story: 6/23

nowadays, i have a hard time remembering living with my brother.

yes, we lived together for at least a few months, in the unit that my japan grandma had basically bought for him up in makiki. those months were, frankly, a blur. i had graduated from college with my bachelor's in religion, and the assurance (to my parents) that i would take the mcats, and then apply to some medical school somewhere. in the meantime, i guess i tried to keep myself busy.

i worked at a pathology lab over on south king street, and at a restaurant (furusato) in waikiki. i also got a job as a bellman/valet over at the waikiki joy hotel. i had these three jobs going on simultaneously. i think i only returned home in the evenings.

my brother was similarly busy. he was into his first year at medical school.

we kept the place pretty clean, as i remember it. he had his room, and i had mine. i recall that there was a kind of "common room" (i guess that's college talk for a living room). there was a tv there, with a box nearby it filled with my brother's porn collection. there was a kind of fold up futon sofa in front of the tv. and i believe that there was a dining table of sorts right nearby, in the same room. i have dim memories of what the kitchen looked like, but it adjoined to that dining table. there was a sliding glass door that opened to what was barely a lanai; like, maybe you could stand there, but not much else. light filtered in through some long, straight leaved foliage into the living room.

my brother made some healthy food for us. there was always some chicken or something, cut up and cooked, and conveniently placed in tupperware containers. i don't know how often i actually ate at home with my brother, but i do remember it being there- the food, i mean.

i can't remember any bathrooms, for any reason. or more precisely, i don't remember where the bathrooms were.

*****

i recall being profoundly depressed and anxious (so when wasn't i?).

i mean, i had successfully exited college, but i had no direction in my life. i was working three jobs, and i suppose that kept me busy, but i knew that i was just floating. i really wanted a relationship, to be honest; there was that loneliness within me, perhaps still in a relatively nascent form, but it was there nonetheless: this nagging hollow that resembled a hunger in the gut.

*****

i remember, occasionally, my brother and i working out together. at least i recall us running over to the track field at roosevelt (?). but i can't recall much beyond that.

every now and then, we would go over to tower records (it still existed back then) to rent some stuff; or we went to this japanese manga shop on young street (it's gone now). i would also occasionally go to an anime place in the mccully shopping center... but that was the essence of our "entertainment" back then: reading stupid manga and watching stupid anime.

*****

i don't really have stories of that time, only flashes, like afterimages burned into my mind... like working at waikiki joy hotel... and trying to carry a bedframe down to a unit, one floor at a time, and thinking of a particular girl... and the song, "i can't even tell," going through my head. (i guess the movie "clerks" was big at that time).

i remember riding my bike down the ala wai. the bumps in the road. sometimes walking past the prostitutes late at night... all these meaningless details. nothing ever really happened, nothing memorable anyway. it was just the texture of life at that time...

...like i was just waiting for someone to recognize me as a human being.