The Love Suicides at Mayors Income, Tennessee

Bored little Kumiko works in a latex club, Meowww, in Juso, a north Osaka suburb. On weekdays she pulls night shifts as a gas-masked hostess, serving ¥5000 whiskey sours and ¥2000 gropes to jaded salariman pervs. On weekends she does a submissive lolita duo with her roommate at a hoteheru at the Hotarugaike Station catering to business travelers wanting a quick kink before flying out of Itami Airport. While working, bored little Kumiko affects the blasé of the autistic, unresponsive in the slightest to the sweaty, drunken fumblings of her customers. “Those dirty men go crazy when you ignore them. They open their wallets and let you pick out what you want.” Outside of work, bored little Kumiko's passion was taking pictures of people’s shoes and hands with her ‘so kawaii’ polaroid, scattering the pictures on her bed like autumn leaves, matching feet to fingers as she falls asleep, while her co-worker and roommate, Sensa, in the next room, continued her ongoing abusive sexual relationship with a worn out teddy bear called Mizoguchi, beneath a mint condition poster of a very disinterested Miles Davis. Bored little Kumiko has a boyfriend named Taro, though she calls him Toto. A spineless androg, he buys her new black pumps each week with the implicit stipulation that she kick him (albeit gently). Toto, an otaku mecha manga moe, is never without his soju fix, which he keeps in an innocent Pocari Sweat can. Toto’s greatest pleasure is to take bored little Kumiko to a grubby Korean pachinko hall and have her hang on him while he mindlessly rockets the steel balls through the machines. She, for her part, doesn’t mind terribly. She snaps polaroids of business men and school girls, housewives and workers walking by, insolently growling ‘nanda-yo?!’ – you want to say something?! if they look askance while she fans her film. Secretly though, bored little Kumiko loves another; an old balladeer drifter who sings Tom Waits covers behind the bus station on her way home from Meowww. Long, unkempt hair, head perpetually hung down, he never looks at the people walking by while he sings. She sways mesmerized by his croaking gravely version of Big in Japan or Tom Traubert's Blues.

Now I lost my Saint Christopher
Now that I've kissed her
And the one-armed bandit knows
And the maverick Chinamen
And the cold-blooded signs
And the girls down by the strip-tease shows...
Go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me

Everynight she lays down a few hundred yen in his open guitar case, like an altar offering, mumbles him a kiss, and rushes off to catch her bus. He always waits til she turns the corner before picking up her bills and tucking them unceremoniously in his back pocket; 'Get out soon, little shabushabu, before they cook the love outta you...'

day 4/365

Taken in: United States / Virginia / Halifax (show map)

Taken on: October 29, 2006

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