Anonymous VIP

“I wonder if any of Mr. Rogers’ neighbors are selling, with this on I should move in next door.”

“You’re gonna come out and show me, riiight?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I walked out from the curtain in an unflatteringly cut cardigan.

I stared into the mirror and made some comment about looking overweight, probably referencing the pudgier days of my youth, when my friend in the fitting room advised me to:

“Stop slouching!”

“I’m not slouching I’m just standing normally… aren’t I?”

“No, you need to….ugh…pull your shoulders back but…”

I have terrible posture and any attempt at correcting it makes me look wildly uncomfortable.

“You would be a lot more approachable if you had good posture and didn’t walk around like a gorilla all the time, yknow.”

I put away the oversized cardigans and irritating wool sweaters and walked out of the fitting room, intermittently pushing back my shoulders as if I were an ex-girlfriend unsuccessfully trying to make her old boyfriend jealous. We moved over to the discount mall and my efforts to correct my poor posture proved to be short-lived.

Located on a street filled with name brands like Adidas, Nike and Uniqlo, these flea-market style malls are sparsely populated. Available hair clips and bags far outnumber the amount of heads and shoulders that are presently looking to purchase. Homogeneity—shoes, purses, accessories, shirts, dresses—is the status quo and with a finite number of customers each vendor diversifies the only way they can: hawking on wandering wallets.

My shoulders sunk after every smiling (Korean) introduction by a vendor. The disappointment and foolishness I felt from being unable to communicate, but more likely from consistently being an anomaly, led to an increasingly feeble posture. After having walked through the booths and been followed by several vendors I had perfected the awkward smile accompanied by headshakes and mumbling.

*****

I bought a lot of necessary new things, considering Korea’s recent cooling and snail mail’s leisurely pace. But the one thing I acquired more of today that I didn’t need was a reminder of my being an anomaly.

It isn’t that I agonize over these daily reminders—because I’ve come to accept them with a light-hearted smile most of the time—it’s that no matter how hard I try to assimilate I won’t ever match my appearance.

Which is sometimes a roadblock in my deliberation on whether or not to search for my birth parents…

Lost in Traffic

Every cab ride starts the same. He rolls down the window and I inch closer, hesitant to reveal my destination because he’s likely to not understand my butchered pronunciation. I quietly wait to see if he hears, recognizes and agrees to take me to the neighborhood or bus station that I couldn’t point to on a map. Most of the time he says yes and I hop in. If he hasn’t figured it out already, he understands the real confusion immediately after I get into the cab.

~~~~~

***are you Korean***

“yes, but…”

***more Korean***

“…I am from the US”

***more Korean***

“I am sorry but I do not speak Korean”

***more Korean***

I have taken more cabs in Korea—because they are so cheap—than I have in my entire life. And depending on his level of English our chatter will go one of two very distinct ways: silent or unbearable. Most of my cab rides are with friends and the cabbies usually don’t speak very much English, so the majority of my cab conversations fall into the silent category; however, I’ve had my share of loquacious (and oblivious) drivers.

~~~~~

He continues to speak in Korean, seemingly faster with every fresh sentence of unfamiliarity, as I sink deeper into my seat. I stare at the meter because with its numbers it is the only thing I can confidently say I can read in the cab, and yet sometimes I still wonder if the driver is hustling me or giving me the special foreigner price-hike.

I already told him, as if it needed to be verbalized, that I don’t speak Korean! He understands the word “slowwww” doesn’t he? Why does he persist to think that I understand all / any of what he’s saying?

I smile, shrug, attempt a completely random statement (“I have one older sister, she lives in New York”) that a first grader handed my conscience and watch the meter count down…then up…

I wonder what he’s saying. Koreans are always so fascinated by my status as a KA. Great, I’m fascinating. Sort of like a puzzle you can’t figure out or an exhibit that the MET only offers on special occasions.

I cannot respond because I cannot speak. There is no dialog, no reciprocity, no two-way street. I am observed.

“wait what’d you say just….”

***what?***

“nevermind”

~~~~~

The immense pride and homogeneity that Korea is endowed with makes the necessity for “real Koreans” to speak their mother tongue unsurprising. In many ways, language aside, I am not a real Korean. In a place where I cannot look around without seeing someone with a similar face I will continue to float and bask in displacement, like a bobber at the end of a fishing line: in the water but never completely submerged.

Until I grow out my hair and drop the dumbbells I will never—language or not—be a real Korean. I will continue riding the rail that straddles American culture and Korean genetics. There’s a certainty in my limbo and I think I’m beginning to understand that that’s okay. Or maybe that’s just because

Korea.

…Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.

Time: 1996-2009

Place: Any of your typical public establishments (eg. retail store, restaurant)

Sales Representative: Incredulous.

“How’re you guys doing today? Are you… both being helped?”

I know why he pauses; it’s not through derision or ill will, but ignorance and living in a sea of White.

Of course we are, can’t you see that other employee’s directing my dad? And what 13 year old shops at Target without a parent?

“Yeah, we’re good,” I dejectedly answer. My father doesn’t deem my response enthusiastic enough, so he subconsciously (and in the nicest way possible) says ‘fuck you’ to everyone who’s given us a crooked look, with fatherly aplomb:

“Everything’s fine, this is my son! (insert requisite parental bragging that embarrasses us yet initiates us into the realm of unconditional love)”

Me: Different.

~~~~~~~~~~~

My journey back to South Korea began in Latin America. I had not fallen into $32,000 like Will from http://www.amazon.com/You-Shall-Know-Our-Velocity/dp/1400033543 and wasn’t in El Salvador for a day en route to Korea; instead, I was on a two week trip with peers from my university, sponsored by Global Outreach. In San Salvador, unofficially nicknamed the “Murder Capital of the World,” I first legitimately considered returning to my birth country.

Digging the foundation for a school in Zaragoza.

Eugene (a senior from Villanova who came down to El Salvador with similar intentions): Hey, can I ask you a forward question?

Me: Yeah, go for it.

Eugene: Are you sure? Because I don’t want to offend you…

We’ve been staying in the same house in San Salvador for several days now, sleeping in the same barracks with a dozen other guys. This is the first time Eugene and I have spoken.

Me: Trust me, lemme have it.

Eugene: Were you adopted?

Me (impressed that he was able to surprise me, even with his disclaimer): Woo, nice to meet you too, Eugene. But yes, I was adopted.

Eugene: Because (insert other girl’s name) said that you were Korean, I don’t know how she knew that, and I work with a foundation that sends overseas adoptees back to Korea to learn about their heritage and search for their birth parents.

Me: Heh, thanks Eugene. Real nice of you, and ballsy, but that doesn’t really bother me—the biological parents stuff—too much. I’m not really interested. I’m too Americanized.

The conversation continued on egg shells, not fearing that we would offend each other, but more from futility; a stranger, in 15 minutes, wasn’t about to tear down the fortress that’s kept me contentedly white for 20 years.

Eugene: In case you change your mind, here’s my contact information. I’ve had buddies who felt the same way as you did and they went and came back so different. Lemme know.

Me: Thanks.

Suddenly, the thought of being in an environment where I wouldn’t be different, where I wouldn’t have my niche carved out by stereotypes and cinematic caricatures, immobilized me just as much as my fears of never fitting in did.

~~~~~~~~~~

I decided to stay in contact with Eugene after the trip. We emailed periodically, discussing the probability of my getting to Korea through his program, and the improbability of my winning a scholarship to fund its $3,000 price tag.

Simultaneously, my internship in the finance department at RandomHouse was starting and my three bosses—Kim, Tang, and Wong—all greeted me warmly. On my first day they took me out to lunch to get sushi. Ed and Oui, both in their early 30s, were bombarded with my precocious viewpoints on marriage and ‘how old is too old to have children (for the sake of the child)’. I’m exhausting like that.

I half-heartedly applied for the scholarship and found out that I didn’t get it via Facebook; in class I noticed a student who spoke frequently every class wasn’t there, and I, diligently and industriously checking my newsfeed rather than engaging in discussion, noticed that said student had just “won the Tobin Study Abroad Scholarship. And will be studying in Israel this summer!” Fuck that. Fuck him. Who needs Korea, anyway? I’m fine here.

They're all on Facebook. And the ones that aren't are looking at the people below them that are.

Ed, Korean with the same birthday as me, was my primary supervisor. He taught me the basics of Excel and promoted the thievery of books around the building. But what I’m most grateful for was his ability to thaw my frigid rejection of all things Korean.

Enthusiasm towards Korea increased during my time at RandomHouse, unfortunately, I was without an option to get there now.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hopes dashed, I randomly got an email from the Korean Boston Consulate sometime in April. The woman I was also emailing with from Eugene’s organization forwarded it to me. It alerted me of some “Korean Homecoming Program” for overseas adoptees, sponsored by the Korean government, that was all expenses paid. Obviously I wasn’t going to get it, nor did I need it, so I let the application deadline pass. But three days after when the Consulate emailed me, saying they would accept a late application and sponsor me, I frantically wrote out a melancholic personal essay about my life, dug up my passport, and filled out my first half-English / half-Korean form.

I went to Korea, for 10 days. It took a direct thirteen-hour flight over the North Pole to get there.

My back hurts thinking about it.

I didn’t look different, I didn’t talk much about being adopted, and I don’t remember the names of places I visited or the food I tried. And I didn’t try to. Those didn’t matter.

It would be ludicrous and inevitably unfulfilling to try and recapitulate my experience, especially with the ignoring of tangible detail and focus on personalized emotions—a person would be forgotten, an interaction overlooked. Instead, I remember the steps that got me there and the people I met, not my destination. And the realization of why I needed it:

Time: 7:00pm on July 11^th, 2010.

Place: Across the street from 2496 Hughes Avenue, my apartment in the Bronx.

Local neighbor: good-natured.

My dad and I just went food shopping. With him pushing the shopping cart I didn’t have to add up the cost of things constantly in my head. We drove back with heaps of groceries and started unloading them from his car.

“Whoaa, someone’s gonna eat well tonight!”

“Heh, yeah. Thanks. I rarely get to eat this good,” I replied.

“Can I come on over for dinner? Cook me up somethin’ special,” he said in the friendliest, and least perverted way.

“Yeah sure, haha!”

“Who bought you all that?”

I point to my father, a portly man who’s 2 inches taller than me and 70 pounds heavier. Brown curly hair and a propensity for burgers and television over mathematics and manners.

“And who’s he?,” the local man unashamedly asks.

“My father.”

Me: Me.