My name is Kyoko, and i’m a twenty-six-year-old single woman who maintains that life is a fragile bit of luck in a world based on chance, that Vodka should be a beverage a girl can marry, that we all secretly dress like hipsters, that nobody’s grown a decent tomato since 1963. What else? I am currently backpacking through Europe and couch surfing my entire way through each city. I’m back in the states now. I work at a comic book store — and recently got employed to be a video game tester (eat your heart out twelve year old boys). I’m from a very tiny village outside of Nagasaki, Japan, born and raised. I came over to the states for Uni (then graduated). I have spent the best years of my life growing out my bangs,  searching for a good bra, and wishing I was anywhere but here. I used to think the world wasn’t that complicated—just add water and live—but along came AIDS and world hunger and the cancellation of Twin Peaks and Firefly and I guess I just grew up. In my life, I’ve always been a fugitive. if I don’t like something, I leave. I scatter my photos, give away my clothes, get rid of my books, sell my shoes. I move. I change boyfriends, haircuts, countries. I learn a new language. I trample my past deliberately. While avoiding my mirrors I repeat to myself that only the future matters. Making a tabula rasa of my life is my way of becoming someone else, or rather, of trying my best to become someone else.

Have I left anything out? Let’s see, I think every human being deserves a good mattress, a comfortable pair of shoes, and a very smart shrink.  I get scared a lot. I’m scared the ozone layer is disappearing.  I’m scared one of those horrible superstores will be coming to a neighborhood near me. I’m scared my parents are getting old. And i’m frighten to death of ambivalent men. 

For a long time, I had a type: dark, intense, just a touch remote—you know the ones I mean, right? They don’t want you, but they want to make good and sure that you want them. At the end of most dates, there’d be a quick peck on the cheek and a simple “Well, it was nice not getting to know you.” I’d actually find myself tempted to reassure the guy that the only thing he’d given away was his name, rank, and serial number. 

I’m left handed, prefer walking rather than running, and own a Snuggie. I want to know when salt became the enemy, and when medical insurance became the status of being an adult. I’ve slowly converted my wardrobe from college student to post graduate. Meaning all my alcoholic related t-shirts are now being replaced with comic con convention t-shirts. 

My father and I go back nearly half a century. It took a lot of time, but I’ve trained him well. He no longer tells me my paintings hang too low or my hemlines hang too high. He doesn’t suggest I get my head out of the clouds or the hair out of my eyes. In exchange for which I refrain from complaining bitterly that he served broiled chicken with a side of frozen broccoli virtually every night from 1985 to the millennium. He doesn’t throw my inability to parallel park, and I’ve quit addressing letters home to “the man who forced me to wear a coat over my Halloween costume.” We’ve managed to forgive each other’s frailties, to accept that he’s neurotic, and I’m, well, even more neurotic. We understand that I will never wear anything that involves applique and he will never eat anything that involves low calories. It’s a fairly complex truce but it generally works for us, and when it doesn’t, we moan to our respective shrinks and live to love another day. Others are less fortunate. 

My, how time flies when i’m doing all the talking. We’re already up to the part where I have to end with some simple, albeit clever, albeit straight from the heart, phrase—something that says we’re all in this together, something that leaves everybody feeling a little less crazy in a world where “something a little less crazy” isn’t always easy to come by….if only I knew what that was.