I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (9 page)

"Do you want to wash up?"

She shook her head. She drank the leftover whiskey.

"You're different," she said, removing the bottle from her lips. Her body glowed, like a firefly in a dark cemetery. She continued, her face smudged in blue. "I've met a lot of guys. I've slept with them and sometimes lived with them. But they couldn't deal with me. I don't know why. So how can you handle me? What makes you different from them?"

She was starting to relax. It was less because of the
liquor and more because of the crazy spectacle she put on. He was envious of her for a second, an artist able to get drunk from her own work. He couldn't be immersed in himself like that, not when he was working.

It seemed an extraordinary indulgence in oneself.

Mimi came by C's apartment for the first time three days after their initial meeting at the café. They watched a videotape of his work in his studio. She showed interest. Looking at her hungrily watching the tape, he realized that she looked like a character in a Boris Vallejo drawing. But he couldn't remember its title. He was in the habit of remembering images, not words.

"I like performance art. Or miming," Mimi said.

"Video art is also fascinating," he ventured cautiously.

She didn't agree. "All you do is look at something through a lens. You edit it, looking at a monitor, then show it onscreen. It's no longer real if it's filtered."

"I guess you could think of it like that. But isn't all art a filter for reality? Drawings or sculpture change reality in some way and make it more real. You could say art is a reflection of reality."

C studied her expression. She didn't look like she was going to back down.

"Performance art is different. I meet things directly. I see death and lust in the audience's eyes. Depending on what I see in their eyes, my work changes immediately. If the
purpose of art is to confront beauty, especially live beauty, aren't all other artistic forms fake? They are compromises and the residue of the desire for useless immortality. All criticism of performance art starts with the fear of true beauty. People preserve beauty because of their obsession with immortality. They are slaves of dead art." She was getting worked up.

"Immortality? What's wrong with immortality? Don't we all want to be immortal?"

She regarded him with disdain. "Fine. Let's stop arguing. But I don't want to force myself to make dead art. Life is short. There isn't enough time to do everything I want to do."

"Why are you afraid of the camera?"

She widened her eyes, insulted. "Afraid? I just don't like it."

"Fear often wears the clothing of hatred. If you are going to learn how to ride a bike, you have to turn the handles the direction you're falling, and pedal hard."

She mulled over his words for a long time, silent. But her silence wasn't a sign of being convinced. "Isn't it the same for you, too? You're scared of dealing with me face-to-face. Isn't that why you brought out the video? Isn't it? It could be you who need to turn the handles in the direction of the fall." Her voice got higher and higher, but lost confidence. He felt unsure.

"Well, then," he said, trying to breathe evenly. "Why did
you agree to work with me? Why did you come all the way to my studio?"

"I don't know." She retreated and lit a cigarette. "I don't quite understand it myself. I sometimes think my work wouldn't be mine anymore if I put it in another medium. Actually, if that ever happened, I feel like the life that I've been maintaining against all the odds would crumble at the foundation. It's stupid, I know. Other people would think it's no big deal. But I think I've taken it too far. I wonder if there's another way to make art."

"I see. Then let's try working together."

She assented. She blew out a long stream of smoke. Bluish smoke filled the room. Her eyes followed the smoke dissipating slowly.

"I slept with a guy for the first time when I was a senior in high school. He was my Korean teacher. He would call me out and take me to a nearby motel. He sometimes got me out of study periods and sometimes even called on Sundays. It wasn't rape or consensual sex, but something awkward, in between. You know what I mean, right? I don't think I was in love with him. It was a point of pride for me that he would take off his clothes in front of me, when he was so popular with the other girls.

"Then I met his wife. A woman I'd never seen before beckoned me out of my study period. I knew who she was immediately. She was icily confident. She said to me calmly, 'You're that girl. You're very pretty. Do you like your
teacher?' I nodded, but not because I liked him. I was acting like I did because I didn't like her coldness. Then she said gently, as if to a younger sister, 'You can't do this. Especially with him. Okay?' What do you think I did then?"

"I don't know." C shrugged, wondering if she'd just nodded passively.

"I screamed. I screamed and screamed like a deranged psychopath, stomped my feet and screamed, until all the students and teachers rushed out. I still can't forget her expression. She was calm, unmoved. What kind of person does that? I was scared. So I kept screaming, and finally my Korean teacher appeared. Then his wife slapped him and walked away, dignified, across the playing field. Everyone understood what that had been all about. The teacher didn't come back to school, and we heard he got divorced. Everyone blamed me for it. It's ridiculous, isn't it?"

Mimi cleaned up in the bathroom. She scrubbed her entire body meticulously, as if she were going to immerse herself in holy water for a religious ritual. She washed her hair with solvent to get all the blue paint out.

"What color are we doing next?" she asked.

"How's black?"

She nodded and dunked her hair in the paint again, her butt in the air, drenching her hair in paint as if she were alone. During her performance, Mimi's hair became a writing instrument, its thickness and shine gone wayward. An unsuppressed lust tore through C like a torpedo whenever
he looked at Mimi writhing. He tried to concentrate on the act of filming.

Her body morphed into the handle of a brush, her hair into bristles. C followed her movements through the bluish viewfinder. He was too used to looking at the world through a lens. He realized that when he walked around, he unconsciously blocked every scene as if he were looking through a frame, believing more in the images he edited on tape than things he saw in person. He actually became attached to the edited images. The video camera was his shield, a small but safe refuge from the vast unknown. This might be why he can't get closer to this seductive performance artist. For a split second, C wanted to stay in his world, the world he knew, one he'd reflected on, created, and captured. Mimi hummed some tune he didn't recognize. He thought she might be crying.

He wouldn't ever leap over this distance between them. He despaired, realizing he would never muster up the courage to cross the chasm separating him from the world, the
objets
he manipulated into art, and the women he'd been with. He thought about Judith, who had walked to the North Pole. When he turned thirty, he had realized that the ability to love another is a skill.

K's taxi was pressing beyond 170 to 180 kilometers per hour, whipping dangerously past Gumi on the two-lane Seoul-Busan Highway. A tunnel sped toward him and swallowed him up in a matter of seconds. The ringing in his ears
became louder, but he didn't hear it. His senses were starting to slow down, to dull. Everything—the wind slapping his face, the shrieking music, his fatigue, his hunger, and speed—felt hazy and far away, as if he were dreaming. K's skill in avoiding a crash was more by instinct than rational judgment. When he emerged from the tunnel, the speakers blew, ripping the music away suddenly, leaving pure silence. His body lurched, unused to the quiet. His ears were ringing, pounding, pulsating as if something were stabbing him. The car swerved into the slow lane and skidded onto the shoulder. Instead of braking, he stepped lightly on the gas and recovered the car's balance. He managed to get back into his lane, only slightly scraping the guardrail in the process. Inexperienced drivers tend to brake in these situations, which causes them to flip over. It's crucial to make sure you handle the wheel lightly, quickly alternating between stepping on the accelerator and the brake to regain your bearings. When K had full control of the car, he slowed and pulled over. The only sound he could hear was the whoosh of passing cars. He felt like he was experiencing the kind of quiet that exists inside a womb. That silence bothered K. He got out of the car to get some air.
Where am I going?

K didn't have an answer. He stood next to his car, wondering where he should go, but he couldn't decide. He had never asked himself such a question. He'd always sat behind the wheel, stepped on the gas, and only then chosen a destination.

Mimi came to visit when C was almost done editing his film. She walked in the door, looking haggard. The woman who had thrashed passionately on canvas had disappeared without a trace. She seemed like a shell of her former self.

"How have you been?" he asked.

"I've been thinking about those people who believed their souls would be sucked out of them if they were photographed," Mimi joked, looking tired. She laughed awkwardly, the way people who haven't laughed for a long time do. A muscle twitched in her cheek.

"Come on in."

She did, slowly. She looked around, almost bewildered, as if she had never been there before, and sat on the sofa. "Would you like some tea?"

"No, thanks." She shook her head. Her thick hair shimmered, following the movement of her head.

"What's up?"

"I was hoping I could see your tape of me."

"Sorry, no." He refused flat out.

"Why not? Why can't I see my work?" Her voice trembled, but she didn't beg. It was more of a monologue, like an actor's—something that was supposed to be internal, unheard by others, but actually needed to be spoken and heard to make sense.

"The tape has captured your work, but it's not really you. It's also me but not me at the same time, since it's my work, something I filmed and edited." He refused her
request even though he didn't have a real reason for doing it. Cruelty breeds a secret pleasure.

"That's not a good enough reason. I think I have a right to see it, at least once."

"Why do you want to see it?"

"I don't want to tell you. Please just let me see it." Mimi's words were hollow, dispersing into the air, again like a monologue.

C changed his mind. He decided to show her the tape. He found it and inserted it in the VCR. Mimi gnawed on her nails while it was being rewound.

"You bite your nails?"

She put her hands away, taken by surprise. "It's an old habit. I haven't done it in a long time. I guess I'm nervous."

Her nervousness was well founded. Her crazy abandon radiated from the video uncensored, passion exploding onto the canvas. Watching herself on the tape, she may have been facing herself for the first time.

C turned on the original, preedited tape. Mimi stared at the screen like a statue. A stillness enveloped the living room, as if a holy ritual were being performed. That mood even infected C, who had seen the tape many times, and he remained quiet, respectful. In the tape, Mimi was attacking the canvas with her whole body, slashing at the surface with black paint. Her hair slid over the smudged imprints left from her breasts, and her body slithered over it all, obliterating the strokes of paint. Throughout her performance, she
mumbled incoherently, as if she were a Native American shaman casting a spell.

"Stop it," she ordered. C paused the video. She got up and paced the living room, muttering like she had in the video. A song, or maybe a spell. Her gaze never left the screen.

"You have to give this to me. You can't show that."

"What?" C got up, mirroring her panic. "You can't take it."

"Why? Why not?" She calmed down. He went over to her and pressed her shoulders down to get her to sit. She refused to look him in the eye.

"You can't throw away all the work we did," he insisted. The time you invest was proportional to the magnitude of your obsession. Nothing was free from this rule, be it love or art. "Why are you so afraid? That isn't you. It's been processed. Your performance has a value of its own, and video art is something completely different. It doesn't take away from your creation. Why can't you understand that?"

"Then why are you so afraid of me?" Mimi retorted, looking him straight in the eyes. A faint smile lingered on her lips.

He hesitated.

"Fine. I didn't think you'd give me that tape. You lust after the woman in the tape, instead of the real me. Because it's safer that way—you can't get hurt. You're right, Mimi in that tape isn't really me. It's you." Mimi walked out.

C blankly watched her leave. He couldn't move. He was paralyzed. Mimi was gone.

C was sick for three days straight. Weakness ravaged his body. He spent the entire time drinking beer and rewinding the tape and watching it over and over again.

When he recovered, he worked tirelessly to finish the project. He interlaced Mimi's performance with a possessed shaman's flailing motions he had filmed in Uijeongbu and with Ungno Lee's abstract letter art. Nobody called him, other than the gallery pressing him to submit his work. From time to time he called Judith, but she never picked up. A recorded voice told him it was the wrong number. He called other women he had dated a long time ago. They all answered his calls in flat voices. He had become a dangerous and bothersome existence to them.

He hadn't heard from Mimi by the opening night of the exhibit. He delivered his work and stopped by the gallery a few times to help with the preparations. He casually asked his curator friend about Mimi's whereabouts, but he didn't know either.
I don't think she's going to come, she's not answering the phone.
The curator shrugged and held his palms out, telling C he couldn't do anything about it. On those days, C went home and watched Mimi perform on tape all night.

At Singal Interchange, K merged onto Yeongdong Highway. Ten minutes later he got off the exit for Yongin Natural Park. Five minutes of navigating curves brought him to the
Yongin Racetrack. He pulled up to the parking lot, assaulted by a sharp pang of hunger. He bought a burger from a nearby fast-food stand and inhaled it. He sat by, watching the cars loop around the racetrack. All the cars were painted in flashy colors. Tobacco company logos, like Marlboro and Salem, were splashed on the entire length of the tricked-out cars. Most of the cars didn't have mufflers, making a loud roar even when they weren't running at their maximum speeds.