by M.R. Bradie

South Korean Riot Football, 

the trans-dimensional Buddha Con, 

and long thoughts & soft moments from Texas Street

In Pusan for one month now.  The routine of eating...sleeping... working ...eating... sleeping...working...eating... has congealed.  Being stared at all the time? What?  Don't notice it so much anymore.  Have learned to order four or five dishes in the restaurants...and learned about nine more words...mostly 'moo-lie-yo' for 'I don't understand' and 'dambe juice a-yo' for 'give me ciggarettes'...so much for being a trans-cultural meganaut. 
     I'm going to the same bars a lot.  Talking with older multi-year vetran expats... that's when you feel the full weight of inexperience.  It starts out feeling good to come into proximity of common origins...but often ends up feeling like any words that come out are so so foolhardy.  Well, I guess naivete' is just one bitch of a alienator...is that how it works?  Yr naive...then you make a fool of yrself, get alienated, cease to be naive and then become the one that unwittingly dwarfs the next new chump to come off the belt? 
     Teaching blows my mind and grinds my emotions down to the bone.  It's one of these totally manic jobs...intrinsically bi-polarized...when it 
works, it feels good!  When the deal goes sour...with the kids...you end up getting stabbed with a pencil ( I did) or having yr director told that yr a mafia boss (that happened).    On a nightly walk tonight...decided to stop by a music store near PNU. On the way, my eyes dropped out when I spotted a squad of riot cops.  Full gear; flak jackets, jackboots, hockey facemask helmets, sheilds, long rubber bats.  I've seen this sort of thing in the states, and it usually means that someone has died or is going to die...or get real fucked up.  I don't like that.  My headphones are off now.  Have to listen for the sounds that follow this sort of thing.  This squad is formated in an alleyway, just standing there.  Why?  I stare for a while and then keep walking.  Closer to the U...there are drums being beaten, Korean words I don't understand piped over the loudspeaker.  At first I think the mobs of people are the normal nightly denizens of this heavy ped traffic zone...but it's slowly dawning on me that that's just not the case. I press on down the street.  Through the mobs; then I start to get the picture.  There's a bigger mob of similarly dressed riot cops, facing off with a pretty evenly matched mob of Korean guys,  young, wearing those mouth covers that I thought were for when yr sick and don't want to spread it.
   At first I get flashes of the nasty KKK/Skinhead/Nazi - Protester - Cop riot I saw in Denver when I was fifteen.  Blood, gas, stones, fistfights, blood, broken windows, bones snapped, fear and rage unbridled in everybody's eyes, hatred, screaming old men with faded blue numerical tatooes on their forearms, the skinheads using their little kids as a wall to stop the eggs and spit and stones...schooling them in hatred, fire, smoke...all that sad shit. 

Video and photos from previous demonstrations are in the News Section

So I hang back hesitantly and just watch.  I soon see that it just isn't like that. I check the eyes on both sides...they look like death and violence aren't even part of the equation...the cops, the students, they chant, they laugh, spit, talk with their friends, smoke a fag, sing a song, chant some more...it seems like they're telling the other side, 'okay guys, get ready, here we come', then they rear back and charge.  The cops pile up behind their shields, no guns on their belts, brace themselves...then ...SMACK!  The two sides collide and bow up against eachother for a while.  They yell, a few cops hop up from the second row and bob students on the head with their rubber bats like little bunny foo-foo. Then they let up.  Rest and preach and chant for a little while, then rear back and go at it again. But there doesn't really seem to be a very high rage/animosity/human-life-anihliation quotient.  It's like reverse tug-o-war.  As far as riots go, I like it.  It just looks like funny street football to me.  I even ask a few members of my surrounding fellow 
rubbernecks if it's football, and they laugh.  I don't know the issues. 
I've heard different remarks about these games...'oh, student riots are 
seasonal' or 'it's about democracy' or the seemingly definitive, ' they're 
pissed about a tuition hike at the university'.  What I do know is that a
lot of those cops are just young dudes fufilling their service conscription ...they'll probably go back to PNU when their time is up.  A lot of them are probably friends or family members of the rioters.  It's a soft riot ...I think...if it is, I like it.  Of course, both sides are doing these leader- to-group call-and-response chants.  Seems like there's a lot of 
groupthink going on amidst both sides...and there's nothing I mistrust more than groupthink. I I leave and go for fried chicken and beer. I half expect to see cops and rioters hanging out together at the bar over beer and dried squid, sharing laughs about when so-and-so accidentally clubbed himself or somthing.  Of course I could be way off about the whole thing.  The rioters could have been marching for Man-Boy- Love-Association Supremacy and I would never know...the cops could be taking the protesters  off in meat wagons for car battery electro-genital torture and I would never know. 
  I was walking home the other morning, cutting through a narrow concrete alleyway.  It was a sunny, calm morning; I think I was coming back from the basketball courts at the university...my string cased b-ball swinging like a metronome in time with Mitch Mitchell's bass-lines on Axis.  I found myself a ways behind four little kids, two girls and a boy who looked about six and one of the girls holding the hand of a little boy who looked about three.  I kept my distance, as not to scare them, and just watched.  They were laughing at the nothing details of their small worlds, singing and swinging their finger locked hands and arms.  Just walkin' along.  That is so right. 

     And then there's the other side. You know it...lonliness...waking up 
without a person you still love there anymore.  Eating most of yr meals 
alone and only talking to aquaintances for weeks at a time.  When 
masturbation feels like nothing more than washing the dishes.  Seeing the 
rest of yr life in a grey flash.  Too much time hearing the voice in yr head talking in repetative re-run circles.  Too much time looking at yrself in 
the mirror.  Watching yrself inside and out as the seconds drain away.  Like keeping some fucked up moldy food in the fridge just to watch it change. Every effort to initiate a relationship feels forced and wrong.  That's the wellsprings of desperation methinks. 
     Then there's a night at the bar.  I'm there, in that lousy 
place...desperation, not the bar, which is good.  Talking to this yeah -yeah- tell-me-somthing-I-don't-know-Henry-Miller-six-year- expat- motherfucker.   Don't get me wrong, he's cool, but he's a motherfucker strait and true. We don't even bother with names. 
     He's been there a while and he's laying it on thick...doing this 
to-the-bone spiel about '...fucking...fucking...fucking...it's all just 
fucking...'.  It's almost one am Sunday morn, and I get to the point where I'm so lonely and desperate that the 'fucking...fucking..fucking' gets me 
hypnotized. I should just leave and go home and wash the dishes...but I 
can't...now all I can think is 'fucking...fucking...fucking'...and of course 
there isn't going to be any legit relationships kindled at this time in the 
morning...not when the bar's dead, and a bar's a lousy place to meet a real person anyhow.  So I'm cold fiending, gripping the undersides of my legs with white knuckles...starting to reverb off him...fucking... blah... blah...'I want to be fucking'.  But now that I'm on 'fucking', he's looking at me like I'm the sad sex sap.  And he says to me like a doctor...' Well Christ, you can always go to Texas Street and get a prostitute.'. 
     'How?'. 
     He lays the drill on me.  Well, you go and walk into any of the bars 
surrounding the Pusan Station.  A girl sits down and you buy her an 
expensive drink, and then you negotiate a price, go up to her room and fuck for an hour. 
     Then he says the shit that most makes me think him a total 
motherfucker.  He tells me somthing that I understand...as far as 
understanding his words.  But it's somthing that I can't really understand, 
having never been there.  Having never obtained the services of a 
prostitute. He tells me, ' you go up to her room, and it's filled with 
stuffed animals and other girly shit.  She lives there.  Do you understand 
that?'. 
     I'm still sexfiending, I nod. 
     'She lives there...that's where she lives.  Understand? She lives 
there, in a little room with all of those stuffed animals and other girly 
shit.". 

     'Okay,', I say, 'I have to go catch a cab. 
     It's almost two am and I get a cab to Pusan Yo.  I start walking around and almost immediately, a girl in tight mini standing out in front of a neon lit bar asks me if I want to come in for a drink.  I figure this is the 
place.  I go in.  We sit down, introduce ourselves.  Her name is Korean, but we'll go with Jane for obvious reasons.  Her english is good.  I'm nervous as hell, but not shaking...because of the alcohol?  I begin to look at her, she's not pretty, not ugly...plain.  She doesn't look like the painted hookers that talk to me and make me blush and giggle in front of the Port Authority in Manhattan.  She gets me a beer and asks if I'll buy her a shot of whiskey. Her shot costs what three shots should cost.  We begin to talk.  She says she used to be a school girl...university...but she got bored. She'd smart...fucking sharp and observant.  Her english is good when she likes the question, and bad when she doesn't.  She laughs a lot and makes me laugh to.  It feels real...which is unnerving.  I know she's trying to get me comfortable.  And I can do nothing but let her.  I'm in her hands now, she's got what's driving me crazy, and for that, she's the boss.  We talk and laugh and I wince everytime she says she wants another drink, but then I forget; 'cause I'm having a nice time.  We talk about all sorts of normal things, and little random things.  She's feeding me raymun noodles and makeing me little oragami animals out of gum wrappers. She's on her third shot of whiskey...I have a second beer that I don't even want...just to have an object in my...control?  Whenever she comes back from a trip to the bar, she's got these wierd little white plastic chips in her hand that she lays on the table.  I ask her what they are...and a hesitant blur passes over her face...I still don't know what the hell they were.  All I could make out from her answer was 'mind control', I think.  She's asks me my age, and I tell her twenty four.  She laughs, and from what I surmise, she's older, but she never would tell me her age.  I didn't know how to initiate the sex negotiations.  But eventually, she brings it up. 'You are my sex friend tonight.', she says.  It's almost four am when she drags me onto the dance floor.  Dancing is on the level of having teeth pulled for me, but I go along and we slow dance, and it feels nice.  We talk about the rural Korean farm she grew up on.  She says we'll go up soon and have sex.  I ask how much and she says, ' I don't care about you money.'  Minutes later she  asks how much I'll pay her.  I make an offer of W60,000.  She laughs, and says 'I don't care about you money.".  Minutes later, she asks, ' How much you pay me?'... 

     She has a fourth shot.  She's still sharp, not even the slightest bit 
tipsy.  I still haven't touched the second beer on the table.  I'm quickly 
growing broke and tired.  She's kissing me on the mouth and holding my hands and after everything I've been told about Wester/Korean public affection being a no-no, I'm a little freaked.  She says she wants a fifth drink and I draw the line.  'No, I think I have to go now.'.  I get up and she follows, and says, 'No, we go up to my room now.'. 
      So we leave, and walk out onto the steamy narrow street.  She keeps holding my hand, and I see the latenight vendors and passersby looking at the clasped palms.  I'm sobered by the paranoiac thoughts passing through my mind.  We walk into the motel that's about a block and a half from the bar. She has a minor altercation with a lady that appears to be the landlord. We go up more stares.  She flits through her purse and produces a key and unlocks her door.  The motherfucker was right.  It's a tiny nest of stuffed animals...a hotplate...clothes...everything a normal apartment has, stuffed in a 15x15 room. I sit on the bed and she takes my coat and scurries around, arranging somthing or another. 
     I feel like I'm dreaming.  My brain feels broken. She sits on the bed next to me.  We smootch a little.  She says, 'how much you pay me?'.  I'm burned on this game, so I grab a napkin and pen, and hand it too her and tell her to write how much.  She writes W100,000 and hands it to me.  I counter with W70,000 and hand it back.  She says, 'Okay'.  I'm 
stiff and scared and just hoping she'll make all the moves.  She looks 
around her nest and sighs.  She asks, 'How far you place?'.  I tell her that all I know is it's near an LG mart, and another significant location, which 
I'll withold in hopes of lessening the threat this tract is to my job.  She 
gets the picture and says, 'Let's go you place.'.  I say 'Okay'.  She 
changes out of her mini into jeans, packs a small handback and we leave.  A stay of sexecution...I'm nervous about bringing this unknown back to my sanctum, but at this point, I figure I'm in it for the ride.  Before we leave, she starts fingering and remarking about this hokey leather studded punk-rock sort of bracelet that I'm wearing.  It's a bracelet I 'borrowed' from my sister, and regardless of the fact that it looks silly, I'm attached to it.  But for a reason that I still figured out, I immediately take it off and give it too her, and it disappears into the nest.  Mind control I guess.  We catch a taxi and jet off into the deadness of a Pusan freeway at 5am.  I remember a few small things about that cab ride.  She's holding my hand, and the cab driver is looking at us obsessivley in the rear view, eyeing our hands and our closeness.  He's also obsessivley polishing the already spotless interior winshield with his white gloved hands.  But what I most remember is the totally twisted music that came on when we took off. This wasn't your average watered down Korean pop.  It was this bizarre trance music that was like traditional indian sitar and rama-rama lady singer gone switched-on;  traditional-electro-trance?  I managed to ask Jane and she answered disinterestedly that it was some form of Korean music.  I'd love to get some, maybe.  I'm still not sure if I like that memory or not. 
      We get to the LG mart and begin the Everest-like climb up hill that 
three flights of stone stairs, then slope that it takes to get up to my 
nearby apartment.  It takes about twenty minutes going up and about three coming down.  I pop my door and she storms in like an Israelite into Caanan. 

      My crib is a semi-dumpy one bedroom, seperate living room with a 
bathroom and a kitchen with a breakfast nook.  It's better than most of the places I've ever had in the states, and I love it.  And seeing her eyes as she began her systematic exploration of every inch and everything I own made me appreciate it even more.  She smacked my arm in mock jealousy as she checked out my fridge and fairly spacious bathroom and the stove.  The motherfucker from the bar comes back into my mind... 'she lives there...that's where she lives.'.  As she began to go through my things on the kitchen table and the living room, I fell back into the bedroom and clumsily started trying to hide the small amount of money I had left.  I started by putting it under some things in the nightstand...then in the wardrobe under the socks...then under the bed...the whole time hoping she won't walk in and discern my pitiful mistrust.  Then I take the cash back out and she walks in and I stuff it into my pocket.  She's enthralled with everything.  She's looking at the few pictures I have of my family, asking questions.  She's playing my few remaining Star Wars figures, and trying to read random passages from novels that are laying around.  Then she goes to take a shower and change into a little white nighty she brought.  I follow, partially to peep her naked in the shower and partially to look for places in the kitchen to stash my money.  More obsessive fumbleing.  As she's walking out from under the showerhead and drying off, I launch the wad of bills behind the fridge...where neither she nor I could ever reach them. Then she tells me to get in the shower, and I strip and obey.  Of course that's the moment when the hot water decides to give out, but I eat it and smile as my skin contracts like a tightened drum. 

      She's in her white night thing and I in my boxer grippies.  I pull an 
American porno out from under the bed...the only one I brought along...the one I claimed at customs like a rube to the humorously whatever-attituded customs official.  She flips though it and comes to the lesbo lick scenes and freaks, laughing.  I realize that I am almost naked with one of the coolest girls I've ever met, and she just happens to be an alcoholic prostitute.  Ain't that just a bitch.  We do a bunch of things I won't discuss.  It's about 7am now.  We drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, and she messes around with my bass guitar.  We do more unmentionables.  Take more showers.  She writes her broken yet functional english on my electric typewriter.  I still have the pages.  We laugh a lot.  It feels so good.  My nervousness, and lonliness and desperation evaporated with the first or second cold shower.  I give her piggy back rides and we bounce my basketball, play Super Mario on the Nintendo Game Boy and watch part of AIRPLANE! on the VCR...but she doesn't get the jokes.  She finds more Stormtroopers in the living room and she tells me that I have so many toys and that I'm just a little boy.  Can I argue? 

     We do more unmentionables, take more showers, more typwriter, more talking, laughing, bass guitar, ciggarette smoking...mine are gone, and we're killing all of hers.  It's nine am.  I have people coming over from my school to go hiking at 1pm.  I have this horrible fear that we'll fall asleep and these middle class peole will show up at my place to find me with a naked prostitute...who under anyother circumstances, I'd be proud to introduce to them.  We talk a lot about Texas Street...she hates 
Russians...she says they break a lot of beer bottles...I'm not sure if she 
means on her head, or on everybodies head.  But I'm getting really scared, because caring for her would be a doomed cause.  And I may be nice, but I am in no way a knight-in-white-armor or an angel-to-the- rescue; and I don't think I ever will be.  I tell her about the people coming over and she asks if she can stay until 12 noon.  No fuckin' way, I think.  That's just too close.  I feel horrible but I tell her no. She want's me to go out and buy her two beers for breakfast. What? I realize that she's a full on drunk.  I wonder if that's what lead her to being a hooker...or if she drinks because she's a hooker...or maybe she just really likes screwing and drinking all the time.  ?  I feel good and bad...because I've had a spiral night/morning...and because I know she's going to have to go back to her tiny nest and the darkness that must overshadow her life.  She tells me that she likes cycling along the Hyundae beach road.  She want's beer, and she's pouting becuase I won't go buy them and because I told her she has to leave. 

  I make more coffee, and then I make her some poached eggs and pour her some OJ...make her eat some real food.  She tells me that all her friends are gone.  I tell her how lonely I am...actually, I told her about being lonely when we were in bed.  She says she want's to be friends, no sex, just friends.  I like that.  I tell her to write a number down where I can reach her, but she says she has none.  So I give her mine.  I tell her to call me, and I really hope she will.  We dress and she makes me put her shoes on her and we leave. 

      We get to the bottom of the elephantine hill and she remembers that 
she left her watch on the nightstand.  So I run back up Mt. KillaManJaro 
and curse the whole way.  Grab her watch, and back down.  We walk to the subway station and she keeps up with that holding hands stuff.  The 
eyes...the eyes...the eyes... She goes into a fancy bakery and buys me some sweetbread with her own money...gives it to me and says its a gift.  Then I walk her to the subway turnstyle like she's my girlfriend and I blow her a kiss as she leaves. It's after ten am, and I'm a shell.  I have to go hiking with decent people in less than three hours.  I really like these people.  I consider them friends.  During our whole day, I keep wanting to tell themabout the cool girl I met last night.  But I don't. 
      Against the little better judgment that I posess, I keep hoping she'll 
call.  But she still hasn't.  Bye Jane. Thanks motherfucker. I'm still trying to dig my cash out from behind the fridge. 
     Let's save the Trans-Dimensional-Buhdda-Con for next time...maybe. 
Goddamn the torpedoes...let'er rip!  

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