for love and war. This is Itaewon, the foreign quarter, adjacent to Yongsan Garrison, the largest U.S. army base in the country. I will come to know this place as a hive of sexual hysteria with a neon glint of violence.
“It’s this way,” Rob says.
On the hike up the hill and through bewildering side streets I spot at least three hofs and nearly beg us to stop. But these men are on a mission — even Justin seems keen. We finally land in a lineup outside a two-storey club called Jokers Red, its sign a splay of cards and an evil clown face. The Korean girls lined up to get in are not dressed for February. They are shivering sticks in miniskirts and tube tops, more concerned with looking hot than being warm. Rob is nearly bursting. At the door, I’m burglarized for a cover charge, follow the men inside, and then get smacked with the thumpthumpthump and the epilepsy of strobe lights. It’s then that I realize how far I have fallen: to be nearly thirty and spending Friday night in the sort of club I had zero interest in when I was nineteen. I need to be drunk.
So off we go to the bar. We take drinks up some stairs to a booth with expansive benches that overlook the rail surrounding the dance floor like a cattle pen. Despite the crowd and its accumulated body heat, this club is as chilly as a meat locker: drafts waft in from poorly insulated walls and windows. Rob and Jon rendezvous with some familiar faces just coming off the dance floor. A shivering stick hugs Jon Hung as he slinks out of his coat and tosses it into the booth. She must be one of his girlfriends. She’s wearing knee-high bitch boots and a miniskirt that barely reaches her groin.
Soon Rob Cruise leads a migration to the dance floor; everyone but me. I tell them I’ll “hold down the booth.” I watch as they all congregate under the throbbing lights. Jon Hung moves like liquid, scoops into his miniskirted girlfriend as if she were a ball grounded deep into left field, leads her where he wants her, and then they grind into each other like turbines. Justin is a good dancer, too; his creepy stoicism complements rather than detracts from his moves. Of course, the star is Rob Cruise: the wind-chime swing of his hips defies his age, and, seemingly, gravity itself. Each sway proves he’s got a profound sense of rhythm flowing through him. He’s attracting moons to his orbit, girls curious and scantily clad. When he looks up to see me watching him, he begins shuffling over to the beat of the music with a wolf-like grin, dances his way up the stairs, grabs my arms, and attempts to drag me into participation. I refuse. I know that down there I would be like the decrepit grandfather attempting the Macarena at a wedding. When he gives up, I scoot off to the bar to see if they sell Scotch.
Soon they’re done dancing and return to the table. More people the guys know come in from the cold to join us — a few more girls wearing virtually nothing, and one of our coworkers, a kid fresh off a B.A., his baseball cap turned around backwards. Rob has brought a raven-haired stranger with him, a heavily made-up girl with bare shoulders peppered with gooseflesh and gleaming a cold sweat. In fact, it’s obvious that all the girls are freezing. Their tight, inscrutable faces try to hide it, but their hands keep rubbing absently at their exposed triceps. The absurdity of it makes me wish I had thick duvet to throw over everyone.
Funny how even under the walloping techno we’re still able to conduct halfway decent conversations. It’s like our ears have adjusted to the noise in the same way that eyes adjust to darkness. Listening to Rob with the bare-shouldered girl, I’m once again awash in envy. His flirting is flawless; he’s working over her defences and guiding her through convoluted hallways, all of which lead to his bed. He even incorporates my presence into his act. I’ll come to learn that this is one of the chief ways Rob gets a girl to trust him, by lobbing huge, exaggerated compliments at his male friends. “See this guy?” he points at me, grinning. “He’s amazing. Been in Korea — eight days. Already speaks lotsa lotsa Korean.” He nods at me. “Go ahead, show her your Korean.” I sip my Scotch without smiling, then rhyme off the handful of phrases I’ve picked up since the flight over — hello/goodbye, do you speak English, I would like a beer, may I make some change please?, etc. etc. I expect the girl to applaud with a frantic little clap of her hands. Instead, she nods once and turns back to Rob. In fact, none of the shivering sticks are paying me any attention, and frankly I don’t blame them. I come off like what I am: a dumpy, balding, bearded orphan who has crash-landed on this peninsula. I might as well be part of the furniture.
Justin, who had bowed out briefly from a conversation, is suddenly laughing, a heavy drum beat, seemingly to himself. He has spotted something over the lip of the booth.
“Hey Rob, check out who’s here,” he says.
Rob twists to look and I look with him. Another Korean girl they know has just cleared the door and stepped into the club. She looks around briefly as if lost, as if she’s not entirely sure she wants to be there. I notice that she’s wearing a heavy winter coat that goes all the way to her knees.
“Ho-leee fuck!” Rob yells and begins waving madly in the air. “Hey, Jin! Jin! Come over here, would you?”
She turns to see our group in the booth, but then hesitates as if trying to gauge whether she wants to join us. She sighs, rolls her eyes, comes marching up the stairway, and arrives at our table, her face flushed from the cold.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Jon Hung clichés.
“Well, if it isn’t my waegookin friends,” she replies, using the Korean word for foreigner. “Friday night and you’re drinking, surprise surprise.”
“What are you doing here?” Rob asks, tucking an arm around the bare-shouldered girl.
“I came to hear the DJ. He played the Armada in Hongdae last weekend, but I missed him.”
“Are you going to join us?”
“I suppose.”
We all scrunch in to give her room to sit. Before she does, she opens her coat, but does not take it off. Underneath, she’s wearing a white cashmere sweater and blue jeans.
“So I hardly recognized you without a cigarette in your mouth.” Rob grins at her. “What, did you quit?” The other girls guffaw, as if what Rob has said tells them everything they need to know about this Jin character. Despite Korea’s rapid assent into modernity, smoking among women is still considered verboten. Jin simply stares at him. “And you grew your hair long again, thank God,” Rob goes on. “That bob you had was a disaster.” She tilts her head and stares even deeper into him. He realizes that he’s probably jeopardizing her presence at the table, and he softens his tone. “So where you been, girl?”
“Working,” she replies. “I see you’re still cruising, Mr. Cruise.” She turns then to the bare-shouldered girl and says with a sort of cheery, deadpan cattiness: “You know, he slept with nearly a hundred women last year — some of them prostitutes.” The girl laughs loudly but uneasily. Within a minute she gets up to go to the bathroom, or so she says, but then disappears into the crowd’s pulsating throngs. Rob keeps looking for her over the rail as our small talk chirps around his head, and when it becomes clear he’s lost her, he turns back to the table to seethe at Jin.
“Why don’t you take off your coat,” he snipes at her.
“Because I’m fucking cold,” she yells over the music. “You guys can ogle me later.” I laugh at this, I can’t help it, but nobody looks at me. “So who’s going to buy me a drink?” she asks. As if by reflex, Jon, Justin, and the kid in the baseball cap all make intimations toward their wallets before stopping themselves as if they’ve been tricked. She just shakes her head. “Ugh. You waegookins are all the same.” And scoots up fast, faster than I can make an offer to get her a drink, and heads to the bar on her own, her lengthy winter coat ballooning like a cape around her.
Aptly
