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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