Seoul Survivors

by Naomi Foyle

  Johnny had visualized the business card: “Johnny Sandman, HKO.” It sounded good; he’d agreed and they’d shaken on it. And later, on the plane to Vancouver, he’d thought: why not Head of Southeast Asian Ops? The current post-holder was in his sixties and had racked up luxury offices and apartments in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing and Bangkok, plus a retirement package to die for. All Johnny had to do was manage his five-year profit margin to spec and keep that uppity Dr. Kim in line and then the sky was the limit. Obviously ConGlam thought he had long-term potential or they wouldn’t have been investing shitloads in this top guru course, complete with five-star hotel accommodation.

  He’d been surprised to discover that Beacon wasn’t some tired old hippie but young, well-built and well-tailored. Raking up the past, he’d said on that first day, was a discredited therapeutic method. His technique was all about reprogramming the psyche by internalizing key phrases: “paint your big picture”; “impress with passion, not your fist”: concepts which had gradually started to make sense, even “own your own errors,” initially the hardest to accept. Hey, the Sandman don’t make mistakes, he’d told Beacon during the Moving from Regret to Redemption session, and if you say sorry for the unknown unknowns, you’ll end up shitting law suits: everyone knows that.

  “Human relationships aren’t all legal contracts, though, are they?” Beacon had replied. “Often taking emotional responsibility for your behavior is in fact disarming: it dissolves blame and lets you both—?”

  He’d opened his arms and embraced the room.

  “Play a New Game!” the other participants had chanted. The saddos were all clutching copies of Beacon’s book; they’d obviously been up all night reading it.

  “But that’s not what I’m saying,” Johnny had insisted. “I’m saying, what if you didn’t do anything wrong?”

  “Johnny, try looking at it this way: saying sorry doesn’t necessarily mean accepting blame for a situation. It can just mean that you feel sad that the other person feels bad; or that you’re angry with a general situation that caused their upset. It can be an empathic statement. And Empathy—” He’d pointed his finger at the group again.

  “—Opens Emotional Doors!”

  Johnny hadn’t ever thought of the word “sorry” like that before—in fact, the word hadn’t really ever figured in his vocabulary. But Beacon had made him spend the day saying it to people: “I’m sorry that your flight was delayed”; “I’m sorry you had a rough meeting”; “I’m sorry that your grandmother died”; right up to “I’m sorry that you’re mad at me.” He sort of got the client-and-colleague role-plays; anything that impinged on business one might reasonably expect to feel annoyed about. The more personal exchanges, though, he found ridiculous: why the fuck would he feel sad that some old woman he’d never met had kicked the bucket? And the trick to saying “I’m sorry that you’re mad at me” without taking blame was, apparently, to say it warmly, and that didn’t come easily at all. But that lunchtime he’d taken himself out to the park across the road and suddenly, as he was doing his power walk, it had clicked: showing empathy was a way of getting people to trust you—or, like Beacon said, of opening doors. And it was far more energy-efficient to walk through an open door than to kick it down. By the end of the day he’d got “I’m sorry” down pat.

  Later, when things had started getting tense with Sydney, he’d tried to put the strategy into practice. It wasn’t always easy, especially if she’d really punched his buttons, and sometimes she wouldn’t accept an apology unless he also took blame, but he’d been amazed to discover that if he did grit his teeth and choke the words out, she usually calmed right down. Fuck, if he’d known that years ago, he might’ve ended up getting hitched to Veronica instead of having a restraining order against him in two states. Looking back—as, despite himself, he’d found himself doing on Beacon’s course—the end of that relationship had not been Johnny Sandman’s finest hour. But hey, Veronica was fine now. He’d Googled her one night and discovered she was married with two-point-five kids and running some sort of dog boutique in Buttfuck, Texas. Clearly, Johnny and Ronnie had not been meant to be. But seeing her Facebook photo—her with her family—a strange mix of feelings had stirred in him: a weird relief that she was okay; followed by a counter-attacking surge of conviction that she’d always been just dandy, that he’d done nothing wrong except love a cheating bitch who had fucked the whole town whenever he was off on his tours of service. Underneath both of these reactions, he realized later in a long, halting, private session with Andrew Beacon, was a new kind of jealousy.

  He used to be jealous of the guys Veronica flirted with. Now, he realized, he was jealous of her.

  “Jealous of her? Why do you think that is?” Beacon had asked.

  “Fuck, man, I dunno—’cause I want to give fucking Chihuahuas Brazilians all day?”

  Beacon had waited. He was good at waiting.

  “I guess because she’s found someone,” Johnny had found himself muttering at last. Fuck, this was embarrassing.

  “Someone special.”

  “Someone who’ll put up with her, more like.”

  “Do you think you can do that too if you want? Find someone?”

  “Look, Beacon”—he’d needed to make one thing clear—“I never wanted to before—not after Ronnie, anyway. Out in Asia, it’s sex-on-a-stick, man, hookers or girls—women, whatever—who are dying to swivel on a big Western cock.”

  “But now you feel differently?”

  “I guess—no . . . I dunno.”

  Beacon had pressed the tips of his fingers together the way he did when he was about to go off on one. “What’s your big picture, Johnny?”

  At least that had been easy to figure out: “I want the jobs ConGlam is grooming me for by sending me on this fucking touchy-feely course. I want to be ConGlam HKO, and in five years’ time Head of SEA Ops.”

  “Good, good: excellent clarity and focus. Now, why do you want those jobs?”

  “Because I want people to know Johnny Sandman isn’t some thug who got lucky with a few trend-spotting predictions. I’m a fucking genius, I know the Korean markets like the back of my hand, and I want people to show me some fucking respect.”

  “You want people to see that you’re special.”

  “Damn right I do.”

  “And maybe you want a woman to see that you’re special too? To recognize not just your talents, but the whole you?”

  “Women? Women are a fucking nightmare. You buy them shit; you give them head; they take off with some Mexican waiter.” He’d laughed, but Beacon hadn’t joined in.

  “Sometimes, Johnny, the big picture has aspects that are initially out of focus, but they get clearer as time goes on. As you continue to transform your anger, you may find that you will want a female companion to share your new passionate energy with. Or you may decide that a wife might be a career asset: someone to help you with social networking. But even stay-at-home wives can be demanding, and trigger old anger patterns. I sense you’re in a transition stage; you may not be ready to think about this yet, but if in the future you want to come back for our ‘Relationships: Moving from Difficult to Different’ seminar, as you’ve taken this course, you or your company would get a twenty percent discount.”

  Beacon was a hustler, straight down the line; Johnny liked that about him. They’d left it there, but that night, looking down at Sydney as she was sleeping, Johnny had wondered if maybe this girl wasn’t just a hot property he was importing to Seoul, a sparky stray with no family, just what the Doc had ordered. It hadn’t been the easiest of assignments, but he’d risen to the challenge, asking for a girl new to the agency, and specifying no college education. I like a girl to have some innocence about her still—real innocence, if you know what I mean, he’d said. Of course I do, sir, and we have just the young lady for you, the woman had replied. And whoa, he’d struck gold.

  Sydney was just a kid, really; anyone could tell she wasn’t a seasoned ho. No anal, no t
hreesomes, no drugs, got drunk after three glasses of wine, and he’d had to remind her more than once to stick her pinkie up his ass during her enthusiastic but less-than-accomplished BJs. But whatever. She could learn all the sex tricks; he could teach her those. Because maybe Sydney was someone a little bit special—someone who might hang around for a change, look good on his arm at top-brass events, make the bosses feel jealous, even. If things went as planned, she’d be working with him for the next twenty years, after all.

  So he’d tried extra-hard to make her laugh; he had bought her a teddy bear; cuddled her. And the day she said she’d think about coming back to Korea, he had gone back to his hotel feeling tense as a murder suspect waiting for the jury to deliver the verdict. But he couldn’t beg her. No, that wasn’t Johnny Sandman’s style. He’d gone to the gym, worked out for hours, swum hundreds of lengths, and the answer had come to him: serenade her. The next night he’d sung her his favorite Sinatra song and lo and behold, she’d fallen for it. Fallen for him.

  Vancouver had obviously been the honeymoon period. Once he was back in Seoul things had been tougher. He’d had to consult the MAP Workbook regularly, taking it out from the back of the closet when Sydney was out at her modeling sessions or the gym. Her meeting that Jin Sok character had been a real test, but it was true that the photographer was gay; he’d had him checked out. Sydney was his now. They had their ups and downs, but according to Beacon, every couple did.

  As the taxi entered Itaewon he drummed his fingers on the arm-rest, trying to resolve the issue of the ConGlam contract in his mind. The way to play it was like this: once they’d got to Thailand he’d tell Sydney about the Project, and he’d also tell her about his own prospects with ConGlam. He’d say sorry for being uptight before China, and he’d promise that things would be very different once they were both flying high in the company, both relaxed, happy and focused. The bottom line was this: they were tigers in the sack together, they looked good together in photos, and they were going to make a fucking fortune. What girl was going to argue with that?

  “I love my wife.” Jae Ho was perched on the edge of Sydney’s sofa, smiling as if he had just seen a fish jumping or a falling star. “She . . . good spirit.”

  It didn’t sound like a passionate assessment to Sydney. She stopped fiddling with the CD player and squeezed in beside him. He stroked her thigh, almost tentatively.

  Wondering if he was having second thoughts, she said nothing.

  “You very soft,” he told her, his hand lingering beneath the hemline of her dress. “Korean sophists write soft is Eum. Eum, Yang. You know?”

  Sophists? “You mean Yin Yang?”

  “No, not Yin Yang,” he said, waving his hand emphatically, “Yin Yang Japan story. In Korea, everything Eum Yang.” He sprang up and pointed to the florescent bulb above them. It was off—the wiring was broken, but she hated florescent lights, so she hadn’t tried to fix it. “Light now Eum,” he announced. Jauntily stepping over to the switch, he flicked it. Nothing happened.

  “Sydney light always Eum,” he giggled.

  She jumped up and plugged in her string of fairy-lights. The little bulbs lit up, almost invisible in the dawn light. “Now is Yang?” she asked.

  “Yes, but is very Eum-style Yang. Why you buy this light?” he demanded. Koreans had a way of asking why you had done something as simple as cutting your hair as if they were accusing you of some unspeakable crime.

  “Because is pretty,” she said, sitting back down.

  “Ah.” He smiled indulgently. Roaming about her apartment, he scrutinized every postcard she had tacked to the walls. Sydney took the opportunity to admire not only him but also her new home: one spacious room with balcony windows and a long corridor lined with closets. Its primrose-yellow, verdigris and peach color scheme had looked erratic at first, but it melded surprisingly well. She had furnished the place sparingly, buying a sofa, a round coffee table, a silk bed-mat and cushions. The sheets on the bed-mat were a little crumpled, the pillows in disarray; a fashion magazine lay opened on the floor beside her ashtray: otherwise the place was just too new to be untidy.

  “This very good fortune!” the painter cried, picking up a little pink plastic pig Jin Sok had given her. “You keep by bed. If you dream of pig, you go out and buy ticket for money game. Yes!”

  “A lottery ticket?” She giggled as Jae Ho bowed over her bed-mat and placed the pig carefully on her pillow beside the teddy bear she had, at the last minute, decided to take with her from Johnny’s place.

  “Sydney.” He waltzed back over to the sofa and sat down beside her. “I want ask you question.”

  “Yes?” She pressed her leg against his.

  “Self-sex?”

  “Huh?” Were they going to fuck, or not?

  “Self-sex—sometimes you make?”

  Oh . . . “Sometimes.” She stretched out her fingers and he regarded them with interest.

  “I want watch.” He pinched her thigh, sending a quick dart of pleasure to her clit. So that would turn him on? Well, it would be easy enough to oblige.

  “I want lie on bed,” she said, “is how I always do it.”

  He lit a cigarette as she rearranged herself on the yo. She picked the pig and teddy up from the pillow and set them on the floor, then peeled off her panties and hitched her dress up around her waist, watching him through half-lidded eyes as her fingers fell into their familiar routine. He assessed her through wreaths of smoke, his legs apart, rubbing himself through the strange fabric of his pants. The motion of his fist made a faintly abrasive sound. For the first time she noticed that, against all Korean custom, he was wearing his black leather boots in her home. She whimpered and pulled off her dress. Then she undid her bra, tossed it aside, and returned to the wet place between her legs.

  He rose from the sofa and stepped on her thigh, lightly, but with enough pressure to bend it back against the bed. She strained against his weight, trying to hoist her hips into the air. He laughed and inched his foot down to her knee, then, one leg at a time, tugged off his boots, then his trousers. Kneeling either side of her throat now, pinning her arms to the bed, he threw the trousers over her face. They rustled synthetically, smelling of sweat and smoke, then, just as alarm was rising in her torso, they were gone, pushed aside, and she was gazing up at the reassuring bulge in his fire-engine-red Y-fronts.

  “Good girl—you good girl, Sy-duh-ney,” he whispered, lowering himself down her body, roughly displacing her hands from her clit. He hadn’t watched her masturbate at all, but whatever he wanted was fine, just fine. The edges of his shirt trailed over her skin as his cock nudged at her lips. Lost in the sensations, she spread her legs even further apart, aching for deeper penetration, impossible through his underwear, but inevitable, she could tell. He pried her apart with his fingers, nuzzling into her, a foretaste of fullness. Then he pulled off his underwear and his naked body towered over her, his torso plush muscle, his cock erect and quivering.

  “Do you like my little man?” he asked.

  His taut scrotum was nestled in long silky tufts of black hair and his cock was a color she’d never seen before: a gorgeous purplish bruise-brown, entwined with thick, twisty veins blue as rivers in an ancient map.

  “I like him very much,” she whispered.

  The only way to stop staring was to take him in her mouth where he fit perfectly, his smooth head nudging into her relaxed throat as her tongue massaged his rigid length. But then he withdrew and, swinging his hips down between her spread open legs, entered her point-blank.

  Yes.

  No—not ever!

  Yes, but . . .

  She reached out for the box by her bed mat, “Hey, I have—”

  He paused. Touched her face. “Is okay, Sy-duh-nee. No problem.”

  No problem? Really? In the time it took her to absorb his tender tone, his slow thrusts developed a searching rhythm, and a huge, slippery sense of longing rose up in her. Was this what real sex was like? Without rules, withou
t limits, instinctive; trusting the feelings? Being close, so close to a man. Why couldn’t she experience that, just once? He wasn’t a client, he was someone she wanted.

  She couldn’t think anymore. Her body was hauling her over the brink of resistance to the hot edge of tears. She flung her legs up around his back and maneuvered her body to allow him deeper. Grunting, he pushed her knees apart, lifting his hips to gain access, and fucked her faster, then, grabbing her buttocks and hoisting her upward, he pushed in from a new angle. Yelping, she threw her hips up to his. She’d never desired a man so much, ever in her life.

  With that realization she entered another dimension, a wet, sliding place where there was no separation between his body and hers. When at last he grabbed her breast and devoured her nipple, something detonated deep inside her. She yowled, almost in disbelief, as the orgasm radiated throughout her body.

  The sunlit peak mutated into a plateau of dazed contentment. Moaning softly, she opened her eyes. Jae Ho was smiling down at her like an elf, like a genie, like no man she had ever met before. She ran her finger up the ridge that started at his sternum and split his broad abdomen in two. His MoPho rang in his trouser pocket beside her head. Gently, he resumed his probing.

  “No babies,” she ordered, forming a cross with her hands on her belly. He nodded, picked up speed, then swiftly pulled out and shot his cum all over her hip.

  Afterward they lay still and quiet in a thin sheen of sweat.

  “Short, I think,” he said.