At the co-op cafeteria, I’ve occasionally witnessed stacks of flyers set out by the trendy, popular university clubs devoted to organizing social functions. They advertise parties with coeds from other universities, summertime beach bashes, winter ski getaways, and other beguiling events. I have heard that, every year, five to six students perish from the exertion of attending all the festivities.
I’ve yet to witness any of these events in person, so I suppose it is possible that they and their organizing bodies are entirely fictional. However, for Shikama and me, the sight of the advertisements alone is sufficient to incite rage.
At one point, we determined to form our own, decidedly untrendy club and plan our own social functions. We called the club Man Musk and threw our doors open wide. Anyone was welcome to attend. Even women. Especially women. Unfortunately, no female students responded to our advertisements. They walked right by our welcoming arms without a glance in our direction.
Undeterred, we held our first event, a jam-packed, ten-man hot pot party that took place in August. It very nearly resulted in fatalities of our own, and the club was promptly disbanded.
Our intent was to inflict self-torture. The hot pot party was supposed to push us to our limits and, in doing so, cultivate a strong psyche capable of enduring any future hardship. In the end, the self-torture was a little too intense. In the environment we’d created, even a kimchi hot pot proved overwhelming, nearly sending a few of us straight up to heaven. In the end, we learned a hard truth: Hot pot parties are an activity best reserved for winter.
Though the club was done for, my compatriots and I had decided to attempt a private comeback. The return hot pot party was to be hosted in my lodgings, and oyster was to be the main ingredient.
There were some early setbacks as we prepped the other typical standbys. Shikama inexplicably began to viciously deride napa cabbage, listing off all the vegetable’s shortcomings. Ido appeared to lose himself in erotic fantasy while slicing strips of tenderloin, and it was only with great difficulty that we pulled him away and out of his torpor. But aside from those small hurdles, the hot pot party commenced smoothly, and we reconfirmed that, in the correct season, the hot pot is a magnanimous thing that warmly envelops the souls of all who gather near.
Takayabu, having a great tolerance for alcohol, had brought his own bottle of liquor, and as he threw back each successive glass, a mysterious smile spread behind his iron sand whiskers. I had no idea what about the atmosphere was so amusing to him. The rest of us took small, careful sips of warmed sake like cats lapping from platters of milk.
“So tell us,” Takayabu suddenly bellowed, turning to me. “Did you find anything over there in London?”
He was dredging up an episode from my past. In the spring of my fourth year, in tandem with my flight from responsibilities at the Faculty of Agriculture, I’d fled from Japan as well, spending approximately a month gallivanting through London. Takayabu and Shikama had since made many a jest about my “journey of self-discovery.”
Takayabu was of the opinion that anything requiring a journey of discovery isn’t really worth being found. And I supposed that was probably true for a man with so large a presence he had nary a hope of making his way through life in any covert manner. Still, I would prefer not to be lumped in with the many hopeless, wayward youths out there who believe they’ve grown in some significant way merely by taking a brief trip overseas.
“I most certainly did,” I replied defiantly.
“Huh?” Takayabu’s surprise was evident. “What did you find?”
“My self.”
“Where?”
“It was on display among the exhibits at the British Museum.”
Shikama, mouth half occupied slurping down a clump of Malony noodles, chimed in earnestly, “All the way over in London and behind glass, hmm? I can see why it would be difficult to find.”
“Describe it,” Takayabu demanded. “What does a self look like when you find it?”
“Why, it was encased in a tin container about yea big. It even had a charming little ribbon wrapped around it. It made for a very moving sight.”
Ido grinned. “How inspiring!”
Takayabu let out a deep sigh. “If what you’re saying is true, then that means my self is somewhere out there waiting to be found, too.”
“Most likely. But I’d recommend you begin your search on the surface of the moon.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Just as the party was really picking up, we heard a hiss outside, like hard wind assaulting the windowpanes. It was followed by a rapid drumming. We’d been hit by a heavy rainstorm.
There was a great rumbling in the distance, and Shikama’s voice grew meek.
“Thunder,” he whispered.
This, I should note, was coming from a man known to react to thunderstorms by crawling on his hands and knees down Imadegawa Street to, quote, “reduce the likelihood of my being struck by lightning.”
Ido craned his neck, listening intently. After a moment, he announced, “Don’t worry. It sounds pretty distant.”
“Cover your navel!” Shikama shrieked. “Raijin will aim right for it if you give him the chance!”
Then, after thinking for a moment, he added, “Well, not that it matters. What good is a navel, anyway?”
“You know, there’s something I’ve always wondered,” I began, laying bare my ignorance. “How exactly is a lightning rod supposed to keep a building safe? It always seemed to me that sticking up toward the sky like that would only draw more lightning.”
Takayabu groaned. “You’re a science major, and you don’t have any idea how a lightning rod works?”
Then, quickly returning to a bushy grin, he began to explain.
“An electric charge builds up inside a thundercloud, see? It grows and grows until it desperately needs somewhere to go, and then bam, lightning! It finds the path of least resistance through the air and comes crackling down to the ground. That’s all there is to it.
“So the answer is to not let a charge build up to the point that lightning becomes inevitable. If we provide a way for it to escape to the ground bit by bit, it’ll never reach a critical mass. Enter the lightning rod. It’s an artificial pathway for an electric charge to reach the ground.
“Speaking of which, in olden times, lightning was seen as a form of divine retribution. So for a period of time even after the invention of the lightning rod, churches refused to install the things. They figured there wasn’t any need, since God would never unleash His wrath onto the righteous.
“But given that all the other buildings in towns were starting to install the rods, and the fact that churches tend to be relatively tall structures, pretty soon it was the unprotected churches that were attracting all the lighting strikes!
“In fact, this one church in Italy had been used to store gunpowder. When lightning inevitably hit the structure, half the town got blown away. Ha-ha-ha!”
Ido interjected, mumbling, “So if we think of men as lightning, then the lightning rod that keeps us from accosting random women on the street is…the video shop.”
“I really wish you’d get your mind out of the gutter,” Takayabu chided quietly. “I don’t care how good the analogy is. You need to stop thinking of everything in terms of sex.”
Shikama, surprisingly, jumped in to defend Ido’s line of thought. “What’s so wrong about focusing on sex? Hmm?”
“It starts to reflect on you. If a guy’s always making seedy comments, he develops an aura about himself. Take you, for example.”
Shikama spread his arms wide and peered down from his chest to his feet.
“By the gods, you’re right. What is this awful shine?” He trembled as he spoke.
“It’s the musk of man, you dolt,” said Takayabu, pouring another drink into his cup. “Your parents would be ashamed of you.”