Tuesday, Jul 8, 2008
To save face, I had to pretend to rape my Korean girlfriend, and she had to pretend to resist.
Nov 19, 1999 | Eun Jung backed her mouth away from mine, searched my eyes for an answer to the question that was in her own, and with a whispered "Shiro" -- which means in Korean either "I don't want it" or "I don't like it" -- slipped out from under my arms. She turned her attention back to "Show-Video-Jockey," the half-hour variety program it had become our habit to watch together on Saturday nights.
When I caught her looking at me from the corner of her eye, she let her lips fall into a pout and, with a sigh, moved once more to embrace me. She laid her hand across the back of my neck and pulled me down with her onto the bed. Quickly, she began to undo the buttons of my shirt, but just as we were about to move into greater intimacy, she put her palms flat against my chest, pushed me away from her, and told me again, "Shiro."
I was confused. I asked several times what was wrong, but she kept her face turned to the television and pretended not to hear me. When I fell silent, she came toward me one more time. When she was close enough for me to touch her, she pulled her shirt over her head, silently, with her eyes averted, and let it fall behind her. Then, while I did nothing but watch, she struggled out of the rest of her clothing, repeating over and over again, in the hoarse voice of one possessed and being forced to perform acts against her will, that same word: Shiro!
When she was naked, she fell against me, and her hands left no doubt that she wanted me naked as well, but once my clothes were off, Eun Jung refused even to look at me, lying there motionless as a stone, while I fumbled like a clumsy teenager trying to learn where and how she wanted to be touched. Finally, she hung her arms limply around my shoulders, threw her head back in a posture of helplessness waiting to be taken, said in a whisper I could hardly hear, "Hago shipoyo!" -- "I want to do it" -- and pulled me on top of her.
The sex was awkward and boring. Eun Jung's fists anchored her firmly to the bed, and she kept her head turned to the side, with her eyes and mouth shut, until it was over. There was little or no conversation afterward, and I left her apartment feeling not only unsatisfied, but cheap, as if the sex were something I had paid for, and that Eun Jung had delivered only to honor that payment.
I replayed the evening in my mind over and over again. The first move had definitely been hers; the decision to make love as much hers as mine. Yet no matter how many times I reassured myself of these facts, I could neither escape the sound of coerced submission that had entered her voice as she undressed herself, nor avoid the fact that such submission was obviously what she had thought I wanted.
Eun Jung was my downstairs neighbor the year I taught English at a private language institute in Seoul. She understood more English than she spoke, but she spoke only a little more English than I did Korean, often making it a real struggle for us to understand each other. That struggle, however, was usually part of the fun of our being together, so it was hard for me to imagine why our first night of lovemaking had been so difficult.
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