Making the most adorably sheepish face, he wiped his mouth with his hand. He slowly got up and switched on the perfectly sculptured floor lamp (obviously another gift from his mother). The soft lighting fell on his back, and I could finally see the full shape of his tattoo. The pointed thing that reached the end of his finger was not a tail but a root. What ran up his arm and leg and stretched around his chest and back was a large tree. One that grew out of and covered a tiny planet, like in The Little Prince.
—Is that a baobab, like the one in The Little Prince?
—No. It’s the Tree of Life.
—What’s that?
—Nothing too meaningful. It contains the principle of the universe that I once studied.
He went on and on about how the universe was like a giant tree, some idea that combined sacred-tree myths from East and West, of invisible seasons and blah blah blah about death and rebirth, but all I could see from the tattoo was an attempt to cover up traces of an embarrassingly delinquent past with a more appropriately cool picture (not that the picture itself was either appropriate or cool). I could see through the thick branches and leaves some faint ghosts and red roses, lotus flowers, and dragons, which looked more like incomplete Irezumi tattoos.
—Didn’t you just draw a tree over an Irezumi tattoo?
—Wow, you must have the second sight. How could you tell?
—Because . . . I have eyes . . .
A “hyung I know” (he had a hyung he knew in every social stratum, it seemed) who had come over from Japan when he was in high school had done the Irezumi tattoo for him. But this hyung was sent to prison before he could finish it, and the incomplete tattoo had only recently been drawn over.
—But do kids these days know about Irezumi? It was a fad in my day.
“A hyung I know,” and “kids these days.” His word choices really were like those of a stuffy, middle-aged ajussi. After a few more clues, I finally discovered that he was a whole Chinese zodiac cycle older than me—twelve years. Born 1976, year of the dragon, entering class of 1995 at K— University.
Despite the natural sense of a generation gap, it didn’t change how I felt about him in the least. He stroked my short beard.
—Lying here with you in the dark . . .
—Yes, hyung?
—It’s like we’re the last two people on Earth.
—Oh, hyung. Enough with that.
Conversations with him at his house sometimes gave me the feeling that he was reciting lines from a Greek tragedy or an absurdist play, or even an eighties movie. Sure, it was partly because he liked to talk about existential stuff or his philosophy of the universe, but it was also because we spoke in formal Korean. I actually sort of liked it that way and thought it was a cute dynamic to have as a couple. What an idiot I was back then.
Around sunup, he and I would leave through the front gate that creaked as if it were crying. There was a dry cleaner in the neighborhood shopping center next door to his house. When the dry cleaner was open, he walked two steps behind me. When it was closed, he walked holding onto my little finger. I liked walking down the street with him hand in hand so much that I preferred to leave early with him. We would reach the main road together and stand shoulder to shoulder until the first bus arrived.
When the bus came and I climbed in, he would put one hand on my back then wave to me with the other. I would sit near the back and turn to the window, through which I could see him waving. The people around me would be dozing as I watched his form grow smaller and smaller. He would wave until the bus turned a corner and I vanished completely from his sight. He was the first person who had ever gazed after me that way.
For too long, I was caught up in the delusion that wherever I was and whatever I did, he would always be there behind me, waving. And so I would return to the hospital under the last remnants of moonlight, creep soundlessly through the newly scrubbed corridors, empty my bladder, and begin my day by listening to Umma complain about how bad her sleep had been.
?
He and I continued to see each other after the twelve-week course at the institute had ended.
That small window of time, those few hours around dawn, decided the flow of my entire day. When we weren’t together, I would wonder about where he was and what he was doing. I was always under his influence, whether I was half listening to Umma’s complaints and taking care of her or making up stuff to put in my cover letters for job applications. Even while walking down streets I’d walked thousands of times before, I felt I was in thrall to his spell. Wanting to see the world from his elevation, I walked on my toes and looked out through what I imagined were his eyes. My thoughts were full of things he might be interested in or what we might do together as a couple. I felt my sensitivity to the world around me heightening with the effort.
That was probably why I went into that Gap store I normally would’ve walked past. There was a sign for a two-for-one sale on T-shirts. I got the same T-shirt in XXL and XL and put them in my bag. I might have even smiled, imagining the T-shirt hanging from his smooth, cold back.
That night at his house, I took out the T-shirts from my bag and presented them to him. His expression immediately turned cold, and he stared at the two shirts that were the same in design but different in size and color.
—I can’t wear this.
—Oh. I guess wearing the same shirt might be a little too much. But maybe when we’re alone at home . . .
—There’s that, but it also has the American flag on it.
—What?
—Mr. Young, I do not wear clothes with this flag. Sometimes I think Mr. Young goes around wearing such symbols with no consideration of their meanings. Symbols such as the flags of warmongering countries. Do you really like America so much?
—Um, well, I mean, not really.
—Your music is all American.
—I like the divas. All gay guys do. What kind of a gay man isn’t into Britney or Beyoncé?
—Who?
—Jesus . . .
But he was already on about how everything about America and the “American Empire” made him uncomfortable.
—The “American Empire”?
—Yes. American imperialism.
Imperialism. I had literally not heard the word spoken out loud since high school. What was there to say to that? His determined expression short-circuited my brain, and I felt nothing but the weird shame of having committed some obscure faux pas, with the American flag sewn on my shirt and cap. Not that I was ashamed of my supposed political ignorance (I’ve never been ashamed of anything like that). My shame stemmed from a fear that he would get sick of my ignorance and mindlessness and cut me out of his life. I was obsessed with getting him to like me, and I stood ready to change my entire value system for him. We spent our first sexless night after that. We didn’t share a meal, our conversation was about nothing, and the distance between us refused to disappear.