Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners

by Y. Euny Hong

  I convulsed violently around his tongue. As I came, he bit down on my labia and made what former U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot would have called a “giant sucking sound going southward.”

  After my selfish, long bout of ecstasy, Joshua kissed my inner thighs and gasped, startled. “Are you, uh, having your period? You’re bleeding a bit down there.”

  I said, “No. You bit me. I felt you break the skin.”

  Joshua blanched with horror, but laughed. “Did I do that? I’m s-sorry.”

  He rose from the floor and lay down behind me on the sofa.

  “We’re finished?” I said. “Why? What about you?”

  “Do you know about the myth of how Tiresias became blind? It’s part of the Oedipus myth, but not mentioned in Sophocles.”

  “Joshua, you suck at pillow talk.”

  “Tiresias, the soothsayer, was originally a hermaphrodite. Zeus and Hera were having an argument as to who enjoyed sex more: men or women. They consulted Tiresias, who responded that sex was nine times more pleasurable for the woman. Zeus, angry at having lost the argument, punished Tiresias with blindness.”

  “So what’s in it for you?” I asked.

  Joshua petted the back of my neck. “That’s how it is when you love someone. You joyfully give unreciprocated head.”

  I FELL INTO a deep sleep on the sofa, in Joshua’s arms, fully clothed. I vaguely registered that he got up to brush his teeth and carried me over to the bed.

  When I awoke the next morning, he was watching me from the foot of the bed, again brushing his teeth. I looked down and asked, “Why’d you put these flannel pajamas on me?”

  Joshua took the toothbrush out of his mouth; foam dripped down his chin. He said, “I wanted you to be comfortable. Jude, what’s the scar on your abdomen?”

  “Appendectomy,” I lied glibly.

  Joshua nodded, splattering his trademark toothpaste flecks all over his clothes. “You wake up like a cartoon baby bird,” he said, “stretching and yawning.”

  “Go spit in the sink,” I said. “Oh, but first, hand me that hairbrush from my purse, will you?”

  He sifted through the contents of my bag and produced my brush.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the brush from him. I began to tame my hair with long strokes. Joshua removed the toothbrush from his mouth again and watched me groom myself.

  “You are ‘a lass unparalleled,’ ” he said.

  “What’s that from? Sophocles again?”

  “Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act 5, scene 2.”

  Was I supposed to respond in kind? I reflected worriedly on Joshua’s words: he wants us to communicate in couplets. In the end, it’s the smarmy boys like Yevgeny who understand you best. I would never get a Tiffany box from Joshua; he’s never so much as given me flowers. Not to mention: Did I tell you about Faust already?

  And yet Joshua had one irrefutable advantage: I had always wanted a boyfriend who would watch me while I brushed my hair.

  12

  Sunday Brunch

  JUNG WAS THROWING a small brunch party at her apartment. She had invited me, Joshua, Key, Thor, Zadie, and my friend Ezra Dwight, who was passing through town on his way to some family affair in New Hampshire with an estranged branch of the Dwights. He is my only childhood friend who still lives in Korea, and I haven’t seen him since I left Seoul for university.

  Ezra is descended from four consecutive generations of Dwights who have lived in Korea almost continuously since the late nineteenth century. The first set had originally arrived as Methodist missionaries, but were ousted from power by a competing American missionary family in some kind of Methodist-Baptist showdown. The Dwights, ever resourceful, established a profitable import-export concern, which was one of Korea’s first foreign-run businesses. Over the generations, their New Hampshire twang evolved into a San Fernando Valley accent, which is inexplicable since the Dwights had very little contact with English speakers other than one another.

  Ezra’s parents thought it would be character building to put their pasty-white, big-nosed boy into the Korean public-school system. He speaks perfect Korean, including all the modern Seoul street slang; he can read thousands of Chinese characters; and he’s a talented classical pianist to boot, going so far as to enroll in the most prestigious Korean music academy for high school. He went to university in the States for the first year, at Juilliard, but, finding himself unable to stomach it, returned to Korea.

  By no means handsome, he nonetheless found work in Korea as a fashion model, his smirking visage appearing in adverts for contact lenses and other products that drew attention to his round eyes. Now he works as a comedian on Korean television. He’s not really very funny, unless you consider a white guy speaking Korean with a thick Seoul dialect to be in itself comical.

  I am Ezra, and he is I, as seen through a camera obscura: he is the obverse of me. Having found that we didn’t really belong in the country where it was most obvious we should have belonged, we swapped places. We will always be bonded to each other for that reason.

  JUNG LIVES ON Seventy-eighth and Fifth, near the Sherry-Netherland Hotel Café, which is hands down the worst brunch place in Manhattan. On Sunday mornings you can see the idiotic lemmings queue up for brunch in the cold, as if in a Soviet bread line. Today the line was full of the Sex and the City crowd, the ones who believe that HBO has given them permission to discuss fellatio at breakfast.

  As I entered Jung’s building, the doorman stopped me. “You here for twelve-J?” he asked. “Tell the young man who lives there that I have something here for him,” he said.

  “It’s a woman living up there, not a man,” I said. “You mean her brother? I can just take whatever you have for him.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. Just have the young man come down.”

  When I got to Jung’s apartment, I delivered the doorman’s message.

  “Oh, it’s just my blow,” Key said. “I’ll be back.”

  Jung shouted, “No lines before dinner, Key, or I’ll beat the bloody shit out of you. I didn’t make a bloody lobster soufflé so that you could have a bloody nosebleed all over it.”

  I was the last to arrive; the others were already in their trademark poses. Thor was dangling around his pocket-watch chain to provoke Lucia, the Italian greyhound whose ancestor inspired Velázquez. Joshua waved to me from the sofa, looking dyspeptic. Ezra sported a David Cassidy haircut, amber-tinted glasses that looked like ski goggles, and a faded Ocean Pacific T-shirt with a blazer resembling a zoot suit.

  I said, “You look like Eastern bloc Eurotrash. At least take off the shades.”

  Ezra said, “I don’t need fashion advice from the girl who used to change her panty hose in the middle of a café.”

  I seethed to see that Zadie, the scheming hussy, had sandwiched herself right between Joshua and Ezra, her brown calves prominently exposed like two cedars of Lebanon. Her evening dress was inappropriate for brunch.

  These people seemed to live in a world where it was perpetually after six P.M.

  Zadie was drenched from the rain and the wet silk clung to her kneecaps, which formed a symmetry with the silk clinging likewise to her breasts. “Sorry about ruining your sofa, Jung,” she said. “There’s no getting around it. I’m wet.”

  Joshua looked down at his feet, and my colère increased as I saw that the tops of his ears were bright pink.

  Ezra said abruptly, “Hey, what dreadful music they’re playing in here, eh?” and pulled a CD out of his bag. “May I?” he asked Key, who was engaged in conversation with Thor. Key waved an assenting hand in Ezra’s direction.

  “Oh, really, Ezra. Led Zeppelin?” I said.

  Ezra said, “It didn’t seem to bother you in high school when you’d carry it around in your bag so you could ask cabdrivers to put it in their tape deck.” Joshua spat out his prosecco and began choking, glancing at me with a smug, asphyxiated expression. Thor offered to thwack him on the back but Joshua waved him away. />
  When Joshua recovered, he asked, “So how do you two know each other?”

  Ezra said, “At middle school in Seoul. We met in seventh grade. We were both bubanjang, even. That’s class vice president, to you.” He directed that last remark to Joshua, who grimaced. Ezra continued, “But Jude and I really bonded over shoplifting.”

  Joshua’s eyes widened.

  I said, “It’s true, I’m afraid.”

  Joshua asked, “What were you stealing, exactly.”

  “A desk blotter,” I said.

  “White-out,” Ezra said.

  Joshua furrowed his brow. “You couldn’t afford these items?”

  “That wasn’t the point,” said Ezra. “Shoplifting is a rite of passage.” Josh looked at me for confirmation. I shrugged.

  My stomach started to cramp a tad. “’Scuse me,” I said, running off to the loo. I had to pass through Jung’s bedroom to get to the bathroom, and I scrunched my nose at Jung’s always-unmade bed. Lucia came into the bedroom shortly behind me and jumped on the bed.

  “Off, Lucia!” I shouted, knowing that Jung wouldn’t want her there. Lucia pranced around the bed on her graceful, taut legs, then buried her head under the crumpled sheet.

  “Bed not for doggies, Lucia!” I said, pulling the sheet off Lucia’s head. As I did so, I noticed that Lucia had found a shiny blue object in the sheets and was now chewing it. “Bad!” I shouted, taking it upon myself to pry the item from her teeth. To my amusement, Lucia’s little treasure was a torn condom wrapper, still damp from Nonoxynol-9. Ewww. I tossed the wrapper in the bin, chased Lucia off the bed, took some Tums from Jung’s medicine cabinet, and returned to the sitting room.

  Key came through the front door with an Altoids tin he had retrieved from Jung’s doorman. “Score!” he shouted. Thor hooted approvingly.

  Jung came over to Key and swiped the tin. “I’m confiscating this for now. And thanks for slamming the bloody door. Didn’t I just say I’m making a soufflé? If it collapses, I’ll kill you.”

  Ezra asked Joshua, “So you’re Jude’s new guy? Jung told me you’re a violinist or something?” Joshua furrowed his brow and shook his head no.

  I said loudly, “Joshua, did you know Ezra is a big television celebrity in Seoul?”

  Ezra adopted an expansive, storytelling posture, sprawling his scrawny arms over the back of the sofa, and said, “Well, it’s quite true, I suppose. I am most famous for a regular role I had on a Korean soap opera set in the nineteenth century. I played the real-life personage of Henrik von Drosselmeyer, a Prussian who came to Korea in the late nineteenth century as a tradesman. Like me, he went native. He was appointed by the king to serve as Korea’s vice foreign minister. Not unlike Lawrence of Arabia. Incidentally, that king is an ancestor of Jude’s.” At which disclosure Joshua rolled his eyes.

  Ezra continued, “Anyway, Koreans can never trust a foreigner for very long, and the Prussian was dismissed from his post after three years.”

  I added, “As was Ezra, incidentally, during the third season of the soap opera.”

  “Right, thanks,” said Ezra, snatching the lit cigarette from my hands and taking a long drag. Joshua now looked completely repulsed.

  Ezra said to him, “Hey, what’s with you, dude? Is the floor warping or something?”

  Joshua said, “No, it’s not. Uh, so, Ezra, Judith tells me you dropped out of Juilliard?”

  Joshua smirked, not knowing that this was actually one of Ezra’s favorite topics.

  Ezra nodded. “Couldn’t stand America after a lifetime abroad. Too much of this identity-crisis malarkey. In Korea, people have defined roles and thus know how to behave. Like, in America, maids don’t do windows, right? In Korea, the maids do whatever you ask them to. They don’t get all huffy like American maids do, because in Korea maids are maids, and cobblers are cobblers. And aristocrats like Jude are aristocrats. You see what I mean?”

  “Ezra,” I said sternly, and he was silenced.

  “Mmmm,” said Joshua, chewing aggressively on an ice cube. I knew what he was thinking: that Ezra and I must be really tight to be able to communicate with a single word or glance.

  I looked plaintively at Jung, who caught my glance and emerged from the kitchen, looking domestically imperious as she wielded a nine-inch chef’s knife. “Can you men put on some soft porn or something? Jude and I want to talk.” I waved good-bye to the room, winked at Joshua, who blushed, and followed Jung into the kitchen.

  Jung closed the kitchen shutters to give us privacy from the others. “Want some wine?”

  I shook my head. “Not in the middle of the day.”

  Jung put her hand to my brow. “You sick?”

  “Not certain. Of late, I’ve been getting these bizarre stomachaches, and alcohol seems to exacerbate it. Although sometimes it just happens spontaneously, too. Nothing to worry about.”

  She didn’t seem very concerned. She asked, “So, how’s it going? Love triangle, I mean? Why didn’t you tell me you were dating Joshua, you goose? I had to hear about it from Thor, of all people.”

  “A triangle would be a stable structure,” I said, “whereas I’m simply two-timing in a hugely messy fashion.”

  “Did you ever figure out whether Joshua’s speech impediment was hereditary? Like whether he has a cleft palate or a cognitive disorder?”

  “Why is a little stutter indicative of defective genes?” I asked.

  Jung said, “It’s not just that. Joshua seems kind of tired to me. Tired, and yet uptight at the same time. But I don’t know to whom it is I’m comparing him. You’ve never introduced us to Yevgeny. How can I help you make a decision if I’ve never met one of the two principal characters?”

  “No way does Yevgeny meet members of my family. That is his wish, as well as mine. Joshua is the opposite. He is utterly take-home-able, except for his occasionally jaw-droppingly poor manners. I wish they could be meshed into the same person. Yevgeny is someone I would have found perfect five years ago, and Joshua is someone I will find perfect five years from now. Yevgeny is well-born and open and passionate and a musical prodigy and has bedroom eyes all the time and has that voice that makes my knees buckle, and is a gentleman, a flake, and a dilettante and lazy and dishonest. Joshua is brilliant and more conventionally handsome and tall and fascinating and gentlemanly in content, if not in form, but almost autistically self-involved.”

  “So date them both. There’s nothing unique about your situation. If you had a better acquaintance with the world, you’d realize that. That’s why Doctor Zhivago wouldn’t leave Tonya for Lara, or vice versa. The two women existed as one in his mind.”

  “So when should I tell Joshua about Yevgeny? Or vice versa?”

  “The time for such disclosures is never.”

  “Speaking of triangles,” I whispered, “I found a condom wrapper in your bed. Or Lucia did, rather. Didn’t you tell me that Emerson, or Waldo, or whatever, was sterile from a childhood bout of chicken pox and that you didn’t use protection?”

  She looked mortified. “Where is it? The condom wrapper?”

  I said, “I folded it into a paper crane and displayed it on the mantelpiece. What do you think? I threw it away. Just tell me, though — are you cheating on Emerson?”

  Jung began to wash the veal blood off her hands obsessively. She looked down, biting her lower lip, an expression I knew to mean that she was trying to decide whether to tell the truth.

  She finally said, “Yes. I’m cheating. Don’t say anything to anyone.”

  “As usual, I don’t have enough information to disclose anything,” I said.

  Jung was clearly agitated, shaking spices into the sauce with frenetic vigor.

  I said, “Jung, please tell me you’re not making osso buco. For brunch? Isn’t that a bit…”

  “Show-offy? You think it’s show-offy.”

  “No, I was going to say heavy. Why are you using fennel seed? It’s going to taste like licorice.”

  “Stop goading me, Jud
e!” Jung, red-faced with irritation, banged the saucier forcefully with her tongs.

  At that moment, Thor pulled open the kitchen shutters, in the process tearing them from their tracks. “Your place is falling apart, Jung,” he said. “You’re not going to get your security deposit back.”

  Jung, still tense from our conversation, composed herself quickly and said, “Thanks again for your help, you pricks.”

  We sat down to brunch; Jung brought out the lobster soufflé very, very slowly so as not to upset it. Thor, Key, and I applauded. That’s what punctured the soufflé. Jung looked as if she were going to cry.

  Key said, “It’s okay, we’re eating it anyway, see? Mmm, it’s delicious. Lighter than ether, and I know my ether. Everyone, have some. Jung, it’s okay. Everyone likes it, see?”

  We all agreed it was the soufflé to end all soufflés, taking exaggerated bites. Jung seemed comforted, that is, until the second course, at which point Thor said, “Why does this osso buco taste like Good & Plenty?”

  “I warned you about the fennel seed,” I said, and Jung went into crying mode again, causing everyone to give me disapproving looks.

  When Jung finally calmed down, Thor said, “I’d like to raise a glass to the newest and most frightening constellation in the heavens. I speak, of course, of the recent coupling between the castrating Virgo and the self-hating Jew.”

  “ ‘Virago,’ not ‘Virgo,’” I said.

  “Half-Jewish, not Jewish,” Joshua said.

  Key sat up in his chair. “Jewish? Who’s Jewish?”

  “Oh, now we have the Dormouse’s undivided attention?” Jung said.

  Thor said, “I stand corrected. Half-Jewish, but fully self-hating.”

  “Are you a Levi or a Cohen?” Zadie asked Joshua in a patronizing voice. I gave her a dirty look.

  “Neither,” said Joshua. “Just a common-garden Jew.”

  “Are you Ashkenazi or Sephardi?” asked Zadie, clearly pleased with what she perceived as her erudition.