by John "I should'a listened to my mama" Bocskay

Author's correction: My apologies to Walter Cronkite, who is very much alive and living in New York City with his wife of 59 years. Sometimes I forget that celebrities stop appearing on television for reasons other than death.

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"I was dreaming when I wrote this;
 forgive me if it goes astray." * * * * * * * * *

As if Mondays weren't bad enough already, there was a grim little article in the paper a couple of weeks ago. Stephen Hawking, the world-famous physicist, said that he was afraid the human race would not survive another milennium, "I am afraid the atmosphere will get hotter and hotter until it will be like Venus with boiling sulfuric acid". Sulfuric acid boils at 340 degrees celsius (644 Fahrenheit), and if the heat doesn't do you in, I'm sure the smell alone would kill the hardiest survivor.

I'm sure there are lots of places Professor Hawking is not able to go, yet he talks about the cosmos with the certainty of a bus driver talking about the route he's been driving for 58 years. His doom forecast certainly resonated with me: I'm astonished if I merely survive a trip across Pusan on my scooter. On my bad days, it's easy to imagine the earth being enveloped in choking clouds of stinky gas, because on a bad day in Ulsan (where I lived last year) the earth actually IS enveloped in clouds of stinky gas. 

Last Monday, I was ready for Stephen Hawking. Party poopers from Nostradamus to Ronald Reagan have long filled my head with visions of fire from the heavens. With Hollywood's help, I have already contemplated the possibilty of plague (Twelve Monkeys), alien invasion (Independence Day) and giant monsters (Godzilla). And last week I was even more prepared for Stephen Hawking's acid forecast, because the Monday in question had aldready been ruined by my landlord. 

The Book of Revelations too talks about the end of the world, and how the last days would be heralded by the coming of the Anti-Christ. I don't know what the Anti-Christ would do exactly, but I imagine he would really ruin my day. In the final analysis, all my dealings with my landlord seem to serve no purpose other than to prepare me for the end of the world. He makes boiling sulfuric acid seem like Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte. I'm not saying he's the Anti-Christ, but there's a good possibility he is one of the devil's own protoypes, providing Satan with invaluable data on how to build the ultimate Pain in the Ass.
 

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A novice can ruin a Monday, but my landlord ruins days indiscriminately, and he does it with the ease of a virtuoso. He has the air of a natural who has been pissing people off for a long, long time. He gets under my skin in several ways, like waking me up at dawn to ask me how my toilet is working.

And he's nearly deaf, so he doesn't merely ask questions, he shouts them. And he is nearly blind, so he shouts them in my face. And he is old, so he often launches spittle and sometimes little gobs of phlegm.

I can hear him just fine, especially since I started averting my face so he can spit directly into my ear. But still we can't communicate. I speak halfway decent Korean but always fail to understand his dialect. I communicate well enough with his wife; she asks me all the time "Where are you going?" and I say "Away from here." Despite my brown hair, blue eyes, and prominent double eyelid, my landlord seems to think I'm Korean, and speaks to me as if I'd grown up on the docks in Pusan.

To his credit, he does make an effort to speak English. His approach to second language aquisition is so novel that it may even inspire new research in linguistics or pedagogy. It's breathtakingly simple: he has learned one word--"Okay"--and has decided that he can make it mean whatever he wants it to. Aside from the traditional meaning of Okay (as in "everything's cool"), he uses it to say hello, good bye, please come here, turn on the light, wake up, and so on. It's a brilliant approach, especially because it limits our conversations to about thirty seconds, which is when I start to become nauseated.

I'm not knocking the guy just for being old. He is rude and inconsiderate, not only waking me up before the chickens, but sometimes insisting I get dressed and come over to his house for yet another fruitless chat. He has continually evaded my questions about my electric bills, which are double what most people pay, once even suggesting that it was somehow fair because I use his washing machine a couple of times a month. And he's nosy--apparently he thinks having a foreign tenant is like having a free, round-the-clock zoo exhibit.

Despite our problems, our dealings with each other remain essentially Confucian. Although I and everybody else knows he is a tactless, loveless, hopeless jerk, we all show him the respect accorded a person his age. On good days, I like Confucianism a lot--it makes people visit their grandparents on holidays and bow to the tombs of their ancestors, thanking them for the gift of life. But on my bad days, Confucianism seems to be little more than a system designed to ensure that even complete assholes get a little respect once in a while.
 

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After considerable hand-wringing and many hours of lost sleep, I finally decided to move out. I told him on a Sunday through my secretary, and on Monday morning he was banging on my door, screaming "Okay!" at six o'clock. 

I answered the door, as I always do at 6 o'clock, half-asleep in my underwear. Most people take this to mean they've come at a bad time. Not my landlord; he stood there pulling up on his belt and spastically cocking his head toward his apartment next door, saying "Okay?"

This was a new one. The uninitiated could be forgiven for thinking that a roving pervert was making an indecent proposal. But after a moment I knew he was simply saying, "Get some clothes on and come next door. I need to talk to you."

I stared blankly for a moment while my brain yawned. And I was surprised by this new level of inconsideration. Eventually, I repeated a phrase that I've had a lot of practice with in recent months, "Ajossi, I was sleeping."

He thought I hadn't understood, so he repeated his Okay mime. This time I took it to mean, "I know you were sleeping, but I'm a complete jackoff with a bug up my ass, so I must insist you get dressed and come over right this second." If there's one nice thing I can say about the guy, it is this: He is not a procrastinator.

I knew resistance was useless, and I was already too pissed off to fall back to sleep. I said "Okay," meaning, "Okay, you rotten prick." Take THAT--Two can play the Okay game.

We sat down in his apartment. The conversation mostly went over my head, but some of it landed on my cheeks and forehead. Finally he asked me a simple question, "Why are you leaving?"

I rubbed my hand through my uncombed hair, struggling for words and self-control. How to explain it to him in a way that is both civil and intelligible? I told him simply "It's too expensive," without telling him exactly what it was costing me: sleep, sanity, and peace of mind.

This answer surprised him, and it sparked another storm of saliva and saturi. He was going on about numbers--maybe he was justifying the bills again?--so I decided to spell it out for him: "I'm not happy here."

The rain stopped. He looked into my red, sleep-encrusted eyes and asked, "You're not happy?"

Normally, I would answer "no" to this question, as in, "No, I'm not happy." But in Korea, one answers the questions literally, as in, "Yes (That's correct, I'm not happy)." I wanted to be perfectly understood on this point, so I said, "Okay." 

"Ahhhhh", he gargled, and there was a momentary silence. I took that as my cue to leave. I got up and he started gurgling again but I cut him off, "Please call my secretary."

He said "Okay" and I walked out, so he said "Okay" again. 

Outside it was shaping up to be a rainy day, but I felt good for having given him at least a glimpse of my thoughts. And I was already getting excited about my imminent freedom. Despite my deep loathing for my landlord, I had to credit him with instilling in me the feeling that everything is and forever will be okay. Even though I was still madder than hell, I felt ready for anything, even boiling sulfuric acid. But first I had to catch up on some sleep.

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Author's note: I'm currently looking for an apartment. If anyone knows of a good place, please e-mail me. The ideal place would be within a few stops of Somyon, have two rooms, an inside toilet, and a landlord who lives in California.

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