—How sad for him.
—That’s why I’m doing this job. I’ve seen too many people ruined by their art or their convictions.
What could art have done to ruin anyone? And wasn’t Spinoza a philosopher, not an artist? I didn’t say any of this out loud. He kept talking in that overserious tone of his about things I had no interest in or didn’t think important, but I pretended to listen. The air purifier by the bed toiled throughout his rambling. I stared at it as I spoke.
—I’m glad the air in here is so clean.
The semibasement apartment had blackout curtains, making it as dark as a cave. It was quite large, but crammed with so much stuff that I felt a bit claustrophobic. His giant desk was stacked with books by philosophers I’d never heard of, and he had air purifiers, dehumidifiers, and air conditioners in both of the two rooms. There was also an ergonomic armchair, a Scandinavian-style sofa and dining table set, and a rug that looked new.
—Your home is amazing. Lots of nice things . . .
—Actually, my umma was a Jasmine Black.
—What’s that?
—It’s a customer status department stores give to people who spend a lot of money. Like a VIP of shopping.
—Mm . . . OK. (When was the last time I’d heard such transparent bragging?) You must be pretty well-off.
—I used to be, but not anymore. I told you about it, right? That my umma is an alcoholic. She likes to shop when she’s drunk. Look at how I have two air conditioners and dehumidifiers. The bookcase and sofa are all her drunk purchases.
—What a habit. Me shouting and kissing men when I’m drunk is nothing compared to that.
A joke, but it fell heavily into the dark silence that followed.
—My family went bankrupt because of it. I lived in an apartment in Apgujeong from the day I was born up to my college graduation, but now here I am in this dump.
What do I say to that? Still, this isn’t so bad, you’re not about to die from cancer or anything, at least you got to live in Apgujeong at one point in your life, were all not great options. Because I couldn’t break my childhood conditioning, I began calculating his position on my mother’s charts: an apartment of this size, grew up in Apgujeong, and a freelance editor. The result? I’m sorry, sir, we cannot offer you membership. But I myself was a French graduate from a mid-tier university and unemployed, so we were the perfect leftover couple, and the feeling that even that was fated made me think I was well and truly dickmatized.
I fell asleep holding him in my arms, listening to him breathe. By the time I woke up, he was also beginning to stir. We both turned to face each other and looked into each other’s eyes. I asked:
—Hyung, how did you know I was on “this side”?
—That was obvious the moment I laid eyes on you.
—Did you know we’d end up like this?
—Yes, from that first moment.
Who knew where this confidence came from? I was repulsed by this implied self-hating-gay dynamic, that he was the most masculine and attractive person on Earth and I was just some obviously gay super uber GAY GAY GAY in comparison, but I couldn’t stop myself from falling headlong in love with him. To understand him, and beyond that, to understand my own thoughts and feelings as I crashed into him, and to interpret that whole mess of contradictions, I listened to every word he said, observed every little thing he did, and recorded it all. Desperately and plaintively, just like a grad student spending years writing their dissertation.
?
That summer, I was totally obsessed. Obsessed and possessed.
He would invariably call after midnight, and I would leave Umma sleeping in her hospital room as I took a taxi to his place. The side effects from the Lasik surgery I’d had made the lights from the five hundred-odd streetlamps along Olympic Boulevard bleed into one another as the taxi zipped by, and the whole world looked like the inside of a dream. I paid the cab fare, about 15,000 won, got out, knocked on the steel gate of his building until I made the rusted hinges rattle, and finally there he was, a whole four inches taller than me, opening the door and emerging from the gate.
—You’re here.
A shy voice. In the dim light his eyes were sunken and his lips protruded, so unbearably cute that even before I stepped through his front door I touched and stroked his face (he hated when I did that).
That night, we ordered spicy chicken feet and soju. We’d almost polished off three bottles of soju when he lay down with my leg as a pillow (unlike him, I was still a few shots short of the red-faced stage of drunkenness). He began to lay out his life history: He was born into a rich family in the Apgujeong neighborhood, but his father couldn’t stand his alcoholic mother and deserted them early, while his older sister was married young to a Korean American and was now living in Virginia. He had lived with just his mother since university, until he put her in a hospital and moved out. The back of his head and neck grew warmer and warmer against my leg as he talked. I had a lot to talk about as well, being the caretaker of my sick mother and all. We both concluded that it was harder to handle their growing meanness and violence as they aged, and their extreme moods that seemed to shift by the second. He had been chattering on and on but suddenly fell silent; I looked down and found him asleep. What was he, a Kongsuni doll that went to sleep wherever you laid it down? His body spasmed a few times and he murmured, “Umma.” A tear ran from one eye. Well, this is a bit dramatic, I thought; it was kind of funny that a grown man about to enter middle age was crying for his mother in his sleep. I stroked his head.
It was both awkward and nice that he kept talking about his family and childhood background. It was funny to see him get drunk on his own emotions and go into a serious actor-y mood when he talked about his family. While I was uncomfortable having to share my own family history as a kind of tit for tat, it was still nice to learn more about his life. I wanted to listen to him all night, for many nights on end. I wanted to fit together his fragmented pieces and complete the puzzle of him in my mind. The life that was unknown to me, the habits I wasn’t aware of, even his breath—I wanted to reconfigure them all and make them my own.
Unaware of my obsessive thoughts, he slept blissfully until my leg started cramping, then his eyes jerked open as if someone had called out his name.
“You know you’ve been drooling, right?” I said as he got up.