まさつ
きょり
しずかなるよる
friction / distance / quiet night
The coin laundry near the station is a place where time ceases to function in the usual way. It was 2:45 AM, a Tuesday, or perhaps already a Wednesday. The distinction felt irrelevant. The air inside smelled of heated cotton, chemical lemon, and the damp, metallic scent of rain that had been falling steadily on Tokyo for three days.
I was sitting on a yellow plastic chair that was bolted to the floor. Across from me, my clothes were tumbling in the dryer—a mesmerizing, rhythmic blur of grey and white. Thump. Swish. Thump.
A jazz record was playing in my head, a slow baritone saxophone piece by Gerry Mulligan. The music seemed to match the rotation of the machine.
Someone recently asked me a strange question. They asked what my two favorite things to wear are. They were expecting an answer about the texture of cashmere or the fit of a specific brand of denim. They wanted a conversation about fashion. But as I watched the dryer spin, I realized that for me, clothing has ceased to be about aesthetics. It has become a matter of structural engineering. It has become about armor.
I have started to realize lately that talking with people—even friends I have known for years—feels like sandpaper to the brain.
The texture of social interaction has shifted. It used to be smooth, a rhythmic exchange of energy like a well-played game of catch. Now, it is rough. It scrapes. It leaves a residue. I have noticed that the person I am speaking to will almost invariably take every single thing I say, or other people say, as a personal slight or a subject for immediate, high-stakes debate.
The conversation is no longer a shared landscape where two people can walk together. It has become a contest for territory.
You could be talking about a simple life experience. You could be talking about the taste of cold beer on a hot afternoon, or the way the light hits the train tracks at dusk. It does not matter. The person across from you will cut you off mid-sentence to pivot the narrative back to their own point. They will hijack the frequency.
They often add the automatic, hollow buffer: “I’m sorry to interrupt, but…”
They say this without ever correcting the behavior. The apology has become part of the attack sequence, a polite noise made before the knife goes in. It is concerning to me that this conversational narcissism has become so utterly normalized. The debate mentality has infected the quiet, neutral spaces of our lives. We are no longer listening to understand. We are waiting for our turn to speak. We are waiting to correct. We are waiting to win.
I used to be extremely extroverted. I fed on the energy of the room. I sought out the noise. But because of this adverse disconnect, this constant, low-level friction, I have retreated. I simply do not have the emotional energy to keep doing it.
I miss the conversations of high school. I miss sitting in a friend’s basement with the lights low, bouncing from topic to topic effortlessly. There was no agitation. There was no agenda. There was just the flow of ideas, drifting like smoke.
So, to answer the question: my favorite things to wear are not clothes. They are defense mechanisms.
My first favorite thing to wear is a metaphorical costume.
Think of it as the Mickey Mouse suit at Disneyland.
When I step out of my apartment and into the abrasive world, I put on this costume. It is a surface designed to be looked at, but not penetrated. It is a layer of pleasant, impenetrable neutrality. I nod. I smile. I offer the correct, non-committal responses. “Is that so?” “I see.” “That’s an interesting perspective.”
For all they know, I am the mascot. I am the character on the surface.
This costume allows me to be present without being targeted. If someone wants to debate, they are debating the costume. They are arguing with the plastic shell. The real person—the one who feels the friction, the one who remembers the quiet basement conversations, the one who just wants to share a thought without being dissected—is safely tucked away underneath, far below the surface.
This is not deceit. It is emotional preservation. It is a necessary distance. It reduces the drag on my soul. It allows me to navigate the sandpaper society without getting scraped raw.
My second favorite thing to wear is an internal coat of silence.
This is the garment I wear on the inside, wrapped tight around my ribs.
When the interruption happens, when the person cuts me off to launch their monologue about why my opinion on pasta is sociopolitically incorrect, I pull this coat tighter. I step back into the observer’s seat.
I listen to the cadence of their voice, but I do not let the words hook into me. I treat their words like the rain outside the laundromat window. It is just weather. It is loud, it is wet, and it is persistent, but it cannot touch me if I stay inside the coat.
This silence is not empty. It is heavy and rich. It is the space where I keep my own thoughts safe from the friction of the debate culture. It is where I remind myself that I do not need to win. I do not need to be right. I do not need to convince this person of my humanity. I just need to remain whole.
The dryer buzzed. A harsh, mechanical sound that signaled the end of the cycle. The machine stopped. The momentum died.
I opened the door and pulled out the warm clothes. They smelled of lemon and heat. I folded them on the folding table—shirt over shirt, sleeve over sleeve. The logic of folding is perfect. It is one of the few things in life that remains exactly as you left it. It does not argue back.
I put on my grey jacket. I checked my reflection in the dark window of the laundromat.
I looked like anyone else. A shadow in a room full of machines. A person ready to walk out into the abrasive, noisy night.
But underneath the grey wool, I was wearing the silence. I was wearing the distance. I was safe. And for now, in a world that has forgotten how to listen, that is the only way to survive.
life 