BKLOG

Standing around the entrance to the KTX station, we were enjoying our last moments in Seoul.  We reminisced and laughed and made pacts about certain details never being revealed to the world.  Someone wondered aloud if they could stand to live in Seoul and, as if on cue, he approached.  You rarely encounter beggars in Korea.  Confucian ideals provide that such lifestyles are extremely taboo.  This guy had obviously never heard of Confucius.

He led with his hand.  It held a smoldering cigarette loosely between two dirty fingers and a few coins were in the palm.  He was old and short and his hair was matted in greasy strings on his bare scalp.  Despite this haggard look, his manner was jovial and he was not deterred when we shooed him away.

‘Aniyo… Aniyo.  Go away.’

He focused his attention on us one by one while we tried to carry on our conversation around him.  Finally he cornered ‘KT:’ ‘Pretty.  Pretty.’  Sweet Jesus – even the bums speak English in Seoul!  I laughed out loud at his tactics and he turned to me grinning.  He smacked his bare gums like a demon and started patting me on the back.  Things were getting weird and I laughed again… but nervously.  My ass was suddenly being groped and the leathery hands were fingering my wallet.  I jumped and shouted aniyo again and again.  This was a filthy game he was playing and cackled knowingly through his tiny teeth.

‘LC’ reached into her Korean arsenal and pulled out an authoritative ‘HAJI-MA!’  I forgot about that one.  It means ‘Don’t do that’ and I’ve used it myself on the occasion that I am ddong chimmed or one of the 4^th graders gouges out his friend’s eye.  He understood and obeyed but began to back the ‘WS’ into a corner.  He seemed to be fiddling with his belt and there was wild in his eyes.

‘Fuck this – let’s get the hell out of this city.’  And so, with haste, we did.

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Seoul is certainly one of the most living cities I have visited.  It has the chaos of midtown Manhattan without the pretense.  Foreigners of all races purposefully walk the streets and I never once felt like an outsider.  We feasted on Subway meatball subs and cheeseburgers.  I don’t think I even saw a chopstick.  Seoul was a vacation from the bullshit things about Korea and, maybe, that is why the five of us flirted with madness.

My notes are sloppy and unreadable in certain places.  some of the pages are stuck together or stained.  But the evidence of epic moral bending could be found everywhere.  We abused our credit any chance some kind stranger was willing to offer us some.  We destroyed our tiny room, defiled the sheets, worried the locals, threw the dancers off the stage, and flirted with the ER nurses.  I was slapped, bitten, kicked and cursed.  There were public displays of pimpled, pasty skin.  No, dear reader, I will not tell what I can remember for fear that light may be shed on what is forgotten.

All I can say is this: some twisted, sadistic flavor of karma sent that bum.  He was the pale, soft underbelly of Seoul we had spent all week jabbing at with magic markers and lit cigarettes; we deserved this.  We looked into his rheumy smiling eyes and recognized the very same pagan mirth that we had indulged and allowed free.  With any luck, the beggar was Seoul’s attempt at making peace.  Hopefully, the next time we visit, we can once again abuse our blank slate.

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“The extreme uncertainties of subsisting without working made excesses necessary and breaks definitive. To quote Stevenson: ‘“Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest.”’