Trike Club
"The first rule of Trike Club is, tell a stranger about Trike Club. The second rule of Trike Club is, don't speak. The third rule of Trike Club is, disappear."
I was new and didn't know how to get laid in a new town. There are rules to sex-success in any place, and if you try to learn by experience, you waste a lot of weekends and a lot of money on a lot of alcohol on a lot of women. If you join a group, introductions get made, guidance is given, girlfriends have friends and secrets are spilled. In other words, you get a leg up--which I always intend as a pun.
I was introduced to Trike Club by Trevor--whose dj name was TV--and I thought it could be just the leg I was looking for. We met pressed into opposite back corners of the service elevator falling groundward from Cinderella's Tower, a free-talk lounge for aspiring princesses atop one of Umeda's dirty-bubble building. Pinned in by the dead-weight bodies of a dozen-odd descending Japanese office workers, we nodded from our respective corners and made the kind of eye contact that both keeps things distant and keeps things cool. Giving nothing up, but acknowledging each other as life-forms.
Then the pause when occupants of an enclosed space become aware of someone's toxic breath.
At floor 14 and falling, Trevor showed his hand and slowly slid the whitest business card I've ever seen across the elevator's matt-black steel wall. His middle-finger at its center, moving that luminous rectangle my way across the vertical flat while at the same time keeping its secret. A gesture I thought he probably learned from TV, but liked and was prepared to imitate.
I got the card just as we reached the ground. Everybody rumbled forth as the cartoon character's voice from the speakers urged us to depart politely and to not forget things we may have forgotten. Trevor vanished with them, leaving me holding the card. I stared at it and it glowed at every angle. It was blank except for at its center where--no bigger than a baby's fingernail--was a drawing of a tiny black tricycle.
On the other side, opposite the drawing, was printed TV.
I was new and didn't know how to get laid in a new town. There are rules to sex-success in any place, and if you try to learn by experience, you waste a lot of weekends and a lot of money on a lot of alcohol on a lot of women. If you join a group, introductions get made, guidance is given, girlfriends have friends and secrets are spilled. In other words, you get a leg up--which I always intend as a pun.
I was introduced to Trike Club by Trevor--whose dj name was TV--and I thought it could be just the leg I was looking for. We met pressed into opposite back corners of the service elevator falling groundward from Cinderella's Tower, a free-talk lounge for aspiring princesses atop one of Umeda's dirty-bubble building. Pinned in by the dead-weight bodies of a dozen-odd descending Japanese office workers, we nodded from our respective corners and made the kind of eye contact that both keeps things distant and keeps things cool. Giving nothing up, but acknowledging each other as life-forms.
Then the pause when occupants of an enclosed space become aware of someone's toxic breath.
At floor 14 and falling, Trevor showed his hand and slowly slid the whitest business card I've ever seen across the elevator's matt-black steel wall. His middle-finger at its center, moving that luminous rectangle my way across the vertical flat while at the same time keeping its secret. A gesture I thought he probably learned from TV, but liked and was prepared to imitate.
I got the card just as we reached the ground. Everybody rumbled forth as the cartoon character's voice from the speakers urged us to depart politely and to not forget things we may have forgotten. Trevor vanished with them, leaving me holding the card. I stared at it and it glowed at every angle. It was blank except for at its center where--no bigger than a baby's fingernail--was a drawing of a tiny black tricycle.
On the other side, opposite the drawing, was printed TV.
posted by jerry at 9:45 PM
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