My Knife

by Jos

  After about thirty seconds of pounding, I started passing out on top of her doggy style. Everyone was distracted with the video and words streaming on the giant plasma in front of them, so I played it off after falling on my side and being jerked up to see Ana’s disappointed face. I returned to the task at hand and continued pounding Ana’s tight pussy. A couple of minutes later, I started hyperventilating and knew that I was about to finish what I had started. “Show me your face!” I moaned before I pulled out and delivered a one-man bukkake straight to her lips and nose, carefully trying to avoid her pretty green eyes. And I told her with a grin, as she wiped off her chin, “If your ear were a cunt, I would fuck it.”

  Then I sat down, exhausted, for a much needed repose. I took another shot as Noah began to sing and teach Jasmine to dance the dougie. Upon finishing the absinthe we remembered that we were originally headed to Noah’s pad, and took the hill up to his place to pregame before a late night in Seoul Bar.

  Noah’s Pad

  We walked out of the noraebang and I was nearly blinded by the setting sun. I hate daylight and couldn’t wait for total darkness. We headed towards Namsan tower and after about five minutes of climbing his gigantic hill, we finally made our way to Noah’s.

  Noah might have been averse to organized religion, but he was completely devoted to superstition. I think it went along with the gambling. The dude’s family had spent time in the Caribbean when he was a child and he had become somewhat of a Santero even though he didn’t know it. Or perhaps admit it. Upon entering his apartment, Noah rubbed a bit of ash into his hand from a block of burnt wood he kept by his door. He entered the room with his right foot and told me that he would never enter a building with his left foot. I noticed a piece of bread nailed just above his door. He then told me that he always made sure to pull his chair with his right hand, lest any deviation from routine affect his “performance” at the casino.

  To him the disappearance was nothing more than a statistically improbable, but realistically possible case of bad luck. To him, the realistically impossible was routine; the sure card that didn’t arrive even though his card counting indicated it would. “Impossible is nothing,” he’d always mumble.

  Noah welcomed us into his living room and began to sit down on his black leather couch. As his body made its way down to the couch, I lunged head first. He sat on my back and immediately jumped up in shock. “Fuck! I thought I had a dead guy under me,” he shouted. We howled with laughter as he started pacing around the room.

  There’s no doubt about it: Noah’s place was decked out. He had expensive furniture, silk curtains, a half-sized Olmec head, and fancy paintings. He was a dude who enjoyed the finer things in life. There might not have been any food in the fridge, but there was certainly a bar full of expensive liquors. He had bought them all on a bender and hadn’t had the time to drink any of it because he was always at Seven Luck.

  He opened his fridge and took out four bottles of Granada 1925. How the hell he was was able to get a six pack of 1925’s in Seoul I have no idea. “I haven’t seen this since my Albayzín days,” I told him. “A platypus got it for me,” he joked with a sly smirk.

  Noah opened the bottles using a ring with words inscribed in Hebrew.

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  “’He who saves a single soul, saves the world entire,” he said.

  Without further elaboration he changed the subject by pulling a bag full of salvia from under his sink. He threw it on the table, grabbed a bottle of makgeolli from his fridge and poured the liquid into the sink. After removing the label from the bottle he used a hot corkscrew opener to make a hole in the green plastic bottle just a few inches from the mouth. He made another hole in the bottom, placed foil paper on the mouth of the bottle and used a needle to poke holes in the foil. He placed the salvia on the foil and passed the makobong to me.

  I grabbed the makobong, put my left thumb over the choke, cocked my head to the side, filled my lungs with the thick smoke, and held my breath for about thirty seconds. As soon as I exhaled, I started hallucinating. The whole room glowed in a red light and it reminded me of the bright paintings in Aztec temples. It’s a short high, and not enjoyable enough for me to want it on a regular basis. But staring at the painting of Tlaloc on Noah’s wall made it more relevant. A massive tsunami of red light started rushing towards me. I felt like running away, but the light held me down. I struggled on the couch and thought myself to be dead right before the high started wearing off.

  I returned to “normal” in the bathroom with no idea of how I got there. I could almost see the shadow of death as I checked my reflection in the mirror. Petrified, I rejoined the conversation in the living room. Noah continued: “Everyone most likely went for an impromptu boat ride and BAM! A shark tipped over their boat.” In my mind, I envisioned Joaquín, Smith, Bubba, Muirne, O’Connor, and Fat Jimmy drowning in a salty pool of blood. I frantically screamed into the ocean and tried to pull them out before I awoke from my Noah-induced daymare. The vision felt as real as the scene around me after five shots of absinthe, salvia, and jetlag. Noah’s explanation was as good as anything I had heard.

  I began to suspect that Joaquín and the rest were truly dead. If they had indeed died, I pondered, wouldn’t it be the decent thing for me to grieve in private instead of cause pandemonium and destruction in one of my drunken rampages? I decided that it would be more fitting to mourn the loss of my friends in solitude. “Guys, I’m not feeling too well. I’ll see you all later.” I walked out of Noah’s pad without saying anything else and stumbled into a stream of black, gray, and white cars. I hailed the first black cab I saw and told the driver to take me home.

  Part Three: Seclusion

  Some Months Later

  In a dilapidated pool hall in Haebangchon, whose name I no longer wish to remember, I decided to quit my job. I had nearly six million in my pension and another ten million in the bank. That would be enough for me to relax for a year. However, it meant I would have to up my intake of soju and the 6 dollar military-special bottles my army buddies brought me, and I would also have to cut off bar drinks. I made it a goal to dedicate myself full-time to carrying a poju camelbak and also, to a certain extent, mourn the loss of my friends.

  I spent months having 5,000-won bowls of delivered to my house every day, which was my only meal. I didn’t care to shave and became a bearded recluse. Maybe I could piece the clues of their deaths together if I reflected on everything Joaquín had ever told me. No mass disappearances had been announced, so they couldn’t have crashed on a large commercial boat. I was sure of that much. Judging from what I knew of Joaquín, he would be the type to randomly organize a trip with whomever was around him. After four months of staring at my wall and contemplating everything I had ever heard them tell me, I remembered one word.

  Platypus. That was it. I had once wrestled Muirne on the floor of the Wolfdog for calling me a platypus. I had slapped Joaquín for whispering platypus into my ear. What did it mean? Was it the code word they had used to deliver a message? I couldn’t understand why the word haunted me. Was this a word that my friends had chosen by committee to torment me?

  Month 5 in Seclusion

  If my employer had bothered to cancel my visa, I would now be an illegal alien. But I don’t particularly care; I have spent the past two months drinking on a near hourly basis. I wake and drink a soju shake. I pass out not soon after that. I have not left my house in five months. Soju and makgeolli bottles litter my floor. I have left a path narrow enough for me to walk from the bathroom to the living room couch and from there to my door. I buy liquor on G-market and ask for everything delivered to be left outside of the door. I buy everything using my smartphone and have not seen another human since I decided to leave my job. I often sleep on the toilet because I find myself losing function of my bladder. I no longer care about my health. I haven’t answered my phone in months. My wall is covered in drawings of platypuses. I chant the word “platypus” in my
head day after day, trying to find meaning. Platypus. Platypus. Platypus.

  Month 6

  The crew never existed. They were merely a figment of my imagination. I was brainwashed by someone. Someone wants me to believe that these people who never existed are real. Was I taken into that tomb in New Haven? They could have cut my head open, perhaps inserted something inside that controls my thoughts. Yes, the platypus is their agent, of that I have no doubt.

  I no longer feel like living.

  Month 7

  My skin is turning yellow and peeling. I can rest safely in knowing that I have figured out what it was Joaquín wanted to tell me. I’m not human. Neither was he. We’re descendants of aliens. The platypus was the evidence they had provided me to prove their malevolent, yet seductive genius. That’s why I never belonged to a “normal,” human world.

  I only felt a bond with other humans when I was out with the crew. I was closer to them than to my own family. They were my family. The crew fragmented and then disappeared. My family disappeared. Why would my family abandon me? They wanted me to leave with them. I was too slow to figure it out. I must return to my people. I fear it is too late. My health is failing. I have neither the energy nor the will to leave my apartment. I’ll be dead here soon. But I fret not. I’ll return to the stars to which Joaquín promised me. I’m sure Muirne will be there, in expat heaven. And she’ll have a bottle of makgeolli waiting for me.

  Month 8

  No entry.

  ___________________

  Airplane Dictionary: “A big building with patients.”

  Exactly the amount for a bottle of soju and a mini-snack.

  individual whose maternal unit is a member of the species Canis lupus familiaris.

  Older men permitted to raise their voices at you as they please.

  An older woman who is permitted to push people in the subway as she pleases.

  Interpersonal relationship closer than acquaintanceship.

  Place where individuals always forget to mention mold issues.

  Sound torture chamber designed by the late Kim Jong-Il.

  An individual whose artificially-constructed morality is temporarily impaired.

  Fried dog soup with whale.

  Chapter II: Arian’s Perspective

  Seoul Bar

  It was hard to believe that El Turco would end his weekend on a Sunday at 7 p.m. instead of Monday at noon. He didn’t say why he had left or when he’d be back. After we ran out of salvia and felt rested, Noah and I took a cab back to Itaewon and headed to Seoul Bar. Jasmine and Ana followed along.

  At Seoul Bar we saw the usual crowd. I always enjoyed seeing Susan, a MILF blonde with huge knockers who I secretly wanted to bang. Of course, there were no secrets to her. She was the Itaewon moped: everyone had borrowed it to carry their groceries from E-Mart. Now, I would have no problem with joining my comrades in riding a beautiful moped, but the drama and anarchy that would follow was in no way worth the trouble.

  I saw the Portuguese crowd playing pool with the Kuwaitis. This time around they weren’t itching to start a fight with an unsuspecting yuppie. Ever since Joaquín won the yellow dragon vest from one of them last season, blood has been spilled regularly in the alleys of Haebangchon and Gyungnidan. Of course, no one ever presses charges against anyone else and the crime rate stays artificially low.

  The minute Joaquín had walked into Seoul Bar that fateful Wednesday morning wearing the yellow dragon vest and added himself to the pool table queue, I knew shit was gonna go down. The Kuwaitis lifted their pool cues and told him to leave the table to them. Once the dude pulled out a knife and wielded it like he was back from a long vacation in the South Bronx after finishing undergrad at the University of Limerick, they had flashbacks to what they’d seen him do and decided that it would be better to just take a chill pill for a while.

  My mind drifted back to the present. I was drunk but in full control of myself. Jasmine and I started discussing El Turco. I didn’t really trust him. I don’t understand why he decided not to give details of his absence. I had already formulated a pretty concrete theory as to what had happened. I knew El Turco was a spy. I decided to drink the night away with the hope that my behavior hadn’t indicated what I knew.

  Old City

  After seeing Susan pull out a large, black, plastic kari and get escorted out of Seoul Bar for throwing it at one of the Kuwaitis, we headed to Old City, where we would probably party ‘til noon. I only worked from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m., so I could stay out every night. We all worked later hours, El Turco, Noah, Jasmine, and I. A smart person can negotiate for a job that suits their lifestyle their second year around. Some took jobs with crappy hours for the pay. But I just wanted to party all night, every night.

  Not much was said in Old City. Ever since Sunday Funday at the ‘Dog died, I began to confirm my suspicion about the existence of a new crew. Sunday Funday united around the fact that we were foreigners who liked to party, recent college grads, and a bit immature and careless at handling the freedom and money that a place like Korea offered.

  However, I’ve logically deduced that this replacement crew – the Itaewon Knife Fighting Crew, as I like to call it – is itself an offshoot of Sunday Funday members. They only recruit individuals with a streak for criminality. I’d always see them together at Old City on weekends, and sometimes on Mondays for the Chill Out sessions. The only other time I’d see them would be in the underground knife fights Antoine and Joaquín organized in that dark, damp, cave-like basement they rented from the Filipina transsexual who tried to beat me up two weeks ago at the Confederate bar on Hooker Hill after I politely declined her advances.

  The motherfuckers in the Itaewon Knife Fighting Crew were the main English teachers and soldiers slicing each other up down in that bitch. The scariest part was that they’d usually bet against one another every single Saturday afternoon, which was the day the Old City regulars were invited to the cave. I highly suspect that they also allowed people from Molly’s, Chingus above Old City, and the bar on Homo Hill with the 7-foot-tall Korean ladyboy, on certain other days.

  But unlike the Filipinos, Nigerians, and Mongolians – whom Antoine had hired simply by sitting outside of Old City at 9 a.m. waiting for a big, aggressive motherfucker trying to start shit up and who also claimed he was in Korea doing “import/export” – the IKFC allowed themselves the privilege of wearing their precious metal face masks when they fought. They didn’t have to worry about getting their faces slashed. Other than that, they didn’t particularly mind wearing the standard, shiny work suits they’d purchased from JJ, the best tailor in Itaewon and one of the few non-aggressive people inside Old City. They’d take off their blazers and you’d see torn, white shirts with faint gash scars. The more scars you had, the more props people gave you. And with props came le pussy.

  Le Pussy

  I remember my first time going down into the cave.

  Antoine asked me at Old City: “Hey, man, you like Mixed Martial Arts?”

  “Are you kidding me? I love it!” I replied.

  “What if, theoretically speaking, these MMA guys had knives. Would you still like that?” He asked.

  “Ahhh, yea, I presume so,” I told him.

  “Well, buddy, it’s your lucky day,” He told me with a smile before inviting me to his basement. It was so decrepit that it made Delta Tau Chi feel like a high-class brothel by comparison. It almost seemed senseless to examine myself in the mirror walking in.

  Two Russian hookers were shaking their asses on all four, their hands and knees rubbing against the dirt, booze, and spice roaches on the floor. I saw Patricia kimchi-squatting by a corner while she sucked off Fat Jimmy. Tears were streaming down her red face and her eyes seemed about to pop; he was choking her a bit harder than she normally liked that afternoon. He choked her with his right hand as he took spice hits with his left, from a bong he made using aluminum foil and a makgeolli bottle with two iris-sized holes. El Turco was black out drunk in a corn
er with his pants down. He was using Muirne as a pillow, who was also black out drunk next to him. Bubba was fingering Jasmine by the left side of the chicken wire, which made the cave resemble a movie theater back in Kosovo. We would rub oil on a big piece of paper, set it behind a stand, light a lamp behind the paper, and perform hand shows. It was specially fun during blackouts. And indeed, the cave looked like it coulda used more lighting.

  I paid the 200,000-won entry fee (they also took dollars since most of the clientèle was composed of soldiers) and stood with my back against the wall. Using a little stool I could see over the cowboy hats that the shirtless teenage privates fresh out of Texas always decided to wear when they would stand in front of the chicken wire that created a small cage and allowed only limited movement for the knife fighters inside. In true Blues Brothers fashion, Susan would always manage to angrily throw her makgeolli jugs at the wire, smashing glass all over the fighters. There wasn’t any extreme bottle smashing taking place on a typical afternoon, however; most of us generally just drank the 1,300-won artificially sweetened makgeolli from their green plastic bottles.

  Angry Smashing

  But my first trip to the cave wasn’t a typical afternoon. Lola had smuggled a few liters of concentrated Green Dragon from Amsterdam. She hid it in a camelback bag and simply placed it between her jacked military chest and a thick sweater during the Amsterdam-Finland-Seoul trip. She couldn’t get a direct flight, and decided to pay double to have a layover in Finland instead of Moscow with Aeroflot ‘cause she saw herself much disinclined to doing time in a gulag. Finland, on the other hand, seemed like a good place to do time. Luckily for her, the trick worked and she came out alive.