Tokyo glistens in the Spring rains which drip, drip, drop off of red lanterns threaded with a thousand tiny fairylights, swaying over the front of the bar. Moonlight is magic, sparkling on your skin, but Tokyo is an insomniac, manic at midnight with the blare of horns and tap, tap of passing feet. On the corner, a clown with a lipstick-red mouth makes balloon animals. You can barely see the stars for the noise of city lights, but somewhere overhead Arcturus the huntsman arches his bow.
He stood with his friend under a pink cherry blossom tree across the road, hunched against the rain in his leather jacket. They rolled a joint and watched me curiously, like two slightly feral cats. I leaned against the front of the bar and ignored them.
“Hej älskling,” with a lupine grin.
“Sorry? English. Sorry.”
He looked to his friend, a smaller guy with his hair tied back in a rat tail, “Wasss your name, English girl? I’m Nils and this is… how you say? Like the bugs you get in your…” He gestured to his stomach.
“Tapeworm?”
“Maybe, yes.” He shrugged.
They were Swedish, he said. Here to make a documentary about Tapeworm’s band. He rattled on enthusiastically about Japan and how important Tapeworm’s band was for Nordic punk culture. Tapeworm and I exchanged a few tentative smiles and curious looks, but we didn’t speak the same language so what could you do?
“Want a drink?” Nils offered me a re-purposed plastic bottle slopping with some kind of brown liquid, which he and Tapeworm had been passing between themselves. Why not?
“Kahlua Midnight”, he said.
Kahlua Midnight starts with the strongest espresso you can imagine, six shots, topped with equal amounts of various liqueurs and a final dose of whiskey. As you take a sip, all around you the low, disorienting rumble of voices you cannot understand is broken by the crackle of laughter. Fairylights and red lanterns dance in a sudden breeze, which sends a shiver up your neck, and pink blossom tumbles from the trees to drift across the street. A hint of mystery: I’ll meet you at midnight. It shouldn’t have, but it tasted like happiness. Sticky, sweet waffles drenched in whisky and spices, eaten by the river on a cold day. The melodic sound of a carousel and children laughing. Fireworks in November.
When the bottle was empty Nils ran out of steam and they set off into the night. Tapeworm turned back at the last minute, leaning into my ear, his whiskery face brushing against my cheek.
“Later?”
He smelled like sour whiskey, “Yes, later,” I said.
I looked for them again the next night, and the next, but they never came back. I did see them once more in the distance a few days later, boarding a tram in the commercial district. Tapeworm had a scowl on his face, while his friend struggled with an enormous camcorder on his shoulder. I left them to it. Some memories, no matter how sweet, should not be held too tightly. You have to let them fade to sepia, become a hazy jane dream that you take out to visit when you’re feeling sad or a little lonely. That’s Tokyo for me.
In my memory, his mouth tasted like sweet, salted chocolate, and he smiled when we kissed. He said my name like “Cairo”; I never quite caught his. I remember the way that Tokyo looked that night, caught in a Spring shower: silken brown cobbles, slicked with rain; the pinkish glow of lanterns flickering off a fizz of silvery, butterfly bubbles blown by a painted clown on the corner. The fairylights like stars that changed blue, green, pink through a fog of Kahlua Midnight. The sound of the band in the bar behind us and the horn player’s mournful wail.
1 shot Kahlua | 1 shot Baileys | 1 shot whiskey | 6 shots espresso | grated chocolate, to taste
