Four people crowd around a small table in a one-room apartment on a tilted, crooked street. The street is in the second-largest town on the second-largest island off the southern coast of South Korea. Two of these people are English, one is Canadian, the other American. The lights are low. The drink has been flowing for several hours, courtesy of yours truly, your friendly neighborhood expatriate bartender-in-training. There's a bed, a few poles with clothes hung on them, a dresser, a derelict TV, a refrigerator, a tiny kitchenette, and a bathroom around the corner. By now, the linoleum floor is gritty with tortilla chip crumbs and dropped peanuts. The air is filled with the smell of alcohol, salty snacks, laundry detergent, Korean pepper paste, citrus, and maraschino cherries. The laptop is on. Several YouTube videos on the screen, one playing Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly"; Groove Armada and Oasis wait in the wings. Jokes are being cracked, stories told, laughs exchanged, fun had. Four plastic highball glasses (filled with rum daisies, tequila moonrises or Chelsea Hotels) are making the rounds between table and lips. Occasionally, one of the four people leaves to use the lavatory; sometimes the entire company adjourns to the rooftop to stargaze, or to look out over the uneven, haphazard, Mary-Poppins skyline of the city. All of us are in a drunken stupor, a happy haze. We've had a hard day of teaching hyperactive Korean children the finer points of the English language. Perhaps we graded 30 journals at a stretch, having to add in all the articles (or subtract all the excess) ourselves. Maybe little Tommy was acting up again and gave us a headache. Maybe it was hot as hell in the classroom because the head secretary's too goddamn cheap to turn on the A/C. Maybe we just had a bad day. But it's all gone now.
We're having a damn fine Friday night in.
4 comments:
This sounds exotic, comfortable, sweaty, magical. Like one of those memories you solidify permanently in your brain to look back on when you are too old to leave your bed, or too tired to create a new picture. How long were you a teacher in Korea for?
It was all those things. Magical foremost. That's EXACTLY what this memory has done: cemented itself in my head, and I couldn't be gladder. I'm going to need it when I'm too old to leave my bed. How did you know that's just what I was thinking when I wrote this?
I was there exactly one year. I would've re-upped for another--even now I regret that I didn't--because I thought I'd better get back and get some flying done.
What a vivid scene - I feel like I'm there. Adjourning to the rooftop is my favorite part.
Yeah, we made it a nightly tradition. I'd look up and, in slurred tones, recite the names of the constellations I knew (about five).
I hoped you'd like this, Polly.
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