A drunk in yonder red light slum

The slum fair was a happy go lucky kind of occasion. I'd wandered into it by accident on my way to buy some cigarettes and beer. There's always a shop open around here on route 16. The place never stops moving. You've got the 24 hour supermarkets serving dog biscuits and clap cream right next door to the all night sex clubs like "Sharon" just up the road from here. I always exchange a nod or a knowing wink with the guys on the door in their dinner jackets with dyed orange hair. They're kind of reassuring in a strange way. You get the feeling there's always someone on watch, guarding the turf. So I feel quite at home around here. It's safer than East London any day of the week. So why should a little slum fair be a problem?
There were all kinds of stalls and side shows and booths. The local Yakuza were out with their girls who carried small rat-like dogs on their tanned and slender tattooed arms. Small kids were accidentally killing gold fish as they tried to scoop them out of a plastic bathtub into the freezer bags and polystyrene food containers that they had brought with them to take their catch home in.
I was just wandering from stall to stall, dodging the crowds as best I could trying not to tread on any dogs. Plumes of greasy smoke engulfed me as the road side chefs flipped their sweet and sour "Pork" kebabs from side to side trying to get an even burn. Everything was going well. Old ladies with broken yellow teeth we're throwing 10,000 yen notes down as they bet in a cockroach race, cackling insanely whether they won or lost. It was the sense of occasion that kept the mood high and buoyant.
I was passing the children's street theatre performance of the "Rape of Najing" when suddenly I was violently struck in the stomach by a broom handle held by one of the small child actors dressed as a Japanese soldier.
"You Yankee! You die!" He cried as he thrust at me again with his imaginary bayonet.
I looked around me and , feeling a little embarrassed and not wanting to lose face which is a terrible thing in Japan, I hit the boy as hard as I could with a solid right hook which knocked most of his naturally crooked front teeth out. I followed this with a few powerful kicks to his stomach until I heard a satisfying cracking sound. He was down and out. Fair fight.
A crowd had by this time gathered around the boy and myself. He was still breathing but he couldn't walk so he had to be lifted onto a wheel barrow that was near by to be taken to the herbalists.
I turned to the crowd, lit a cigarette and wiped the boys blood from my fist.
"The Rape of Najing is a lie." I shouted at the top of my voice. A cheer went up from the crowd.
"It was a lie made up by shadowy and sinister powers in league with the cowardly Chinese to discredit the brave and fearless soldiers of the Japanese Imperial army." The crowd cheered again.
"I am not an American." Another cheer.
"I am British. This was never our war. This was a war that we we're both tricked into fighting by wall street bankers who were the only people to profit from the tragedy that robbed both our countries of their once glorious empires."
By this time I was held high on the shoulders of those around me as they carried me all the way home in a delirious slum procession that stretched along route 16 back to "Lions Mansions".

V. C.