THE CALM: 'What was I thinking?', ... I stopped asking myself that 
question long ago, because the answer was always, ' huh?'.  The answer was 
always a question that was further from the answer than the question that it 
was supposed to be answering.  I won't write what I just thought.  I'd hate 
to cast a prophesy of doom upon myself.  I've done it too much in the past, 
and it leads nowhere. 

     Life entangles you in it's tentacles without mercy or quarter in this 
city named Pusan.  I've already made so many cultural mistakes by the four 
month point of my stay here ... fuck that, most of my mistakes transcend the 
cultural barriers ... I've made a shit-ton of mistakes (without harming 
anybody physically or sexually) that are an affront to common human decency. 
  I don't know if I'll be able to recover at this point.  Everything could 
be fine tomorrow ... business as usual ... or I could be in mortal trouble.  
I just don't know and I need to stop worrying about it on my off time, 
because it's already infected my brain with the fear and paranoia and it's 
starting to threaten my physical wellbeing.  On that note, I think I'll 
momentarily shift the subject sort of ...

     Martin Grove's recently posted  piece for PusanWeb, called 'Brain 
Eater', is awesome.  He's saying things with a simplistic eloquence that 
I'll try for years to express, and ultimately fail.  I feel humbled and 
jealous.  'Brain Eater' blew me away ... it sucked me up, turned out my mind 
and any semblance of my soul that remains, and then shot me out, liquified, 
into the stream.  What's left?  Not much.  But that's okay ... more than 
okay ... it's downright cool ... that's what's cool about writing things 
down.  Here's to maps of tacit!

... A BAD MOON RISING : I may be the only one who will ever know it, but my 
only crime against the other people on this planet, besides littering 
sometimes ... a few cig butts in the street ... is trying to be honest.  Not 
necessarily truthful; as I see it, that's how the semi-fictionalized 
autobiog. game goes, but honest about thoughts, feelings and especially 
impressions.  I guess I'm a 'fuck the facts, m'am' sort of hack.  I'm going 
to refrain from quoting ' Bird On A Wire' right now.

     ABSOLUTE NONFICTION: I saw something that was infinitely strange, 
fearsome and seemingly inexplicable this morning, around 1:30 AM.  I want to 
make it public before it fades.  Then again, I think I'm going to be 
flashing on it for a long time.

     I was strolling down one of the streets near my home in the seemingly 
conservative neighborhood of Chaing-Jung-Dong(?), which  is lined with 
business's ... restaurants, arcades, PC Rooms, convenience stores, magic 
cranes and bars.  I was stone cold sober, feeling like my normal, lonely, 
horny self.  From a basement bar I heard the caterwahl of a woman singing 
Karaoke in Hangul-Mal, out of time with the music.  It's seemed too loud to 
be a private room, so I ventured in to check out the show.  I opened the 
heavy door, and as all the inside faces turned towards me, I saw that it was 
a strange sort of singing room, with no actual bar; there was a small 
cashier counter; two or three tables, and a small dancing/singing floor, 
which was backed up by a wall of about twelve or fifteen stacked video 
monitors, and one more monitor on a stand in the middle of the floor.  There 
were four men and four women meandering imbetween the dance floor and one of 
the tables, dancing, singing and grooving.  At the table, there was another 
man and another woman, sitting amidst a clutter of beer bottles, plates of 
Korean side dishes, packs of 'This' cigarettes, butt filled ash trays, and 
wadded up napkins.  There were also three workers present.  Upon entering, I 
made a series of sharp glances around the scene, taking in a cursory 
inspection of the room.  Most of the teetering lads looked absolutely 
inebriated; while the women seemed to have better balance about them as they 
danced.
     The staff raced towards me.  I smiled and managed to say, ' Makeju?, Is 
this Hof?'.  Everyone was looking at me, and seemed bewildered by my 
presence in the small room ... fair enough ... I didn't really know why I 
was there either.  They motioned me to a table and I sat and pulled out my 
smokes, lighter and a few 1000 and 5000 W bills from my pocket.  I said, ' 
OB Lager?  Makeju?  This Hof?'.  The waiter pointed at the small wad of 
folded over bills like it wasn't going to be enough.  I had more in my 
wallet, but I hadn't anticipated being asked to put a deposit down on future 
beers.  The waiter said in an impatiently friendly tone, ' O-baeg-won ... 
five thousand won ... '.
     I passed him the 5000 W note and he darted back for the kitchen.  The 
party was continuously checking me out as I sat in the booth, waiting for my 
beer.  I smiled and nodded.
     Around the time that the waiter placed a bottle, glass and plate of 
what appeared to be fried crickets in front of me, one of the drunken male 
revellers danced over and took a seat next to me in the booth.  He started 
trying to talk to me as I poured the frothy beer into the glass and took a 
sip.  He was very drunk and obviously didn't have enough sense left to 
calculate or coordinate his actions.  I tried a cricket and smiled and 
offered a few 'thumbs up' as he proceeded to place his hands all about my 
person.  I know that semi-intimate casual physical contact between males in 
public is commonplace in this culture, so I took no offense as he put his 
arm around me, began to rub my back, touched my leg, and even took a wobbly 
swat at my hindquarter on the seat.  The whole time, other less drunken men 
were coming over, smiling friendly, and trying to coax him away from the 
booth.  But he pushed them away in slow motion as drunken folks are prone to 
doing; he was dead set on keeping me company.

     So he's all over me, and saying something like ' ... mother ... have a 
baby ... me ... no ... you ... no me ... mother ... baby ... baby baby ...'
    
Maybe he was still singing the song lyrics.  I tried to communicate, ' 
... mother? '.
     ' No, yess, no ... mother ... baby ...'.
     ' Is your mother having a baby?  What? ', I asked, lost in a fog of  hobbled
communication.

     More of the same, ' Mother ... you ... baby ... yess ...,', he said, 
pointing at me, non-offensively jabbing his finger in my direction, still 
groping me.

     Then the ocillation of his drunken swaying began to increase 
exponentially.  He grabbed the remainder of my beer in the bottle, knocked 
over the plate of crickets, scattering them across the table and said, ' 
Cheers!', offering me a toast that I was afraid would end with the bottle 
colliding with my face.

    Pulling back, I smiled and lifted my glass to toast.  His friends were 
surrounding us, attempting to defuse whatever situation was forming.  Keep 
in mind that I didn't feel threatened, just nervous over his total loss of 
coordination and bodily control.  I was expecting to be puked on at any 
moment.
     And that's when I took a closer look at the image flashing on the video 
monitors ... and began to feel like I'd stumbled into an extremely deviant 
situation ... the nature of which I still do not fully understand.

     FREAKOUT:  As I looked at the stack of video monitors, I realized that 
the image that had been playing the whole time behind the flashing song 
lyrics running across the bottom of the screen was a man and a women, in 
what seemed to be a small enclosed space ... maybe a toilet stall ... with 
their clothes on ... but the man appeared to be forcefully fucking the woman 
from behind ...

     As the one remaining couple on the dance floor continued to sing and 
dance, I watched the scene on the screen; no exposed genitalia or 
penetration ... no exposed breasts ... but the man was ramming his hips up 
under the woman's gathered skirt as she supported herself with her hands out 
in front of her at the forefront of the screen, her face contorting 
rythmically with an emotion I wasn't able to discern.  It was clearly the 
most high impact fuck scene I've ever witnessed.

     With the man and his friends swarming my proximity, I didn't have 
enough time to figure out whether this grainy low-grade video was a 
recording or coming live from a private room.   For lack of better 
articulation, I became extremely weirded out.  As the friends of the drunken 
man pulled me from his thrall, the music died and the two remaining men and 
five women who were not surrounding my booth returned to their nearby table 
to watch our scene.  I was transfixed on the monitors, and began to ask 
aloud, plainly but mindless of any language barriers, " What the fuck is 
this?', pointing to the monitors.  I wasn't mad or offended or disgusted or 
pleasantly surprised, I was just plain confused, ' What is this, some sort 
of porno bar?'.

   No answer.  The music off.  The woman on the video turned around and went 
down to fellate the man.  I began to feel bad for fucking up the party or 
orgy or whatever the hell it was, and was too confused to attempt a cultural 
navigation.  I felt like an asshole.  I stood to leave, and the drunk's 
friends gently pulled him back to clear my way.  By this point, people ... 
revellers and waitstaff were buzzing around me ... keep in mind that this 
place seemed no bigger than 9x9 meters.  I felt like the two or three people 
speaking in Hangul and broken English were telling me to go.  But the waiter 
walked up to me with four bottles of beer and a tray of side dishes and 
motioned for me to stay ... but one of the more sober friends smiled and 
gestured in a friendly way towards the door.  He opened it for me and asked 
my name.  I told him, 'Mike ... ,', shook his hand, asked, ' what's your 
name?'.  But amidst the fracas still rumbling from his wasted buddy, I 
didn't have a chance to get an answer. I left out the door and up the 
basement stairs, still puzzling over what I'd seen a moment ago on the 
monitors.

     What had I just seen?  Was it a porno tape?  Was it some sort of 
bizarre backroom closed circuit visual spanish fly to get the partyer's hot? 
Was it a rape?  Was it fun and games in a society that's more sexually 
permissible in some ways than my own?  Was it the latest twisted music video 
by a western band?  I just don't know.

     I walked down the street, stopping at the convenience stores for snack 
foods and playing the magic cranes for lack of anything better to do.  A 
half hour later, on my way back down the same street, I saw the same group 
of men, outside, across from the bar.  Two of them were arguing and then 
fighting.  They were surrounding a car and they were surrounded by three or 
four police officers.  When the two men began to lunge at each other, one of 
them being the man who was all over me, the cops set upon them.  They pulled 
one man away, and the one who'd been touching me was fighting with one of 
the police officers.  I lingered for a little while, but then felt bad for 
rubbernecking.  I walked past the club a little and stooped over to mess 
with a magic crane.  I saw the five girls from the basement bar come out of 
the doorway and walk over to a compact red car that was running, with a male 
driver behind the wheel.  The girls packed in and I could see them looking 
back at me as I looked up from the magic crane.  I waved and one of them 
waved back.  The magic crane claw picked up a pink stuffed pig and I 
returned my attentions to it as it neared the drop hole.

     ... PANIC ... INSTANTLY POSTING/PUBLISHING SEMI-AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 
MATERIAL IN A FISHBOWL CITY WITHOUT A FAKE NAME IS JUST A BAD IDEA ...

     Paranoiac delusion or reasonable concern?  I can't tell, but I've got 
all kinds of growing fears about the stuff I've been turning out for this 
'Ugly American' column on Pusanweb. It's starting to cave in on me.

      Aesthetic Shmaesthetic - I'm not even talking about people telling me 
they like or don't like it.  I'm a hog.  I'll grab all the airtime I can 
get.  If the kind folks at Pusanweb want to post what I write, then great.  
When they ignore a piece I turn in, I take it in stride and assume that 
there was ample reason for it to die.  There's nothing financial in the 
equation.  I won't lie; I love to write, and I love it more when what I 
write is read by others.  If the readers like it, cool.  If they despise it; 
if they think it's a pale imitation of a more established writer, I can take 
the pain.

     But the water level's rising past the wholly expected mere flesh wounds 
to my pride.  And I'll be the first to admit that I've asked for the firing 
squad ... hell, I've paid to have the target tattooed on my chest, and 
exposed it to the world.  I deserve the plastic idiot award. I've already 
fucked up by describing situations that involve people I interact with on a 
daily and weekly basis.

    I'm in the process of having my psychology, motives, behavior and 
intentions picked apart by my employer and co-workers.  I've think I've 
offended my boss beyond describable proportion.  And I know that the 
'meanings' of these rantish stories meant for entertainment purposes are 
being mistranslated and misunderstood.  And here's what REALLY has me 
freaked-the-fuck-out ... I had a 'person' relate my writing to a question 
about ... a word I'm not even going to write out of mortal fear and disgust 
... it has to do with the violation of minors ... it is something I would 
never do ... something I would never purposely discuss ... something I would 
never support .... it has me going back over everything posted ... wringing 
my hands over the possible interpretations of statements ... and then I 
stumble to  a statement I cranked out when I was writing about 'Korean Riot 
Football ...' where I made a comment to the effect of ' the protesters could 
be rallying in support of the Man Boy Love Association', but I would never 
know because I don't understand their language ...".  And I filled with 
sickness and regret at the carelessness of my ... contrasting 
description(?).  I don't know what to call it, but I wish I'd never written 
it.  I've got people I work with printing out my stories and bringing them 
to work and asking questions about them. I feel like there looking for ways 
to accuse me of intending to perpetrate criminal actions that I would never 
commit.  Any prostitutes I ever claim to have had 'spent time' with were 
adults. I HAVE NEVER AND WILL NEVER VIOLATE(D) A MINOR! And it makes me very 
sad and ashamed to feel the need to make that statement.

Karma?  Poetic Justice?  Bad Luck?  Just Desserts?  Fate? I'll accept my 
fate.  Writing is worth the pain ... ?  I guess I'm going to find out.

Will I be reprimanded?
Will I be fired?
Will I be deported?
Will I be arrested?
Will I have my hands broken, and be thrown in a merciless Korean Prison to 
rot forever after, never writing another word?
Will I disappear?
Will I be beaten to death by an angry street mob filled with master martial 
artists?
Will the American Military kill me for less than complementary comments I 
made about them? (consequently, I wrote some horribly erroneous facts about 
the 'Hooker Hill' slaying in my last piece entitled 'Star Spangled Bastard' 
and I deserve to have all of the 800,000W in my possession sued out from 
under me ... oh shit, it was stated in the opening paragraph that it was a 
satire ... oh, christ, why didn't I study harder in that media law class 
that I was required to take ...)

or

Am I an egotistical, paranoid, obnoxious, self promoting prick who is 
generating drama for the sake of receiving attention from others?

Will I merely be ignored?

Is the creative recording of common, minute experiences worth suffering real 
consequences?

I'm doing my best to stay loose for the ride, whatever it may be. Although, 
I don't want to die, be maimed or imprisoned. This may sound a little 
twisted, but I think being deported would be regrettable, but would make for 
a fantastic story.

     THE DEATH OF MY CHARACTER

     I've had the growing fear ever since I arrived in Pusan, that the 
nature of my employment as a teacher, and the nature of South Korean culture 
would force a transformation in my 'character' that I would/will not be able 
to control.  It is becoming clear that a transformation is inevitable.  I 
feel it happening.  But is that just the analogue spectrum of transition of 
life in the modern age ... or are the external forces at work more ... 
acute?  Clothes and personal style, choice of hair formation ... the line 
between choice and compulsion are blurring ... free will and fearful 
conformity ... common sense and stubborness ...

The only question that remains is ...

will this inevitable transformation resemble...

... A ROBOTOMY ...

... or will I merely be ...

... SHAPESHIFTING INTO HIGH GEAR?!

...or is it just too late?

I don't know.  I am afraid.  But ... let this SICK (but non-violent, 
non-physically violating to any human beings) EXPERIMENT COMMENCE!

FUCK THAT WEAK ASS 'BIG BROTHER' BULLSHIT!

THE SNAKE IS EATING ITS MOUTH

THE AGE OF GLOBAL TELEPATHIC PEACEFUL UTOPIA IS AT HAND!

THERE WILL BE FREE CHICKEN WINGS FOR ALL! FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED!

THE UGLY AMERICAN HAS SPOKEN ... YOU ARE NOW FREE TO GO ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS!

Updated March 17, 2002

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