The Animal World

Standing on the corner in the gas station glow with the Torontonian, the Bostonian, two high school dudes in matching blue uniforms ... the first dying moth of spring swims in circles on the pavement ... the Torontonian is peering down at his iPod with a green flask in his hand ... the Bostonian is emptying a bottle of soju into this high school dude's wide open mouth, molar fillings catching the light ...

A white girl enters the convenience store ... the Torontonian and the Bostonian peek at her through the glass ... the Torontonian pronounces her ugly ... the Bostonian diagnoses her a dyke ... she comes back out with a carton of milk, the Bostonian gives her shit ...

"Sup, cracker?" he snaps.
"Fuck you," she says.
"Just being friendly," shouts the Torontonian, flipping her off.
"Some party you got there, fags," she snarls as she crosses the street.

The wet sound of passing cars fills the silence ... the high school dudes are red-faced and beaming ... it is 2 AM ...

"What are we gonna do now?" asks the Torontonian ... the question makes me shudder, or maybe it's the wind ...

"We are standing here on the corner," the Bostonian says, "and we are keeping quiet until something happens."

While the Torontonian is quacking about the burgundy fitted suit he bought in Phuket, a cab screams to a stop in the middle of the intersection ... there is a sick muffled pop ... the Torontonian shuts up ... with the engine humming, the driver gets out of the cab, walks around front, squats before the bumper ... something's pinned under his right front tire ... a bag? ... a loaf of bread? ... grey and white ... fuzzy ... a tail ... it is a cat ... the driver lines himself up, free kicks the cat corpse and it tumbles, rolls over twice, tail windmilling, limp paws outstretched and bobbing ... he instep kicks it six times until it's nestled with its nose up against the curb ... the driver gets back in the cab and peels out, careens through a red light ...

The Torontonian removes his headphones ... "Christ," I murmur ... the Bostonian staggers into the convenience store and returns, leading the gas station attendant by the arm ... the attendant, his whole face marred by some terrible blueberry-colored bruise, spots the cat, nods grimly, speaks a soft aside to the high school dudes, they nod grimly ...

Minutes pass ... a white Kia pulls up to the curb ... two women get out of the car ... one woman is carrying a black Adidas shoe bag ... she kneels while the other nudges the cat into the bag with her toe ... the bag is carefully placed atop an impromptu sidewalk garbage heap ... the women get back in the car, the car changes lanes, coasts through a red light ...

"That ain't no way to bury a cat," the Bostonian says and I nod grimly, unsure of what he means ...

A man in a tan trenchcoat swaggers by, points at us, baptizes me with his bottle of soju ... drunk, Korean, man ... a drunk Korean man ... he says to us: "The cat has died. Let's go home."

The high schoolers bow to us and chatter to each other en route to the PC room across the street ... I wander into the convenience store to buy a cup of ramen ... the Bostonian and the Torontonian linger on the corner planning a cremation ceremony, but I'm in bed before that happens ...

Sometimes I'm the slave, sometimes ...

It's dawn and the foreigners are pushing each other around in shopping carts, frightened giggles and metallic rattling noises coming from the illlit alleyway between chicken places. Meanwhile, Korea sleeps: mommy curled up in bed with her 20 year-old son; daddy splayed out naked, lying unconscious on a medicine-white futon down at the neighborhood rub 'n tug. Soon, Korea will wake up, jettison the kids off to school for twelve hours. Mommy will strap on her sun visor, go out and price haggle with vegetable vendors, come home and cook kimchi stew, stare pensively out the window, watch KBS dramas all afternoon. Daddy will wear a silver suit for fourteen hours and he won't come home after that. The foreigner gets up at one PM, groans, watches videos on the internet until three, walks to school munching on a cornbread thing, thinks this is all a pretty raw deal, public restrooms ain't got toilet paper ...

Request

If anyone happens to find themselves in The Brothers Lounge on 38th and Farnam in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, North America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Universe: please let me know whether they still have The Best of Roxy Music and Exile on Main St. in the jukebox. So I can sleep at night.

Inclined pushups in the buff

I am lying there in the sauna, drifting off as I watch some tubby old guy do inclined pushups in the buff. He does twenty, stands back up, claps his hands, jumps around, everything jiggles. Then, he turns to me and bellows something. I sit up and stare at him through the mist. He's pointing at a spot on the floor and bellowing, cackling and bellowing. He is challenging me to an inclined pushups in the buff duel. I am wearing nothing but sauna steam.

I get in the wheelbarrow position with my legs propped up on a two-foot-high stone bench. The man bellows again, indicating that my toes need to be pressing against the front of the bench, not perched on top of it. I reposition myself accordingly. Then, while this nude Korean man looks on, I start doing pushups. He claps and bellows and cackles. I get to ten and can probably do more, but the tediousness of doing pushups - even naked, even with a nude Korean man watching me - entices me to quit out of sheer boredom.

The nude Korean man cackles, squeezes my bicep, bellows that I am strong. I say, bashfully, no, no, no, you are strong, though he is almost all gut. We talk briefly about his family, about his wife's cooking, about his daughter who is studying something in college, but I don't know the Korean word for her major. He asks if I am coming back to the sauna tomorrow. I nod noncommittally. He squeezes my bicep, cackles, turns and disappears into the mist.

On the flatscreen in front of the hottub is a Bob Saget Era episode of America's Funniest Videos. Seated around the hottub is a ring of naked Korean men, watching Bob Saget. It's one of the $100,000 Contest episodes, so I take a seat. The grand prize winner is someone dropping a toilet down the stairs. Nobody laughs.

Walking home.

I feed the beasts some word puzzles and while they tear each other apart, my mind melts into the white paint on the wall. It is six something and I have taught nine classes today. Two of them weren't anywhere on my schedule, but I taught them anyway, because I am a slave for children.

Walking home. I'm two blocks from my dumpy little flat where a clogged toilet and a 50-pack box of Quaker Oatmeal await me. It's like the afterlife. But first, I stop for a bowl of take-out kimchi stew. When I get inside the restaurant, the owner guy approaches and embraces me. What? Oh, right. This man befriended me whilst he was staggering drunk one night several weeks ago; I think it was a Tuesday. He insists that I stay and eat at his restaurant, so I do. I'm sitting by myself and in Korea, this means you are insane. The table of high school girls next to me bubbles over with giggles.

The owner guy asks me if I want a cup of coffee and I say yes. I wait outside in the cold, breathing clouds. He comes out and hands me a little pee cup of sugary milkwater and then practices his English on me for half an hour. He seems to know 30,000 vocabulary words, but not how to pronounce or use them. He embraces me again, says he is very jubilation, and asks me to come by his restaurant every day for good pood. I say sure.

A block away from home, I stop by the bakery for a cornbread thing. I'm browsing the cornbread thing shelf when the door opens behind me and one of my middle school students walks in.

"Teacher. Buy me pood. Puh-lease-uh," he says.

Ordinarily, I would drop a quip and disappear into the night, but my will is so decimated at this point that I cave in and buy him a pig-face cheese danish. He says thanks.

"One day," he says, "I buy you pood."

I'm in the convenience store across the street from my apartment. My canned coffee rings up for three bucks which strikes me as vaguely ludicrous, but I'm too spaced to argue. As I pull my wallet from my back pocket, it vomits all my cards out on the floor. While I'm bent over trying to claw the cards up off the tile with my untrimmed fingernails, five Korean geezers cut in front of me in line. When I finally get out of there with the coffee, I'm stopped at the door by a woman holding a gurgling fetus/baby thing that's about six hours fresh from the womb.

"Excuse me," she says, "please talk to Jae-Min."

Me: Hello!
Jae-Min: [ogles, spits up on self]
Mom: Say hello, Jae-Min!
Me: Hello, Jae-Min!
Jae-Min: Wagghhhhh.
Mom: Say hello, Jae-Min!
Me: Hello!
Jae-Min: Blughhhhh.

Mom thanks me, bows, and walks away.

I shut the door and lock it behind me. I'm home. On the dining room table is a 50-pack box of Quaker Oatmeal. In the bathroom is a clogged toilet.