Motown House

“Are you sure?” the guy asked his friend at the door, “this feels kind of weird.”

We were in Roppongi – the notorious, kind of seedy, club district of Tokyo – at a bar called Motown House, and the Bruno Mars was blaring. A friend had invited us to go out, mainly because a friend of hers was bartending that night. “A trip advisor reviewer claimed he got drugged and robbed there,” my sister had announced the day before, “but it’s Roppongi, that happens. Besides, we know the bartender, she’s probably not going to drug us.”

That same bartender, who was quickly becoming the only reason we were there, had also described the clientele as “an interesting, older crowd.” We’d imagined professionals around our age, in their 30s and 40s, grooving to some soul and offering interesting conversation. We’d been about 15 years off the mark, and the only soul we’d heard in the past two hours was a techno remix of Jackson Five’s “ABC.”

Photo credit: my sister

Photo credit: my sister

Photo credit: my sister

Maybe we’d arrived too early, we thought. Yet, with everything just a bit off – the older women who appeared to believe in the sex appeal of brown, knee high boots with a reasonable heel, the overweight men who seemed limited to staring with half smiles, the working girls that were about two decades past their prime – it made for some fantastic people-watching. Alcohol mixed with blatant desperation turned the slight hip swaying into frantic bouncing to an imaginary beat a fraction of a pulse off the rhythm coming out of the speakers. An undernourished woman arrived in a fur hat three times the size of her head and threw off her coat to dance with the grace of a push puppet on speed. Her much older date shuffled his boot-clad legs to Justin Bieber, his eyes covered by dark sunglasses despite the dim lighting. A Korean girl arrived with her stoic boyfriend, and proceeded to jump up and down, mosh pit style, through every single song. Two Japanese salarymen were doing what looked like interpretive dancing. Another was falling asleep on his feet at the bar. A guy came in high, and pantomimed conducting an orchestra with a glass of red wine.

The bright side of being trapped in a virtual circus was that it was easy to find people who were normal. They usually came in with trepidation, looked horrified, and left within fifteen minutes.

“Is it always like this?” An Australian guy shouted in my ear as he looked around the room, mentally clutching on to his sense of dignity.

“I don’t know, but it gets worse the farther back you go,” I shouted back.

While the harmless drunks and weirdos save Motown House from being completely awful, the bar is still exceedingly creepy. For about ten minutes, a group of us kept our eyes resolutely fixed on different spots in the bar while a guy that looked like Michael Moore crossed with John Wayne Gacy stood next to our table and stared at us. On my way out of the bathroom, a South Asian guy stroked the back of my head. A drunk Japanese guy simply stood six inches behind one of our friends for about an hour.

“I work for the CIA,” a white-haired, American guy in a suit tried to tell my sister.

“No, you don’t,” she said flatly, “if you did, you wouldn’t tell me that.”

“Okay,” he conceded, lamely, “I work for the U.S. Embassy.”

“Yeah?” My sister said, sensing another lie, “what do you do there?”

Our breath of fresh air was the older Asian guy in a Hermes tie featuring bunny rabbits, who, completely wasted, insisted on trying to dance with every butch lesbian in our group. He happily accepted rejection yet remained optimistic and immune to the creepy desperation permeating most of the room. He bounced to the beat with us until we realized it was midnight and escaped the smoky confines of Motown House to catch the last train.

I came home to an anguished whimper-bark and a dog – normally too lazy to get up to greet me when I get home – practically vibrating with happiness.

“Do I smell like an ashtray?” I asked as she jumped and wagged excited circles around me and sniffed my mascara, “did you miss me?”

On the ride home, we had talked through hoarse throats about how terrible Motown House had been, the Michael Moore/John Wayne Gacy serial killer, and the possibility of that bar becoming a part of my future if I didn’t find a life partner in the next ten years. My sister had apologized for dragging me there, as if going out with her didn’t always involve slightly outrageous events. But even with the high percentage of creeps there, it’s hard to write off Motown House as a bad bar. Like watching Hoarders, it’s an experience that can turn your far-from-perfect life into one that is much more worthy of appreciation. Suddenly, I can point to my safe, repetitive life where I spend most nights with an ungrateful dog with pride because I’m not a regular at a bar seemingly designed for the comfortably desperate.

Should I ever need another reminder, fortunately, Motown House is only a short subway ride away.

Another Year of Discomfort

Back in November, when I said that I was getting back into cycling, I was full of good intentions. I pumped my tires, lubed my chain, and had mentally prepared a progression plan to build up my legs around my lifting schedule. There was a glimmer of a hope of an actual outdoor ride before the new year and dusting off of jackets and base layers. I was prepared. I was ready.

You know how they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions? Yeah, that.

In my defense, it’s not like I’ve been sitting around. I’ve been sitting around and doing research, catching up on all the races I missed last year. Some might say “missed” is a bit of a strong word, but it’s really the only one suitable to describe that feeling when you realize that Grand Tour stages can actually be more interesting than the action montages so graciously put together by Steephill.tv. I say “can,” because while it’s been exhilarating, it can be kind of exhausting. I haven’t quite managed to stick around long enough to see who has won what.

Spinning those wheels again.

It’s not because I have the attention span of a squirrel, or because my smartphone and the inundation of technology has conditioned me to only seek instant gratification. It’s because I’m watching these races on the big screen at my gym, where a replay of a three-week Grand Tour fills up a nice five-hour chunk of the day. I linger in the stretching area, staring at a 50-inch flat-screen TV, looking for Degenkolb, Cav, and Lotto, while wondering if my yoga pants are really getting more snug, or if it’s just a self-conscious reaction to the reminder that cyclists should always be unsustainably skinny.

Afterwards, I cross my fingers and step on the scale. Though I’ve perfected the art of making the act seem casual enough, I’m usually mentally pleading with the universe. Please, please, please, I think, make it a number over 51.5kg.

As I get back into a sport that places a premium on being light, I am, for the first time in my life, deliberately trying to push my body the other way. Once I reconciled myself to the need to build some mass, I figured it’d be pretty easy. I’ve gotten fat before, and I love to eat. The only way I could see this going wrong would be if I got blubbery but made zero gains.  

Honestly, thus far, the whole process has been kind of like a dick slap in the face. What I considered a slow, reasonable weight gain of 1kg per month has been frustratingly out of reach. My former ability to gain weight at the sight of food has suddenly disappeared, and those fat jeans that I bought two months ago still have the tags on them. I’ve gained and lost the same pound approximately three times in the past two months, and have been fighting off the teeth-grinding nausea that comes with eating too much food when you have gastroparesis. I’ve reincorporated donuts back into my diet, but I’m also tired of chewing. So far, it’s been a losing battle.

Tomato ramen!

The worst part, though, is that it’s still an extremely mentally uncomfortable thing to do. When I realized that I wanted to ride again, there was a nagging fear of falling back into old habits and unrealistic expectations. I didn’t want the bike to become a vehicle of insecurity: something that made me feel bad about myself and exaggerated my inadequacies. Yet, despite seeking a more balanced life with the bike, purposefully trying to gain weight is still sometimes countered by those endurance sports tendencies to be as skinny as possible. I love the muscle I’ve built on my shoulders and arms – they balance out my wide hips and thicker thighs – but am prone to falling down the social media trap of wishing I looked different. Once or twice a month, I’ll complain (“I feel fat”) to friends who tell me I’m being ridiculous (“there are professionals that can help you with that”).

Deadlift bruises, bro.

Fortunately, this time around, that’s pretty much where it ends. There is – and may always be – the temptation to fall back into familiar routines; to only ride and go hungry and get on the trainer every day. It would be the comfortable thing to do, the thing people in cycling tell you to do, the thing I’ve almost always done. But as much as I voice my displeasure at feeling heavier, at eating so much, at doing something new, I’ve been enjoying the discomfort. With the past few months getting me comfortable with being uncomfortable, here’s hoping 2017 brings more of the same. 

A Year of Reunions

“It’s been the year of reunions,” I said to Adam, over omurice. It was his last day in Tokyo and we’d spent it wandering around Shinjuku and Harajuku and indulging in my favorite pastime of eating too much food. I was referring to a few friends I’d reconnected with (a friend from high school and a roommate from college, both of which I hadn’t spoken to in at least a decade) as well as to seeing Adam in Tokyo again (we’d lost touch for about a year). Though the origins of each of those friendships were vastly different, it seemed that cycling – like an embarrassing moment that you play over and over in your head, reliving it to react differently – always lingered in the background. My old college roommate had gotten addicted to cycling some years back, and my friend from high school was now a hardcore endurance athlete. New friends brought memories of training rides and red-lining my way up mountain passes, too. “Do you do sports?,” a gym buddy asked as I got under the barbell for some squats.

While I currently spend more time in the gym than on my bike, the past weekend spent at Cycle Mode with Adam Hansen and the exceptionally welcoming people at Ridley was really bringing back that lovin’ feeling for bikes.

Incredibly, this was my first ever visit to Cycle Mode. Held at Makuhari Messe in Chiba prefecture, it took up two separate convention hall spaces, which were connected by a small passageway. Unlike Interbike, Cycle Mode is focused on presenting new products directly to consumers. To that end, most bike brands offered free test rides of almost all of their bikes, and this didn’t mean a simple loop around the building. Cycle Mode organizers had set up a winding 1.2km course exclusively for testing the bikes, which came in an impressively wide range of sizes.

As Adam did sign and meet sessions at the Ridley booth, then talks at the main stage of Cycle Mode, I wandered around taking pictures of people touching stuff. Ridley was kind enough to invite me along to Adam’s signing event at Y’s Road in Ochanomizu, as well as a talk and private party hosted by Cycle Terrace in the Aeon Mall where I became the unofficial interpreter. 

Between events and after the whirlwind of a day was done, Adam and I did what old friends do: drink lots of coffee and catch up on recent life events. There was a whisky bar in Ginza, Scramble Crossing and eel in Shibuya, Din Tai Fung in Shinjuku and wandering around Harajuku. There was lots of laughing and a lot more teasing and sarcasm and giving each other shit. There were promises made to do it again next year.

I opened iTunes this morning for the first time in four days and noticed that I’d had Eminem’s “Die Alone” on repeat. Not because I’m mourning an ex, but because it seemed to reflect my feelings after I’d lost cycling. Cycling had been an answer to everything until a few years ago, when it began to bring with it a heaviness and a sense of permanent ostracization. “Why aren’t I good enough?” I used to cry to my best friend, “why does the bike industry hate me?”

It had felt like a betrayal. I’d poured my soul into cycling. I knew the races, I knew most of the riders, I knew I could write and copyedit better than whatever Cycling News was publishing. And it still wasn’t good enough. It broke my heart, and in retaliation, I had resolved to move away and past cycling, onto bigger and better things.

Predictably, I struggled. Bikes seemed to be all I knew. No other spectator sport is nearly as fulfilling, emotional, or rewarding. I still watched roadies pass enviously and continually reminded myself to do something about my currently nonexistent aerobic capacity. I looked at my hopelessly scarred knees and tried to convince myself that I was in it for the long haul, there was no going back. And yet, there was still the hurt and the fear. Could I ride solo again for years without unraveling? Will the risk of bringing back all the baggage and negativity be worth it? Was it healthy for me mentally to get back into cycling?

Releasing my iPhone from looping “Die Alone” this morning, the beats eventually slid into “Guts Over Fear” and I realized how I’d come full circle. When I had said to Adam that this year was one of reunions, I’d been more right than I’d known. It wasn’t just a year of reconnecting with old friends who’d known me before I started to ride, of hanging out with a professional cyclist who doesn’t judge me for not riding for over a year, but also one of getting back into cycling and the bike.

It’s taken a while, but I think I’m back.

[A big thank you to Kawataki-san, Haruki-san, and Edward V. at Ridley, and Glenn L. at Vittoria!]

Prescription Dom Perignon

Every couple of months, I find myself in a compromising position, where the strangest part about my situation is not that I don’t have any pants on. It’s not that a virtual stranger is hovering over me with a giant popsicle stick, or that hot wax is involved. Or that I actually enjoy the process. It’s always something else with my waxing sessions.

There was the time in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where I swear the woman was using a pumice. It was so painful, it scared my hair into not growing back for nearly two weeks (unfortunately, it’s also been the best wax job I’ve ever received). There was the time I ended up hearing about how much skin you have to push, pull, and generally move around when you wax a scrotum. That time I got offered a job (I’m still not quite sure what to think of the fact that the only time I’ve been offered a job on the spot, I was naked from the waist down). And then there was that time that the nice lady working industriously over my nether regions was convinced that I really needed to get on Tinder.

Of course, I could lie. “I’m dating this awesome guy, fantastic in bed,” I could say. “I’m totally gainfully employed; love my job,” I could also claim. Yet, somehow, being deceptive at a time when you’re lying back, half naked, seems extremely silly. And because that translates to guys as well, I haven’t allowed myself to download Tinder. Besides, I like to tell myself, I’m not a reliable date. After all, I’ve been prescribed Dom Perignon.

Okay, it’s domperidone. Not quite the fizzy, alcoholic elixir – ironically named after a monk – of the French aristocracy, and more like a small, coincidentally pale yellow tablet that lets me eat somewhat normally. It’s the current fix for stomach problems that have been getting progressively worse over the past three to four years: hardcore morning nausea, a tight throat and more nausea after meals, and other unpleasant symptoms like bloating until I look pregnant.

And so, while I had hoped by this time that I’d be re-establishing those tan lines, I haven’t ridden outside in over two months.

It sucks. A lot. The worst part is the unpredictability. I’ll be fine for five days in a row, and kitted up and ready to head out on a long-anticipated outdoor ride, my stomach will suddenly throw a temper tantrum. I’d like to say that I’m coming to terms with it, but my friends would probably claim otherwise. They’d be right; I’ve been reduced – more times than I’d like to admit – to lying in bed in my bib shorts and sports bra, weeping in frustration.

It hasn’t been all bad, though. Usually, I’ve managed to make it to the gym a few times a week. One could argue, of course, that if I could lift, I can probably ride. That may be true; but fighting nausea in a squat rack near friends seems far more appealing and comforting than trying to keep a belly full of Skratch down while attempting to pedal myself home, alone. And though I still can’t squat for shit, I’m finally growing some arms. I’ve made gym friends I can laugh with, too, and lifting ensures I go home genuinely, honestly hungry.

On days I lift, the rest of the day can throw what it wants at me. It can involve stories about scrotums, some serious exfoliation that borders on sadism, or not-so-subtle hints that I need to get laid. It can involve that frustrating feeling of being hungry yet nauseous at the same time, for the entire day, or acid reflux that burns my throat and keeps me up at night. Even getting creeped on by the local creeper at the gym ain't no thang. I might not have my bike to run to, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay.

If not, I can always take more Dom Perignon.

The Postcard Project

“Do you read a lot?” A then-new friend asked me a few months ago.

“No, not really,” I said, almost with guilt, because the question sparked a memory of an acquaintance who seems to finish a book a week, broadcasting her consumption via Instagram. In comparison, I am a practicing anorexic, selecting to sip and savor tropes at a deliberate pace. I read, re-read, and watch sentences slowly unfurl into rich, bittersweet storylines. By the time I lumber through the last page – and they have to be real, paper pages – I can’t think of peeling back the cover of a new book until everything inside has settled.

I didn’t used to be like this. Until a handful of years ago, I faithfully relied on my slim Kindle, a nearly ancient version featuring the miniature keyboard and absolutely no touch screen. You had to click through the pages, back and forth, via oblong buttons on the side of the device. “Flipping through” a book meant furiously clicking back a page at a time and hoping you’d land somewhere near that sentence you really liked but forgot to bookmark. And then repeating the process to get back to where you were. It made recalling passages nearly impossible. You simply couldn’t go back to something you didn’t have the foresight to highlight. On the other hand, it encouraged progression like any good electronic device; the meter at the bottom of the screen encouraged me to read faster, consume more, and hoard titles – instantly delivered via wi-fi! – in my slim, gray bank. I bought into it, becoming the ideal Amazon customer. I bought e-books because “they’re so much cheaper than the print versions,” and left them to hibernate. I became those people who buy books – print or electronic – as if purchasing literature would also include the instant download of the thought and intellect required to actually read and comprehend what was inside. Books, by virtue of their ability to be consumed in bulk, were the new intellectual status symbol.

Somehow, through this era of enarmorment with an “electronic reading device,” I was able to retain enough self-awareness to realize that I wouldn’t be able to read anything remotely thought-provoking in an electronic format. Those books remained out of reach, simply because recalling themes and paragraphs would either take several days to click back to, or the process would be so frustrating that I would invariably drive my head through a wall. This, coupled with the purchase of an iPhone that turned my life into a parody of human interaction, switching from screen to screen to screen to screen, finally broke me. I ricocheted back to real books, embracing the ability to literally thumb through creamy pages fat with words.

Recently, that focus on the real has leaked over to email, Facetime, Skype, texts. So much of our lives is filtered through a screen – both literally and figuratively – that communication, while instantaneous, becomes less meaningful. “It erodes,” Noam Chomsky once said in an interview, of the Internet, “normal human relations.”

Separated by most of my friends by an ocean and several time zones, it’s never clear whether anyone who is unfortunate enough to be closely associated with me truly understands my gratitude for their company. In a world saturated with emails and texts, lines declaring that partners in crime are missed, that five year old custom-made frames are still dearly loved, that I still think of that ride when, or how grateful I am that certain people stuck around until I clawed my way out of a vortex of depression, seem to risk getting lost in the deluge. And because I think the world of my friends, and because I am stubborn, I started to make postcards.

Measuring 10.5cm by 15cm, they’re small collages of memories patched together from piles of old magazines. They’re fun to make between food portraits, and layering paper on thicker stock gives them a nice, tangible weight. They’re real. Hand-made, hand-written, and hand-sent. Three have arrived at their destinations thus far (the wait is excruciating, compared with the click and send of email), with more (hopefully, lots more) on the way.

Fingers crossed they have their intended impact. And even if they don’t, each one is really the best 70yen I’ve spent. 

Searching for Action Heroes

“I like to go to this small theatre,” he said, “where they show all these foreign art films. I don’t think my girlfriend enjoys it that much, though.”

In hindsight, I was probably expected to gush about my own love for confusing art films shot only in natural light with no clear resolutions. But when your automatic reaction to a challenge are the words, “well, yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,” loneliness is expressed by “talk to me, Goose,” and ultimate affection by the phrase “you make every day feel like kindergarten,” you’ve relinquished any right to take yourself seriously.

I laughed awkwardly instead, hoping to gloss over my sudden discomfort that there’s very little I love more than a good action movie. To do so usually involves owning up to the scarlet letter of being less than intelligent, which I’ve more than come to terms with. To do so as a woman, however, seems to open the door to questions about a broken moral compass and mental instability. The presumption being that women are somehow expected to skirt away from violence, and to prefer romantic comedies, indie films that require thought, and/or tear-jerker dramas. Anything but bloodshed, gunfire, and revenge.  

To make matters worse, no one is impressed when you’re impressed by violence. For all the obligatory honesty and lack of self-consciousness in admitting that you’ve seen all – yes, all – the Transporter series, and that you communicate with your best friend in quotes from across the entire Fast and Furious series, such admissions are, more often than not, met with derision and suspicion. At best, some suspect it’s a move to gain points with the guys, as if scripted quotes could magically get someone to go home with me (I wish). At worst, I’m a closet psychopath preparing to go Postal (and though I’d almost prefer it, not in the way that involves a mini fridge full of blood bags).

 “But, why action movies?” Most people say.

When pressed to make any definitive statement on the matter, I am often reduced – like a Playboy aficionado – to offering, “but the story was really good in that one.” Action movies are really dramas wrapped in rampage, I like to claim, as if their appeal isn’t largely confined to their innate brutality. I’ll concede that there is no denying the catharsis of hand-to-hand combat, car chases, gunfights and improbable escapes from equally unrealistic situations…but really, I’m captivated by the inner conflict of the protagonist. Really.

It’s not complete bullshit. Aside from the thrill of violence, any action movie plot involves turmoil of the nonviolent kind, which usually requires a brief suspension of belief and reality. And it is this plunge into the fantastic that I love as much as the explosions and kung fu contortions. As the lights dim in theatres, action movie addicts take a leap of faith that there is a world where good will eventually overcome, the hero gets the girl or guy, and revenge – sweet, cold, justifiable revenge – can be ours. Like watching Lance win all those Tours “clean,” it’s the shared experience of optimism on EPO that keeps me coming back for more.

That’s probably why, when anxiety attacks hit after passing scenes that remind me too much of New York, Paris, happier times, when sad or frustrating thoughts start creeping in, I’ve found that a good action movie works better than medication. When the typical remedies – pharmaceuticals, pictures of Heinrich Haussler – can’t stem the flow of tears and snot, I turn to Vin Diesel, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone. I suppose it’s a good thing you can’t drug out heartbreak yet; I still have a lot of movies to catch up on.

The other day, searching for something I haven’t seen before, something with reasonable acting but lots and lots of action, I felt momentary guilt being so comfortable with being so mindless. A scene tugged at the corner of my guilt, then, and I finally had the perfect response to that statement made months ago about art films.

"Why...so...serious?" I should have hissed. Not that he would have gotten it.