Tokyo to Tijuana: Gabriele Departing America | Page 6

both ate sparsely in thorough silence, Yang Kwam paid the bill, and then he was gone.
Sang Huin's instinct was to follow his former friend to the ends of the earth on the public
bus system and to harass him in the bus by making him feel miserable for his declaration
that he was a dirty person. No, he told himself, he had handled the situation the best that
he could. After sitting at the table for a while, he had withdrawn to his home passively.
On what seemed like an eternal trip, cramped on a seat in the bus, disconnection was
making his mind jittery, soft, and rolling like a ball away from him. He tried sleeping but
his mind kept trying to imagine what really took place between his sister and her boss at
the park if indeed it had been really him at all. The jury years ago had not thought of the
evidence as being conclusive. In sentencing a man to a life of imprisonment it couldn't be
done on a feeling.
He felt lost and loose. He still felt stunned. He remembered that he had only touched him
by barely stroking his hair and his hand and then touching his underwear. It only lasted a
minute and then he turned on his side away from him and his own instincts. It was an
insignificant minute in one's life and he could not figure out why it became such evidence
of the accuser that he was dirty-the charge of homosexuality not being directly stated. He
asked himself why, even now, he was staring at moving forest and long stretches of road
with this yearning for love. He opened another pint of milk. He sipped and then rested its
opening to his bottom lip. Why did human beings end in such closure? Why did they gain
worth and awareness of their being only in personal interactions? Was he nothing but the
composite of other people's impressions of him? These impressions--these judgments--
could not be real. They were based on brief outward gestures and the judges had nothing
but their own usual experiences of their petty and selfish lives to compare others with. In
Japan women who left their children locked up in hot cars were rarely accused of the
crime of manslaughter; and in Korea the handicapped, he had seen, were left to crawl like
worms, pushing their carts and singing their songs as traditional music blared forth. He
died every time he saw one of them. He yearned for the love and the language where he
could befriend someone who was handicapped and he chastised himself for only being
able to lay money in some of their cans. Once he put his hand into the hair of such a man.
He stroked the hair around his face. The gesture lasted only a couple seconds. The man
screamed out something and a security guard began moving toward them. Sang Huin
placed money in the can and went away. Then he began to question himself. Maybe it
was loneliness that had compelled him to do that. After all, the action was undoubtedly
bizarre in the sense that no one else did such things. He was not wearing a monk's robe.
Another man's fate was none of his business. This type of action just was not done; and
yet, he was not the same as others. Suffering the paralysis that would not allow him to
make a full smile and finding the eyes x- rays that could go, for the most part, beyond
pleasant countenances to a suffering innate in other beings, it was no wonder that he was
peculiar. It was no wonder that at Christmas parties or barrooms he sat and drank in

silence feeling like a buffoon for not acting like one. In ways he was a buffoon: his
taciturn ways that thwarted the lighthearted frivolity of a world conceived out of motion
was the substance that often caused contemptuous laughs.
What did it matter? What did any of his actions towards others matter? Everyone came
and left him. He was dizzy on a merry-go-round.
"You must all eat," said Sung Ki as he poured water into the remaining rice in Sang
Huin's bowl. He had heard it so many times. How they had carried on an affair with the
sister staying there and the overnight visits of Sung Ki's father was a mystery.
They had met in the park in Umsong. Sang Huin was memorizing words in his textbook
entitled Let's Speak Korean. Sung Ki spoke something to him in Korean. "Miguk Sarem
imnidad" responded Sang Huin (I am an American). Sung Ki, accompanied by a high
school friend, took him to eat kimbop (a Korean version of sushi). He spoke in English
the entire time