I, RYAN STARSAILOR, CHILD OF THE STARS, DISSENTER OF THE SUN, AND THE LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS . . .

. . . whose corporeal form has been pressed through the thresher of life for some time now, and whose cortisol levels have been consistently through the roof all winter, and whose tears do scald like molten lead, am presently continuing to burn through hundreds of gallons of that precious

HIGH-OCTANE MUTANT JET FUEL

. . . that it costs to live like this . . . to live like I do! On top of that, my body has been fighting off some seemingly inexorable sickness of the soul, perhaps in vain. Such a thing is metabolically expensive. It is not sustainable.

And so . . .

THE FOLLOWING ESSAY, WHICH I WROTE ENTIRELY ON MY PHONE BEFORE FALLING ASLEEP, CONCERNS DEATH AND LONGING. BE NOT AFRAID: AS WITH ALL THINGS I WRITE, THERE IS A MELANCHOLIC SWEETNESS IN ITS CENTER.

Only weeks ago that fuel supply had been replenished unto me on account of a few air-thin miracles I had experienced. See: I felt a sort of temporary relief when I had a life-affirming night with Nicole the Polish Girl and her brother in Shibuya on the same day I thought I was going to die in a plane crash, and again a week later (lol) when I thought I was dying in the back of that ambulance a few miles away by the Sumida River. I had accidentally nearly tripled the dosage of my medication, having switched from my American pills to my new German pills (each pill being double the dosage of my American ones) . . . it had caused my body to essentially shut down and I could barely stand up, my vision began to fail, and I felt an overwhelming drowsiness as if I had been shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart that could have put a T-rex into a coma.

And so when death seemed possible and perhaps even imminent, as I began to black out and the EMTs keeping me awake behind a language barrier, I accepted that my adventures on planet earth had finally come to an end, having already cheated death so many times before, and having lived on borrowed time ever since. I had been given so much extra life I had never even asked for in the first place, and yet I was thankful for it. Lying on that stretcher beneath an orange blanket upon which was embroidered unknown kanji characters, I had a dark suspicion that they had finally nailed my ass, that I could have only gotten away with it for so long, and now the bill had come due . . . so it was only fair to the forces which had come for my soul that I enter the Other World without fear or apprehension. For all the pain I have felt in my life, and all the darkness I have endured, it seemed I had been granted a mercifully peaceful death. And really, what more can anyone ask for?

And yet I live. For a few days following my discharge from a Tokyo ER, I experienced a weightlessness I had always dreamed of achieving. I was, after all, now certifiably unkillable. I thought: “I’ll bet girls would go for that.” Whatever few things I had feared on the other side of that overdose, all the many years of my life before, I no longer feared. I had finally truly seen through the veil. I knew now with certainty I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and I felt no fear of it. And so saying, I also disconnected from my own personhood. I was unencumbered by it. My body was on earth but my mind had been transmitted to some far-off place in the womb of the Milky Way. I walked around with the confidence of a man who had shaken hands with the Reaper and then turned and walked away. It was a beautiful feeling. I only wish I could have sustained it. Whatever chemical reactions were going on inside me to create the illusion of that nirvana must have been metabolically expensive. Unbeknownst to me, it was costing my body an insane amount of fuel.

A few days later, riding the Shinkansen back to Tokyo from Kyoto on the other side of the country, I felt that old familiar feeling of myself slowly begin to bleed back into that post-death Ryan. The affliction was returning, such was its severity. I groaned and thought: Oh God, not this again . . .

It was my birthday. I dropped my bag off at my old hostel and took a train an hour south of Tokyo to Yokohama. I intended to visit Manyo Club, a multi-story bathhouse I had last visited in the winter of 2010. My plan was to soak in hot water all night, and watch the rainbow-lit ferris wheel spin from atop the building where you can put on a parka and dip your legs into a ring of hot water while drinking tea.

I got off the train and began the twenty-minute walk along the Ōoka River. Ten minutes in, beneath a ghostly lit sky bridge floating over the river, I stopped walking and suddenly lost all desire to get to the bathhouse. I felt the loneliness of Tokyo crushing in on me just then and began to cry. I missed my friends and wished I were with them instead. And now here I was alone and crying on my birthday beneath a bridge on the other side of the planet. I called my sister in Berlin. It was morning where she was. She cheered me up enough for me to make my way to the train station to catch a train back north into Tokyo.

I rode the train all the way to Ueno to eat at a Saizeriya along the main boulevard there. I got a table in the back and ordered a veggie and mushroom pizza and Saizeriya’s famous unlimited drink bar. I shotgunned cappuccinos and oolong tea for over an hour while surrounded by tired salarymen and happy teenage couples. Before leaving I got a slice of tiramisu. It was, after all, my 38th birthday.

Still unkillable, but beginning to reactivate into my old self, I got a milk tea from a vending machine and walked through the mostly empty streets back to my hostel near Tokyo Skytree and the Sumida River. My mind was mercifully blank. Drawn to water as usual, I put my hands in the pockets of my leather jacket and walked along the river while Tokyo Skytree loomed overhead, scorching the night sky with its ethereal light show. Quite by accident I passed the hospital where I’d been rescued from the tyranny of death. It was a beautiful night.

I stopped off at the FamilyMart around the corner from my hostel to stock up on mineral water and green tea. I felt compelled to hang out in the Fruit Corner . . .

. . . and then departed into the night with my beverages and Greek yogurt and hot-spring-boiled hard-boiled egg.

Back on the street, I turned the corner and vampire-glided into the warmly lit cafe of the hostel. It was filled with happy people drinking coffee and talking quietly. I asked the nice guy at the front desk for a clean towel . . . I figured I’d go upstairs and take a long birthday bath.

He said: “Your friends are looking for you. Someone named Monty and Katie. They were worried because they hadn’t heard from you in a while. Are you OK?”

I white-lied and told him I was, and that I would let my friends know as much. I hadn’t looked at my phone all day.

“And,” he said smiling, “I heard it’s your birthday. So happy birthday.”

I said, “Thanks, man . . . I appreciate it.” I felt my body tremble.

I headed toward the elevator with my clean towel and finally looked at all the text messages I’d gotten since returning from Kyoto earlier that day. There were about a million of them.

Monty had written, among other things:

Please reflect upon the bottomless love your friends and family have for you.

Truthfully, I teared up a little. On my way up to the third floor I did as she had asked: I reflected upon the bottomless love my friends and family have for me, and felt the weight of it all at once.

Elsewhere, in Europe, and far beyond in Canada and the United States of America, I began to receive a flurry of happy birthday texts from my many friends. I felt a happiness, and yet I felt also in my body the unquenchable fire of myself, of Ryan, fully ignite once again, now burning brightly and twice as fast as it ever had before. I thought: So much for my stockpiled reserves of that high-octane mutant jet fuel . . . at this rate the tank will run dry before I even make it back to Berlin. Then I thought: Perhaps a bath will help slow it down for a little while . . .

And so saying I was happy to find the bathtub stall was empty. I went inside and showered and filled the tall deep tub with deliciously hot water. When it was halfway full, I climbed inside and waited for the water to reach my neck. And once filled to the brim, I sank into it until my face was submerged up to a centimeter beneath my nostrils.

I stayed in the tub for a least an hour, draining it occasionally to add more hot water. I chugged mineral water and green tea. I texted my friends. And while I attempted to suppress it, I felt a heavy longing bloom inside my heart and turn into an immovable stone which sank to the bottom and become heavier still.

That longing has persisted ever since. I feel it even now, at five in the morning while lying on my couch in Berlin and 8,000 miles away from where it began. A longing is very expensive to feel, when death would have only cost me my life, which I’d gotten for free. As I am unkillable, when that longing ends I’m sure I don’t know. And yet unfortunately some little melancholic part of me hopes it never does.