the only thing that sucks more than existence is....

we sat across from each other in the dingy izakaya, ice already melting off the frosted mugs. a group of businessmen's chatter at the next table grew louder and louder in their drunkenness. the salt clung to the soybean pods set out before us as a libation snack. i raised my mug. "kampai. to....."

well shit, i thought. what exactly do you toast to when you're sitting across from a guy who'd been threatening suicide all week?

when you'd spent 4 hours in the police station a few days before trying to track down someone who refused to answer any call, explain where he was, except in riddles and rhymes that the cops called a "cry for help" if he were actually going to do it he wouldn't have told you he would've just done it obviously he trusts you why do you think he called you? well goddamn it if it's help you want, you need to answer your fucking phone and tell me where the hell you are.... what do say a toast to?

he had a shopping bag with him, full to the brim of travel brochures weighed down by a hardcover Japanese copy of La Nausee.

i know why he called me. he called me because i get it. i'm not going to die over it, but i get it.

finally i had my kampai. i raised my glass, "to existence."

"to existence."

because really, it sucks and it's futile sometimes.... and the only thing that sucks more is the alternative....

that Kafka, what a little smartass

i considered driving to the city office because it was raining, only a little bit, but decided not to because it wasn't quite far away enough to make driving worthwhile. i considered just walking up Fujimi-dori, but decided to go through Beppu Park instead.

why, i wondered. what did it matter. what did anything matter? Sartre's novel La Nausee and an almost-but-not-quite-healed broken heart is a lethal combination. hey old guy, why are you bending down to exercise your knees? don't you know existence is futile and limber knee joints are impermanent, and therefore your efforts to preserve them are absurd? hey pidgeon, why are you scuttling across the dead squashed sakura blossoms made wet with rain and brown with decay..... through the fog i could almost make out the sickly obscene fake bright colors of the non-operational ferris wheel at the abandoned amusement park on the hill.

almost.

nausea.

and why was i even walking to the city office to sign up for health insurace that would probably end up being more expensive than just paying out of pocket for health checkups? the thought occurred to me, the only way health insurance to be worth its price is for whoever's paying for it to become really fucking sick like with a brain tumor or something.... a bitter snicker burst forth into the misty fog.

"Jaaaa, zat is pretty funny, nicht?" i looked to my left.
"Franz, what are you doing in Beppu Park?"
his expression didn't change from the picture you can find on Wikipedia, nor any color fill the black and white of his slightly stick-out ears and center part down his hair.

"I am not in zis Beppu Park, but merely in your existential qvandary."
"Alright fine. What are you doing in my existential quandary?"
"You didn't ask Freddie Mercury what he was doing in the Texas Instruments cafeteria last veek."
"Freddie didn't talk to me. He just danced around and sang "Another One Bites The Dust" so I'd feel better about getting my heart ripped out of my ass."

Franz took out a ratty hankerchief and coughed into it. He peered into the red substance he'd coughed up. "Sorry," he sighed. "Eet's ze tuberculosis, you see."
"Well the rain's probably not good for it. Here." He shrugged and ducked under the black umbrella. "I can't remember, did you speak English?"
"Nein. But you do. Und you can fake a good German akzent."
"Yeah." We kept walking. All of Beppu park is just this winding yellow pathway punctuated with too-beautiful flowers and man-made babbling brooks. "I don't know where I'm going anymore."
"Zen it does not matter which vay you go."
"You stole that from Alice in Wonderland."
"Nein. You did."

We came to one of the park exits. B-con Plaza loomed above in all its bubble economy era excess.
"Shit. This is not where I wanted to go."
Franz cackled and then hacked up another bloody phlegmwad into his handkerchief. "But you just said--"
"I know. I know. Shut up."
He shrugged again. "I just vanted to show you... if nossing matters und life is meaningless, zen you should not upset yourself so over such trifles of ssings. Like getting lost."
"Yeah...." I sighed. "Goddamn it Franz, I hope no one finds out about this conversation we had. They'll think I'm completely insane."
He shook his head. "Nein. You are not crazy. Crazy people do not ssink zey are crazy; razzer zey sink everyvahn ELSE is crazy, und zey are sane."
"You stole that from Lost."
"Nein. You did." He made another disgusting 30 seconds of wheezing and choking.
"They did cure that eventually, you know."
"Ja, und zey could also give me ze, how you say, Prozac fur meinen melancholia und anxieties.

But zen.... vhat vould I write about?"

He was gone. I stopped to smell a tulip. It was nice. And then I kept walking.