PREFACE
In December, I went to see the film
Love Actually with my friend Yuri, and afterwards, we discussed the merits of declaring one’s love for the object of one’s affection, particularly if the object didn’t seem to share those feelings.
“You’ve got to do it, Helen,” she urged me. “If you don’t do it now, you might regret it for the rest of your life! And after all, it’s Christmas.”
I considered telling KB, a classmate I’ve liked for several months, how I felt. Three seconds later, I decided against it. “He’s the kind of person who would make it clear if he liked me, and he hasn’t. So what’s the point?” I argued.
What’s the point indeed? Until this term of school, I’ve never been the worst in my class, and I’ve also never been the supplicant in love. Yes, I’ve of course liked people who didn’t like me back in that way, but I made sure that they never knew how I felt. Because really, what’s the point?
I’ve learned a lot this term, and I think one of the things I've learned is that there is an answer to that question. An unexpectedly good one.
CAVEAT
Oh, by the way, if you wince at the thought of me kissing a boy or having a sex life, please spare yourself the following. Yeah, that means you, bigbro. Really. Spare yourself.
THE STORY
Friday, Feb. 27: Picnics and Drinkniks
The Sogang Level 6 picnic this term was to a teahouse in the northern section of Seoul. There honestly wasn’t much to see; our teacher had said as much, encouraging us to instead just enjoy the atmosphere and chat with each other. After tea (I had a lovely cup of pine needle tea), we headed to lunch in Insadong, which was nothing spectacular.
The spectacular stuff began after lunch, when half of the class departed for other appointments or home, and the other half followed our teacher’s suggestion of finding a rather famous old dong-dong-ju (rice liquor) house in the neighborhood.
The place doesn’t really have a name, and it looks like a large, abandoned storage shed on the outside. Inside, the ceilings look like they’re about to fall down if you breathe in their direction, and are so low that my claustrophobia nearly drove me outside again. The walls are covered in layers of graffiti, and the liquor is served in metal basins of the variety Korean grandmothers use to wash clothes.
It was awesome.
At first, we all felt a bit awkward, but with each basin of dong-dong-ju, our teacher became more animated and set the mood for the rest of us, dogging on the youngest member of our class, asking us about our love lives, commanding us to drink more, and generally acting completely unlike a teacher and more like a cool older sister.
The oldest and youngest class members, one a Japanese linguistics professor and the other a 25-year-old Korean-Hawaiian, set up the smoking corner at one end of the table. One by one – first Aki, then Yoko, then Hank from Taiwan – we eventually crept over to become part of the smoking corner. Finally, I gave in and also asked for a smoke, at which time, our teacher, sitting on my right, said, “Then you’d better give me one too!” Which, if you spend any time in Korea, is highly unusual for a mild-mannered Korean woman.
I was supposed to meet Maiko at school that afternoon, but was having such a good time, I asked if I could invite her over, and eventually she joined us, just as we were leaving the place to go to our next location, a karaoke place. Karaoke is an inevitable part of the Korean social experience, and needs little explanation, except that with a linguistics professor and a couple of other English speakers and music lovers in the crowd, we sang an unusual number of English songs, including the Titanic song, Backstreet Boys, the Beatles, U2, and Britney Spears.
I admit, I was responsible for the Britney. I’m not that innocent, baby!
After karaoke, we headed to another dong-dong-ju house, at which we ordered pa-jeon (like seafood pancakes) and more liquor, and talked about stuff like relationships, the political situation in Taiwan, and room-salons, the notorious “hostess” establishments that every businessman in Korea is familiar with.
While we were there, I got a message from my friend KB, who’d gone back to his homeland for the past two months and was visiting Korea for a week before going back home for good. In Korean: “Do you want to come over and watch a movie? I’m near school, but there’s a place for you to sleep if you need to stay over.” (Everyone knows that I live far from school, and can’t party past 11 or so if I’m going home that night.)
I messaged back: “What movie? I’m in Insadong now so I probably can.”
A bit later, he called and said there were a number of DVDs to choose from, and it would be fine if I brought others along, since a couple of the other people at the table were also friends of his. So after the talk died down at our table, we all headed to Shinchon, where I then promptly lost almost everyone to another bar except for Maiko, who pleaded fatigue and went home.
“Where’s everyone else?” KB asked when I finally met up with him.
“They all wanted to continue drinking,” I said, “and apparently I have no friends.”
“Aww, poor Helen,” he laughed. And then, “If you want to keep drinking too, then don’t let me stop you.”
“Nah,” I said, “it’s okay. I don’t really want to drink any more.” Silently, I added,
if you think I’m going to give up the chance to spend some time with you alone, you’re nuts!
After picking up some provisions, we went back to his friend Mig’s place, where he was staying, and talked about my recent travels to Southeast Asia. KB had been there a few years before and loved it. To my surprise, he’d brought the map that he promised to lend me at the time (but didn’t find until after I went!), so I pointed out the route that Wendy and I had taken, and talked at length about the sadness of Cambodia, and the vibrancy of Hanoi, and the beauty of Halong Bay. I was rather flattered that he took such an interest; I hadn’t talked about the trip in such detail to anyone else.
We watched a movie about KB’s homeland (and yes, I’m trying to be deliberately vague about the details, sorry), which was sort of difficult to watch, as it dealt with a certain minority group in that country, but instructive. After that, Mig came back home from drinking, so we sat around and talked a bit. Mig and KB are from the same area, and have both hunted, so Mig talked about his first time killing a deer. Apparently, the knife he’d brought broke when he was cutting off the head, and so he and his companion spent 30 minutes trying to break the spine with two rocks, laughing at the absurdity of it, before succeeding and carrying the huge head back home.
KB volunteered that he’d never killed a deer, just smaller game like rabbits and possums (now it sounds like they’re both from Appalachia, doesn’t it?), and that he’d actually cried when he killed his first rabbit. With a bow and arrow. (Aborigines? Masai? Some South American indigenous tribe? Just stop trying to guess, will you?) With a beginner’s luck and lack of skill, he’d managed to pin the rabbit by the skin of its head to a tree trunk, where it was kicking and struggling to escape before he managed to run up and break its neck.
I think that would make me cry too. As it was, the stories from these two were so far removed from the way I grew up, I looked up at them from my seat on the floor, tilted my head, and said, “Wow. I had a really … different life.”
They laughed.
An hour or two later, we were nodding off, so Mig went off to his room, and KB unrolled the blankets for bed on the floor. I was reminded of the first time I’d slept over with KB, when I was astonished to realize that he meant for me to sleep in the same bed with him. Unclear at that time what his intentions were, I was a bit nervous, but that night and each successive time, KB never gave the slightest hint of interest, so this night, I merely smiled inwardly at the memory and plopped into bed.
Where, as usual, I couldn’t sleep. It’s hard enough for me to sleep next to anyone, even a friend, and I’ve harbored crush-like feelings for KB for a long time. So I lay there, listening to him breathe, trying to will myself to sleep. At some point, I must have succeeded, because I woke up and it was 7 in the morning. Trying to decide whether I should get up or keep trying to sleep, I was caught off guard when, in the process of rolling over in his sleep, KB draped his right arm over my stomach.
Um… hm. What do I do with this? I wondered. I know this is just an accident. Oh, if it only weren’t an accident. But it so is. Shit.
And before I could gather my senses, he rolled over again and took his arm with him. About 20 minutes later, his alarm went off, and he said sleepily, muffled by his pillow, “Get up.” The arm was definitely an accident.
Saturday, Feb. 28: Sleep
I left early in the morning to get to my 9 a.m. hospital appointment. The results of my blood test were fine, so who knows what sort of stomach bug I had two weeks ago. After that, I went home and slept for six hours.
I got up for a few hours at night to check email and stress about financial aid stuff for law school, and then, defeated, went back to sleep.
Sunday, Feb. 29: Spa!
Maiko and I had originally planned to go on a two day trip this weekend, as Monday was a holiday, but I had so much work to do, we compromised on a one-day trip to a spa. And to be totally honest, I admitted to her and to myself that I wanted to see as much of KB as I could before he left. Maiko having recently said goodbye to a close Korean friend who went to study abroad in Australia, was sympathetic, suggesting that we invite KB along, but I decided I should honor my original commitment to her and not be a total ass. (Especially since I hadn’t even made plans with KB! One tries not to be a total loser, you see.)
We went to a rather famous hot springs place, Asan Spavis, about an hour south of Seoul, which turned out to be so crowded that they had a wait list for the day. We got number 385. They were calling people with numbers under 230. We left.
The non-famous hot springs place down the street that we ended up going to was less than half the price of the famous place and was just fine. At first, it’s a bit awkward to walk around naked with your friend, but after a bit, you get used to it. After all, everyone else who is walking around, sloughing off dead skin, washing their hair, applying lotion, dozing, washing their kids, and talking with their friends is also completely naked, so after a while, it seems pretty natural.
Inside, there were a number of pools of varying temperatures, as well as showers and steam rooms, but the best part of the place was the outdoor pool. It was cold enough that day to make the hot water feel luxuriously comfortable, although even accounting for the cold, no one could stay in for very long.
While Maiko was exfoliating, I watched a woman next to us doing the same to her grandmother, scrubbing off the dead skin with the ubiquitous green exfoliating cloth that’s sold all over Korea. It was really sweet, actually.
We stayed at the hot springs for a few hours, at the end of which I felt extremely clean, but oddly drained of energy. While we were dressing, though, something happened that would have been really annoying if it also weren’t really funny: Maiko left her black plastic bag of toiletries on the bench outside her locker while she went to wash her hands, and when she came back, it was gone. Two ajummas (women in their 40s or 50s) had been undressing next to us, so she suspected they’d taken it.
As the bag contained things she rather needed in order to bathe, period, she exasperatedly took off her clothes and went back into the spa room to hunt her bag down. I just rolled up my jeans and went in, attracting strange looks from others. Just as I was explaining to the owner of another black plastic bag that I was searching for a similar one, Maiko came up and said, “It’s okay, I found it.” Apparently, the two ajummas had taken the bag and then, when Maiko came up to them and indicated it was hers, denied it, pretending that it was theirs. Maiko silently reached into the bag and pulled out the shampoo and conditioner bottles, which she had labeled in Japanese. “Is this yours too?” she asked pointedly. And then they feigned surprise.
“I could have gotten angry,” she mused later, “but really, what was the point?”
Monday, March 1: Studying, drinking, and the things that result
Monday was a holiday, so Maiko and I met at a coffeehouse close to school to study together. I messaged KB, “I’m in Shinchon studying. If you’ve time later, let’s have dinner.” He called back almost immediately: “Where are you?”
“At XYZ Coffeehouse. Where are you?”
Laughing: “Right outside XYZ Coffeehouse. I’m supposed to study with a friend here. Hold on.”
So KB and his former housemate Borough studied in one corner of XYZ Coffeehouse, while Maiko and I studied several feet away, until about 7 or so. KB, Maiko and I all felt like some chicken barbecue, but Borough is vegetarian, so we settled for going to chicken barbecue place and ordering squid barbecue. It’s actually tasty, but when you’re in the mood for chicken, squid just don’t do it.
However. We had, for some reason, a very good group dynamic, and together complained about being ignored because we were foreigners, practiced yelling for service, and drank three bottles of soju by the end of the meal, which practically demanded to be followed by a trip to a local dong-dong-ju house. Where we proceeded to get really trashed. Or at least, I did. And Maiko. I think KB and Borough were feeling it too, though not nearly as much.
The place has a very nice, old-fashioned air to it – not the hole-in-the-wall feeling of the place in Insadong, but a friendly, intimate atmosphere. The dong-dong-ju came in small clay pots rather than metal basins, which naturally also lends itself to a rather snug feeling.
We were sitting next to a group of students, and, at a particularly soused moment, we asked them to teach us a drinking game. Which they refused. Or, not refused as much as did that Asian thing of not really replying, which is universally understood to be a neg.
Later, however, one of the students turned to us and said, “Did you want to learn a Korean drinking game? I’ll teach you.” He showed us two, which the four of us followed with varying success. And then, in an oddly touching and illuminating moment, he said, “It does my heart good to see four foreigners like yourselves trying to learn and speak Korean so earnestly. Have fun.”
We chorused our thanks, but didn’t actually play any of drinking games until Borough’s Korean girlfriend joined us about half an hour later. That was definitely the downfall. In the game, you point to someone in the group while a designated person states a number — say, 5. Then, starting from the number-giver, you follow the pointing hands until the fifth person, who has to drink. It’s an extremely simple and fast game, and Maiko and I got the worst of it, so that by the time Borough and his girlfriend left, the room was spinning for me (but in a friendly way!) and I had to ask Maiko and KB to wait.
While we waited, our server, whom we’d been exhorting to come and have a drink, actually did come over and bring a bottle on the house for us to share. A student, he was just working a parttime job there. A bit shy but an earnest sort of fellow, and we exchanged emails and promised to come again.
According to the email that he eventually did send us, we left the place at around 3 am, Maiko, me, and KB, and headed back to KB’s place (really Mig’s place, if you recall). I was flying pretty high but Maiko was a bit worse off – she actually fell down on a steep hill and only got up, as she explained later on, when she realized that that was a pretty uncomfortable place to sleep.
At Mig’s place, Maiko went straight to sleep, and KB was headed in that direction, but I was energized by the liquor and the fun, and I didn’t want it to end, so when I was coming back from the bathroom, I noticed the light on in Mig’s room and knocked.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I returned. “Do you want to have a drink? Can I have a cigarette?”
“Sure.”
So I wound up sitting in Mig’s room, sharing a beer and cigarette. At some point, we heard KB in the bathroom and heard a loud thump. “Whoa. Hope that wasn’t his head,” I said, and we both laughed.
A few minutes later, I got up to see if KB wanted to come and drink with me and Mig. The room was dark, and KB grunted something unintelligible to my question, so I groped my way toward the source of his voice.
“Are you sleeping?” I asked, rather stupidly.
“Mmmrphm.”
“What?” At that point, a hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me forward. I fell right onto KB. “What the --?”
“I’m not sleeping – I didn’t want to sleep alone tonight – and I can’t believe you’re going to fuck my friend!”
“What!?”
“You’re going to fuck my friend, aren’t you?”
“What? No! What the hell are you talking about?”
A few more rounds of this, and I finally figured out that he was very, very jealous. “KB, I don’t fuck men I met two days ago.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, challengingly.
“Yeah. Look… I like you. I really like you. I’m not about to fuck your friend. Trust me.”
He sat up and held my face between his hands. “You’re not drunk, are you? Tell me you’re not drunk.”
I noticed he was shaking. I shook my head and put my hands over his. “No, I’m not drunk anymore.”
“Oh, man.” And then the absurdity of the situation hit us. I’m not sure who started giggling first. Mig’s light was still on and he was clearly expecting me to come back and at least finish the bottle of beer. Less than two inches away, Maiko was passed out. And two nights earlier, KB and I had been alone in the same bed and done absolutely nothing.
“How come you didn’t say anything?” I gasped out after the laugh attack passed.
“I didn’t see you that way until I came back to Korea this time,” he said. “And anyway, how come YOU didn’t say anything?”
“Because I figured you were the kind of person who would make it clear if you liked someone, and you didn’t, so I didn’t say anything,” I replied, mixing up pronouns with delirious he-likes-me! abandon.
“You know I wouldn’t say anything!” he denied, “I never say anything when I like someone.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
The rest of the night was, er, frustrating. To say the least. But I told myself and KB, “It’s okay. There’s tomorrow night and the night after. And every night until you go back.” And then I kicked him out from under the blanket and onto the sofa.
We actually felt really bad about Maiko. And Mig.
INTERMISSION
It occurred to me after writing the first part of the story that if you don’t know KB, he could come out looking like a bit of a jealous thug and not the least bit appealing. (Though certain friends of mine would be quick to point out that if KB is a thug, that would be nothing more than a continuation of a longstanding tradition.)
A brief and, unfortunately, vague description of KB seems necessary at this point, or at the very least, an explanation of why I’ve liked him for the better part of a year.
KB is the kind of broad-minded westerner that you wish were the norm abroad, to give nonwesterners the impression that not all westerners are culturally insensitive boors. Even when we were in level 3, with a very limited range of expression, we’ve always spoken Korean with each other, and he inspired me to speak Korean even with other English speakers.
Being a foreigner in Korea is sometimes a hard business. He’s been asked belligerently why he’s here, why he just doesn’t go back home where he belongs. But he takes it all with a smile and a generous acceptance of the fallibility of human nature – including his own.
KB is totally unafraid of strangers. He’ll strike up a conversation with anyone; when we had to conduct a poll in level 4 of a Korean person, he was talking with someone he met on the street before the rest of us had even pulled out our sheet of questions. That is something I really wish I could do. But he wasn’t born like that – he used to be shy, but actively tried to become less so.
This isn’t working, is it? It never does, actually – trying to explain why you like someone is virtually impossible. I’ll just leave it at this – to borrow BC’s phrase, when I met KB, I knew right off the bat that he was the real deal. A good person, through and through. Add to that a generous and kind spirit, an interest in other cultures and peoples, courtesy and sensitivity, plus, of course, the usual down-to-earth, simple style that gets me every time, and it was practically inevitable.
Back to the story.
Tuesday, March 2: Unrequited Love
On Tuesday morning, I went to class with a spring in my step and a gleam in my eye. My teacher asked if I’d been to the hot springs or something, because my cheeks had color and my face seemed brighter, somehow. I have no idea how she guessed, but considering that I’d had three hours of sleep that night, I’m not sure that the hot springs I went to on Sunday had anything to do with the change in my appearance.
I went home that afternoon to change clothes and rest before returning to Shinchon to celebrate my friend Etsuko’s birthday. Four Japanese girls and I took her out for chicken BBQ (finally!), ice cream, and then the inevitable karaoke place.
I’d arranged to meet KB at around 11:30, since he was out with a friend watching a movie. But it was 11:45 pm when he finally called and said he was a couple stops away. We were just heading out of the karaoke place by that point, so it was well timed, but I was so tired that I wasn’t sure I could wait the 15 minutes he said it would take for him to get to Shinchon. One of my friends urged me to stay with her, and since I couldn’t think of a reason not to, I agreed.
I called KB to tell him I was heading to our friend’s house, and he sounded so surprised and dismayed that I changed my mind. The dismay was obviously my goal, sneaky bastard that I am.
It was a little bit awkward seeing KB again, but no more than you’d expect. Since we’d planned for me to stay over, I took out my contact lenses and we brushed our teeth together like an old couple. Weird.
In any case, it was fine once the lights were off. How is it that you always feel more comfortable talking with someone once you can’t see them? Since KB is on the laconic side, I took a perverse pleasure in asking him lots of questions. One is curious, after all, about a partner’s first pet, things they are self-conscious about, their most memorable girlfriend, what they’d like to keep about themselves if they were reincarnated – you know, the usual things. At one point, he said, “You ask the oddest questions,” and I said, “I have an odd brain.” I offered to stop asking questions, but he said, “No, I rather like it.”
Through this game, I learned that that random arm over my stomach on Friday night wasn’t so random, and that he certainly wasn’t sleeping at the time. “Yeah, I was this close to just making a move then,” he admitted, “risking a knee to the groin and everything.” Heh.
My favorite answer was when I asked KB what his happiest moment was today and he replied, “Well, this is pretty nice.” I followed up by asking what the happiest moment of the week was, and he again said, “I’d have to say right now.” Awwww!
But curiosity has hurt much larger mammals than cats, and though I was really, really pleased with the above exchange, I was in for a fall. The first indication was when he asked me a question.
“Do you ever have casual sex?”
“Me? No. Do you?”
“Oh, sure.”
Shocked, I said, “Really?”
“Yeah, sure. You know, like a friend of a friend, if they’re really cute or something. But it’s hard to have casual sex with a friend.”
I thought about this for a moment. “Are we friends?”
“I should hope so.”
“So if we have sex, will it be casual?”
“Well, seeing as I’m leaving in a few days, yeah, I guess so.”
I absorbed this for a minute, heart sinking. But the real downer was when I asked why he saw me differently this time, back for just a visit before he would return to his home country.
“Well,” he said, “to be perfectly honest, I really liked this girl for the past year and a half.”
“Oh.” I said, crestfallen. Not heartbroken, because I’m not in love with KB, but deeply, deeply crestfallen. “Oh,” I said again, louder. “So, did you tell her?”
“No. I think she likes me but I never said anything.”
“So you like her and you think she likes you, but …?”
“Well, we’re really good friends.”
“So why don’t you say something?”
“What good would it do now?”
“That’s true, but still…. It seems like a shame.” I thought about it, trying to put myself in his place. “Are you very sad about it?”
“I suppose so.”
“But… so why me, now?”
“I suppose I gave up.”
“Oh.”
I felt compassion for KB, sadness for him and myself, and a silent wail of mild misery all at once. A minute later, I turned away from him, facing the sofa. I felt lost. I like KB. Have for a while. And last night I thought he liked me all this time too. But here it turns out that I’m the substitute, the rebound, the runner-up.
So what are you going to do, Helen? I asked myself. This is gonna hurt so much. It already does. Do you get up and leave? Do you refuse to touch him, or let him touch you? Do you make this the last night? Do you use him as you suspect he’s using you?
And somewhere in the space of two minutes or so, I decided, Okay. It’s going to hurt like hell, but I want this. It’s worth it. To feel protected and safe again. To just… feel. To feel everything that I’ve put away for a year, tried so hard not to remember. To remember again that intimacy – not just physical, but the kind that comes from sharing those kind of weird thoughts in the dark – is a beautiful, worthy, painful part of life. That life is empty without it.
The room was very cold, and the space underneath the blanket was very warm. KB reached out and gently put his hand on my waist. I put mine over it, and turned back to him.
Wednesday, March 3: Quite boring. Just sleep.
On Wednesday, I went to school in the morning, work in the afternoon, and straight to bed at home afterwards, exhausted.
On Thursday morning, I found a message (in Korean, always in Korean) on my phone: “Did you perhaps go to home so you could get some sleep?” KB had sent it around 11 pm on Wednesday night. I smiled at it, and dumped my phone in my bag. He could wait for an answer.
On the way to school, I sent a reply: “Yes, I was sleeping very soundly when you sent that message. Why, were you lonely?”
A few hours later: “Yes, I was lonely. I’m headed back to Seoul now from hiking North Mountain.”
Thursday, March 4: Snow and confession
On Thursday, 18.2 centimeters (over 7 inches) of snow fell in Seoul, the biggest March snowfall since recording began in 1907. In Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of the capital, 49 centimeters (over 19 inches) were recorded as of 4 pm. Roofs collapsed. More than 9000 homes lost power. Schools were closed. Thousands of drivers stranded on highways overnight, and intracity bus rides took three times as long as usual.
A highly unusual meteorological event, they say.
I was researching and writing my speech for class during the afternoon and into the evening on Thursday, and from my perch on the 8th floor, I saw the snow fall and the heard the thunder, but it wasn’t until I headed out to meet KB at 9 that I realized just how heavily it was snowing. My hair and clothes were covered with white within a minute. I ducked into a
pojangmacha (a sidewalk food vendor) for a bite to eat and to melt off a bit, but when I emerged, it was still snowing like the dickens.
I had already arranged to sleep over that night, so I wasn’t worried about getting home. Accordingly, as I walked over to KB’s old guesthouse, where he was hanging out with some of his former housemates, I thought of nothing except how beautiful Seoul was like this. It was cold, and the house was a 15-minute walk away, but I looked up at the sky, blinking the snowflakes out of my eyes, and grinned like a fool.
At the house, KB, Borough and his girlfriend, and KB’s other former housemate Curly were watching the Korean courtroom drama episode in which KB and his friend had roles. We hung out, watching the show and then the
Jackass movie (disturbingly idiotic yet oddly compelling), eating ice cream and coffee until midnight.
When we finally got going, it had stopped snowing, but everything was hushed and soft-looking, and Seoul looked more beautiful than it had in months. The beauty of the snow-covered trees and buildings touched me, but also made me feel sadder. And I was already feeling a little sad. The three hours with Borough and his girlfriend, who are very affectionate and very clearly in love, had reminded me that what I had settled for with KB was by no means a relationship. It was definitely a settling.
We threw a couple snowballs at each other before reaching Mig’s place, which is halfway up a small mountain. Blanketed with snow and lit by moonlight, it didn’t look a bit like the Seoul we knew. KB went to get a camera, and snapped a couple shots. When he pointed it in my direction, I suggested instead that we take one together, and we did. Afterwards, we stood on the snow-covered stairs, KB on the step below me, and looked out at the trees. KB put his arm around my waist, and I put mine around his neck. We stayed like that for a long time.
In the apartment, wearing one of KB’s shirts and huddled next to him under the thick blanket, I lay very quietly, head on his arm, for a long time, thinking, while he gently caressed me. Finally, I spoke in Korean: “I’m sorry, KB. I’m feeling a little
soh-un-heh.”
“What does that mean?” he asked, and I remembered that we’d just learned the word this term. Continuing in Korean, I explained, “It means a kind of sadness, but also a kind of disappointment, and hurt.”
“Why?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s just that these kind of intimate moments, where you feel a kind of connection” – I felt him nod in the dark – “they always end. So it’s sad.” Taking a breath, I continued, “And also, to be perfectly honest, I – I like you. But in your heart, you like another girl. So it’s difficult.”
He kept his arm around me, but froze. As anyone would. “You like me? But – how much?”
“Enough to make it difficult.”
Silence. And then, haltingly, “I don’t want to – if this makes life hard for you, Helen, then I don’t…” He used the formal form of address when he said my name, something I registered almost automatically. An unconscious distancing? Or respect? “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing anything, if…”
“It’s okay, KB. I mean, I’m not going to waste away from pining after you,” I tried to reassure him. “And I want to be here.”
“When did you start feeling this way?”
“A while ago,” I answered vaguely, on purpose.
“But we – I mean, we haven’t even spent all that much time together.”
“I know a good person when I see one,” I said. There was silence again, during which I briefly considered and then discarded the idea of telling him about how I felt about each of those sleepovers in the past year. “I’m sorry, KB. I’m sorry that I gave you the burden of knowing. I mean, I kind of feel better now, actually. Sorry,” I chuckled.
“Yeah. Catch me trying to sleep tonight.”
I laughed again, “Sorry,” my heart genuinely lighter. There was silence for a while, during which KB’s arm never left its position, wrapped around me, hand gently stroking my shoulder. Finally, I stirred. “Can I ask a favor though? Will you tell me what your position is?”
“Well,” he sighed, “it’ll have to be in English. If I can even find the right English words.” He paused for a second. “I … always … liked you. More than other people. Felt a connection, I guess. And I find you extremely sexy. But I don’t know, I just never… oh, man.”
I waited for a second, and then said, “It’s okay. I just felt like I was a substitute, you know? Second place. Runner up.”
“You’re not a substitute. You’re…”
“I was just afraid that I just happened to be the person who was around.”
“Well, to be honest,” he replied, “I thought that’s what I was to you.”
“Well,” I said, starting to laugh, “there’s a little bit of that too.”
“Right.”
We lay without speaking for several minutes. I finally turned onto my side, moving closer, and rested my head on his shoulder. “It’s easier than you think,” I said.
“What is?”
“Telling someone you like them.”
“Yeah… unless it changes what you already have.”
“Oh. Right.” I honestly hadn’t thought of that. I mulled it over for a minute. “But – I don’t know, this is so clichéd, but when I broke up with my boyfriend – and that was almost a year ago – I was first really, really sad. And I’m still sad about it now. But during that time, you know, I started enjoying life again, and going to class and work and meeting friends and stuff, and I thought, ‘Okay, things are good, life is good, there’s nothing I need.’ But – and you showed me this in the past few days – there was something missing. I mean, being intimate with someone is this wonderful thing. And I’d sort of forgotten it.”
I turned my head and looked up at his profile, barely visible in the dark. “I’m not sure that intimacy for intimacy’s sake is really all that, but—“ I paused, searching for the words, “but finding someone to … share yourself with, that’s so worthwhile. It’s so worth it. And – this is going to sound even more clichéd – but you have to open up to get anything back. So maybe it’s worth the risk.”
After another long period of quiet, KB’s arm around me suddenly tightened, and he asked, “We’re still going to be friends, right?”
“Well, that’s kind of up to you,” I said, trying to be honest. “I mean, I really want to be. But things are the same for me as they were yesterday, whereas now you have the burden of knowing. So, you know, I feel like it’s up to you.”
He didn’t say anything, and a spike of fear, and then something like resignation shot through me. Or maybe it was acceptance. In any case, I stayed still for a minute, absorbing the possibility that maybe we wouldn’t be friends, that maybe I’d said the things that make it impossible to stay friends. And then – well, then I kissed him. And he kissed me back.
Friday, March 5: Uncertainty but acceptance
The next morning, I got dressed for class, put some makeup on, and decided I needed a cigarette. So I knocked on Mig’s doorframe and hung out for the next 20 minutes watching Ali G on his computer and smoking and chatting. I headed back to KB’s room when Mig got up to shower, where he stirred when I came in.
“What time is it?”
I looked over at the electric clock on the DVD player. “9:30” I said, sitting down next to him and pulling the blanket over me. “Looks like I’m skipping morning class today.”
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” he remarked sleepily.
“I just got dressed,” I objected.
“Well, you can get re-dressed, can’t you?”
Unable to argue with this fine logic, I pulled off my sweater and tights and lay down in my dress next to KB.
“Did I tell you I fucked up my plane tickets?” he asked.
“Um, I think you did, but I couldn’t understand you,” I kidded him, at which he playfully grabbed me in a chokehold and complained, “Oh, you Americans need to learn to speak English.”
We talked for a minute or two about his plans for the day, and then fell quiet.
It was 9:50 the next time I looked at the clock, and I reluctantly got up and sat on the sofa to pull on my sweater. KB yawned and sat up next to my bare legs, which he absently put a hand on while he slowly woke up. I waited, noticing how white my legs looked in the pale light, looking at him as he in return gazed at my knee, eye-level for him. He looked up for a brief moment with a gentle smile before kissing my knee and getting up.
I put on all my articles of clothing and wound my scarf around my neck as KB dressed. Just before I was about to pick up my backpack, KB drew me close and looked at me with a strange, tender expression on his face that said everything:
I’m sorry I don’t feel that way. I wish you didn’t either. I feel sorry for you, but I’m glad you stayed last night.
I smiled back up at him, and I hope my expression said what I felt too:
It’s okay. I like you and I can’t help that, and I wish you liked me, but you can’t help that, so I’ll take what I can get, and be richer for it. Don’t worry, my friend. He pulled me into a hug, and I wrapped my arms around his neck.
I truly don’t know if we’ll stay friends. I hope to god we do. Given that we’ll be living thousands of miles apart in a few days, and that he’s already told me that he’s a bad correspondent… well, I don’t want to admit it, but it’s going to be an uphill battle.
But for some reason, on the way to school, seeing a patch of snow-free ground, I broke into a run, clunking along in my latest cheap-black-shoes-that-don’t-quite-fit, backpack full of books thumping my back. And I tell you, my heart felt glad. It still does.
That night (yesterday!), I slept in my bed at home: just too tired to think of doing otherwise. This blog entry has taken me several hours to write, and I thank you for getting through it.
After I sign off here, I'm off to Shinchon again, to study with Maiko and then to go to a farewell party for KB. He leaves here for good on Monday, and I expect I'll be somewhat of a mess that day and for some days afterwards. But I'm still glad. I feel... humbled, yes, absolutely. But glad.
