Drift Reality

The first thought that entered my mind as I walked through the gates that lead into the main waiting area of Bangpo airport in Seoul was that the Koreans were taller than I had thought they would be. After all, one of my favorite answers to the question, “Why are you going to Korea,” had been, “Because I want to know what it is like to be tall.” I had said this half-jokingly, but on some deeper level, I think that I had genuinely been looking forward to being tall. Now, glancing around the sea of Koreans in the airport, I realized that my vision might never come to fruition.

The second thought that entered my mind was that I had no idea who was going to meet me at the airport. This idea contained a disturbing gravity that was a stark contrast to my first idea. The question that entered my mind at that point was: What if nobody came to claim me?

I looked desperately at all of the name placards that were being held up by tall Koreans and realized that my grand quest into the unknown might get off to a bad start. It was then that I remembered that I had written down the phone number of the woman who had recruited me to come to Korea, so I grabbed my fifty-pound duffel bag tightly to my side and darted towards the phones.

After growing increasingly panicked with every unanswered ring of the phone, finally a woman answered the phone.

“Yoboseyo?”

“…uh, Hello?” I answered hesitantly.

“Yes? Oh, is this Jiyan?” Relief flooded over me as I heard the tone of recognition in her voice.

“Yes, I’m here Soo-Yeon.” Soo-Yeon was the name of the woman who had recruited me, a self-proclaimed “black bowling-ball.” Over the course of the past month, I had been in constant correspondence with her, working out all the details of my trip. At one point I had mentioned to her that she had a very cute voice, to which she responded by telling me that she was fat and always wore black clothing. Hence, she explained, she was a “black bowling-ball.”

“Well, the supervisor should be there,” she said with a questioning tone in her voice, as if she was wondering why I would be calling her at 11:00 at night.

“Hmm. . .What does she look like?” I asked.

“She is shorter, and she has dark short hair,” Soo-yeon explained. Looking around the crowded airport, I realized that Soo-Yeon might as well have told me that “she has feet and hands.”

“Okay. I’ll look around for her,” I said.

“Okay. Well, call me if you can not find her,” Soo-Yeon responded.

“Okay, bye.”

With that, I hung up the phone and turned around to look for the Korean woman who was “shorter” and had “dark short hair.” Out of the blur of people who had dark hair and were shorter, one figure stopped and looked at me for a moment. I looked back at her and she started to walk towards me.

Augustus had short dark hair and couldn’t have been taller than 5′2″. She had a neat organized little face with eyes that seemed to say “What? So what?”

She stopped about five feet in front of me and asked, “Are you Jiyan?”

To which my answer, “Yes, nice to meet you,” was met with a sliver of a smile. She examined my extended hand gingerly before deciding to limply drop her hand into it and squirm it around a bit.

She looked back at me with her “so what?” eyes and explained, “You look different in person than in your pictures.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I responded with a smile.

She looked at me for a moment, as if wondering what to make of this strange creature in front of her, and then proceeded to simply shrug her shoulders as if it did not make the slightest bit of difference to her.

“My cah is pahked outside,” she said.

I smiled at her as I followed her out the airport doors that opened into Seoul.

Augustus had a white compact-sized car with a small herd of fluorescent stuffed animals resting on the dash. As we headed out of the airport and into the Seoul night, I was immediately struck by the massive size of the apartment complexes that loomed over us. I found my eyes glued to the window as a blur of lights and shapes passed before my eyes - there was a palpable vibrancy that resonated through the air despite the late hour.

I soon noticed myself straining to make out the bizarre characters that were etched onto the looming monolith like apartment buildings on either side of us.

“How was your flight?” Augustus asked.

“Not too bad,” I answered. “I’m excited to be here,” and unlike so many other times I had made that statement, I actually meant it.

“Mr. Kim told me to take you out for dinner,” Augustus said.

“That sounds great,” I told her as I fought hard to control the excited electricity that had begun to arc through my stomach as I gazed in wonder at the Seoul landscape.

“Do you know the Outback Steak House?” Augustus asked, and I couldn’t help but be surprised that I had traveled halfway across the globe to eat at the Outback Steak House.

Disillusionment at the banality of chain restaurants was quickly swept aside by a vision of hot wings and beer, further beautified by the fact that I had spent nearly one whole day eating rationed airplane food and peanuts.

“Yeah, that sounds great actually,” I told her and a slight glint of a smile slid over her lips.

“Do you like Korean food?” she asked.

“Yes, actually,” I responded. “My father always used to buy Kim-Chi.”

Actually, Kim-Chi was the only Korean food I really knew, but I didn’t want to sound uneducated about Korean culture so early in the game.

Augustus’s eyes widened in surprise as she nodded her head and emitted a strange, nasally-sounding “Uhhnnngh.” “So,” she continued, “you like spicy food?”

“Yeah, I put Tabasco on everything actually.”

She repeated her head nodding and her beast-like nasally sound, which I found strangely amusing. In the hopes that I could elicit this reaction from her further, I continued, “My dad always used to put Tabasco sauce on everything, so I gradually just picked up the habit.”

Bingo. She continued her head bobbing and nose moaning.

“So, your Father is Korean?” she asked.

“Yeah. He was born in Pyongyang actually.”

She kept nodding her head, but to my dismay, the “uhhng” sound had ceased.

I turned back to the window and let myself become hypnotized by the scenery.

“So,” she began, disrupting my reverie. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
I was a bit surprised by this question seeing as how the two of us had just met, but not being a particularly bashful person, I took her answer in stride and answered, “Yes, she lives in New York.”

Augustus seemed to be a bit surprised by this piece of information and spouted forth a follow-up question with machine like precision: “Wasn’t she very disappointed when you left?”

I paused for a moment before I spoke. “Yes. But this is something I decided to do.” Thankfully, my answer satisfied her and we continued in silence towards the restaurant.

The rest of the trip took about twenty minutes, which was enough time for me to find out that Augustus wanted to be a man, that she disliked her boyfriend because he was “selfish and uncaring,” and that I would inevitably come to hate Augustus because “everyone else hates her,” to which I diplomatically responded that I was “Definitely not one to follow the crowd.”

We arrived at the Outback Steak House and Augustus watched with restrained curiosity as I proceeded to gorge myself on hot wings and beer. In between (and often during) bites, I managed to babble endlessly about my family, my life, and College experience, while making eyes at the cute waitress who giggled every time she tried to say something in English. The whole time, Augustus just sat there and listened intently, as if gathering information that she would later report to her superiors.

Later, as she paid the bill and we left the restaurant, my thoughts turned towards a vision of what my apartment would be like. During my sophomore year of College, I had stayed in a three-bedroom apartment complex with five of my friends. It had been quite comfortable and we had made sure to adorn it with the quintessential recipe for proper College decor: a large television set, a futon, and posters of Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, and at least one semi-naked girl.

During my senior year, I had moved into a two-bedroom apartment with a close friend. Once again, we had made sure to furnish it with a large television set, a futon, and posters of Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, and at least one semi-naked girl. Seeing as how we were about to graduate and enter the professional world, we also included a poster of a Salvador Dali painting.

In general, my whole concept of what an apartment should be, left me completely unprepared for what I found out an apartment in Seoul was.

After driving along the highway for several more minutes, Augustus pulled off onto one of the exits and we headed down a four-lane road. On either side of the road were rows of four-story buildings containing a jungle of neon signs.

Although it was already about 12:00 midnight on a Thursday, there were still hundred of people milling about on the sidewalks. Again, I felt a thrill run through my stomach at the teeming vibrancy of the place. If New York was the city that never slept, Seoul must be the city in which people not only never sleep, but also never sit still.

We turned onto a small side street and headed up a road that was surrounded on both sides by small Mom and Pop stores. Augustus informed me that the area was surrounded by one of the larger open-air markets in Seoul.

After driving up a narrow hill, Augustus struggled to parallel-park in a space that granted her no more than one or two feet of leeway. The general closeness of the place immediately struck me, as did the manner in which cars were jumbled together in chaotic patterns.

We parked and I heaved my weighty luggage out of Augustus’s car, which seemed to breath a sigh of metal relief. We walked through a black gate composed of aluminum siding, onto a patio that was covered with an unbecoming assortment of boxes and trash bags. On the right side of the patio was a small house and Augustus walked towards the front door and knocked on it.

After a few moments, a slender man in his early twenties opened the door. Jake was wearing faded gray cargo pants and a black t-shirt. He had a lean, angular face with a sharp nose and his hair was extremely thin.

He smiled at me, and then turned towards Augustus.

“What are you doing here?” he asked nervously.

“This is the new teacher,” Augustus said with a forced smile. “He will be staying here until the other apartment is ready,” and her tone left little room for debate.

Jake nodded quickly and then backed into the house. Augustus walked through the door and I followed behind her.

The apartment was modest: the front door opened onto a small common room. The far side of the common room contained a wooden table with three small chairs. A 12″ screen television sat atop a small wooden drawer on the near side of the room.

Augustus cast a disapproving gaze around the room before asking, “Where did you get all of this stuff?”

I examined the barren room and wondered what she could have possibly been talking about seeing as how there was less furniture in the room than one would expect at a Hare Krishna commune.

Jake offered her a feeble smile and shrugged his shoulders.

“You must stop picking stuff up off the streets,” she said.

Augustus then turned to me and calmly explained, “School starts at 10:00. You might want to get there a little bit earlier to prepare.”

With that, she turned and walked out the door. I watched as the door closed behind her.
“I hate Augustus,” Jake said in a flat tone. “She’s a bitch.”

This was the first thing that I learned about Jake, that he harbored a powerful resentment towards Augusts. The second thing that I learned about Jake was that he was an irrepressible gossip and therefore, the perfect individual to introduce me to the world that I had just entered.

We had a few cigarettes and I listened intently as he told me about his roommates: Bob the alcoholic and Greg the lecher, both of whom were apparently cavorting in the Hostess bars.

“What are the hostess bars?” I asked.

A sly smile crept onto Jake’s lips as he explained that the hostess bars were venues in which an individual might purchase both alcohol and female companionship.

“You pay them to do. . .do stuff with you,” he explained coyly. “Both Bob and Greg go there all the time.”

I found it a bit interested that he seemed so enthusiastic to divulge this type of information to me. I got the distinct impression that he had been quietly watching his roommates for quite some time, just waiting for someone to come along who might show interest in what he had to say.

After listening to Jake rant on for about an hour, it dawned on me that I would have to wake up in several hours and jump into the unknown world of teaching English, so I yawned and asked where I could lay my head.

Jake laid a few blankets on the linoleum floor in his room and I fell asleep in a matter of seconds.

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