If one more Korean kid tries to stick their hands up my ass...

I posted my resume on the main Korea teaching job boards and I got an email the next day offering an interview for a job next year paying about $2500 a month plus 13 weeks paid vacation. I actually was considering it for a couple hours, but then I realized if I came back here again it would be solely for the money. I would jump at an interview for that job. In any other country. There's a reason why foreign teachers get paid so much here, they have to offer absurd amounts of money in order to lure people away from the rest of Asia. That being said, there's a price that I could be bought at. Maybe a university job working 20 hours a week plus $60,000 a month. Yeah, i think it'd come back to Korea then.

I've made up for my lack of skills with girls by becoming best friends with a bunch of middle aged Korean men. I met one guy last Sunday at Woodstock while he was watching a soccer game, he told me to meet him there again on Wednesday for the next game. So I did and as expected I didn't pay any money but got way too drunk for a Wednesday. Korea lost the soccer game so him and his buddies were all depressed. During the game, they all just yelled out "Shibbal" (Fuck) or "Geseki" (Son of a Bitch) over and over again. It took me a few months to figure out that geseki was really a curse word. The students say it in class all the time and they told me that it was a "dog baby" so I just thought that was cute so I decided to say it all the time, too. But lucky for me, it seems the kids don't go home and tell their parents their white teacher curses at them all the time.

There was a married couple at Woodstock with my new old friend and it was the wife's birthday. She was 31 or something. But I told her that her face looked 24. That was a lie. Her face was awful. When we left Woodstock, she was pretty tanked since the bar kept giving her free shots and as we're walking to a soju place, she's hanging all over me. The husband was walking up ahead and this girl keeps telling me I should have a girlfriend. She told me I was shy. I'm thinking yeah, you know your husband is drunk, he's about 250 pounds, and there's no chance in hell he likes you molesting some white guy you just met. As I was going home later that night, she ran outside and asked when she would see me again. I said maybe after all the bruises heal after your husband beats the shit out of you tonight.

I went to another bar after that by myself, just planned on having one gin tonic. But then more middle aged Korean guys wanted to be my best friend. They challenged me to darts, loser buys the other beer. I almost wanted to lose, thinking about the next morning but they were the worst darts players I've ever seen. I'd say they only hit the board at a 1/5 clip. So I beat them twice and arranged for a gay threesome on Saturday. It's funny (or tragic) how easy it is for me to hang out with dudes while it's such a pain in the ass dealing with girls and requires way too much effort on my part.

I woke up at 8 on Thursday, still pretty drunk. I was thinking wow I feel ok maybe it wont be so bad. It was by 10 when I got to my first class, which turns out is the one with 12 of the youngest kids, where I was ready to start throwing them and myself through a wall. I quickly remembered why I instituted the no drinking during the week policy after my first month there.

I've got 10 weeks left here and I'm not expecting to be productive or do anything meaningful during that time. I've got three days off next month and then another week off just before I come home, but I have no real desire to travel anywhere or see anything else in Korea. I want to sleep, watch movies, play poker and drink heavily. I have bronchitis again and my eyes burn everyday, the air in this city has raped my body. If you are currently in America, as you take your next breath, full of clean delicious oxygen without toxic chemicals, think of me and pray.

Lesbians.

(This the only column I wrote for the college paper that I did not submit to be published. You might be able to figure out why.)

There comes a time in every man’s life when he must lie in the arms of lesbians. Check the list of needs for any normal guy and it looks something like this: 1. eat 2. sleep 3. beer 4. lesbians (not necessarily in that order). The problem with lesbians is well, they are lesbians. You can not touch them, you can not play with them and you surely can not have sex with them. Despite what you may have seen in Chasing Amy, let me assure you that sweet talking a lesbian will not cause her to immediately forget about her sexuality.

Why do guys wet their pants when they see two girls going at but women would be traumatized for years if they witnessed gay guys getting down? A complex question for sure, but the answer is surprisingly simple. Men actually believe (I do not know why) they can someday bag a lesbian. Therefore when they watch lesbians what they are really seeing is two naked girls rolling around who will one day tickle their pickle. Two naked guys, well, that’s just a little too much hair to be visually appealing. If I were a girl, and no I don’t imagine that more than 4 times a week, I’d totally take watching lesbians play in the mud than watching gay men hammer around. Now could you ever imagine a straight man uttering the following statement: “Oh yeah, I love watching Steve and Mark make sweet love. Lesbians just don’t do it for me.” Thus we have the paradox of gayness.

The whole point of this column was supposed to be how I hate lesbians and maybe hate is not a strong enough word. I despise lesbians. Why would God make beautiful girls who only want to be with other beautiful girls? Talk about holy torture. (Yes, I realize that not all lesbians are smoking, but I live in a fantasy world). While I hold out hope that some of them are just playing a cruel game of hard to get, I realize I will probably be forever cursed to being with only beautiful straight girls. It’s something I must deal with every morning when I roll out of bed and if the numbers are correct, over 42 % of men are suffering from “I’ll never nail a lesbian” syndrome.

I know you are all thinking this has nothing with the University of Richmond, for surely lesbians are way too diverse to attend this school. However, this assumption would be wrong. They are all over the place. They work at the library. They work at D-hall. And at last count, 17 professors were suspected of being hardcore bush hunters.

To give this column some legitimacy, I did a little research by searching for lesbians on Yahoo. After weaving through (weaving = not looking at for more than 10 minutes) the more raunchy sites, I finally came to the first one with some real information. Disregarding the address of the site, lustydevil.com, I read about how recently out lesbians could generate a white lesbian name in order to “cast off the name of their oppressors”. A noble idea indeed. My white lesbian name, and I am not making this up, Pony Windynut.

Back on topic, for those few men out there who still believe they can get a lesbian to give up their lifestyle for a piece of their meat, keep this in mind: Lesbian DO NOT like penis. Actually, this may be the reason why they are lesbians in the first place. It is a known fact that 5 % of all women suffer from an intense fear of the penis (Note: Figures may or may not be accurate). The chances of converting one these girls inflicted with peniphelia is worse than your chances of finding at bargain at the school bookstore. That said, if someone out there does manage to achieve the impossible, let me know and I’ll give you a trophy or a cookie.

I could have sworn I was dancing with girls on the pole

Korean girls tend to hit the bars in groups of three. Typically, each one fits a different mold. One of them is hot, this one will speak almost no English. The second one is average looking and speaks great English. Her job is really just to serve as the translator as I try to talk to the hot one. The problem is always the third girl. She is not good looking and it doesn't matter if she speaks English or not, because she'll either just keep trying to dance with me or just ask repeatedly "You girlfriend, no?" I was in the middle of this situation twice this weekend and not only did I blow it with the hot girls, I'm now supposed to meet both of the "third girls" on different nights this weekend. The soju is going to have to be flowing at unheard of levels.

Not that Bender is gone, I head out a lot more by myself, but like I've said before, you don't stay by yourself for long if you're white in Korea. Actually, you meet a lot more people if you go out by yourself, Koreans tend to be intimidated by groups of white people (ie more than one). So while I miss Bender dearly, it's not bad hanging out with new people every time I go out. On Saturday I brought the horsehead out to woodstock, which is probably what scared the crap out of the hot girl. They had a dance contest, so I went out there, the bartender told me I couldn't wear the horsehead but I told him to play the damn music. He did, I dryhumped the floor and that was the end of my chances with a girl and any dignity I had left for the day.

Had off from work yesterday, so I went downtown Monday night. I thought we were going to Hongdae, but turned out to be Itaewon, and it was just as dirty as I remembered it. Things were pretty chill until we got to Spy, where i was expecting the usual crowd of Russian models to be, but it was dead. So I went on a pole dancing rage (see above) and had to be dragged off the pole and out of the club at one point (sorry zaida). A korean guy in a suit came into the place surrounded by 15 young girls. I tried to hand a few of the girls money. I feel bad about that now.

For a country that doesn't believe in gay people, Korean guys love to act gay. In the last week, one guy fed me for five minutes, another full on two handed ass groped me up an entire staircase and another kept his hand on my thigh for what seemed like an hour. For a guy who spent the ages of 15-24 acting gay at home for a cheap laugh, it's quite odd when an entire country acts that way but has no idea they're doing it, nor do they like it when you laugh.

Next week we move to the early schedule at school which means a 9-5 deal, looking forward to that. Not the first few days when my body is going to be screwed up, but there's something nice about seeing the sunlight during the summer. Cause right now, it's hot and humid so when I get home at 11, all I want to do is pop a sleeping pill and wake up at noon the next day.

I've gone an entire two days without saying a word to a Korean teacher. That is splendid.

Coughing up Green Stuff, Welcome Back to Seoul!

There's a subtle difference between Thailand and Korea. In Thailand, you are a person, just one of many roaming around and unless you have purple hair, tattoos on your face and your pants down, people leave you alone. In Korea, white skin scares people, you're a monster, and it's not the stares that bother me anymore, it's just the all the time feeling that I'm being watched, even if I'm not being stared at. And it's not a friendly feeling, most of the time. Of course, there are plenty awesome Koreans, one guy downtown this morning helped me find the dentist office for a good half an hour in the pouring rain, but there's too much negative b.s. in this country to deal with. Younger Korean guys, forget about it, they act like 12 year olds if they see a white guy even look at a Korean girl. If there was ever a country, that, collectively, just needed to get laid, it is Korea. Loosen up. Chill out. Just try to be a little bit cooler.

Anyway, Thailand was an awesome experience, even though the weather was brutally hot and I dropped a ton of cash. We went to some of the seedier areas in Phuket and Bangkok, mainly because seedy is fun, if used in moderation. Which basically means you go into a bar, a girl is sitting next to you within 30 seconds. They ask you the general rundown, name, age, location, 15 minutes later, they think they have you on a string, they ask you to buy them a drink. That's when you tell them to F-off and wait for the next dumb girl to come over. That was all cool, but in Patpong in Bangkok, we were definitely in a lady boy joint, where half the girls in there did in fact have penises at one point. But you walk in there, and maybe 3 or 4 are obviously guys because they are 7 feet tall and have hands bigger than my head, but the other 100 are hot. Like really hot. Some of them I would stake my life that they were chicks, guys can't be that hot, or I'm gay, but it did cause some serious reflection the next morning when I tried to figure out if I had been heavy-petted by guys all night. On the last night in Bangkok, we hung out with 19 year old German girls, I felt like their grandfather.

The beaches in Phuket, especially Laem Singh were incredible, I was tempted to just sleep on the beach for the next five years. We spent two nights on Phi Phi Island, which is about a two hour ferry ride from Phuket. Something like 2,000 people died there when the tsunami hit in 2004 and that kind of creeped me out. We bought a lot of crap from small children during the trip. It's a great strategy. If a kid begs you to buy something enough, even if it's a rusty old fork, you'll end up giving him twenty bucks for it. We thumb-wrestled a few of them to try to get out of buying a crappy looking rose, but these kids are poor, they put up a good fight and when you've already drank a bucket of Thai Whiskey, well, you lose.

For all the hype around Bangkok, it wasn't as amazing as I was expecting. Some parts even look dirtier than Seoul, and that's sick. The touristy things were OK, but I get sick of looking at crap pretty quickly. I like to do things. Like sleep. Our hostel also would only run the air-con from 6pm-11am, which was annoying. Who the hell wakes up before 11am? The most amazing site in Bangkok wasn't the palaces or temples, but instead the 50 year old white guys walking around with 18 year old Thai guys. Not just walking, but holding hands, hugging. Not behind a wall. In the middle of the mall. I'd give anything to see something like that in Korea. Now I'm certain that I would have had a better time if I decided to teach in Bangkok, but the place isn't cool enough for me to justify the cash I'm going to leave Korea with, not even close really.

Monday was an awful day at work. I got off the plane at 7am, back to my apartment by 11 and then to work at 2. I had missed the kids a little bit, but it was still painful. I made one girl cry because she was being a bitch. Things are better now, I can see the end now, less than 3 months, and all I really need to worry about is going to every doctor and dentist possible here since I probably won't have health insurance in America until 2012.

I brought back a dozen of these little dolls from Bangkok for the Korean teachers. In typical fashion, even when you think you're doing something positive, something bad will probably come out of it if it takes place in Korea. I handed out the dolls on Monday. On Tuesday, the head Korean teacher told me the school director was "sulky" and "pouting" because I hadn't given her a doll. Fact is I rarely see the director plus I just kind of forgot. So now I have the last doll on my desk, just waiting until the director comes into the office again, which will hopefully be sometime before October. I also gave a doll to the girl who gave me a birthday present. Not surprisingly, since she's great, she wrote me a thank you note that I got a few minutes ago. It just says "Teacher, thank you give a doll. It is very cute. Thank you." But then under the note, pre-written on the paper, is "I wish fall in love with you." First off, kind of strange. And second, why don't Koreans get native speakers to spell and grammar check the crap they post all over the city? And also, apparently on the little post it notes they make? Koreans will pay a million bucks to mass produce something that looks completely retarded to anyone that really speaks English. Great business strategy.

Oh, I almost saw a 90-year-old nipslip in Phuket. That would not have been hot.

A bunch more photos from Thailand up top. And yeah, the last one, thats me with the same guy from the banana video, probably taken just moments before I got under a table and simulated fellacio with a pole.

Thailand: I think I feltup a ladyboy last week

Back from Thailand, and here are some of the photos, should be pretty easy to tell which are from the beaches and which are from Bangkok. I'll post more later after I get readjusted to the toxic air in Seoul. I will say this though, the video posted above is not PG-rated. In fact, nobody should watch it, if you do choose to do so, I will state once again, that while my actions may suggest otherwise, I am not gay. Stick around for the 1:15 mark, that's when things get really ugly. Two quick notes, the girl Bender is dancing with is a prostitute, despite what he may claim, and the guy across the table from me is 100 percent gay as I had just seen a photo of him in a bikini before the video was made.