Trouserpress

Last Sunday, the 18th, I read at the Osaka bash of the world-renowned Four Stories event.

I have to confess that I was dead nervous. I have read many times at Readers Anonymous and once at Reading Words, but those are open mic events. Four Stories is an invitation only event for published authors and I felt that expectations are therefore higher — just take a look at the talent listed on Four Stories’ web site. Moreover, we had featured the event in the March issue of Kansai Scene and I was expecting a bigger crowd than usual.

As it turned out, I was not savaged to death by an angry mob of disappoint literature fans and neither did I embarrass myself by getting drunk, throwing up or falling off the reader’s stool. I didn’t hit on anyone, get hit by anyone and my trousers managed not to fall down.

All four readers were well received (Suzanne Kamata, Holly Thompson and Jerry Gordon) I met some new friends and saw some more familiar ones, and there was lots of wine and food.

The organiser Tracy Slater, who runs this event in Tokyo and Boston besides Osaka, has put up some photographs of the event on Four Stories’ Flickr site and MP3s are available for free download from the main FS site.

I don’t yet know when the next Osaka event is, but I shall be going along as part of the audience. See you there?

Through this event and through the web site, authors are able to promote their work and publications. I was therefore somewhat abashed that my own novel Weed, through my own errors, is still languishing on my HD and my follow up collection of short stories ain’t going nowhere until Weed has shifted its arse. Actually the novel is delayed by technical considerations (an inability to get out of bed and then keep my face out of a bottle). Weed: coming soon. Honest.

The world of blogging was rocked to its foundations today when I added a new post to Psipook.

On the train this morning I was lost in concentration doing some editing on my laptop for the magazine. Nearing Osaka, I looked up and did a double take on a very good looking young woman sitting opposite that I hadn’t noticed before. She was, I would guess, in her early twenties and was not one of the petit women that so often grab your attention in Japan; she was a gorgeously cuddly build. She had a cascade of black, permed hair and lips that were made for kissing. I was quite struck.

I have a bad habit of staring at people, especially women, on the train. Especially when I am in my writing/editing/reading zone, I lose a sense of where I am and STARE. I dragged my attention back to my work but then I noticed that she was taking looks at me. I tried not to look at her and she tried not to look at me but we both seemed to have the same problem in keeping our eyes to ourselves.

I did not delude myself: this young thing was not interested in an old man like me. Perhaps she is one of those people who likes to talk to foreigners, I thought, but tried again to keep my mind on my work. Nevertheless, I was dead chuffed that this gorgeous woman had found some reason to sneak looks at me whatever it was. I allowed myself a quiet smile and got on as best I could with typing.

Soon the train stopped at Tennoji and she got up to leave with one more furtive look my way. Ho hum, I sighed admiring her calves, there goes another one, and reacting to some unregistered sensation put my hand up to my face where under my nose I discovered a large encrustation, a bogey, a relic of the hurried blow I had when leaving the house. It was a big greener, that had been with me all the way from my front door to Osaka. Now I can see why the young woman found me so irresistible.