Entry #38: Life Imitating Writing

Today is the third week of vacation and it’s been a productive one so far. Last weekend, I finished the first out of four major sections in the book. The problem is that it’s 170 pages long. If each section is roughly the same length, the book is going to end up being 680 pages. As my total should be less than half of that, I have a lot of cutting to do when I revise.

This productivity occurred despite being bedridden for most of last week. I had the flu. I don’t remember the last time I had the flu. Not because I’m normally healthy; I lead a very unhealthy life. My guesses are that either I’m hungover so often that my body has built up its immunity or that the hangovers have masked any short-term colds/flus I’ve had.

One reason I think I came down with the flu is because of the writing. The first section is about basic training and I had a severe flu three or four weeks out of the five weeks of boot camp. I had my temperature taken on two separate occasions and the temperature was the same both times—forty degrees Celsius. 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, Army medicine is less than reliable, but I was at some level of incoherence throughout the majority of basic, including most of the more rigorous training: individual combat training (gakgaejeontu), PRI, comprehensive training, 40 km full-pack marches, the gas chamber.

I shat blood last week and again it corresponded with the sections about my three-week bout with constipation and unsuccessfully trying to shit at night and instead shitting blood. I looked on the internet and it said that it’s almost impossible to go three weeks without shitting. You’d start throwing up shit or die, according to one website run by a nurse. I asked Tae about it and he said that it’s possible because they give you an injection at the beginning of basic which shuts down basic bodily impulses, the libido and urge to shit.

Now that I’ve finished with the first section, all that’s left is a sporadic cough. The body aches and fever are gone and I just had a very satisfying bowel movement. I guess it’s a good sign, that I’m allowing myself to be immersed in those painful experiences as I write. Here’s to hoping that the psychosomatic results of writing about the Army cannot replicate Athlete’s Foot, one of my afflictions in the next section. If you’ve ever experienced full-blown Athlete’s Foot, you’ll know that it’s more than just itchy feet. You get blister-like formations between your toes and the skin of your feet comes off nicely like the skin of a ripe plum.

Entry #37: Vicariously Living the Dream II

When I first started this blog, there were a couple mentions of a writer-friend, Krystn, who gave me encouragement and pointers about how the business works. While I’m not one to take advice from anyone, I was still clueless about the industry and she had been through the regular channels (getting her MFA and attending workshops). At the time of our first meeting, she had an agent who recognized her talent but she was worried because she was working on a collection of short stories and short story collections generally don’t sell well.

Well, her book, Drifting House, has been published and is now on the shelves in the US and UK. Check it out. I guess you can find it at Barnes and Noble’s New Arrivals section.

The reviews are gushing, and watching her process from a distance, I can’t help but say I’m a bit envious. Also not prone to envy, I say this because she made it seem so easy, kind of the way that I still expect the process to happen for me. She didn’t have to query to find an agent who was enthusiastic about her potential, the major publishing houses went to battle in an auction for her work, and now she’s published and the critics are in love. She’s living the dream.

I’m happy for her (yet another thing that doesn’t come naturally to me) and do encourage you to go out and pick up her book. Her fairy tale story is not undeserved. It’s not luck. She can write. That’s why she had no problem finding an agent and the publishing houses and critics are crazy about her. Because she can write.

To be honest, I haven’t read much of her writing. Writers often don’t like to share and there was no real benefit for her to have me read for her. We did write together once, but we each worked on our own stuff for the most part. She bounced a couple of plot ideas off of me and I gave her some feedback but I don’t know if she actually used any of it or she was just being nice. (She’s also an unusually nice person.) I’ve only read a couple of excerpts she or critics have posted on the Internet. When the book comes out it Korea, I’ll probably make the trek to Kyobo to pick up a copy. I’ll write another post once that happens but who knows when that will be.

Congratulations, Krystn.

Random #49: Not Myself in Jeonju

It’s seven in the morning and I’m home. I have half a cup of coffee, a Sausage Egg McMuffin, a hash brown, and a packet and a half of ketchup in my belly after over four hours on the road. I put a shot of cheap whiskey in the coffee but only after I got home. It’s good to be home.

I’ll occasionally go out of my way for a close friend and I’ll do almost anything for a lady I have more than a physical interest in, but there’s a limit to how much I’ll give at the expense of my own comfort. It’s different with family. I’ll sacrifice a much needed break from January intensives to make the nightmarish trek through holiday traffic to do absolutely nothing in Jeonju except fix Mom’s computer and set up her printer and buy her two months of groceries and listen to her delusions of grandeur. (It runs in the family.) I’ll wake up early in the morning and drive out to the mountains to have a drink with my deceased Aunt, one poured out along her burial mound and one for me. I’ll go drinking with 50 year olds at a depressing bar for old people, listening to my Uncle talk to his friend about architecture and other old people for hours. I’ll refrain from the only vice I can enjoy while driving—smoking—during the drive up and add on another hour and a half to the trip to drop my cousin off at her friend’s place at the complete other side of a city too large for its own good.

For some people, this doesn’t seem like much, but for a guy who spends the majority of his time alone doing whatever the fuck he wants, it’s draining. After dropping off my cousin, I rolled down the window, lit up a smoke, stopped by McDonald’s, and ate my McMorning as I raced other early morning assholes down the strangely empty streets of Seoul, my foot heavy on the gas and my hand liberal with the horn. The day is on the verge of dawning as I drag my weary ass down into the cave that is my place. I turn on the heater, strip down to my underwear, pour a shot of whiskey into my coffee, turn on the television for some me time, and retreat into sweet oblivion. There’s no place like home.

Happy Lunar New Year. I hope that this, the year of the dragon, is an auspicious year for everyone. As a realist, I believe that people care more about relative gains (having more than the Joneses) as opposed to absolute gains (just having more), but I don’t give a fuck about the Joneses. Everybody be prosperous. I’m going to do my best to prosper this year.

Random #48: A Strange Mood

“Success as the result of industry is a peasant ideal.”

- Wallace Stevens, as quoted in “Ten Jack-Offs” in The Most Beautiful Woman in Town (1983) by Charles Bukowski

Then success as the result of what should be pursued? Talent? A myth. It’s either a fortunate coincidence or a lie for people who make it and want people to love them more. Screwing people over? I guess that would be noble, wouldn’t it?

Who the fuck knows what it means but it suits me because I don’t like industry and I don’t want to be a peasant even if it means being something worse, a beggar in soiled rags and leprous hand holding out a dried-out gourd to accept alms for the no-good. It’s the decision I’ve made. It’s my bed and it’s no bed but I’ll sleep in it. I have no choice.

I’m in a strange mood today. I spent the weekend in bed, eating canned spaghetti and white rice and pickled radishes, because I’m only quasi-poor (and less than broke in reality) and I spent today teaching stream of consciousness and freewriting and babysitting overgrown children, hormones and bullshit and bravado seeping out of their diapers, and now I’m in a coffee shop with twenty-two cigarettes and a tepid cup of coffee reading short stories from another old (dead?), crotchety old man who liked to drink and fuck and smoke and write.

Bukowski’s dead. I was asked on a date with a disinterested but courteous girl what kind of writing I wanted to write and I told her I didn’t know how to describe it. Dirty realism, Wikipedia says his style was. I don’t know enough about writing or writers to define what I want to write but also I haven’t really written anything yet. I like the expression, though.

This strange mood is wearing out. I can feel it wearing out. Which is a good thing because I need to get back to working on the ms and I’m no good like this. At least it’s not so abstract and psychedelic as the last time I felt in this mood, maybe seven something years ago when I was mad in the desert of Afghanistan, mad not because of the heat but because I was being worked like a dog chained, a two-year service to a cruel, sadistic master with a rolled-up newspaper of time and privatism. It’s almost gone. I’m posting this not because of any inherent worth but because sometimes the shit that comes out of my head is strange and pointless and I end up throwing it away and not being prolific.

Entry #36: A Latin Question

Any readers out there proficient in Latin? The unofficial motto of the Korean soldier is “Always cold, hungry, and sleepy.” I wanted to make a play on words with the motto of the USMC, “Always faithful,” semper fi(delis).

Work on the book is going very slowly but surely. I’m thinking about brushing up the first five pages to get ready to begin the agent search again around January 28th/29th, the sixth/eighth anniversary of my discharge/induction. I have about the first 60 pages in decent condition with about 200 pages of random episodes and notes.

Like I’ve mentioned in a previous entry, I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions but I have set up my new goal for the book for the summer. I need to finish this book before I become a cliché and it becomes that book I’m eternally working on.

Random #47: Time Is Ticking

 Saturday was my birthday. 33 years old. Or my Jesus age, as Annie put it. Jesus was 33 years old when he came out of the desert, started preaching and getting followers, got tried as a revolutionary, died for the sins of all humanity, and came back from the dead. I’ve got a lot of shit to do.

Birthdays aren’t a special occasion for me anymore. I was drinking on Friday at the jazz bar with Hole and at 11:55, he and the bartenders said, “Five more minutes,” and I thought, five more minutes for what?

Saturday night, I had a very small group of friends out for Hooters and Club I. Jayuin, my waiter, had two bottles of J&B on the table waiting for us. God bless the guy. The alcohol and “water” was constant and by the end of the night, I was falling asleep, drunk and tired of partying. I remember the beginning and the end of the night but the middle was a blur. It’s how I like the reminders of my mortality—unmemorable. At the end of the night, a crazy girl that had been talking to Mark braved the freezing cold to find us having breakfast at Burger King and she wanted to share my bed but I sent her away. She wasn’t the right kind of crazy.

Last week, I was thinking about re-working the book from yet another different approach but decided against it. This is it. This is going to be the year I finish the manuscript and see if I can sell it. If I can’t find an agent and publisher, I’ll try to self-publish it via electronic media and then I’m going to move on to the other stories that are wasting away on the backburner. I’ve been working on this book for too long. It’s already been almost six years since I finished my military service and my memory’s not getting any better.

I’m hoping that I’ll be motivated now that time is ticking. I still hold to the thought that 35 is it. If things go according to my beliefs, I have two years left to live. I’m either going to die in a couple years or live forever. If my premonition is right, I want to see my name in print at least once before I go.

* In other news, Kim Jong-il, the crazy-haired, plump dictator of North Korea, died on my birthday. I guess it’s good news but we’ll have to see the effect his death has on security and the exchange rate.

Random #46: Nomanakya Naranai, Part IV

This is the last installment of the series. If it seems long-winded yet hurried, it’s because it is. It’s been a month since the trip and I need to get back to work.

     “Oppa, did you hear that Jeongeun had a baby?”
     Taka gives her a look out of the corner of his eye.
     “Uh… yeah, I heard it.” I heard it yesterday. It was Soyoung that had brought it up while I was working on my gyuutan curry. I take my beer in my hand and Taka clinks his glass with mine and we drink.
     “You know, she asks about you often.”
     I acknowledge her statement, but I don’t reply. There’s a brief, awkward break in the conversation which Taka breaks by offering me some of his “Garlic Pig” tonkatsu. “Try some. It’s really good.”
     I try it and I like it. It’s some of the best pork cutlet I’ve ever had. I had debated ordering it but thought that something garlicky wouldn’t go down well after last night’s binge. I ordered the normal ro-su katsu instead.
     “It doesn’t taste like garlic.”
     “It’s not cooked with garlic,” Taka explains. “They feed the pig garlic.”
     I take another sip of my Asahi draft. It’s not exactly a hangover meal, deep-fried pork and beer, but they took me here because they know I’m a fan of tonkatsu. I’ve only slept four or five hours—the girls at the hostel were loud in getting ready for their day, the door slamming next to my head every time one of them entered or left the room—but I feel bad for Taka and Soyoung. Taka was wrecked last night. After he got out of the taxi, he threw up in the stairwell in his apartment complex and fell asleep there. Soyoung woke up early and found him there. She put him to bed and then went out to clean up his mess. As she was cleaning it up, she added some of her own because of the smell. As we were walking to the restaurant, I told her we had ramen before we went home. “I know,” she said.
     The conversation turns to Soyoung’s newfound appreciation for alcohol and the couple’s first wedding in Busan, the year after we met during the summer program.
     “We should’ve stayed at the party that night,” Soyoung laments.
     “You were getting married the next day,” I offer.
     “Yeah, but I heard you guys had a lot of fun on the beach.”
     We had started out the night drinking at the hotel the Taka was staying at. Soyoung’s friends had come down early and GK and I were there for Taka. After the couple left to go to bed, the rest of us took the party to the beach at Haeundae. We picked up beer and snacks at a convenience store and sat in a big circle on the beach. It was dark but there was enough light from the street behind us.
     “I heard the conversation was kind of dirty.” It had been. Soyoung had done some modeling when she was younger and her girlfriends were of the same caliber. Add that to some lonely guys and alcohol and it was a natural conclusion.
     “Not everyone. Just certain people.”
     “Jeongeun-eonni, right?”
     I get the feeling that Soyoung won’t let it rest but I have no idea why. Who knows what goes on in the terrible complexity of the machine inside a woman’s head and heart?

     Jeongeun was one of Soyoung’s friends who had come down early for the wedding. When we met in front of our hotel to head to the party that night, she was the one who had caught my eye. Long, flowing black hair, bright half-moon eyes, a broad, dimpled smile, skin like polished ivory, flawless and smooth. She had a sweet, unnaturally soft and high-toned voice, the kind you imagine a kindergarten teacher uses toward her infant students, and even that I found endearing.
     The things that she shared as we played drinking games on the beach were shocking. Not that she was a slut, but she was very open and brazen about her sexual history, rare for a proper Korean girl. Perhaps she was drunk. The contradiction between her soft-spokenness and the rawness of her stories and even the fact that she liked to drink drew me in deeper and deeper. At the end of the night, we left the beach and headed to a small restaurant on the pier for haejangguk and soju. I had gone to McDonald’s with Simpson and his girlfriend for my own haejang food and when we got to the restaurant, she sat next to a seat she had saved for me, her head in her hands. She was completely plastered. When Simpson and I talked in English, she woke up and spouted some nonsense about hating when people spoke in English and other things and I was in love. I have a strange thing for crazy girls.
     After the wedding, I called up Soyoung and asked for Jeongeun’s number. When I finally mustered up the courage to call her, Jeongeun had asked, “What took you so long?”
     We were like little kids in love, running around whenever we had the chance. It was the last relationship I had in which I allowed myself to act and love unreservedly. The lovemaking was like atoms colliding, the physical chemistry palpable. The next month, I had agreed to a month-long tour of Southeast Asia with Hole and annoyed him to no end with my constant long-distance phone calls and need to find internet cafés for long, webcam chats about nothing in particular with her. When I returned, I borrowed my friend’s van and took her for a romantic weekend out to the coast and we spent it entangled as if I had returned home after years at war.
     Things were great, or so I thought, but there was a seed of restlessness and doubt germinating within Jeongeun. I was taking her home one night and she was strangely distant, staring out the passenger window.
     “What’s wrong?” I asked.
     “It’s nothing,” she replied and gave me a sweet, melancholy smile.
     The next week, she disappeared. She didn’t respond to my text messages or answer my phone calls. It was during that time my mother came to Korea for some minor surgery. I got a phone call at three in the morning from my aunt while I was out at a night club with my buddy Evan, who was trying to get my mind off of Jeongeun. My mom was sick and so could I come down to Jeonju, she asked. I left Evan alone at the club and headed down to Jeonju.
     There had been complications with the surgery and a more invasive surgery was necessary, the doctor told me. There was a chance that a clot could get dislodged and block the blood flow in her veins. I told him I understood and went out for a smoke or three. I called Jeongeun. I texted her saying that I didn’t know what was going on but at least this one time, I needed to talk to her. I called again and again and no answer. I stamped out my last cigarette and headed back into the hospital.
     I later found out that she had been starting seeing somebody else during the disappearance and then pulled another disappearing act before reappearing in Japan.

     After lunch, Taka, Soyoung, and I took the subway down to Roppongi to go to the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi Hills. The tickets for the museum are something absurd, $50 per person, but Taka’s company provides tickets and we get in for free. We take the elevator up to the sky deck first and take in the night scenery of Tokyo, dark buildings with bright eyes, the strings of yellow and red along the major roads, Tokyo Tower, brightly lit as if on fire, piercing the night sky. The exhibition in the gallery is on the Metabolist Movement in architecture, large-scale, avant-garde plans for an organic and futuristic Japan from sixty years ago. I let Taka and Soyoung go on without me while I take in the scale models of architectural vision. In school, I opted for fine art over design, but I’ve always harbored an appreciation for architecture.

Image sent to me by Soyoung. I don’t know where she found it.

     Taka and I want to see the DragonQuest exhibition, too, so Soyoung waits in a coffee shop while we walk through the exhibition surrounded by otakus and children. It’s a bit disappointing as a fan of the art of Akira Toriyama but I spend it half in people-watching.
     They let me have a smoke outside before we head back up to the northwestern part of Tokyo and we agree to have a drink, or rather Soyoung agrees to join us as Taka and I have naturally assumed that our night would end in drunken shenanigans.
     “Do you want to go to an izakaya that’s kind of loud or a bar?”
     I shrug and give my usual noncommittal answer. “It doesn’t matter to me. Whatever you guys want.”
     We go to the bar because it’s right off the subway station. Pronto is the name of the bar, a bar we have in Korea where I’ve had bad memories. I actually have no memories, having blacked out in less than an hour, but it was the start of a long night. Going to a bar with a two-hour all-you-can-drink policy with a fellow alcoholic is not a good idea, I’ve learned.
     We don’t have dinner first—Soyoung explains that Japanese people usually eat after they’re done drinking—and start off with beer and a bottle of Suntory for highballs. There’s a cute little thing in knee-high socks and a short skirt sitting at the next table, reading a book and drinking a glass of red wine. It’s not unusual for Japanese girls to come to bars by themselves for some alone time, Soyoung and Taka tell me. I consider talking to her but she’s gone by our second drink.
     I’m content. I’m having drinks with my favorite married couple and getting fairly toasted. We talk about the past, I apologize for always missing Taka’s birthday when he’s always called me on mine—“You’re the only person I bother calling on their birthday”—and they laugh and vent about married life.
“It was tough at the beginning,” Soyoung shares. “I didn’t know anybody and Taka’s always drinking because of work.” She adds, “I don’t talk to Jeongeun much anymore.”
     “It must’ve been hard,” I respond to show I’m paying attention while Taka and I work on our highballs.
     “I talk to Taka’s mom all the time. She’s so cute and innocent.”
     “Yeah, it seemed like it.” The last time I was in Japan was last year for their second wedding in Taka’s hometown of Miyazaki. It was the only time I ever saw his mother.
     “It was hard before the wedding here because sometimes I would forget that our first wedding was a secret.”
     “It was?” I had wondered why Taka’s parents didn’t come to the wedding in Busan. “Why?”
     “My parents didn’t want us to live together before we got married and Taka’s parents didn’t want us to get married before we had lived together.” I don’t know if Taka’s parents are like other Japanese parents, but they seem like good, open-minded, wholesome folk.

     Their second wedding was held in Miyazaki—“The Jeju-do of Japan,” Taka had said—but there were gray, overcast skies and heavy rains that entire weekend in May. I spent the months leading up to the trip studying Japanese, taking classes during my breaks at the institute I work at and night classes out in Gangnam. I told people I was studying so that I wouldn’t have to burden Taka with translating for me while in Japan with the implication that it was to be used to hit on Japanese women without my wingman. It was also because if I hadn’t, I’d end up having to talk to the disappearing woman.
     “Oppa, is it okay if Jeongeun comes to the wedding?” Soyoung asked me when they first invited me to the wedding, months earlier.
     “It’s okay. It’s your wedding.” Although I’m a child in a thirty-something’s body, I can be somewhat mature when need be. I didn’t want my childishness to mar their (second) special day.
     “If you’re uncomfortable with her being there, I don’t have to invite her.”
     It was a nice gesture but I assured her it wasn’t a problem. My plan was immature; I was planning to avoid her when possible. It was immature but it went along with my emotional stuntedness. When we got to the hotel in Miyazaki, GK went with Taka and Soyoung to get dinner with Jeongeun and the other guests. I stayed in the hotel with the excuse that I don’t eat seafood and went down to the hotel convenience store for cup ramen and worked on my wedding present which had broken into several pieces on the trip down. They came by the hotel room after dinner for drinks and I was civil, greeting her politely and answering her questions about how I had been. After Taka and Soyoung left, I went back to working on the wedding present with my beer beside me and let everyone else be merry.
     The day of the wedding, I spent most of my time hanging out with GK and Michi and when we went out to a bar afterwards, I spent my time using my Japanese to talk to Taka’s female classmates. It was getting late and GK, Soyoung, and the Korean girls decided to head back to the hotel and GK asked what I was going to do. Simpson and the rest of the Japanese entourage were down to drink and have udon so I joined them instead. As the groups were about to split up, Jeongeun walked up to me. Shit.
     “Can we talk?” Fuck. A tamer, but all the same dreaded version of that despicable expression “We need to have a talk.”
     “Okay.”
     “We can talk when you get back to the hotel. Let me know when you get back, okay?”
     “Okay,” I agreed begrudgingly, putting a damper on my night.
     The udon was good and Simpson was fucked up and raucous in his drunken state, his booming voice cracking jokes in English. Two delinquents at the next table started shit and Simpson was not one to back down, the girls yelling in Japanese and Simpson responding thunderously in English. The rest of our group apologized to the kids, bowing at ninety degrees, and I tried to take Simpson’s attention away from the girls.
     When I got back to the hotel, I was tired. I took off my suit and started packing. We were leaving early the next morning and I wanted to sleep in. I was packing when there was a knock at the door. I had completely forgotten about my appointment to talk but there was Jeongeun at the door. How did she know I got back to the hotel? I wondered.
     I looked out in the hall but there was no place to talk so I invited her in. I took two chairs and brought them near the door since GK was sound asleep.
“I wanted a chance to explain what happened,” she said meekly, hugging her knees as she sat on the chair.
     “It’s not necessary. It’s all in the past.”
     “I wasn’t seeing someone else. It was this guy that was stalking me at my company. He hacked into my account and posted those pictures.”
     “Okay,” I said although her words grated at me. There was no need to lie to me. It had already been two years since and those pictures and dates couldn’t have been fabricated.
     She went on and I sat, stoically accepting her excuses. I was already tired, too tired to listen at length and so I cut her short. “Are you happy?”
     “Yeah, I think I’m happy now,” she responded, but there didn’t seem like there was conviction in her reply.
     “That’s all that matters.” I was trying to take the high road. “I knew that you were unhappy with your life back then anyway.” I had a feeling but I had thought that I could do something to remedy that. I had been wrong.
     “Thanks.”
     “Look, I’m tired. If you don’t have anything more you want to say, I’m going to go to bed.”
     “Okay.”
     We got up and I opened the door for her. She lingered, hesitating.
     Jeongeun had a serious boyfriend—Soyoung had let it slip earlier—but I got the feeling from her that I got back then when we first met. I could have taken advantage of her, could have had that angry, break-up/make-up/see-you-never sex but it was over for me, had been over for a while, and I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t know what she was expecting—absolution, forgiveness, my dick—but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction in any sense. Damn her for digging up the past.
     “Good night,” I said, gave her a polite smile and wave, and shut the door.

     Pronto closes early, around midnight, so we head to our second choice, the izakaya. It is loud; there are large groups in drunken merriment all around us. I’m guessing the reason is the reasonable prices of alcohol. If social etiquette doesn’t keep Japanese people from causing drunken scenes, alcohol prices will take care of it. But here, the alcohol is cheap and Taka and I take advantage of it. Soyoung drinks a bit but she’s reaching her limit and starts nodding off. Taka and I drink until Soyoung is down for the count, pay the bill, and take Soyoung home in a cab.
     The night is still young and Taka heads out to Ikebukuro with me after putting Soyoung to bed. Now that Soyoung is in bed, the periodic mentions of Jeongeun are past and Taka and I can play. We head to a “girl’s bar,” the equivalent of a modern bar or talking bar in Korea where you talk to the attractive female bartenders, but it’s packed and so we end up going to another kyabakura. It’s nicer than the place we ended up last night and I fall in love with one of the girls, Shiina, until our time is up and we pay and I put Taka in a cab and walk back to the hostel.

     The binging of the two nights catches up to me in full force the next morning but I manage to drag myself out of bed to check out, no time for a shower or shit, but the liquor shits come to me anyway while I’m waiting for Taka and I sneak back up to the seventh floor to empty my alcohol-ravaged bowels. Taka is late but he shows up while I’m having coffee and he’s in bad condition, too.
     He goes with me to Narita, we sleep on the express train, and after check-in at the Korean Air counter, we walk around, looking for a place to eat. Neither of us are in a condition to eat but it’s our last meal so we go anyway.
     The flight back to Korea is nice; I’ve been bumped up to business class and it’s an experience I’ll probably never experience again in my lifetime. Fully reclining seat with ample room and my own armrests, a larger screen to watch movies, more attention from the stewardesses. It’s only a shame the flight is as short as it is.
     When I leave the gate and step out into the brisk, Korean winter, I find myself longing for Tokyo. It was a good weekend, an expensive one and one with some memories of a slight and lingering pain, but one of the best I’ve had in a while.

Random #45: Nomanakya Naranai, Part III

This series is getting long and is unrelated to the theme of the blog so I’ll try to wrap it up with the next installment. I also feel like I’m spreading myself too thin so I haven’t been able to polish these entries or get much work done on the book.

Michi is leading us down a side street away from Kawasaki Station. The street is lined with bars and grills. It’s softly glowing with incandescent orange, and large signs advertising cheap food and drinks crowd the sidewalk. Attractive young girls in mini-skirts and leg warmers hand out flyers and packs of tissues with advertisements tucked inside. This is more like it.
We take a turn down an alleyway and wait at the corner of a small intersection while Michi makes a call. A yakuza-looking motherfucker walks past, shaved head and gaudy jewelry visible above the collar of his flashy button-up shirt. This is the Japan I prefer to experience, the seedy underbelly of a country that seems almost too clean and orderly from the surface. When I travel, this is what I’m interested in: how people really live, how they party, how the side that most people don’t experience is.
Once Michi gets off the phone, we backtrack a couple minutes and Michi waves to a young woman smartly dressed in a low-cut blouse under an ivory jacket-miniskirt ensemble. She has a decent, homely face and the trademark crooked teeth. He introduces Taka in Japanese and Japanese formalities ensue, the exchanging of bows, terse sentences in introduction, business cards. Michi then explains who I am in Japanese.
“This is my friend, Sakiko,” Michi tells me. She smiles and waves. She speaks in decent English, something I haven’t heard besides my friends and the counter staff at the hostel.
“Come on,” she says, starting down a different alleyway.
As we walk, I ask Michi how he knows her. “I’ll tell you later,” he responds enigmatically and smiles. A big Japanese guy in a black and gold luchador mask walks, no, struts past. Nice.
We stop at the entrance of a building, and after a short discussion, we double back to stop by a yakiniku place decorated with a Mexican wrestling motif. The luchador from earlier takes our order of various kinds of roasted meat—galbi, pork, chicken, and gyuutan. Taka and Michi remember that I don’t like seafood. They heard that I’m not a fan of gyuutan, but I tell them they can get it if they want. We don’t sit down. “They’re going to deliver,” Michi tells me as we head back out the door.
We go back to the building and take the elevator to the third floor. The establishment is called Anklet. It’s a kyabakura, a cabaret club or hostess bar. The place is small, about the size of my studio in Seoul. There’s a small bar against the far wall and tables and black velvet-cushioned seats around the inner two walls. There are no other customers and a few girls in tight business suits mull around the bar.
It seems like Michi is a regular here. The mama comes out and greets him and takes us to a table in the corner. She’s attractive, maybe in her late-twenties. A pretty face, an ample bosom, and nice, long legs. She takes our order—we’re starting off with beer—and leaves.
Sakiko is sitting with us—she works in IT days and here nights—and two more girls join us. The one on my right is practically bursting out of her red, satin jacket and mini-skirt. She has nice, soft features and a mass of auburn-dyed hair swirled around her crown, held in place with a handful of hairpins. She tells me her name but I don’t catch it and just nod and grin stupidly.
Red hands me a hot towel to wipe my hands with while the mama comes out with the beer. I say my arigatou and smile sheepishly, the foreignness of the language and the situation making me self-conscious. Her smile and sexuality making me self-conscious.
“The mama’s the best-looking,” Taka says. I nod, but Red has got my vote.
She says something to me, none of which I pick up. I look at Taka and he asks her what she said. “She said she thinks you have a nice smile,” Taka translates. I know the words for smile but I didn’t hear it. The self-consciousness is plugging my ears. I thank her and pull out a cigarette as my go-to in awkward situations. I make to light it and she stops me, asks her co-worker for a lighter, and lights my cigarette.
I keep busy with smoking and drinking and occasionally attempt to join in the conversation in Japanese, which becomes easier as the drunkenness overpowers the self-consciousness. The food comes and we eat and drink together. I’m content. I’m drinking Japanese beer with my friends, eating good food, and having good times, pure sex appeal in a red dress sitting next to me.
As far as I can tell, kyabakura are the equivalent to chakseok bars in Korea. You pay a little extra for the alcohol or in the form of a tip for girls to sit and drink with you. There isn’t anything shady going on (there couldn’t be because you’re out in the open, in plain view of all the other patrons) unless you consider paying for someone to drink with you shady. Some people may say that they don’t like situations where the girls are being paid to talk to them but my opinion is that it’s more honest this way. I’ve paid for my share of pasta dinners and coffee or anju and drinks on dates in Korea and many of those dates were hardly good company. Most of them I didn’t bother contacting again.
Red says something to Michi and he leans over and says to me, “She says you can put your hand on her leg.”
“What?”
“You can put your hand on her leg.”
I look at her and she’s smiling and I look at her legs, crossed right over left, netted pantyhose over smooth, perfect thighs. I’m sure I’m staring but I can’t help it. I’m mesmerized. I can put my hand on her leg. I can put my hand on her leg. But I can’t. My hand is frozen to my knee. Is it really okay? Is Michi fucking with me?
I’m interrupted by a commotion at the door and a large group of large guys and girls barge in. Fuck. The trance is broken and the opportunity is lost. The mama walks over and asks us to move over to make room for the newcomers. There are nine or ten of them and there’s barely room for all of us. We oblige and mama calls Red and the other girl over to take care of them. Fuck.
The new table is rowdy in the way you can only find outside the big city. They’re thick, both men and women, the kind of thick that comes from being country-fed. Thick, meaty arms and rolls and rolls of scruff where a neck should be, both men and women. They’ve cost me enlightenment but I like them immediately. Not enough to talk to them, but I can appreciate the atmosphere they bring. Another aspect of culture I haven’t seen in Tokyo. They order their drinks and, once they are liquored up, make use of the karaoke machine. Taka and Michi listen politely and Sakiko sings along softly.
“This is a famous song in Japan,” she tells me. “All Japanese people know it.”
I nod and try to read the lyrics as they light up on the screen. Every so often I look dolefully over at Red at the other table. She’s not talking; the group is having fun amongst themselves. She’s sitting politely, occasionally pouring a drink.
Taka wants to drink highballs. We order a bottle of Suntory. Kaku, Taka says. What’s that? It’s what we call it. Because of the shape of the bottle.

Image taken from Google ImageSearch

The mama brings the bottle and sits next to me, pouring drinks for us. She gives me her business card. Her name is Mitsuki. By now, I’m buzzing nicely and manage to carry a decent conversation with her. She’s no Red, but she’s far more attractive than the other girls. The whisky is pretty good. The Japanese know how to make alcohol. Sakiko leaves to help with the other table and I take the opportunity to ask Michi how he knows her. “I met her at the gym,” he says, but something tells me there’s more to the story.
When it comes time to pay, Michi pays for everything. I take out my roll but Taka tells me to put it away. “Michi’s rich,” he says. “He’s got money to burn.”
It’s around eleven, just enough time for us to catch the subway back to Ikebukuro. It’s too early to call it a night so Michi and Taka come up to Ikebukuro, where we wander around. We go down another side street with an arch above the entrance. I read the lettering on the arch: Romance Street.
We go into another kyabakura. This one is a lot darker and busier. The walls are lined with customers. The girls aren’t as pretty. We order another kaku and there’s a bottle of Jinro soju on the table. I say hell no. Taka says we don’t have to drink it. It’s “service.”
We drink and talk to the girls. Michi is absorbed in conversation with the girl sitting next to him. Taka is in pain. The girl sitting next to him is very homely and very chatty. The girl I’m talking to just came back from a trip to Korea. She tells me about the places she went, Myeongdong (of course) and Club Volume in Itaewon, and about the celebrities she likes. Time flies when you’re faded. We’ve somehow finished the bottle of Suntory and a couple more beers and we decide to call it a night. It’s half past four.
Once we’re out on the street, Taka sees a ramen place so we go to have some post-drinking ramen. He knows that it’s one of the things I want to eat while in Japan. We sit at the island in the center of the restaurant, drunk and tired. Taka and I order ramen and rice, Michi opts for gyoza. Taka orders beer but I’m thinking that we’ve reached our limit.
The ramen is thick and greasy, how I like it when I’m sober. It doesn’t agree with my stomach while I’m drunk and I throw up a good bit of it in the toilet. I come back out and finish my ramen and wash it down with beer.
Michi and I put Taka in a cab and I walk with Michi to the station. It’s a little past five and he says he’s fine to take the subway. “I only had gyoza,” he says. We part ways and I double back to my hostel.
It was a good night. I feel bad because Michi paid for everything and am relieved that I didn’t because, considering how inflated everything is, it must have cost a small fortune. My Japanese friends are too kind.

[This section contains mature content. I don’t know if mature is the right word, but you’ve been warned.]

It was a tame night but it’s really all I wanted. I didn’t come to sightsee and, although I appreciate it, I didn’t really come to experience the nightlife. I bought that second ticket to drink with my friends. Soyoung told me on the days leading up to the trip how excited Taka and Michi were and how they had been planning everything out, considering the things I’m into. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded if we had spent the entire night at a normal bar. This is my fifth time in Japan and third in Tokyo and I’ve done the sightseeing and the nightlife. I’ve seen some crazy shit and I’d feel bad if we had gone somewhere shadier, considering that Taka’s married and Soyoung’s a good girl. I’ve seen some fucked-up shit.
I visited Taka in 2008 while we were both still in grad school. I was putting off my thesis at the time and had a vacation from work. Taka was busy with something one night and so Sunao, another participant in the summer program, came out and showed me around Shinjuku. He’s a good kid and not much of a drinker, I’m guessing that’s why we didn’t get too close, but he said he’d take me “somewhere nice.”
We walked down a relatively unlit side street, past several host bars with large posters of the hosts plastering the street walls and an area of hotels where an hour for “resting” was upwards of seventy dollars.
“Wait here,” he said and walked down a stairwell into the basement of a building that seemed too plain and nondescript relative to its surroundings. After about five minutes, Sunao showed up at the bottom of the stairwell and beckoned me down. He met me at about halfway and stuck a ticket in my hand. “Don’t speak English until we get in,” he said. Apparently, wherever we were was Japanese only.
At the bottom, we gave the guy at the counter our tickets and walked towards the back of the establishment and through two doors into a dark room.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the low lighting, and when they did, I saw that we were in a large room. There were a lot of older men and they were all standing in long lines that twist around the room. At the end of these lines, subway grips hung from long lines attached to the ceiling and a young woman stood holding onto each of the grips. A Japanese guy said something along the effect of “If you’re not in line, get out of the way,” and Sunao and I retreated toward the back of the room. There were partitioned areas but the partitions are made of clear vinyl and I didn’t really want to know what went on in there. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to know what was going on out here.
Sunao and I backed up against a railing and I craned my head in the direction of the end of the line closest to us to see what’s going on. The man next in line walked up to the girl and then started groping her. After he had his fill, the next guy walked up and did the same. What is this place and why did Sunao bring me here? And who is Sunao really? He seemed like such an innocent kid, always acting uncomfortable whenever the conversation turned even slightly crude. It’s the quiet ones you need to watch out for.
The lights turned toward the back of the room and Sunao said we should sit down. Now that the lights were turned up and the men that had been standing in line were sitting down, I could get a feel for the room. There was a stage that extended out into the room to end in a circular area, which kind of made the setup look like a dick. The seating area surrounded the stage (the head and shaft) and there was a rail between the seating area and the stage, kind of like a Universal Studios attraction. On the left wall, there was a display and the lighted section moved down one step as we sat down.
A girl came out from backstage carrying a plexi-glass box. She put it in the middle of the circular area and then started to undress. She put her panties around one arm and then stood on top of the box. Minutes passed and nothing happened so she put on her clothes and went backstage and a different girl came out, undressed, and stood on top of the box as the first did. She stood on top of the box completely naked for a minute and then it happened. She started pissing into the box. From a standing position. What the fuck is going on? I didn’t know how to feel about what I was seeing. I looked around and everybody was into it.
She drained quite a bit of liquid and the level of urine in the box rose. Then she wiped herself off, discarded the tissue in the box, dressed, and walked off stage to fanfare. And that was just the beginning. The display moved down another step and I realized that each step was a part of the show.
In the next stage, a different girl brought out a mattress and put it in the middle of the stage. Then she called for a volunteer. Hands went up all around me. I didn’t dare put up my hand. Who knew what other crazy shit was going to happen. She chose a middle-aged man sitting behind me and he joined her up on stage. She explained what was going to happen but I had no idea what the fuck she was saying, even with my avid viewership of Japanese cinema. She wiped down his hand and gave him a latex glove. Then she lied down on her back with her knees bent and the guy went to work, finger-fucking her. The stage started to rotate. The guy was working at it, the girl was moaning softly and wriggling on her mattress, and the sucking sound of latex-clad finger furiously fucking her, going in and out of her vagina, was audible above the music. Her moans got louder and louder until the real show started. She started squirting. The stage was turning and she was squirting and it had distance. It was a fucking Gallagher show and her juices were getting all over the front row. I was glad Sunao chose two seats in the second row. The first row didn’t even have a plastic blanket to shield themselves.
The rest of the show was relatively tamer and I was stuck to my seat, dumbfounded. So this is a Japanese strip club. Other stages included all the girls coming out and line dancing the Para Para, which was popular back then, stripping as they danced, a time to slow dance with the girls, and a short time where the girls sat on the stage and the customers could go up and talk to the girls and pay to have a Polaroid taken of them. At the end of the show, the girls came out in their panties and all the men ran up to the stage and the girls let the men have a final grope of their bare breasts.
It took me the first couple of acts before I understood what was going on and decided to appreciate the fact that it was an experience very few non-Japanese, if any, could experience. What facilitated that appreciation happened during the Para Para stage. Because each of the previous acts featured a single girl or two at most, I was surprised at how many girls were backstage. At least fifteen girls filed out onto the stage and took their places in three neat rows. The dance music started and the girls started waving their arms around and stepping in unison to the music. Of the fifteen or so girls on stage, there was one who caught my eye. She was gorgeous, one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and the way that she immersed herself in the dance was hypnotic, even as strange as the dance was. I swear that she caught my eye in the darkness and gave me a smile but I’m a guy and not immune to the self-delusions of grandeur we allow ourselves to entertain.
While the other customers were flush against the stage for their final gropes, I stood at my seat.
“C’mon,” Sunao said. “Let’s go.” To the stage, he meant. Unlike many of the stages, this finale was free.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You go ahead.”
He shrugged and joined the others at the stage. I watched my dancer among the girls leaning down to allow the men their goodbyes. We made eye contact and she motioned for me to approach the stage.
Sunao pulled me over to the stage and my dancer knelt down on one knee. She smiled and I obliged, extending my hand to say my goodbye, a strange goodbye and the end to a strange night.

I walk back to the hostel and get my key from the front desk. The guy working the graveyard shift isn’t as hospitable as the girls that work the counter during the day. I go back outside for a last smoke then take the elevator up to the seventh floor. I stop by the toilet just in case the rest of my ramen decides to come up. Better now than when I’m sleeping on a bunk bed. Nothing comes out. I dry heave a few times and so I rinse my mouth with my saliva and spit it into the toilet bowl. I’m fucked-up but still take a moment to marvel at Japanese ingenuity. The room is too small for a separate sink and so there is a small faucet and basin on the water tank of the toilet which turns on automatically when the toilet is flushed. Nice.
I try to be as quiet as possible unlocking the door to the room and closing it behind me. Someone is sleeping in my bed so I take the bed on the top bunk closest to the door. I climb the ladder as quietly as my drunken, off-balanced body will take me. The girls are all sleeping, one of them is snoring. I should’ve made my bed before I left. I put the pillowcase on the pillow but give up on the sheets, take my clothes off, throw the blanket over myself, and pass out into Suntory-induced oblivion.

Random #44: Nomanakya Naranai, Part II

The title of this series of entries is a shortened, conversational form of nomanakereba naranai, meaning “you must drink” (literally, “you mustn’t not drink”).

     “Oppa, do you want a beer with lunch?” I’m surprised Soyoung is encouraging me to drink because she has complained about Taka drinking so much and often and that is exactly why I’m here.
     “Sure.” I’m going to need it to chase the taste of gyuutan. I don’t really want to try cow tongue cuisine and I don’t think Soyoung wants to, either, but Ju-eon, Soyoung’s married friend, is adamant on introducing me to something new and Japanese. I choose the cow tongue curry, hoping the curry flavor will overpower the taste of tongue meat.
     The girls order our cow tongue feast and two beers.
     “I’ve been trying to build up my tolerance,” Soyoung tells me. “I couldn’t really drink when you saw me last time, remember?”
     I don’t. I nod to be polite, but the few times we’ve been at a bar together, my attention was focused elsewhere.
     “Taka is always drinking so I thought I’d pick it up.” Boy, Taka lucked out. A girl who can’t drink but is willing to learn for her husband is a good girl.

Gyuutan. Image courtesy of Google Image search. Some blog titled shibatabread.com

     It’s my second beer of the day. My first was on the flight from Incheon. There was a seat on the 10:10 to Narita. When you’ve spent an extra 500 bucks on account of your own stupidity, drink. When you’re surrounded by Japanese middle school kids running up and down the aisles and flirting with each other, drink. Drink and forget your troubles. When you’re on your way to meet up with close friends you haven’t seen in a while, drink. When the Korean Air stewardesses give you a smile as they pass by because you’re not a Japanese middle school student running up and down the aisle and flirting with other middle school students, drink. Drink and be merry.
     When you’re waiting for the girls to struggle through their roast tongue and tongue over rice, drink. It’s my second and I can appreciate that it was on Soyoung’s suggestion.

     “It’s too late to go to the art museum. Is there anything you want to do?”
     “Not really.”
     Sightseeing is overrated. I used to sightsee. I’d go to some exotic location and pay good money to be surrounded by hordes of tourists and wait in line to see things and think, “Wow, that’s old,” or “Wow, that’s impressive,” and take a picture that has been taken countless times before when that same money could be used for beer and massages. I love beautiful things but I prefer the beauty of the young and alive and temporal than the beauty of the old and static and permanent. I agreed to go to the art museum as kind of trade off for the drunken shenanigans Taka and Michi and I are planning for the weekend.
     “Well, Taka’s going to meet you at the station at 7. Michi wants to take you to ‘someplace nice’ in Kanagawa.” She sighs. I wonder why Taka didn’t just lie to her.
     “Kanagawa? What’s in Kanagawa?” Ju-eon asks. I guess people who live in Tokyo don’t venture out there normally.
     “I don’t know,” she says with a tone of exasperation. The kind of tone that implies, “Who knows what guys do when they’re out drinking but I’m sure I don’t want to know.”
     “What’s Kanagawa?” I ask.
     “It’s like Gyeonggi-do,” she replies and I decide to leave it at that.

     The girls take me to my hostel and wait for me across the street at a café while I check-in. My co-ed dormitory room is tiny, just enough space for three bunk beds, and occupied by only women. There are three Swedes on vacation from teaching English in Korea and a 1.5 generation Korean American. They seem like nice people but I’m not here to socialize with strangers.
     Having nothing to do until Taka gets off work, the three of us have coffee and head to Ikebukuro Station to look around the department store. Japanese goods are well-designed but severely over-priced ($100 for a Moleskin notebook) so I do my own type of browsing of the local goods while Soyoung and Ju-eon look for notebooks and wrapping paper. Ju-eon decides it would be better to buy wrapping paper at the 100-yen store so we head out to the roof of the adjacent department store for vending machine coffee and a smoke until Taka arrives.
     We meet Taka at the West entrance of the station. He’s still in his suit and clutching his bag. The girls graciously take their leave and we head down to the platform on our way to Kanagawa.

     I have an idea what we’re getting into. A couple weeks earlier, Taka came to Seoul on a business trip and GK and I met him for a night cap at some happening spot in Itaewon. After grad school, Taka took a job at Samsung Japan for his wife but the benefit is that work occasionally brings him to Korea to party for a short time after his duties end and his flight back to Tokyo leaves. Michi works at the Tokyo branch of an American data processing company and so we only get to see him when we go to Japan.
     The four of us met in the summer of 2007. It was during an international summer program for students from Seoul National University, Waseda University, and Peking University. Ten students from each university spending a week in each country, studying regional integration and other idealistic bullshit. Although an American, I was able to take part in the bullshit because of my connection to the institute hosting the program on the condition that I take care of “extracurricular activities” while the group was in Korea. (I met GK during my first semester at SNU and he agreed to help me in my hosting duties.) Most of the thirty were only interested in petty things like shopping or cultural activities but Taka and Michi were always down to drink. Every night for the three weeks of the program.
     At the bar in Itaewon, we were catching up over cheap Korean beer and chicken skewers. GK just broke up with his serious girlfriend and Taka told us Michi did as well. We’re getting to the age where people seriously consider marriage, and while it’s sad news, a dark part of me is comforted by the fact that my friends will be around to drink until the wee hours of the morning, unfettered by the bonds of commitment.
     It was getting late, the critical point where you have to decide to turn in or fuck it all and drink until your plane leaves.
     “So what do you want to do?” GK asked Taka. Taka’s the guest and even though we all have to work or catch a plane in the early morning, it’s Asian hospitality to drink as long as the guest so desires. Actually, I’m not sure if it’s Asian hospitality or just our version of hospitality.
     “What is there to do?”
     “It depends on what kind of atmosphere you’re looking for.” GK was being careful because Taka’s a married man and he was unsure of Japanese morality when it comes to marriage and frequenting the shadier aspects of society. “We can go to a bar or a club or a place where we can talk to girls.”
     “What kind of place is that?”
     “There are lots of different kinds of places. It depends on what you want.”
     “You only get to talk to one girl?”
     “Usually. It can be pretty expensive, too.” GK’s tone told me that he didn’t really want to spend money but he would if Taka was into it.
     “In Japan, the girls rotate so you get to talk to every girl.”
     “Really?”
     “Yeah. Holden, you’ll see what I mean. Michi wants to take you ‘somewhere nice’ when you come.”

     We take the Yamanote Line down to Shinagawa (I think it was) and transfer to the line that will take us out to Kanagawa Prefecture. We’re heading to Kawasaki city. “It’s dirty there,” Taka tells me. “Good,” I tell him. Although I’m not sure what we’re getting into, dirty is what I’m looking for. Michi has the night planned out and he’s going to meet us there.

Random #43: Nomanakya Naranai, Part I

My recent blogging inactivity this time is not entirely due to laziness or sudden inspiration in writing the book. I just got back from Tokyo and spent the weeks leading up to the trip trying to brush up my Japanese in the off chance that I’d get to use it. The trip was eventful in the way that most things in my life are, pathetic and alcoholic.

     I open my eyes and the sun is faintly shining through the small window in my semi-basement studio. What the fuck? Oh, shit. I look at the clock. 7:00 am. Fuck me. I jump out of bed, turn on the lights, and stand in the middle of my room, my brain addled with a mixture of sleep and panic. What to do? What to do? Calm the fuck down. My bag is packed and my clothes are laid out on the floor. Can I make it? Numbers and time schedules run through my head. Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve got to try. Do I have time to shower? Fuck. Should I drive or take a cab? Fuck. I decide on a cab, hoping the driver will drive like they do whenever I catch one completely drunk and have to fight the sick from coming back up. Shit. Shit. Shit.
     I run down the hill and out to the road, farther and farther because the few cabs that pass by are occupied or are driven by assholes who ignore the disheveled guy trying to hail a cab while coughing and breathing heavily. I need to stop smoking. Shit. Shit. Shit. I run out to the main road and jump into the first cab I see.
     “Incheon Airport. Step on it.” He hesitates and I can tell he wants to make up some excuse about a shift change or the cab not being able to leave the city so I add, “I’ll pay extra if you get there quickly.” He pulls away from the curb and starts down the road.
     “Which way do you want me to go?”
     Fuck, I don’t know. “Whichever way is faster. I need to catch a plane at 8:40.”
     It’s my luck that I’ve got the slowest, most law-abiding taxi driver in Korea. Shit. Shit. Shit. My eyes are affixed on the small clock on the dash. We don’t make it on the 88 until a little before 7:50. Shit. Maybe I should call the airline. I reach for my phone. It’s not in my usual pocket. It’s not in my other pocket. It’s not in my pants or in my bag. Fuck. Shit.
     8:00. Shit. Shit. Shit.
     The airport is in sight. I look at the meter. 43,000. I reach in my wallet. 46,000. I take it out and get ready to run.
     “Where do you want me to stop?”
     “Here’s fine,” I say. I throw the money in the front and run into the terminal.
     Inside the terminal, I look up at the check-in counter display. Counter H? Fuck. Just my luck that it’s at the complete opposite end of the terminal. Shit. Shit. Shit. I take off running, my bag bouncing vigorously against my back. I’m a halfback again, finding and barging through the holes in the crowd of travelers with their carrier bags and all the fucking time in the world.
     When I make it to the counter, one lady is pulling the cordon closed and the lady at the counter is organizing her papers. I run up to the counter and take out my passport.
     “I’m sorry, sir. You’re too late. We stopped ticketing at 8:00.”
     I turn around and look at the clock. 8:06. She’s got to be fucking kidding me. She isn’t. She explains that ticketing was supposed to stop at 7:40 and they already kept the ticket counter open twenty more minutes. There’s nothing she can do.
     Dejected, I walk out the door and take out my cigarettes. Shit. Shit. Shit. This is what I get for choosing sleep over beer.

     “Just drink until it’s time to head to the airport,” Tae had suggested. In order to make it to the airport on time, I had to leave at five. I was having a beer at the bar but decided it’d be better to get some sleep before my flight. “No, I want to be in top condition for my partying in Tokyo tomorrow,” I explained as I handed him my credit card. Why I chose not to drink more is a mystery. I’m usually the one to suggest drinking before a flight and the amount of sleep I’ve had the night before has relatively little bearing on my condition. Nevertheless, I went home, set my alarm, and got into bed. Oversleeping wasn’t a concern because I rarely oversleep and I’m such a light sleeper a text message can wake me up even when I’m completely plastered. I did wake up at five but apparently only long enough to turn off the alarm.

     As I take out another cigarette, I agonize over what to do. Should I go home and try again next month or should I go back in and look for another ticket? I should go home. I don’t have much money left after being raped at the bank currency exchange.  I’ll have to buy another ticket because the ticket had been a promotion with a no change and no refund clause. I don’t have my phone and I’m tired as hell. Ah, fuck it. I’ve made it this far, might as well go a little farther. I put out my cigarette, walk back into the terminal, and buy a ticket for the next flight to Japan.