thoughtjunkie

Time passes, dreamlike and sprinkled with flashes of nightmare-- the eyes-rolled-back snarl of a teacher; kimchi that tastes of fire and blood; the anglerfish horrors of the Suwon fish market.

But things are good, you laugh over minor cultural misunderstandings with new friends, and spin classic Korean references into Americanized threats-- "Don't make me call my friend in Jeju-do. He come up here and crack skulls till I get a drink, biatch." The sun and the humidity conspire to steam you on the way to your Crowd Control 101 class, but it's only a halfhearted effort. On the bus, you dodge scowls from toothless Korean geezers with a bow and grin.

Waiting for an elevator one day, you joke with one of the orientation coordinators.
"All this heat," he tells you, "you're probably going to lose some weight."
"I hope so," you tell him, crossing your fingers, and deciding not to take the remark personally.
"Really? I thought that in America, having more weight showed that you could afford to feed yourself very well," he tells you. You smile, like it's a weird joke you're missing the social cues to pick up on. When all you get back is an earnest stare, you explain that that line of thinking was true for France in the 15-hundreds, but nowadays Americans are just fat because of eating poorly and little to no exercise. You start to explain that the leading research shows that high-fructose corn syrup actually eliminates the body's ability to tell the brain that it's full, but the elevator doors slide open and you can see that he's already lost interest.

There's a terrifying coordination in some of the Sports Day groups. A sort of militant efficiency that comes from synchronized chanting and the muscle-pop of testosterone. There's grit in their voices and veins that bulge from throats. The chain of command is easy to spot, top down, orders that get barked over dodgeballs and across bugbitten links in the human rope. There's a violence inside their organization, and it all seems rather silly for 10,000 won worth of KFC gift certificates.

One night, you go to Noraebang and warble through the echo of the mic. You learn that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is not, under any circumstances, a good warm-up song. You drink $3 ciders and bounce on the couches, waiting for the booklet of songs. You struggle to keep up with Eminem's lung capacity, and Matthew Bellamy's stratosphere pitch, and have a fantastic time. There's talk of purchasing a third hour, but you eventually decide against it.

You Skype obsessively. Your girlfriend's still in Iowa, a 14-hour time difference, and you phone her at 11pm, so when she answers, you get to poke fun at her bed-crazy hair. She complains: "I haven't even brushed my teeth yet." You tell her that she probably tastes like day-old tuna and half eaten broccoli. You make faces and gagging sounds, but you wonder if you're right. You skype other folks too-- your mom, who still hasn't figured out her webcam; your friend who works the graveyard shift at a college parking ramp; your old roommate who wants to talk writing and art and philsophy with you. For all these things, if you could make love to the internet, you would (but only if the internet was into it, and only if it weren't a dude, and not if it were into anything freaky... which, knowing the internet, it probably would be).

In Seoul, you see a legless man drag himself down the street, face down on a skateboard. He's filthy with dirt the pedestrians kick up from the street. Grime collects in the wrinkles in his face, deep grooves that cut through his forehead from hours and days of straining to look up. He's tied tire rubber onto his stubs to cope with the constant friction with the street. He's got a radio that he shoves along in front of him, screeching the peppy K-pop noodle-eating song they played in your dance class. The song's happiness sours, from his radio. You wonder how the world looks from his perspective; just shoes and pantcuffs and cigarette butts, and the occasional glint of money: yes! 50 won! You think this in the disgustingly blase way that rich, white, employed college kids think about these things-- a flickering curiosity that's gone by the next knicknack shop. You cannot fathom the inherent nihilism, the raw hopelessness, of his situation because hopelessness is a word you simply do not understand. You see three more men, legless or paralyzed, their thighs withered and atrophied. You do not give them money.

In class, you wince at misspellings and grammatical faux pas that your fellow soon-to-be teachers stumble into. But they're nice folks, by and large, and they're in front of the class for the first time, so you decide it's okay to cut them some slack.

Shock isn't sudden. Not this kind, anyway. This kind slithers in, slips from periphery to focus, into the flesh of the place. It's an orchestra tilting into alignment around a single pure Clarinet's A, the moment when the blur of motes form the words on the highway sign: Chicago O'Hare Next Exit.

You get on the bus and swelter. The ceiling boasts Air Conditioning next to every pair of airplane-nozzeled fans, but you don't believe it. The bus isn't on yet, because the driver is busy feeding it luggage. So you drop your head back on the teal, swirl-patterned vinyl headrest and you dream of bathing in more than your own sweat. Then, eventually, the bus starts. The AC kicks on (not a lie!) and the air smells bookstore-stale. You fake conversations with the other travelers inbetween three minute naps.

It's little things at first-- how long the dotted white streetlines are, how the snap-together plastic barricades are blocky and crenelated, how the police officers flap white gloves at traffic and walk in unison. Then the larger things enter your field of vision: 25 exact replica apartment buildings (black steel balconies and sprayed on stucco exteriors). Brand names you don't recognize. How aggressively the bus ignores the lanes.

There are the obvious things of course-- the periodic refrain, "I can't believe we're in Korea!" from various voices all around; the sameness in hair color and height; and of course, the sudden onset of illiteracy.

When you arrive, you want nothing more than to fall asleep, but you can't. You can't because it's 8:50 am, and you have to get On Schedule. You're off, you lost a day, and your legs ache and your back spasms, but you're not On Schedule and you need to be On Schedule. So you stay up and take walks, slow and aimless. You work on getting money changed but for some inexplicable reason need your passport to do so. It's day 1, but you worry about being too insular.

But then again, you've written something for the fist time in months. So, you know, there is that.