a removed participation

On the last day of the Chinese new year, I abandoned Chloe and all the kind invites from friends, and spent ¥158 for a small room in the four-star hotel near my apartment downtown. I opted against the cheapest option in the place, which supposedly had no window. In my room the window was about ten feet wide and the remaining wall just a foot or two beyond that. The bed was so wide it looked square, and made me wish I had someone to share it with. Okay, the someone was specific, and memories from the birthday stay with Justin at Fengyashan ringed my evening.

When I'd showered and warmed my body in the luxury of central heating, I wandered down to the basement-level Uni-mart to push unhurriedly through the last-minute new year shopping crowds. I bought the candy I was supposed to buy, and wasabi crackers to eat with cheese. For a few minutes I considered a smallish bottle of Great Wall at Uni-Mart, but decided I didn't want to drink wine alone. I ended up with apple juice, Sprite, and a Heineken that a girl in the 21st-floor teahouse opened with her teeth just after eleven.

There were many episodes of Deadwood, as planned, but I paused Al Swearengen's rant at ten-minutes-to-midnight so that I could open the window and fully take in the explosions ping-ponging back and forth across the city. There were loud, booming displays that made my heart race. There were smaller and more-distant pops that were perfect circles blooming from behind this building, from the edge of the river. There were the slow, rhythmic shoooms and sizzles of the try-this-at-home cardboard tube fireworks . . . arcing up from unseen hands, from windows and rooftops in tight housing compounds. I thought of Sam last year scaring me to death by shooting his at the apartment buildings fifty feet away.

It all came through my window in a great crackling rain, this exuberant celebration. I laughed and then cried as I looked out over the city which I, in Justin's words, “have complicated feelings about.” All these millions of people, unified for these few moments by these blasts of light and sound by which they welcomed the new year. I thought something about how ghosts and devils would be scared far from this city tonight, and then, of americans god blessing the usa and how we're all so sure we've got this stuff covered.

From the hotel's western windows I could see other fireworks watchers at the complex across from Nangao. They were still silhouettes in the full-length windows of their balconies, backlit by yellow light, and in the reverberating city they seemed warm and quiet - like I felt.

I went barefoot and pajama-bottomed back up to the teahouse to look out their floor-to-ceiling windows. But onto the wooden walkway and across the shallow little pond, there were two feet below a curtain-wrapped figure in the shadowy section near the windows - probably an employee sneaking time on his cellphone - so I retreated.

The forty or fifty guests that I'd seen before midnight were gone (back to their rooms, I suppose) and the employees were playing pool and pulling chairs round to watch TV, so I padded back down the stairs. The fireworks went on steadily . . . it was 12:15 by the time I got back to the plague in Deadwood . . . and they were still going after 1:00.