When Life Hands Me Lemons, I Chuck Them at Unsuspecting Passersby

Yesterday I spent my time lounging around my apartment and watching political documentaries. I made myself breakfast, I made myself lunch, and I made myself dinner. The whole day, to myself. It was nice. Around midnight, I hopped in the shower and wasted so much water I should be in jail for it. But hey, if you had a full length mirror in front of you in your shower, you'd just stand there, lathering forever too, wouldn't you?

I sauntered out into the balmy, tropical, foul-smelling Busan night with several gin and tonic's worth of pep in my step, playing air guitar to Mastodon and dodging the ubiquitous food vendors, young men on motorcycles, and piles of fruit all around. I stopped into the phone booth and called my dad, and had another always appreciated conversation with him. I love my dad. I wish everyone had parents as great as mine.

Continuing on to the bar where I spend several nights a week, Kino-Eye, the sure place of meeting up with new acquaintances, I gleefully romped through the rain and thought of all the people I miss. Like Keith from Taos, whose stories of his time in Vietnam and lack of teeth, his instantly recognizable cackle and stories of bedding Deborah Harry in a fabled 1970's Brooklyn brought me back to a warm friendship and an amazing person I wish I could still be downing MGDs and chasing coyotes with. Sometimes I think that my best memories are my worst enemies, because when you leave behind outstanding people and experiences throughout your roaming, you inevitably come up sadder than if you had simply not tried to have all that awesome shit in your past.

I arrived at Kino-Eye and it was packed to the brim. Or, as Michael Steele would say, "off the hook." I spotted my new friend Muran, a Turk, across the bar and went over and sat next to him. He was unusually enthusiastic this evening, despite having just had his girlfriend walk out on him. I tried to console him and tell him that it always happens that way, that love never came without loss. I didn't want him to feel bad...I had known too viscerally how much love, when it goes away, hurts in the past year. He shrieked in laughter and yelled in my ear, like you do when in an impossibly loud room, "BITCHES, MAN! BITCHES! I WOULDN'T WANT HER BACK IF SHE HAD THE SUN FOR A PET AND SPOKE PURE GOLD IN HER SLEEP! I GOT ALL I NEED RIGHT HERE! AND SHE'S NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!" I clapped him on the back and congratulated him for his quick, if obviously dishonest, recovery. He bought me a drink and we shot around the usual bull, after which I dismissed myself and went over to the other side of the bar, where a beautiful Korean woman was sitting. I figured I might explore his logic.

After ordering a rum and coke and sparking up a Marlboro, I leaned over and asked her if she was enjoying herself this evening. Either she didn't speak English, or I bore a striking resemblance to Gallagher at that moment, because she erupted in rancid laughter and continued talking with her friend next to her. "Alright," I thought. "That's enough of that."

I sat nursing my cocktail and bruised ego for several minutes. The place was really hopping. I looked around the packed room of wannabe mooks and nubile young bodies and tried to understand how it was that such an impossibly charming, perfectly eligible suitor like myself could spend every night alone. I mean, come on, the tormented, existential, loner man thing only works like five days a week, right? On the other two you want something real, soft, warm, alive! Someone to share grapefruit, omellettes and coffee with in the morning!

At that moment, a drop-dead gorgeous Alicia Silverstone lookalike came stumbling over to me, pushing her hair out of her reddened, glassy, inebriated eyes. She sat right down on my lap. She was muttering unintelligably and I was waiting for some man to come over and punch me in the face. I put my hands on her shoulders and said "you look like a lot of fun, darling, but I think you need a cab home." She could barely sit properly. She kept putting her hands to her mouth as if expecting a volcanic eruption to occur from it any second. I asked her if I could help her in any way, like get home or at least down to the stream of waiting cabs in the street, and she just continued mumbling and flailing about, crushing my genitals with whatever was in her back pockets.

She abruptly stood up and staggered over to a bouncer like person standing by the door, and began grinding against him and doing this comical reprisal of what would have been a very sexy dance if she wasn't well beyond her quota of liquor for the evening. Then, to my simultaneous excitement and horror, she began trying to wrestle herself out of her shirt, without success, and promptly vomited all over herself, and the built young korean man she was trying to make an impression on. She continued puking, all over the floor, the bar, people standing nearby, chairs, and the stairs to her side we would all walk down on our individual ways out that night. Her hair was covered in barf and she was laughing hysterically. And, I mean it, this woman was beautiful. It was like seeing a bunny rabbit ran over by a hummer.

But I didn't feel anything.

I paid my tab, put my jacket on, and, sidestepping her gastrointesinal refuse on my way out, walked home, alone, again.

I awoke thinking of where she went last night, and if I would ever see her again.