Western Condensation, Osmosis.

I’m standing outside of a Kentucky Fried Chicken. There’s a specialty hotdog shop across the street, I can see an Outback Steakhouse, and I can hear English conversations as background noise. My brain’s first reaction is to cling onto these like flotsam. Everything else gets sorted down to a lower priority, right now I need to think, process, sink my teeth into the important English waveband. I can tune in, even if the station’s only playing stupid messages like “Wow, this is just like New York!” or “KFC sounds good right now.”

Down the street there’s an old dwarf of a Korean man. He’s angry at everything, the type of drunk that stumbles when he walks, then stops to curse the street. His face is ribbed with wrinkles, and he’s got the thinnest frost of white hair. He’s wearing a backpack, carrying a white umbrella. He’s mad and he wants money, and no one’s biting. He tries me. Doesn’t even ask, just sticks his hand out and grunts at me.

“Get outta here,” I tell him. Don’t even bother in Korean.

“Ah!” he shouts, “Ah! Ah!” he aims his umbrella at me, looks around to see if anyone else can help. No one’s looking at this angry son of a bitch, no one likes him.  He keeps grunting and brushing the hair above his ear, cursing me.

“Alright, fuck off,” I said.

He stops swatting his hair, manages to look angrier.

“Ah! You watch your mouth. Ah! Get outta my country!” It takes about thirty seconds for him to say this, he’s too busy grunting and barking in Korean every few words. I give him a level look and don’t say anything else. No point in arguing with a bum. At this point he realizes that he’s definitely not getting any money out of me, curses me again, and shakes his umbrella one last time. I watch him stumble down the street, swatting invisible flies around his head.

Itaewon does that to people.

Some cities have Chinatown. Itaewon is the opposite, some condensation of the western hemisphere with Europe thrown in free of charge. The foreigner population is mostly fed by the large American military base nearby. There’s no theme, no planning, everything is slammed together. You can buy a shot of Jagermeister on the street, eat kebabs from Pakis, watch a football match at one many London-style pubs. It’s an international hub, the official language is neon light, the currency is liquor, the population is an even split of everyone from Earth.

     There are bars, there are clubs, and there's the nebula of social hierarchy to go along with these places. Dive bars exist underneath high-rise clubs with a twenty-thousand won cover. At one point I walked past a huge wearing a down jacket, its owner picking poop off the street with toilet paper.

"That's a Great Dane, motherfucker!" someone shouts. "Fuck yeah, I know my dogs like nobody's business. Hey, Wang! Wang! Don't you fuckers eat dog?"

"Yeah, but not like that, not the Korean way. You gotta stir-fry that shit! I'm barely Korean at all, I've gotta eat it like a Chink! Stir fry that dog up!"

The dog offered no opinion.

Whenever I go to Itaewon I rediscover a whole group that I hate. They’re the boorish, the too-drunk, the too-loud, the foreigners who have washed out or never tried in the first place. Americans in their mid-40s do the same awful shuffling dance they do on a girls night out in the states, cheer at tired old songs like Piano Man. People fall into a table in a bar, knock glasses over, laugh as they break, drunkenly walk away.

It’s the least Korean place in Seoul. There’s a hint of the country under the peeling wallpaper of American food and Ford Expeditions parked on the street, but you have to dig for it—after a few seconds you stop trying. More than anything, it’s a guilty pleasure.

Sometimes you need to take a break from the whole Asia thing, I get that and support it completely, but for some Itaewon is life-support. It’s a little bit of home for anyone from anywhere, but it’s stretched so thin that you wonder why anyone bothers with a bad imitation of something that might have been best left alone in the first place.

The Sad State of 21st Century Treasure Hunting

Every inch of Seoul’s streets are covered with something to put money into. Vending machines are everywhere, sell everything. People come to pay homage to the gods of Pepsi and Coca Cola, drop the equivalent of 30 cents into an instant, four ounce cup of coffee. Gourmet varieties of coffee machines exist, for fifty cents you can get a green tea latte, caramel macchiato, or ten shades of Americano.

Electronic skill games are everywhere, and they offer a galaxy of prizes. Boring things like stuffed animals are commonplace, stranger machines offer cans of Spam, beans, or tins of cookies. They’re leashed with zip-ties, and I’m certain that no one has ever fished one out. The games are cheap, bright, loud, and if you’re a masochist; fun.

Pusher-style games offer greater prizes for a steeper price of admission. You maneuver a rod right, then up, choosing each direction only once. When the time runs out the game pushes the rod forward, attempting to knock a prize off of a shelf.

At first the games are easy to resist, but Korea carpet bombs you with cheap, blinking fun. I held out longer than any reasonable person could be asked, but eventually I went for the pusher machine. This one had knockoff Bose earbuds, bottom-dollar mp3 players, handcuffs, sexy underwear, and lighters.

My money wasn’t even in the bill slot when an old-timer appeared out of thin-air behind me. He was short, hands clasped behind his back, and wearing a Fidel Castro Hat. Worse, he wanted to help. Korean advice usually falls between flagellation and public humiliation.

“So, what do I do here?” I ask him. He understood very little English. The game-clock was ticking in the background.

“Right, up, up, no no no no, no, right,” he cried. Grating, kuh-huh-huh laughter. I pushed the rod right, up, missed, and successfully wasted a dollar on nothing. He walked away cackling, cursing me under his breath.

Fire filled my lungs. I bit back a thousand ways to say “fuck you,” knowing they’d be lost on him. I dug around in my pocket, past my keys, and fished out a crinkled old bill. Slapped it onto the glass, smoothed it, fed it into the machine. This time I chose my target, a small cell-phone charm. Hardly worth the price of admission, I’m sure some poor Chinese person made them by the thousands every morning, but it looked like a willing victim. I started moving the rod, and once again the Korean man has teleported next to me. Now he’s cheering me on with an endless stream of Korean percolating with angry sounds. Right, right, ne, up-pa, ne ne ne, ani, ani, ahhhh, like a lawnmower ripcord.  The pusher-rod found purchase, and slowly, agonizingly slow, glacially slow, pushed the charm into the prize bin.

“Ha,” I shout. In my mind, I was the fury of a thousand storms, my ha!, thunder on a dark night. His five-foot figure looked unfazed.

 “Pretty cool, huh?” I asked him, dangling the phone charm into front of him. He shifted his teeth, leered at me, and angrily said “Thank you” before disappearing into some neon-lit back alley.

Smoked Duck and Soju

            

            “Peter! Hah,” Seon said. “When he gets so drunk, gets very, ah, what’s the word? Angry? Is that it?”

“Peter gets angry?” I asked. It was loud in the restaurant, I was drunk.

“No, his penis gets angry!” Seon said, miming masturbation with both hands like he was waving a fire hose around. “When it gets like this, he must find a woman.”

I looked over to Peter. He sipped his soju, offering the briefest of smiles.

“It’s not such a bad thing though, at his age. Without alcohol, his penis doesn’t work so well, so to get it angry is a pretty good thing for the women.”

I met Seon on the leg-press machine at the gym. He was doing sets of thirty reps at low resistance, and he was hogging it for twenty minutes. I’d eventually talked him into switching off sets with me. For fifty-six years old, Seon was like a boulder. He had a huge chest, not a body-builder’s physique, but bulky with a lifetime of exercise. We talked, his English was near-fluent. He introduced me to Peter a few minutes later.

“He’s my brother, sixty-four years old, and yet he is still starting to learn English. Can you believe it?” he asked, clapping me on the shoulder. Peter looked good for his age, he had a full head of dark hair and a smooth face. I’d put him closer to fifty than sixty-four.

“Hello,” Peter said, giving a gentle wave and a slight bow. “Ah, how are you?” he asked, slowly piecing the words together.

“He’s at the beginner level,” Seon said. “So you’ll have to help him, really.”

It was settled, then.

Seon took a quick liking to me, and particularly my voice. Liked me enough to buy me dinner, in fact, so long as Peter could come and practice his English.

A week later, we were sitting on the floor at some hole in the wall restaurant. In a few hours we’d talk about angry genitalia.

“You like smoke duck?” Seon asked, taking his jacket off. He paused, one arm halfway out of a sleeve. “That’s correct, smoke duck, right?”

“Close,” I said. “Smoked duck is perfect, a hundred percent.”

“Smoked duck!” he said. “Ah, ha,” pointing a long, wrinkled finger at Peter. “A hundred percent!”

Peter shrugged. “It’s no problem,” he said.

“No problem! Hah, that’s good,” Seon said, shaking Peter’s shoulder with a fierceness. “He learns many words, but he won’t admit it.”

We three sat around the table. The restaurant was dead except for us. Seon shouted off orders in Korean for Soju, the waitress ran to the fridge and  brought back a small green bottle of the stuff. The cooler was stacked full of bottles of Soju. Four crates of surplus were piled next to the fridge. It’s all Koreans drink.

Peter offered to pour my glass. I put my dominant hand out, bracing my forearm with my left hand.

“Ah, how do you know to do this?” Seon shouted.

“Research, you know? I looked it up before I came here.”

“That’s what I like about you,” he said, “you’re so honest. It’s like the first time I met you. I asked you why you got a job in Korea, and you tell me that there are no jobs in America. No one would be so honest, but you were. Man, that’s what I like about you, really.”

Honestly didn’t have much to do with it. I was an uninspired English major in a downturned economy. I had to look for work anywhere.

The duck came. Slow roasted, smelling like a thousand childhood campfires. Seon took the tongs and tossed a huge pile onto the skillet. Our server, Hye-yeong, laid out constellations of plates and dishes on the table.

At a Korean restaurant they bring plenty of fixings. Between the three of us we had four servings of onions and jalapenos, pickled radish, teriyaki sauce, garlic, kimchi, cabbage, gochujang, two salads, two platters loaded with large lettuce and cilantro leaves, two big bowls of duck soup, and three bowls of traditional Korean noodles. This was just to start.

“Are you retired?” I asked Seon.

“Retired? Nah, but I don’t work either. I’m a hang-around kind of guy, you know? I worked hard for thirty years, now I just relax.” Suddenly his face snapped back. “Don’t talk to me, talk to him,” he said, pointing to Peter.

Same question to Peter. He’s a plumber by trade, owns a plumbing business.

“He has lots of money,” Seon added.

“No, no,” Peter said, “no much money.”

“And a house on Je-ju island!”

I’d heard everything there was to learn about Jeju island that week from my students. They were memorizing speeches about it. Tropical gem south of Korea, great oranges, inactive volcano in the center. Very popular.

“That’s gotta be nice,” I said. “Sam-da-do, right?” ‘Sam-da-do’ meant Je-ju embodied three ideas, wind, beautiful water, and beautiful women. My kids said it all week.

“Sam-da-do!” Peter said, smiling.  “He knows Sam-Da-Do,” then shot off a staccato of Korean off to Seon. He sputtered a response, smiled.

“He has such an amount of money,” Seon said. “But don’t talk to me, talk to him!”

I started with the basics for Peter, the same way I’d meet a new student.

“Do you have any hobbies?”  I asked.

“Slow! Slow, please,” Peter said, tapping the table gently. I looked at Seon, but he was too focused on flipping the duck on the skillet. I asked again, slow like a glacial thaw.

“Hobbies! Ah, yes, I love hiking. Every day, every morning, I hike a small mountain in Seoul. Then the gym in the afternoon.”

“So you’re sixty-four, you hike up a mountain every day, own a house on a tropical island, and are trying to learn a new language?” I didn’t expect Peter to get all of that, so I looked to Seon. He translated this to Peter, who spit back a quick response and a laugh.

 “He’s also only loves his wife,” Seon added, stuffing a mouthful of lettuce and duck into his mouth. “Really, they proposed at twenty-five, and since then she’s been his only woman.”

“That’s the way to be,” I said. “Faithful.” It wasn’t much to add, but what else was there to say?

“I’m the same way,” Seon said. “Really, I met my wife when I was young. How about your parents,” he added quickly.

“Oh, sure, my dad met my mom when they were both in college. My dad was in grad school.”

“Was it an arranged marriage?”

I told him no, arranged marriages weren’t very common in America.

“And your father, is he a faithful man?”

“Sure he is,” I said. “If he wasn’t, I think my mother would kill him. She could do it, too, she’s fierce like that.”

“Ah-h,” Seon said. “That is how my wife is. She really is stronger than me. I have always been faithful to her, there’s no other way to it.”

I nodded, grabbing pieces of duck with my chopsticks. It was juicy, hot, smoky, and spicy. This past summer I’d spent a lot of time experimenting with smoked barbecue. Two cerebral dots connected over six months and eight-thousand miles.

“There’s no way to go through life loving more than one woman, do you know?” Seon added. “Really, there’s not enough love for one person to give for more than one person.”

“There’s a saying,” I said. “There’s only enough blood in a man’s body to work his brain or his penis,”

“Yes!” Seon said, slapping the table. White china dishes clinked together. “That’s how it is, right!”

Seon threw more duck on the skillet. Hye-yeong, stopped by multiple times to ask me a few questions in Korean. Typical questions I’d been a thousand times. How old are you, how long have I been in Korea, are you a student? I took a second to appreciate that I could understand each of these questions and answer fluidly back in Korean. Fluid enough, at least for them to nod approval.

“She say you’re handsome,” Seon said. “Maybe it is a big fire burning deep within her.”

Hye-yeong knew her way around a smoked duck. Another saying, never trust a skinny cook, and I trusted her completely. I wouldn’t want to share a bed with her, but she could cook for me any day of the week.

More shots of Soju. Take a bite of food, take a sip of Soju.

“Really, she keeps mentioning it,” Seon said as Hye-yeong brought more Teriyaki sauce. “‘He is so good with chop-sticks,’ she says. I wonder if there is even a part of you she isn’t in love with.” Hye-yeong mumbled something quickly in Korean. “There it is again, ‘he’s so handsome.’ I wonder if really there is a love for you burning deep within her. Do you have a love for her burning?”

 “I’m too happy being single,” I said. “I just dumped my last girlfriend a month ago.”

“Ah-h, an American girl? You need to find a Korean girl.”

“I don’t  know, Seon. The last Korean girl I knew was crazy. She was too clingy.”

Seon raised an eyebrow.

“Clingy, you know, obsessed. Too attached.” A dramatic nod, Ah-h. “She would text me every few minutes to see how I was. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘What did you dream about last night?’ ‘Why did you kiss me the first time we met?’ She always wanted to hang out, every day-- I had to lie and tell her I was too sick to hang out. She told me she was on a subway to my apartment to take care of me. I tried to scare her away by telling her I would get her sick, too, but she told me it’d be worth getting sick. That’s too crazy for me.”

“Oh yeah,” Seon said, flicking a few pieces of duck into a small bowl. “Try this, go ahead,” he said.

I did. I snagged a leaf of lettuce, piled the duck on top with a thin slice of pickled radish, gochujang, garlic, and a jalapeno pepper.

“Ah, you like spicy food?”

“Oh sure,” I said. “It’s a drag, every time I go into a restaurant here they don’t put any spice on my food. They think since I’m an American I can’t deal with anything spicy. I love this stuff.”

“You really are Korean,” Seon said, laughing. Another slap on the table. More clinking of china. Another shot of soju. I brace my glass as Peter pours more. The bottle emptied, he put it next to two others. Called for another bottle from Hye-yeong.

“You need to remember our ages,” Seon said. “You are the youngest, so next time you will pour, is that right? Pour? Pour the soju from the cup?”

“Bottle,” I said. “Pour from the bottle.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Seon said, smiling and waving me away. “When in Rome, do as Romans are doing, do you know?”

I nodded and gave him a “ne,” yes.

“Women, though, you must always be faithful,” he said, accepting a shot of soju from me. We toasted, slugged down the shots, poured again. “Never have sexual intercourse with another woman. Willingly, at least. I would never do it in a proper state of mind. When I am drunk , though,” he said, pointing at the four empty bottles of soju littering the table. “That’s something else. A man sees a woman and he just can’t contain himself, you know?”

“All men are like that,” I said. “Like I said, not enough blood in the body.”

“Still, so many women to have sexual intercourse with. Really, you wonder why you would do such a thing. It’s the alcohol though, it’s not me. I just drink too much, then I end up with another woman. I’m still faithful to my wife, though,” he said, rubbing his gold chain necklace absently.

I picked at the food.

“Anyways,” Seon said, “what’s your Korean name?” “I don’t have one,” I admitted. “A Korean person needs to give you a Korean name, otherwise it doesn’t count.”

“Ah, hmm,” Seon said. “I don’t have an English name, you must give me one.”

“Let me thing,” I said, running through the normal theatric “hum”s

“Not yet! Give it time, the next time I see you, you must have an English name for me though. For you, though, Park DaeJae, for sure. It’s a funny name, really.”

“Why is it funny?” I asked, grabbing more duck with my chopsticks. How many plates had this been? Three, I think, but I couldn’t be sure.

“In Gangnam, there’s a big area for tourists to go, Park DaeJae is the name of this small hill where people go. So, you see, it’s a funny name, really.”

“Got it,” I said, chewing through the crispy duck gristle.

“So, what’s your name?” he asked.

“Park DaeJae,” I said, smiling.

“That’s right, really,” he said. “Go ahead though, Peter needs another glass of Soju. Pour him another, ah,” he said, searching for the word. “Cup!”

“Glass,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Don’t talk to me, though, talk to him!”