Yukio

Yukio Mishima killed himself in 1970.

It is the 22nd of March of 2015. As I enter the Lulu Island pizzeria, Adil the Kazakh is sitting at a table, there he quietly reading a Russian fiction novel. I buy a diet cola and sit with him. I try to pronounce the Russian title. He approves of my pronunciation. I say that Russian letters look wide and masculine. He mentions that he has read Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood in Russian translation from Japanese. I mention another famous writer, Yukio Mishima. Sasha the Ukrainian enters. We all start talking about the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. People were more positive then than now, in the lingering AIDS era. People are more negative now. Then we start talking about all sorts of drugs. Sasha's girlfriend, 58, a Canadian, smokes marijuana frequently. Marijuana is prevalent today. I think that it affects the mind.