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!”