and billowy hippie clothes of indeterminate nationality. Neither has showered for several days.
“Where are we getting drunk?” says Janie, a bigboned but tragically low-waisted American girl with fashionable glasses. She’s holding a manila envelope.
“Is that what I think it is?” says the Englishman, referring to the envelope. “Has our shipment from San Francisco arrived?”
“My shipment,” Janie corrects him. “I know you’re going to try and treat this like your personal stash, but this is mine.”
“What are you going to do with a whole sheet of acid?” asks the Mormon.
“Whatever I want,” says Janie.
“Give us a taste, you sick tease,” says the Englishman, springing to his feet.
Janie relents. “You can each have one tab.”
From the envelope she pulls out a letter-sized page scored into tiny boxes, each inked with a blue star.
And, I gather, an ample serving of LSD. The Englishman and the Mormon hungrily accept their tiny tabs, placing them on their tongues. Janie turns to Ray and smiles. “Care to join us?”
“Me? No,” says Ray. “I don’t want to be seeing trails and shit when I’m forty.”
“That’s such an urban myth,” she says, then turns to me. “What about you? You look like you could use a pick-me-up.”
“Much appreciated,” I say. “But I’d prefer to keep my feet on the ground just now. I believe there was some talk of getting drunk?”
“We could take them to Suzie’s,” suggests the Englishman. “How about it, mates? Shall we storm Hooker Hill?”
The word “hooker” seems to demolish any objection Ray might tender. A few minutes later, the five of us are packed into a taxi headed to Itaewon, Seoul’s version of a red-light district. The Mormon — whose real name is Gene — uses the trip to explain how he’s arrived at his current station in life.
He’d been on a religious mission to Indonesia, with his wife and newborn daughter, when he experienced an “awakening.”
The Englishman coughs theatrically. “More like a descent into moral disrepair.”
“I just realized that I wasn’t living the life I was supposed to be living,” replies Gene.
“Because you’re a queer,” says the Englishman.
“I am not a queer,” Gene says, looking directly at Ray. “Although this one’s got this whole butch thing that’s really turning me on.”
“Because you’re a goddamn poofter,” the Englishman says, as if stating the obvious.
The Mormon smiles with practiced tolerance.
“I’m really not gay. Anyway, I’ve been traveling for two years ever since. I’ve seen so much of the world.”
“What about your family?” I ask.
“I tried to stay in touch with them at first. But after a while they didn’t seem so interested in hearing from me. I think we’re all just moving on.”
When the taxi arrives at Suzie’s, no one but Ray can find a wallet. Mine appears to have been stolen while I slept at the hostel. I take some consolation in the fact that the thief or thieves ignored my passport and plane ticket.
“The front desk should have warned you,” Janie says. “That’s the fifth or sixth robbery this week.”
Ray grudgingly pays the cab fare. “He’s got an excuse,” he says, pointing to me. “What about the rest of you?”
The Englishman raises his hands in surrender.
“What can we say? We are but poor travelers. But if you’re intent on recompense,” he says, pointing to the Mormon, “I’m certain he’ll bless your knob with a thorough spit-and-shine.”
“Ha!” says the Mormon with a laugh. “He’s kidding. I’m really not going to, you know, do what he said I’d do. That would be a sin.” The Mormon’s leg vibrates nervously: The acid is kicking in.
“Just pay the fare,” Janie says. “And stop pretending that you don’t like being the moneybags.” Something tells me that Ray and Janie are not destined to be boon companions.
Inside, Suzie’s looks like it might once have been a car dealership. Large plate-glass windows provide natural advertising to the foot traffic outside and a colorful view of the gaudily lit neighborhood for the customers within. Most of the interior space is devoted to a dance floor, where a dozen or so Korean beauties in slinky dresses and their male p a rtne rs — the clientele, I assume — twirl incongruously to the sounds of New Kids on the Block. The scene looks more like a USO dance than a bordello: A large percentage of the men wear American military uniforms. “Yongsan Garrison’s just west of here,” Janie explains. “Thirty thousand red-blooded, shit-kicking United States Army men.”
“How do the Koreans feel about that?” I ask.
Janie shrugs. “I guess they probably hate it. But not Suzie. Without them, she’d be out of business.
Korean men are like totally straitlaced. They expect their women to be good little hausfraus, dressed all conservative and staying home in the kitchen. If they saw Korean women acting this way, they’d go apeshit.”
I look again at the dancers in search of behavior that might drive the locals crazy — public nudity, pussy- powered Ping-Pong balls, etc. — but I don’t see much more than the occasional suggestive smile. As for the foreigners — Ray, in particular — the relatively demure dancing works like catnip. If the mention of hookers piqued Ray’s interest, the sight of this many potential sexual partners of Asian descent has him bug-eyed. “How does this work?”
he asks, bouncing from heel to heel.
“Miss Suzie will take care of us,” says the Englishman. Miss Suzie looks like an older version of one of her employees, although with Asian women I never can tell — my best guess at her age is somewhere between thirty and seventy. She addresses the Englishman with comfortable familiarity. “Welcome back, Mister Christopher. You bring friends tonight.”
Miss Suzie leads us to a booth in the back. “I’ll send someone over with your drinks.” She pauses for a moment, carefully studying each of our faces.
She bows gracefully and shifts her attention to another group, American soldiers who seem to be edging from boisterous toward rowdy.
“Shouldn’t she have asked us what we wanted first?” I wonder aloud.
“There are only two drinks on the menu,” says Mormon Gene. “Yellow and orange.”
Gene is clearly tripping — the pupils of his eyes, as is the case with Janie and the Englishman, are as wide as saucers — but a couple of minutes later, one of the Korean beauties presents a tray bearing two plastic soda bottles, recycled and filled with what looks like radioactive Kool-Aid. Yellow and orange. “Grain alcohol,” says Janie. “Be careful.
This stuff will hit you like a brick wall.”
Ray sneers at her. He grabs one of the disposable picnic cups that accompany the bottles, fills it with yellow, and chugs it down. Then he pours himself another.
Janie sneers back. “Oooh!”
Ray ignores her. “So what now?” he asks.
“That’s up to Miss Suzie,” replies the Englishman. “But don’t worry, you’re in good hands.”
When Miss Suzie reappears, she’s holding hands with a dancer she’s chosen, it seems, specifically for Ray. “This is Sunny,” she says to him. “You look like a good dancer. She is very good dancer too.”
Sunny, covered in a light layer of sweat from the dancing, smiles at Ray, not lewdly but like an innocent child being introduced to an adult. The effect on Ray is immediate. He throws back his second cup and in the same motion leaps to his feet and grabs Sunny’s hand.
“You like Sunny?” asks Miss Suzie.
“I like Sunny,” Ray replies, already leading her toward the dance floor. “Sunny days are here again.”
