[AK] THE WORLD OUTSIDE.

Perfection.

You could chase it the whole of your life and still find yourself in your deathbed with but the taste of it on your tongue, inches away from a pursuit you had never finished, so foolish to have begun it in the first place. We are artists, this is our form, and yet we strive for…perfection. In something so subjective as this, we feel that there are maximums, there are objective truths, there are ways of being.

Let me shatter this illusion for you, Augustus.

I did not come to PCW to be judged by another person’s vision of what is perfection. I did not come to a space such as this, one that celebrates talent in all of its varying forms, to be degraded for the way I perform. You are an athlete, a prime competitor, a connoisseur of sorts. You feel that you have tasted all the world has to offer, and you have come away with your refined palette and found yourself as judge, jury, executioner. I am sure that you feel this opportunity is a showcase for that-to brutalize me in a way that will make it clear that your doctrine is supreme, your sport is superior, you are the king and we are all whelps that should be lucky to lay at your feet as scorned dogs.

Let me be the first to say; let me shift your expectation, let me rock your world.

I have made my career from one end of the spectrum to the other, stepping into this industry as an icon of the Joshi scene, a paragon and beholder of all things magnificent and glorious of that side of Japan. Long, grueling days in dojos that broke my spirit and shattered my soul, in a body that was primed for war at the cost of all pleasure and joy, even the most minimal of indulgences would break my stride. Surely, that worked for some time - I found some glory, I found some gold, but I was a prisoner of my own mind. I was beholden by the standards of others, upholding some longform bullshit promise to myself that I had made when I got into this industry, that I would be true to myself so long as it did not hamper my success.

I leaned too hard into the latter half of that statement, though.

Misery became my only companion in the longer days of that drag, the spaces wherein I found myself alone, dragging across broken glass to find some frame of competition and success in a way that worked for me. I may have carried fame on my shoulders, but I hated what stared back at me from the mirror, the eyes which caught mine, empty and hollow and dead, and failure found me, too. My glory left me, and my gold left me, and I was unable to recover it. I was unable to find my way back to the mountaintop I had sacrificed so much of myself to get to.

It took me all the way back home-a karaoke bar in Osaka-to find myself, again; to settle outside of the bones of what I was and find a path forward to become something new and something different, the shifting body of what I was becoming. No longer was I a golden-glory seeking whore-I had to be true. I had to be honest.

I realized that I was an acquired taste-and so, I sank back into that in its entirety, and I became the Port City Playboy.

I invite you, Augustus, to look deep into your own soul. To ask yourself, is this really who I am? Am I content being the high-brow tasteful sky-fucking sportsman? Am I content to paint subjectivity as objective? Or am I, too, being insincere? Am I unsure?

Let me push that last point. Let me show you the world outside of the confines of that which you’ve built.

Let me rock your fucking world, baby.