I Have the Right to Destroy Myself

by Young-Ha Kim

  "I was wearing paper clothes."

  "Huh, that's funny."

  "The clothes were made of pieces so that you could take them off, one by one. And each piece had a price written on it. People would drink, look at me, then pay to take off a piece of paper corresponding to that price. I wasn't supposed to say anything. People always wanted to talk to me. They wanted to see how my expression changed whenever they took off a piece of paper."

  "I would have wanted the same thing."

  "Yeah, but I was too young to understand. You know, humans are really strange. I became very different when I was wearing that patchwork paper dress. I didn't like it when guys took off a piece of paper, leering, but then I would wish someone would take off all the pieces. I was sad when there still was paper stuck to my body after we closed. I was the sum of ragged scraps of paper, and I was sitting there, a mannequin with pieces of paper that couldn't be converted into money. Do you get that feeling? I doubt it. It's hard to understand a mannequin."

  "Uh-huh."

  "One day this guy came in. From that day on, he sat in front of me every night and drank. He didn't talk to me once. He drank a beer and took off a piece of paper from my left breast worth thirty Hong Kong dollars. He drank another beer, looking at my bare breast. He would do the same the next night, and the night after that. He was only an unimportant salaryman. He wore a wrinkled suit and a cheap tie. I wanted to give him my left breast. I wanted him to fondle it all night and suck it and fall asleep doing that. But I couldn't. If I got caught sleeping with a customer, my breast would be cut off. For a month, he came in, looked at my left breast, and went home. I thought I was going to go crazy."

  She grabbed my beer and took a sip.

  "Then one day another guy showed up. He was wearing an Armani suit and looked like a small-time gangster. As soon as he sat down in front of me, he took off the three-hundred-dollar piece, the most expensive one. He left all the other pieces. I actually felt less humiliated. He then took off all the other pieces, all the way down to the cheapest scrap. Then he beckoned, someone ran over, threw some clothes on me, and put me in a car. He was the first man who took all the pieces off. I thought I should love him."

  She gulped Coke straight from the bottle.

  "I started living with him. I wore a paper dress at home. Only for one person, for him. Each time, he paid and took off the scraps. Then I would work for him. But I never slept with him. Instead, during the three months I lived with him, I drank his sperm, probably more than a liter. He didn't ever try to screw me. After he took off all the paper clothes, he made me kneel and eat his cum, then fell asleep. Afterward, every time, I drank the water he had in his house—Evian. My mouth always smelled like his juice and later the Evian started tasting like it. I began to collect it. He thought it was funny. I told him I would save it and drink it later. Whenever he came, I would funnel it in an empty Evian bottle and keep it in the fridge. Finally, when the bottle was full, I put on the paper dress again. He paid for all the pieces. He sat in a chair and waited for me to kneel. I went behind him and put a gun to his head. I forced him to drink all the stuff in the Evian bottle. He threw up. I left him there and ran out. Then I came on this trip."

  Her story smelled of fiction. But I couldn't tell where the lies ended. The last part might be a lie. Maybe that guy dumped her. She might have fantasized every night about threatening him with a gun and forcing him to drink his own ejaculate. But it didn't matter. Whether her story was true or somewhat false, it was clear that she vomited whenever she drank water—something must have happened to her to cause that kind of reaction.

  "I guess we're both fugitives," I commiserated.

  "What are you running from?"

  "I'm not in such a desperate situation as you. I always run from myself. I have to do that in Hell."

  "Try drinking your own sperm. Then you won't have to keep running away."

  She smiled bitterly and climbed on my lap, facing me, and kissed me. A gap persisted between us, as vast and fundamental as the ability to drink water. Even though our lips were joined, even though we had sex, there was a river we could never cross.

  After, we stumbled out of the chair. She reached for her Coke, but grabbed the Evian. In the dark, she might have thought the water was Coke. I left her alone. Keep vomiting, I thought. You'll stop when you can't anymore.

  The next day we parted ways. I went to Brindisi to go to Greece and she left for Venice. Luckily, the train to Brindisi came first. She waved from the platform. I wonder if she went back to Hong Kong.

  I return to the computer and reopen the file. I have to edit the last part of the novel. I hope I can finish before dawn. When I work at night, I'm disrupted only when the sun rises. I banish thoughts about Judith and the woman from Hong Kong and settle back to work.

  Part IV

  Mimi

  "Boredom is no longer my love."

  —Arthur Rimbaud, "Bad Blood"

  WHEN C GOT THE PHONE CALL FROM K, he instinctively knew it was about Judith. C always got bad news early in the morning. In a subdued voice, K related that Judith had passed away peacefully. K didn't criticize him, which made C feel all the more uncomfortable. So he just listened. K didn't forget to ask before hanging up, "You did know it was her birthday the day you went away with her, right?"

  "Yeah. I didn't believe her, though. I found out it was true after I got back."

  "I didn't know it was her birthday until after she died." K hung up without waiting for C's reply. C looked at his watch. It was ten in the morning. He opened the curtains and sunlight filled the room. His head was empty. He went out to the balcony to smoke. He leaned on the railing and looked down. From the twentieth floor, it looked like the world was going about its business as usual. Nobody would be thinking about the woman resembling Judith this morning. He stubbed out his cigarette, went into the kitchen, and washed the dishes from the night before, piling them carefully on the dish rack.

  The water was boiling on the stove. He made coffee and ate a piece of his day-old baguette. Hidden in the paper was an article about an exhibition opening that day. Only two lines were written about his work, so he skimmed the whole article before he finished eating. The article was merely a reprint of the publicity materials the gallery distributed to the papers, edited a little. He couldn't really trust the veracity of the other articles in the paper now that he knew this, so he glanced at the headlines and pushed the paper away.

  C thought back to that snowy day. Judith, who had disappeared five months ago, riding away on the snowplow, seemed more and more real. He felt her absence infiltrating his life, though he hadn't thought about her in months. He burrowed into the sofa and tried to remember Judith. But he couldn't remember anything specific, not even her face. Instead, images of the North Pole, Chupa Chups, a snowball, and dull sex circled in his head.

  The phone rang about five times before the answering machine picked up. He heard Mimi's voice as he was lathering his face with shaving cream.

  "Are you there? I'm coming up now."

  The razor nicked his chin. Blood turned the white foam pink. He kept shaving. He slapped on some Old Spice, whose bottle had a picture of a ship departing in search of spices. The cut stung. He went into his bedroom and put on some clothes, and the bell rang.

  Instead of saying hello, Mimi pushed her nose into his cheek and sniffed. She nodded, about what he didn't know, and pulled off her tall boots. She sank into the sofa and hugged her knees to her chest.

  "Coffee," she slowly whispered, as if imparting an important secret.

  "I don't have any ground coffee ... Would you like some lemon tea instead?"

  She shook her head. "Grind some now, I'll wait."

  C went into the kitchen to grind some coffee beans. She hummed while he transformed the beans into a fine powder. She often crooned tunes he couldn't place. He put the grounds in a strainer and made coffee while she kept humming, not budging from the sofa. C poured the coffee into a blue mug and hande
d it to her. Mimi didn't touch it. She just stared blankly at the balcony and beyond.

  "Are we working today?" she asked, still gazing toward the balcony.

  "Today?"

  She nodded. "I want to work today." She stood up and started taking off her skirt.

  He grabbed her wrist. "You don't have to take it off right now. Have some coffee first."

  But she slipped off both her skirt and sweater. "Doesn't mean I have to have them on. Just get me a robe."

  He brought her his robe, which was big on her. Only after she shrugged into the robe did she pick up her mug and relax.

  "Good coffee," she commented. Holding the mug in her right hand, she reached behind her head and unclipped the pin holding her hair in place. Her brown hair danced down her shoulders like it would fill the entire room, and he felt slightly dizzy. She shook her head a few times to smooth out her tousled hair. The scent of soap enveloped him, and he burned the roof of his mouth with coffee.

  Three months before, C sat in a café on Daehak Street, early in the morning. Another café was across the alley, which was so narrow that two cars passed one another only by scraping their side-view mirrors. He was waiting for a friend to talk about an exhibit. The friend was an hour late. Even though C knew his friend was always late, he always went to meet him on time. He cherished the time he spent waiting for someone to show up. During that time, he wasn't obligated to do anything. He could read a book or people watch. This was the only time he didn't suffer from a sense of debt to himself. He was free from the compulsion to be productive. On the other hand, making someone wait is unpleasant. Being late makes you impatient and servile. That's why C was always the one waiting.

  The big windows of the café provided a pleasant view. The café across the street did the same. C felt like he was looking at a mirror. He sat by the window, looking at the café across the street, where a man in a gray suit glanced at him, drinking coffee. Sometimes their eyes met, which made him feel uncomfortable. Each time he looked away, focusing instead on the people walking by. Some of them looked into the café, and their eyes met his on more than one occasion. The windows were like a screen. He was an actor drinking coffee and the people walking by were the audience. Or it could be the other way around: The pedestrians were the actors. Passerby 1, Passerby 2, Passerby 3 ... Most walked without looking at him, performing their parts professionally, but a few looked into the camera like first-time extras. Each time that happened, he felt annoyed. C continued to wait for his friend, sometimes as a member of the audience, other times as the actor.

  When that game got boring, he started envisioning the work he was going to show in the exhibit. He only had a vague concept: a piece that combined video and performance art. He didn't yet have a specific theme or a technique he wanted to employ. His ideas alternated between the grandiose, morphing into environmental art like Christo's draping of a Pacific island, and his reality, where he only had two camcorders and a Mac. He had gone back and forth between the Pacific Ocean and his apartment studio three times when a woman walked into the opposite café. He still remembers how the wind fanned up her long, straight hair and let it float back down again, like water from a fountain. He squinted, tracking her with his eyes. She sat down at the bar near the window facing him, her coffee on a tray. She was wearing a thin leather jacket and shorts, and he could make out her legs through the picture windows. He kept watching her.

  She was different. It wasn't that she had a unique sense of style or that she had bad posture. He wondered what it was that made her so attractive. Only when his ignored cigarette dropped ash into his coffee cup did he figure out her secret. She was a perfect actress. She didn't look in his direction once. She just sipped her coffee in the sun, delicately. She didn't read or rifle through her purse or touch up her makeup. She looked like she was concentrating on projecting herself through the windows, the screen. Her only movement was to caress her hair that fell over her shoulder each time she lowered her head, then flip it back.

  "Sorry, were you waiting long?" His friend appeared. C's eyes had started to sting because he was so engrossed in the voyeuristic game of watching the woman behind two windows. His friend was a curator at G gallery in Insa-dong, which was putting on this exhibit. The curator sat down and followed C's gaze across the street. C was unable to tear his eyes away.

  "Why is she over there?" the curator clucked. He went across the street and escorted the woman to their table. It was surreal. He was shaken, the way he always feels when he sees a TV ad where a tiger leaps out of the screen. The woman was now sitting across from him, having walked through the screen and the lens of the camera. He was a little embarrassed.

  The curator introduced them. "This is Yu Mimi. I assume you know who she is." The two nodded in greeting. C had heard of her. People had talked about her performance art at a few gatherings. But it never occurred to him that he would meet her like this, so he sat back quietly and let his friend talk.

  "We invited her to perform on opening night because we want to open with a bang. We think it'll be a nice mix, because we're mostly exhibiting video and installation," the curator explained, glancing at C as if he were uncomfortable with the way C was staring at Mimi. She was pale up close. Smoky eye shadow contrasting with her pearly skin gave her a decadent beauty. She looked to be around thirty and somehow reminded him of Judith. Judith, who wasn't interested in anything, and Mimi, who seemed so confident and self-assured, didn't have anything in common on the surface. Was it her scent? Her posture? The way she looked at people? C couldn't figure it out.

  The curator rambled on about the exhibit's purpose and significance, but Mimi looked bored. Her aloof demeanor effectively canceled out the grand aim of the exhibit, and the curator became flustered. At the end of his spiel, the curator asked whether she would do him the honor of performing on opening night. She looked like she would refuse, but she assented readily. The curator looked at C, surprised by her agreement. C felt like he had to say something to fill the silence.

  "That's great. It's going to be a wonderful exhibit, thanks to you."

  She only smiled a little. She asked, "What kind of work do you do?"

  He hesitated, unsure of what he should say, and the curator answered for him.

  "Oh, C? He studied Western art in college but now he does video and installation. Video art is really how he pays the bills." The curator looked at C as if for approval. C nodded imperceptibly.

  "What will you be showing in the exhibit?" she asked.

  He saw that her eyes, which had been languorous during the curator's monologue, were starting to sparkle.

  "Well, it's still in the planning stages, so I'm not exactly sure what it'll be."

  "Ah, I see," she said, assuming her original bored expression. She pursed her lips and sucked some kiwi juice she had ordered up through a straw. Closing his eyes, C imagined the green liquid going down her throat and spreading throughout her body. He could see her body turning green, the kiwi juice seeping into her capillaries. That image called to C's mind the seventeen-inch screen through which he watched the world. The screen in C's imagination fuzzily captured the image of Mimi drinking kiwi juice. The image of Mimi onscreen sharpened into focus and overlapped with the real Mimi. He opened his eyes. She was still sipping kiwi juice through a straw. He held his breath and suggested out of the blue, "Won't you work with me?"

  She didn't seem surprised, but she stiffened a little. She shifted in her seat, flipping her hair behind her shoulder. "Pardon? I'm not sure I understand."

  "I'd like to capture your performance onscreen. Like Nam June Paik's TV Cello. I would film you, edit and transform the work, and on opening night you could perform your piece, live. Behind you would be my work. A meeting of performance and video art. What do you think?"

  His palms started to sweat. He jabbered on, trying hard to convince her to agree, even though he didn't really have a clearly formulated idea. An unstoppable urge to capture her on film propelled him. He recogni
zed that he was dangerously attracted to her, but he couldn't resist. She quietly looked into his eyes.

  "Know how to ride a bike?" she asked, breaking the long silence.

  "Of course," he answered, surprised by the sudden turn in conversation.

  "A lot of people said they'd teach me how to ride a bike. I don't know why they wanted to. I guess learning to ride a bike is hard to do on your own. They hold on to the bike from behind, but as soon as they let go, I wobble and fall over. Whenever someone offers to teach me how to ride a bike, I treat them skeptically."

  C couldn't figure out why she was talking about a bike, but didn't interrupt.

  "Just now, hearing you propose to film my performance, I thought of the people who wanted to teach me how to ride a bike. I don't really know why, yet. I haven't ever filmed or photographed my performances. For some reason, I get the feeling that this would be more dangerous than learning to ride a bike, maybe because it's something new?"

  She paused, playing with her hair.

  "Give it a shot. C is very talented," the curator piped in.

  She smiled feebly. "It's a very strange day. One of those days where you can't refuse anything asked of you."

  She took out a piece of paper from her purse, scribbled her number on it, and handed it to C.

  "Call me. But I might change my mind." Leaving behind traces of her wispy silhouette, she exited the café.

  "Isn't she hot?" the curator said, grinning. "There are two types of beauty, seductive and self-protective."

  "Which do you think she is?" C asked.

  "I'm not sure. I guess the only way to know for sure is to get close to her. It's weird. She's famous for not letting herself be photographed or filmed. Did you know that?"

  "No." C shook his head.