A Little Trip to America for Thanksgiving

There is one big reason I come back to America. I love my daughter and honestly that’s reason enough. My most recently completed book could easily be labeled roman a clef which roughly translates to fiction where characters and situations are more or less the author’s fantasy or desires from life translated to the page. Novel with a key is what the translation comes out as. In the book I finished last week, a daughter chooses to come live with her father in Japan and adventures ensue.  It’s not the reality for a variety of reasons – my daughter loves living with her mom and in Hawaii are the two biggest. It sure was nice to imagine it as the starting premise for my latest novel though, and maybe at some point, that part of it will come true. Either way, it’s not a terrible trauma to take a trip to Hawaii and seeing and spending time with her brings me joy. The hardest thing about living in Japan is being away from her, not being able to spend time with her in person, and not being able to be an influence that I know she needs. After all, I’m her dad and it’s the most important job I’ve ever had.

I’m grateful I was able to make it to her science fair and that the two of us could take a little trip to California to spend Thanksgiving with my sister and some friends. Truly wonderful.

All of that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t enjoy being in America. As soon as I stepped on an American plane heading to America, it was broken down on the runway and delayed for more than an hour as they ‘fixed it’ with all the passengers on board. The Turo I’d rented a month in advance was late to arrive even though we arrived late and then it was a car that looked like it had come straight from a crack dealer’s house. Filthy, unwashed, mismatched hood from body, not the car I had actually booked. I had a short window before school was out and went to the beach. Literally dozens of homeless on the short drive. An aggressive homeless man  screamed in my direction at the beach. A woman in a shanty and a man on a bicycle got in an f-bomb laden shouting match next to the beach showers. After the science fair,  a shared grilled cheese sandwich, two fountain drinks, and a couple of macaroons for my daughter and I ended up costing us $40. A McDonalds coffee I ordered and paid for ahead on the app seemed an easy win at 5:30 but the mandatory drive through line took 35 minutes and had no way to exit out of it. America simply doesn’t work anymore and being here is like being in water that is slowly becoming hotter and hotter. My bank, did some sort of database migration back in July and in that process they reopened a corporate account I closed two years ago, then they began charging me service fees. The notifications of this only came in the physical mail. I didn’t find out about it until getting here. It took an hour to convince them that I had closed the account and then the clerk I was working with had no power to fix anything. I wanted to open a safe deposit box for important papers but he said they wouldn’t have someone who could do that for me available for two days. I’ve done it before, you sign a paper and show an ID. Finally they told me that they would resolve my dead account and keep it from coming back to life again but I don’t have confidence.  They couldn’t fix the issue. They didn’t have authority. The clerk at the Goodwill didn’t have the authority to add a third item to my sister’s bill so she got the buy two get one free deal – neither did the manager. They told her if she returned the two items they would be returned to a processing center and her only option was to buy two new items. She just bought the third item. They literally couldn’t fix it. The five security guards with whistles and vaguely military uniforms trying to control the flow of traffic made it much much worse. They made light chaos into total chaos. Some didn’t recognize  their authority and they didn’t know what to do with the authority that others granted them. The wifi at a formerly favorite cafe was out and a big ‘cash only’ sign flew on the door and at the Starbucks I used to enjoy writing at, the bathrooms have been closed because of (from the barista) ‘some horrendous accidents’ – they sent me to the public bathrooms below the UFC gym where a homeless man was eating a salad in the handicapped stall, and another stall was producing huge amounts of paper that was being thrown on the floor beneath the walls. The militant parking attendant at another formerly favorite cafe let me know when I pulled up that ‘you will be towed if you linger too long’ – I was there to linger, so I left. The last Turo I ever plan to rent seemed like they finally had it figured out but I had to pay a $7 parking structure ticket when I left and was followed by texts from the host telling me that “Turo would charge $150 for any sand, but he would be “willing to take just $50 up front to help me out”. I was already paying $250 for a five day $30 rental – which doesn’t add up. Never again. On this trip, the last of the useful institutions that were propping up my idea of America being a place of opportunity have disintegrated. There is only the opportunity for madness and anxiety here.  The Starbucks clerk said “Welcome to Starbucks, can I help you?” when I came back from the astoundingly bad UFC Gym toilet she sent me to. I answered “A large black coffee, please” to which she responded “Oh, are you trying to order, someone will be with you in a second.” Her colleague stepped up and I repeated my order “A large black coffee” to which she replied “Do you want cream and sugar?” and “What size?”  At least they sort of smiled as they tried to keep up with the massive number of mobile orders that were coming in non-stop. This Starbucks isn’t like the living room or a third place – it’s a level of hell. Yet it has free wifi and there aren’t as many homeless people as in the McDonalds down the street. The library is closed. The cat hair in my friend’s apartment makes my eyes feel like they are made out of  baking soda mixed with vinegar. Fourteen police cars with lights flashing around the school down the street. “What happened?” I ask thinking the worst because this is America. “They do this all the time,” the woman walking by tells me. “They are closing the outbound lane so they can work on it.”  I’m befuddled by how much road construction there is, how much it creates traffic, and how bad the roads are despite the fact that this type of construction has been happening for the past half decade.

A few additional tidbits of broken things: 

Hawaiian Airlines gave me 1 hour between my arrival in Tokyo and my flight to Sapporo departing. Upon getting to the Hawaiian Terminal of Honolulu International Airport, the clerks working at the kiosks informed me that I could check in for my flight there (in Terminal 1) but to check my baggage, I would need to walk the considerable distance in the unseasonable heat to Terminal 2, Lobby 4. I have two semi- heavy bags of things I am taking back to Japan, plus my carry on and personal item. So I pushed my bags to Terminal 2, Lobby 4 and checked them. I then inquired – my bags were checked to Haneda in Tokyo but also to Sapporo. “Will I need to get my bags in Tokyo and recheck them?” “Yes, so that you can clear customs.” “Will there be enough time for that?” arrive, clear customs and immigration, find the Japan Airlines flight operating as a Hawaiian flight, recheck my bags, and make my way to the domestic terminal of Haneda. “Yeah, no problem,” the attendant told me. I’m highly doubtful of her confidence. Very highly doubtful. But whatever. “Where’s the security gate?” “You have to hike back to Terminal 1.” She didn’t say hike, but she should have. At terminal 1, I got in the security line closest to Terminal 2 Lobby 4 where I had just come from. “No, you need to go to the poor door,” the attendant said. She didn’t say poor door, but she should have. It was at the farthest point from Terminal 2, Lobby 4. More hiking. I’m morbidly curious how all of this will work out.

My friend who runs the storage facility I have a unit in told me another tale. They have a mailbox service there. Recently her auto insurance jumped to $700 a month because the automated software saw that there were a number of mail box customers who used the same address as she did (the mailbox facility) so the software just added them as additional drivers on her insurance. All of them, without telling her, sending a text, sending a piece of mail, or an email. She only found out when she saw that her bank account had been dramatically over charged.

Twice while here in Honolulu, I saw big trucks whose drivers had installed flashing LED lights that look like emergency lights. The drivers would get behind. people and tailgate while turning on the ’emergency lights’ and most drivers politely got out of the way. I also saw no less than three people tailgating and making aggressive moves on a red Tesla that had a BTC custom license plate. Pure hate and envy manifesting. The driver might be an ass, I don’t know, but it appeared to be simply aggression towards the license plate from where I was observing from behind. I saw several other road rage incidents.

At Safeway there was a Santa hat on sale for $2.99 from $9.99. Despite having the Safeway app and correct coupon etc, the scanner charged me $9.99. At Longs there were macadamia nuts on sale for $9.99 from $13.99  – I was charged $13.99. In both cases clerks fixed the error when I pointed it out. I don’t think it’s an error. I remember a few years ago reading about how the chaos of airline boarding procedures was intentional to encourage people to spend more on upgrades. I think that the stores are making intentional errors knowing that most people won’t check or are in too much of a hurry to get the errors fixed.

I think the enfuckification of America is intentional. I can think of a lot of reasons why this might be the case, but the most reasonable is along the lines of the Unabomber Manifesto. The classes no longer need the classes to be at full capacity. What they need are less masses so they can have more wealth. The enserfication of Americans has been happening for a while now. It’s not a coincidence that people are losing their minds. Yesterday, we drove past a man who shook his fist and spit at us. Today while filling up the gas tank of my Turo at 8am (probably the last time I will use Turo) a man and woman spilled out of an apartment grappling and screaming at each other. “Stay the fuck away from me…” she screamed while running  away from me down the streets of paradise, Honolulu, Hawaii USA. He slowly chased after her menacingly, “Keep running,” he yelled.

“Should we call the police?” I asked the construction worker next to me. “It’s just a domestic,” the guy said “they’ll be gone before the police arrive.” I considered calling the police or even following to help them but America has already affected me too. I didn’t know their story, it might be drugs, maybe she had robbed him, maybe he was a pimp and she a sex worker – not my issue. There were plenty of people around, someone would intervene, right? I feel guilty but I had a flight to catch and a Turo to return.

The Turo owner was sending vaguely threatening passive aggressive text messages “Turo will charge you $150 if there is excess sand but I’m happy to just charge you $50 to clean it myself.” Turo doesn’t charge, the owners do. “Fill it up with premium or it might cause engine damage and you will be responsible.”  WTF? I thought the third Turo of this trip might be normal. Nope. I’m going back to rental cars just like I went back to hotels when AirBNB owners became micro-fascists by charging cleaning fees, garbage fees, and setting more rules than a homeless shelter while charging more money than a luxury resort. Fuck that. The sharing economy only works with people who understand sharing. It is now the exploitation economy because that is all those people seem to understand. I’m done with it all. Back to Japan.

The good news is that the failure of America seems to be happening faster and faster. The bad news is that the failing of America seems to be accelerating but might actually continue getting worse for a long long time. I don’t know. I only know that being here makes me feel like I am losing my mind. I think everyone here feels that, but I just happen to feel it more acutely. It’s like a sprinkler system that is hitting everyone but for some reason I get hit with it like a firehose stream. I know I’m not alone.

The fundamental brokenness of America after almost two weeks of being here is truly mind-blowing. This is the paradise side of America and I can tell you without hesitation that it is not a fun place to be. I don’t see anyone actually having fun here, but they are all trying like crazy.

All of this is completely aside from all the political stuff. Immigration, identity politics, militant police, drugs, crime, gun violence, rampant inflation, unsustainable realities for huge numbers of people and everyone living crammed together in a dog eat dog ‘I gotta get mine’ reality where the rich are getting far more wealthy, far more powerful, and far more ruthless while the poor are becoming for more powerless in every sense of the word. The mind drip of social media and the subtle control systems of the technological dictatorship are an entirely different but just as connected portion of it.

Maybe that’s why it doesn’t hurt me to see people who are so ideologically different than I am taking control of this Frankensteinian monster. I don’t think it’s repairable. I don’t think it can be fixed. I don’t’ even really think it is worth saving unless the monster baby is thrown out with the bathwater and the bathtub and the bathroom, and the whole entire house. They are going to burn it down?  Maybe that’s the only way forward. Their plans are terrifying but maybe it only goes as far as it needs to – and it needs to go.

The last American stop on the train of history is coming up soon. Unfortunately, I can’t stay on this train any longer.

It sure is nice to spend time with my daughter though. It sure is nice to checkin and make sure she is okay. I hope she is okay. I hope she is okay in America. I hope I can get her out when the walls start collapsing.