My Knife

by Jos

  “He’s disappeared,” I told her.

  I expected her to at least blink, but all she said was, “Oh, I see.” I could tell right away that they weren’t close, or perhaps that she was detached.

  “Do you think he’s dead?” she asked bluntly.

  “I don’t know. Do you believe it’s possible?” I asked. She stared blankly through her stained glass window and, instead of considering the disappearance, simply mentioned that there was no such thing as death.

  We shared a deep conversation about reincarnation as I waited for Gabriella to return from her Latin pride meeting. By the time she got around to quoting Emerson – “nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals… and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some strange new disguise” – she’d already convinced me that I would be reborn. I looked into her deep green eyes, lost in the words she had just told me, when I heard the door open and Gabriella walk in.

  Conversation with Gabriella

  “He’s an escapist! He’s done this before and will do it again. Whenever shit gets rough he just stops giving a fuck and peaces out.” Her response was too mechanical, almost as if she had rehearsed it before. Even then, she only saw him as an escapist because he had wanted to travel abroad, leaving her behind. This time was different.

  “My friends disappeared along with him. They left no information about a future destination. You were the only person he ever spoke fondly about when he was drunk. I came here with the hope that you would be able to--”

  She cut me off. “Would you like to toke?” It would have been impolite to say no to such insistence. I took a massive hit from her glass pipe and immediately began to suspect she knew more than she was letting on, but I had no way of knowing for sure.

  She regaled me with tales of Joaquín which helped make the fact that he was missing a distant thought. His absolute lack of creativity when it came to food: “It was not unusual to see him eating Yale’s organic granola with Silk soy milk and Silk soy yogurt three times a day for days in a row. The fact that he never got sick was a miracle to me, especially given his love for port wine and absinthe.”

  She took another hit from her pipe and continued, her lips almost seducing me as perhaps they had Joaquín; “I’ve never met anyone like him. The way he made love, the way he kissed. For that time that he held me, it was as if I was the only thing that mattered in his world. But I also hate him,” she continued. “He was mercurial. He’d want me near him one minute and gone the next. He left for Seoul and didn’t even show a hint of emotion when he was leaving.”

  She seemed earnest, but I was still suspicious. I tried looking for roundabout ways of getting her to tell me if she knew where my friends had gone, but nothing. “We gotta take down the system, help the proletariat,” was the only thing I felt she really wanted to tell me.

  She had a radical nature that attracted me, but she radiated negative energy that made me nervous. I felt uncomfortable and excused myself after about three hours. It was clear that I would learn nothing. I decided to stumble around campus, take in the sights, and head to New York City. Not 300 meters from Gabriella’s dorm I passed by a windowless building. None of the students I asked were willing to stop and discuss the building. “It’s the tomb,” one of them uttered as he dashed right by me that chilly Thursday night. I watched two students go in: they were clad in ecclesiastical wear not that uncommon from a 13th century monk. I assumed the building was some kind of mortician’s chamber and moved on.

  Return to Seoul

  My vacation was rather pleasant. My time in Nantucket before heading down to New Haven was a needed rest from the hectic bustle of Seoul’s bars. My liver couldn’t complain either. After meeting Gabriella, I rented a Tesla S and drove up to NYC to lounge around The Village, clear my head, and hang out in the staircases outside the stores on St. Mark’s Place, enjoying the freak show. Yet on the flight from JFK to Incheon, I still didn’t know what to make of my trip to New Haven.

  The torment of my friends’ disappearance still would not leave me. I arrived at Incheon airport at around 4 a.m. and proceeded directly to Old City, where my life as a Bohemian alcoholic awaited me.

  Old City

  As I walked into Old City I was greeted by the dwarf Korean with an afro who always insists upon 5,000 won, even though he’ll be more than satisfied with 1,000. “Kamsahamnida!” he uttered after I slipped two cheonwon into the bucket he held in his tiny hands. I met Jasmine and Arian there, both of whom were struggling to not fall out of their chairs. I had been enjoying the complimentary liquor offered on the flight and drank a bottle of makgeolli on the taxi ride, so it only took me an hour of drinking to catch up with them.

  I neglected to mention the details of my trip; my hunch that an old lover of Joaquín would know his whereabouts proved wrong. If anything, I am certain he left because he wanted to protect her from something. Just what, I don’t know.

  I examined Jasmine and Arian’s faces: cold, blank stares, and bloodshot eyes. They seemed unfazed by the disappearance of our closest drinking buddies. Of course, we were all masters of masking our worries with liquor. After six solid gin and tonics at Old City, we proceeded to Roof Top Palace for brunch after being invited over by none other than our dear friend Noah. An invitation to an event of his was something we never turned down.

  Noah

  Noah had just left Seven Luck casino. His night had been successful. I always joked that he was a professional gambler, part-time teacher, using his day job merely as a way to hold a visa. He often spent most weeknights hooked on Ritalin while waiting for chumps to show up at the poker tables. He came to Korea partly because he found it easier to dominate the poker tables there than back in Atlantic City. Japanese tourists were walking marks for him.

  Noah always claimed he hated money. He’d make 3 grand one night and blow it within hours on expensive booze and hookers for himself and his friends. Of course, he was above the “pieces of lifeless flesh” he had initially picked from behind the glass doors on Hooker Hill. No, Noah went to the ritzy places in Gangnam. Paying a grand for a blow job wasn’t something he saw as unusual.

  For his first few months, he went to Sunday Fundays at the Wolfdog but gradually drifted from the scene as he fell more and more in love with the casinos. He would still go out at least once or twice a month. I must admit, we all looked forward to it. He would buy the whole house a shot, tell us tales of the wild things he did in his youth. He once set fire to a curtain in his synagogue just to see how it burned. The dude had total contempt for religion. And that, of course, made him feel comfortable with us.

  His generosity when it came to drinks did not go completely unrewarded, however. His compulsive spending and occasional droughts of good luck meant that we would find ourselves lending him money. I thought he was going to die one June. He went for three weeks straight eating nothing but cheap, Friendly Mart ramen. Joaquín was known for the big vegetarian meals he prepared, and he always invited Noah over to join him. He invited everyone. It was his way of promoting his diet. He saw it as his mandatory community service. Noah would rarely join, only when he found himself completely fatigued from playing online poker on credit.

  Overall, he was up more than 500 grand. He was really good at putting his Columbia math degree to good use, but he should have done a minor in economic frugality. He had made over 5 thousand dollars the night I flew into Incheon, and I knew that we were going to blow it all over the next 24 hours. Ritalin allowed him to go on wired benders, and he always had enough pills to help us keep up with him. The casinos offered free drinks, so Jasmine, Arian, and I already knew that we were going to meet a Noah perhaps even more incoherent and belligerent than us.

  Part II: The Bender

  Roof Top Palace

  As soon as we made it to the bottom of Homo Hill and up the narrow staircase of Roof Top Palace, we saw Noah yelling at Yong-nam, who was on the phone with the police. “Look, fucking chutzpah, I
’ll do whatever the fuck I want. Do it! Call them! I’ll bash your head in with their nightsticks, faggot!” As soon as Yong-nam put his cell away, Noah screamed, “I can’t believe you pussied out and called them!” He struggled to pick up a pine tree to smash on the bartender’s head. Jasmine grabbed Noah’s hand and asked him what he was about to do. “This motherfucker thinks he owns the place, I’ll show him to have some respect,” he barked. Before Jasmine even finished saying, “Well, he actually does own the place,” a swarm of Korean cops managed to make their way over from Itaewon Station to the bottom of Homo Hill. Noah saw the car lights flashing just over the low wall on the roof, gently placed down the pine tree, and calmly sat down.

  He had thrown a chair at the owner for a reason that still remains a mystery to me and my other friends. Merely seconds after Noah “calmed down,” the police had already run up the stairs and escorted him off the premises.

  The barkeep, who was right behind me, pushed me to the side and gave me a condescending look as he walked down to accompany Noah in the back of the police car along with “Ana,” a girl whose services Noah had acquired for the day. As is customary in Korea, the cops drove everyone involved in the incident to the police station together and didn’t cuff them, even though they had been in an altercation with each other and were wildly drunk. The cops just trusted that no one was crazy enough to challenge them.

  After waiting an hour and a half for a translator, the cops called the bartender to give his statement. Fortunately for Noah, they were on a roof, there were no cameras to prove anyone’s story, and because the place had just opened, there were no other witnesses but Yong-nam, Ana, and himself. The bar owner wanted to press charges for the attempted assault, but Ana came to the rescue. She claimed that the owner had punched her for being “slutty” and threatened to press charges against him. The owner decided not to press charges for fear that she would legally retaliate. In the end, Noah ended up paying only thirty thousand won for damages, and they left the station together after two hours. He thereafter offered Ana a bonus for services rendered.

  Train

  Now that Noah was banned from his seventh bar in Itaewon, our alcoholism demanded we wait for him to return from the police station in a bar called Train, where we had already downed several pitchers of Rass beer. As soon as they walked out of the Yongsan investigation center at some point just after noon, Noah and Ana returned to rampage in Itaewon. If you figured that two hours of sobering up in a police station would be enough to calm a person down, you’d be wrong. Noah took Ana to the bathroom as soon as he entered the bar. He received something he refers to as a “post-circumcision celebration,” though I can only imagine the details of such a thing.

  Although I wasn’t as messed up as Noah, I was pretty gone myself. I flowed along with the insanity in a casual manner. One would assume that I can remember all the details of the series of events that transpired that day, but the reality is that I’m piecing everything together, thanks to the abundantly large number of highly graphic photographs that Jasmine had snapped. I was causing some havoc myself and managed to get banned from Train after taking my pants off, chugging a pitcher of beer, and jumping on top of the bar. We were the only clients, and I’m sure we could have prevented ourselves from getting kicked out if I had just come down or ignored the bartender. However, I decided that the best course of action would be to spit in the bartender’s direction and call him a motherfucking orospu çocuğu.

  Spitting on the sidewalk is something that a lot of drunk do like it’s their job, but doing it in a bar and in the direction of someone was clearly an offense. Everyone followed me out after I got banned. We stumbled down the stairs and into the Friendly Mart between Train and Taco Campana. I was in dire need of hydration in the form of fermented rice juice, so I walked to the back of the bodega, opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle of makgeolli. I started drinking quickly, and knew that the bottle would be half-way done before I even paid for it.

  After using Noah’s debit card to pay for the makgeolli, we jaywalked across the street, almost spilling the precious booze after a crazy cab driver distracted by his TV came close to running us over. Noah shook his hands and cursed him to hell before entering the building we would soon terrorize. We walked past the toothless with an eye patch and short, curly hair who drinks makgeolli and wears a sun visor and a long dress with a floral pattern. I gave her what I had left of my bottle and climbed up to the third floor. Bullcat was closed so we walked back down to the second floor and entered Iguanas.

  Iguanas Terrace

  As soon as we sat down, we ordered a five-course Irish meal: 4 beers and a potato. The beers and potato arrived almost immediately, and then I turned my attention back to my friends. Jasmine and Arian are not really the type to get banned. Arian always remembers to take the fights outside and Jasmine just wants to stand on the sidelines and take pictures of everything while she “shuffles” cards. With Noah buying drinks like a man expecting the sun to go supernova at any moment, Jasmine, Arian, and Ana were basically getting paid to drink and watch “The Noah and El Turco Parade of Madness.” We were surprisingly, and uncharacteristically for this hour, relaxed by the time we made it to Iguanas and even started playing a game of euchre. Of course, there was the kimchi pot in the room whose smell everyone was afraid to discuss.

  After an hour of small talk, the table fell silent. I took a deep breath. “What has become of everyone?”

  I didn’t bring up my trip to New Haven, since nothing had come of that, and I didn’t want to seem like the type to just pick up and leave myself. But it was almost as if Arian and Jasmine refused to talk about it. Arian stared at the ground and covered his mouth with his right hand, slowly stroking his inexistent beard. Jasmine crossed her right leg over her left and focused despondently on the bar’s brick walls. I could hear the slow tap, tap, tap of her flip flop against the sole of her foot. Were they being evasive or did they really not have any answers?

  Noah, again too incoherent to make much sense, killed his drink and set the glass on the table. “If some bookie was trying to kill me, I’d disappear, too,” he said, and called for another drink. He’d often try to make everything about himself when he was on benders. He did and said whatever he wanted to be the center of attention. But we didn’t really mind--there was never one dull moment when he was around.

  Again I brought up our missing friends. In turn, we all professed our ignorance and fell back into nervous chatting. I passed out on the chair and was woken by the owner some 20 minutes later. He wanted me to leave. Outraged, I smashed a mason jar through a window on my way out. The owner started chasing me and, as I made my way down the staircase, slipped on a piece of kimchi, rolled down the staircase, and scraped my knee. The owner held me by the belt and the cops arrived in less than a couple of minutes. We walked right across the street to the police station in front of the Porkinton Hotel. I was about to get slapped with a 500,000 won damage bill, but Arian came to the rescue. He claimed he saw the owner push me down the stairs. Fortunately for me, there was no camera in the staircase.

  I decided not to press charges, and the owner decided not to charge me for the broken mason jar and window. However, I got another bartender to add me to his “ ” list.

  I made my way out of the police station, away from Itaewon station exit 3, past Allied Nations, past the gas station in front of Helium, and to the liquor store next door, where Noah purchased a bottle of absinthe. We walked out of the liquor store, crossed the street, hailed a “foreigners only” cab and proceeded to Noah’s pad in Haebangchon to smoke salvia and listen to Omega and his Violent Mambo. We got off at the Friendly Mart next to the kimbap place in front of the jjimjilbang under the PC bang, but by then had forgotten our original intentions and ended up heading down into the noraebang that stood next to the .

  The

  The noraebang was dark, secluded, and underground so we were free to do as we wished. There was no lock on the door, so we couldn’t be
so extreme as to warrant someone entering the room. However, we’d never before been walked in on there, so we knew we could down our shots of absinthe, sing crappy K-pop songs, and do as we wished. I’m not a fast reader of Korean, so I sloshed through the songs, making half the shit up.

  I was mumbling like an automaton as I stared at the plasma in front of me when I casually looked over my shoulder and spotted Noah receiving a second BJ from Ana in the center of the room. The dude was kind enough to offer her services to me afterwards. After all, he had already paid her for the whole day. Did I accept? I was drunk as fuck and in no position to make decisions by that point; it was already 3 p.m. I don’t remember the last time I wasn’t smashed at 3 p.m. on a Sunday.

  At first we sat in the back and talked. I asked her where she had gone to college, but she said she hadn’t gone to uni. She was teaching middle school under the table, tricking on the side, and would take a cheap ferry to the nearest Japanese island every three months to renew her tourist visa. She poured out her life story: her parents had committed suicide and she never had the dough for school nor the looks to strip her way through college, get plastic surgery, and help her siblings. She came to Korea, tutored for a few months and saved up for a rhinoplasty and boob job. The surgeries now allowed her to charge top won for her ass, and she’s finally able to help her siblings back in South Africa. I admired her hustler attitude. In fact, I admired it so much that I saw it as an honor to start banging her.