Dans L'Escalier

Two rather odd things happened on my afternoon out in Planet Itaewon. For those readers not familiar with life in Korea, I'll attempt to explain the phenomenon that is Planet Itaewon.

P.I. is a neighborhood, formally known as Itaewon-dong in Korean, that has been the traditional zone in which foreigners were allowed to conduct business. Now that Korea has pretty much opened up to the outside world, terms like 'foreigner's quarter' are pretty much historical - though it still does retain an international flavor that other neighborhoods now popular with foreigners, does not have.

Unfortunately, Itaewon is something of a ghetto, if not a textbook caricature of the same. There is a standing mafia, a pretty corrupt police force, substandard housing, and the collection of unpleasant characters that one usually associates with ghettos. On top of this rather unsavory structure is laid an American army base (the headquarters of the US forces Korea) with it's attendant prostitution industry, fist fights in the streets at midnight, and other general ugliness I'd rather not go into here.

Suffice it to say I generally avoid the place, which is actually quite difficult these days, as the place has gentrified somewhat since the nineties, sporting some nicer pubs with imported brews; I've also got some die-hard friends who seem unable to accept the idea that they live in a ghetto, and worst of all, it is the only place in the country that reliably carries my shoe size.

I was there this Saturday with my friend Peter, whose leg is in a rather sci-fi looking black brace, with knobs and levers and buttons that say "Don't Push!". Peter has lived here nearly a decade, the leg brace is a new affect, a gift of a recent scooter accident. He's a decent sort, so much so, that he's the only person I will befriend who has some yuppie traits, like hanging out in the Starbucks all weekend or complaining about Supersizing racism at the Burger King.

There was Peter, in his usual chair, swilling the joe and proofing his latest book about idioms, English Oxygen. There was a new character there as well, a voice talent named Andrew. He had a nice way with words, and we lost no time in verbally abusing the fashion sensibilities of the stream of punters who were filing past us to get their daily drug.

It was in this spirit that we found ourselves, taking the piss out of anything and everything, everyone and anyone, that when a comely young lass came in with a Mac Laptop (sorry, I know it has another name in MacSpeak, but I'm a hopeless PChead) and began disassembling it with a Swiss Army knife (called a 'McGiver knife here). SEE PICTURES ABOVE (clickable)

I mean, it wasn't so much the fact that she was kind of good looking, or a female, so much as of all the incongruous activities one can engage in in a coffeeshop, this has pretty much got to take the cake. I guess Mactops are pretty easy to swap RAM on, or the girl is something of an industry insider - I would never take my laptop apart with a knife in a public place, let alone in a private dust-free NASA facility - but that's just me.

Peter leans over and starts engaging in MacTalk, Backtalk, or something else, but he seems to be getting somewhere, most likely because he already has a girlfriend ( a beauty, at that). That must have been what encouraged me and Andrew, for I leaned over and started snapping the pictures above, but Andrew leaps out of his chair, rushes over and says 'Would you mind if I join you....in a relationship?' It was a kind of pickup line, undeniably, a little flippant, possibly crass to some - but certainly not what I would call a verbal assault.

The friend of the girl reacted before she could: "This is why white guys have a bad name in Itaewon" she intoned angrily, in what had to have been a native-speaking American accent. There was a lot of hostility which apparently had been built up over time, over similar incidents...

Not being a ghetto resident or frequenter, I shut my trap (for I had also been one of those caught snickering red-handedly at the boldness and audacity of it all) but there was a very, very thick silence which suddenly lay over that little region of the coffeeshop, like the moment in Western movies before a barroom gunfight. It was as though we were awaiting the inevitably deadly verbal fallout from this pre-emptive nuclear strike...

Later, mulling this over at home, it reminded me of something I once witnessed at a bar in San Francisco, a total stranger had come in and given this girl sitting next to me (also a stranger) a deep French kiss. It was so sudden, so unexpected, and so totally 'Not Found In the Manual' kind of situation that the girl actually had a beatific 'I enjoyed it' kind of face before she recovered and started protesting her rights, and shooting us at the bar dirty looks for laughing as a reaction, which she interpreted as encouraging such acts.

Yes, in some ways the two things were the same - cultural mishaps, both intra and intercultural in dimension.

And now, I've been suprressing the whole reason why I wrote about this incident. The title of this post refers to a borrowed French idiom which means literally 'On the Stairs' - it refers to verbal retorts, which never seem to occur to one in time, clever answers to a remark only occur to one as they are leaving, or 'on the stairs' on the way out.

Here's my 'dans l'escalier' then, it's not all that brilliant, but at least I can shout out from the safety of my blog, and of the time past:

IT'S GIRLS LIKE YOU THAT ALLOW TIRED STEREOTYPES TO LIVE IN BIG HOMES AND DRIVE FANCY CARS!

Actually, I should say 'Remarks like that' instead of 'Girls like you', because otherwise I just participate in the Stereotype Slaughterhouse Circus, but I can't help but feeling miffed at this sort of Bobbitting behavior which threatens to emasculate any male showing any attention to a woman whatever.

I know from my own experience, from receiving unwanted attention from Gay men among others, from being the recipient of suggestive comments that are unprintable here, that someday we will all be grateful for the attention now long gone. When we are all old, wrinkled and alone (I've already got 2 out of 3) we will pine for that shining moment of misplaced affection, which doesn't make us any smaller, doesn't cost money, or bring us under crosshairs of any kind. They're just WORDS, after all, for chriminey sakes!

Sticks and Stones will break my bones...

But the IRS can really hurt me.

Ciao, Pax everybody as I go to discover Mongolia and the deepest lake in the world.