Ramblings

“Now, an even funnier story was the time I got genital warts on the inside of my cock. Man, I sure was surprised to see those two little viper tongues popping out that morning,” said Hadrian as we exited our school, well within earshot of dozens of our students.  We both knew it didn’t matter even if they could hear what we were saying, anyway.

“The most erotic experience I had was in Saigon—yeah, I was high on speed at the time—and, come to think of it, she was probably the one that gave me Chlamydia.”

We left through the gate to the courtyard, as a crowd of our students stood around, waving with both hands and shouting “Nice to meet you!”, even though Hadrian and I had both been teaching at their school for well over four months.  No matter how close we stood to our students, they always seemed to wave with both of their hands.

“You where go?” asked one of our students illiterately.  Hadrian and I both understood what she meant, but her knowledge of English grammar was a bit disappointing, especially coming from a student who had been studying English for close to six years.  Clearly, I hadn’t been doing a very good job, either.  She was in one of my classes.

“I’m going to Lichtenstein! Hey, where’s my apple?” asked Hadrian, saying the same joke he said every single day.  Hadrian laughed harder at his own joke than I had ever seen him laugh before, his leathery face all crunched up.

Our students obviously didn’t understand, yet again. “OK! See you again!”

More of our students were standing in the street, eating skewers of chicken and rice cakes. 

“Hey, Yoda,” Hadrian said to student who really did look like Yoda.  She was pretty wrinkly for a teenager, and she must have had the longest and most pronounced ears I’ve ever seen on a human.  I felt sorry for her.  “Where’s Chewie?” Hadrian asked her.

“Oh, there she is,” said Hadrian, pointing to possibly the hairiest girl in all of Asia.  I felt sorry for her, too.  Hadrian liked to think he was tough because he could tease a 13-year-old girl in a language she didn’t understand.

Hadrian waved at the students as he turned to me and continued what I can only imagine was his previous thought. “As I was saying, I’ve shot people for money, but that’s the thing you sign on for when you’re a merc in Africa.”

Hadrian had to have the most illogical train of thought I’d ever encountered.  These were worse than the ramblings of a drunk man.   We’d been working together for the last few months, teaching English at a girl’s middle school in a small town in South Korea.  He was older than me, soon to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, and had spent the last few years or decades meandering around the world.  A couple of stamps had probably fallen out of his passport along the way, if you know what I mean.  Maybe it was only me who realized that Hadrian shouldn’t be allowed to work around children.  I just hoped that some of the things he told me weren’t true.

“That’s when I got that parasitic worm in my eye, which is why I don’t have any peripheral vision on my left side.”

Earlier that day Hadrian had farted into the microphone during class, disgusting his students and horrifying the faculty.  One of Hadrian’s students, who liked me and often visited me in between classes to talk and complain about Hadrian, said his fart made the whole classroom smell like old, rotten, Chinese food.

“It was very bad,” she told me.  Her English was the most impressive I had encountered in Korea, better than some of her teachers, and, in my opinion, often better than Hadrian’s.  She claimed to have never left Korea.  I don’t know how she had managed to learn it all.  “I was sitting next to him when he did it.  I could not breathe after that.  I wanted to stick my head out the window.”

His actions had prompted the Korean English faculty at our school to have a meeting with him during lunch and review his effectiveness as a teacher.  The review had not been very positive.  All of the teachers complained that Hadrian is often “hysterical” during class, noting that he “never prepares for lessons, doesn’t remember his class schedule, frequently stands on chairs, lays on the floor, throws books, speaks in Spanish and French, and doesn’t make an effort to love his students.”

“They got my neck on the chopping block now,” he told me after I asked how his review went.  “I guess I’d better shape up or plan on getting out of this country.  I hear Azerbaijan is nice.”

Construction workers near our school were busy doing repairs on the street.  Several workers were wearing sandals while cutting bricks, sending pieces of concrete and granite flying everywhere as children walked by only a couple of feet away.  One worker was arc-welding with no eye protection at all.  The light was blinding from 50 feet away, I couldn’t imagine how he was able to do any work with that torch only inches away from his face.

“They’ll have to put some chimp eyes in that guy in a couple of years,” commented Hadrian, who used to work construction before he got his GED and college degree in his early 40s, presumably after he was done being a mercenary.  He’d gone back to school specifically to get a position teaching English is Korea.

A block from our school we passed a homeless man who was always begging for change on the same corner everyday.  Obviously retarded, he was poorly singing along to a scratchy tape recorder that dangled from his neck.  He had a large dent in his forehead—deep enough to conceal a small orange—and the pitted complexion of a golf ball.  Both of his eyes pointed in different directions, neither ever seemed to find a focus.  Poor guy.  I always felt bad for him and gave him the loose change I had in my pocket.  He managed to lurch out a bow in thanks.

“Hey, Bud! Know any Sinatra?” asked Hadrian, punching him in the arm repeatedly.

He didn’t reply.  I guess he didn’t take requests.

Two feet away a pickup truck full of unfrozen fish basked in the afternoon sun.  A bus drove by, pouring out a large cloud of exhaust.  People were picking up fish with their bare hands then putting them back in the pile if they weren’t worth buying.  I didn’t pick any up for dinner either. 

Hadrian was always rambling about something.  “The second person I killed I had to use a machete.  Sometimes you have to resort to that if you don’t watch your back in Panama.”

An old man, sitting outside of a convenience store drinking soju, stared at us, pointed, and then began slurring words together in Korean as we walked by.  He only had four teeth, all metal, none of which were lined up in a manner to actually make chewing very convenient.

The old man stood up and started walking along with us.  In Korean he asked us both where we were from.  I told him that I was from America.

“Oh, that is very good.  America is a very good country!” he said excitedly.  “What are you?” he said to Hadrian, pointing a finger at his chest.  “Are you a Soviet?  A dirty Russian?”

“A Soviet?” asked Hadrian.  Hadrian turned toward me, “Who the hell is this guy?” 

“No, I’m Welsh like you.  We’re brothers,” Hadrian explained to the old man.  Even though Hadrian was actually Canadian, he had an odd theory that Koreans come from Welsh ancestry.  I never fully understood his logic, but it was clear that most people didn’t either.  The old Korean man was confused, and he began shouting at us for an explanation, but we were already moving at a faster pace and he would never be able to catch up.

Hadrian was now telling me about Thailand, a country he had visited several times already.  I would be going for the first time in a couple of weeks.

“You should have a good time when you go.  I have a phone number of a good doctor I can give you in case you get the drip.  And remember this:  sometimes the prettiest girls are the littlest boys,” said Hadrian, finally making me start to taste bile in my mouth.  “At least in Bangkok, anyway,” he clarified.

We passed a clinic where the security guard found it necessary to salute to both of us as we walk by each day.  Hadrian gave the guard a curt “At ease, soldier!”, as a woman slowly staggered out of the clinic, dragging her IV drip behind her.  Bloody gauze and tape held the needle in her arm.  She was still wearing her paper gown, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter clenched up in her free hand.  A homeless man was shaving his face on the street, using the window of the clinic to look at his reflection.

“Hey,” Hadrian exclaimed, pointing at a large puddle of crusty vomit—probably equal parts kimchi, soju, garlic, and seafood—leftover from some drunk guy the previous weekend.  “Korean pizza! Let’s have a late lunch!”

Hadrian got down on one knee and pretended to scoop up the vomit into his mouth with one hand.  He laughed again, I rolled my eyes.  He laughed some more.  The woman in the hospital gown made a face at him as she lurched by.  She lit her cigarette.

“The good thing about the food here is that I won’t get any of the other health problems my other family members have. I just know it,” he said as he ripped the filter off his third Kool cigarette since leaving school.  On more than one occasion, he had extinguished his cigarette into a beer before drinking it.

Hadrian lit his cigarette and extended his hand. I shook it out of courtesy.

“Man, we do live righteously!” Hadrian shouted to no one in particular.

A man walked by with the largest goiter I’ve ever seen, bigger than both of my fists combined.  It stretched out the collar of his shirt while making his jaw line merge with his neck—not exactly something you can hide with a collared shirt, as he seemed to be attempting to do.  He walked by the clinic, not even glancing in its general direction.  He wasn’t on his way to an appointment that day.

Hadrian asked me if I wanted to grab a beer and some dinner with him at a local bar, even offering to pay with money he earned from the private lessons he taught on the weekends.  I knew Hadrian kept a large reserve of cash—of various denominations and currencies—in drawers around his house.  I saw a pile of cash one time when I was over there, and it had to amount to at least $3000.  He never deposited his earnings from his side jobs into his bank account.  On top of that, he was constantly withdrawing money from his bank account that the school paid into, adding it to the piles around his house, afraid the Korean immigration service would check his bank statement and realize he wasn’t spending any of the money he earned at school.  These are the kind of actions that define paranoia. 

I declined his offer for a beer, saying that I was tired and wanted to rest at home.  The last time I had taken up Hadrian on his offer for dinner and drinks, he drank so much beer and soju that he left the restaurant in a drunken, manic stupor, leaving me to settle the bill.  I found him passed out face-down in the middle of the street a couple of blocks away, about to be run over by a bus and turned into Korean road pizza.  I barely managed to drag him out of the way in time.  At the time I had never been to his apartment and didn’t know where he lived, and I definitely knew I didn’t want him staying at my place, so I hailed a cab and shoved Hadrian into the backseat.  I handed the driver $30 from Hadrian’s wallet, closed the door, and ran away before the driver could argue with me.  I really didn’t know what else to do.  The next morning Hadrian came to school late, looking pretty rough.  I don’t know how he got home that night.

Hadrian called me a kraut and said that I should loosen up and learn how to party, but I was already opening the door to my apartment building.

“Hey!  Don’t forget!” Hadrian called out to me as I finally entered my apartment building, signifying the end of the day.  “You and me are the best teachers in this whole, gook province!”

In terms of craziness, I give Hadrian a score of 5,249,393 out of a possible 100,000.