The Itaewon Diaries: Part 2 - Thin Lines of Desperation
Everyone in Itaewon is running from something. Not everyone makes it out.
It was the end of May. I was sleeping in the nude, partly because I like to sleep in the nude, partly because I didn’t want to waste money on pajamas, but mostly because it was hot as a sauna. The only ventilation in my room was the small 6 by 6 inch window. The air outside was about 38 degrees, heated up from the cement and asphalt reverberating heat rays all over the building.
It was 5:30 am on a Monday. That’s the day with Professor Kim’s class on Korean media. This alone put me in a bad mood. Monday class with Michael felt like a misogynistic Revenge of the Nerds’ session. There was a lot of smirking and sneering and dismissing students’ opinions – unless the students were the most awkwardly bookish (yet not necessarily sharpest) or had socially well-connected parents.
I had had a late shift at the bar, and I was dreading waking up early and presenting my final project to the class. Dead tired, my head hit the pillow at 2 in the morning, and I had hoped to get a couple hours of sleep before my Monday morning academic humiliation ritual. Unfortunately, my neighbor seemed to have conflicting plans. I woke up to her laughing and chatting happily on the phone in another language. These were not the muffled whispers of a nighttime call. She was uninhibited and might as well have been yelling directly into my ear.
I laid in bed, silently screaming. I contemplated my two options: do nothing, or tell her to be quiet (a third option of quieting her forever I only entertained briefly in fantasy). After several moments of internal screaming and debating, I made up my mind. I jolted out of bed, threw on the closest thing next to me (an uncomfortably warm sweater dress) and went to knock on her door.
I knocked.
“WHAT, Jenny?!” She barked as she threw open the door. “Oh, hello! I thought you were Jenny.” Her tone changed when she saw it was me.
“Hi. Um. You’re kind of loud and it’s really early. Could you please be more quiet?” Roar of a lioness, that was. I’d been spending most of my life avoiding confrontation and conflict, I was pushed to the edge of sanity but still managing to err on evasive politeness.
“Oh, no, I can’t! I’m speaking to my family in Tunisia. They asked me to speak louder because they couldn’t hear me.”
“Can’t you call them at another time? It’s super early and I’m trying to sleep.”
“No, this is the only time I can call them,” She paused, “Where are you from?” Her tone was starting to get less syrupy.
“America.”
“Well, I’m from Tunisia and this is the only time I can call! I don’t know what time it is in America right now but for Tunisia this is the only time!” Shrillness of tone increased by 30%.
“We’re all foreigners here. No one except you is talking this loudly at 5 in the morning. You need to be quieter.” Firmness of tone increases by 50%.
Suddenly, with great force, from the bottom of her stomach she howled “FUCK YOUUUUU!!!” and violently slammed the door. Before the door could hit my face, I grabbed it and pushed it back open, stepped into her little room and got chest to chest with her.
Heart pounding and blood boiling, I had an intoxicating surge of rage course from my gut to my brain. I started a rapid-fire verbal onslaught. “You fucking stupid whore don’t you ever fucking scream at me again! I’m gonna get you kicked out of this place, I’m going to get you kicked out of this country. I know you’re having visa problems and I know you’re a fucking prostitute. Don’t you ever fuck with me you stupid, stupid bitch.” The stuff about the visa and prostitution were just guesses, but in the moment they felt good to say. I thought I needed leverage to make her scared enough to stop yelling in the morning. Plus, I was enraged and unhinged. I had nothing more to say and didn’t want to stay long enough to see what she’d do in response. I retreated quickly and shuffled back to my room while she stood in shock.
Then, through our wall she started screaming: “I have a Korean husband and I’m calling him now. He will fuck you up!”
For a second I was nervous - would her pimp really come over here to beat me up for yelling at her? The answer was no, not at this hour and not for this girl. No pimp, or ‘oppa’, or mysterious Arab man was going to come to her rescue and beat up an American postgrad student – especially at the crack of dawn.
“I’m calling him right now!”
“Go ahead, do it!” I yelled back and called her bluff. She was silent for a minute. Had she given up? Relieved, and with nothing else to do but get another hour of sleep before the intellectual punishment that was Korean Media History’s final presentation in two hours, I threw off that itchy sweater dress and flopped down into my hard, mildewy bed.
A knock at the door. It was her, of course. Do I answer it? My adrenaline was still circling in my system and I thought I could have it in me to have another screaming match with her. And no sweater dress either – like an alpha wolf, I will go head-to-head with her in the buff. Or that's what I told myself.
I opened the door, stark nude under the fluorescent light. “Yes? What is it?”
She kissed my cheek and gave me a hug. I’m nude. She is not fazed in the slightest. Of course she’s not.
“Let’s not fight, Habibi. I’m sorry,” she says in that sweet bird voice as she releases me from her embrace. This girl and her curveballs.
“Yeah... I’m sorry, too. But you really should try to be quieter if you’re living with so many other people.”
“I know. I hate this place! I want to leave soon. Here is so small and dirty, I’m looking for another place to stay.”
“Yes! Oh my god, it's so depressing here,” I agreed with everything. Please leave; this place is bad and with you here it's worse. I was screaming those words, and obscenities, in my head as I smiled and said, “You should totally leave! This place sucks.”
We exchange a few more dull lines, and I tell her I’m going back to bed. As my door was just about to close, her eyes darkened and she spat out, “And don’t you ever call me a whore again!”
I rushed to shut the door, locked it and jumped into bed. Lying in bed with my heart pounding, I wondered how the hell I was going to get out of here, away from these psychos and the roaches and the stench. Why the hell did I come to Seoul in the first place? To get a Masters, to get out of teaching English to bored housewives and dead-inside salarymen in Japan. Am I being punished? Is this bad karma? Am I an idiot to go to the most expensive private university in Korea while being basically too broke to function?
With my head swirling as I felt sorry for myself, I pressed my eyelids down to try to focus on getting to sleep. I couldn’t escape this little moldy box of a room – yet– but I could escape in my head. In my mind's eye, I cast myself as the star of some romantic comedy, like in those K-dramas where a plucky, hardworking girl catches the eye of some secret CEO or celebrity with a baseball cap on as disguise. He'd look at me and think, Who is that beautiful, feisty, hardworking girl? Why the hell is she living in a backstreet bordello? I have this uncontrollable desire to shower her with money!! And then he'd put me on his magic carpet and we'd fly off, or whatever. And then I’d never have problems again. And then, I was asleep. The dream didn’t last long.
…
The silver lining to this living situation that I was stuck in was that I was barely there. I was only there to rest my head after school and my many part-time jobs. A few weeks before I moved into the goshitel, I started working as a bartender for a jazz whiskey bar named The Albatross. It was owned by an Australian expat who'd been living in Seoul since the early 2000s. He was married to a Korean artist who was (at the time) the coolest lady I've ever met. Her husband seemed to be an alcoholic, or an "alcoholist" as he'd like to say. Nevertheless, he gave me a job, and I was desperately grateful.
I spent most evenings working there behind the bar. I took on extra hours so I wouldn't have to be in my apartment, and that meant that most days I would be in class for about five to six hours; then I would teach. I would tutor rich or wealthy children English. This job was pretty easy for me to get as a native English speaker, and I was also going to basically the Yale of Korea. When people heard I was an American girl from Hawaii who was living in Seoul and going to Yonsei University, they would hire me right away, and this was my main income source because I would get up to $50 an hour, maybe just a few hours a week. Anyways, it was good money. I sometimes felt like a language prostitute, though very undervalued. People viewed me, despite being expensive, as an expendable resource. After a few hours of speaking with elementary school students and helping them with their homework and/or playing with kindergarten students at their homes in upscale neighborhoods, I would make my way to the Albatross.
There I had a batch of regulars.
There were several of my friends who lived in a two block radius who would come by sporadically, sit at the bar and chitchat with me during the low hours, which was most of the time. Occasionally I would see a classmate or colleague from my university pop in while I'm working. And then there were the unique customers. There was a Korean art professor who looked like he was in his early 40s, relatively handsome. At least twice a week, he would come with different female students at the art school; always young, beautiful girls, always a different one.
There was an American journalist who was doing a story on Southeast Asian spy networks. There was another Canadian businessman who had somehow orchestrated Dennis Rodman’s visit to North Korea to make Kim Jong Un.
There were also men who would come and flirt with me and buy me drinks. In Korea, bartenders were allowed to drink at the bar. At least, that’s what I was told – I never bothered checking the actual law. I would often flirt with them so that they would buy me something to eat, never so boldly saying that I'm hungry and broke. Part of my survival strategy was getting men to buy me food.
When I first started working there, I didn't know how to open a bottle of wine. I didn't know if Sauvignon Blanc was white or if Cabernet was red. We only had two wines in the bar because it was a whiskey bar, and I would still get them mixed up.
Most nights the bar was pretty empty, so I could try to do my class reading. A friend would come in, maybe a Korean customer or two. The bar closed at 1 am, more time spent away from my room in the goshitel. Time away from the filth and the grime and the heat and my erratic neighbors.
…
After the early morning incident with my neighbor, I didn’t hear from her. Ramadan had started, and her uncharacteristic quiet made me assume that she gave up alcohol in observance. I was glad to be relieved of her screaming, crying and fighting.
It was in the first week or so of Ramadan I met up with an acquaintance, Riad, a young Egyptian man I worked and lived with at the hostel from before. He was another down-on-his-luck foreigner living in Seoul. Both of us were broke, but Riad was actually penniless. He fled military service a few years prior and was working odd jobs at industrial factories to get by.
I was happy to hear over lunch that he had found a better job in the neighborhood. He started working at an Israeli hookah bar. Previously, Riad refused to work anywhere they served alcohol. He didn’t want to “serve poison” to anyone – which greatly limited his job prospects in the soju-drenched streets of Itaewon where the only job he qualified for was a waiter. But at the hookah bar they accepted his principles and allowed him to just handle the food.
Although Riad avoided serving poison, he could not avoid the vices of Itaewon.
“It’s awful, Ali. This bar is awful. It employs prostitutes,” he complained.
“Prostitutes?”
“Yeah. These two girls. A Tunisian and a half Thai girl. They get men to come in and have them buy overpriced drinks. Then the men can buy them.”
“Tunisian?!”
After exchanging some details about physical characteristics and personality, as well as the corroborating detail of there being a half Thai, half Korean girl named Jenny (of “GIVE ME MY MONEY JENNY” infamy) we deduced that the Tunisian at the hookah bar was my neighbor.
“They work for the bar, they bring in guys, rich Arab guys usually. They charge them something crazy for the drinks and hookah. Like five times the normal price. It’s crazy how much they spend, Ali.”
“And the bar sets this up or something?”
“Yes,” he sighed. “They give the girls some commission. But it’s worse. I know they’re sleeping with the customers for money, too. I heard them talking about it.” Riad was heavy with guilt, his head in his hands. “This is worse than alcohol. I don’t want to work there anymore but I can’t work in those factories again.”
My suspicions were finally confirmed; she was indeed a sex worker. I didn’t have the same moral dilemma as Riad. My favorite movie throughout my teens was Moulin Rouge. But this wasn’t the Sparkling Diamonds of the Moulin Rouge – this was as glamorous as a used condom. But it was pretty light nightlife shenanigans compared to what else went on in the neighborhood. I was doubly impressed that Itaewon was so small that gossip spread so easily.
…
Later that week, she knocked on my door frantically again. I had learned my lesson this time and completely ignored her. After a minute, she gave up. Then I heard her start knocking on a door down the hall. They answered the door, “Yes?” From their voice I could tell it was this emaciated woman with unkempt hair and wild eyes that would unblinkingly stare at people.
The Tunisian girl said, in a mix of Korean and English, “Help me. I’m dying.” She spoke in a baby voice.
She said something else in Korean that I didn’t fully understand, and then I heard the door shutting on her. She shuffled back to her room (to die apparently).
The next day I saw her – alive and looking very well – in the cosmetic store by our house. She saw me and smiled brightly, “Hi”.
“You know, I tried to find you last night, but you weren’t home.”
“Really? I slept at my friend’s house last night.”
“Yeah, I wanted to come in and sleep with you in your bed because I was feeling really sick. I needed someone to hold me. I was feeling so sick that I had a panic attack and I felt like I was dying.” Our beds are all super narrow twins. Not even American standard-sized twins, but more like army barrack cots. I still didn’t know this girl’s first name, and she wanted to come and spoon with me.
With a slight chill up my spine, I said “That sounds awful! I definitely was not there that night, though. That’s too bad. OK, well I gotta go!”
The goshitel made my skin crawl. This girl had freaked me out. I decided to tell my boss at the bar that I was available to work every night. Work more hours, sleep at other people’s places more, anything to spend less time in that place. Just a few more months of this and then I’d graduate. Keep my head low and all will be fine.
All wasn’t going to be fine, though. The Tunisian girl was peripheral – she never got past my barriers. The walls were thin, but they were still there. As exhaustion and desperation eroded my barriers, thin lines became blurred. It wasn’t my neighbor I had to worry about, it was the men that I was about to meet.
To Be Continued in Part 3