Seoulbound
I stepped out of my apartment complex, glad to be free of the musty-smelling interior and the cramped studio apartment that served as my home base during my one-year tenure in Seoul. The day was gray, and the air was thick with conflicting scents ,from the brisk, freshly fallen rain to the rotting food waste set out in designated buckets. I walked down to the end of the street, where I met Aliaa, one of my fellow teachers at the Academy.
“Hey,” she said, flashing me a bright smile that stood out against her olive-toned skin. “Have you decided what you want to eat yet?”
“Not yet. Maybe something new,” I said.
“I’m down. We can walk to the mall,” Aliaa suggested. Our apartments were close to Lotte World Tower, and there was a bookstore near one of the bus stops that sold books in English, so naturally we frequented the area.
I agreed, and we began our ramble down the familiar back streets. We passed the art school with its unicorn sign, and the alterations shop where racks of clothes were visible through the window. There were two elderly women exercising on the equipment in the small park. They chatted animatedly with each other as their legs swung back and forth on the elliptical-like apparatuses. Soon we came to the street corner where our usual seafood joint was situated. As we walked, the air filled with the scent of spice, and Aliaa began to gush about the boy who worked at the tteokbokki place down the street.
I tried to engage in the conversation, but I didn’t relate to the butterflies of a budding flirtation. It had taken me years to come to terms with my asexuality—I grew up in a conservative family, where heterosexual was the only viable option for one’s sexual identity. For so long, I thought that my lack of curiosity about sex and intimacy was normal. But then college came around, and while the people around me developed romantic relationships, I stayed disinterested. It made me realize that I was different from those around me. Over time, I realized who I was, and that realization led to an acceptance of myself that I hadn’t experienced before. Knowing that the way I thought and felt had a name, that other people experienced the world through the same lens, gave me comfort.
We rounded the street and emerged into the main thoroughfare, where large signs advertised businesses ranging from the laundromat to a noraebang, or karaoke room, where our group of foreign teachers sometimes spent an evening singing along to our favorite songs. Aliaa and I often performed Evanescence’s “My Immortal” when we were feeling melodramatic; Aliaa would sing with all the passion of past heartbreaks, and I would simply bask in her vulnerability while I questioned if I would ever know what it’s like to have love.
While Aliaa kept the conversation flowing, I felt my attention drifting to the city that teemed with life around me. Most of the people we passed were young, and they wore fashions that would put my meager closet to shame. The women tended to wear short skirts and heels, the kind of clothes I had never jived with. My Korean co-teacher sat the Academy were often getting on my case to wear skirts and dress more feminine, and their rigid ideas of what it meant to be a woman had made me realize I don’t identify with those ideas.
Even with the conflict I felt looking at the people around me, I never took for granted the new and exciting landscape, knowing that I would someday return home, and this place would be reduced to memories. I had formed a habit of typing up descriptions of the city in my Notes app on my phone so I’d never forget how Seoul looked and sounded and smelled.
We passed our favorite fried chicken place and made our way to the larger intersection. There were quite a few people standing on its edges, waiting for the signal from the streetlight on the opposite side to tell us we could make our way across. It wasn’t like back home, where you would look both ways, say a quick prayer, and jaywalk the hell across the street. Here in Seoul, I still glanced both ways when the light signaled for us to go; I’d already been hit by two cars and one of those delivery bikes that rarely gave way for pedestrians, so I knew not to take a proverbial green light at face value. Funny how that had become an analogy for my romantic prospects, too—facing the idea of love always felt like striding across that crosswalk, feeling exposed with each step I took into the intersection, just waiting for something to crash into me and tell me I didn’t belong there.
It was about a half hour’s walk to the mall. I enjoyed strolling past the food stalls lining the street, until I passed the fragrant vats of frying beondegi, or silkworm pupae, and remembered my disastrous experience tasting one. Still, I was glad to be out and about with Aliaa. Our excursions into the city were a welcome break from writing my current novel. I had a tendency to embrace solitude and spend weekends cooped up in my apartment, but since Aliaa joined the teaching staff at the Academy, I finally had a friend to encourage me to leave my bubble. And on a day like this, with the smells of the recent rainfall mingling with those of fried foods, I thought to myself that an adventure would do me good. Get me out of my shell. With that thought in mind, I walked with Aliaa down the cool, cramped streets, my hands in my pockets and my thoughts on the city I had come to call my home away from home.
