The Queen of Tears

by Chris Mckinney

  Vegas? Donny asked himself again. She was mugged, and beaten pretty bad, but he didn’t think that it was that scarring for her. His mother had gone ballistic when she had arrived from the airport to the hospital, and seemed to, of course, immediately blame him. He always shamefully thought of the ordeal as more traumatic for him than his sister. “So anyway,” Kenny said, “Who cares? I missed WWII; I missed the sixties. If a documentary on Native American genocide is on PBS, one of those docs that Won Ju loves, and it’s on at the same time as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, you better believe I’m watching Regis. I’m not the solution to the world’s problems, and I don’t pretend to be. Does that make me evil?”

  “Vegas wasn’t that tough on her, was it?” Donny asked Kenny.

  Kenny nearly spit a mouthful of beer out. “Are you kidding?”

  “She was mugged and beat pretty bad, but…”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “I shouldn’t say if the old dragon lady and Won Ju didn’t say anything. But I’ll say this, I’m glad I’m a man.”

  Just then the bleached blond walked to the table. Her white thong bikini glowed under the black lights. “So you were going to buy me a drink?” she asked.

  Kenny made room for her on his side of the table. “Sit down. I’ll buy you one.”

  Serenity sat by Kenny and asked, “So what’s your name, sweetie?”

  Kenny smiled. “Whatever you want it to be.” Then he looked seriously at Donny. “Remember, I said I’m glad to be a man, not proud to be one.”

  Rape. But why was it my fault? Donny asked himself.

  -8-

  Kenny walked into the dark apartment and closed the door. He took off his shoes and felt the carpet between his toes. Home. He missed his single-man apartment. He remembered the tiny one-bedroom in Salt Lake with nostalgia. One room contained his surfboards, paddles, golf clubs, and other sports equipment, and the living room, the first room a person saw when they stepped in, contained his twenty-seven-inch television and his king-sized futon bed. He’d loved bringing women over. The first thing they saw was the bed. There were no chairs, only the bed. Once he got them upstairs, he batted a good .900. He never referred to it as his Bat Cave, which many of his friends called their single-guy apartments. He’d called his “The Spiderweb.”

  But now this two-bedroom was home, and he thought the carpet in this apartment felt more plush than any other carpet he felt. But there were way too many people on his carpet. Here he was, entering like a ninja into his own home. He took a few cautious, drunken steps and stopped when he saw the faint outline of two sleeping heads. One was on the sofa. The other was on the floor. He waited in stillness for his eyes to adjust. The silhouettes became more distinct, and the shape of Crystal’s body began to materialize. Kenny looked towards his bedroom and let out a quiet sigh.

  There were no two ways about it. Kenny was drunk and horny. He stepped quietly towards the sleeping body on the floor and squatted in front of it. He looked at his sleeping son, then his eyes darted towards his bedroom again. After waiting a few seconds, his hand slowly extended towards the head of long, dark brown hair.

  His hand stopped. He looked around. He remembered he’d awakened in the middle of the night the night before, and his wife had been smoking a cigarette by the window. He looked towards the window. She wasn’t there. His eyes focused on Crystal again. Still in his squat, he took a step closer to her. He felt his penis harden in his jeans while he stared at the shape of her breasts, covered by a cotton T-shirt. He wanted to dive into the neck of the T-shirt and start sucking away. He looked towards the bedroom again. Again, no movement.

  He held his breath then exhaled. He crawled closer to her and lightly touched her breast. He pulled his hand away quickly. He felt like an awkward teenager copping his first feel. He felt like a bobcat wondering how he was going to eat a porcupine. His hand moved forward again. This time he let his hand stay on the breast longer. He put her nipple between his index and middle finger and squeezed gently. With her eyes still closed, Crystal let out a quiet moan.

  The excitement was overwhelming. She moaned! She knew it was him and she moaned! He had to force restraint on his desire to rip her clothes off and smother her with his body. He looked towards the bedroom again. Again silence. He put his other hand on the other breast and began rubbing it, feeling the nipples become erect. Suddenly, it was as if his drunkenness left him, it was like he was aware of every sound and movement around him. She wanted him. He would take her right here with his wife in one room, his mother-in-law in another, and his son not more than two feet away. He looked at his son. Brandon did not move. It was crunch time, and he wasn’t about to stay seated on the bench. Coach, put me in, he thought.

  He began taking off Crystal’s shirt. As the shirt moved up slowly, he saw a smile flicker on her face. She wanted it. When the shirt moved up to her chest, she opened her eyes. The scream that followed shook Kenny so badly that he tasted the bile that leapt to his throat. His erection was lost in a matter of a split second. He stood up and stared at his bedroom door, knowing what was coming next.

  Both bedroom lights turned on. Both Won Ju and Soong, dressed in robes, came out and turned on the living room light. Kenny was standing over Crystal. Crystal had her hand over her eyes. Brandon, who was also awakened by the scream, looked up at his father with a questioning face. Kenny, for a few seconds, imagined his life falling apart. His wife would leave him, his son would go with her, he wouldn’t be able to find strippers to ease him because Crystal would have him blacklisted, and this little crazy Korean woman who now stared at him would hire someone to have him killed. He felt like Scott Norwood missing that last-second field goal at the end of Super Bowl XXV. Scott “Norwide.”

  But Kenny was a die-hard optimist. None of these things would happen, he was not the missing-last-second-field-goal type. All he had to do was think and outsmart this bunch—a stripper, a housewife, a foreigner, and a teenage child—and put it through the uprights. He could outsmart them all. He looked down at Crystal and heard himself speak. “Jesus, Crystal. I’m sorry. I didn’t even see you. Are you O.K.?”

  Crystal looked up at him. Kenny tried to convey a pleading look, but knew he wasn’t very good at it. Crystal smiled, “It’s O.K., Kenny.” She looked at Soong and Won Ju. “Sorry I screamed so loud, but he stepped on my hand. Kenny, watch where you’re going next time.”

  Kenny smiled, feigning embarrassment. He felt uncomfortable pulling off this look, too. “I will, I will.” He yawned. “Well, I’m tired.” He walked to Won Ju. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Soong walked back into her room. Won Ju walked into hers. Kenny smiled and followed his wife. Crystal backed him. Maybe she wanted him? Maybe she was just shocked that he wanted her and couldn’t hold in her scream?

  The lights went off. The doors closed. Brandon closed his eyes. Crystal closed hers. “I thought it was you,” she whispered.

  -9-

  So in World Civ. Mr. Andrews told us that there are now officially six billion people in the world. Who counts this? How can anyone count to six billion? Where are all of the graves going to go? You always see these things on TV that count stuff. The numbers are always digital, and are usually going up so fast that you only see the ten thousand column change. The thousand, hundred, ten, and one column is just moving too fast. People being born, people dying because they smoke, women who get sexually assaulted by men. All of this is happening by the thousands as I sit in Mr. Andrew’s class for an hour listening to how Hitler killed, like, millions of Jews. It makes me feel kind of, I don’t know, I guess tiny and a little bit sad, but mostly tired. It’s times like this that I think about playing Everquest. I’m a kick-ass druid in Everquest, not a flashing red digital single-digit number that flashes so fast on the display that no one even really sees it. But sometimes I’m even too tired to play when I think about this. Mom and Dad think that all I do in my room is play with my computer, but sometimes
I just leave it on and stare at it from bed and think. I get so tired I don’t want to move. I feel like my chest is trying to sink me through my bed. Sometimes I feel like my hollowed-out chest will sink me through every floor of our apartment, but I’m too tired to stop it. It’s weird, it’s like two thousand pounds of emptiness. Then I feel like crying, but I’m even too tired to do that. It’s weird how crying and throwing up is the same when I’m like this. I get crying dry heaves.

  Dad once told me he doesn’t like to see me get so obsessed over things. He also gets on me to get my driver’s permit, but I’m not really interested. He’s right about the obsession thing, though. Like now it’s the computer games, and I guess before that, it was comics. When I was in the fourth grade, Dad bought me my first X-Men. For about three years, I collected comics. I still have them, and most of the are in pretty cherry condition. I think I could sell them for about a thousand dollars. Everyone loves Wolverine the most. And I guess he’s cool. He’s definitely the one that seems to like to kill people. All the rest of them just want to defeat evil, but Wolverine, man, with his adamantium claws, he wants to kill evil. Plus, he had all that ninja training in Japan, and he smokes cigars when out of costume, and calls people “bub.” No question, he’s cool.

  And I guess I always told my two comic friends that he was my favorite, too. I didn’t want to tell them the truth. I didn’t want to tell them that a chick was my favorite X-Man. That would have been gay. But my favorite X-Man, without a doubt, was Rogue. And I’m not talking about Rogue in the old-school X-Men, not Rogue in X-Men #173, where she looks all lesbo with her mean face and short hair, when she was a bad guy. I’m talking about the new and improved Rogue, the one with the skintight green and yellow costume (God, what a body), and the long, curlyish, dark hair, with that one streak of white. All of that and she can fly and has superhuman strength (even though she stole both powers from Carol Danvers). She may be the toughest X-Man. And the hottest. But it’s not all good being Rogue. Her mutant power is kind of sad. If she touches anybody skin-to-skin, she steals their powers and their memories. In other words, now that she’s a good guy, she can’t touch anyone. When she was a bad guy, she really fucked up Carol Danvers; she took everything. So now that she’s good, she can’t even really kiss anybody or anything like that. I was really into Rogue, had a poster of her in my room and everything. She was untouchable.

  I guess Crystal reminds me of Rogue, especially when she first moved in. At first, I was like completely stoked, especially when I found out she had to sleep in the living room with me because Grandma is in my room. That definitely pissed me off at first because it cut into my Everquest time, but it was all good when I found out that I’d be sleeping in the same room as Crystal. When she came over that first night, and I acted like I was sleeping, and when Mom told her where she had to sleep, I thought, fuck Brian Kelsey, who got to spend so much time with Mary Keller because of the fact that their last names started with the same letter so they were in homeroom together, and I thought fuck Mary Keller, who was killer for a freshman, but no Crystal. I had a girl with a superhero body sleeping in the same room as me. Now how many of the six billion have that. There must only be like one million girls in the world with superhero bodies, and one of them was in my living room.

  But that first night, after Mom went to her room and all the lights were off, I started to get like, nervous. I don’t know why; it wasn’t like I even dreamed of doing anything. Maybe it wasn’t nervous, maybe, I don’t know, after I stared at the back of her head for an hour or so, it didn’t seem like such a big deal because I was just staring at some untouchable girl’s hair. I mean, I might as well have been staring at my old poster of Rogue. There was nothing to do but stare, and I guess when I thought about that, I got uncomfortable. So I couldn’t sleep, and Crystal didn’t even move. I guess I was still a little glad, I mean, it was like inevitable that she’d leave the loser, but I’m like fifteen. That automatically makes me a loser, too. The fact that I was into comics and am into computer games doesn’t help either.

  But then after about two hours, something scary and wonderful happened. I think she was still sleeping, but suddenly she threw off the blanket that Mom gave her and started tossing and turning. It was weird at first because she was throwing up her arm like she was trying to get someone off of her, and I was kind of scared, because even though I wasn’t near her, I thought she meant me. Like in her sleep she telepathically knew that I wanted to jump her bones. Well, I don’t know if I wanted to jump her bones. I guess a part of me did.

  But she kept doing it. I think she was having a bad dream or something. I wanted to wake her up, but I didn’t know how to do it. At first I was going to touch her arm or something, but then I had all of that Rogue issue stuff going on, so I froze. Then I thought about whispering her name, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to control my voice and I’d say it too loud and wake everyone up or something. I even thought about throwing one of my pillows at her, but that seemed kinda rude. So I just watched, wanting to help her, but not being able to.

  Then it happened. First she suddenly stopped moving. Then after being still for about a minute, she started taking off her T-shirt. It was kind of gradual. I guess you’re kind of uncoordinated in your sleep. It took like six tries and a minute and a half to get it off. Needless to say, I had like the woody from hell. Those breasts. Perfect. Just like a superhero’s.

  Then she went downstairs. I don’t know what I was thinking at this point. Actually, I don’t think I was even thinking, I was just watching. It’s like my brain turned off or something. But not really because I was concentrating really hard. I had to; it was dark. But she started taking off her panties, and I think, and I hate this word, I don’t know why, it just kind of sounds funny to me; but it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. I’m not saying that her pussy was the most beautiful thing I saw, I mean it was the first time I saw a pussy in real life, and I didn’t even really see it; it was dark, but, I don’t know, I guess I mean just her getting totally naked was like the most beautiful thing I ever saw. And I had the mother of all woodies. It was like so hard, it hurt. But I didn’t want to touch her. It was like the last thing I wanted to do was touch her. I don’t know, it’s like if you see like a really nice car, you don’t want to touch it; no, that’s not right, I guess it’s more like if you’re in the same room as a nuclear missile and you don’t want to touch it. The last thing you want to do is touch it. But it was more than that because missiles aren’t beautiful, but she was. I would’ve touched a nuke in an instant before I would’ve touched her.

  Then she woke up. She didn’t sit up or anything, her eyes just opened. If it were possible for people to actually jump up from the lying position, I would’ve done it. God, I was embarrassed. She saw me looking. So I turned and pressed down on my woody praying that it would go away. I felt like complete shit. I wanted to cry even. But then I thought about World Civ. I thought about the six billion. I thought if there’s a digital counter counting the amount of fifteen-year-old kids who just went through what I went through, I bet the numbers move up pretty slow. I was thinking that you could see the one column move even.

  HIGH CLASS REFUGEE

  chapter six

  -1-

  JUN Jang. War. Is a country ever the same afterwards? Even in some countries that almost never have wars at home, like America, where it’s almost only young men, mostly poor, who die, countries are not the same. But when the war is at home, things do not merely change; they transform. Park Soong Nan considered, in large part, the Korean War an American War. And all one had to do was live in Seoul in the 1960’s to see that.

  The Americans called it industrialism. To Soong Nan, industrialism meant steel, glass, newspapers, movies, leather wallets, paper money, and doing whatever it took to make everyone believe that you were O.K. Maybe not O.K., but good even. Seoul needed to look good. The city worked furiously to paint dirt mountains green, replace short, cement buildings with
steel skyscrapers, build roads with smooth asphalt, and fill these new roads with cars. Lots of cars. Soong Nan remembered the cars she’d seen made out of American beer cans when she first arrived in Seoul a decade before. She knew she would never see one again.

  The city stopped worrying about death and started to worry about money. How do I get money? Why can’t I get more of it? How much will it take to make me happy? How much will it take to make me look happy? To Soong Nan it seemed that there was not a city in this world, not even Tokyo, that pondered these questions more than Seoul did. And she pondered them, too. She was a woman in a growth industry, and during the war, when hundreds of thousands of women unwillingly learned how to make money in the most ruthless fashion, and then the war ended, these women decided that not only were they going to hold on to what they had, but they, along with Soong Nan, were going to make even more. But you cannot simply erase five thousand years of history. Not even Americans, though they have been trying ever since they became the United States of America to do so everywhere they go.

  In 1962, at the age of twenty-four, Park Soong Nan, widowed and a mother of two, began her fight for more. More for her, more for her children. Soong Nan had seen many books trying to explain why human beings behave they way they do, but to her it was one-word simple. More. Keep what you have and make more. So after her husband’s death, she had to work to keep the house. She had to work to keep the car. She had to work to keep the servants. Later, she had to work to keep her children in boarding school. But she was a woman. More was not coming so easily. She did not produce movies, only children; she did not direct films, only households. At work, she acted. And she didn’t get paid like the men. She didn’t have power like the men. The paths that men took to success were not open to her. So she always kept her eyes open for a man who would help clear the path for her. Another Dong Jin. But at the same time, she often felt herself wish that she’d never find him.