Sad Peninsula

by Mark Sampson

  I even love the way she strings me along, keeps me guessing. One Friday night, we join a group of her girlfriends for dinner in Apujung, Seoul’s ritziest, most celebrity-rich neighbourhood. The drinks flow and Jin is charming, running circles around these girls, all of whom are giggly, sweet, brittle, and not very fluent in English. I’m enamoured with the deference they pay to Jin, to all she has experienced, the envious curiosity they show over the fact that she has a waegookin boyfriend. By the time Jin and I head back to the subway together, I’m feeling brave. Mildly drunk and full of desire for her. “Do you want to come back to Daechi?” I venture.

  “No, I have to work in the morning.”

  “Yes, at the COEX,” I reply. Implication: a twenty-minute walk from my apartment.

  She turns to me, her look inscrutable. “My mother is waiting at home,” is all she says. We descend the subway stairs, buy our tickets, and prepare to be triaged to opposite sides of the platform. “I’ll see you next weekend, Michael,” she says lightly, then hustles off without so much as a goodnight peck on my cheek. Before I can even mount a protest, she already has her handphone out and open, her eyes narrowing over its screen as she sends out a text message, probably to her mother. I stand there, watching her go, full of a lust I’ve never felt before.

  And there are attributes we love because we think we can change them, make them stronger. She detests the food I keep in the apartment fridge — can’t understand my penchant for bland bags of white bread and sad cartons of skim milk, silvery bags of pre-made kimchi, and store-bought packages of dried seaweed for snacking. Every meal out with Jin becomes a matter of correcting my lazy tastes, with her explaining the intricacies of each dish with little jabs of her chopsticks. From my end, I begin probing the hang-ups she has about her family and stop hiding the fact that I want to meet them, to be introduced to this father who never sleeps and this dragon-like mother who still treats her like an adolescent. Jin gives no quarter on these queries, though mentioned in a moment of weakness that she has no desire to marry a Korean man. She longs to live aboard, like her younger brother “Carl,” who is away studying at a chef school in Los Angeles. Jin would love to move to an English-speaking country, maybe even Canada. She says this one day while squatting down in front of my open fridge to critique the contents of my vegetable crisper. She stands back up and swings around to face me, her hair a-flutter, her eyes falling into mine. “Yeah, I think living in Canada would not be too bad,” she flirts. “What do you think?”

  I think: Don’t you dare fucking tease me. I think: I love the way you tease me.

  Three weeks and then it happens. The Saturday starts in a swath of innocence. We’ve been invited to dinner at the home of a young married couple with whom Jin is close friends. “Jack” and “Mindy” live near Wolgok station in the far north end of Seoul. It’s a horrendous subway ride from my place in Daechi, involving several transfers. Jin meets me after she finishes work so we can make the trek together. She has explained that Mindy is a literature professor at a nearby university and Jack edits a tourism magazine. “You’ll love them, Michael. Fluent in English. Very literary and modern. They’re your kind of people.” On the way, Jin asks me why she didn’t see Justin in my apartment when she stopped by to get me.

  “He’s away this weekend,” I tell her. “He went to Seokcho to go hiking with the family he tutors.”

  She nods. “He’ll be going up Seorak Mountain, obviously,” she says. “Seokcho is very beautiful — right on the ocean.” She gives me a look I can’t read. “When does he come back?”

  “Not until Monday,” I answer. And she nods again.

  We finally arrive in Wolgok and make our way to Jack and Mindy’s condo building — a gleaming, silvery edifice standing over a mélange of more run-down apartment tenements. Jack and Mindy buzz us in and we ride the smooth, silent elevator up to their unit on the eighteenth floor. The smiling couple is already waiting for us at their threshold. They welcome us in to the first spacious Korean home I’ve ever seen. Full wraparound living room leading to an alcove dining area, a large galley kitchen, and a hallway leading down to bed and bath. The floor beneath our feet is not plastic ondol covering; it’s actual hardwood with a nice cozy heat radiating up from it. There’s a massive flat-screen TV on the wall in the living room, surrounded by shelves of neatly stacked books.

  Jack and Mindy speak to us in unwavering English, which puts me immediately at ease. A glass of wine appears in my hand and we seat ourselves around their dining room table, with Mindy making occasional trips to the kitchen to tend to whatever food is making that delectable smell. They check in with Jin about her job before turning to ask me how I like teaching children at a hagwon. I put a polite spin on my days of slinging English at exhausted kids, and Jack and Mindy nod knowingly; like Jin, they too went through their hagwon paces as children, know the Sisyphean stress of it. Jin mentions to Jack that I had worked as a journalist back in Canada, and this allusion causes my spine to kink, that old reminder of a deliberately destroyed career. If he picks up on my discomfort, he doesn’t let on; merely mentions that he works with a lot of journalists, though struggles to find good writers in English. Am I a good writer?

  Over two more glasses of wine, I learn that Mindy teaches courses on Hemingway and Fitzgerald at the local university, but her true passion lies in what she calls the “linguistically ambitious”; she can draw a straight line from Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Burgess up through Martin Amis and Will Self. “We grabbed each other over Milan Kundera,” Jin pipes up, and I nod in agreement. I’m in a stew of engagement here. Jack seems a little left out; he hasn’t read nearly as much as the rest of us. Eventually, Mindy dresses the table with our meal — a rich pork-bone soup, Korean dumplings seared to perfection, and the freshest, spiciest kimchi I have ever tasted. It all goes down nicely with the wine, with the stories we tell and the jokes I make, the generous laughs all around.

  After dinner, we move to the couches in the living room. Jack is glowing pleasantly from the wine, slurring his words, and nearly spilling his drink on the white upholstery beneath him. The rest of us playfully chide him about it. He responds by growing a touch more serious: he wants to talk about the news — specifically what’s been happening in Iraq since the invasion started. He’s impressed, he says, that the Americans took Baghdad so quickly, and they did excellent work rescuing that poor Jessica Lynch girl. Still, he’s worried about the outbreaks of looting and violence that have started plaguing the city. I propose that these are not random acts, but rather the beginnings of an insurgency. Jack disagrees; chimes in perfunctorily about freedom, about the Americans yanking the Iraqi people out from under Saddam’s thumb.

  “Isn’t that what this is really about?” he sloshes. “Won’t all this be a liberation in the end, no matter what America’s really there for?”

  “No, Jack,” I say. “Every invasion is a rape.” As soon as the word leaves my mouth, there’s a gasp in the room. It’s Jin. I look at her, there on the other side of the couch, clutching her wine. Her mouth has gone slack and she’s staring right into me. I swallow. Turn back to Jack. Continue tentatively. “I mean, maybe not every invasion, but this one certainly could be. I don’t think it counts as a seduction if your victim is an unwilling participant. There are always consequences when you force violence on a different culture. Trust me, this won’t be a simple seduction.” Jack opens his mouth, but then closes it again. Sips his wine.

  I look back at Jin. Her gaze is locked into me, but not unpleasantly so. She says nothing while the rest of us natter on for a while longer. She turns to Mindy. “Can I use your washroom?” she asks.

  “Of course,” her friend replies. Jin sets down her wine, gets up from the couch. But as she does, she digs out her handphone. Flips it open and dials a number, tucks the phone under her hair as she disappears into the hall. Who on earth is she calling from the bathroom?

  It’s very late, past midnight, before we finally call it a night. Jack and
Mindy shake my hand at the door and tell me I’m welcome back any time. “He’s fascinating,” Mindy tells Jin, but Jin just nods and looks at her toes. We say our goodbyes and then ride the elevator down to the lobby. When we hit the street heading to the subway, Jin takes my arm and pulls me close.

  “Hey, you were pretty quiet there by the end,” I say. “Is everything okay? I didn’t overstep my bounds with your friends, did I?”

  “Of course not,” she replies. “I just love it when you’re in that mode, Michael. I didn’t want to interrupt you. I just wanted to listen. I love … I love it.”

  As we approach the subway stop I’m about to ask when I’ll see her again — perhaps next weekend? But before I can, Jin says, “So what are we doing now?”

  I startle with surprise. “I, I don’t know. What are we doing now?”

  “Can we go back to Daechi?”

  “Sure,” I sputter. “Sure we can.”

  So south we go on the subway, the long parade of stops and transfers. Jin is silent through most of the trip, pulled deeply into herself. If I didn’t know better, I’d say there is a tinge of fear in her body language, or at least an inner debate going on. Each transfer point we pass is another closed door, another lost opportunity for her to bail on what’s about to happen. She doesn’t bail.

  Back in Daechi after nearly an hour, and we walk up the deserted main drag. She asks if we can stop at the 7-Eleven to get beer. We purchase two massive bottles of Hite lager, and I carry them for us in a plastic bag. In the apartment, I ensure the door is locked behind us as she moves into my cramped little bedroom. At the kitchen counter, I open one of the beers and fill two glasses, then bring them into the bedroom. I find she’s already put on some of my music — John Coltrane — and made herself comfortable on my floor.

  We drink in silence for a while, our legs touching, our backs resting against the edge of the bed. She won’t look at me — just lets her dark hair fall over her face as she burrows a gaze into her navel and takes pulls from her glass of beer. I’m tracing a finger along her denim leg, from the high point of her thigh down to the bump of her knee, and then back up again. Her breathing is methodical, as if she’s making a point of controlling its cadence.

  “You’re very different now that Rob Cruise is away,” she says. “Have I told you that?”

  “Different how?”

  “You talk more. You reveal more of yourself, now that he’s not around.” A blush of brake lights smear across the frost of my window, the quiet surge of a late-night car moving on. My finger grows a touch heavier on Jin’s thigh. “Whenever he hangs out with us,” she goes on, “Rob needs to talk over everybody, to own the room — all the time. At first that is very attractive, but then it gets annoying. I noticed right away that you don’t fight with him for your place in the room. You don’t go down to that level. You — how you say … how you say …” Her English fails, and so I steady my hand a moment. “How you say, pick your spots. That’s what I liked about you from the very beginning — that you don’t talk just to talk. You only speak when you have something wise to say. I find that so rare.”

  “Jin …”

  “And now that he’s gone for two months, you seem more relaxed, ready to share yourself. And that’s what I find attractive now. Like tonight — all I wanted was to sit and listen to you fit in so well with two of my dearest friends. I mean, if I brought Rob Cruise into that environment he’d offend them in about five seconds, just by being himself.”

  I cup her behind the knee, pull her close enough for our chests to almost touch. Her chin is pinned between her collar bones. She still won’t look at me.

  “There are many things I want to tell you,” she says. “Things about my family — things I think you’d understand. But it scares me a little, to think that y —”

  I wait no longer. I steer my head between the curtains of her dark hair, pull her face up with mine. No weak little peck on the lips this time; my mouth sinks into hers, parts it like water. Her breath grows frantic as my tongue strokes hers, and she quivers all over. Our heads sway like buoys as we kiss fully, properly, wondering why we waited so long, wondering if we should wait longer. But then her hands slip up under my shirt with a confidence that startles me, and she’s pulling it up and over my head. I do the same for her. She looks down at me in the dark. “Ohh, you’re very hairy!” she whispers, running fingers through the forest of my stomach, and we laugh, touch foreheads. Then I’m kissing her again, serious, can’t believe that she’s letting me kiss her.

  And then I have her in the air, lifting her off the ondol floor in a rescuer’s embrace. I set her down on the bed, let her sink into my sheets and pillow. She stretches out to welcome me. I reach behind her for the clasp of her bra and she arches upward. I struggle; I’m useless, useless. She helps me out, an expert unclipping, then lets her shoulders go limp so the garment can fall away. Her small breasts look silver in this light. As I work my way down to them, she lets out a delighted noise, but also tinged with doubt. Still with the doubt. So I kiss her mouth again. The room is so hot now. Our hands move lower and grow busy. The rattle of undone belt buckles knocking together, the swish of our jeans, the sound of them falling heavy on the floor. She strokes my shoulders and neck while I kiss her throat. I work my way back down again, breasts and sternum and stomach. Discover her underwear, just a thin cotton ring around her hips. I tuck my thumbs under either side, prepare to ease them off. But she seizes up, seizes up for just a moment, a final groan of uncertainty.

  I stop. And the fact that I stop swings the pendulum: she relaxes completely, sinks deeper into my bed. I gently pull the panties from her hips, down legs, over ankles, and onto the floor. There is a kinetic energy to her limbs as I return. Pulling her to me, I kiss her lower stomach. I can’t stop kissing her. I move even lower. Jin immediately takes my head in her hands and pulls me back up, lets out the littlest “Uh-uhh …” I moan a small disappointment, genuine. As if to console, she bites her bottom lip and leans into me, moves her hands over and then into my tented boxers, her fingers on my flesh. I pull my boxers off. Then I raise her legs by the back of her knees. She fidgets, pleads, “Michael … Michael, you better …” I get it. I reach over her, bang open my night-side table. The rustle of cardboard, square tinfoil in my hand, a rip and pull, liberating that wet little ring, then a slow, tight roll. She’s fighting her doubt, helps me push the thing all the way down. I raise her legs up again. She’s hovering in a place between close and very far away. “Michael, please … Michael, please …” She’s nearly weeping under the weight of her indecision, begging me to carry it away like something toxic. I am struck by a stroke of genius. I take myself in my hand and begin slowly rubbing her, there, with the point of me.

  “Jin, how much of me do you want?” I say in the dark. Deadpan it, to create the illusion that I could go either way.

  “Huuh? Hohhh …”

  “Do you want just a little of me?” And with that, I move in on her, just enough to give her a taste. Refuse to go deeper.

  “Hohh, hohh, hohh …”

  I pull back out, resume my cruel rubbing, my slow circles. She coils like a spring. “How much of me do you want?” I ask again. “Hmm? Do you want just some of me?” I squeeze back inside her, slide myself in half way. Hold it.

  “Hahhhhh … huhhhhh …”

  This is more difficult than I thought. Fighting every instinct in my body, I slowly pull out again, return myself to that nub, gently lap it like a tongue. I feel like I’m going to break right through the condom. “Was that enough?” I ask. “Or do you want more?”

  “Michael … Mi chael!”

  “Do you want just some of me, Jin? Hmmm? Or do you want all of me?”

  A slow languorous sink all the way to the ocean floor. She sucks every molecule of air from the room, releases a scream. I hold myself there, feel the little tickle of her cervix on my tip. Then, fighting the weight of the world and Jin’s desperate grip on me, I pull back up, back out,
and return to my teasing. She gives me the sound I’ve been waiting for — a holler of shattering disappointment.

  “How much of me do you want?” I beg, rubbing, rubbing.

  “Ughhhuuu … arrrghhhuuu …”

  “Jin, how much of me?”

  “All of you … all of you …”

  “Are you sure?”

  “ Yes.”

  And with that final beseech, I plunge back in. Back in to stay. And I think: finally, after all these years, somebody finally wants me. Wants all of me.

  We’re on the cheap leather couch in the living room for Round Two, an abandoned trip to the kitchen to freshen our beers. As Jin dances above me, I briefly worry about Justin coming in the door then, home early from his trip to Seokcho, to see Jin’s breasts flying and my mouth at her throat. Of course he doesn’t, wouldn’t. It’s something like three in the morning.

  After we’re done, we’re locked on those narrow cushions in a semi-comfortable embrace, legs twined and faces turned up at each other. I take a casual glance at my watch. “Won’t your mother be angry you’re out this late?” I ask.

  “No. I called and told her I was staying at Jack and Mindy’s.”

  Ah yes, the call from the bathroom. I beam down at her. “Did you now?” She gives a mischievous shrug, like a teenager. “And if she knew the truth,” I ask, “would you be grounded?”