"Itewon"
Itewon, that little island of American culture in Seoul, was sleazy. I knew that even as I agreed to go. It had a reputation. Any place with a locale known as "hooker hill" has a decent chance of being sleazy. But hey, I figured, we're Western. If we don't hit Seoul Pub and drink Budweisers and dance to hip hop, what kind of expats would we be?
"I can't believe I got carded! I'm 28 and I'm British!" Jay was screaming. He wasn't having a crisis, he was just straining his voice because Unk's "Walk it Out" was playing loud enough for them to hear it back in the States where it belonged.
"It's 'cause of your hair!" Jay had been the first person I met at the Incheon airport, but we hadn't spent any time together since then. He had a buzz cut and did look like a soldier. Weird that they carded him, though. Weird to be carded at all in Korea, where you can buy a liter of light beer at a Family Mart and drink it while you walk to the subway.
I felt profoundly uncomfortable. I had only just begun to get used to Seoul.
Only a week earlier the tour bus with its caterpillar-eared mirrors had dropped me off in a sandy lot in my district. A a shy man loaded me and my luggage into a little 2-door and drove me nearly an hour along curvy, unmarked streets to my apartment. He explained in the car that he wasn't going to work with me- that his wife, Mrs. Choi, would be my co-teacher. He couldn't explain much more. Like most Koreans, his English was limited to telling me that he spoke very little. As we drove, the traffic became more and more congested. I was tempted to ask him to listen to something- anything- other than the squacking American teeny-bopper music he must have thought he was being kind to have brought, but restrained myself.
"Downtown," he said, after we had been waiting for more than five minutes to turn right.
"Oh, downtown Seongbuk-gu?" Seongbuk-gu was where my school, Jangwol Elementary, was purported to be.
"No, downtown Seoul."
Mr. Kim (in Korea, wives don't take their husbands' names) turned onto a street with the sign "Dongdaemun Stadium" and I saw what he meant. Enormous signs flashing neon pink and yellow English and Korean were more visible now in the darkening dusk than they had been when we started our drive, and I saw that they were department stores. So many of them! We drove past a few of them - APM and Milgiore and Doota- and I wondered that there could be so many people in one place. I wondered if agoraphobia existed in Seoul. How could it? A baby fresh into the world must be placed in a high-rise bassinet upon entering the nursery. The horrible American pop faded into the background as we drove by a concert stage. Horrible Korean pop briefly took it place. At least I couldn't understand the lyrics.
I had prepared myself for a tiny apartment, but I hadn't prepared myself for the co-op. Mrs. Choi, a friendly-looking woman in glasses and a ponytail, met us at the car and helped me up to my room. This was a space roughly half the size as my freshman dorm, including the shower and kitchenette area. I swallowed hard as I looked around. There was a foot print on the pillow case and next to the bed I could make out what looked like a sooty hand print. The place was filthy.
"Haha, my husband says that he has worked with many foreign teachers, and this is the nicest apartment he is seeing them live in!"
Mrs. Choi- Kelly, as I was to call her, had a husband who was either a liar or who habitually placed his foreign teachers in caves. This place was a hovel. I felt ready to cry.
"Let's get bi bim bap!"
I would have preferred almost anything else. Bi bim bap contains every ingredient possible which sticks in the molars and will not be disloged without the aid of a dental hygienist. I doubted I would be able to find my toothbrush in my suitcase that night. Walking to find a place to eat was like swimming through a particularly reedy pond. Everything was slow-moving and I could barely see three feet in front of my face. Old women with screened visors nested upon pouffy permed hair and impossibly thin girls packed into tight jeans and loose blouses wove expertly in and out of our paths. Everything smelled so strong - could that have been fried chicken? But fried chicken didn't smell that sweet. Those were the biggest crabs I had ever seen. That man- was he really selling fur coats out of the back of a truck in this ninety degree weather? Sensory overload had kicked in and we were barely a block away from my co-op.
The bi bim bap- a rice and vegetable dish usually stirred together with ground beef- was tasty in the way that a radish platter is tasty when you're in the mood for pizza. Kelly's conversation was pleasant in the way Grandma's conversation would be if Grandma had a discomforting, patriotic mistrust of American culture.
I discovered at the dinner table that last year's native teacher, a half-Korean named Mina, had been much reviled at Jangwol Elementary. She had worn spaghetti strap shirts to teach at the English summer camp, and hadn't hidden her tattoos from the children. She had refused to work extra hours at school and had constantly badgered the school for more money. The principal, vice-principal, and the rest of the teacher staff were anxious and disturbed for my arrival.
The bean sprouts were stuck between my back molars. I longed to pick at them but what if Mina had picked her teeth? I supposed I could so so stealthily but it didn't seem worth the risk.
In the week that followed I spent an enormous chunk of the money I had saved from my 60-hour workweek madness the year before. I bought Windex to clean the dingy walls, and when Windex did little to help I bought tapestries to cover them. I bought a bath mat and an alarm clock and a laundry bag. I bought plants for the bathroom, my bed area, and the kitchenette. I was supposed to have gotten 300,000 won (about $300) as a settlement bonus but my school didn't deliver. I would have made a big deal about it but wasn't that what they hated Mina for? They said that they'd pay it along with my salary at the end of the month and I hoped they meant it.
So with my hours spent either at school or trying to make my apartment livable, I had made the co-op something close to home. I still wasn't used to showering over my toilet or pulling my computer desk out to use as a table, but heck- this was downtown Seoul. I had the entire city outside my door. All I needed was to learn some Korean and I'd be comfortable and easy in this daunting city.
How strange, then, that on my first weekend after settling into my apartment I was in Itewon. On the way to the club we had passed a Pita Hut, a KFC, a McDonald's, and an Outback Steakhouse. We had also passed bored-looking prostitutes with zebra-print heels and hair piled high on their heads. I had never been that close to a prostitute before except in Amsterdam's red light district, where they hide behind windows.
Our group of English teachers had cornered the tables and most of us were drinking things with names like "soju kettle pineapple." I had an amaretto sour and the beginnings of ear trauma as Ja Rule's "Always on Time" gave the threesome in the corner something new to grind to.
"I requested Vogue!" Tim, one of the unlucky Asian-Americans to speak no Korean, seemed perpetually in quest of the most stereotypically gay thing to say. Ordinarily I would have found it charming but I was on edge.
Greg, who was not gay but seemed eager to please, nodded enthusiastically. "Everybody had better dance!"
I looked at the clientele. There were more black people in this room than I had seen in Seoul since I arrived. It didn't seem an easy city to be black in. The text books the schools used featured a black boy with Sambo-like lips who enthusiastically proclaimed his love of chicken. What image did the country even have of African-Americans other than the rap videos they loved and the black soldiers who came with their white compatriots to sleep with their women?
"I don't know- they might not even play it."
"Cha-cha Slide" came on and nearly everyone in the club responded to the mysterious programming in our brains that insists than when DJ Casper orders us Charlie Brown we had better damn well Charlie Brown.
I went through the familiar motions and felt the familiar slosh in my head. Amaretto sours go to work fast. It should have been fun but it wasn't. I had never found the club scene gratifying in the United States. I loved to dance, but dancing wasn't the objective in a straight club. The objective seemed to be to look adorable and be hit on by strange men. The problem was that I never managed to meet any men there- or anywhere really- and those I did would typically rather chat with the tall beauty with the big vacant eyes sitting beside me than bother with me. I always wanted to wear some kind of sandwich sign. Speaks fluent French! Extensive international experience! Good sense of humor! Creative! Generally interested in smooching! I was as far away from the United States as I could possibly get but I was still plain Jessica, dancing to cheesy hip hop alone in a line of sweaty English teachers, certain to walk out the door only with Katie, who was on her second soju kettle and looking wrecked.
"Excuse me, where are you from?"
It was one of the prostitutes- you could tell by the bare arms and the good command of English. Some of them milled around the clubs waiting for the soldiers.
"United States." I had to respond to her mid-clap, since clapping our hands was what DJ Casper was commanding us to do in his soothing, rhythmic monotone.
The girl looked confused. "In United States, does everyone know this dance?" She indicated our crowd. It occurred to me that if English wasn't one's first language it might indeed seem very strange to see twenty people spontaneously slide to the left.
I laughed. "Yes." I turned it out, and she was behind me.
The song ended, and to my surprise, it was followed by Vogue. I sat down- early Madonna really isn't my thing- and saw the hooker clap her hands eagerly. She dragged a friend of hers onto the floor and they both struck exaggerated poses. Tim joined them for a spell and they took turns making the most dramatic face.
I sipped my American drink. I snorted a laugh into my drink, and much of my bad mood melted away. I didn't like Itewon very much, but I figured I might like Korea pretty well.
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