re:mote voices

So I developed an urge to let my body be rocked by waves of very, very loud music - when you're in a club its ok to slam into other people.

The first time you ram into someone, you hit them with your anger. You feel rage in the pain of the collision. Then, without waiting, you go and crash into a second person and then a third, a fourth, a fifth, bashing into them with different parts of your body, and you feel the rage start to dissolve in the lingering traces of pain: it's taken apart, broken down into separate elements of something that isn't anger anymore; you feel your body being enveloped within something like a membrane of frozen, numbed exhaustion. The impulse towards collision at acute angles subsides now, and instead of colliding you start to writhe, stretching out a rapid hand to brush parts of bodies of people nearby; you rub against people. As if to pickpocket pieces of them. A rush of erotic feeling surges up inside you. You start to feel grateful that you are living like this, not just letting your rage take control. At times like these you want to be in a really huge place with a really great sound system. The sort of place that gets so packed that it looks like a bucket of potatoes when you see it from above. At clubs there's never any pause between one song and the next. That's not surprising, but its still very important. Somewhere out there the beat is always throbbing, inside your body, you're completely passive in the grip of the sound; it feels like you're not even there, it feels like you're not even you.

I want to touch someone. If its too hard to start touching, then I want a reason to touch. I'm frightened of people whose skin I can't cover with my own, ever so gently, two surfaces together. I feel as if I'm about to be attacked, and so I feel as if I'm about to attack. I worry that I might act too aggressively in self-defence; I might lash out suddenly and kill them...

Vibrator
Mari Akasaka
Faber