My Knife

by Jos

  As is to be expected with competitive young North Americans like ourselves, one person would always try to keep up with Vinnie Johnson the following week. Joaquín was the main performer the week after Vinnie cured his self-diagnosed yellow fever. It’s hard to believe that the dude had more Irish friends in Korea than he did Korean friends. If that’s not any indication of what he was up to, then I’ll refuse to believe in stereotypes and become politically correct. He took a girl home on Saturday night from the Lounge, fucked her doggy style starting at 4:27 a.m., woke up at 9:37 a.m., and then had the customary 30-minute morning conversation followed by intense missionary. Afterwards he washed his calembo over the sink and went to The Wolfdog at around 11 am Sunday (Antoine, Fat Jimmy, and Derpina were already topless and dancing on tables by that point) to meet up with Patricia, one of his British friends from outside of the city.

  To say Patricia was notoriously loud was an understatement. If you heard some girl sounding like a Chav version of Shaniqua, you’d know it was her. She’d waltz in screamin’ everywhere she went. Only the jacked-up army guys pumping steroids had enough energy for her, and indeed she chased them like Wile E. Coyote. (She had already fucked a captain and had it as her mission to get all the way to general; “I want the power to start a war,” she’d say.)

  Patricia had been going non-stop since Friday so she introduced him to her best friend. Patricia told her friend that Joaquín had a big calembo. The girl said, “wanna show me?” and took him to the bathroom. Just like that, he was fuckin’ her on top of the toilet, their bodily fluids dripping all over the floor as Fat Jimmy and I watched from the cracks in the toilet stall. Fat Jimmy had busted one out long before Joaquín had even started. I must admit that I went to the ladies’ room and masturbated as others came in to enjoy the show inside. Patricia cheered them on and called everyone in to watch. “Swallow, swallow, swallow!” everyone started chanting as soon as Joaquín pulled out and began to give that girl his Hooker Hill-famous vegan milkshake. It was just so wild and raw we couldn’t resist.

  After they were done they exchanged phone numbers and continued drinking. Joaquín met another girl at around 5:37 in the afternoon and by 7:42 was at our place pounding more ass. I don’t know where the hell he got the energy, but maybe it had to do with his strict vegetarian diet and the Dominican fire in him. In a megacity of 25 million, it’s hard to believe that the 40 or so of us who attended The Wolfdog on Sundays had slept with at least a few members of the group. The average person there was capable of taking a picture with four other people they had fucked on any given Sunday. Hell, there was that syphilis epidemic that hit half the crew one month after our trip to Thailand. Sex-wise it was wild, but when it came to drunken revelry we were unmatched.

  There was always a topless girl who gave out free nipple licks. She would often take off her top and flash the whole bar, much to the chagrin of the staff. I only wonder how hard it must have been for a conservative Korean to spend all day seeing s drink themselves stupid. Collectively, I estimate that we are responsible for at least four of the five reasons why Koreans hate foreigners. I can’t count the number of times that the bartenders would come over and tell that one girl to put on her top. They threatened to throw her out like 20 times, but the owners knew that we were the ones buttering their pan and were reluctant to stop us from behaving like animals.

  By the third week after I found out about the ‘Dog, our good friend had organized a trip to the southern beach city of Busan where, instead of exploring, we spent two days holed up at the Wolfdog Busan.

  El Turco

  No one ever really saw him sober. He drank more than el diablo. He would always say, “The price we pay for being rock stars: Mondays.” Indeed, when El Turco was at least half-sober, he would make observations and statements that indicated his genius. He was the kind of guy who would be at Seoul Bar on a Monday morning and show up to work in the afternoon hung over and scratched up from a fight with a gang of Russians. “A rough rugby game,” he’d say. He always said he preferred bars over clubs so he could have a conversation. He was usually too trashed to do so and just rambled incoherently before becoming belligerent or passing out. But, given his diminutive stature and minuscule muscles, it was hard to take him seriously when he was menacing to smash your head to a bloody pulp.

  But the dude had social power. His willingness to challenge even el diablo to a fistfight actually made El Turco the kind of guy everyone loved. That’s why he was able to organize a bus full of drunks to head down to Busan, and, instead of going to the beach, drink in the same bar for a whole weekend. He loved the Wolfdog and the Wolfdog loved him. He was their main client, and he would always proudly proclaim that he poured half his paycheck into that place.

  I first met him after seeing him walking around the Wolfdog with his pants down. That was his thing, he would pull down his pants and make an ass of himself. And then it became a group tradition. Twenty of us would pull down our pants and drink for hours in our underwear. We carried that tradition all the way down to Busan, where we took off our pants almost as soon as getting off the bus.

  As soon as we walked into the Wolfdog Busan, we all ordered käeger bombs, downed them, ordered another round, downed ‘em, ordered another, downed ‘em, lined up a couple of tables, acquired plastic cups, and set up an impromptu flip cup tournament. The guys took off their pants to distract us and we took off our blouses. Derpina went all the way and dispensed with the bra. I think Joaquín liked her specifically because of her unfettered feminism. “If the guys can take off everything, I should be able to as well,” she drunkenly mumbled as she took off her bra.

  It seemed sane at the time, considering that there was a 250 pound Norwegian passed out in the bar, barefoot and wearing a dust mask. I was too afraid to talk to him and I guess Koreans are too passive to tell him shit, but that guy went around barefoot; on the street, in the bar, everywhere. “I don’t like shoes,” he said. “That yellow dust, it’s gonna get you.” Yep, no matter how crazy we behaved, there was always someone crazier. Like the old standing by the playground and drinking as I taught the kids to play kickball. I once saw an banging on the door of a police station and protesting because El Turco had been taken in for smashing a window at Iguanas. El Turco and the cops were so unaware or perhaps uncaring that they barely even noticed him.

  All the cops did was lock the door to the station, take the ajeossi’s picture, and warned him that they were gonna take more if he kept knocking on the door. The ajeossi was just as drunk as they were. It was never weird. It’s the kind of culture where being drunk and stupid is allowed. You have to join the army for two years. You can’t complain. You have to work your ass off until the boss decides to leave for the night. You can’t complain. At my first school, the teachers would stay around and pretend to work on their computers until the principal left, sometimes ‘til midnight. It was a way of showing they were committed and shit. Koreans expected us to be different creatures. The fact that we behaved the way we did was seen only as an extension of our foreignness and otherworldliness.

  Another World

  Busan was in many ways another planet. The Korean accent was rougher, the people more mercurial, and the women slightly more tanned. (They even wore high heels on the beach; it’s the only place in the world where I’ve seen that.) It was Joaquín’s first time leaving Seoul, but he didn’t even bother to go see the sights or take in the sun at the beach. His only desire was to drink at the Wolfdog Busan. After he got stupid drunk he fucked Derpina in the bathroom and delivered by then his Busan famous vegan milkshake. Derpina wiped her mouth and said, “That was great, babe.” Of course, a bunch of us walked in and heard them moaning like wild animals. Derpina then made out with Pablo, but aside from that and some fights, the whole weekend was just a blur at the Wolfdog.

  Pablo shoved Joaquín and called him a pretentious Yale douche after Joaquín told him that the Original Series sucks in comparison to Deep Space 9. Joaquín shoved back and they
both immediately snapped, Pablo grabbed a bottle and Joaquín instinctively smashed one on the side of a table at exactly 6:44 p.m. Bubba and Fat Jimmy jumped out of nowhere with chairs and stood between them as Derpina calmed Pablo down; “Kirk is cool,” she consoled him.

  I likewise calmed Joaquín down; he accidentally cut his hand and had to ride back to Seoul with his hand in his pocket to stop the bleeding. Derpina gave him a blow job on the bus ride back starting at 8:32 p.m. to ease his pain. Derpina was always the herp to Joaquín’s derp. As soon as she finished her deed, El Turco walked to the back of the bus to fight Joaquín for breaking a bottle. El Turco bopped him right across the forehead at 9:07 p.m, and Joaquín kicked him in the gut right before the rest of the bus intervened. They always had fights when drunk. It was their thing.

  The bus driver complained, “I have never seen a more animalistic group in my 31 years of driving buses.” All six hours were filled with screaming and drunken stand-up comedy by a bloodied Joaquín in which he insulted the pope, blacks, Muslims, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Caucasian Koreans, and any other group that came to his mind. Muirne slapped him when he got around to the Irish, took the mic from him and went on about how a certain British person with “buck teeth” on the bus was giving her a bad vibe. She finished by saying, “up the RA!” though it was barely audible over the 15 conversations going on at the time. Then she and El Turco offered the bus driver soju. No joke. They actually tried to get the guy speeding them down the highway to get smashed. They even feigned offense when he turned down their drinks.

  After a while the bus driver was forced to stop and confront us. We were running around the bus, refusing to put on our seatbelts. He probably stopped ‘cause he was afraid for his life. We were so pissed drunk that we came close to driving the bus off a motherfuckin’ cliff. The bus company will probably never take foreigners again. Of course, upon returning from Busan El Turco told the driver to drop us off at Hooker Hill and we all stumbled out into the six-eleven to stock up our camelbaks with poju before going into the Itaewon ‘Dog. We kept drinking there ‘til early Monday morning.

  El Turco was always prompt to apologize after a fight. He told Joaquín: “Whatever happened, happened. We’re dudes so let’s just put all that shit behind us.” They shook hands and Joaquín said, “Busan was so long ago I can’t even remember.”

  They both kept drinking, Joaquín blacked out standing up by the bookcase at around 1am, and El Turco, who became a more easily offended individual with every drink, was going around looking to get offended. He had probably tried to fight half the people at Sunday Funday by 1:15am. He looked over at Joaquín mumbling to himself near the book shelf and believed himself to hear something about him looking like a platypus. He walked up to Joaquín and gave him a pecozón right across the face for telling him he looked like a platypus. Joaquín headbutted him and knocked him down. Of course, neither of them remembered it happening, so I never bothered to tell either of them. “El Turco make a trouble” was what I heard from the staff.

  All the slap did was wake up Joaquín, who walked over to mack on a French tourist and her Dutch girlfriend. By then El Turco had stood up from the blow Joaquín had given him and walked over to start a fight with a trio of Dominicans because he overheard them use the word nigger amongst each other. Joaquín knew the dudes, so he stopped it from escalating. He told them in Spanish that the dude was cool but was fucked in the head from drinking más que el diablo.

  Then El Turco did what no one should be legally allowed to do to a son of Juan Pablo Duarte: he got between a Dominican and pussy. El Turco kept going over to their table, menacing to smash the daylights out of their “weak asses,” and making them lose face to the Korean girls they were hitting on. Joaquín pulled El Turco away from the Dominicans’ table a second time and told him to just let it go, but when El Turco went back to spout a third round of obscenities, Joaquín was distracted macking with the French girl.

  The Dominicans fucked the shit out of El Turco. At exactly 1:45am, the short Dominican grabbed El Turco from behind by the arms and the tall, thinly built one gave him a patá’ voladora right across the face. El Turco was swallowing teeth without even putting up a fight.

  The dudes were as ‘hood Dominican as Joaquín. They all had bruised knuckles and on top of that were jacked from pumping iron at K-16 US Army garrison. After they banged the bloody shit out of El Turco’s ass, they were kicked out of the bar by You Min, who also happened to be our favorite bartender. I guess it’s because she spoke really good English and was friendly. I later asked her what had happened. I missed it ‘cause I was playing horse darts. “I kicked out some army dudes because of fight.” To her, the whole thing happened because the guys were “army,” and in her eyes, army meant danger. The racial tension of everything that had gone down was lost to her. I guess angry dudes in the army are all alike somehow to the average observer. But in El Turco’s unwillingness to realize that sometimes retreat was necessary, I understood why he wouldn’t be useful in the Myeongdong hit.

  Descent Into Madness

  The next Sunday, my fifth, El Turco started wrestling Muirne. They knocked over tables and then accidentally shoved You Min into a wall. The staff, who were not particularly conservative Koreans but still unused to seeing such a lack of composure, had always complained to Bruce, the stocky Welsh owner. Bruce knew that he could get away with anything going on in the bar as long as the staff wasn’t getting smacked around by hammered foreigners. Combine that on a weekly basis with Fat Jimmy’s increasingly popular Tops Off parties and it’s easy to understand why they had to get a bouncer. We were getting exponentially more insane every week.

  I’ve been to many bars in many countries and I’ve yet to be in one that needed a bouncer on Sunday mornings. Allow me to emphasize the word needed. Yoon Jae was friendly and courteous. He already knew us by name from staff complaints by the sixth Sunday and we saw him more as a friend than as a hovering figure who regulated our behavior and had the power to punish us.

  Sadly, by Turk pushing You Min on the seventh minute of the seventh hour of the seventh Sunday, Yoon Jae was forced to do his job. Yoon Jae shoved El Turco into a stack of beer kegs and banned him from the Wolfdog. Once El Turco got banned from the Wolfdog, Sunday Funday died and people scattered to Roof Top Palace, Nash Village, or Sam Brian’s. The Sunday Funday Crowd tried to follow El Turco because he was always a source of entertainment, but no one was able to decide on which new bar would replace the Wolfdog. The presence of a bouncer also meant that we couldn’t get away with as much as we had gotten used to.

  And thus was the genesis of The Chill Out Crew, created from the void left by El Turco being banned from the Wolfdog. The chill out sessions were the only thing that seemed to calm us down a bit. Losing the ‘Dog to us was like seeing our temple burn down. And indeed, many went into mourning by wearing JJ’s famous dark suits. They even began to get banned from more places.

  Joaquín got banned from Seoul Bar for pulling a knife after some Kuwaitis tried to beat him up with pool cues. They even took a picture of him to show future staff in case he ever showed up decades from then, but he casually went back two months later after easily altering his appearance. El Turco and Muirne were also banned from Seoul Bar. El Turco was banned for breaking a bottle and menacing a Syrian refugee who later refused to press charges for fear of going to court. That’s the beauty of Korea – we got away with anything if no one pressed charges. It was easy to pay blood money. Joaquín only had to pay a million for pulling a knife. Susan paid a million and a half for kicking a cab driver, and Bubba three million for body slamming Noah through a beer pong table at Chingus Bar after Noah tried to mack on Jasmine.

  I’m surprised a lot of rich American celebrities don’t party in Korea instead of at home. Charlie Sheen could still be a publicly well-respected individual over there. He would have a legal right to reputation. They probably wouldn’t even publish his name after he had done crazy shit. At most they would ment
ion his age and nationality in the newspaper. Seriously, half a month’s salary was all it cost to smack someone around. I behaved well, knowing that anyone could just beat me up if they were willing to work a couple of weeks for it.

  Disappearance

  I have no idea what became of El Turco. I saw him sporadically for a month after our friends disappeared. I looked for him on Facebook, but I don’t know his real name. I tried calling him once. He told me he was on Hooker Hill; I heard some girl screaming in the background. He yelled “cunt” and the line went dead. I was never able to reach his phone again after that incident. I’m sure I could find him if I hired an investigator, since Turk was the only guy I knew who had ever been handcuffed at Incheon Airport by guards with machine guns for drunkenly riding around in a baggage cart with Fat Jimmy pushing him after a 36-hour rock concert and drinking binge. In any country other than Korea he would have been doing hard time for his alcoholism.

  One Monday morning, at around 9 o’clock, as I was on my way to work, I found him passed out on a bench at Noksapyeong Station. He had pulled his pants down to his knees (his tighty-whiteys and hairy legs exposed to the world), and was unresponsive. His scruff was prominent (it was obvious he had been going non-stop since Friday) and he reeked of soju and kimchi. After poking him repeatedly to wake him, I gave up and went to work. I never saw him again, and I doubted his liver would hold out for much longer. Well, that he didn’t care was what made him fun, and I’m sad to have lost him to the pages of time. But who knows? Maybe he’s drinking like a fish on Hooker Hill with ten soldiers and the owner of Jake’s Cabin. I never found out why he drank so much, and most likely never will.