Sad Peninsula (12 page)

As we approach the subway stop I'm about to ask when I'll see her again — perhaps next weekend? But before I can, Jin says, “So what are we doing now?”

I startle with surprise. “I, I don't know. What
are
we doing now?”

“Can we go back to Daechi?”

“Sure,” I sputter. “Sure we can.”

So south we go on the subway, the long parade of stops and transfers. Jin is silent through most of the trip, pulled deeply into herself. If I didn't know better, I'd say there is a tinge of fear in her body language, or at least an inner debate going on. Each transfer point we pass is another closed door, another lost opportunity for her to bail on what's about to happen. She doesn't bail.

Back in Daechi after nearly an hour, and we walk up the deserted main drag. She asks if we can stop at the 7-Eleven to get beer. We purchase two massive bottles of Hite lager, and I carry them for us in a plastic bag. In the apartment, I ensure the door is locked behind us as she moves into my cramped little bedroom. At the kitchen counter, I open one of the beers and fill two glasses, then bring them into the bedroom. I find she's already put on some of my music — John Coltrane — and made herself comfortable on my floor.

We drink in silence for a while, our legs touching, our backs resting against the edge of the bed. She won't look at me — just lets her dark hair fall over her face as she burrows a gaze into her navel and takes pulls from her glass of beer. I'm tracing a finger along her denim leg, from the high point of her thigh down to the bump of her knee, and then back up again. Her breathing is methodical, as if she's making a point of controlling its cadence.

“You're very different now that Rob Cruise is away,” she says. “Have I told you that?”

“Different how?”

“You talk more. You reveal more of yourself, now that he's not around.” A blush of brake lights smear across the frost of my window, the quiet surge of a late-night car moving on. My finger grows a touch heavier on Jin's thigh. “Whenever he hangs out with us,” she goes on, “Rob needs to talk over everybody, to
own
the room — all the time. At first that is very attractive, but then it gets annoying. I noticed right away that you don't fight with him for your place in the room. You don't go down to that level. You — how you say … how you say …” Her English fails, and so I steady my hand a moment. “How you say, pick your spots. That's what I liked about you from the very beginning — that you don't talk just to talk. You only speak when you have something wise to say. I find that so rare.”

“Jin …”

“And now that he's gone for two months, you seem more relaxed, ready to share yourself. And that's what I find attractive now. Like tonight — all I wanted was to sit and listen to you fit in so well with two of my dearest friends. I mean, if I brought Rob Cruise into that environment he'd offend them in about five seconds, just by being himself.”

I cup her behind the knee, pull her close enough for our chests to almost touch. Her chin is pinned between her collar bones. She still won't look at me.

“There are many things I want to tell you,” she says. “Things about my family — things I think you'd understand. But it
scares
me a little, to think that y —”

I wait no longer. I steer my head between the curtains of her dark hair, pull her face up with mine. No weak little peck on the lips this time; my mouth sinks into hers, parts it like water. Her breath grows frantic as my tongue strokes hers, and she quivers all over. Our heads sway like buoys as we kiss fully, properly, wondering why we waited so long, wondering if we should wait longer. But then her hands slip up under my shirt with a confidence that startles me, and she's pulling it up and over my head. I do the same for her. She looks down at me in the dark. “Ohh, you're very hairy!” she whispers, running fingers through the forest of my stomach, and we laugh, touch foreheads. Then I'm kissing her again, serious, can't believe that she's letting me kiss her.

And then I have her in the air, lifting her off the
ondol
floor in a rescuer's embrace. I set her down on the bed, let her sink into my sheets and pillow. She stretches out to welcome me. I reach behind her for the clasp of her bra and she arches upward. I struggle; I'm useless, useless. She helps me out, an expert unclipping, then lets her shoulders go limp so the garment can fall away. Her small breasts look silver in this light. As I work my way down to them, she lets out a delighted noise, but also tinged with doubt. Still with the doubt. So I kiss her mouth again. The room is so hot now. Our hands move lower and grow busy. The rattle of undone belt buckles knocking together, the swish of our jeans, the sound of them falling heavy on the floor. She strokes my shoulders and neck while I kiss her throat. I work my way back down again, breasts and sternum and stomach. Discover her underwear, just a thin cotton ring around her hips. I tuck my thumbs under either side, prepare to ease them off. But she seizes up, seizes up for just a moment, a final groan of uncertainty.

I stop. And the fact that I stop swings the pendulum: she relaxes completely, sinks deeper into my bed. I gently pull the panties from her hips, down legs, over ankles, and onto the floor. There is a kinetic energy to her limbs as I return. Pulling her to me, I kiss her lower stomach. I can't stop kissing her. I move even lower. Jin immediately takes my head in her hands and pulls me back up, lets out the littlest “Uh-uhh …” I moan a small disappointment, genuine. As if to console, she bites her bottom lip and leans into me, moves her hands over and then into my tented boxers, her fingers on my flesh. I pull my boxers off. Then I raise her legs by the back of her knees. She fidgets, pleads, “Michael … Michael, you better …” I get it. I reach over her, bang open my night-side table. The rustle of cardboard, square tinfoil in my hand, a rip and pull, liberating that wet little ring, then a slow, tight roll. She's fighting her doubt, helps me push the thing all the way down. I raise her legs up again. She's hovering in a place between close and very far away. “Michael, please … Michael, please …” She's nearly weeping under the weight of her indecision, begging me to carry it away like something toxic. I am struck by a stroke of genius. I take myself in my hand and begin slowly rubbing her,
there
, with the point of me.

“Jin, how much of me do you want?” I say in the dark. Deadpan it, to create the illusion that I could go either way.

“Huuh? Hohhh …”

“Do you want just a little of me?” And with that, I move in on her, just enough to give her a taste. Refuse to go deeper.

“Hohh, hohh, hohh …”

I pull back out, resume my cruel rubbing, my slow circles. She coils like a spring. “How much of me do you want?” I ask again. “Hmm? Do you want just some of me?” I squeeze back inside her, slide myself in half way. Hold it.

“Hahhhhh … huhhhhh …”

This is more difficult than I thought. Fighting every instinct in my body, I slowly pull out again, return myself to that nub, gently lap it like a tongue. I feel like I'm going to break right through the condom. “Was that enough?” I ask. “Or do you want more?”

“Michael … Mi
chael
!”

“Do you want just some of me, Jin? Hmmm? Or do you want
all
of me?”

A slow languorous sink all the way to the ocean floor. She sucks every molecule of air from the room, releases a scream. I hold myself there, feel the little tickle of her cervix on my tip. Then, fighting the weight of the world and Jin's desperate grip on me, I pull back up, back out, and return to my teasing. She gives me the sound I've been waiting for — a holler of shattering disappointment.

“How much of me do you want?” I beg, rubbing, rubbing.

“Ughhhuuu … arrrghhhuuu …”

“Jin, how much of me?”

“All of you … all of you …”

“Are you sure?”

“
Yes
.”

And with that final beseech, I plunge back in. Back in to stay. And I think: finally, after all these years, somebody finally wants me. Wants all of me.

W
e're on the cheap leather couch in the living room for Round Two, an abandoned trip to the kitchen to freshen our beers. As Jin dances above me, I briefly worry about Justin coming in the door then, home early from his trip to Seokcho, to see Jin's breasts flying and my mouth at her throat. Of course he doesn't, wouldn't. It's something like three in the morning.

After we're done, we're locked on those narrow cushions in a semi-comfortable embrace, legs twined and faces turned up at each other. I take a casual glance at my watch. “Won't your mother be angry you're out this late?” I ask.

“No. I called and told her I was staying at Jack and Mindy's.”

Ah yes, the call from the bathroom. I beam down at her. “Did you now?” She gives a mischievous shrug, like a teenager. “And if she knew the truth,” I ask, “would you be grounded?”

“Grounded?” Her mind flips through vocabulary until she finds it. “Oh shut up!” she barks. And I laugh.

With our passion sapped and the memory of it fading behind us, I already feel Jin pulling away from me. Shoals of doubt, shoals of distance, shoals of
What the hell just happened?
swimming between us on the couch. She sits up, pulls her legs under her. Finds the remote control, pops on the TV.

“Jin, c'mon, turn it off.”

“No. Let's watch something.” She surfs through the channels — talking heads, noisy action movies with Korean subtitles, overwrought singing contests. I can't bring myself to watch. Instead, I stroke her hair, trace a knuckle over her shoulder and down her long, lean side. She doesn't respond, doesn't even look at me. She's so beautiful. I'm scared to tell her how beautiful she is.

Her face tightens just then. “What the hell is all this?” she asks.

I turn to find myself once again staring into CNN. The news ticker rushes along the bottom of the screen, and above it a stony image of Saddam Hussein. Not an image. A statue. We watch as the camera switches to a long shot, showing his body in full: A single arm raised in avuncular salute over a square packed with people. There is a thick rope and pulley hanging loosely over the statue's neck and shoulder.

“What's going on?” Jin asks.

“I don't know.”

We watch a long preparation, U.S. soldiers in beige desert wear working and then clearing out. At first nothing happens, but then the rope grows taut, tightened by the pull of an armoured vehicle. Another moment and Saddam begins to bow to the crowd. His fall is slow, incredibly slow at first, but then picks up speed as his legs break and he slumps drunkenly over his own pedestal. The statue hangs there for an eternity, detritus and shoes flying through the air at its head. Jin and I watch in a kind of silent sobriety.

“Michael, do you think …” she says. “Do you think it will …”

And then it does. Breaks loose of the pedestal and comes crashing to the ground with a heavy lurch. The crowd rushes it, leaps onto it even before the torso comes to a full stop. The tall arm waves at the sky. The people are plowing onto the statue, dancing on it, stomping it, smacking it with the soles of their shoes. Jubilation and tears and arms pumping in the air. The CNN commentators have caved to their jingoism: this is why they believe America has come.

“Do you think it's staged?” I ask.

“Staged? What does this mean?”

“Do you think they're —” I clear my throat. “Do you think they're
faking
it?”

Jin looks at the TV, then back at me, a kind of once over, then to the TV again. I'm suddenly very aware of my nakedness. She blows a hair out of her eyes as the dancing and cheers go on. “No, it looks genuine. But I'm thinking of what you and Jack were talking about tonight. I still say he's wrong and you're right. This,” — and she nods at the happy images glowing at my living room — “this isn't a simple … a simple — what was the word you used?”

I hesitate. “Seduction.”

“Right. This isn't a simple seduction. This won't be simple at all.”

T
he TV eventually comes off but we're too lazy to move back to my bedroom. Jin curls on the couch to sleep, but in an unwelcoming way; there really isn't room for both of us. So instead I move to the cold floor, sit with my back against the chilly wall. I'm not going to sleep. I'm going to sit exactly like this for the whole night and watch Jin as she dozes. A few hours pass and then she stirs, opens her eyes to find me staring at her. She sits up and stretches. Then, without a word, slips off the couch and heads to my room. From the darkness, I hear her pulling her clothes back on. She takes forever. When she finally comes back out, she's got her handphone open, looking at the screen and pressing buttons. Sending a text message, to her mother I suppose. She sits back on the couch, her knees together. Texting, texting. Not looking at me.

“Jin …”

She claps the phone shut. “Hey, did you sleep at
all
?” she asks.

“I didn't want to sleep,” I reply. “I wanted to kiss you until the sun came up.”

Corny. So corny. A wave of unease passes through her. She's resumed that bashful, closed-off stance from last night, chin down and buried, hair falling in her face.

“Michael, I have to go. I have places I need to be.”

“Jin …”

She shakes her head, but then grows still. Sighs. “Ask me,” she says. “Go on and ask me.”

“Jin, are we going to try to love each other?”

She looks up but not at me.

“You're afraid to love a
waegookin
,” I say.

“I
am
afraid,” she clips, turning to me. “Is that so wrong?”

“I'm afraid, too. But so what? Jin, there are right decisions and there are wrong decisions. But you can never make a right decision from a place of fear. You know that.” I lick my lips. “So fuck fear. Fuck it. Throw your fear out the bloody window, for Christsake. And then give your
heart
to me.” It sounds almost like an order.