October 2nd

It's been a bad day so far. For all of us. So bad, in fact, that my co-worker Keiko, who is also kind of like my supervisor, smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes today, and encouraged me to hang out with her at the bar for hours after work. I think Mondays are like this everywhere in the world, America and Japan alike.

It is past 10 p.m. when I am on the last bus home. My roommate Kimberly will be wondering where I am once every few hours, occasionally lifting her head up from . We'll exchange a few words and then I'll slump down on the couch, thinking about whether or not I want microwaveable ramen bowl for dinner.

This is the very first time I've ridden the bus alone. Usually there are businessmen of some sort coming back from the bars at this hour, disgruntled and reluctant to return home to their wives. Sometimes there will be a little old lady hugging the day's purchases close, her eyes swimming with excitement over treats to share with the daughter-in-law and the grandchildren. Me? I stick out like an ugly anglerfish in a country of sophisticated koi.

The street lights we roll by are rounded, but the beams of light resemble rectangular prisms. The gates to all the residential complexes are brick or metal fencing. This bus is a long tube. I am returning home to a small cube apartment that can only semi-comfortably accommodate two people once they get used to living in close quarters. I work at the Holiday Inn that has basically the same setup of corridors. I wonder if I will be confined to boxes for the remainder of my life.

It reminds me of something I read in one of those educational-motivational pamphlets by the nurse's office in high school, about relationships. It said that the minds of men operate like storage systems of all boxes. Males compartmentalize -- a box for TV or computer gaming, a box for work, a box for the girlfriend. And since they can only use, or commit to, one box at a time, this is why giving attention to the girlfriend while the game is on just can't work. Little by little I begin to understand and accept this.

I wonder what box I was in when my last boyfriend Kenichi cheated on me. It's been about a year after the fact, and once my fury subsided I began to wrap my mind around these "boxes". The fixation with porn, in all its available forms here in Japan, was a warning sign. Only recently did it become kinda-clear that relationships and sex have different boxes. Not that I've become okay with that, but perhaps that's just the way it is.

The fat bitch that he committed this offense with was obviously just the "sex box". There was nothing good about her whatsoever. (Not that I've become okay with that either.) I once pondered aloud to Kimberly if whatever "box" I was in was all banged up and weathered, instead of flowery or shiny like the "naughty boxes". She just said that men aren't that complex -- no real box in any guy's real closet is shiny or has flowery decorations on it.

My roommate Kimberly is a half-Asian like me. She's half Korean and she's a lot more outgoing and outspoken than I am. We went to Zama High School together on the military base close by, and only really became closer friends our senior year. Today we find ourselves sharing this apartment in Atsugi, with the same common goal, a job and then looking into the prospect of college. We both want to stay in Japan. She's having a much better time than me, though. She'll find excitement out of anything, and I just go to the newly-opened Holiday Inn to look and feel like crap everyday.

" 'Sup?" she says when I walk in. She is looking at pictures of models with blond highlights on her computer screen, her own solid black hair strewn wildly about her shoulders.

"Ehhh," is the only response I can ever come up with after work.

"I saw this in the store today and it was so cute I had to buy some," she says, pointing to the countertop to my right. "I saved that one for you."

"Thanks!" I exclaim. I want to get into new types of cheap food too, but my schedule just doesn't permit. The first thing I see is a photo-illustration of a strawberry shortcake, layered with pink and white sugar sandwiching a spongy cream-yellow cake.

In a box.

And it looks like I'm just having cake for dinner.

I already went through the pigging out stage of my grief, and thank God that only lasted a week or so, and slouching here on the couch with sweets sometimes take me right back to those days. I was so gross.

Strawberry shortcake, for some reason, is not tasting so good after the Asahi beers that Keiko bought for me at the lounge back at the hotel.

Kimberly's round-but-cute face lights up because one of her MySpace friends from back in the States has just messaged her. She is bouncing in her seat to a Ludacris song, the kind of song that you stop understanding after awhile because you hear the word "booty" and all you can imagine in your mind is some chick with a huge ass gyrating on the hood of some celebrity's car. Anyway, I bet I'd probably be long over this stupid breakup if I was more like her.

"You're short-changing yourself if you think Kenichi is the only hot guy around, Cheryl," she told me at first. "Females can play the field just as well as the guys can. Just get yourself out there."

Now she says things like, "I can't do anything about it if you want to be sad about it for months and months". But what can I do? Maybe falling in love and trying to be in a committed relationship at 18 is foolish, but I was honest about it and put my whole heart into it. I'm willing to bet that Kim thinks about her first love a lot too, just in secret.

She has also proposed the idea of finding a temporary stand-in, someone to fool around with until I've completely gotten over it. Basically, a rebound. I'm actually guilty of entertaining the thought, but I'm not sure if I can do that. In some strange way, I put that on the same level of selfishness as what Kenichi did to me. Susceptible, lonely people aren't for playing with.