And the fight would progress until one of us was shouting . . .
Now that I was employed, I got into the bad habit of buying things to relieve stress. Gyu-ho was the same, and I tended to acquire books or trinkets while he competitively purchased clothes and daily essentials. Gyu-ho demanded I throw out books I wasn’t going to read while I demanded he throw out clothes he wasn’t going to wear. Neither of us was willing to compromise, and our small apartment was getting smaller by the day.
Gyu-ho couldn’t stand how I let all my things just lie around the house. When he once said to me that everything should have its place, I retorted, “What place? Look at this tiny apartment! Wherever I am and wherever I go, there a place shall be, and that is God’s truth.” We almost broke up after the fight that ensued.
Even after hating him so much I felt like killing him, I’d find myself turning back to Gyu-ho as if nothing had happened and saying things like “What are we having for dinner tomorrow?” or “Please don’t forget to buy trash bags tomorrow at the store.” Mostly we slept on our own beds but occasionally in the same one, not having sex but taking turns giving each other an arm-pillow, breathing in the scent of each other’s chests or armpits, slowly coming to believe that this was what it meant to love and be together.
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We coordinated our vacation days to visit Thailand together. The trip would be for a week, which was a long time for us.
Gyu-ho had kicked up a fuss making sure that I had my passport, that I wasn’t forgetting anything. I would’ve told him to quit it with the nagging, but I couldn’t in good conscience because of the bad precedent I’d set. Back when we were preparing for our failed Japan trip, we had gone together to apply for our passports at the Jongno district office. It was to be his first trip overseas, but he had acted like an expert; I did think that was a little cute. And this time, unlike the last trip we took, things went well for us from the beginning. We got a discount on our room at the new Park Hyatt in Bangkok because their remodeling wasn’t finished. As a joke, we’d filled in “honeymoon” as the reason for our trip, but there was champagne and a card waiting for us when we got into the room. And not only that, the electric curtain was broken in the room we’d booked, which prompted the front desk to upgrade us to a suite on the top floor. As soon as we stepped into it, Gyu-ho and I couldn’t help shouting out in amazement.
That night, we used some expensive Le Labo body cleanser to make a bubble bath, something we wouldn’t do at home normally because of the price, and had champagne in the tub while making Marie Antoinette hairdos out of bubbles on each other’s heads, giggling and taking photos. Drunk, we posted them on Instagram, finished the bottle, and lay in the tub until our fingertips wrinkled. Just as our bodies were turning red from the heat, we got out and put on our bathrobes and sprawled on the bed. I fell asleep gazing at Gyu-ho’s reddened face.
When I woke from a dreamless sleep, I found us naked in each other’s arms with our bathrobes sloughed off. There he lay in my arms, quiet as always. I touched the tip of his long nose and his cheeks. The air conditioner made them feel cold and dry to the touch.
We spent that morning shopping. Gyu-ho wanted to go to Khao San Road, which he’d heard so much about, and we decided to take a river taxi there. There was a squall as soon as we got onto the boat, and we were drenched through by the time we arrived. The rain kept coming down, and there was no place for us to go except a guesthouse nearby that charged around 50,000 won. After using the communal shower (basically a concrete floor with a few water hoses), we lay down on the creaking bed with our clothes off. And we had sex. Watching the ceiling fan rapidly slice up the air above us, I felt as if we had been connected into one body. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.
By the time the rain stopped, the sun was setting. We gazed at the atmospheric view and the violet sun as we downed a couple of beers. We bought matching Winnie the Pooh tank tops and put them on right away.
On Saturday, we wore the tank tops again, this time to the clubs. It was midnight when a familiar song started to play: T-ara’s “Sexy Love.” How many years had it been? A group of locals—my T-ara group’s counterpart in Thailand—stormed the stage and began to flawlessly execute the choreography. Gyu-ho and I screamed as we hugged each other and hopped up and down. Gyu-ho’s head felt warm and lovely, and we kissed right there in the middle of the club.
I’ve read somewhere that lovers will only quarrel when they visit Bangkok together, and we were the same. That one of us was staring after some guy, that the traffic was atrocious, and a whole score of other things I don’t even remember squabbling about and getting into a wordless funk over—none of that mattered after a few pints and a kiss.
Because we were on vacation.
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After we came back to reality, we quickly became mired in the usual fatigue that came with the work we had to do for a living. The tank tops we wore in Thailand became loungewear. Pooh’s face on the chest of our clothes started to pill, got splattered by broth from instant noodles, and then faded. Occasionally we laughed over our memories of the trip, but mostly we exchanged complaints about how dead tired we were, pinging them back and forth like we were playing table tennis. Gyu-ho and I had come to see each other as a part of a landscape of tedium. Just another prop in our monotonous, sweaty days.
After the trip, we began to argue more often than ever. Twice we even split up. One of the times we were apart, Gyu-ho moved out, and the other time, I did. We saw different people. A lot of people in my case, and probably the same for Gyu-ho. Once enough time passed and our hate, resentment, and reasons for fighting began to fade from memory, we got back together, moved back into the apartment, and asked no questions of each other as we silently made up and continued our relationship.
4.