Christmas in Cambodia

Come on over here

2005-01-21T14:51:00.000+09:00

for my main weblog.

THE End?

2005-01-13T16:29:00.000+09:00

Writing to you from Siem Reap, an arid place, rusty dust-filled in the midst
of the dry season here in Cambodia. We arrived here 2 days ago, the boy's
loving the place almost as much as I have since my first time here,
and we've just gotten an apartment today for $50/month, thanks to our
Canadian friend. No lease, no deposit, just some American
dollars passed from my fist to the landlady's, and the key in return.
It'll be a nice change from the alligator pool behind our guesthouse
with its denizens that've been keeping us awake at night since we got
here.

This new apartment also got no kitchen, no fridge, and no hot water,
but plenty of room for me to paint (and y''all know it's all about
me). We'll buy a "camping" stove for about $6 tomorrow for coffee and
maybe more, a cooler for beer and cheese, and hot water showers
aren't necessary in this climate.

Now it's time to get some jobs. I've had an art gallery dangling a
position tantalizingly for months now, but we'll see if it
materializes. The boy's looking more into teaching here, because he actually
enjoys doing it. Our canadian friend's setting up the boy and me for a debate in front of his American History class. It should be a great time: an American and a Brit arguing furiously in front of a class for 15 minutes then likely making up over Angkor beer afterwards.

Happy New Year from Hua Hin, Thailand

2004-12-31T20:15:00.000+09:00

Don't worry, we're on the east coast; the tragedies at Phuket and beyond happened on the west.

Currently battling bronchitis and a predisposition to melancholic holiday spirits, however lovely the surroundings. Those here are soft powdery white sand and european tourists baked brown and red, their skimpy beach attire an offense to the senses. Men tow massive bellies along with their rent-a-wifes. All in all, it's a tame beach area for Thailand: there are plenty of families, both Thai and European, and prostitutes keep a low profile.

After giving out this blog address at too many drunken parties and outings, I've realized that this space is no longer anonymous, so cannot really be uncensored anymore; in fact, it hasn't been for a long time.
I've no reason for this blog anymore.
At the beginning, I needed to release frustrations from my relationship; it was a kind of sexily-spiced place, though never went as far as becoming a "sex blog" (have reflected that if I hadn't followed my art and travel obsessions, I likely would've become obsessed with sex instead, but other interests have taken their place; perhaps it's unfortunate, but I seem a much happier person for it). Later, I wrote of travels I wasn't comfortable letting my school know about at the time. But now, plenty of people know who I am, and I don't think the internet's the place to write of my private struggles. They'll be misconstrued by well-intentioned people who are, effectively, strangers....

I've also been neglecting my "main blog", a place I should focus on more. After all, friends and family read it, the occasional painting I actually manage to complete is exhibited there, and it deserves better writing and photos than I've put on it since I began writing here.
So after the boy's read the archives here and I've returned those that discomfit him to their draft form, I'll put a link to my main blog here. He's very excited to read what's here. I've told him that really, he shouldn't get his hopes up.
Hoo-RAY!! I'll lose the flimsy pretense of anonymity!
As if you care?!
Ah well, I hope you've had a good time here, and I'll get the link to my main (though just as basic) blog soon.

Feverish in Beijing

2004-12-24T13:58:00.000+09:00

And it's not from Xmas anticipation.

After a roiling 26-hour ferry from Seoul to Tianjin, China, I've gotten the same flu that the boy struggled through last weekend. The picturesque hotel I found online has service, shower and heating that range from lukewarm to frigid.

He arrives on the 25th, and I've just found out that the hotel we'd reserved for Xmas day is full. I'm not the sentimental type, but I'd rather sleep in a bed than the train station.

I'll leave you with a scene from yesterday:

At the Bank of China, after walking several kilometers down slushy streets, stinging from the last clerk I'd talked to ("If you can't change Korean won, do you know anyone who can?" She shook her head: "No one will.")
"It's illegal to change Korean money in China," said the woman at the information desk.

I sat down, tears ready to pour out of my flushed, feverish head. I hadn't eaten anything in over a day.
"I can change for you," said a smiling middle-aged man, wearing an acrylic sweater and pleated polyester pants. After some bartering, he changed around $200 worth of Korean money for me; he made perhaps $15 off of the deal.
A first black-market exchange for me, done in full view of security guards and staff at the Bank of China.

Recent Photos

2004-12-06T09:56:00.000+09:00

I'm reminded of Varla's nature pictures.
This one's from a Chinese garden; peace in the midst of a tropical Asian city with choking pollution:

What's for dinner? Jesus on a slab (oh those Spanish Catholics and their love of gore):

From the pedestrian paradise that is Insa-dong in Seoul. Traditional parades, antique shops, and galleries, open all weekend long for tourists and transients:

The boy and me, from a photo series I'm doing (the two of us reflected in sculpture/water/mirrors/windows around the world):

Airplane sunsets turn everything upside down:

From my hotel room in Cambodia, last time I was there:

What luck to stumble upon one of these:

If you'd like to know where any of these photos came from, just leave an email in the comments section.

Today: It's Underworld in the sunshine. It's very 18-years-old to mention the music I'm listening to; why have I waited so long to do it?

Stumbled upon this today

2004-12-03T10:35:00.000+09:00

Anyone remember Viewmasters? This Vlad chick's done some excellent work with the medium. Check out the Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino images - gorgeous!

Plan of the day for our immediate future is {subject to change tomorrow}:

A: Xmas in Qingdao: I take the 20+ hour ferry from Seoul to Qingdao on the day my tourist visa expires in Korea, the boy later joins me for a week or so till [Western] New Years. Then I return alone to Korea on the ferry, while he boards a flight to Taipei (Taiwan) to look for a job there (though likely something different from the "girls" in the photos).

For me, work in January will be at a hellishly intensive winter camp - somewhere in Korea, I've no idea of the location - having kids sneeze and cry all over me six days a week, then hop a flight to Taiwan, a couple thousand US$ in hand. Stay with the boy a week or two at the most (the Taiwanese gov't will graciously grant me a 14 day landing visa - that's plenty of time for the boy and me to screw one another silly and perhaps see some of the Taipei environs), then head to Siem Reap, Cambodia, either by land (Tainan? [China] to the mainland to Vietnam then Cambodia maybe) or a "the air-con will desiccate and freeze your nose hairs into oblivion" flight with more hours spent rolling luggage halfheartedly around slick 3rd-world airports than sitting on rough poly-blend fabric seats in a 747.

I'm sure you know which option I'd prefer: yep, the "Oh, you don't have the correct visa so you need to give us an extra $20US at the Vietnamese border" version. You see more countryside that way, feel temperature and humidity changes, smell all the delicious variants of flammable garbage burning next to railroad tracks. Now that's a trip.

B: Xmas in Kyoto:
We discussed the Kyoto idea earlier this week when I realized I needed to stay in Korea to earn extra money for the trip to Cambodia - my english-teaching outsourcing agency (a completely illegal venture for both sides, theirs and mine...they take out "taxes" from what they pay me which I'm convinced they use for bribe money) hasn't been able to find me full-time work, so I resigned myself to working a Winter Camp several days ago.
Winter camp means I'd need a new visa. Ergo, why not Japan? Flights to Osaka are cheap because it's friggin' cold this time of year, and people would rather go to the Philippines, where it's sultry and Catholic, festive and cheap. Flights to Manila are running about a grand round trip for Xmas, and are nearly full. So say the travel agents.

It'd be a short train ride from Osaka to Kyoto, I raved to the boy the other night as he washed dishes. He nodded, interested - for years he's been unqualified in his worship of all things Japanese, though he seems to have developed some skepticism in recent months. "If I spend a week in Kyoto, I'll never need to go to Japan again," I smiled. He said nothing, looked over his shoulder at me with mild interest. "Kyoto has everything I want to see in Japan! One week, and it can be a fly-over country for me afterwards." He smirked at his dishtowel.

Then I read the L.P. guide to Japan for the next hour, bashed the country's bland cuisine, its minimalism in general, and the guidebook's authors' submission to an over-hyped culture that's been as successful as the boy's in marketing itself as something greater than what it actually contains, giving no credit to other cultures that have influenced it.

Anyway, we decided after a day or two that perhaps a place that could easily eat up a few months salary was better left for a time where we had more planning on our side and no major life changes staring us in the cleavage.

C: Christmas in Cambodia: Nope, I didn't re-name this weblog after some Kerry fiasco. I'd actually expected to spend Xmas in Siem Reap, where I plan to relocate early next year. But no, finances and work and visas and perhaps even sentiment conspired to keep me from it.

Perhaps it'll be Xmas in Cambodia 2005. Who knows?
I've realized that I've no idea of what's going to happen till I buy the ticket that'll get me there.
And even then, it's never guaranteed.

Moloko's entertaining my ears today.

Sasha on Ecstasy

2004-12-01T10:40:00.002+09:00

with the boy on Saturday night.
Some friends came up for the show from the massively industrialized Korean town where we lived for a year, a place where culture of any kind seems to have been forgotten along with proper sewage disposal.

One friend handed us some tablets at an underground Korean bar.
The boy and I looked at one another and grinned. Slid them bitterly over our tongues along with our last beer of the evening.

A short time later we strode to the club, and I chatted with a guy in French forgetting what language I was speaking (not unusual if I've had something to drink) then somehow the boy&I ended up outside a Buy The Way convenience store slurping water before we assaulted our senses with bodies, noise, and pulsing light.

Descended darkened stairs into M2 and blood rushed to my ears in anticipation. We grasped hands and heated skin and I think if I write much more I'll turn into a gibbering drooling idiot and likely I haven't had enough wine to justify that. Today. Yet. Writing of drug-soaked experiences is for the likes of Timothy Leary worshippers, and I prefer pensive hotties like Pico Iyer.
So I'll just say this: it was as unforgettable as unreal experiences get. Illusory, heightened sensations, but we felt the same for one another as we always do...he's uninhibited when expressing his feelings for me, but I'm tamer about it. Saturday, I didn't censor anything, and he grinned and nodded though surely he couldn't hear half of what I moaned into his ear. He was even more fuckable than usual in a tight black sweater and sunglasses.

Though I nearly threw up from dehydration (you can never drink enough water on the damned stuff) I think remembering that the future of a few dozen kids lay in my hands the next morning kept me from doing anything spectacularly stupid. These kids were competing for the Hankyoreh newspaper's scholarship to a US High School. (Many of them had lived abroad before and some of the interviews were entertaining as hell - particularly the high school group whose assigned question was: "What would you do if your best friend told you they were gay/lesbian?" They asked if I'd had any gay friends and how they'd had babies.)

It's midday and I've got to download some kick-ass, challenging lesson plans for Korean Racetrack employees.

TA everyone, and for those of you in the northern hemisphere, keep warm under flannel sheets. Just don't wear them in public!

swimming topless

2004-11-23T18:43:00.000+09:00

Sunday evening with boy and beer and cigarette in hand was the highlight of this past weekend.
We looked up at jungly plants around the pool, and a local radio station blared 70s cock-rock favorites. Children screeched outside our stuccoed walls, running around the "Happy Fiesta" soiree.

It was the best visa run ever. Completed by a visit to a volcano within a lake swamped in fog and rain. During a typhoon. And having pie and purple sweet potatoes with the jolliest priest I've met in years.

Thanks again to Jack - these kind of things will brighten any smoggy day, back in the real world.
They're phrased to give you fuzzies about yourself, however abhorrent your personality.
I don't know about knowing things no one else does. It's true I've little patience for small talk, but then again, most everything I yak on about could be construed as exactly that.

You Are the Investigator

5

You're independent - and a logical analytical thinker.

You love learning and ideas... and know things no one else does.

Bored by small talk, you refuse to participate in boring conversations.

You are open minded. A visionary. You understand the world and may change it.

What number are you?

2004-11-18T23:49:00.000+09:00

One, two, three, four - shit a brick and die!

Which Swear Word Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

You can never swear enough.
Thanks, Jack!

Positions I have Held

2004-11-07T17:49:00.000+09:00

Hannah's recent talk of jobs got me thinking about the many I've had. Probably so I could see how much better off I am now than in the past?!
Here's an alphabetized summary of most, including volunteering ventures:

Artists all over the UK received phone calls from me one summer as I invited them to what we hoped would be a memorable exhibit in a dank space that had once been a legwarmer factory in Liverpool. We succeeded in scoring, amongst other delights: gilded rotting fruit, a chocolate electric chair, and a madcap gaggle of Austrians who built a "hugging machine" from a discarded mattress.

Babysitting - from siblings to sundry neighborhood brats - was my first moneymaking activity. It's pushed back my biological clock for a few years, if not for ever.

[I] Consumed too many french fries one summer while working second shift at Burger King. This was during my brief catholic university days. I worked second shift and typically drove to my boyfriend's at 4am for a quick shag before returning to my parent's house.

Despite sitting (clothed) for hours one afternoon in front of a group of amateur painters, they only handed me enough lire for a packet of cigarettes. Then again, they could have been confused by all those zeroes - this was in pre-Euro Italy.

Everything I owned reeked of proofing bread and factory-fresh vegetables during my tenure as a Subway Sandwich Artist. Strangely enough, I never grew tired of their sandwiches.

Fabrics of all sorts slipped through my fingers and over my body while working in retail for several years. This is where I learned the difference - by touch - between silk charmeuse, sandwashed silk, and silk knits. And where I saw, manifested every day, the adage: "Money can't buy good taste".

"Goddess?" I would answer expectantly, lifting an ungainly plastic receiver, as (mostly) male clients called for one of the polyester-clad escorts who lounged on a smelly sofa watching cheap cable that flickered in the dimly-lit room next to where we, the phone girls, sat.

Hellish indeed can be the freelance life, particularly when working for a nitpicking designer. While I painted museum sets, restaurant stucco, and showroom walls, the men who schmoozed our jobs into existence pocketed a fat commission.

Interest rates were far too low one year during university, when I worked in banking at the bottom of the corporate ladder, and realized that I had no desire to climb any closer to the top.

Juices and yogurts were all I ate one summer while I worked at a yogurt shop. One night as I closed the shop alone, my boyfriend stopped by and we had a quickie inside the walk-in refrigerator.

"Kosher food" was printed on all the labels at an Israeli-owned factory where Vi and I worked one summer. We wondered how the pita bread magically became kosher after our very goy hands had been all over it. Maybe it was the plastic gloves we wore.

Lovelorn callers would ask about anything from the color of my toenail polish (black) to my favorite sex position (none of their damn business) as I turned their grovelling words into appealing personal ads.

[I] Made certain that hors d'oeuvres were well-stocked while presiding as concierge in an exclusive hotel. It had cheap furniture veneered with expensive wood, and far too much sperm on its duvets, as revealed by a local TV station several years later.

No place I've worked was as gorgeous as one summer spent in Tuscany as a sculptor's assistant and all-around scrub. Tasks ranged from welding to making plaster molds to cutting bamboo that grew over a neighboring hill. I wanted to shag the assistant, but only kissed him instead, as a boy waited anxiously for me in the states.

Onion-chopping and other undesirable tasks were handed down to me by pot-smoking twenty-somethings in my first legal job at a pizza parlor, age 14.

Painting has always been the most gratifying, yet toxic, job I've undertaken. There's another reason to adopt: my ovaries have likely spent too many months swimming in turpentine.

Quite often, the renumeration for a job is inversely proportionate to the amount of enjoyment you'll derive from it. For example, the various art stores where I've worked: great times were had by all at a salary barely exceeding the minimum wage.

Roaming charges were the hot issue during a one-month stint of selling cell phones. One memorable customer was a large woman who came in several times complaining that her phone didn't work. We replaced it several times. The last time I saw her, I understood why: she pulled it out of her bra and handed it to me. Sweat, heartbeats, and electronic gadgets don't mix.

Students pretended to listen attentively to my lectures on French culture and art history, and would only wake up when I brought out paints for them to use.

Teaching English in Korea, Thailand and France has been the most challenging occupation I've ever attempted. I can't wait to do something else.

2000 Unbelievable kinds of paper from around the world were stacked on shelves in an art store, and I was responsible for keeping them all in order. From brushed lacquer to hand marbled papers, some inlaid with real leaves and butterflies, they were all inspiring. But creativity has its dark side, too: the paper gave me eczema.

Volunteering at an artistic, high-minded charity in England sounded like a great plan for an idealist straight out of university. For several weeks, two of us worked evenings and coralled drunken teens out of the woodwork of the 19th-century building, while we lived in decrepit community housing. Then I had another brilliant idea. I quit and moved into the hotel room of a maniacal art gallery owner who lived on the dole.

Xenophobic elderly Americans needed reassurance on queries about Muslims in Morocco and Mexican bandits. They'd call me at the travel agency and chat about anything from airline seats to the relative advantage of euthanizing a husband with violent dementia. Really.

Young artists, faces gleaming with pride from fresh infusions of grant money, inspired a healthy amount of envy as an art gallery assistant at my university. And gave me unrealistic expectations of the art world. "Oh, that guy scratched hieroglyphics into horse bones. Anyone get a prize from the _______ foundation! I've got talent, so it'll be no problem."

Zippers were one of the few things we couldn't customize on portfolios for artists and photographers, I learned during a few frenzied months at a handmade portfolio store. It was owned by a Sicilian who'd speak broken Italian to his Spanish-speaking factory workers, and have lunch with his Mafia friends at the pizzeria around the corner.

a belated hallowee'en

2004-11-03T17:46:00.000+09:00

was had last night.
This is what happens when you give a girl two silk scarves, seven safety pins, lots of costume jewelry, and too much time to think of her man. I'll post a photo in the orange bar above the next time I download everything from my camera (a girl's best friend) at the overpriced Kodak store around the corner.

Came home from teaching a business class last night, harried-looking and autumnally windblown from the subway. Dressed in a grey wool secondhand blazer that had been made in China then sold to a Korean ingenue, discarded by same (Korean women don't go for used clothing) and bought in Thailand by me for around US$6 several months ago. Its lapels are draped rather than pressed & folded - I'm wearing it above - so I'd safetypinned it near my throat and it looked like a bizarre chi-chi designer creation rather than something bought in a tired SE Asian shopping mall.

Feeling very corporate, I kissed the boy who, as usual, wore almost nothing as he did his evening exercises - some combination of t'ai chi and stretching and training using his body weight. Pulled out trays of green&red peppers/purple onions/sundry vegetables that I'd cut that afternoon, and deviled eggs. I popped one into his mouth when he'd finished, and asked him to go to the convenience store please and get us a Guinness.

"Only one?" he asked, eyebrows lifted.
"Well, they cost over $4 each, so why don't you get one large Stout (cheap yet palatable Korean brew masquerading only in color and brand as a stout beer) along with the Guinness? That should go well with the fried rice noodles, sesame beef & peppers, right?"
He agreed and kissed me for five minutes till I threatened him with a plastic spatula.
I like him to think he's thought of everything.

He left.
I rushed to the bathroom, stripped, and shimmied into a pair of black ribbed thigh-highs with burlesque black bows sewn onto the garters. The effect was very nineteenth century, and contrasted nicely with the ultra-modern "Fire Station" underwear I slipped above them. Pinned a gossamer pale blue scarf (thanks, CC!) to the front and a dark blue with metallic inserts and fringe to the back of my bra. Sounds bizarre, but the effect was of a caped Grecian goddess once I pinned up my hair and threw on tarnished silver jewelry and a bronze choker.
Slipped on a pair of high-heeled slippers, poured sesame oil into a skillet, and soon the scent of ginger and garlic was everywhere.

Heard him ascend the stairs outside, and grinned.
So did he - for the next few hours.

The Guinness was for me, for dessert: I've told him for months that he'd wash down nicely with a pint of Guinness, and finally got to try it out.
Delicious.

Things with him have never been perfect, but even with recent difficulties, they're - for the most part - much better than before I left for Thailand several months ago. I just don't have friends here - any (and I won't be here long enough to really seek them out) - as I did in the other town where we lived, so can be more histrionic, and write of things here rather than having a session with them at our favorite bar.
"I won't be here long enough to seek them out," means I'll be in Seoul for about 6 more weeks, I think. Or, at the very most, ten. Visa runs negate any potential savings I could make through english teaching in Korea. As an American, I've got to leave the country once a month unless I've got an employer-sponsored visa. Which I'm no longer interested in after past experiences here.

My future "career" aspirations run to the hands-on art conservation/history/archaeology part of the spectrum, and I'm interested in pursuing some of this in SE Asia. There are also other jobs I can do to supplement english teaching there: though they may pay less, anything's preferable to motivating students to do something that I don't even like!
The boy's are focused in Japan (and, to some degree, in China): T'ai Chi, shiatsu massage, karate - any martial art, actually.
We've discussed for some time now the necessity for a probable long-term separation next year. I've no interest in living in Japan. Someday I'd like to go there as a tourist, but I find much about Japanese culture is bland and over-hyped, and I'm turned off by its personal repression and minimalism.
It's so un-sexy. And far too expensive to enjoy myself as I like.
But there's no way I'd ask him not to go to Japan so he could stay with me wherever I wanted to go.
He and I are in Korea right now because of the other person. We've no other reason to be here. He also needs to send a substantial amount of money home to pay for monthly bills there, and Korea's one of the few countries where that's possible when teaching EFL.

A comment I made today on Hannah's site.
Compelled to copy it here for some reason. Anything but write of the election. Oh god. Now I'm starting to get depressed.

"One thing that an ex once pointed out was the 'Don't', 'can't', 'never', and 'always'-es that punctuated my sentences. Absolutes and negative qualifiers like those indicate a kind of tunnel vision that accompanies depression.
Other responses to what you've written: What language were the kids yelling in? Here in Korea it's unfortunately common to see 3-year-olds playing in the streets at midnight.
Being tough isn't about insulation against environment, it's often simply survival. So no, you were smart to be wary! Fear's normal, and you shouldn't be ashamed of it.

Sounds like your company's changed titles so they don't have to do the ass-kissing that people expect of 'help desks'. 'Call centers' are implicitly customer service oriented, but in a more removed, systematic way. I did phone work in the states for a number of years, during and after university. 'Talk time' limits are normal. It's a precarious balance between feel-good customer service on the phone and follow-up time and efficient queue time, so they don't have hundreds of people waiting on the phone, or have to hire too many people. It's a business tactic unfortunately. Over time you should be able to manage it.

Keep looking for work while at this crap job. Or you may begin to feel worse than you already do. Look into resume-tweaking, see if there are any low-cost classes available for an industry you're interested in. Perhaps school may also look more appealing after some time at that job.
Periods suck. I've been bleeding for 20 of the past 21 days, and in pain for many of them. (time to get rid of the IUD, I think).
Mental institutions suck. I spent a week in one, but it kept me from walking in front of a car as I nearly did that day.
Change of environment can be a wonderful thing, but only with proper pre-meditation. And with the right reasons; not for escapism, because that cliche's really true: internal problems & problems with dealing with the world outside your skin will follow you.

I believe a job you really like probably won't just appear. You've got to train for it, lust after it, always keep searching for it while at the nasty jobs that pay the rent. Because that's why we work: to pay the rent, to pay for vacations from our lives, our lovers, our grim environments. But the people living in those gorgeous places with silky beaches have just as many problems as we do. I've been wrestling w/these questions for 10 years now, and have had jobs ranging from the incredible (takes serendipity or connections or training to get them) to the horrible. By writing of your problems here, you're taking a step towards resolving them. But it's not the last step, either."

"Return to Me"

2004-11-01T20:59:00.000+09:00

as sung by Dean Martin was playing when I arrived home last night.

He stood in the kitchen with a dishful of tortilla chips, plates of black & green olives, feta cheese, and....a nice bottle of red wine. He looked over with a quiet smile, and I relaxed straight away.
Couldn't help but grin as I heard Martin croon at full volume, accompanied by strings and a chorus of angelic-sounding women:

"Return to me
Oh my dear I'm so lonely
Hurry back, hurry back...."

How melodramatic, as are the two of us sometimes.

"Did you finish my Guinness?" I asked.
He laughed, and said: "Yeah, eventually. It took me a while to realize you'd gone. I thought you'd just gone to the restroom."
Handed me a tumbler filled with wine. We toasted one another silently, and I giggled as I heard Martin again:

"Return to me
For my heart wants you only
Hurry home, hurry home
Won't you please hurry home to my heart"

This isn't the boy's usual fare; he usually prefers ambient music sans lyrics and distractions, for meditation or...anything else we have in mind. As the singing ended, he rushed over to his laptop that we use as a TV and stereo, and restarted the song.
I looked up at him. "Did you play that for me?" I asked.
He looked away, then back, as though mulling over if he should admit it or not. Then he smiled and nodded.
I listened:

"My darling, if I hurt you I'm sorry
Forgive me and please say you are mine
Return to me
Please come back bella mia
Hurry back, hurry home to my arms
To my lips and my heart"

Then I heard the Italian - oh, that's why the boy had chosen it!

"Retorna me
Cara mia ti amo
Solo tu, solo tu, solo tu, solo tu
Mio cuore"

He started the song once again when it finished.
"How many times have you played that tonight?" I wondered aloud, glancing from my glass to his.
"Oh, a few," he grinned, and we brought plates to the piece of luggage that we've converted to a table covered in a polyester tablecloth which he also wears while washing dishes because I think he's sexy as hell, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted in a dusty pink sarong with nothing underneath.

epilogue: it was by no means a perfect evening afterwards, though it was a dramatic improvement over the past few days. We slept (in separate rooms; I wasn't ready for sharing a bed yet) after mock-fighting over what time we'd get up today for "brunch" at Starbucks. They don't have brunch where he's from, so his definition of the word can cover anything from yogurt at noon to a full dinner at 2pm.

2004-10-31T21:24:00.000+09:00

From an email conversation with a friend who reads my blog. He knows both the boy and me:

"I am worried. Your blog sounded alarming.

~ I have been kind of alarmed these past few days...things have been overwhelmingly intense.

I've just left the boy at the dinner table. Abandoned him, actually, while he chatted on the phone with a friend who'd called in the midst of an important discussion we'd been having. As the boy began talking, I left him there with his Guinness and half of mine.
I regret leaving the Guinness.
We were speaking of things, after a day of little speaking.
Until then, our dinner was quiet. We were at a gorgeous restaurant with even better food. Black linguine with seafood and squid ink, Caesar salad, bread&olive oil.

Tell me it is just the full moon and your wiccan coming out to play for Halloween and that Seoul is not stealing yours.

~ Ah, no, it's not Seoul. It's only ourselves, unfortunately...

The other night as I went out for beer and cigarettes instead of booking a hotel room I really wanted to hop a flight to Thailand then head to [where my friend lives] with the 1.5 mil [around US$1200] I'll be getting in the next week or so.

There are many reasons to postpone it till next year. I think?
I dunno...will keep it in mind?
Sigh.
Thanks for your email."

He's a great guy, this CC friend of mine. And, CC, if you'd prefer another moniker here, email it to me!!

Logistics - the boy rented this 2-bedroom apartment while I was in Bangkok. The extra bedroom was for me: either as a painting studio, sleeping-room, or both. I've always had a hard time sleeping with another person, and need more personal space than most. I'd been nervous about moving in with him, because I can be prone to fits of "need to be completely alone in the apartment time", and most Asian apartments are lilliputian.

This place he's discovered is actually a great size, and filled with light. A rarity in Seoul.

It scared me, the idea of living with him in a city where I knew absolutely no one else (actually, I think if I had some girlfriends here, that'd have helped a lot recently), but I decided I wasn't going to run away from what I wanted with him anymore. None of this is complete, or sounds quite right.

Vi's often noted that I tend to bring out extreme emotions in my lovers...I can be infuriating.
She's actually not contacted me in weeks, due to, I think, something-or-other I've said that's offended her.

So the boy and I've been together for a year now.

~ For the first 2 months we knew one another, I lived in an apartment provided by my first employer.

~ Then, due to being fired by that employer based on lies told by my 60-year-old alcoholic male roommate, I lived with the boy for the next 6 weeks.

~ I moved into a Korean love motel for the following month, after I briefly broke up with the boy. Essentially, among other things, I needed to have my own room and time apart. We got back together, still living in our separate places.

~ He then spent a month in Thailand after he'd finished his year-long contract, after I insisted he go. He needed a long break from Korea between contracts; it's standard - even those who love it here profess to need one.

~ He came back to Korea and stayed with me in my love motel for a month. All was well, yet after 4 weeks, I had a temper tantrum - we were living in a tiny, airless room, and I'd become clausterphobic with him constantly there - and he realized he'd have to get a job to have his own apartment. He got a job, went back to his home country for 2 weeks, then moved into his own place in Korea upon his return.

~ For 6 weeks, we lived at the opposite ends of a nice-ish beach. A northern beach, with ugly white highrises everywhere. We loved our apartments, and hated our jobs. I quit mine, and went to SE Asia for an indefinite period of time (it ended up being 10 weeks). He moved up to Seoul, where I've now been for...6 weeks.

What a year it's been.

Some day I'll get into my convoluted work history in Korea; it may explain my ambivalence to many things Korean.

Our time together has been segmented by plenty of time apart.
All I know is, he's the most interesting lover (of about 2 dozen) I've had - both in and out of bed. And I respect him completely (however much my behavior can belie that sometimes), which is more than I can say of any other man I've really known.
Most men bore me, or don't attract me, or are incredible egoists, or I find unable to satisfy me in bed without toys - and who wants to bring those through airport customs?....he's the only one who's been able to do all the above, and so much more.

It's time to go home, after a few hours at a PC room.
Likely the first words he'll say to me will be an apology for answering the phone while in the midst of our discussion. He'll mean it, I'll smile, I'll mean it, and we'll see what happens.

THIS Article

2004-10-22T19:03:00.000+09:00

is a mystifying read on Korean sexual relations and what is considered "respectable". If anyone has any similar experiences of miscommunication from culture or language gaps, feel free to mention them here.

One that occurs to me is of the Cuban lover I had one night on a black sand beach. We'd met the night before at a "Casa de la Musica" a bar with relaxed, informal concerts.
He was well over six feet tall, with eyes that were heavy-lidded yet sharp with intelligence, and delectable lips wrapped around marlboros.
Unlike most of the other men who'd dropped by my table, asking me to dance, he had his own beer, his own cigarettes, and his eyes didn't ask me for anything I had.
Just my body, I suppose.

Saw him the next evening at a danceclub on the mountain overlooking the sand. After I'd had several Cubra Libres with syrupy dark rum, I finally agreed to dance with him. "It runs in my family - we all dance," he said when I complimented him on his finesse, though compared with other Cuban men, his movements were clumsy. I didn't mind: he had, by far, the most (conventionally) handsome face I'd ever caressed.
"My father's white as you are and my mother's even darker than me," he murmured, and I thought of this combination, unusual in much of the world, but not remarkable in Cuba. Racism there exists more in the government than among the people.

The club closed after 3am, and we walked down to the beach, arms linked. I looked forward to some langorous petting and slow sensual removal of what little we wore in the heavy evening air. We lounged on the black sand, and I pushed his hands away as he tried to slip off my trousers.

"American girls like to talk a bit more," I said, unsettled by how quickly he was ready to get to what we both wanted. "We need to be warmed up first." He was patient, and soon enough, we were naked and cavorted in cool waves. I motioned for him to slip on a condom, and we collapsed on top of the foam. Suddenly a wave broke over us and snatched our clothes. I shrieked, and he slipped out quickly. We ran to retrieve them, threw them up the shore, and lay again on the sand, eager to continue.

"You just like Cuban girl," he said as my hips reached up for his. I suppose he'd heard that white women were frigid.
It wasn't till he slipped out again that I felt pain from the sharp black volcanic sand, and saw the shredded condom. Sand had coated us when we lay down, and abraded....everything. I've never felt pain quite like that as I walked gingerly to smooth asphalt, craving a shower to wash away salt and sand and whatever else had escaped the condom we wore.

Also, there are plenty of what have become standard ways to find my blog:

"thai girls/pussies/prostitutes/ladyboys"

"asian" anything sexualized

recently: "western women married to asian men"

"free 10 to 12 year-old girl sex photos" This asshole from the Netherlands (I'm assuming he's male) stayed on my site for over six minutes.

"asian boy" (from Yahoo! Germany) This guy's command of english must not be too great, or he'd never type anything so broad in a search engine.

"Kanchanaburi girly bar" from a guy in western europe

"farang boyfriend" Portugal

"Khao San get laid"

"Pictures Clitorises" A surprising number of those...

"Uncircumcised boyfriend post"

"Malaysian indian girls photos"

"Indian sex stories with no misleadings"

"katoy bars in Bangkok Patpong" from Germany

2004-10-20T08:40:00.000+09:00

For some reason Vi's latest post reminded me of something my CC [Creative Canadian/Crazy Canadian/definitely a Carbon Copy of no one I've met] once said:

"On Sunday afternoons in North America, you'll see a young woman walking down the street, paper Starbucks coffeecup in hand, yoga mat slung over her shoulder, on the way to class.

"On Sunday in Latin America, you'll see a woman walking from church services to meet her lover."

He's lived on both continents, so would probably know better than most.

On another note, I've begun to name the dozens of different kind of orgasms the boy gives me. At around 4am, exhausted and delerious and technically sober, we discovered a brand new one, I call [ack! I'm embarassed! but the description's right on] the Hungry Lotus. The image has got to be from the hundreds of huge pink blossoms I've seen floating in ponds and ditches in the past week.

Jesus....it was incredible.
Ours were synhronized as some of the best ones are. Internal layers opening up and outwards, further than I'd thought possible. Trembled for a half hour afterwards.
I've never felt anything quite like it, and can't wait to try for more.

That's what a few days apart will do for you.

2004-10-14T08:51:00.000+09:00

Currently jacked up on caffeine.
It's coffee Korean style, a.k.a. "coffee mix". This strangely addictive coffee substitute is equal parts powdered creamer, sugar, and freeze-dried coffee that'd give any coffee connoisseur a rollicking stomach-ache. Trust me, you get used to it.

Other countries naturally adapt western products to local tastes, and the results can be ghastly. Like the garlic cheese bread I once had in Wales: sharp cheddar drooped flaccidly over cloves of garlic on a week-old baguette that'd been slathered in rancid butter.
Korean versions of western foods might be a good subject for another post.

Anyway, as I entered a dark, nearly deserted PC room after boring Baskin-Robbins employees with tips on writing business emails, I wondered about the effect of the environment on my writing. As I don't own a computer, I've [nearly] always written blog entries from dark, smoky PC Rooms. They're typically filled with Korean men and teenagers playing online games.
They smoke like fiends, often play shrieking K-pop music at full blast, hack and spit into ashtrays and disposable coffee cups. But they'll never steal my mobile phone if I dash to the girls room. Or my CD player. They've all got MP3 players anyway.

I wonder about you.
What most often surrounds you when you type pixels onto your online pages?

Back Pain

2004-10-13T20:24:00.000+09:00

is one of the most universal (physiological) pains out there.
And it's a tiring subject for others, particularly if they haven't got empathy from experiencing that particular version of hell.
Here's how I got my crippling pain this week:

The other night as I walked down labyrinthine Seoul alleys, I blinked.
There were strange pale garbage bags with hangeul (Korean writing) all over them. Clear bags filled with water jugs, beer bottles, and tuna tins rested alongside the garbage.
I nearly cheered in the street.

After nearly a month at this apartment, I'd finally discovered a trash day, and it appeared that Mondays were recycling day, too!
Garbage disposal in Korea is a great example of personal responsibility. You buy individual trash bags at the grocery store, so the more garbage you leave for trash collectors, the more you pay for it.
It's also an incentive to recycle, which thrifty Koreans do with a vengeance.

Anyway, as our landlady doesn't speak English and neither do our neighbors, and we don't speak Korean, we had no way of finding out when we could dispose of our trash, etcetera.
So we'd let about a dozen bags - mostly plastic bottles - accumulate on our patio...we don't use it for anything at all now, as I don't smoke anymore. I'd worried about rats & roaches, as I've lived with them before in Brooklyn, and never wanted to again.

So - here was the solution to the problem of rat and roach bait: Mondays.
I hurried to the grocery store, bought around ten (20L) plastic bags for about $6 US, and made a half-dozen trips down three flights of stairs with all of our rubbish. I placed them in front of a steel door next to our driveway that looked like it hadn't been used in years, forgetting of course that most everything here is so cheaply made that it ages (unattractively) within weeks of purchase.

On my final run, I heard a commotion. Three old men ("ajoshis" in Korean) scrambled into the street and wailed as they gestured at all my bags piled near the door. They didn't seem personally slighted so much as simply wound up. Probably sedated/inflamed by soju (soju = lethal Korean drink) as well.
Anyway, one said, "Move!" and pointed at what I'd left.
I looked up and there was another ajoshi on his patio hollering to his neighbors about the westerner who was blocking her neighbor's door.
(my god, didn't he have anything better to be doing with his time than eyeing where I'd placed my rubbish?)

It must've happened as I was tossing bags into our driveway. None of them were particularly heavy, but somehow I twisted/wrenched something-or-other in my spine.
Didn't notice much till later that evening. Thought the soreness was from sitting in a strange position as I'd read the Korea Herald that afternoon.
Had a typically acrobatic time with the boy that night and it was no problem. We did nothing reckless, like having him slam into me as I sit atop our little fridge, though I've asked him for it.

(then again, that'd mean clearing off spare change, a painting palette, his armbands, and god knows what else from the top of the fridge, which it seems we've turned into a table, because we don't have one. We could be dramatic and sweep it off onto the floor, but I think the idea of having to clean it all up later might ruin it for me. Though once we can afford red wine again, I'll likely not give a damn about strewing it all over our faux-wood floor)

Woke up the next morning and could hardly breathe, as deep breaths moved something internal - my spine I suppose - that caused a deeply intense pain. It grew stronger as the day went on, and was worsened by sitting down.
My god, I've felt helpless ever since, though it's slightly better today than before. Sometimes. Breathing's often difficult, sleeping is too, of course. The boy gave me a gentle backrub (he's a trained massage therapist) but that wasn't the greatest idea. It helped and hurt all at once.

All right, enough! I sound like a 75-year-old already! There are plenty of things to experience before then, and I won't let this interfere with them. It seems the body gets used to a steady level of pain, as thresholds are passed...
If anyone's got advice on websites, or what's worked for them, just leave a comment here.

Penang II: Older Men

2004-10-07T20:22:00.000+09:00

A tale of two Walters: one German, one Swiss, encountered my last day in Penang.

After avoiding the Canadian, I went for breakfast at a cafe on the other side of Love Lane (yes, really!), near the spare hotel where I'd stayed the night before. It looked a friendly, reasonably clean place to spend an hour, though I decided against spending a night there after viewing one of their single rooms: a cot, the room barely partitioned from the next, a squat toilet down the hall.

Still, they had a delectable western menu.
A gruff man handed me his copy of a Malaysian english newspaper, and eventually asked if he could sit at my table. Internally I sighed, but I could always toss my money on the table and plead a hangover if I grew tired of him.

He was from a small German village near the French border, and knew well a French city where I'd spent a few years of my childhood. He enjoyed tourist-ing in that town more than I had when I returned there during university.

This German Walther was in Penang with a construction company, and had a blustering, frank manner about him that I found refreshing after SE Asian deference and smarmy western men. [there'll be more about him added later but I'm existentially tired out today]

After dinner, we headed to his favorite Chinese bar to watch Formula One racing. I'd never had any desire to watch it before, but his enthusiasm infected me. It'd be a quiet nightcap on a few days in a quiet seaside town.

The walls were painted a matte chinese red that hovered somewhere between the sultry and the slattern. Within moments I was introduced to Swiss Walter, who, after they'd spoken incomprehensibly over my shoulder for a minute or two, asked if I also spoke German. Shook my head sadly, though there's no chance of me attempting a language that manages to sound serpentine and death-rattling all at once. French is close enough.

Our eyes were glued alternately to the small televisions inconveniently placed close to the ceiling and our beers reflected in the bar mirrors. [sighing again. I've no taste for recollections today. trying to hang on to sanity instead]

Though it's not - as it would've been several months ago - Korea that's driving me to this. Seoul's been a thoroughly positive surprise so far (probably has to do with the brevity of my intended stay here). It's teaching, and hormones, and my perceived inadequacies, and new situations, and...hell, I don't know what it'll take to sort this out.

Time, I think, and ideas for the classroom, and not letting reflexive reactions to criticism - which has been liberally delivered, and never direct - get in the way of its real purpose as a spur for change.
Strange the sensation of desperately needing to cry and knowing you're at the edge of it for hours while being scrutinized by strangers in public, but once home in a great, private space, unable to release it.

Violently angry, trembling at the keys earlier, for perceived insults and faults that are nothing but chimera. Damn, love an online thesaurus that finds the word that fits, exactly, the image, the sensation, your mind wanted in language.

It seems nothing's ever at midpoint. A Korean fashion photographer has, by some miracle, discovered my "Art in English" ad. It was placed under an assumed name, as tutoring by foreigners is generally illegal. Initially I was suspicious of his intentions, as he wanted me to come to his studio rather than his home, he didn't want to bring along his wife, who was a painter (and so, sometimes, am I, though I never pay taxes on what I earn), even though I'd tutor her at no extra charge...and his email had "nude" in the address.
I've found fashion photographers can be sleazier than others when dealing with them, but he agreed to my rate of about US$37/hour, which is more or less standard for a North American female in Seoul.

There's also the mother of a 5-year-old girl who'd like me to tutor her daughter in artsy-craftsy activities, in English, of course. So I'll be busy between PMS-inflamed bouts of neurosis.

During the week, I teach two corporate classes. One is for Baskin-Robbins/Dunkin Donuts employees, and the other is held for employees at the Seoul Racetrack. Really! One student creates new fruit flavors for donuts, another is the male secretary to the racetrack's CEO, and they all have stories to share. Once anxiety over losing face in front of colleagues/superiors/subordinates has dissipated, anyway. I've just got to figure out how to do that.

These dynamics, more strained than between strangers meeting in a classroom (then they are only based upon age and salary earned, rather than the host of other criteria that affect co-workers interactions), are much more complex than I will be able to comprehend in our 10 weeks together. It's all completely new to me.

Interlude: Links

2004-10-02T18:37:00.000+09:00

New link: Vi's my best friend in the whole wide world, and has been for the past 15 years, more or less. She lives in one of the cheeriest, strangest, surreal dream cities in America, and has just started her own blog. If you've some time, head over there and give her some love. It's a darkly poetic site (both content and template) and abstract. Good for the occasional white night. Or dangerously bad, I suppose.
She's an incredible writer, but is going through a darkish time right now.
OK, Vi - you can knock me in the head from the opposite side of the Pacific! You have my new phone number.

Have had to delete several links, as people have moved on from blogging lives to real ones. Or perhaps they've assumed new online identities.

So, if you've another minute, leave your opinion on the following: what's life like for the "average" blogger? What demographic does s/he come from? There seem to be some common traits in many of the blogs I've stumbled across. I used to browse the "10 Most Recently Updated Blogs" each time I posted, and here's what I found:

~ Lots of white people. Particularly Americans. Middle-class (hooray, it still exists!?) to upper-middle class. Occupations seem evenly split between university students with constant access to computers and hours of each day spent online to "professionals" in many occupations that require hours of time at computers - often online - each day.

There were occasional exceptions, particularly as I'd discover a few published from Asia, due to the time difference here. Still, through links from links to people who've linked to me, the above is a common theme.
Then again, I'm a whitish, middle class American, so in some ways I fit that mold too. But no one has a belly-tattoo that's identical to mine!

Penang Portraits I: Young Men

2004-09-28T17:20:00.000+09:00

The train ride from Bangkok to Penang, Malaysia, was 21 hours.
Each way.
You read that right - 21! For a two-day stay in small colonial Georgetown on a little island with no decent beaches?!

Trains are my favorite mode of travel; they relax and lull you to sleep as scenery rolls by, next to rather than under you, far-far-away, as it does in a plane.
Though the boy and I have each had our equivalent of the mile high club in the train fantasies, train toilets are always too slick with something-or-other to really encourage any fun aside from smoking.
And I don't smoke anymore. Well, I haven't for two weeks or so now.

Anyway, on to the characters, before I forget all about them.

After a brief morning sojurn through Thai, then Malaysian, immigration:
English-boy (EB) was first flirting with a pair of Japanese girls, giggling as they tend to do from nervousness (though western men take it as proof of their captivating charm).
EB had one of those open-mouthed, nasal accents that makes it difficult for North Americans to determine its origin. South African or southern English, I thought. Perhaps from New Zealand, though their voices tend to be more melodic than his, which, wherever EB was from, sounded like spoiled privilege personified into a pudgy, thick-lipped, faux-confident form.
He'd been selling real estate in Thailand for several months, and was headed to southern Malaysia, near Singapore, to meet his father and explore other job possibilities. Or perhaps he'd spend some more time in Borneo...how easy it is for those with credit cards or trust funds to tick off cheap destinations on smooth, dilettantish fingers.
Ran into him outside during a morning cigarette and he proceeded to talk my ear off, now that he had one fluent in English.

Thanks to EB, though, I soon met Trevor, or perhaps I've misplaced his name somewhere in the chaotic confused morass of grey that passes for my memory. After tilting pints of beer down our throats that evening, he told me his story, and if any of it was true, Trevor - or whatever - wasn't his real name.
This lovely boy with a brilliant smile had golden freckled skin, peeling shoulders, and ginger hair with green eyes. And transparent lashes. Did I mention his perfect smile? He looked more Californian than Canadian.
He was on the run from his old life, Trevor said, after stories of volunteering at homeless shelters in Vancouver, and lengthy descripions of his family and friends, all of whom still lived in his small hometown, and had never left.

"On the run?" I asked, staring helplessly at all the Tiger beer that remained in the jug in front of me.
Then out came the rest of his story. He'd been one of the biggest pot dealers in the region, and had supposedly been earning tens of thousands of dollars every month. "It's too easy in Canada," he said sorrowfully, "they've been relaxing the laws on pot growing for years. I'd buy a home or two, and we'd grow thousands of marijuana plants in it, then we'd sell it after a while."
I swallowed my flat beer and idly lit one cigarette after another, mildly interested yet barely credulous. Wondered if it was really the government's fault - as he insinuated - that he dealt drugs.
"I want to leave it all behind and start over," Trevor said, yet he was living off of the proceeds of his dealing, and had planned a brief return to Canada to discipline a pair of "kids" who weren't handling the distribution effectively. That is, if his tough best friend hadn't convinced them to shape up in a few weeks.
"That's why I volunteered at the shelter, and gave away some to charity, to make up for what I was doing." But he was still doing it by having it done for him, even as he travelled in Asia.

This golden boy was a liar, a loser, or both. I was reminded of why I rarely trust pretty, straight males.
For many people, one appeal of long-term travel or relocation is the ease of remaking your past and future. No one knows or really cares where you come from, and invention is easy. Many begin to believe their own stories; it helps when convincing others.

He seemed desperate for a girl, a western girl, a relationship to tether him to the life he wanted. He had strategies for initiating productive conversations, and had determined that the best environment for captivating western girls was the beach rather than the bar, Malaysia rather than Thailand.
"I'm looking for a wife," he admitted towards the end of the evening.
Beer nearly sprayed from my nose. Instead, I choked.
He smiled sheepishly, and we left for our separate rooms at the hotel.

On the way, he stopped for a quick late-night dinner of fried curried noodles. Penang food is a gorgeous combination of Indian and Malay and Thai cuisines. Indian predominates in street food stalls.

He slipped the last noodle between his lips as he asked me how kinky I liked it.
"Y'know, till recently, my repertoire was pretty standard," I said, "aside from a weekend or two." I gazed into the street where a rickshaw squeaked past us. My eyes skimmed over colonial buildings haunted by streetlamps.
"But it seems with this one, we're going places where I never thought I'd want to go before. And that's all I'll say," I grinned and rose to leave.
"Oh, you're going to go back and masturbate now, aren't you?" he said peevishly.
"No - we've actually agreed to abstain for a week before we see one another." Beer had me speaking unconsciously. I had no reason to flirt with him, and had found being flirted with tiresome while travelling.

He chattered on as we walked back to the hotel, and I said good night, and that certainly, we could meet for breakfast at noon.
As I unlocked my door, he said quickly: "You know I'm going to have to masturbate in my room now that you've told me all that." I closed the door, turned on for a second, but not very, and thought that no, we wouldn't have breakfast together tomorrow.

Planes and Photos

2004-09-19T21:19:00.000+09:00

Back in Korea, in Seoul this time, and ready to pound (or would that be hit? depends on how much wine I've had) the pavement for jobs tomorrow.

The boy's ecstatic, and I am too, especially after we stumble out of bed, grinning, on weekend afternoons. He's got a very large, sunny 2-bedroom apartment for the two of us in the center of the city.
Seoul's a definite improvement on the city where we were living before. A cliche we seem to be spouting these days is: "If you've got to be in Korea, you've gotta be in Seoul."

New photos:

~ The above: Taken for the boy in my hotel room in Bangkok, to model a secondhand blazer I'd bought that day. To illustrate what a professional english teacher I'll be. Unfortunately, the "Sassy" printed on my then-favorite pair of underwear was reversed - of course - in the mirror, and I neglected to switch the image around when I posted it.

~ Above right: Taken in the tiled bathroom of my motel in Lopburi, Thailand. Side view with blue skirt-turned scarf. Though perhaps not explicit as the boy would've liked, it reminded me of some of my favorite paintings.

~ Right, below: Taken in Bangkok, on Sukhumvit road. We never made it inside, though it looked to be a typical Thai street-side bar: wooden planks and rickety stools with lovely anxious companions waiting inside for sunburnt clients.

Walked for 4 hours today around Mount Namsan, not far from our apartment, planning to explore trails and listen to headphones and have some time alone.

As so often happens, it was not to be.
A hottie Korean personal trainer - Jesus, what an amazing body he had! - overtook me for conversation (read: free english lessons; [I want to try for around US$40/hour when looking for private work]), and though we had a nice chat while strolling up and down hills, walking both forward and backwards, as the sun set I craved time away from pidgin english and mentioned that I had to go to a PC room to email my mother. Family always works well as an imperative in Asia.

He accompanied me to the PC room.
He sat next to me as I opened 2 of my email accounts.
He diligently wrote down my email address when I pointed out to him what his eyes sought on the screen.
I said pointedly that I might be here for an hour or two.
As I began to type, he rose. I shook his hand goodbye and said that yes, we could go to Olympic Park sometime.
He returned a minute later with a card for the computer next to mine. I tried not to sigh audibly.
An hour later, I was still typing to family and friends, and he rose. Said goodbye again.
A minute later he returned, asking if I wanted dinner. I smiled a negative, and he finally left me to my pixels and prattling.

2004-09-11T16:45:00.000+09:00

11-9-2001, Manhattan: I was working on a 40-something storey of steel and glass near Grand Central. We saw the second plane crash, and were not evacuated from our building till noon. I walked the long route home to Brooklyn, as subways of course weren't running. We had whiskey and valium on the roof and watched smoke plume as tears couldn't be controlled any longer.

11-9-2002, Boston: A 9-11 memorial meeting with my travel company. I decided to attend, even though it was my day off. The event that had polarized the nation, and especially the travel industry, had indirectly gotten me the best job of my life, after package travel rebounded at the end of 2001.

11-9-2003, Cambodia: Only while fumbling through international TV channels, many of them with flashbacks of crumbling buildings, did I remember the anniversary. I was at Angkor Wat for several days during Chuseok, Korea's thanksgiving celebration. In a gigantic, cool room, lined floor to ceiling with rattan mats, I opened a beer and raised a solitary toast to those who had died and the many public misleadings and mistakes that have since been made.

11-9-2004, Malaysia: Dressed in appropriately modest longish-sleeved top and trousers, wandering the colonial streets of Georgetown, Penang Island, I wiped away sweat from brilliant afternoon sun. A motorcyclist grabbed my ass in a gentle, contemptuous swipe.

"Ecrivain en Herbe"

2004-09-05T23:36:00.000+09:00

is how an Israeli/French girl who goes to school in London (and is currently in Beijing travelling with her parents after a recent visit with me where we went clubbing on Khao San Road then spent all night drinking on the curb with a Maori friend of hers and some South Americans - we did the salsa at 7am with beer and chocolate in hand....ah these have been great weeks)
described the tone of my last email: "You're a natural writer," she said, laughing.

Here goes:

The Thai guy (P) did call on Sun, the evening flower market was a trip, my camera died, we went to a great minimalist outdoor restaurant docked on the Chao Phraya river with a brilliant nighttime view of Wat Arun [temple], a cute pair of gay guys insisted that we help them finish their bottle of rum, P. became critical and jealous of my boyfriend and said all sorts of presumptuous things about him, he drove me home and spouted a bunch of righteous Buddhist quotations about love (he'd spent a year as a monk, as he reminded me), essentially saying that if I REALLY loved the boy there would be no conflicts between the two of us, the next day I wrote him an email saying I didn't want to see him again as apparently we weren't able to be civil friends, the following day I moved into the new room [as described below], that evening P. interrupted a stuff-your-face for one hour for 200 baht sushi dinner and came back later with a bottle of whisky, obviously intending to drink it all in sorrow afterwards. I was unmoved.

A friend from Korea (crazy creative Canadian) is in BKK and last night we went to some girly bars on Sukhumvit road, he wanted to buy one for me to watch me with her, I said no, she was hurt (he should've tipped her 20 baht [50 cents] at least), another mischievously lifted her thong under my chin during a routine (couldn't help but giggle back), got some ideas on using the boy as furniture, why don't they sell those stripper poles for the home in Korea? oh, right, they don't have strippers there - or AIDS, either - met a half-thai/half-brit named Trajan (that'd be the emperor, not the condom) who claims to go to Oxford (don't they all?) whose father owns lots of girly bars - and also happens to have been a classics professor, hence the unfortunate name - so we went to one of his venues nearby and rode a mechanical bull (today my thigh's all bruised, actually my legs are completely sore: feel just like I've had a wonderfully sex-drenched night) and closed the bar with lots of B-52s on the house. Went to his giant place its parquet floor covered in cat-crap to smoke a cold joint and though I arrived home at the entirely reasonable hour of 3am I somehow didn't make it to class the next morning.

It's the side of BKK I'd avoided before, but dipping into it now and again's ok. No "ping-pong" or "smoking" shows for me, however many menus are waved under our noses in Patpong (where, I've since found, that underwear we bought is hopelessly overpriced). I hope to go to a katoy (lady-man) bar with the Canadian before he leaves for Vietnam.

All the above sounds more exciting than it is, I think. Have had a great time with just the right amount of company (I'm kind of a private person...like time alone).....It was GREAT to hang out with you in BKK, and we'll have to do it again, whenever we can, wherever you and I are. You seemed to have changed during your time in SE Asia, more sure of yourself, with more bravada, too, and that'll balance out....likely you'll be hit with the changes more after heading to London: a changed person in a familiar environment.

Time to watch some Indian/Chinese/Thai melodramas in my new, apparently spic/span room with its mouse droppings I've inherited near the window, and an occasional bathroom roach for company, for an early night.

Hualamphong

2004-08-31T19:03:00.000+09:00

is Bangkok's main train station.
It's also a good landmark for this neighborhood, near the Chao Phaya river that runs through the city.

At the moment, I'm across the street from the station, for who knows how long, at an internet cafe.
Everything I own in Thailand (that's not much since my luggage was stolen a while ago) is in the Left Luggage center at Hualamphong.

D'you want to know why?!
A guy with whom I'm teaching part-time has a room not far from here and he's moved into an actual apartment so he's agreed to sublet the place for me for the next 2 weeks while I finish my TEFL course (which is coming along at a great pace, by the way).
I'm doing him a favor, and he's said he'd do one for me.

Or so I thought.
Caught a cab to the school this afternoon; we'd agreed last week he'd leave his keys there for me.
When we arrived, I begged the driver to wait for "2 minutes". He shrugged, "mai ben lai", which means, vaguely, "no problem, whatever, it doesn't bother me". A typical Thai expression; whether they really mean it or not, it's best to take it at face value.
Rushed to the teachers room, but there were no teachers there.
And no keys, either.
Only three students who were generous enough to offer a mobile phone to me.

This guy's phone was stolen last week on a crowded bus, so of course no one answered it when I rang. I had to call the man who set me up with this position (more on him some other time....he's a character) to get subletter's girlfriend's phone number.
She didn't answer hers, either.
Fingers and brain were numb as I smiled politely to the girls and strode back to the taxi.

Blank-mindedly I entered the cab, having no idea of where to go.
All my possessions were with me in the car, and I was unsure of where to spend the night.
The driver looked at me politely in the rearview mirror.
"Hualamphong, please," I said, eyeing the hot narrow streets around us, dusty from exhaust, thinking over and again, "mai ben lai".

It's all good.
Time to phone the girl again, and if that fails, there are basic fan rooms across from the station for $5/night. And a cheap sushi dinner with D. the Macedonian and his girlfriend.
More on him soon, too.

Kanchanaburi

2004-08-22T23:00:00.000+09:00

is a jungly Thai town made famous for a bridge over a river that was renamed the River Kwai.

Last weekend I got the hell out of Bangkok and got some fresh air-and a history lesson or two.

This weekend I did a visa run (tourist visas are only good for 30 days) to Poipet, Cambodia, through a visa service, which cost little more than doing it on my own.

We spent much of the day on an air-con bus, and lunch was greasy Asian buffet fare inside a sterile casino.
To get there, we walked through lanes of begging children, elderly, and land mine victims. Some of them held babies no more than a few weeks old.

I nearly stumbled, my vision blurred, as we rushed past them, unprepared with coins in hand and knowing it wouldn't be a good idea to stop and fumble for change.
Last year, I spent several days at Siem Reap (for Angkor Wat), and it was desperately poor, but it held nothing like the misery of this place.

"You should've seen it several years ago," said an Australian as we wove through traffic. Almost none of it was motorized - nearly all was human: primarily men and boys pulling huge wooden carts filled with produce and people, almost identical to the ones you can see in representations of daily life on the walls of Angkor from 800 years ago.
"There were guys walking around with machine guns," he continued. "You wanted to get the hell out of here. They've really cleaned it up since."
My feet skidded in the muddy street, and I thought that one visit to Poipet was enough for me...

Hot days in Bangkok

2004-08-18T23:20:00.000+09:00

A brief review of the past few days.

The TEFL course is progressing at a pace that's quite a bit slower than I'd hoped, as the main instructor is often late, and out of our total time of 4 hours a day, nearly a quarter of it is taken up by our lunch break.
There are also a dozen students, half of whom are not native speakers of English, and four others who very much like to hear themselves speak. Which is a quality shared by our instructor, a man who at least is charismatic enough to make him interesting.

It is very easy for a western woman with pale eyes and decent - ahem - presentation (read: nice figure and clothing) to find jobs in Bangkok, as the job-seekers here are, overwhelmingly, men, for reasons recently stated. Thais have many little girls that need to be taught, and they'd rather have a female teacher for them. Western women can also be a drawcard for business/corporate training.

I did some temp teaching last week for the first time since June, in a girls' high school.
Didn't really enjoy it, though I thought I would.
I don't know if the girls did, either, though they seemed to.
At the end of a lesson ("ear-ache!" "back-ache!" "knee hurts!" "hospital!") filled with physical and writing and listening activities, we played the old standby, hangman.

I'll return there tomorrow and Friday (it'll help pay for my visa run to Poipet, at the Cambodian border this weekend), and we're to do some sort of preparation for a big quiz show....will know more soon. And tomorrow I will have a new pair of presentable shoes. It was remarked upon by the administrators there that I was wearing sandals and inappropriate trousers (though I'd been told I wouldn't be teaching till the following week!).

"Oh, Sister So-and-so at St. ______'s wants to interview you today," said our teaching instructor. I said yes, as I was curious to see more of the school I'd walked past every day since moving into the neighborhood.
And I wanted to check out some of her interview techniques.

Sister So-and-so, a white-frocked Filipina, sized me up immediately, stiff and sweating as I was in a green silk skirt. She asked me questions about my original degree and later experiences, in teaching and other jobs as well.

Her thinking was transparent: "Where can I fit this foreigner in my school? How can I use her?" Then, when I offhandedly mentioned the boyfriend in Korea, she saw me as a potential liability. Her questioning grew more specific on teaching techniques and my TEFL course.
Told her I would be unavailable to teach till the course was finished.
Of course I had no intention of teaching for them, as their salary is extremely low, even for Bangkok, and their teacher turnover is high.
Have heard stories of this nun keeping tabs on her foreign teachers, asking them who they're dating and how late they were out the night before.

Also, one must be at the school from 7:30am-3:30pm. It's too close to the concept of a 9-5 job, which was also true of my last job in Korea. And that's the kind of life that I've never been able to maintain for very long.
NEVER AGAIN! I say, unless it's something I really, really enjoy.
And even though I will, I think, I hope to be a much better teacher after this TEFL course, unless something changes, I will not have the crucial fire and the drive for EFL teaching that I have for other interests. But teaching is, for a while, a bridge to other places, so I will continue with it for a while.

Patpong II: "I hope the money arrived you"

2004-08-17T00:26:00.000+09:00

Money drives the world and all of us in it, and money from sex tourism fuels Thailand's economy.

In the introduction, one author writes:
"To all the men whose letters appear in this book, I thank you all for some fascinating material. May your love lives be positive and your blood tests negative."

And a Thai woman who translates letters for the girls:
"When the man go to Patpong, he will see beautiful girl. But beautiful girl in American eyes. Not beautiful in Thai eyes....He take her upcountry or beach...they satisfy together. And he send money."

A friend's plump Thai girlfriend recently remarked: "We Thais think these girls are ugly!" And she tossed her hair at the beautiful girls across the street from us.

A Thai psychologist: "morality is not an issue here....Both sexes are exploited. You have the male filling the vacuum of cheap labor. And you have the female filling the vacuum of the sex trade."

Many Thai women support entire families - parents, children, siblings - on the money received from foreigners. Bank accounts and the like are themes running through every letter. As are the mundane jobs that consume many of these men's lives. And often, touching insecurities are revealed.

English is often the second language for both the writer and reader, but just as frequently the broken english is a result of the condescending pidgin spoken in similar relationships around the world.

German: "You are my wife, my little spoiled daughter and the mother of our baby, although we were stupid to give away our good baby...I hoped that you will have our baby in your body. I thought always, when you have a baby of me, you will never go off of me. Our baby I loved bery, very much. But perhaps I'm only stupid."

After a detailed description of the STD he's caught from the girl: "I have sent you a koala (doll) from Australia to keep you company in your room."

French: "It is true, my love: if it was not for you, I would feel a very old and tired man, a useless person, and would eventually give up everything and let myself die. I have nobody else than you...Please love me a little."

"I met you about one month ago about 11:00 in the Pussy Galore club...Probably and hopefully you can remember me. It is already a long time.
That evening I didn't give you money. I feel very sorry about that. If you like I will send you money or perhaps something else. Just tell me.
I have not introduced myself. I am 42 years old, but I feel myself younger. I do a lot of sports (jogging, tennis) and I work as a bookkeeper in an office. I live in the Netherlands. It is a flat country."

"When I receive your letter I will send you some more money. So please write darling."

Finnish: "Hello my mosquito! Can you ask somebody what I have to do if I come to Bangkok to drive tuk-tuk. I am serious because it is my biggest dream in the world."

"I want that you stop to stay with a man some days before I come to Bangkok and that you check you body about AIDS and I want to see this in English language. P.S. Don't be angry my darling, I like you..."

"Is that another reason why you are unsure that you want to marry me, darking? You do not know if you want to have a baby with me? I know that I am not everything you like in a man, but I don't feel that way about you.
I know you are angry at me because I did not keep my promise to send you money."

Australian: "I cannot send you any more money and believe me it hurts me very much to have to say this. The reason I do this is because I have much financial problems in Australia and have to start a new life for myself. I am a very lonely and unhappy because of this fact. I have to get a new house because I have given my ex-wife all my property with the divorce settlement. Darling I will never stop loving you and one day in the near future I still wish to marry you. I cry very deeply to think that the only way we will ever be together is for me to do this to you. I do not know what you will have to do to make a life for yourself, but remember whatever you have to do please be aware that my 'love' for you will never 'stop'...
Darling I will not teltphone anymore but will always write letters to you...I will always love you my tiny darling...I do this for love darling...to bring you and our daughter to Australia to live with me. Yours Forever."

French: "Have you asked your doctor about the name for your disease? Remember I need this information for a more efficient cure on my side, because I do not show any obvious symptoms. Many kisses and lots of love from your faithful Frenchman."

German: "If you really want to come to me I want to help you to stop fuck...I send some money for food and I think don't make big party for your birthday...All my love to you.
I hope the money arrived you."

"I am sorry for lying to you when I came back from Cambodia and making you angry with me that night at the hotel. The girl in Cambodia did not mean anything to me, but you do.
XXXXX
I still have your black panties to remind me of you."

Australian: "I told my wife about you and now I am by myself. But I could not live with anyone except you again."

Must be English: "I got your letter today. I telephoned today as you asked.
Your friend said you were away, probably in Singapore.
You promised me that you would stay at home and look after your daughter.
It appears that you have a boyfriend. It also appears that your promises are worth nothing.
Please explain by return letter."

"Got your letter thank you. Please tell me this:
1. What bar do you work? Are you dancing?
2. Why do you say you have my baby in 2 months when I was last in Bangkok before two and a half months?
3. Why do you work in a bar?"

"Dear Darling,
Money for December.
Also for teeth.
Love..."

"To: Hotel
Can you please tell the girl, she has to go back to Bangkok today. I have to be alone the last days I am here. Say she is a lovely girl and I love her. And can you tell her I will send her a check from Denmark for about US dollars 100-200. She doesn't speak English.
Thank you very much.
P.S. She check out 12pm."

French: "I'll go back in Bangkok soon, perhaps with my wife. Don't worry for you, my wife is a very good girlfriend like you. I think you can understand."

Belgian: "Dear little Darling,
I am living here with my girlfriend, but I think of you all the time and I don't want her, I want you!...I am not the best man on earth, but then, if I had been a very good man, I would not have met you!"

English: "When I am rich, I will buy you a helicopter and BMW car.
Darling, when we stayed together I loved you - but I don't know if you love me. Many times I think you only want me for my money. I remember you say to me 100 times 'Buy me television.' Even when you come with me to the airport you said to me many times, 'Give me money'."

"That girl you met when you came to see me at NANA hotel, I didn't know that he/she were an hermaphrodite and when somebody told me about I decided not to see her again. Many kisses from your lover."

"many years in a very different country form people."

"It's more easy for you to make fuck than to learn ABCD in English. But I know, you fuck for money, I think it's really boring and dirty...I want that you think to me, too."

Australian: "Please darling tell me what you think about me. Do you like my body, am I too old for you, do you like me?"

"But, butterfly or not you are the same as me, the only difference with us is that I pay and you get paid."

Interlude

2004-08-12T19:30:00.000+09:00

You know when you've woken up at 3am, with your lights and clothes still on, at the edge of a massive hangover, that it'll be a long long time till the room stops spinning.

From a letter from the boy, called "CONFESSIONS"

I eat at Burger King almost every day. The worst thing is I actually want them to hurry up with it. It is cheap, they have air con, I am hungry.

I have started smoking so I can quit on the same day as you and at least feel something that you are going through.

I was bowled over when I first saw you, and have been ever since.

I sometimes use American grammar when I feel it is appropriate.

I pluck my eyebrows.

I try to be nice to people even when I absolutely despise them.

I used to be chronically late and a complete day-dreamer, hmm... some things don't change that much. My punctuality has improved though.

More later, need to walk the dog before class.

Patpong

2004-08-10T16:29:00.000+09:00

is a neighborhood in Bangkok that's known around the world for its lovely girls, its steamy clubs and nightlife.
It's also located next to the hotel where I'm staying during August and September (more on the hotel some other time, likely in the photo-blog).

And how uncensored shall I be here - of myself, that is?
Not certain. It's easy to feel I'm inviting attacks, and I'd rather not have any comments to delete.
For the moment I will just say this:
A fellow student summed it up yesterday when he said, "A friend of mine said she felt invisible in Bangkok." Though construction workers and waiters will gawp at a woman no matter where she goes.

It's how many western (ethnically non-asian) women feel in Asia, particularly in countries with high amounts of sex tourism, like Thailand and Cambodia. Asia is the first place I've lived where I've been confronted with so many unpleasant, overt stereotypes about women like me.

Sitting round a table with western men often feels like an ol'boys' club from several decades ago, with women spoken of in ways that would be unacceptable in public back home. It's common here, and not discouraged by Asian societies and their peers, many of whom are disillusioned with the changes wrought by western-style feminism.
The sexual equality professed by my generation doesn't exist here, and likely never will. Changes are happening gradually in women's education, etc., but in a region where confrontation is discouraged and responsibilities to extended family are paramount, women's advancement in Asia will take a much different form than in the west. (end of section that reads like a textbook)

This also makes me wonder, among other things, how many of my interactions with men - whether as friends or colleagues - in the west have more than a tinge of the flirtatious.
Because in the west, I'm considered by most to be a very attractive woman (if I do say so...)
In the lands of yellow fever, all is different, and that's all I'll extrapolate personally on the subject in this post, but it is something I confront and question every day.

Recently I picked up a book called Hello, My Big, Big Honey!, a compilation of love letters from foreign men to some of the bar girls who work in the Patpong area. "Love? In Patpong?" one of the authors writes. "Love is one four-letter word rarely mentioned in stories about Asia's sex industry."
(Especially, I must add, in the local books that line stores' shelves in Thailand - all of which are written by western men - further explor/oiting the sex industry, this time through words. They tend to be poorly written and two-dimensional, but then so are most of the books available, anywhere, for recreational reading.)

Honey has a different tone, because it's not an autobiography (thinly disguised to avoid prosecution) but is transcribed directly - it's written in the voices of those involved. I also wanted to understand more of what I walk past every day...on that side of the street. For Bangkok is like anywhere else: divisions between neighborhoods, wealth and poverty, and life and death can be like sharpened steel.

Here are excerpts from interviews with several women....jumbled together (with apologies) from my lazy note-taking. Themes are family and money, VD and work of all sorts, but most of all, vastly different definitions between East and West on prostitution, love, and what women and men expect of/desire from one another:

"Farang (foreigner) different from Thai man. Farang man make love better! Yeah! (laughs) I have boyfriend now, Danish man, really fucking good! I love him. With Thai man, when he lie down, he just come. Never make me feel romantic.

Farang boyfriend is more easy life. Farang have more money. Lady like me, a prostitute, can't get a very good Thai man. He just want the lady to help him make money. If I stay with Thai boy, I never go to big hotel eat food, or go holiday. Never.

I want shirt, he buy shirt. I want jean, he buy jean. And tape cassette, big, he buy for me...I want somebody hold me, and I think he like me sometime. He say, "I like you". Never say love you. I say "I like you too."

If your [regular] customer goes with other girls, are you angry?
I angry. But I cannot make fight, because man can say, "I come here holiday. Can have any lady."

I see many girl cut arm because they angry about the man have other lady. But me, I never like that because I love me more than man.

What advice would you give a new girl who's thinking about working in a bar?
If she lady, I tell her, "Never work this." If she already fuck around, I say, "Yes, go to work. Better. You enjoy, get money too." Why she make fuck for free?

You have to sleep around. Sometimes man look like shit, have to fuck him.

What attracts foreign men to Thai women?
Some man say, "Want different sex." When he come here, he free.

A lot of farang women, after married, get fat.
Thai women are prostitutes to take care their families.

I think he like lady Thai because beautiful, take care him and good love, good heart. I don't think lady farang same. Lady farang not take care of him and think about herself. Or she butterfly [butterfly = sleep around].

They say, "Farang women, big smelly pussy. Too fat! Too much hair! Breasts long. Not faithful." [After hearing comments like these, whether in person or in print, I'm always tempted to retort, to thin air of course: "Believe me, I understand...most white men's members leave plenty to be desired, their hair falls out of their heads yet grows thickly over the most obscure parts of their bodies, and a post-25 year-old belly is something my eyes must skip over while searching for other things I find attractive about him."]

When they're in their country, they can't get a girl friend. They're very lonely. Work, work, work and come back home.

Have any of your friends married foreign men?
Lady stay with man one week, two weeks, go to foreign country. I think for work, not for love. Many young farang men come to Bangkok looking for lady, like gigolo. Handsome. Take lady for working. I look, I know. Good sex! I have friend marry farang. Happy. Why not? She go Sweden. He send money to family...She will marry. She say quickly "Yes," because she working for family.

When he send money, he has some feeling. Maybe not love, but he cares. Now I dream about find a very, very good man who is true to me because it's all bullshit.

What is Thai society's reaction to your work?
Maybe think ugly.

Do you say you love the men?
I say, "Love! Love! Love!" but not. I feel nothing. I say "love" for money. Money! I working because I looking marry the man. Good man. Because I don't like Thai man. Thai man like money from the lady. I look good man. He wear nice shirt, not smell bad, not tell lies and not a drunk. Old men, 35-40, are good. Young men want to fuck for free.

She tell him anything to fall in love. She say, "I not butterfly." Farang men say, "Farang lady don't take care. Big hole." Like that.

What did you think your first time like with a foreigner?
What will happen? What to talk? How can you have a feeling when you don't know the man? After it is OK. For some it's bad, but it's for the money. Bad for the body. Bad for the heart. But it's for my living.

What do you think about when you make love with them?
I think about shopping. Shopping for gold. Or I think nothing. I don't like. I have house, buffalo, but now I want money because I want to stop work.

Why do some girls take drugs?
I tell you the truth? Because people want good sex. Because the tourists like. They have money. Say, "Come on, we have good fun together."

Any bad experiences with men?
Crazy man want make love like here (she points to her rear). I say cannot. I not like boy.

Sometime farang crazy...I just lie down on back and he write on my back. "Fuck me my daughter," and then fuck me.

Swiss man say "Lady from Europe like a man hurt she." Wow! Picture he do with lady. He make lady hurt sex. Another, my friend lady go with Korea man. He tell lady, cut her arm. He want to look. He happy to see blood. He Korea.

Which of your two farang boyfriends will you choose?
I have to wait. Now I play a game, two games with two boyfriends. Some people have to show me they love me and my daughter also.

A 28-year-old transsexual: Operation cost 45,000 baht for cut here (she gives a sharp karate chop to her genitals), 25,000 baht for breasts and 8,000 baht for nose. I have to sign my name so if I die [the hospital] have no problem. If [a client] ask [if I am a transsexual], OK. If they don't ask, they don't know. Of 100, about 10 people know.

[Interview with a "mama-san", a woman who supervises the bar and takes care of the girls. The interviewer - a western man, of course - asks her again and again why she doesn't sleep with foreign men.]
Me? No. Only friend, take care. I don't know, I tell them, "Just you very good friend." Because I don't like. I think I have enough money. I don't want to give my body for some farang for some money. I don't like.

What are your criteria for a new bar girl?
First, what shape her skin? Fat? Or slim? Fat cannot dance. I don't like. If she can speak English, good. I look the face, nice?

Sometimes, maybe she go some boy [go-go] bar. And money she give the boy. For what? I tell her.

[Interview with a bar girl who works with a human rights group and has lectured at AIDS conferences around the world. Most audiences don't know what she does for a living.]
In Thailand, if someone have AIDS have to go to hospital or some people have to go to jail. Police take there, stay there. And no see family.

What if your customer refuses a condom?
If I tell customer "use condom" and they not use, I don't know how to do. I lose money. If sometime we need money, I think it very difficult for girl to say no. Men they say, "If I need condom, why I take you? I not need you."
Mean if I tell customer "Use condom," if he need condom, he not need woman. If I have no money, I will do. I don't care he don't use condom.

When I in Canada, I see many girl work like me. But more difficult than me. If they have to work on the street, they have to stand up on the street in the cold. They have to buy more coat.

What would you like to see in the future?
I want fair for woman, everything fair.
Maybe fair more than men."

Walking to the internet cafe down a busy Bangkokian street, (my palate satisfied from fresh coconut milk) at the tail end of rush hour traffic: Patpong on the one side, and convents on the other. One must stroll in the street, as sidewalks are covered with stalls vending piled raw meat, fish packed in shaved ice, meat smoking over coals, pirated DVDs, fresh spring rolls, and hair accessories.
Occasionally, when descending the SkyTrain in late evening, we'll see an elephant, its bridle held by a tiny man whose head barely reaches my nose.
Bangkok is a great city in every sense of the word.

(part 2 will be some hilarious/awful/poignant letters from western men....if I'm not reprimanded sometime by the authors, whose names I'll look up tomorrow)

Flash-Forward to Bangkok

2004-08-07T00:46:00.000+09:00

where I'm taking a 6-week Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course.

The boy recently visited me here for several days while he completed paperwork for his new job in Korea.
I, on the other hand, am postponing my return there and am doing what I should have done before I ever walked into a classroom with the invisible title of "teacher" plastered somewhere on my forehead: taking a crash course in EFL teaching. It should fill in some important gaps remaining after a year of teaching students of all ages, in many settings.

But most of all, it's getting me enthusiastic about teaching again, a quality I'd lost sometime in my first few months of hell with a private institute in Korea.

Even as I signed up for this course online - while travelling through Laos - I had no idea how I could pay for it.
But thanks to help from a friend and family member (more about that soon), I'm able to do this at a crucial time.

I've begun a retro-active photoblog of this trip called Misadventures of E., and will update it in my spare time. It's mainly for family members and those who know ME but from whom I'd rather keep clandestine certain aspects of my personality - like my monk fetish, for example.

If you haven't already noticed, I've got a fascination for them.
Saffron robes over lithe frames and lickably smooth skin in gorgeous shades of brown.
Shy glances and repressed sexuality.
They hunger for it.
A woman can sense it straight away from the way they look at and away from her body.
It's delicious.

two Lao women watching the Mekong ferry to Chiang Mai

2004-08-02T18:16:00.000+09:00

a Buddhist Ceremony

2004-07-31T15:54:00.000+09:00

was held at my friend's guesthouse in Luang Prabang, and we were there to witness and photograph it.

The elderly monks filed in, an hour after the ceremony was scheduled to start.
They lit candles,

and novices sat outside with the mostly western rabble.

They passed around a ball of string, each of them holding a length of it in his hand.

The audience's attention was fixed on the monks as they began chanting, variously atonal or melodic.

One of the front desk girls kept glancing outside into the sunshine.

At the end of the ceremony, the grande dame of the guesthouse knelt in front of offerings, and brought out food and drink for all.

A group of elderly laypeople tied strings round the wrists of westerners and one another, wishing us safe travels and a speedy return home.

Of course I've no idea where home is these days.
It's simplistic to say that "home" is within me, as I've said for years now, wandering between temporary homes.

Several weeks ago, on the Mekong boat to an ancient sacred place in Laos called Pak Ou cave, I met a flaming-yet-stately Englishman, perhaps thirty years my senior. He was travelling with his dimunitive Thai lover this time around, and has met many American expatriates throughout his travels.

After a brief discussion of English/American/Korean/Thai/Lao politics and philosophies, he asked me, not when I planned to return to the States, but:
"Do you ever plan to live in the States again?"

"Very perceptive of him," the boy said last night when I told him, as we lay in bed after an early night filled with heat and rain.
I rolled over in tears.
"I don't belong anywhere!" I sniffed. In a mood to feel sorry for myself that day, after reading too much of family squabbles and disagreements over lifestyles and decisions.

The boy looked attentively at a point somewhere near my navel, though his thoughts were likely elsewhere, probably somewhere inside his Italian phrasebook. I delved back into a tattered copy of Erica Jong's Fanny, and was soon lost in the bawdy dialect of pyrates and scatological sea captains and masquerades.

Now it's time to run and meet him at Bangkok's massive Chatuchak - weekend - market. Belated apologies for the inconsistently-sized pictures; every computer seems to display the photos differently!

Monks & Bedbugs

2004-07-27T14:33:00.000+09:00

"Do you want to come with me on the monk run?" my friend - the aggressive photographer - asked. "5:45am, the street corner over there, bring your camera!"

The next morning, we spotted them in a silent line, their orange robes wavering in the light mist.

Every morning, the monks walk barefoot around the city with metal pots,

and people give alms of sticky rice or small change or leaf-wrapped delicacies.

This woman charged me the tourist price of $1 per bag of alms, and kept putting more inside my basket. Finally I had to wave her away. I call her the "saleslady".

Th monks range from young to old,

and from swift to slow in their pace.

They walk according to their rank: the oldest stride first, and the youngest follow.

This happens throughout SE Asia nearly every morning, and it's a wonder to gaze upon, even from the sidelines.

On a more earthly note, as I read in bed yesterday afternoon, I killed something that I was convinced was a bedbug. To call the seedy guesthouse where I've been staying "a dive" would be generous. Massive cockroaches in the courtyard, dogs roaming around breakfast tables, etc.
This creature I plucked from my skin could've been a flea...I'm not certain. Engorged with blood, it spattered all over my book.
After research, it might've been too small to be a bedbug, but I changed to another room (had already paid for my last night at the place) and turned everything inside-out...twice!

Luang Prabang

2004-07-24T14:21:00.000+09:00

in Laos is a world heritage city, and I liked it so much I ended up staying there for 8 days.

Met a guy in LPrabang who teaches in the same Korean town that I have for a year.
He's a giggly Puerto Rican guy who's acclimated to Korea with his laughter and desire to connect to Koreans; after all, he's been there for 7 years. (SEVEN?!?)
Still, he needs to escape it as much as anyone else does, and we both grew restless when a group of poet-college Koreans sat next to us at a night market. They laughed and pointed at the food, their voices reaching that pitch I know so well...men snicker, their voices cracking when they speak, and the women shriek plaintively. "Take picture?" they asked the Lao girls who hovered over steaming pots.
Unable to stand it any longer, after a moment I added: "Please?"
They looked sheepish, and I was abashed at my rudeness, but my friend just smiled.

From the market:

This guy's also an agressive photographer, and by taking pictures with him for several days, I lost some of my inhibitions.

Monks from a temple on the unfortunately named Phousi Hill (there was also a Poussi Massage down the street....forgot to take a photo of that one, though!)

Silver nagas guarding another temple

Glimmering light inside a somber temple

"Monk and Monkey!" my friend laughed. "You've gotta get one of this guy!"

Masked dancers from a "Royal Ballet" cultural performance

Gorgeous dancers from the performance...I like this one...impressionistic. Magical.

Some snakes preserved in Lao Lao (Lao rice whiskey...damned strong stuff...we had our first taste at 9am)

A last view of lovely restoration done at yet another temple.

Next time: photos from the "monk run".

Laos and more

2004-07-16T14:13:00.000+09:00

Flashback to Korea: pink dildo machine from our last love motel.
For a solid plastic model: under $10US
For the motorized version (a much better value): under $20

To the recent: from Ayutthaya, Thailand's ancient capital.

We had "beans" - shaped like a pair of horns, brownish-black on the outside, and white starch crumbled into our mouths as we bit through the thick, salty exterior.

Fried banana chips - green (savory) and yellow (sweet).

Opaque grey soup with onions, greens, a hint of spices.

We scooped sticky rice with our hands from large woven baskets, dipped it into chili sauce - fire up the nose, a rush to the senses - then tore pieces of rich greyish chicken and stuffed it into our mouths, laughing, drinking BeerLao and speaking with our hands.

Two more slender men: obsidian-eyed, graceful - rode up the dirt path on motos. With a live chicken in each hand. One man descended from our platform and grabbed the chickens by their feet. Held them up for us. Handed one chicken to another man and spread his on a stump I hadn't noticed before. Grasped a thick blade and hacked off the chicken's neck in one blow. Handed the animal to a boy and then returned to his dinner as though nothing had happened.

Later, a drunk policeman took me on his scooter back to my guesthouse, after many hugs and thank-yous.

Reclining Buddha, Ayutthaya (Christo'd be proud of this one)

Crooked golden spire, Ayutthaya

Khmeresque Buddha, Ayutthaya

Offerings and ants at a temple in Vientiane

Vientiane

2004-07-11T12:09:00.000+09:00

the capital of Laos, is a sleepy French colonial town near the Thai border.

It's been overcast & humid these past few days, and the glint of temples' golden spires are muted by giant clouds in a sky where the horizon stretches further than I'd remembered was possible, living as I have in a Korean city filled with white soulless buildings: giant teeth slashing up mountains and sky.

Last night I sat down at one of the tin-roofed stands outside the market and had a beer while trying not to imagine the full length of tanned skin Viennese travel companion possesses (his smiles are easy and his conversation never flags...so far I've managed to avoid doing the silly things I tend to do while travelling alone).
A tiny Lao boy put a paperclip under his nose; a slender steel mustache, and he hid behind a pole to escape my blue eyes. I laughed and motioned to my camera. "Picture OK?" He loved looking at his image on my digital camera.

His aunt then invited me to dinner: "You like chicken soup and beer?" said her friend, a Thai woman who lived in Laos. I nodded.
"He is policeman," she pointed at a companion. "And so is he, so you will be fine, don't worry."
We set off on the policeman's motorbike in spitting rain past one temple after another and another. Concrete buildings disappeared and wooden houses on stilts took their place. Thick tropical plants replaced dirt clearings. Rice fields stretched into a darkening sky.

We drove onto a dirt road and under a stilted house.
Two couples already sat on an elevated platform covered with woven mats and plastic tablecloth. Large cows wandered after boys in a field twenty meters away. Wild chickens screeched a call-and-response, nearing the end of their free-ranging days under rattan baskets.

I must pack and run to the market to buy them a thank-you present, before heading on the well-trod backpacker path to Vang Vieng, so this will be continued soon....

Change of plans

2004-07-07T22:24:00.000+09:00

as usual!

After a minute or two of reflection, I decided to head to Laos tomorrow night instead. Trains are my favorite mode of transport, and those in SE Asia can range from great to abysmal.
(Check out Seat 61 for train info all around the world.)

I want to try as many trains on this subcontinent as I can, and those in Myanmar are run by the oppressive regime. I may head over there - if I've the cash - after taking those in Vietnam, perhaps Cambodia, Southern Thailand down to Malaysia and Singapore. (My original intent in Myanmar was to donate paints to local artists and do demonstrations of an encaustic [wax] painting technique, but the supplies are now all likely in a guesthouse dustbin.)

Laos has no train system to speak of, so it'll be treacherous buses as I pass through that terrain....it's also the wet season, so many roads'll be washed out, as well!

At the moment, I'm sweating away into a little flame-red t-shirt I got today. It reads: "Can I have hot water in my pot?" below the silhouette of an ornate teapot and Chinese characters. I love it, and the innuendo, too.

The boy is now in Seoul, checking out jobs there. I'll join him wherever he is, whenever I return.

It'll be refreshing to be in a quieter city, however teeming with backpackers, after too much time in Bangkok (definition: anything longer than 24 hours after you've been here once).

Thailand Mis-adventures

2004-07-06T20:10:00.000+09:00

Still it seems I'm unable to view my blog or comments, so if you read me regularly, come back sometime soon!

It's nearly dusk in Bangkok, and the afternoon heat disappears as mosquitos roam round ankles and ears. The PC attendant slaps at them playfully.

Little sleep last night led to dozing on the airport bus this afternoon, and my luggage was stolen by a skanky NAmerican backpacker...a strangely lightened sensation afterwards as I filed paperwork at the Bangkok Tourist Police office. Freedom from the weight of paints and obligations, deet and bikinis. Yet still materialistic enough to buy some clothes before I crash early in an air-con double room on Khao San.

Tomorrow: in search of a visa and ticket to Myanmar.

Censorship

2004-06-27T18:54:00.000+09:00

by the Korean government is the news this week.

We in Korea are no longer allowed to view any blogs suspected of running the Kim Il Seong beheading video.
And that includes mine, though I've made no mention of it here.
So we're unable to view anything on Blogspot or elsewhere, till the Ministry of Information & Communications decides to release its grip.

Keylessness

2004-06-21T09:21:00.000+09:00

Tickets will soon be bought, wandering plans are being arranged, luggage will be stored with friends, rent will not be paid - anywhere, and I will, yet again, be living without keys.
For a (short?) while.

Asked the boy to move his things from my place this weekend, as I need to organize all of mine into compartments, give away books, sort through decadent clothes bought in Thailand and Cambodia last year that I rarely wear in this conservative climate.
And pare down. Again and again and again.
This lifestyle demands it on a regular basis; I've been doing it for 6 years now...

Enough of those pseudo-philosophical, over-reflective rumblings about difficult decisions and repeated uprootings, which are about as interesting to read as gripes about lack of money or sex. On to the actual, for example:

A note from the boy left under my bedspread. Painted with Sumi ink on mulberry paper I'd had strewn on the floor after ripping it into paintable sizes.
"I.O.U. Love. Unlimited. Unconditional + [drawing of hands...massage] + [drawing of a glass of wine] + [drawing of cheese] in perpetuity." He'd brought over a bottle of Cotes du Rhone and feta from Carrefour as he packed his clothes.
On the reverse: "Voucher not necessary for redemption...Your statutory rights not affected."
Damn, he beats all the others. Every one.

Looking forward to upcoming good times in steamy rain-drenched places, temples and rivers, markets and coconut milk, either alone or with temporary companions. And of course plenty of beer and reflection on what the hell I'm doing here, there, or anywhere else.

Ch-ch-ch-CHANges ~

2004-06-17T08:45:00.000+09:00

Well, due to the inordinate amount of paranoia I've recently accumulated, I feel unable to write in detail about upcoming changes.
Yet.
But they've cleared my mind in anticipation.
Thank GOD!! I'm ready to let out a Bronx cheer with the joy of it all...

Had several beers last night with a good Canadian friend, who's perhaps 15 years older than me, with loads of EFL experience. He's also been subject to some of the same internal earthquakes as me, and I knew I could trust his advice as both unbiased and unconventional.
He's also good at springing ideas into discussions that I could never have imagined. "Here are some of the stressors in your life right now," he said.
Ticked them off his fingers, and damn, it felt great to have someone who understands.
(The boy is excellent, but his overconfident "You can do whatever you want in this country...F'em" is more appreciated after some empathetic reflection.)

~ I don't really have a home at the moment. I live in an (essentially unfurnished) apartment that, if I want to stay here beyond 30 June, requires over $4000US in "key money" as a deposit, plus a monthly rent. This is typical of most apartments in Korea. After the experiences I've had with money and employers here, I'm not willing to do that.
So my other options are: Move into an expensive furnished apartment at the other end of the beach, or into a melancholy love motel room yet again. I've lived in 4 apartments in the last year, and am REALLY tired of moving around within this city.

~ The boy is - at the moment - equal part stress relief and stressor. I'm just easily worked up by anyone close to me, over things that wouldn't bother most people.

~ I typically teach only 3-4 hours daily, but must be at school from 8:20-4:30 every day, and stare at the computer for most of it. Zoned out here, not really living, bound by stupid rules and pettiness I disagree with. This is NOT the way I want to live!! (I've more connections now for what it takes to survive here, though, so I'm not worried as before, when I was under-employed and desperate for several months.) Have felt ungrateful in some ways, as my job has more perks than most of my friends here. But the psychological pressure's been intense.

~ Had a teaching demo today in front of all the other English teachers and the Principal and VP. Was worried about it to no end, but, now able to take things here less seriously, I didn't really give a damn and we all had a good time: students, teachers, and me.

~ Have felt I NEEDed to do something besides mere travel: some kind of TEFL certificate. And they run to about US$1500 with accommodation. I couldn't afford both TEFL and travel. Still can't afford both, but am satisfied with what'll hopefully happen.

Now if only my bloody heart rate would slow down. And brain, can't slow it these days. And fingers, squirming toes, etc. Thank god there's none of the violence of years past.
Except I suppose the other night when I threw my hand-phone on the floor. And a few Sundays ago at 5am when after a long tortured night of drinking and perceived insults I tossed the boy's faux Birks out of the window. After he left me in a cab and caught another home (my place's on the way to his) because I didn't want him to walk me home.
And two pairs of charmeuse silk boxers followed the Birks a moment later. What a release it was to watch my anger flutter away.
The next day I wondered if I'd dreamt it.
Nope. I did it all.
Thank God that's all that I could fit through the window.

Time to go shopping for silk boxers.

You'll understand this if you live in Korea.

2004-06-16T18:37:00.000+09:00

Completely.
I, too, get the "Oh, sorry you live there," from other expats when travelling outside Korea.
Wheels are perhaps turning for a brief respite, sooner than planned.

Oh the strange paths

2004-06-15T09:06:00.000+09:00

that have led people here, from search engines that I never knew existed.
Here's a selection:

* Uncircumcised Korean Boyfriend Blog

* Oversized Clitorises

* Flirtatious Put-downs (from the UK)

* Sex Blogs

* Fellatio

* Pictures of Clitorises and Labias

* Pictures of Korean Prostitutes

* Lust

* Divorce

And last, but never least:

* Ethanol (for gods' sake).

Rest assured that I'll add to this as more debauched individuals yank me from obscurity. And there'll be more of them after I've typed these here.

Oh...after another long hard-drinking, careening weekend, and a class that went particularly badly, I decided, once again - for certain this time - that I need to leave. Soon.

There are doubts, of course: "Will a new environment be any better than this? It's just me, isn't it? "
The boy's response: "C'mon, E, it's Spain you're talking about! My favorite vacation spot in Europe. Who the hell would want to live here, anyway? I'm just staying in Korea for you, y'know." He IS always the optimist, and I've been frustrated to some degree everywhere I've lived.
("How could you hate France, even occasionally?" he wondered the other day. Well, I did, because I'm passionate about everything around me, one way or another. Though I disliked the strangely French brand of snobbery, I felt an affection for the place that I could never have for Korea.)

The mini-vacation & TEFL cert I'd planned in Thailand would have only been a brief distraction from a pair of problems: the environment here (all high rises and noise and spitting men); and living in the midst of a language I've no intention of learning, which cuts me off from this society.
Yes I know the latter's my own decision. I can read Korean, as it's a phonetic language (see "Emily" in Hangeul, above...learned it in a few hours of riding the subway), but that's about it. I've been - recreationally, as I seem to do everything these days - studying Spanish instead: a language that's useful in more than one hemisphere.

So ~
I will of course write of any concrete developments here. When they happen. After several recent days of trembling near the edge, I've decided to make changes. And I've begun researching them now.

My time-sense is completely screwed. I sometimes rush the pace my classes, because I've no idea how quickly I'm speaking and thinking. Sharp-tempered and caustic, my students can sense it, and the boy feels it in my accusations. Continually exhausted these days from trying to lift myself up out of this place. Drugged out and dizzy in the morning from the things I've taken to help me sleep.

And the boy's been excellent through all of this. Understands I need to leave - he's reminded me that if I don't find work in Spain, at least I'll have had a vacation there! And have learned some more Spanish, which is what I've been determined to do for two years now. Time to tick off one more goal at the end of my 20s...

Thank god (mentally rolls eyes to heaven with hands folded in proper Catholic-girl pose, hair covered in what's apparently mosquito netting)

Burn-out

2004-06-11T09:30:00.000+09:00

That's all this is. And a chance to toy with bold print.

Rx: Attitude adjustment.
Until/unless we find a satisfactory solution, we'll be here till the end of the year.
"Why don't you just go to Spain on your own?" a friend asked me yesterday, when she heard of where I'd like to go next (and if we miss hiring time in September, it'll be difficult for me to find under-the-table work).
In the past, I would've left for Spain, straight away. I could think of a half-dozen theories as to why I won't this time, but they all come down to this:

It's different with him.
I'm different with him, though I won't live with him any time soon. Insomnia's always been a problem for me, particularly in the summer.
I can also get mouthy, especially after a few drinks, and need the solace of my own bed, and my own room.

He's brought up Viet Nam as a possible destination, as he knows I'm interested in the country, but I nixed that for now.
I want to be in a society (for a while) that really appreciates women....or where the native women aren't fetishized by expats as much as they are everywhere in Asia. Sounds crass, perhaps, but it's often true. It makes for too many unpleasant conversations.

[My first roommate here was a 60-year-old man - the school neglected to tell me of our generation gap till I walked into our apartment after a 27+-hour flight - who drank 1-2 bottles of soju* every night and had taken the virginity of a Vietnamese woman 30 years his junior and had been promising to marry her for the past 5 years...]

All I know is, wherever I'm living at the time, I've got to get back to the States this Christmas.
It'd be the fourth year in a row of my absence from Xmas festivities, and that's just not cool.

A freshly fragmented family [Mom left Dad over a year ago, and the divorce hasn't gone well...he refuses to speak to her, ever; he's also tried to pit my siblings against one another, and has told me things about my mother and my own conception that were just mean] needs me around for a few weeks.
Then it'll be off to discover somewhere else and meet the boy.

As with a number of my American friends here, I love many things about America, but plan never to live in the States (long-term) again. There are too many aspects of the lifestyle there that I don't want, for myself, or (if I have any of the little bastards) my children.

This is perhaps part of the danger of EFL teaching, because there is always someone who wants to learn English, anywhere you'd like to go.
It often takes a somewhat rootless person with more than their share of wanderlust (or, simply, lust) to do it. The more places you go, the more you desire to experience. This can continue for years, till nowhere, really, feels like home, because, in a sense, everywhere does, or can. There is something wonderful yet hollow and sensation-seeking in all of this.

When I set out for Korea a year ago, I'd planned to spend several years here, do some travelling, and save up enough for a small house in western Morocco. That was where I really wanted to live - at least in the summertime - for many reasons. It's heterogeneous - as most dynamic places are - with a fascinating mix of people: nomadic Berbers, Arabs, French, Spanish. There are mountains, oceans, and a nice slice of the Sahara. It lacks much of the pretention of Europe yet is near many countries I enjoy. I could use my French and learn Spanish and Maghrebi Arabic; the cost of living and taxation are low, etc. It'd be a good retreat and was, by far, my favorite of the nearly 2 dozen countries I've seen.

[Other reasons I enjoyed Morocco, a liberal Muslim country (not a mutually exclusive term, that) don't need to be listed here. Many Americans disagree with me, and I'm not interested in a debate about why I appreciate a land where the dominant religion happens to be Islam. Thanks...]

The boy came to Asia nearly two years ago, planning to learn more T'ai Chi and improve some of his varied martial arts and shiatsu techniques. He then wanted to open a clinic in his home country (a place where I've spent several months and that was long enough, thanks very much). He has never been to America, and certainly wouldn't settle there; I wouldn't ask him to, either.

We've no idea what'll happen next, only that for the moment the ideas we'd had before we came to Asia have changed dramatically. They've shifted, in part because we've met one another, but mainly through the disrobing of illusions we'd had about Asia, and perhaps ourselves.

But we can re-evaluate all that in the future. For now, we're preoccupied (isn't everyone?) with surviving this current quake - including the boy giving notice at his job yesterday - and its aftershocks.

One word for what our home countries possess in overabundance:
Me: Patriotism [blind]
The boy: Prurience [peeping]
Damn, I love it when I have to look up a word he's used.
Though I (almost) never tell him.

* Korean alcohol. Though not as strong as vodka, most brands are rumored to contain ethanol, and it's consistently abused, as vodka is further to the north.

Like

2004-06-10T10:10:00.000+09:00

seeks like, eh?

Here's Nyunkia in Japan, an Australian who enjoys photographing eclectic subjects (for example, the faces our minds impose on inanimate objects) writing on her recent difficult times there.

Another western woman in Japan, Andrea's a young Canadian married to a Chinese man, and she's putting more culture links on her site all the time.
Her Japanese experience seems quite different, perhaps in part because she is not single...

The boy walked home from my place at 2am.
Korea's generally a very safe place, so it's not unusual to do that kind of thing.
As he walked along an underpass, three drunk Korean men threatened him and tried to punch him.
He just walked away.
There's no question that the reason this happened is because they thought he was American; that's why they shouted anti-american insults and lunged at him. Most of my friends who've had that kind of experience have been walking with their Korean girlfriends when they were threatened by Korean men. Last night, though, the boy was alone - unless he has a girlfriend I don't know about!
Westerners here are symbols that evoke strong emotions in Koreans, one way or another.

To most Koreans, any caucasian is a "megook" - an American. (Anyone with dark skin is "African". Any Korean with dark skin is teased and called "Maori" or "Malaysian".)
I hear "megook" nearly every day as the boy and I walk down the street.
Often, children point at us and giggle, or shout "Hi!" He doesn't often notice it, but I'm tired of the stares. I know I'm special, and don't need others to point it out....HA!

This morning a strange man entered his apartment. It's a keyless lock; you open the door with a code. Someone he's never met has somehow found out his code.
Needless to say, none of this has improved his view of Korea at the moment.

Anyway, here's a rare link that actually references something of political substance: a post by Marmot on the current state of antiamericanism in Korea.

For something less substantial but perhaps more interesting, here's a Marmot post on a new restaurant in Seoul, where the main attraction is a western (read: Russian) woman in a glass box.

Soon to be added to my "sexy" links: Tangle's Tired, an erotic blog with a very rough tongue. Lumbar tattoos as an incentive to getting it up the ass, and "whore chairs" are recent subjects. She's blase and intense, curious and iconoclastic all at once.

Had some beer last night with two of the boy's coworkers. They're Maoris from New Zealand.
"Very proud," the boy remarked later. They had powerful personalities, and great stories to tell. Confident and relaxed: my favorite kind of company.

As I ordered our second, an old woman next to me stroked my thai silk top and made an hourglass motion with her hands. She smiled and gave me a gap-toothed thumbs-up. "She says you aren't fat like an apple like most [western] women are," the waitress said. Oh, stereotypes...seems I hear [and propagate?] more every day.
Later she had a beer sent over to our table. I discreetly poured it into our friends' pitcher and thanked the woman on our way out.

Debra in Taiwan

2004-06-09T09:05:00.000+09:00

and I have been emailing recently.
She and I have been feeling similarly of late, but for different reasons. She usually writes with a sunnier attitude than I do, but it's been really hard for her lately.

It was strange to read her this morning, because I've nearly the same difficulties at the moment.
Here's an excerpt from her latest journal:

Tuesday, Jun. 08, 2004 - 10:39 p.m.
Here are the thoughts going through my head right now:

* I am a loser that cant hold a job for any respectable amount of time.
* I am selfish.
* I have goals and dreams that are impossible to reach, and I keep trying to settle for less than, and than change my mind and try and reach them again.
* I feel guilty as sin.
* Taiwan sucks ass in ways I can not express fully.
* I will NEVER find another teaching job as long as I live.
* I am doomed to never work again.
* I am THE worst traveler in the history of travelers.

Why am I thinking these things? I just gave my notice at work! We are still working out the details as to when I will leave exactly, but I told my boss tonight that I needed to leave. It did NOT go over well at all. I have stayed 7 months so far trying like mad to make this work. But I slip deeper and deeper into a severe dislike for this place and my life here.

I tried buying things, creating new distractions outside of work, and more....all to stay and finish my contract. But after the blog I wrote this morning I had another crying fit on my scooter as I was going into work. I knew it was time to throw in the towel. I am financially screwing myself in a way that will take some time to recover from, but some things are more important. Like my mental and physical health.

Any advice from ESL teachers who have left a job that they NEED on their resume to get another teaching job and how to explain the broken contract would be nice.
djusttraveling@yahoo.com

Sun coats students as they scratch on exam papers.
Construction booms all around us.
Sounds of metal and rocks for structures designed to last fewer than 30 years.
I've a strangely deep affection for these students. I really don't want to leave most of them. But the administration here, deceit and whispers behind closed doors, is driving me crazy.

The boy can't really leave till the end of the year, so I'm mulling over ideas of what to do till then.
Laughed the other day (after washing away bitterness with a bottle of Guinness) that he'd decided to stay in Korea for me, and now it's my turn to stay for him.
There are plenty of reasons for my distaste for this place right now; the events that led me to this school were unpleasant.
That story can wait for another time.

Looking up at a chrome soapdish

2004-06-08T11:11:00.000+09:00

while painlessly bruising your back on a tile floor - for reasons that need not be elaborated - is even better than mirrors on the ceiling.

You've got to love calling in sick (for a good reason: IUD complications), even if it means being asked to apologize to the Vice Principal, the Dean of Foreign Languages, and virtually all the other teachers in your school.
Instead, I've printed out graphic IUD info in English and the receipt from my doctor's visit. This will make them squeamish if they bother to read any of it. I will pass it to them with both hands, and eyes lowered, as one should here.
But I will not apologize.

Never. The confucian-bound bastards.
Friends with more experience here have said the admin wouldn't speak to a western male the way they've done to me.
I also suspect they plan to fire me so they don't have to pay for my vacation, as they won't show me the contract they've supposedly changed to include it. The Dean of Foreign Languages has been criticizing my teaching in the past week, yet has no ideas for any potential solutions I might use.

I'm completely over Korea these days: the pungent food, the rabid Americanization of their underdog culture that's mostly an amalgam of better-known Chinese and Japanese cultures, the historical monuments of poured concrete extolled by Koreans that have been reconstituted in the past thirty years (and are passed off as nearly genuine because of a half-dozen remaining foundation stones), the bloody high-rises everywhere, the language that's useless anywhere else.
When expats feel this way that it's time for them to prepare to leave, as the boy and I will certainly do later this year. As for the method and location, we've tossed around plenty of ideas in the past week.
More on this some other time.

On to the "Sexy" blogs:

Most of you know Life at TJs, as that's how you found me. Kev's the manager of a strip club in the Midwestern US, and he writes with a lyricism that seeps into your unconsciousness, as all good storytellers do. He's the best kind of narrator: there's nothing to distract you from the story he's telling. While reading, you enter into his world straight away, whether he's writing of the dancers' dressing room, or his neighbor who hollers for her dog every day, little knowing that Kev's planning his demise.

Belle de Jour's been working on her book lately in lieu of her "Diary of a London Call Girl", so she hasn't had time to give us any of her steamy stories which remind us that erotica's more about mind-fucking than webcam-fucking.
Read. Laugh. Grow warm and bubbly. Shake your head at her arch observations, all written with her (pug, smug) nose in the air.

Violet Blue (not worksafe, at least in Korea) is one of the most prolific writers I've seen, though perhaps some of that has to do with her subject: sex, especially leaning towards the vinyl/bondage arena.
She reviews sex toys for Good Vibrations, and is full of great tips on everything from fellatio to anal techniques and beyond. Her books are on my "read someday when I'm living in a country where I won't get arrested for having them sent to me" list, and her blog's one I check out whenever I'm in a PC room far from students' prying eyes.

Prattlepants is a late-20s hispanic-american chick, who writes with a breezy yet substantial style, on being a dyke in SF in the midst of a long-term, long-distance relationship. She'll make you wish that your lover, too, occasionally wore your underwear as they typed. Wore it on their head, that is. She's always a great read, though she's been on hiatus for a while.

That's it for now.
Enjoy.

"It's SHOWtime!"

2004-06-03T12:34:00.000+09:00

I say to myself more often than not when caffeine has failed to lift me to the energetically feverish pitch required to motivate a room full of 30 teenagers.

Anyhow, anything worth writing about in my immediate environment would take up...oh, I don't know...perhaps a line or two (for example, the mysterious sign in Hangeul [Korean] on the water cooler that probably means it's broken, but I don't dare try it as who knows what could come spouting out of that antiquated plastic machine), so rather than write about any of my trivial crap that not only borders but veers straight through the mundane into the other side, I'll tout others' blogs instead.

For today's sample, the "Asiatic"s, several writers also living in Asia.

Yong Fook is a sharp-witted, undeniably hot Eurasian guy teaching in the Japanese hinterlands, whose writing reflects the best and worst of Brit sensibility: relentlessly articulated jabs at what surrounds him combined with enough self-deprecation to make it palatable.
Occasionally irritating, yet always entertaining.

Ryan's the Lost Spaceman . His take on Taiwan, and English teaching in general, is refreshing. If more english teachers had his freewheeling, earnest creativity, ESL would be a more respected profession.
On rare days like this one, where I want to leave this school and Korea (immediately, on my terms, and no one else's!) I envy his and others' apparent contentment, living as they do in small Asian cities and towns. I, on the other hand, get restless if there are several months of bad art at the local museum, and occasionally frustrated at the monochromatic skin tones of those around me, walking daily through a sea of Koreans with hardly a foreigner in sight.

[Aside: "Even Seoul's a hell of a lot less cosmopolitan than Boston," my first recruiter said, when I insisted on a placement here. "[The city where I live] is like a backwater."
There were far more jobs available in Seoul, but I was determined to avoid extreme urban crowding to come to this city of reasonable temperatures, with its fast-running subways, mountains, grey beaches, and, most of all, a tight expat community. Well, Korea was called the Hermit Kingdom for a reason.]

Randy is a Korean-American airman. He's a unique voice in Korean blogs, most of which are written by pale, jaded english teachers like me, many of whom can be ambivalent about our "host culture", or whose primary connection to it comes from a wife/girlfriend.
As a left-winging anti-war girl, I had plenty of preconceptions about GIs and armymen before I came here, and they've been eroding slowly as months have gone by, as I've met people now and then who've gotten me to look out of my ivory tower...

Buddha's Birthday

2004-05-28T11:49:00.000+09:00

is a beautiful time in Korea.

This celebration of lotus lanterns and temples comes at the intersection of spring and summer.

The boy and I had a temple-filled day of mountains and sea in our city, which can be a lovely place when away from pale high-rises.

Often when in the Korean countryside I look around at rice fields, layers of sloping mountains and streams, and think: "This is why so many kingdoms wanted to grab this country, and why Koreans fought so hard to keep it."

On to a few photos:

During our temple-walk, we stumbled across this seaside fish-trailer:

Later on, a woman peeled sea urchins:

We walked around a bend and could see the festival in full swing that afternoon:

Amazing lanterns with temple roof silhouette:

Nighttime scenes:

Cream Bush

2004-05-25T11:32:00.000+09:00

Who says politics can't be sexy?
(A reminder of why I'm happy not to pay taxes to my "government" while I live far far away.)

Dreaming of a pair of these...for their historic value, of course.
Who wouldn't want to pass on a(n unworn) pair of these to their grandchildren?

Time to join the boy for a (chaste, unfortunately) meaty sandwich.
A romantic lunch date at Subway, where the pickles are sweet and jalapenos are automatically sprinkled on top of every sandwich.

2004-05-22T13:09:00.000+09:00

Minimization.

Don't know why, but that word occurred just now.

At a large department/grocery store this morning before my hour-long Saturday class (yes, in Korea, many of us work 6 days a week, though fewer hours than our Korean colleagues...I now have classes every day, including my private classes, which are illegal here), I picked up some chocolates for a 160-odd students who'd won the Idiom Championships I'd held this week in what masquerades as my conversation classes.

[It's been fun having them guess the meaning of phrases like "When the s*** hits the fan", "funny farm", "crapper" vs. "hit the crapper", etc. Most idioms that I give them are harmless, but I like to throw in the odd one that will make them giggle.]

ANYway, the fluorescent lights highlighted my puffy eyes, doughy from tearful insomnia the night before. The boy had been very tolerant of it all, and walked with me first in sunshine and then through aisles of ramyeon.
After debating over the most cost-effective chocolates, I remembered: "Oh, I'm improvising down there at the moment, and really would prefer that my blood-soaked tissue not fall out on the way to school."

So, by the time we got to the checkout counter, we had a cart full of chocolates and maxi pads.
"We've got the PMSing from hell cart," the boy laughed.
"All we need is red wine and cigarettes," I said.
He almost went over to get me some.

The lantern-jawed PE teacher, who's obsessed with tea, hums before he goes into the bathroom to hack for a few minutes.
Sometime soon I should write some verbal portraits of the other teachers, and some of the expats I've met here.

Feel like I've no life as I write this on a gorgeous sunny afternoon.
WHY STAY INDOORS?
Next week, my Saturday class will head to the beach for a picnic, and I'll bring books on Angkor Wat and the Philippines; these kids like to talk about travel almost as much as I do.

Though I got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning and feel like everything's going to hell in a handbasket, it's time to run off, get the hell outta here, split, and scram by the skin of my teeth, to a private class, and then who-knows-what, though it's probably "Elementary my dear Watson," and then take a bus from hell on a wing and a prayer for Saturday night mayhem, as I have a field day and spend my pin money while drinking like a fish and hopefully not getting eighty-sixed from any of my favorite watering holes (as that's be a fate worse than death) before I run out of steam and have to hit the hay in the buff like the near-30-year-old I am....knock on wood.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

IUD'd in Korea

2004-05-20T10:19:00.000+09:00

_ _ _ _ women's hospital had been recommended to me by a good friend, and I'd visited her there several weeks ago.
The reception area looked cleaner than most here, and my girlfriend'd had great things to say about her doctor.

After handing over my health care card, I was ushered into the doctor's office by a delicately panicked nurse, her hands fluttering helplessly around her white uniform, as though compensating for our language barrier.

The doctor nodded when I asked her if I could make an appointment for a copper IUD, and began writing some notes.
Then she stopped her pen mid-sentence. "Do you want it today?" she asked.

Now it was my turn to panic.
First thoughts were of the week-long hair growth on my legs, the weeks it'd been since I'd trimmed...anything, and the last shower I'd had, which was the night before. (Intimate hygeine always goes downhill when the boy's out of town.) Had thought I'd have to wait several weeks due to bureaucracy and the vagaries of my cycle.
Little did I know there'd be even more reasons for apprehension to come.

Checked my watch.
"When does the clinic close tonight?" I asked.
"In a half hour," the doctor said, and motioned for the nurse to take me to the changing room.

What?
They could shove a piece of copper inside of me and then show me out the door, undressed, dressed, and paid up within a half hour?
Curiosity and desire to get it over with egged me on.
"Why not?" I shrugged my shoulders.
Presented a deceptive nonchalantic [it can be a word, says the english teacher] demeanor, as usual.

"Change-ee," a pregnant nurse said gently as she led me to the women's changing room. She handed me long, voluminous cotton skirt in a weathered shade of burgundy. I don't know when it was last washed. Perhaps they do so daily, but they seem to have been reused at least once. In Korea, there's less attention paid to personal space and health care hygeine than in the west.

Back to the waiting room, dressed in a veneer of equanimity and a huge skirt that showed off my prickly ankles. Then into the doctor's office again, behind a curtain.

"Up here onto the chair," the nurses hands said.
There was perhaps a foot of space on each side of the chair. As I began to climb clumsily, my feet banging into everything around me, I felt like a giant western ox.
"No, no!" she shook her head. Pointed at my shoes.
I sighed in apprehension and frustration. Took them off.
(Thank God I wasn't in Japan; Koreans tend to be rougher, less refined, and more tolerant of idiotic behavior and fashion.)
Climbed up again, more carefully this time.

The doctor showed me what she'd do, aided by a 3-dimensional plastic reproduction of a uterus and IUD.
I swallowed hard and just wanted it all to be over.
Leaned back and stared hard at the curtained window as she told me to relax.

Then glanced to my left where the doctor had extended her non-gloved hand.
And froze in disbelief.
She'd pulled the speculum and other tools from a metal can of (alcohol and?) water.
Remembered reading about how essential it is to have a completely septic environment for these kinds of things that go up and up you to strange places where nothing's been before.
Then she wiped the tool on a towel before using it on me.

[Interlude: with potentially terrorizing experiences, like those at a GYN clinic, one becomes used to them after a few years, due to a kind of routine understanding between you and the med establishment of your culture, I suppose.
But having procedures done in another country turns that all inside out and brings fresh fears to all levels of your body and mind.]

"Don't move. Relax," she said.
But it was too late. I'd twitched and cried out as she'd done it.

Oh - and the best part?
Only afterwards was I told that I couldn't have any romantic encounters of the kind I like best for 2 weeks, and the boy was due to return in three days.

Dizziness and fear walked with me to the pharmacy next door, and pain joined us on the subway to my favorite bar where I numbed strange new cramps with cheap Korean draft beer. Thank goodness I had a pair of girlfriends waiting for me.

Here's some IUD information from Family Health International, a Planned Parenthood-esque organization. So their perspective as a charity has a condescending feminist tone, and their bias leans to the left (as does mine).

A friend

2004-05-17T15:48:00.000+09:00

mentioned this photo today.

I've been recently distracted, but had decided (before the distraction) to remove it and replace it with another, silhouetted one.

Want to be able still to write what I'd like.
Also, since this relationship seems, possibly, maybe, to have a potential future for a while (perhaps... any more modifiers I could use?), I'd rather that the boy's friends/family or mine not see anything like this from me, or from him, either.
Or, God forbid, my students: I teach at a high-profile school in my town, and have been in their TV commercials.

Man, my English really sucks today.
Just spent an hour on the phone with my best friend, who's going through a hard time.
Love her dearly, but my hand phone's reception's terrible, as was the satellite delay on her phone card. The wind blowing into our mouthpieces - Californian on one end, Korean on the other - made it even harder to understand one another. Exhaustion after an energetic class and a near-sleepless weekend. So I couldn't be there as much as I'd have liked.

Commercial interlude: Mmmmm....Sun Chips with special Korean flavoring. Sweet, salty and spicy.
Sun Chips: the healthy way to get your trans fats!

Got an IUD last week.
It was exciting and disgusting and scary, and perhaps I shouldn't have done it.
Reasons why will be forthcoming.

More soon.

Ideas for Erotic Emails

2004-05-13T11:08:00.000+09:00

Actually, it's just time to clean out my inbox and rummage through old emails.
I don't want to forget some of these lines.
Vanilla can be so much fun.
The boy returns tomorrow and I can't wait.

Wrote to him yesterday:
"It will likely be sticky in _____ when you return. I'll be wearing some satin, with wine-red lipstick and nails, and probably have sand in my shoes. And I'll require your full attention. Demanding that you focus on me. As usual.
When I see you on Friday I expect you to be naked and ready for me, whether you're awake or not (man, that felt great to write)."

Anyway, a selection from the last six (yikes!) months. Most of them were written while one or the other of us was travelling, as we text message one another while in our Korean town.
He leans more toward the romantic than I do, and I wonder how things will sound in a few years, if we still know one another then.
Helped a friend write an erotic email to her lover the other night, and it was a great time.

Write your lover erotic emails, often, even if they're in the same room.

"When we're in bed I'm not just fucking your gorgeous, slim, tight-assed, long-legged body.
I am fucking your attitude. I am fucking the way your smile makes me feel.
And I tell you girl, I fucking well love it.
In between the tobacco, beer and your own delectable smell I catch the scent of your ideas.
My lungs are full of it now. Before me your eyes glimmer with a bewitching promise and your smile could eat me for breakfast.
I see you, feel you and smell you now.
===
I like the way you judge me in your dreams but then I like the way you do everything. It amuses me intensely that you think I want you to change in any way...that dark haired elf girl looks like you. Western adverts with dark-haired girls look like you, I want to materialise you here with me. You are everywhere, I am a tad drunk but I thought I'd share my stream of consciousness with you. Read your blog and had a sharp intake of breath because you'd updated it. You know, you know, you know how I feel about you.

See you soon. Hey what hotel are we going to stay at, it might useful to know the name.

Cheers,__. I am thinking something I can't express with words, I want to be with you now.
===
Well helllloooooo. The former spoken lasciviously and salaciously in the style of Leslie Phillips, a famous 60's actor who still cuts it in Shakespeare and guest TV appearances. I have gone from chilled to thrilled. Seeing your messages in my inbox made me feel queasy, the unknown, unhoped for. After reading the first my hair stood on end and actually not just my hair.
===
PS. With all due respect and due decorum wishing to give no offence I humbly request you to keep those fucking knickers (green or otherwise) on till I get back.
===
Read the subject line of my last 4 emails inclusive as if you need the prompting. I want YOU so much. [You. Are. So. Right....he does that kind of thing a lot.]
===
Brave the post midnight streets and LBs to vainly search for an internet cafe. Isn't the thought of me vainly searching so appropriate. You can imagine me looking in closed shop windows at my reflection.

There's something about the blown kiss from an LB that I find deeply disconcerting. It's a man's sound of course coming from a well dressed simulacrum of a woman. Likewise the gruff "Harrow" scares the shit out of me.

You......

You......

You switch me on, fire me up and take my breath away.

Could there be anybody else like you?

I could tell someone how I wanted them to behave, what to do in bed and how to do it, what to say and how and when to maximise my enjoyment in and out of bed. But really I couldn't do that. I just lie silently hoping these things will come naturally and unbidden.

Could I ask for a person and myself to be so mutually obsessed, fixated, worried and afraid of the other?

No! That would be ludicrous but it's exactly what I've got and exactly what I want with you.

I think you know the conclusion. You know the way I feel about you.

The good is wonderful and the 'bad' isn't really bad at all.
===
Slick. What a beautiful word and how descriptive. It's funny, I can hardly think at all when my attention focuses on you. I do think I'm going beyond thought although there is a monumental limbic rush as well.

The rush is still going on. I shall have to tell you something factual instead. KL was very interesting, different and the Islamic Arts Museum (the reason I went in the first place) was superb.

I can't do it I'm staring at the screen thinking of you...
===
# Lots more to come. I had a friend who would find the double entendres in everything. He was actually a very happy person.
===
Red fish, flying knickers....
endear me to you. Whatever the combination, I prefer that one, I know what you're talking about, could see the pictures.
You are the best welcome. Later we could take it slow, rub each other in baby oil, take a bath and then to bed if we can make it that far.
Oh the things you can think, wondering and wandering with you are bliss.
===
Long days, still light at 9pm. Space, the sky to be seen. Sudden showers, bright sunshine that leaves you cold. Miles of beach, empty. Cherry blossom second time round. I miss you terribly.

I wish you sound sleep and pleasant dreams. You have the starring role in my reality.
===
E1 and only
I have lots of things for you to wear some of them biological in origin. It will take a very long time to tell you how special and extrordinary you are to me. Showing you will also take me a long time. Refer to the title of this email ["My favourite one"] to know why we will both enjoy the explanation so much.
===
You.....
excite and interest me in so many ways. Everything is so different, fresh and good. I love your ideas and spontaneity, I think they mirror and complement my own.

You....

slay me and I am reborn a better person. So much so that I may eventually deserve my own megalomaniac view of my own wondrous personality and character. I don't deny it will take a while.

You.....

in my arms soon. There is nothing I wish more for.

Yours...... To be continued with my full and focused attention and desire.
===
Let's get.....
physiological."

Dreamt of a fetish shop

2004-05-10T15:32:00.000+09:00

filled with gorgeous lace thongs and fantastically luxurious outfits: heavy lace-up velvet and damask, inspired by 18th-century corsets. Well-lit and tended by discreet staff.

The boy - in the guise of someone I would've preferred before I met him: slender body and features, taller, with longish hair - tried on a pair of flesh colored, knee-high leather boots. With heels. He said something at once scatological and submissive: "You know, I'd like you to..." Couldn't help but smile. Had it been any of my past lovers, I would've looked down on him. But with this one, it seems that not even my unconscious does so.

As much as I'd like to.

Prostitution in Korea

2004-05-10T14:15:00.000+09:00

is a many-tentacled creature.

On the second floor of my apartment building is a resource center for foreign prostitutes (most of them Filipina and Russian). In our elevator hangs a sign, in Russian and English, that reads, in part:

"We provide language translation service for foreign victims of prostitution and sexual harassment/violence...Exclusive Quarters for Foreign victims of Human Traffic...[they are kept] under protection for a certain period of time to make them recover physically and mentally and then return home to their normal social life safely."

Most Russian women in my city have been brought into Korea under the protection of the Russian mafia, which I'm told is quite strong here. There's a certain Russian district where you walk down the street, and you feel the strongest sensation of being watched, invisibly, from everywhere around you. It's rarely busy unless the American navy's in town. Your footsteps echo off decrepit concrete walls. Gaggles of drunken Korean men stare at you over their soju. The SE Asian men don't drink much, but eat huge plates of Filipino and Chinese food as they chatter animatedly. Old Russian madams with frazzled blond hair and sagging polyester lace lounge on the brick-paved street, cigarettes dangling from long fingernails. They eye other western women (my friends and me) with suspicion. We're perceived either as competition or voyeurs.

We are, sometimes, the latter.

I've heard tales of red light districts where the Korean girls in the windows all wear wedding hanboks, to satisfy a particularly Korean fetish. Westerners are shooed away.

At the small red light district on the way home from school, slender Korean girls lean on sliding glass doors, pink lights behind them, and call out: "a-JO-shi!" (mister), or "Hello!", depending on the skin colors of passersby.

I've a collection of Korean "girlie cards". You can find these photos of available girls littering the street on any morning, or taped to the steps that lead to love motels.
Was going to take a photo of some of them, but I figure there's enough on the web fetishizing women, particularly Asian women, already. Similar photos are easy to come by with a simple search. So here are two verbal pictures:

Both photos - the girls' expressions and demeanor - disconcert me. Both feature the word "NEW!" printed in large lettering. New girls are of course always at a premium, perhaps perceived as being closer to a virginal state, or less jaded.

The first has hair dyed chestnut.
A cheap cutting job has been done to the edges of her hair and figure.
She wears a bikini top printed with the American flag. One breast is printed with the word "LOVE".
A tiny pair of camouflage shorts.
They are unzipped, revealing the top of the American flag on her bikini bottom.
Her legs are spread, and she's bent over slightly to enhance the cleavage pressing against her top.
Her expression is closed and pensive, even glum, as she stares into the camera and fan that blows hair around her plain but pretty roundish face.

The second has invisible makeup.
Her head is bent to the side, knees pulled up in an adolescent pose.
Red plaid miniskirt completes the image.
We could see till the top of her thighs, up her skirt, if her manicured hands weren't covering what we're meant to imagine there: white panties or nothing at all.
White socks are pulled tight over slender calves.
White blouse half-unbuttoned.
She appears wistful, vulnerable, nervous.

These expressions I read into the photos are of course contrived. I prefer the tousled, grinning ones who look like they've just stepped into the studio from the beach.

It's all a kind of marketing like any other, but it's the desires that produce these - admittedly innocuous - images discomfit me. And the sight of 5-year-old kids picking the cards up from city streets.

(Vanity) on a haggard sunny afternoon

2004-05-06T10:38:00.000+09:00

I took this auto-picture (see sidebar).
Blurred to keep some necessary ambiguity.

Decided to post it for a while, till I put something else up.
Images give some humanity to any writing, I think.

Why not?

Somehow

2004-05-04T14:33:00.000+09:00

the topic of our teachers' discussion was twisted in five minutes from traditional ondol floor-heating (Korean floors heated by hot water pipes) to oriental/occidental dating.

Don't ask me how; I barely kept up with questions fired at me.
"Why did you think you wouldn't find a boyfriend over here?"
"Why do western men prefer Korean women?"
"Why do you think so few western women date Korean men?"

Looked over at the row expectant smiles from my Korean male colleagues. How to hedge round the truth? I wondered.

Admit that I don't like bending down to kiss someone, and would rather weigh less, not more, than my lover?
Nope.
That a language barrier is only sexy for five minutes, unless I feel like tying someone up and slipping a ball gag over their tongue and truly objectifying them?
Nah.
That size really matters for me?
Never.

"I think family obligations are more important for Korean men than for women here, so it is more intimidating for western women," I posited sloppily, knowing there were infinite reasons, and how can one generalize without repeating pejorative prejudices?

"I think," said Mr. Kim, the "Sparrow and meal" teacher from a while ago, "the problem is more general." I nodded expectantly.
"American - I mean, western, races are superior to Asian, so I think Korean men have a hard time..."
Shook my head vehemently and - for once - waved away what he said straight away. He might've been humoring me somehow, but I didn't think so (he's both an Anglo- and Ameri-phile).

One rarely sees Asian models over here in print advertisements, especially for luxury goods. They're almost entirely western, yet never black. African features are used as insults from one student to another, for example: "You look like negro!" they'll say. "You from Africa." I let them know what I think of those comments.
Straight away.

Sunburst today after days and days of rain.
Thank god; smiles don't feel forced anymore.

Yikes!

2004-05-04T12:16:00.000+09:00

It seems that someone thought I was a boy!

Oh no, honey, I'm all girl...careening hormones and all.
Currently on the pill for a short while and ISO an IUD (copper) in this Korean town, hopefully to be installed by an English-speaking doctor who will understand more than my cries of pain.
We'll see tomorrow.

Further indications of my femininity:

Noticed some older men staring at my rack the other day. [I occasionally try to keep it demure by wearing a size smaller than I really wear....normally a 35C & size 7 clothing...an in-between, both in size and otherwise.]
"Why are they being so obvious about it?" I wondered. Usually they just stare at my eyes, and then I pass them before they can get any further.
Looked down at my shirt on a cold windy afternoon, and realized why.

Most Korean women wear padded bras. Perhaps it's from perceived aesthetic necessity - and, I realized, for discretion, as well. There's nothing so distracting as a pair of nipples poking through a thin pale blouse. The western equivalent would be a bikini top worn downtown, far from the beach.
And for the hardcore Muslim, perhaps: a burqa lowered on the street to reveal nose and moistened lips.

Korean Condoms

2004-05-03T08:40:00.000+09:00

are commonly referred to as "thumb wraps" by the American military guys I've met.

They look excruciatiatingly painful to put on, and I don't dare help out, for fear of causing damage to the boy, either physically or mentally.

A brief review of the ones we've tried:
(NB: I can't remember the names of these, so a description of the packaging will have to suffice)

~ Darling art nouveau-esque line drawing with an unoccupied bed at nighttime. Moon and stars are visible, but the couple in question is not. The condoms are pink, and have tiny bumps - like taste buds - for "shared sensation". Perhaps this is the girls' choice?

~ Black and gold packaging, in a lush serif font. Prominently advertises the thinness of the condom for "more sensation", to draw the male buyer. We found them to be so thin he had to squeeze hard to put them on.

~ Benetton - yes, real "Colors of Benetton" condoms. The package has your typical assortment of ethnically interesting Benetton models. Condoms are, of course, green. Talk about brand loyalty - I mean, who wouldn't want to turn their dick green for a while? These are made in Japan and seem more tolerable than the others above, but are still a trial.

The boy grew up with Durex, and I grew up with Trojans.
Neither of us were prepared with a supply when we moved over here.
From what I'd read, I'd expected to be celibate the entire time.

Anyway, hopefully all this'll soon be a thing of the past, as I'm looking into other options.
That'd be birth control options.
Time to gather some famous quotations and try not to think about what I'm missing down there these days.

2004-04-30T12:21:00.000+09:00

The boy has gone back to his home country for 2 weeks before starting a new job here.
I miss him, but am happy to sleep undisturbed for a while.
He is to bring back for us (hmm - me, really):

~ Plenty of purple Silk Cuts

~ Dark lacy underwear: hipsters, thongs, whatever he'd like to see on me

~ 6 months supply of lg. western condoms (decided that 6 months' worth was too much pressure, so I just asked for as many as he was comfortable carrying on a series of international flights)

~ Lube for some extra-fun things

He liked to count them off on his fingers before he left: "Cigs, condoms, knickers..."

And left a present for me on my pillow yesterday.
Toothpaste and cavity-causing chocolate-covered almonds.
Just like him to be full of contradictions and deliciously bad-for-me things.

Here, faux pas in fashion are everywhere you look, so I wear things I never would elsewhere.
Like whitish socks with black (pleather) trousers and black Doc Martens.
But, for all you fashion police rookies out there, the socks have fat, luscious cherries printed all over them.
And who can argue with a girl who'd wear cherries on her ankles?

"Teacher, look: it's the principal!"

2004-04-29T16:03:00.000+09:00

one kid shouted in my last class.

This particular authoritarian, who (and I say this in the kindest possible way) looks like a half-revived corpse with dyed black hair and bulging eyes, put his finger to his lips as I looked over in a dazed panic.

The class had been broken into 6 groups of 5 students each, and of course they'd been loudly discussing the assignment in Korean, in my English Conversation class. I tried not to pay attention as the principal motioned in several cameramen who followed me as I wove through a labyrinth of desks.

Hoping my red-blackish hair wasn't too straggly and my lipstick dark enough but not too dark.
That kids weren't torturing one another in Korean, or talking about my boyfriend in front of the camera.
That my pale eyes didn't look as tired as they felt.
That one of my heels wouldn't fall off as it's been threatening to do.

A pair of mothers gaped through large classroom windows and I wouldn't have minded heaving a brick through it.

Why does it so often feel like we westerners live within isolated fishbowls here?
We'd rather not be stared at constantly.
Peripheral vision seems unused in Korea, both when staring at people who look different than the rest of your neighbor Kims - and when driving, too.

Note: One has spent too much time around other english teachers when in an argument with your lover you bring up his use of pronouns in an offensive phrase. Then you assert that because he used these pronouns, he really meant the innuendo in a much more personal way than he realized. This could also be classified as relatively delusional thinking.

DVD Bangs (rooms)

2004-04-26T12:46:00.000+09:00

can be an entertaining time with your friends or lovers.
For many younger Koreans, it's a rare opportunity for private time together (ergo the windows now mandatory in the rooms).

Walking into the reception area isn't any different from going to a rental store.
But then you pay your 10,000 won ($9 US) and are led to a small private room where you can smoke and have an intimate cinematic experience.
We've been several times and are usually armed with beer, anju (something-or-other to munch on while we drink), and plenty of desire.
The other night we were desperate and couldn't find a secluded spot anywhere on the beach we'd walked to, far away from where we live. He moaned as I pressed him against a railing next to roiling waves.

Then I spotted a "Hollywood DVD Bang" sign, and we rushed in as he exclaimed about good ideas.
We chose Vidoq, as it looked like a decent background to what we were really after.
The grey room was windowless and furnished with a vinyl sofa that looked more like a longish bed. We looked at one another and grinned.

It was a great, uninhibited time to the cacophony of monsters and terrified screaming that let us be as loud as we wanted.

weekend

2004-04-26T09:44:00.000+09:00

ended with smashed glass.
In the bathroom. Inside and behind tub and sink.
Shards and water splashed into the bedroom.
Thrown in the direction opposite from the boy, I was soaked, and nothing got onto him.

Had felt the breaking urge for days, and it took an afternoon of several misunderstandings and cheap Korean beer to bring it out.
Springtime quickens my blood, speeds up my brain, warps perception of time (10 minutes can feel like hours), disturbs sleep, gives me a volatile energy, easily throws me into rages. Several years ago, circumstances (death in the family, a breakup, and nearly losing my job in the same week) led me to a week-long psych ward experience.
Came out of it with the label of "manic-depressive". They had to put something on my file, on me. I prefer the more archaic, if histrionic, term: "nervous breakdown," which is how the boy refers to colleagues' similar experiences.

"Fast-food psychiatry" we called it, as the ward was for short-term patients: it was designed to get us out of there as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Then increasing prescriptions were written; for the insurers, they were much cheaper than weekly shrink appointments. I took serenity-in-a-capsule (or would that be "soma") for several months, then gradually cut down over several more, and finally stopped altogether.

Shortly before I left for Korea, an appointment with a rosy-cheeked doctor fresh from Harvard med school:
"So why haven't they put you on Lithium?" he asked.
"I didn't want the risk of liver damage, or have my blood monitored constantly," I said. Also the associations with that drug weren't pleasant.

And I knew they were wrong, wrong about it all.
Didn't want to be on anything unless it was absolutely necessary; there had to be other ways to manage the sensation of and desire to fall off a cliff. I was looking for backup medication for times like now....didn't want to be on it constantly. Before, I'd been on an anti-seizure drug experimentally prescribed for mania, and was looking for more of the same.

"Moving to a new country, an unfamiliar setting, could trigger another manic episode," he said. Mmm-hmm, I thought. "Part of your desire to move around so much comes from the mania, manifested as a restless drive," another had said.
Who knows?
Avoiding caffeine [am drinking coffee mix right now] and getting enough sleep [hard with the boy around] are more important.

This is the worst it's been since I moved here quite a while ago.

On another note, a new store opened down the street. American Apparel's hot shorts look and feel divine. Mine are of brilliant tramp-red cotton, and look much better in three dimensions than they do in two!

It's the first pair of underwear I've bought in Korea.
Much of what one sees on display in lingerie stores is high-waisted, full-coverage, and unflattering. "Bikini" is a generous term for the raciest ones, and thongs are non-existent in this city. Lace tends to be scratchy and cheap-looking.

For months I've wanted a pair of hipsters: a nice alternative to thongs. Also thought that Korean underwear wouldn't fit me as the women are so small here, but after finding plenty of trousers that fit, I'm not apprehensive anymore.

A friend and I walked past A.A. store the other night, and our eyes popped out. Thongs in the window! Twice lifesize, half-naked women plastered over the rear of the store!
We rushed in.
Though the prices were high for Korea, it was worth paying extra for soft strong cotton. Most fabrics are cheap blends, cheaply made in China.
The sweatshop-free workmanship was a bonus.

It shows how removed we are here from issues in the west.
I've forgotten all about things like sweatshops and Mountain Dew.

Bow

2004-04-23T12:20:00.000+09:00

your head
to the right people.
I am bowed to (or would that be "at"?) all day long at school, by staff and students.

Dip the head to teachers
but never to students, for they are below you in the Confucian hierarchy that Koreans seem to have adopted with a fervor unlike anything else, save materialism.
Bow head and shoulders to the principal and VP, for they are far above you.
Not only are they part of the old boys club, but you are a woman, and your worth is only confirmed by bearing male children.
Bow to administrative staff?
I'm not sure, but do so, because they all do to me.
Same for the cleaning ladies and gents, all splayed mops and rough regional accents.

A woman comes by soliciting cash for some cause, and I've no idea what she wants the money for, so don't give her any.
She scowls at me.

It's the little things...

2004-04-22T16:00:00.000+09:00

...like two-three months paid vacation,
that make being here worthwhile.
Makes up for the obscene amount of office hours (read: sitting on my derriere emailing/reading others' blogs) I put in here.

During the "vacation-discussion," I was also advised to socialize more with the Korean teachers.
"We are very happy that you live in the neighborhood now," they said. "That way we can spend time with you after school."
Or not, I thought as I nodded vaguely.

Sex in North Korea

2004-04-21T10:46:00.000+09:00

Quote: "Cunnilingus is a dialectic like any other".

Turn up the volume if you like Nina Simone interpreted by St. Germain

2004-04-20T12:29:00.000+09:00

It's been a while, but things have been relatively calm lately, save for petty conflicts with the administration, which I probably won't want to remember, so I won't write about it.
Unless they fire me, which is always a possibility.

I'll just say this:
Yesterday, I either slept through my 730 alarm or it never went off.
This is after getting a sunrise massage from the boy as my shoulder was out of place from curling up to him all night....it could be either from strange sleeping positions or contortions on the bathroom floor.

So I called the only school administrator whose phone number I have who speaks some English, letting him know I'd be late, and he told the vice-principal that my mom was sick. The VP of course promptly called me to confirm my mother's illness and I tried to tell him what happened. He didn't understand.
So it looked like I was lying because some guy thought I said "Mom" when I said "alarm"! but of course the guy-in-question would never admit a mistake. Nor would I talk to him about it...I've learned that much at least in my time here.

After I got off the phone with the VP, I successfully suppressed my urge to throw a dilapidated hand-phone across the room and curse at stagnant air. The boy looked over at me, having the tact not to let a smile cross his face till I made a random crack about Canadians' appropriation of English spelling and American pronunciation.

Recent PMS-inspired conflicts with the boy have led to the following scenarios [he's in between jobs at the moment]:

Said one night I wanted no male company so he stayed on the couch at a girlfriend's house...this'd be the same insane, charismatic, always desperately-seeking-attention chick he was in love with before he met me. I didn't find out where he'd been till the next evening, and couldn't sleep next to him afterwards....he knows I can't stand her, for many reasons. So I asked him to leave again.
What did he do?
Walked several miles to a hilltop temple complex and watched the sunrise as he ate breakfast, hanging out with the temple dogs.
I love the way he can turn a miserable situation into something inspiring.

The next afternoon I walked into my room with dehydrated-urine-colored floors and glanced wearily at the bed. Then back again.
He'd turned clean laundry into a message atop the red-and-white checked bedspread.

One brown-and-white bath towel [a luxurious rare find over here] was folded into an "I".
A pink hand towel was pleated into a heart.
A red-and-white bath towel bent into a "U".
And - this was my favorite part - a pair of black socks formed a period: full-stop.

Yeah, I cried a little.
It doesn't take much these days.

Dong Shin/Kancho

2004-04-12T14:29:00.000+09:00

Dong shin is the Korean equivalent. I think most of us here have experienced it from young students; it's one of the most disconcerting sensations. Here's a great description from Gavin in Japan:

Okay, so I've been teaching for about a week and a half now, and...I've been anally violated about three times and my balls fondled perhaps one more than that. And no, I am not teaching at the Saku City Correctional Facility. This happened at ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. The sad thing is, I had warning, and I didn't really pay any attention to it.

So I went out with a few of the guys that have been in Japan for a few years already, a little bit ago. And they mentioned something, in a scarily casual manner, just in passing: Japanese schoolchildren think it's really funny to form their fingers into the shape of a gun and jam it up the ass of an unsuspecting teacher. Particularly FOREIGN teachers. I didn't really take him seriously at the time, until my first day...I was in the hall when second-period break began, and kids, after realizing I was a foreigner, immediately swarmed me. The presence of a gaijin in any sort of elementary school is usually a terribly enthralling thing, even if he happens to look like a native, apparently.

Anyway, I was pretty euphoric about this. Here I was, my first day, and the kids are absolu-fucking-lutely ecstatic to have me around! I was having the time of my life, wrestling these kids to the ground, giving them piggyback rides five at time, in general just goofing around. The kids kept piling on as I playfully fell to the ground, and I couldn't have been happier. But it was then I felt it: a tiny pair of fingers reaching around in my ass like there was candy hidden in there. Not coincidentally, it was also then I realized that I actually couldn't move under the combined weight of the children, which by then numbered more than a dozen. So there I was, trapped under the weight of a classful of children, with the tiny digits of a mischievous 8 year-old making like a frightened ostrich, with my asshole playing the part of the sand. Lovely.

I should note here that when Japanese children do this, they don't really realize they're being so disturbingly disgusting, as unbelievable as that may sound. Apparently the social mores concerning such "pranks" just happen to differ CONSIDERABLY from American standards. This ass-excavation hilarity is called "Kancho," by the way, or "Enema," and is apparently performed by TV comedians all the time, thus making it okay. Someday I will hunt them down and replace their testicles with their eyeballs so they get a bird's-eye-view as I hammer nails into their scrotums. Speaking of which, there's the same lack-of-morals for nonchalantly handling male genitalia -- one of my first days, this fat kid just reached out and grabbed my nuts like they were stress-relief balls, chanting "Galvin-sensei no chin-chin" (Mr.Galvin's pee-pee), over and over, in a very disturbing manner. I wanted to point out that, as the class fat kid, he really should be too busy being mocked about his unbearable cravings for Pooh Biscuits and other such confections to have the time to gleefully fondle his teacher's Wrinkly Wonder. Sadly, I didn't have the Japanese capability to do so.

Contracts bite

2004-04-06T14:23:00.000+09:00

~at least if you have to make life decisions based upon them.

It's torn me up since we've met.
At first, because he was going to leave.
Then, when he decided to stay here till I leave, and, he hopes optomistically (no matter how negative I get) go where I do.

Emotions shouldn't be subjected to, or regulated by, job contracts. It's heightened my doubts about him in the past few months (though they've settled down somewhat, for many reasons). How? I have felt obligated to decide, now, whether to take the next step with him or not.

Fear that if I wait too long, then I'll become so attached I won't be able to make a rational decision about it as I prepare to leave at the end of the year.
But I already am.
Both irrational and very attached.
He wants to talk about the future occasionally...okay, often...but recent scathing emails from me, saying I wanted to hear none of it, have cut those conversations short for a while.

All he'll say these days is simply, "We don't need to live together there - wherever there may be."
Well, of course not!!
Still, it's nice to hear he thinks the same way.

Suppose I just need to relax, as I often have lately. And think of where I want to go next, rather than where we'd like to go.

He says, a man cynical about many things - but not those romantic - that he'd follow me anywhere.
Perhaps I'll just have to see if he means it, if we're still together at the end of the year.

It's always great to have a man for a digestif after midnight, and then for breakfast the next morning...

Speaking of swallowing...

2004-04-01T11:17:00.000+09:00

always remember to take out your gum first.

The brain must've stopped working this morning after a month of celibacy.
Of course we couldn't wait till tonight.

Example of an "If/Then" sentence: If heated fumbling in a morning taxi isn't enough, then there's always the deserted bathroom at Starbucks, the cleanest in town.
Bitter, black, unsweetened coffee was a perfect complement afterwards.

Later he'll discover what I've written on my skin - around my tattoo and cleavage, under black thigh-highs, under my skirts.

He started it all, weeks ago, with a valentine's day missive brushed in arabic on my back.

To swallow or not?

2004-03-25T16:11:00.000+09:00

Pills, that is.
As for the other, I always do....wouldn't go there in the first place unless I quite liked that person anyway.

"Oh, you're on Anti-D's?" heard one male acquaintance ask another last week.
(It had been some time since I'd thought of psychotropic drugs, in any context, let alone someone I knew here. True, most of my friends in the states are, or have been on them in recent years. And so have I, of course.)

Then I heard the dreaded refrain, asserted by many:
"Y'know, I think everyone gets depressed sometimes," and the guy went on, while his pal-on-drugs looked away.

What right do people have, to speak of the emotional state of another in such a manner?!
None. None at all. Particularly when they've opened up enough to mention such an embarassing subject.
Not one of us have anything beyond a general idea of how another person is feeling.
Ever. No matter how well, or how long, we've known them.

Yellow Fever

2004-03-24T13:37:00.000+09:00

"You don't really speak any Korean?" I'm often asked at my school by curious teachers.
The only other western teacher they've had contact with, M, spoke it reasonably well, partly because he'd lived here for a number of years, and he'd also had a steady Korean girlfriend for two of them.
The latter, I think, is crucial: the girlfriend.
I've often wanted to respond, "The only reason he could speak Korean is because he was fucking one!"

It's a cliche/truism that one best learns another language in bed.
After several weeks with a French boyfriend in Paris, my language ability had increased exponentially.
Intimacy with another demands communication on as many levels as possible, or at least a nominal interest in their tongues.

On what is called, over here, "Yellow Fever":

Part of my motivation for coming to Asia, rather than the other continents that interested me, was to soften my intensive reactions to it.
I'd had an Asiaphile (caucasian) boyfriend for a few years, and when I ended the relationship, my pain/fury/loathing was, to some extent, projected on the Asian girls of whom he'd been so fond. And when I left him, my new neighborhood, in a new East Coast city, was brimming with asian immigrants. Every time I ascended the subway platform, I'd feel helpless (and, I knew, irrational) resentment choke me.
For months. It heightened all my self-loathing.

It never quite went away, though settled down as my life calmed and I found myself again.
As I researched EFL teaching around the world, the highest salaries and most plentiful jobs for newcomers were in Korea and Japan.

Read the expat message boards, and there were hundreds of messages from western men extolling the advantages of Asian women and insulting western women: our casual clothing, our bodies, our forthright and demanding personalities.
There were dozens of comments, glaring insecurities, and put-downs from female expats in response.
Yellow Fever - what a gloriously un-PC term it is - is well-known to infect men, and rarely western women. (Perhaps a comparison of western and asian condoms could give an idea of an important reason...asian condoms are commonly called "thumb-wraps"...they're excruciating for most western men to use, and western condoms are really hard to find in my city....was just given some Magnums by a flirtatious male friend...am SO happy, and the boy will be, too)

"What am I getting myself into?" I wondered at the time.
Not only did it sound like a flipside world of cultural and linguistic differences, but also a place where any physical insecurity of mine would become magnified around petite, smooth-skinned women who knew - and cared - more than I about how to give a man what he wanted.

Moved over here and shortly found that both men and women want many different things, contrary to the caricatures found on the internet. It seems that those with plenty of time to post on message boards have little personality to offer in person, and one rarely sees them while socializing.

There are plenty of other western couples I know who have met after they've moved here.
We are, however, far outnumbered by the western man/asian woman scenario. Rarer still is the western woman/asian man relationship, though upon superficial examination, those liasons seem to be more marriage-bound.

Many male friends who I think of as "otherwise cool" people will admit with a smirk, especially after a beer or twelve, that "It's so easy for us to get laid over here." The boy has talked of how "women have thrown themselves" at him (well, he is charming and attractive with an excellent body and is intelligent with a smooth tongue in every sense...he can be a bastard, too).
Female teachers are at a premium at most schools. Our rationale for travelling/living abroad tends to be sans the "fuck the natives" drive that motivates many western men in Asia. Our reasons for being here are tied to other kinds of adventures....of course, sensual ones are always welcome, if not part of our premise.

Personally, I find many Korean men delectable visually, but it's a very rare man that makes me say to myself: "Now, I really want to take his clothes off, right now."
They can be gorgeous but are generally not my idea of fuckable.
Though I've seen a number of exceptions recently - my eyes are more open to that kind of thing with the boy's absence.

Intrigues

2004-03-17T12:08:00.000+09:00

abound in this culture of indirect communication. Most westerners would call the style deceitful.
As a foreigner, for whom things must be translated, relations and conflicts can be all the more maddening. It seems I've walked into a hive of politics here, and have stirred things up....certainly not for the first time.

Know that I've signed the contract, that the world's unfair and all that rot.
"Be firm and diplomatic," I've been advised by long-timers here. I've been the latter, but not enough of the former.

In this country where honesty - as westerners know it - is never the best policy, I'm often confused about what to say to whom. Who next will lose face? Don't care if I do or not...after all, it's not my society, and I hopefully won't be here next year.
Worry does nothing but raise my pulse.
Damn these rules and ambiguous translations!
At this moment, today, I'm still calm. Have seen enough here to disbelieve assurances - till they're in writing.
Imagined misunderstandings (at the outset) turned into real ones.

Sometimes surreal:
At the beginning of class, a student stands up and orders the others to bow to me. An entire roomful of shiny black heads moves together, the individualism of their features lost for a moment.

Have provided students with answers, for which they must supply questions.
Some of the more memorable results:

"Teacher, how do you spell 'panty'?"
"Um, what was that?"
"'Panty.'" Still I refused to comprehend. "'Panty,' teacher." And he drew a diagram to augment his pronunciation.
I walked away.

Ten minutes later, he said again, "Teacher, please."
I walked over with a disgusted look on my face and asked: "Is this going to be a serious question?"
He bowed his head.
"Teacher, forgive me."
I accepted.

Then, I had them give me answers and I had to think of the questions that could have produced those answers.
Today:

"Wet dream."
Skipped that one...it's taken me two weeks to not react to that kind of thing.

"First kiss."
"What is a good film?" I asked. Is it a film? It probably is, somewhere.

"Love letter."
"What is a great thing to get from your girlfriend?"

Still, what I like most about teaching is the creativity it forces from you. All the aspects of learning: visual, aural, and verbal, must be reached. Time and pacing and eye contact and omnipresence factor into it all.
"Y'know, I never pictured you happy behind a desk all day long," a flamboyant, sycophantic manager told me before. This is the most interesting work I've ever done.

Side note: just received a message from the Dean of Foreign Languages.
"Your teaching schedule for 10th and 11th graders every week and every month is needed immediately." I must turn in my syllabus on Saturday...the syllabus for the rest of the year, that is.
Everyone else has known for a week or two, and I was told today.
Lost in Translation indeed.

"Would you mind...

2004-03-12T10:57:00.000+09:00

...if [the boy] didn't come back?" a friend asked last night.
I paused for a moment - hadn't considered the possibility in a while, as he'd been so adamant about returning to Korea.

Then said blithely: "Not really."
Knew it was a lie.

"Well, I would somewhat," I admitted. Bravada is so much easier with those who know you slightly, socially, with plenty of liquid courage to back you up - till you get home.
Yes, I'd mind, but I'd prepared for a parting from the day we met: he'd planned to move to China. Know that heartbreak, etcetera, is temporary. Easy to say when I haven't felt it in a while.

Remember the timbre in his voice when he said before he left, again and again - in doorways, in the street, in a corner - "You know how serious I am about you, don't you?"
Nodded. Felt it then, the passion rippling beneath understatement that I know so well.
Only when I remember that do I forget the chaff and remember the best of what I've felt for him.

And when I receive emails as today.
He's the only lover I've had who writes nearly as well as I do.
Too bad that most of it has been wasted...before me.

"I am the Sparrow, you are the Meal,"

2004-03-11T17:57:00.000+09:00

said one teacher today. "I love to talk to you." Er, you want me for lunch?
He also mentioned that the last foreign teacher had had paid vacations.
And I don't.

Still pissed, but am now searching for what I will do about this. Am trying to contact that "old foreign teacher" to get his advice on how to deal with this conservative administration.

"Korea." I hate the word today, am tired of it reverberating around my head, of thinking about my life here. I think it's all the students' questions (and the principal's vacation stinginess). Of course they have a lot of questions, and Korea, for the most part, is all they know, and all they have to talk about of immediacy. I don't want to start out with a deluge of information about the states or other englishspeaking countries, so will start with the most visible thing the students and I share: their country, spoken in my language.

From a recent Belle de Jour post:

The door was barely closed when we started grabbing at each other's clothes. Dr C was as fit in the altogether as he'd been dressed, and his hands as good as I'd imagined. I took his penis in my mouth. "Ahh, that's fantastic," he murmured. "American girls don't know what to do with a foreskin."

Well, of course lots of us don't! Especially those who tend to date paler types.
I thought uncut men were revolting for a long time...and had met a few examples that I think just didn't know how to keep themselves...um, really clean.

From an as-yet unpublished article by an acquaintance:

"To cut or not to cut. That is the question. Male circumcision, it seems is the hot new topic. It must be. After all, Sex and the City has dedicated an entire episode to it. While doing lunch, the four Manhattan sirens do the "fore and aginst" foreskin debate. And although all the bases are dutiful covered, it is Charlotte who gets the most memorable lines. For Charlotte the foreskin looks like a charpee and everyone knows that this season charpees are a fashion faux paus. Somehow the adage "if it ain't bust dont fix it " gets ammended by Charlotte to "if it ain't fixed don't bother." In Charlotte's world, uncut is abnormal and not what a good girl wants to be bringing home to meet the parents these days

However, despite all her impeccable wasp upbringing, Charlotte is in for a rude awakening: circumcision is going the way of the dodo....

(An interesting and ironic anectode to circcunmsision as a deterrent to masturbation is a 1998 study which found american males masturbated more frequently and were more sexually adventurous then their uncircumcised brothers) [more sexually adventurous? not in my experience]

...Despite all the movement against male circ, 1.3 million males will go under the knife this year. Only twenty percent of the worlds males but 60% of American males are circumsised. It is the highest in the industrialized world. (Canada is 20%, Australia 15%). And although there is change, it is coming slowest in America.

The majority of American parents are still making the decsion for circ. Strangely, the parents opting for circ are the most educated and most advantaged in their own country. (And they are being counseled by argueably the most advanced but inarguably the most expensive health care industry in the world.) These parents are typically a demographic who are flexible in their beliefs and move quickly to act when new information is available. Still, in this issue, American parents are proving to be the most resistant to change. This is difficult to understand. But again, it is the debate around Female Genital Mutilation which makes this reaction (or lack of it) of American parents easier to understand.

African parents who consent to FGM for their daughter give many reasons for their decision: to prevent HIV, to prevent STDs, to discourage promiscuity, to promote virginity, to increase pleasure for the daughters husbands, to increase and decrease sexual pleasure for their daughters and even for asthetic reasons (advocates in Egypt of circumcision boast that local woman are said to have "oversized" clitorises and protusive and therefore overly active labias). But, the main reason underlying all of the above reasons for female circ are exactly the same reason underlying American parents decsion for male circ: sexual noramality. Most parents whether in Nairobi or New York want their children to fit in and function as a member of the community. For a woman in Africa and Asia the consequences for not being sexually normal are profound. Uncircumcised women can be severely handicapped in finding a husband and the resulting economic and social repercussions are often devasting for the women. Circ is simply what 150 million "good girls" around the world do. In many parts of the world female circ is an unquestioned rite of passage to womanhood and the only way to be a fully enfranchised member of society. American parents' concerns have a lot in common with this. They may joke that they want junior to be the same as dear old dad but the idea of not being sexually normal is a very real fear for American parents. Having their sons taunted in the communal school shower or humiliated in the bedroom (remember Charlotte) is for American parents are very real consideration....

In America there may be no wild fire debates as in France over FGM, but circumcisions will very likely be virtually unheard of within a generation. It seems that the 20 percent of circumsised men are in danger of finding out what the other 80 percent of men already know: keep sharp objects away from the family jewels. And that could be revolutionary, albeit a quiet one.

Watch out Charlotte. The charpee is coming back"

Now after that savory topic:

Am on the rag today, full-on, so gave in to chocolate cravings and T, E and I are going out for bulgogi: cheap marinated beef that we cook at our table to perfection. A dozen side dishes, rice, and sesame leaves to wrap around it all. Delicious.

V.O.

2004-03-11T08:45:00.000+09:00

..will change addresses soon.

A friend said they felt like a "voyeur" while reading it. "If it had been someone I didn't know," he said, "I would have enjoyed it." So I'll soon make this anonymous again....in a few weeks...months, maybe.

Recently:
I heard someone shout to a girl: "Hi, Annabelle!" Her name seems more appropriate for a cow; brings to mind images of a creature that's old-fashioned, plump, fecund.

Turned around, as it's an unusual name, and knew immediately who it was, though we'd never met before. She was one of the many girls, in our city and elsewhere, that the boy had shagged and obsessed over during the year before he met me. Sank and boiled over at the same time...not at her, but at him (at least he wasn't there to see it). Humiliation and a reminder of my many doubts about him and the veracity of his sentiments towards me.

"He had an affectionate heart; he always needed someone to love." Paraphrase from Austen's Persuasion.

Think I made a fool out of myself afterwards to a few friends, though not to A....I don't think so, anyway. Called the boy a "tramp" to anyone I knew remotely well, pointed her out to several as yet another girl he'd screwed, and proceded to get roaring drunk. Of course liquid depressants worked their usual magic.

Last weekend someone said they'd never date a person here, as there are so many entanglements and the circle of expats is so small...during the first few months with the boy, I heard and discovered plenty of unsavory things. Still wince as I'm introduced to new female acquaintances of his, wondering if they've been involved in some way.

As the taxi dropped me off that night, S kissed my cheeks goodnight then slipped his tongue through my lips...I pulled away quickly and ran across the street. Didn't want anything like that with him, or anyone else.

Last night I had a glass with S and his Japanese girlfriend, who's in town for a week. They were wearing their "couple rings" in honor of her visit, though I've never seen S with his before.

Sent some racy digital pix to the boy last night (playing with a camera timer's always fun) and washed my underwear at T's. The woman who owns my building insists on doing my laundry (saves her money on the water bill) but she won't, of course, wash my underwear. So I have to make other arrangements.

Tried to sleep, but an outcall girl in the next room was wailing atop her john, and I stewed. Remembered:

~ In December, the boy was stranded in Bangkok for an evening, as he waited for a flight to join me on the beach. He emailed me looking for ideas on "spiritual things" he could do on Xmas eve there....he'd nixed my initial suggestion of a night out on Khao San Road.

He ran into an acquaintance, L, at the airport, and ended up drinking on Khao San all night with her anyway.
The day after he found out about my "kissing a pakistani boy" incident, the boy mused manipulatively:
"Funny, isn't it, that you and I were both with attractive people that night. Have you ever met Laura? No? Well, she's tall, slender, good-looking, vivacious, really interested in India."
Thought at the time, and while (pointless and futile, I know) rehashing it again last night:
"Well, if that's all it takes, then you can have at her."

Now, a (probably) too-late contract dispute with my school. It has me trembling-mad at them and at my lack of thoroughness a few months ago...and my lack of assertiveness back then, as well.

Felt ready to pass out from cramps during one class. It was a delerious hour and I was relieved that the students had us all laughing as they acted onstage.