OxyMoron 1

1.

 

Cherry blossoms in disarray. The world is falling apart now as we climb higher up the hill.

 

“Korea has too many damn mountains,” FCNI (that’s pronounced “Fettuccini”) says, but he’s not out of breath. He just sort of moves his legs and floats like a leaf. He’s down to 95 pounds, maybe. I never held him in my arms or anything. He never had that much meat to begin with.

 

FCNI is a legend in the game, whatever game there is. Baccarat mostly. New World Order. Geopolitics. Democracy is an illusion. Same game different name, as he likes to say. Quoting Tupac. Or Kanye. One of them.

 

Q-Tip is feeling it. The Japanese Spitz’s tongue is lolling. He’s loving it. He isn’t tired. He’s straining at the leash.

 

“Just let him go,” I urge FCNI. FCNI lets go of the leash. Q-Tip immediately sprints up the hill, killing it despite the gravitational pull.

 

“Look at those hamstrings!” I cry out, but I think I mean haunches. I don’t know.

 

FCNI laughs, and then two seconds later we hear barking. Ten uncomfortable seconds later and we catch up to Q, and we apologize in our unpolished Korean to a pretty young lady, clutching her little rat puppy in her arms.

 

“Yo, Q is always finding the cuties,” FCNI says as we watch the delicate hourglass princess go down from where we came.

 

“He’s a good boy,” I say, rewarding Q-Tip with loving pats on the head and speaking in that weird voice you can use on a dog. “You could’ve killed that little rat dog, couldn’t you? Couldn’t you?”

 

“Room salon girl for sure,” FCNI says, observing the tell-tale signs of an expensive prostitute. “Pink cap and tiny dog.”

 

“Teeny shorts and designer slipper,” I add for good measure.

 

The afternoon is fading into evening.

 

There should be perspiration on our faces, or the sense of heartrates going up, but we’re just silhouettes in the evening.

 

We pass villas on our right and breathe the scent of grass in the air. An odor you don’t encounter in Seoul very often, less so in Gangnam. Q-Tip keeps us coming here, for the smell, and to feel the surprising heat from his shit on the other side of a plastic bag.

 

The park on our left is mostly empty now, the king’s tombs is a large green mound, now cast in blue shadow. Q-Tip sniffs a lamppost and lets a stream go. FCNI and I watch the urine creep down the sidewalk and trickle onto the street. FCNI lights a cigarette.

 

“We need to buy dog food,” I say absently. I realize we haven’t eaten all day. I don’t feel hungry, but in order to keep ourselves going, we must consume the thing that prior to Oxy, used to give us much joy and satisfaction. The thing that used to dictate time and energy and mark sections of the day.

 

Food.

 

“Word,” FCNI agrees. We can starve ourselves. Q-Tip can’t.

 

FCNI flicks his cigarette. We walk into the sunset, finishing our evening lap around Seolleung Park. Q-Tip looks back at us and smiles. He knows we’re talking about dinner now. Maybe we do this every day. He’s used to so many of our habits now. The walks. The sight of flames licking the bottom of aluminum foil. The music that comes after.

 

FCNI is wearing oversized glasses and a trucker hat that looks like he found it or stole it from someone. The sunset accents the crinkling hairs on his chin. I don’t know what I’m wearing. But it used to be expensive.

 

“What should we eat?” I ask.

 

The Yoga Instructor

 

Her name was Hana.

I was searching for Enlightenment then. Or at least, I believed in such things. I was transitioning from Jesus to Buddha, would eventually go back to Jesus, but mostly I was hungover on any given afternoon.

I had just broken up with a girl I thought I might marry, and I was getting closer to 30, moving up the ladder in a career I didn’t really want. It was the kind of situation where a fellow might walk into a yoga studio thinking this will change his life, particularly after having read The Gita.

I moseyed into her studio, hopeful, but unexpectant. The yoga studio was on the fourth floor of a newly built high-rise near my apartment, replacing an old gimbap restaurant I went to once and never went back to again, despite enjoying the food. I was walking my dog, Max, when I decided to investigate this source of spiritual Enlightenment, mostly thinking, “Where’s my gimbap restaurant?” despite having only eaten there once.

Max was a key part of this story. Any white fluffy dog should be, especially when dealing with an attractive woman. I don’t think I’ve ever used a pick-up line in my life other than, “What are you drinking?”

She had just opened, so she was rather surprised to see me, but pleasantly so, since it had been a few weeks and the lack of customer curiosity was making her nervous.

We spoke about India–which neither of us had been to–and about different kinds of yoga–which neither of us really knew about, and she petted the dog and sipped tea as I explained my search for Enlightenment, and wondered if she might provide guidance in such matters.

Hana explained that her version was the “hot” kind. It was supposed to make you sweat. You were going to be filthy, disgusting, and vile to the touch, and this was supposed to feel liberating.

“But we can do yoga in the park,” she offered. “The fresh air changes the experience.”

I knew we would never do this, but I signed up anyway, perhaps encouraged by the discount she offered, or maybe the splendor of her thick thighs squeezed by tiny shorts. Max panted happily, and I became the only male pupil in the class.

For weeks, I bent and grunted, and wondered if it was my imagination that Hana had patted my ass more than once as guidance, or was it affirmation, as I did a downward dog?

Max was a good sport. He lay in the corner and let the older ladies coddle him and rub his belly. He was a total whore.

Most afternoons, after class let out, Hana would invite me to tea. She talked about the dog she had lost, one of those overgrown rat-things with bulging eyes, but I acted sympathetic. I didn’t yet know how much it would hurt to lose a dog. I didn’t know much about losses yet.

I can’t say if our relationship escalated, or hers and Max’s did. She asked if she could walk him and I shrugged, saying that that’s all we did anyway. I joked that he was my boss and I obeyed his whims, and we both looked down at Max, eyes bright, panting, and he yipped in protestation, knowing he was being used as a foil.

“You should never tease them,” Hana told me seriously. “They’re very sensitive beings.”

Admonished, I let her lead, until she admonished me again and told me that I had to show Max that I was in control.

“It makes them calm,” she told me. “If you don’t lead, it gives them stress. They want you to be in control.”

We walked around Seolleung Park, which was near my home, and I explained that I was new at the dog-owner thing, that Max had entered my life not long ago. My friend FCNI (that’s pronounced “Fettuccini”) and I found the Japanese Spitz outside a bar. We adopted him like a gay couple that didn’t live together, shuttling the dog from FCNI’s place to mine. We were drinking buddies, and when we found the dog we were drunk, and where we found Max was outside a bar.

I left most of those details out.

Hana told the story of her own dog, which was more tragic. She had been gifted the dog by her then-boyfriend, who was supposed to be her soon-husband, and then one day found the bastard with another woman, in the home, in front of their dog, and it destroyed everything.

“I couldn’t even look at my dog anymore,” she admitted quietly. “I felt so betrayed, even by him.”

“By him” meant the dog. I suppose she would have wanted the dog to, like Lassie, run and tell her what was going on, but he simply watched her soon-to-be-husband defile their bed with some other bitch, letting it happen, not saying a word.

“I’m sorry he hurt you,” I told her. I wasn’t sure if I meant her ex or the dog.

We watched some actors on set repeat a stroll down the lane, under the cherry blossoms. The director wanted them to look more in love. The scene from what would later become a hit K-drama. We were in Gangnam. You saw a lot of that.

“I guess it still hurts you?” I asked her. “When will it stop?”

Hana looked at the tombs where the kings were buried, behind the park’s gilded gates. Cherry blossoms adrift in a pink swirling breeze.

“I just want to be soft,” Hana said after a while. “I don’t want to be tough, like a scar.”

I asked her if she wanted to stop by my place. She said that she was thirsty.

We spent the rest of the afternoon making love. She introduced me to positions that I wasn’t prepared for.

I was always terrible at yoga. I could never master anything more than the downward dog.

I felt so much silence as she lowered herself onto my face. My ears were covered by the press of her thighs against my skull. I imagined being inside her forever, listening to the sounds of ocean in my head.

The spring flowers bloomed and wilted with the stifling summer heat. I was nowhere near Enlightenment, but I did feel closer to being trapped. I started to panic, and though I tried not to show it, Hana had her third-eye open.

“How much longer are you going to play with me?” she asked in Korean.

Then she lifted up our hands, as if to envision rings there.

The next morning, we woke up and I offered her breakfast, but she said she had plans for brunch with a friend.

Hana played with the dog and I defiantly told her that I was quitting yoga, but there was too much growling between her and the dog as they romped around on all fours.

I would probably never reach Enlightenment.

I would never know what lay beyond the fullness and emptiness of her Spandex. When one day she wore something softer, like a wedding dress.

I leashed up Max and we went down to the street. We walked Hana to Seolleung Station where we said goodbye. Fuck lotus positions. I hated New Age music anyway.

“She really liked you,” I said to Max as we watched her disappear.

I wasn’t sure if I meant her ex or the dog.