Ji-yeon, the super-muscular guy with the prettiest face and shittiest temper of us all, went up to the DJ booth and screamed, in his amazingly loud voice, for him to put on some T-ara right this minute, but the DJ continued to look full of himself, pretending to be all serious with one side of his headphones held up to his ear. Didn’t this pretentious fuck play the same old tired club mix every single week? Look, asshole, is this America or Korea? Answer me. Answer me, goddamnit! Ji-yeon was close to swiping the nerd’s face with one of his paws. Boram and I each held onto one of Ji-yeon’s arms, but he was a big girl at six feet and 185 pounds. Then suddenly, something flashed before my eyes, and when I came to, I heard T-ara screaming behind me. Or I heard them too late: Ji-yeon’s elbow had busted my lip.
A face came right up to mine through the spinning stars and canaries. Very short hair, long eyes with uncreased lids. Hey, it’s that bartender, no? I could see more of his pupils than the whites of his eyes, which made him look like an alien, and my face was reflected in them. I looked pathetic and numb and even a bit lonely.
But you, your sideburns curved into your beard, which tickled my face, you were so close. Something cold touched my cheek. A 500-milliliter bottle of Fiji water you had brought to my busted lip.
—Are you all right?
A deep, slightly hoarse voice. Lips with a hint of dryness covering a cute snaggletooth. It felt like a crime to let those friendly lips just pass me by. I kissed them before I could stop myself. Your tongue, which was as warm as your gaze, caressing mine—I wish that was how our love began, but this was long before it really started. I was just crazy. Over you? No, I was crazy from the excessive booze, the music, the chaotic laser beams, the stuffy air that felt like it could suffocate me any minute.
And more than anything else, I was crazy with my own piercing unhappiness.
I tasted blood. The taste shocked me sober and I pushed you away, then whispered in your ear.
—Please forget me.
I staggered as I got up from the floor. Yes, to tell you the truth now, after all that has happened since, I wasn’t that drunk that night. It was just a stupid excuse in my attempt to gloss over the awkward moment. Boram and Qri shook my shoulders, and Kylie’s “All the Lovers” started playing over the speakers. “Fuck this, come on, let’s go.” I pretended to be more drunk than I was as Eun-jung supported me on our way out of the club. Up on the surface, I magically sobered up and turned my head back toward the entrance leading down into the club. In the direction from which Kylie’s voice continued to resound. The only thing I felt about you at the time was worry.
You, Gyu-ho, who tasted my blood.
?
Kylie.
Summer of 2010, I went on my first leave from my compulsory military service, and the only three things floating around in my brain were iced Americano, Kylie Minogue, and sex. A man waved to me as I got off the express bus—K, my civil servant boyfriend of six months. He was holding a Starbucks venti extra-shot iced Americano in one hand, and I chugged that elixir of life so fast my eyes rolled up into the back of my head. Bitterness: my favorite taste in the world. That first coffee in three months made my heart pound like mad.
—Hyung, the new Kylie Minogue is out, I want to listen to it now.
—All right. Let’s go inside somewhere.
We found a motel. As I threw off my uniform and showered, the hyung searched for the “All the Lovers” music video on the computer in our room, and I came out of the bathroom almost dripping wet to watch the hundreds of people take their clothes off, form a tower, and make the tower writhe in waves. We watched the mountains of naked people again and again, lay down on the bed, put on Aphrodite, and had sex. I was a little out of my mind because it had been a while, so when the hyung asked if he could do it with the condom off, I said yes. Around the fourth track, “Closer,” he came inside me, and I went into the bathroom first to shower. We’d gone at it a little too hard—there was bleeding. Then it was back to the army after two nights and three days with him. Two weeks later I had a fever and red spots, and after spending a few days in the infirmary, wandering the border between life and death, I was sent to the military hospital.
The first thing the army doctor said to me when he looked up from my blood test results was:
—Are you a bottom or a top?
—Sir? I don’t understand the question.
Apparently, that civil servant dogshit had fucked every man in sight as soon as I had entered bootcamp. I was returned to civilian status so fast my head spun, and the first thing I did to process my new reality was what I did best.
Creatively name things.
I named it Kylie, but not because my life had gone down the gutter while I’d been listening to Kylie Minogue. I just liked the name. If I was going to live with this thing for the rest of my life, I thought I might as well give it a pretty name, so Kylie it was.
Yeah. More than Madonna, Ariana, Britney, or Beyoncé, it’s got to be Kylie. No question.
I’ve never regretted the name since.
?
Even idiots who’ve drunk two hundred thousand shots of tequila the night before have to show up for work the next day. There I was, sitting behind a foldout table, trying not to puke. “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee.” Sandy’s whining was as uninspired as ever. The directing was a mess and the miscasting so irredeemable that the audience seats were practically empty despite all the comp tickets that had been handed out. I mean, look, no one was exactly asking for the ten millionth Grease revival. (Although this is coming from a guy who’s fine with going to the same restaurant and same café for every date, as long as it’s with a new man.) My only job in this graveyard was to stifle my yawns and catch what shuteye I could despite the horrendously loud music. Even in that dump, I occupied the bottommost pit. I wasn’t in the cast, production team, or marketing, I was just the lowest of the low sitting glumly by the theater entrance, selling programs nobody wanted. In a whole month I must’ve sold just 400,000 won’s worth, not even half my salary, which meant I’d be fired soon. What was this torture, sitting here on a Sunday night when all the normals were resting at home? Not to mention (to anyone) my running to the bathroom twice during the first act to throw up. My body itched to toss aside the programs and just go to bed, but Jaehee, my best friend from college, happened to be the one who got me this plum part-time job, and I couldn’t let her down. The producer was some oppa she knew—I think they had slept together years before. Anyway, act 2 was about to begin, and what was that guy still loitering around the lobby for? I moved my ass, heavy as a planet though it was, over to where he sat.
—Sir, the intermission is . . .
The man looked up. Oh, wait a minute, this guy is familiar. That bartender from yesterday?
—Hey, you’re the guy from the club last night, am I right?
—I think you are.
—Wow, coincidence! Are you here for the show?
—No. I’m here for you.
Damn. What’s up with this guy? Does he like me? was what I could’ve thought, but I’m truly excellent at knowing my damn place in this world.
—Well . . . They won’t let you in for the next fifteen minutes if you don’t go in now.
He repeated that his only reason for being here was to see me. (Why, to sue me?)
—How did you know I’d even be here?
He’d seen a photo of the Grease tickets I’d given Ji-yeon on his Instagram.