Fishing With Sapporo and Perdomo

Friday night. 

Cold at 42 degrees and drizzling, but warmer than the last month. I couldn’t be cooped up inside. I grabbed my jacket, went downstairs, bought a can of beer, and got comfortable smoking a cigar on the patio outside. I was fishing for someone to talk to, using myself as bait. Here, if you’re drinking in a public place, people will just start talking to you. Alcohol makes the wheels turn.

Three teenagers walked past me, jaws hanging open. The air was dead, I’m swimming in a cloud of smoke and doing some damage to the 500ml can of Sapporo. A father and his son walk past, the boy is being dragged along once he notices that I’m not Korean. I give him a smile and a nod, he’s paralyzed with curiosity. His father is chatting on his phone, tugging at his arm, and the two disappear down the street. A few mothers walk by, one gives me a look, the other stomps down the street purposefully in her heels.

I expected more people to be out with the warmer weather—I’m told that the patio outside of the convenience mart is a big gathering place in nice weather. I keep smoking, check my phone. 10:05, early. Two women walk past, and I recognize them from months ago. After a few seconds, they recognize me. “Ah!” they both cry, and hurry over.

“How does it work?” Justine asked. Nickname Beyoncé. She was pointing at the cigar, both are fascinated.

“Just kind of puff it in, you know, don’t breathe it in all the way,” I said. I tap my neck, then my chest, and make a cross with my forearms. Korean body language is different.

Her cocked eyebrow told me she didn’t quite get it. Her English is practical but not fluent.

“You know,” I said, “like this.” I take a hit; let it sit in my mouth, the smoke slowly spilling out. I’m old hat at this, and I’m not ashamed to admit I goosed it a bit to look cool. Wearing a black jacket, white tanktop, and jeans, it seemed like the proper thing to do.

“Okay, okay, okay,” she said. “마자,마자.” They both mean the same thing. I hand her the cigar.

She took a hit, her friend Jinny leaning in to watch like a kid at a magic show. Justine breathes in, takes a huge rip of the cigar, doubles over coughing.

“No, no,” she cries, slapping her chest. More coughing, deep, throaty coughing, the coughing you do over a toilet after you throw up.

I smile and take another monster drag, bathe the area in fog.

“괜찮어?” I ask. Are you alright?

“Oooh!” She cries, impressed, then doubles over to cough more.

“Very nice,” Jinny says, flashing a bright, straight smile. Most Korean girls don’t smile, but most Korean women don’t have a smile as beautiful as hers.

“How many have you smoked?” Jinny asked, inspecting the Perdomo wrapper.

“In my life?” I said.

“No, today,”

Koreans don’t get cigars.

“Just this one,” I said. I held it out, and with my right hand showed its original length.

“One a day?” I told them one every few weeks. “Ah, ah,” the two said, harmonizing. Justine has recovered by now. They chew it over in Korean to one another, and then make cutting motions at where the midpoint of the cigar would have been.

“In half,” they say, trying to figure out the point of having a cigar so long. To them, you buy a long cigar and cut off as many servings as you’d like to smoke.

“Not quite,” I say, smiling. “I’ll just show you next time.” I offer her the cigar again, she turns it down.

I’m surprised she tried it at all. In my experience, people usually don’t try new things unless the media picks up on a craze. Apart from the few punk crowds that every culture has, people here seem pretty happy fitting in with one another. People smoke cigarettes, and they’re cheap. A pack of Marlboros is ₩2,500. Korean brands are ₩2,000 or less. When people drink, it’s Soju and beer. Crazy people mix the two to make 소맥, literally Soju and the word for beer, mixed.

It’s only fitting that the next night we went out for Soju and beer. We smoked a bit, too. Justine was working on a pack of This Plus! cigarettes, fashioned with a whale on the outside. Jinny was smoking menthols with a pearl you crack in the filter for an extra blast of mint.

I like smoking. Tobacco, and especially cigarettes, goes well with the rule of cool. Smoking doesn’t make you cool, smoking itself isn’t cool, but if you’re doing something cool and you’ve got a cigarette stuck on your lower lip, you’re really hitting it. Eating chicken isn’t that cool—we were originally supposed to go out for 순대, pig heart and intestine, but the go-to place was sold out. It’s a hot ticket item. If we were eating pig heart and smoking cigarettes, that’d be too cool for school. Next time we’ll have to give that a go.

Even in the cold I managed to find some friends. I can’t imagine how nice it’ll be in the spring.