The peach-colored palette of the lobby interior was just as it had been this time last year, the classy yet oddly cheap feeling of the twisted chandeliers, and the chestnut-colored carpeting that muffled each footstep. The French man who introduced himself as the proprietor stood in the same place wearing the same clothes, which made me smile. This was exactly the same building as before, but looking back, I was standing there feeling utterly different.
The proprietor called me Mr. Park and held out his hand. This unexpected hospitality brought another awkward smile to my face. His French-accented English. His name card slipped inside my passport. When he asked how the friend I’d come with before was doing, I just kept smiling. And simply said, as clearly as possible, with no awkwardness in my manner or voice, the room number on the thirtieth floor and Habibi’s name.
When the doors to his room opened before me, I was surprised again not only because Habibi seemed more tired and older than when I had first met him, but also because the layout of the suite was so familiar. Sometimes, the memory of a space can come to us faster than that of a person or a scene. Half-opened motorized drapes, fabric sofas that smelled new, a bathroom laid with black marble. The same as the suite I had stayed in a year ago.
Habibi put his hand on my shoulder and we embraced. I didn’t know much about him. A financier who had studied economics at an American university. Thirty-nine on Tinder, but much older in reality. He wore formal attire, even a necktie pin and cufflinks, a Rolex watch, and had various currencies in a Louis Vuitton wallet. The only other thing I knew about him was the fact that at the end of October, late into vacation season when I had nothing special to do, he had called.
But it wasn’t as if I had realized that much about myself, either. Just a few months ago, I never would’ve thought that I would, at thirty-two, be going on a late-rainy-season vacation at the end of October.
?
After Gyu-ho left, the first thing I did was throw out his mattress.
Until not long ago, there was a super-single mattress and a queen-size Tempur bed lying side by side in my tiny studio apartment. There were also two bookshelves and a desk, as well as a refrigerator, leaving almost no room to move about. Gyu-ho had brought the super-single mattress when he moved in, the same brand that not long ago made the news for having carcinogenic compounds in its materials; I recognized the Taegeuk-style logo underneath. I kept thinking of Gyu-ho complaining about how his back hurt the longer he slept, which made me smile. The Tempur bed had been gifted to me by my father, when I was first published in a literary magazine, because I had a bad back. Father had expanded his business despite the bad economy and was going around with a wallet stuffed with so many checks he couldn’t close it—while nonetheless giving off all kinds of ominous vibes. And of course, not even a year later, he’d been accused of evading taxes and embezzling funds through a dual contract and was currently on the run.
There was a stain somewhere on the mattress from soy sauce we’d spilled on it.
As I hauled that radon-spewing mattress out on my own, I thought back to the time Gyu-ho and I had sushi together on it. Something good must’ve happened that day. Sushi was celebration takeout.
One time, while sitting on the bed eating his sushi, Gyu-ho (always clumsy) flipped over his plate by accident, and I quickly wiped it with my sleeve. A brief moment, but a stain remained on the mattress.
By the time I realized my back wasn’t sound enough for me to haul out a super-single mattress on my own, it was too late; I felt jolts of electricity all the way to the ends of my toes as I just barely made it to the complex’s recycling area. When I got back to the room, there was a report on the news saying the company responsible for the carcinogenic mattresses was offering to pick them up and dispose of them for free. The pain in my back throbbed, stubborn and persistent. It was too late to put things back the way they’d been.
?
The second thing I did after breaking up with Gyu-ho was quit my job.
I had been reassigned to the administrative support team around the time Gyu-ho left. “Administrative support” was a fancy term for procuring toilet paper, mops, highlighters, and other office junk to distribute within the company. A job any elementary school student with decent math skills could do, and it was the perfect work for a person like me, who had no special skills or ambition. The company was satisfied, and I should’ve been satisfied too, but every day I was caught up in an inexplicable, silent rage, and every morning I begged the gods that I would not ruin yet another day being mired in vicious resentment. In the new office, I gradually turned into a hairy Sasquatch that made no effort whatsoever to be sociable, and just slouched around, hoping no one noticed me. I had said the same thing to myself in the last company I’d worked for, but I kept my mind intact by vowing over and over that this was the last time I would take on a corporate job. Soon, my thirty-two-inch waist ballooned to thirty-six inches, I got promoted to middle manager, and I reached the point where I had to shop at specialized online stores for big and tall men. My body and heart grew heavier by the day.
After Gyu-ho left, it became difficult to get out of bed in the morning. I was occasionally late for work. Sometimes I forgot to wash my face or shave—I even walked around all day with my zipper down or shirt buttons unaligned, only realizing it when I got back home. Routine hygiene tasks like shaving, clipping my nails, and brushing my teeth were starting to feel like lofty luxuries. As much as I may have looked like some hairy thug off the streets, I had actually never ever been absent during my twelve years of primary school and was slightly obsessive about showering before going out, which made these developments a new experience. I started taking home things from my desk at work. Soon after all my personal items were gone, I handed in my notice. I did not feel excited or hopeful or relieved. Just tired of everything.
?
The third thing I did after splitting up with Gyu-ho was get on a plane to Bangkok.
If I had followed my initial plan, I would’ve lived an extremely enlightened and elegant life. Sleep from midnight to eight, make pourover coffees at home, exercise for three hours a day, learn the guitar, read all the books I wanted to, write, shop thriftily . . . But when I opened my eyes in the morning, I hadn’t a clue what time it was or whether the sun was even up. My circadian rhythms were completely shot. If, at first, I felt guilty about wasting my life away, I soon came to think, Well, whatever. Let’s see how far my money goes, let’s go as far as life will take me. And lying there on my Tempur bed, I came to the realization, Wow, this really is a very plush and perfect state of death, even boredom can get boring, and turned on my phone to do some half-hearted swiping on Tinder. Anyone would do, anyone to get me out of that coffin of a bed and into the world outside, from the rotting cesspool of my life to what lay beyond. I racked up swipes like I was repopulating the Earth. And when I got a match, I messaged, Where are you now? And finally dragged myself from bed to have bad sex for the sake of going outside.