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I’ve never been good at connecting with people. In high school and even the early years of college, I was too overeager, latching on to the first person who showed any sign of interest. If a girl complimented my lipstick choice, I presumed that we were going to be exchanging those interlocking BFFs heart necklaces and then I’d be crushed when I got skipped over for that girl’s trip to the nail salon or the post-prom party at the Embassy Suites down by the river. In college, it was much the same way. I’d take the most innocent of overtures and blow it up into a lifelong friendship before we’d even had a meal together. I’d end up hurt, but wouldn’t admit it. By the end of my sophomore year, I learned to stop making the effort.
The last real relationship I had, if you could call it that, was with Travis Bloom. He was a jock insomuch as a nonscholarship college athlete could be called one. He was fit, looked good in a pair of jeans, rocked intramural sports, said that he rushed but didn’t want to conform. Later, someone told me that he never even received an invite to join a fraternity. It sounded about right. He often made small boasts that could never be verified—was the best player on my high school football team but am not going to brag about it—but I thought he was cool in the way stupid virgins who didn’t have boyfriends in high school think men in college are cool.
He was bad in bed, although I was no better so I didn’t complain. Our two-semester romance didn’t make it past the summer between my sophomore and junior years. He went home to St. Louis and hooked up with his high school girlfriend, a former cheerleader if I remember correctly, and I learned how to make a chocolate raspberry mousse with my mom at a new kitchen store that had opened up in the East Village.
After that, I had a few random hookups but nothing serious. I slept with a lab partner for a semester mostly because we were both bored and it was easy. I hooked up with a minor league baseball player whom I met at a bar the summer I graduated from college. These experiences were pretty soulless and unsatisfying, so when I started working, I decided that my time was better spent as a single female. Men were too much effort, and friends? Well, I had my coworkers if I needed someone to hang out with, and there were other things in life that fulfilled me. Books. Binge-watching sitcoms made ten years ago. I took up knitting once with Mom. We tried to make a blanket together. It turned into a very large, very ugly scarf. I wonder where the monstrosity is right now. In the three years since I’ve been out of college, I’ve sort of retreated—to my apartment, to my hobbies, to my television.
Mom always pressed me to go out more, to be more social, but that wasn’t my thing. Last night was an anomaly. All my interaction with Choi Yujun has been out of the ordinary. The point of this is to say that I’m likely misreading Yujun’s actions and my dream of being smothered alive is symbolic of how embarrassed I will feel mistaking his friendliness for something more. In the light of day, when sleep and time have burned off the soju, it’s clear he was being kind and not trying to get into my mom jeans.
I vow to be cool and less dorky the next time I see him—if I see him at all again, which is unlikely. Besides, I have more important things to do, none of which I can accomplish until lunchtime, when I meet with Boyoung. I drag my stiff body out of bed and wander downstairs. Everyone is gone again. My flatmates are hard workers.
I decide to go for another walk. This time I don’t need my notebook to recognize the chicken sign: ?? . If I’m ever lost and hungry, I’ll at least be able to figure out where to eat. From the lettering on the windows, I’m able to figure out a few more words. Over the top of a laundromat I see a word that reminds me of ppalli ppalli—the first word I learned in Korean. When I check the translation app on my phone and find out that I’m very close—ppallaebang—I want to slap a gold star on my chest. Fluency, here I come. I almost text Yujun from Seoul but manage to talk myself down from that silly impulse. The instinct to share something with Yujun only happens three more times before lunch.
I manage to keep myself together until it’s time to meet Boyoung at the ttalgi café she suggested. Two doors down from the café, a few older people stand in front of a four-story building that looks to be in the process of renovation. They are all holding signs with red-and-black lettering. My limited Korean gives me no insight and I add it to the mental scroll of all the things I need Boyoung to explain, but first are my photos.
