I got back on the airport link alone. Gray, empty marshland stretched on and on outside the window. I felt like I was watching the same movie on repeat. My ears craved music, so I put on Kylie Minogue’s album Aphrodite for old time’s sake. Days like this reminded me of her voice. My lips kept drying out, but my pockets turned up empty—no lip balm. This was usually Gyu-ho’s cue to hand me some of his. That wasn’t all he did for me. He came home before me, cleaned the floor, had the stew cooked salty just the way I liked it, struck me speechless with the many ridiculous things he said . . . What was I going to do without him for four days? I thought of how long it had been since Gyu-ho and I had had sex. I’d never had a relationship so unmoored from sex before. And it was me who had told him to sleep around with Japanese guys, so why was I feeling shitty? Proving once again that no one is a bigger idiot than me.

◊

I first met Gyu-ho at what’s now a defunct gay club in Itaewon.

It was Chuseok and they were having an all-you-can-drink tequila event. Not having a family to join for Chuseok—being a certified Unnatural focused on bringing shame to the family (not much has changed since then) and generally being stuck in poverty (yup, still)—I could hardly afford to pass up such an opportunity. I left the following message in our group chat:

Hey guys, there’s an unlimited tequila event at G today. See you all there.

My friends were all in their twenties and would never say no to a free drink, and thus we “T-ara members” soon found ourselves strutting down Itaewon-ro in formation. I’d labeled our group chat after the girl group T-ara because there were six of us and I’m so very creative at naming things. I was the second shortest of the group and had a seriously nasal singing voice. Naturally that made me So-yeon, but that’s not important; what’s really important was that we had descended upon the club and were making our entrance.