by Y. Euny Hong
“Spinoza is a Sephardic name, but I’m mostly Ashkenazi,” said Joshua, nervously overbuttering his bread.
“What’s the other half, anyway?” Thor asked.
“Generic mongrel. Mother is mostly Irish,” said Joshua.
“Good God,” Ezra said.
Thor replied, “Yup. He’s got potato eaters on both sides, I’m afraid; Irish on the one, towel head and Polish shtetl stock on the other.” Thor shoveled piles of lyonnaise potatoes into his mouth as he spoke.
“Not far from the mark,” said Joshua. I thought to myself, Where are your balls, man?
I said, “Thor, is your house haunted or something?”
Bewildered, he shook his head no.
I said, “Really? Because I can’t think of any other reason why you won’t stay at home in peace instead of spending every waking hour tooling around with people who can’t stand you.”
“Judith,” said Joshua cajolingly. Was he taking Thor’s side?
“It’s okay, Joshua,” said Thor, whose voice lacked its usual booming quality. I had clearly hurt him. “Judith’s sense of humor is a bit of an acquired taste.”
IF THIS WERE A PLAY, someone would have thrown down his napkin and stormed out. But in real life, luncheon parties are imprisoning. No matter how unpleasant the company or conversation gets, no one ever leaves.
After brunch, Key and Thor did a few lines of coke on the coffee table and then held a race to see whose mobile phones would wiggle across the table the fastest while in vibrator mode. Key’s right nostril started to gush blood suddenly. He grabbed a couch cushion to stop the bleeding. Thor laughed uproariously.
“That table is oak,” Jung said. “You didn’t even use a coaster.”
Suddenly, a horrific pang shot through my abdomen, as if I had eaten broken glass. I doubled over and fell to the floor, screaming.
“Shit, call an ambulance!” shouted Jung.
“No, really, Jung, I’m okay,” said the ever-self-absorbed Key, whose nose was still bleeding.
“YOU’VE BEEN IN the ER a lot lately, according to this,” said a youthful lady doctor, a Dr. Cha, who was an attending physician at the Mount Sinai Hospital emergency room.
“My body is very sensitive,” I said, reclining on a narrow cot.
“So it seems,” said Dr. Cha. “Do you know what irritable bowel syndrome is?”
I shook my head, my hair making a bristling sound against the cot.
“We’re thinking that this is what you have, at least by process of elimination. That bit of unpleasantness earlier with the probe was to rule out other possibilities, like spastic colon.”
I giggled at the term, and my stomach seared with fresh pain.
“Try not to laugh,” said Dr. Cha. “Anyway, irritable bowel syndrome is what happens when you have very sensitive intestines, as you seem to. Irritation in the intestines leads to painful cramping, sometimes problems with waste elimination. It’s not lethal, but as you see it is very painful and debilitating. It is often brought on by stress, which is why the disease is sometimes known as successful-woman’s ulcer.”
“Well, it can’t be that,” I said.
“Funny,” said Dr. Cha. “But I think there may be triggering factors other than stress. The X-ray showed you have something on your fallopian tubes. Clips, I presume? Have you had your tubes tied?”
I nodded.
“And the abdominal pain started after you had your tubes tied?”
I nodded. “Is it that something’s not fully healed in there? Because it’s been almost four months now.”
Dr. Cha said, “No, the tissue itself is fully healed, and the doctor did the job properly, such as it is. But it seems your organs are kind of squished together; it’s not good or bad, it’s just how your body is made. And your intestines, as I say, seem to be responding adversely to the intrusion created by the clips.”
“Idiot,” I muttered. Seeing her look of surprise, I added, “I’m talking about me, not you. Would the problem go away if I had the clips removed?”
Dr. Cha sighed. “It’s hard to say. Most likely, yes, though you might still suffer from the trauma of a second surgery. But in theory, the pain should subside over time, if you get the clips removed.”
“Can you do it here? Now?”
“I’m sorry, it’s not really considered an emergency procedure. I can have you book an appointment with a colleague of mine. Your insurance should cover this.”
I didn’t have insurance. “Thanks anyway,” I said. “I’ll just take the meds for now; that’ll work, won’t it?”
“As a stopgap measure, yes. That’s what most people with IBS do,” said Dr. Cha. “Just try to stay away from stress and alcohol and try to eat more fiber. Here’s some literature. In the short run, there’s nothing serious to worry about. Over the long haul, though, you will have to get the clips removed. Oh, really nice lingerie, by the way.”
Joshua, who had accompanied me to the emergency room, rode with me in a cab back to Madame Tartakov’s.
“Please talk to me, Jude,” said Joshua. “I’m worried sick.”
“They think it might be a gallstone,” I said. “Or my appendix.”
“Didn’t you say you had your appendix out already? That scar on your belly; you said that’s what it was.”
“Right, I forgot.” I rested my head on his shoulder and pretended to sleep.
13
The Ball Is Round, the Game Lasts Ninety Minutes
Der Ball ist rund und das Spiel dauert 90 Minuten.
The ball is round and the game lasts 90 minutes.
— SEPP HERBERGER, GERMAN SOCCER PLAYER
THE DAY AFTER my visit to the ER, Madame Tartakov announced that all girls and their escorts would be attending the mandatory Demimondaine Winter Ball.
“What is this ball, exactly?” I said to Heike as she was getting dressed to meet her man Boswell. “Is it just for us girls and our escorts?”
“No, it’s for everyone who’s anyone in the demimonde. All the top New York ogresses send their girls. They rent out ballrooms and suites at the St. Estèphe. White tie. Really very fun.”
The ball was held on the winter solstice. After the usual preening, I arrived at the St. Estèphe on Yevgeny’s arm. He looked ripping in his tails, a black Oscar de la Renta with matte satin lapels. He looked like a young Daniel Barenboim. I proudly took my place next to him in a long queue outside the ballroom.
I pride myself on not being easily impressed, but now, peeking into the ballroom, I was completely floored. It was so vulgar that it had exceeded the boundaries of vulgarity and was almost elegant.
At such times one cannot give a proper description without making crass references to money: the centerpieces alone must have cost at least ten thousand dollars all told. Each floral arrangement consisted of the freshest ginger blossom, heliconia, and birds of paradise, in clusters so thick and tall that they drooped like palm trees over the seated diners. I would later learn that the flowers had been hand-delivered from Hawaii, and that the florist had escorted the flowers personally from Kauai to Honolulu to the St. Estèphe, to ensure that the delicate blossoms were not exposed to continental December weather for even a second.
Each table was recessed in the center and filled with a flat layer of real cherries, luscious but inaccessible, as they were sealed under a thick sheet of beveled glass.
“Oh, heavens, not a champagne fountain,” someone complained in a melodiously disapproving baritone.
I turned around to identify the speaker; it was the man standing next to Heike. They were five couples behind us and I beckoned them to cut behind us.
“No backsie cuts allowed, only frontsies,” said the man standing behind me, who was wearing a white tie and tails.
I sighed and moved Heike and her companion to cut in front of us instead.
Heike introduced me and Yevgeny to Boswell. “Lovely dress,” Boswell said to me, kissing my hand in greeting. “Raw silk, I presume?”
&n
bsp; “Indeed,” I said, a titillating suspicion rising within me.
He looked over Yevgeny’s outfit. “Is this event white tie or black tie? Why are there people in both? They really ought to be more specific in the invitations; otherwise it makes everyone look like a bunch of vaudevillians.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Yevgeny, fingering his black tie. Abruptly, he stood on his toes, eagerly peering into the ballroom. “Oh, look, we’re being paired off,” he said.
“Paired off? We’re already paired off,” I said innocently. But I had grasped Yevgeny’s meaning. We were to be swapping partners.
In this atmosphere of tightly controlled mirth, it seemed fitting that the redistribution of partners was determined by a game of charades. The girls drew lots to determine the order of play. Immediately before her turn, each girl drew a slip of paper containing the item to be mimed. Whichever gentleman correctly guessed the answer was paired with the girl charading it. Her own client was of course excluded from play during her turn.
When my turn came up, I drew my item from a hat and chuckled. I squinted through a closed fist and made a crank-turning motion with my other hand.
“Film,” someone shouted. I nodded.
Third word: I tried to look statuesque and pointed to myself.
A man in the audience shouted: “Acne.” “Cellulite.” I recognized the heckler as Jeremy, a particularly nasty fellow in mergers and acquisitions, who at one time or other was paired with Heike and was now with Justine.
Sighing, I picked up a book — one of the sanctioned props — and balanced it on my head.
“Charm school — charm,” shouted Boswell. I nodded vigorously, silently praying for him to win.
Fifth word: I mimed making a martini. Spotting Yevgeny, I seized upon an idea. I began mimicking the jaunty way he would shoot out his shirt cuffs from his jacket sleeve in order to admire his cufflinks. Funny, until then I hadn’t realized that Yevgeny was really…
“Bourgeois!” came a voice from the audience, completing my thought.
The same speaker followed quickly on the heels of his previous guess: “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie!” To my great relief and delight, the victor was Boswell.
“WHAT do you think of all this?” Boswell asked me as he sat on an armchair in the St. Estèphe Hotel suite to which he and I had been assigned. I was sitting on the bed, massaging my feet and wondering about the very fair-skinned woman who got paired with Yevgeny.
Boswell lit a meerschaum pipe and adopted a patrician tone, speaking while biting down on the pipe stem. “Rather nelly affair, eh?”
I said, “Does your boyfriend approve of your smoking?” I lit a cigarette for myself.
Boswell sputtered, having accidentally inhaled his pipe smoke. As he expelled the smoke, it mingled with the smoke from my cigarette, forming a fog between us that rose slowly over our heads like a canopy.
I ran over to the courtesy bar and got Boswell a bottle of Evian. He nodded, gulping down the water until his coughing subsided. Face still crimson, he said, “Heike promised she wouldn’t tell.”
“She didn’t,” I said. “Heteros don’t use the word nelly.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks. I imagine ladies of the evening would become astute at such things.” He banged the tobacco out of his elegant pipe, angry with it for its spectacular failure as a heterosexual disguise. He continued, “Heike is a front; my beard, as they say. My boss is a client of Madame Tartakov’s; he’s here tonight, somewhere. He suggested this courtesan arrangement to me, and it seemed such a delicious idea. I couldn’t resist. It was easier than manufacturing a wife, at any rate.”
I started rubbing my other foot, relieved beyond belief. I asked, “In this day and age, does a gay man really need a front?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said, flipping through the TV Guide. “If you’re at a white-shoe law firm and have the Church of Latter-day Saints as your chief client and you’re up for senior partner, then, yes. Oh, look, they’re doing a Northern Exposure marathon on channel fifty-six.”
After a respectable period of time, which was two and a half Northern Exposure episodes, Boswell and I returned to the ballroom for the next part of the festivities. I tried to catch Yevgeny’s eye; he was standing akimbo over a girl with pale, almost greenish skin, the one with whom he had been paired. She was slumped limply over a chair. Her face was smudged with green eye shadow mixed with blood; she looked like a melting cake. I was taken aback to see that the source of blood was her wrists, which were cut open. When I approached her, two men scooped her up and removed her from the room.
I gasped, but Yevgeny’s plaintive glance silenced me. He was holding what looked like a garbage bag. He walked over to me, put his arm around my tensed frame, and whispered, “She did it to herself. I couldn’t stop her.” He kissed me on the forehead. I nodded and smiled warily.
14
Three Letters from My Father
MY FATHER called me one morning to tell me he had just arrived in New York, and was staying at the Helmsley. He had a meeting in Washington, he said, but he was in New York to pick up a suit he was having made. Did I want to meet him for lunch, since he was going to be around anyway?
Things between my parents and myself have been uncomfortable for nearly a decade, the evolution of which can be described in several letters.
My parents were never wild about the idea of my going to the States for university. My father handed me a letter as he saw me off at the airport before my freshman year. I read it on the plane.
August 26
My dear Judith,
As you know, in the 1960s your mother and I went to America for school. As you are doing now. We were so very lonely, as you will be.
I befriended a Japanese student, called Yoshihara, the only other Asian in my department. We cooked our native cuisines for each other, one time attempting to make soba noodles together. Yoshihara told me that the sauce would taste better with lemon juice, so we picked up a can of lemon Pledge from the store. Everything in America came in cans. We didn’t know it was furniture polish until we noticed the sauce tasted soapy. Is that not diverting?
Whenever the three of us met — Yoshihara and your mother and I — we would sit whispering in Harvard Square cafés and share all of our new discoveries about Americans. Over time, we came to agree upon several patterns which we deemed to be almost axiomatic:
1. When eating out in groups with Americans, do not offer to pay the whole bill. Americans will not fight you for it. They will take you at your word and expect you to pay the bill, and they may not reciprocate the treat at a later date.
2. When an American you meet for the first time suggests, “Let’s do lunch,” this may or may not mean that he wants to have lunch with you.
3. When you visit an American’s house for the first time, he will give you a “tour” of the house, as if it is the Versailles. He will even show you his bedroom and his bathroom. You are expected to compliment the furnishings.
4. If you see a woman and man together socially, do not ask whether they are married, or even if they are dating.
5. If offered a drink, say yes the first time. If you refuse the first time, your chance is gone forever.
6. If you break something in an American’s house or spill something on his clothes, peace will not be made until you offer to pay for it. They may not accept your money, but you must at least make an offer.
Learn this list, Judith, if your choice is to stay in America. You will not survive without it.
Americans have no fixed class system; anyone can rise and fall at any time. Status maintenance requires unceasing aggression, which is perhaps why they smoke marijuana constantly, even blue bloods.
In my student days in Boston, I befriended an American hippie called Ronald, who had dropped out of Harvard and was working in the bookstore of the Harvard Coop. He became fascinated with me and your mother, and he kept asking us questions about Zen Buddhism, about which I knew nothing. I expl
ained to him that Korean aristocrats are never Buddhist.
“That’s okay, too,” he replied.
You see, Judith, when you are living in a foreign country, it becomes very difficult to judge people correctly.
I did eventually have to teach myself about Zen Buddhism, because I found it was the only way that I could make friends with Americans. I gave myself a crash course, reading the essays of Japanese spiritualist D. T. Suzuki, which of course were not available in Korean, only in English. I became something of a guru, and a small group of frizzy-topped Americans came to my apartment every weekend to nod solemnly and ask questions like, “Should we say some Oms?”
Shortly after completing my degree, I took a post with the Korean Consulate in New York. This part you no doubt remember. I ached to return to Korea, but your mother wouldn’t hear of it. As you know, I finally wore down her resistance and we left America. I was all too glad to see the back of that place.
I don’t understand why you choose this difficult life instead of returning to Korea, where your family has perks. We are fragile beings who cannot survive outside our native environment.
Regards,
Your father
By “perks,” I think my father was referring to things like the citation he received from a disgraced Korean president three regimes ago. As one of the perks of the citation, my family now has lifetime immunity from being charged with traffic violations in Korea.
Similarly gnomic communications followed over the four years I was at school. Though I went home twice a year, my parents communicated their concerns only through letters.
The real tension began my senior year at Yale. I had failed a few classes and would not be receiving my degree on time.
The university was very good about letting delinquents like me save face before our families. On graduation day, I walked up to the podium like everyone else, shook the dean and the master’s hands, and received a velvety portfolio, inside of which was a piece of paper that read, “As you know, your diploma is being withheld.” Very smooth, very tactful, those WASPs.
