by James Zerndt
Moon looks up Reed College on the internet. A private college in Portland, Oregon. Private means expensive. Moon knows little about either Art History or Philosophy, so the class listings mean nothing to him. Both have high GPAs though.
Especially Joe. 3.8 overall.
It was Moon’s job to vet the candidates. It was his job to find the best. It would be his job if he somehow botched this. He put the papers back in their file, placed the file under a stack of papers.
Eunice couldn’t find out about this.
Not now.
Not when he was just getting back on his feet.
Pusan National University. That’s where Moon met his wife. She was taking classes to be a nurse. The first time he saw her was at a bus stop. She had a ten-pound medical book on her lap, thicker than anything Moon had ever seen before. When he looked over to see what she was studying, he didn’t seem able to look away. There, square in the center of the page, was a picture of a penis. Only there was something wrong with it. Very wrong with it. The tip was black, and the shaft was grey and pustular. It looked dead. Like someone’s penis had died.
“Can I help you?”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. I just happened to see what you’re...reading.”
“Studying. I’m in the nursing program.”
“Oh, right. That makes more sense.”
“More sense than what?”
Moon could barely look at her, she was so beautiful. Her nose wrinkled when she spoke. “I don’t know what I meant really. What happened to his, um, to his...?”
“To his penis?” Again, she did that thing with her nose, and it made Moon’s insides wrinkle somehow too. “This poor fellow is suffering from Fournier’s gangrene. His genitalia is necrotizing.”
Moon nodded. All he could really do. He’d heard of gangrene but didn’t know you could get it there.
“It just means his ding-dong is dying.”
“Oh,” Moon said and nodded again. This was getting more and more awkward by the minute. He reached up and touched his cheek. Probably red by now. He had a tendency to blush in these sorts of situations. What sort of situations? Talking about dying penises to a cute girl at a bus stop?
The bus came, and there was the usual mad scramble for the doors even though the bus was just about empty. Koreans didn’t believe in queues. A waste of time.
It was bold, sitting next to her, but something told Moon it would be okay. And it was. The pretty girl with the magical nose opened her gigantic textbook again and continued to study in silence. Moon noticed, however, that she had turned to a different, although no more palatable, section of the book: prostate cancer.
Moon knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on his own studies, but he opened his book and stared down at the jumble of words anyway. He had already decided to follow the girl. Or, at the very least, to get off at the same stop and talk to her again. It wasn’t like Moon to do these type of things. It was like he’d been hypnotized. Drugged. A spell put over him.
Moon was busy planning all the clever things he would say when the young woman reached up and pulled the cord. They were near the beach and Busan Aquarium. She grabbed her things, stood without so much as a glance at Moon, and headed for the doors. Moon’s heart ached. Maybe he was losing his mind. Maybe it had been so long since he’d been with a girl that he no longer picked up on the subtleties of attraction. His legs were numb, and he was pretty sure his heart had stopped beating.
When the doors opened, the girl turned her head just slightly in Moon’s direction and smiled. Moon’s heart started up again, and he leapt to his feet, ran to the door. When he started following after her, she stopped without turning around.
“I’m going to study with the sharks. You can come along as long as you don’t talk to me for at least one hour. Deal?”
“Deal,” Moon said quickly, sensing he may have just made the best one of his life.
Yun-ji
To: [email protected]: dul-yodol-ahop-dasot... This is my phone number in Korean numerals. If you can figure it out, text me. Yun-ji (from Youldong Park)
It was a little reckless, but Yun-ji didn’t care. She was bored. And besides, he probably wouldn’t respond anyway. It was Friday night after all. Most likely he was out somewhere getting drunk like everybody else.
Some of the teachers and staff from Kids, Inc! had gone out to dinner after work, but Yun-ji lied and said she needed to help her mother at home. Which was half-true. Yun-ji did help with dinner a little. She set the table, arranged the dishes on the table the way her father liked.
And then they waited.
Like she and her mother had so many times before.
Yun-ji was always sweet to her mother during these awkward moments. But only because she felt so bad for her. Time and time again her mother went out of her way for this man, and he couldn’t even be bothered to call. Yun-ji went down there, to the tent he usually drank at, when she was just eleven years old and yelled at him. It had only made everybody laugh. Including her father. Oh, look at the cute little girl scolding her daddy! Ha, ha, ha! The next year it was a twelve-year-old girl. Then thirteen. She finally stopped at fifteen.
It never did any good.
There always came a point on nights like these when her mother would sigh, look toward the door, and reluctantly pick up her spoon. Yun-ji had to wait for this moment. It would be unheard of for her to start eating, let alone pick up her spoon, before her mother. Some nights it took an excruciatingly long time for this moment to come, with Yun-ji’s stomach rumbling under the table, almost like it was filling in for her father’s part of the conversation.
This night, though, that moment never came because just when Yun-ji thought she was going to die of starvation, her father came staggering into the kitchen.
There was no hello.
No greeting or acknowledgment whatsoever.
He threw his jacket on the couch, turned the TV on, and began mumbling to himself once the news came on. Her mother looked down at her plate, sighed quietly, and, right on cue, picked up her spoon.
It was time to eat.
Yun-ji might not have said anything, but there was something so heartbreaking, so defeated, about that damn sigh of her mother’s that she pushed her bowl away and stood from the table.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry you have to go through this. But I don’t.”
Yun-ji went to her room, slammed the door.
Great. Now she had nothing to eat. What did that prove? The drunken fool probably didn’t even notice she’d left the room. She rummaged through her desk drawer. She had to have some snacks somewhere. Sesame candies. Not exactly a meal, but it would have to do.
She checked her phone. There was a text.
Meet me at the park? Shaun
She held the phone in her hand, weighing it along with the decision. On any other night she would have said no. On any other night she would have gone back out there, apologized to her mother, and sat back down.
She could smell her father even from her bedroom.
The soju pouring off him.
On any other night...
Ten minutes by bungee jump.
Billie
I’m going to be a great poet someday.
Poetess. Whatever. I am. Seriously. I’ve known it ever since I was a little girl. And it’s not a phase like my wonderful mother always says.
Her face is a phase. Ha.
Anyway, my biggest problem right now is finishing them. All I seem to get are these disjointed lines. They come to me, sometimes, when I’m sleeping. I’ll wake up with words on my tongue. And I can’t fall back asleep until I spit them out.
Weird, huh.
I haven’t said anything to Joe about it yet. It’s sort of my dirty little secret. And, well, I guess I’m a little chicken too. I mean Joe has his guitar which he’s pretty incredible at. He refuses to sing though and that drives me crazy because he’s got a decent voice. He can play almost anything by ear. I don’t thi
nk he’s ever even taken a lesson. I envy that. His natural talent. At least he has some kind of outlet. All I have are words. And sometimes those don’t seem like enough.
Maybe that means I’m not a real poet. I don’t know.
On the plane ride here he almost caught me. I was scribbling away, thinking he was asleep, and next thing I know, I hear, “What you writing?”
I nearly pooped my pants.
I told him it was my diary and all he did was shrug. I guess I’m embarrassed about it. I mean, doesn’t everybody think they’re a poet on some level?
I want to be the real deal though.
All I do is collect words.
For example, I was talking to this guy once who made his own clothes. He called himself a couturier. I had to look the word up later, but I listened to him for half an hour just so I could hear all his couturier words.
I Made a Jacket
Out of a poem
But it was cold like me
Dropping colors and phrase from its sleeve
Shivering and useless
Until I hemmed in the warmth of your name
I’ve already sent a few in to some magazines, but all I’ve gotten back so far are form-rejection letters. If I ever get a hand-written one, I’ll consider it a major victory.
I’m reading a book of poems now by a guy in a band I used to listen to. He’s the definition of indie. Like, he was indie before it was called indie. That sort of thing. He has a long, thick Whitmanesque beard and sparkling eyes. I try to picture him sitting in an apartment similar to ours, listening to a TV next door that sounds like a warbling pigeon. (That’s how Korean TV sounds to me. Through the walls anyway. American TV probably sounds the same, but I never noticed.) Anyway, it’s obvious this guy’s a genius of some sort. It wasn’t enough for him to have a band that influenced other cool bands. No, the jerk had to write a book of poems and have both Rolling Stone and The New Yorker cream all over it.
I study his forehead. His brow. Writers have brows, not foreheads. Nothing really special there. No mountain ridge leading to the spring of truth or any nonsense like that. The nose, too, seems average. And his chin is probably weak, hence the big beard. But the eyes. The eyes seem to let in a certain light people like me don’t have access to.
In comparison, my own eyes are cloudy.
Two orbs of overcast stuck in a puddle.
Somebody actually told me that once, that I had a puddle for a face. An ex boyfriend from high school. There’s a sort of twisted beauty in the phrase though. Something that might work in a poem.
She had a puddle for a face
Something that made people want to stomp around
in it
You see what I mean? It’s not quite finished, is it?
There’s a little boy in one of the rock star’s poems. And snow. It’s a happy poem about snow angels and how different the world can seem when it’s snowing. Like the world has another skin to it.
When I close my eyes, I can see Wisconsin, our backyard from when I was a kid, the garage, my father. We’re playing. Or, at least, I think we’re playing. My Dad chases me through the snow, falls, gets up. It’s cold out. His face is red.
“I’m gonna getcha, Bill. I’m gonna getcha.”
I run into our old garage, close the door and hide. My Dad will be there any second. It’s a game we’re playing. I hide behind a stack of tires. It’s funny. I wait, can hear my dad fumbling at the door.
Then a click.
Then silence.
I wait and wait, but he never comes for me. Eventually I climb out through a window, tearing my snow pants on a loose shard of glass. When my mother finds them later, she grounds me. I don’t tell her what happened this time. I don’t tell her how I found Dad passed out on the couch, a big, stupid grin plastered all over his warm face.
I haven’t thought about it in years. Sometimes things like that happened with my dad, but I always understood. It wasn’t anything personal. My dad had a problem. With the bottle as my mother called it. Like there was just this one bottle out there causing all the problems and not the bagfuls of empties in the rafters of our garage.
But I wasn’t supposed to know about those.
My dad had a problem.
But he doesn’t now. He died the year I started high school. Which, come to think of it, is just about when I started to get heavy into poetry.
It’s all so cliché though.
I mean, isn’t everybody’s dad an alcoholic?
My dad did lots of stuff with me, though, when I was little. He would always take me out with him on the boat and try to teach me how to fish. We spent hours at a time on that boat, my dad sipping beer, his hands coated in mosquito repellent and worm guts. He always seemed to be getting cut while trying to cup his hand over a flailing sunfish or bluegill. And then there were the hooks the fish kept swallowing. I remember the sigh my dad would always let out when trying to get those out, like somebody else had been doing the fishing and he was just there to clean up the unfortunate mess.
I also remember asking my dad why he was always so angry.
“You’ll understand someday. And when you do understand, you’ll wonder why everybody else isn’t just as angry.”
At the time, I thought it was bullshit.
But it makes sense now. Or, at least, it’s starting to.
All I really know is poetry is a way out of that anger.
I just don’t know how exactly.
Moon
It’s Saturday. The day he gets to spend with his son.
Moon turns the music up, takes the long way to his ex-wife’s apartment. They’re going to the park to watch one of the soccer matches. Moon could care less about it but his son loves it, knows all the names of the players.
Moon’s been brushing up, watching the news at night and trying to remember a few of the names. They’re all so young, so healthy. He lights up a cigarette, thumbs the volume knob up a little more. Joe gave him a CD. A band called The Feelings. He had to look the English word up.
Feelings.
Moon has them now.
But there was a time when he didn’t.
He isn’t sure if he likes the music yet. It’s strange. Different. The singer’s voice...it sounds like a girl’s. Still, he listens to it. He promised Joe he would. And, well, weren’t Americans always years ahead of everybody else when it came to setting trends? Maybe this was the band everybody would be listening to in a few years.
All anybody in Korea listened to these days were boy bands. It was one of the reasons Moon left his job as a music producer. Nobody wanted to try anything new. All they wanted was clean and cute. K-pop. It was a joke. Still, he’d been good at it. Too good maybe. The money just kept flooding in, even when all he seemed to be doing was drinking himself stupid. His bosses, the clients, they all seemed to like Moon like that though. Hell, they practically demanded it of him.
But everybody loved him back then.
Everybody except his wife and son.
Why did she have to insist on working nights at the hospital? They didn’t need the money. Moon kept telling her that, but she wouldn’t listen to him. Never did really. He remembers how cute he used to find it when she’d throw nursing words into their conversations.
Apnea. Hemoptysis. Mydriasis. Paroxysm.
It never mattered that he didn’t know what the words meant. He just loved to hear her talk. But at some point it stopped being cute, and all it reminded him of was how she wasn’t there most nights. How these words, this other place, took her from him. After all, how could he ever compete with a myocardial infarction?
Moon changes the CD. He’ll listen to it later. Right now he needs something to lift his spirits.
War Pigs by Black Sabbath.
Perfect.
He lets the bass roll over him, feels it rumbling up from the floor into his legs and arms. He squeezes the steering wheel. Something about music has always made him feel safe. Complete. Like if you just turned the
volume up high enough, you could disappear.
Not any more though.
The memories are still there.
They’re always there.
He can see little Hyo standing in the middle of the kitchen. Screaming. The tears pouring down his face. At his feet are small puddles. And behind him is a trail of little droplets.
Moon winces.
He knows what’s coming next.
And there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
He’s drunk. He’s angry. Little Hyo won’t stop crying. And he’s been getting into everything. Running from one thing to the next, pulling out the cabinet drawers, reaching on top of the counters, grabbing anything he can reach then flinging it across the floor. For awhile Moon kept replacing the plastic locks to keep him out, but Hyo would only snap them in two again. What fourteen-month-old baby did this? It was like he had superhuman strength. And he still wouldn’t sleep for more than a three-hour stretch.
Something about bad minds...
Moon used to joke that Hyo was only quiet when other people were around, that he saved his bad side for his parents. And it was true. Even the nurse said they had a good one when Hyo was first born. But then, as soon as she left the room, the crying started.
And it hasn’t stopped since.
The Tiny Pterodactyl.
That’s what his wife used to call him. A cute name for the screaming red mass Hyo would morph into. She always had more patience with him. Always felt compassion where Moon felt anger. Resentment. Why wouldn’t he stop crying? Their neighbor had a baby the same age, and Moon never heard a peep out of him.
Colicky. That’s what people said. The baby was colicky.
Sure, but that didn’t explain why he had to destroy everything he could get his hands on. Hyo ate books, too. Moon didn’t remember eating any books as a baby. Who ate books?
Something about the world not turning anymore...
That night. It still makes Moon sick to think about it. But he has to think about it. Has to remember what happened. He grips the wheel harder. His hands are starting to shake. He wants a drink. He turns the music up. He rolls the window down halfway. That helps. Fresh air. Breathe, Moon. Breathe...
