Untitled (Short Story)

Here’s a little short story I wrote years ago. Enjoy:

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I see pieces of art as marble spheres hanging in space. As we float along aimlessly in the atmosphere, we long to grab hold of these spheres as if we own them; yet our fingers slip off their smooth, glossy surface. To comprehend them, we begin to “analyze,” “interpret” – we create false definitions and fabricate stories to describe its identity, its history, its origin. As we do this, we etch into the perfect orb, destroying the flawless plane so that we can greedily slip our fingers into the crevices and fool ourselves into believing that our thoughts and insights have some great value. In the end, however, we know nothing concrete of the world at all; we have succeeded only in destroying its pristine, innocent beauty.

We play Scrabble on his floor, me lying down on his orange basketball beanbag, glasses hung on the tip of my nose and eyes pointed towards the board, him sitting on his pillow confident in his ability for victory. I profess to be no scrabble professional. The only talent I have to my name at this moment is an extraordinary taste and hunger for words.

Someone once told me how much she admired my apparent “love of language.” Immediately, I picture a child greedily shoving chocolate in her mouth, then guiltily looking up at her guardian, caught red-handed with the telltale signs of gluttony published for all to read. I make generous appeals to poetic license, to which he first cries indignation, then smirks amusement. I like to make him laugh, or at least make him feel that I have intellectual ability enough to make this scholarly Berkeley image replete with more than just glasses.

Afterwards, we scramble around a Twister mat, and he makes me fall on my ass so many times I am sore with defeat.

One more time! One more time! I keep protesting.

He laughs and we tumble in a heap onto the mat together. I put my arm around him and press my ear against his chest. Thump, thump, his heart beats steadily, like the beat of the butterflies in my stomach rising in a flutter of wings as he smiles at me.

“I like you, you’re crazy, but I like you,” he says, cocking his head to the side.

He calls it a quote from “Old School,” but it still makes my heart flutter, like all the I-love-you’s that could never suffice.

Before I step into the shower these mornings, I mouth the words to myself, “I like you, I like you…” They whisper like the rustle of autumn leaves caught by the wind and whisked across the earth. Sometimes I think I would rather be liked than loved, if those are the only choices, because where after love comes hate, after like comes the world. It is such a young, impulsive confession to make, like puppies or flowers picked in clandestine operation from mother’s garden… yet it gives the oxygen for the inherent romantic spirit in us all to breath, to gasp. For romanticism is dying, in this world of reason, logic, science, and selfness. Compassion and Empathy are antiques long lost under the dust settling in from misuse. Love… is long lost.

“I love you” means nothing anymore. I despise how it has become nothing more than a deadweight, words that two people, too young, whether in age or experience, to understand love itself, feel they must say to each other to justify their supposed loyalty to one another – a comment shrouded in mundanity, a conditioned response. There is no unconditional in its giving or reception. It is like a broken record unable to move past one section of a disc and repeating the same lyrics of a line over… and over… and over again… tedious, maddening, dead. It is being caught stuck in a trap, held in a standstill with no hope for progression. It is meaningless. Lacking feeling, lacking passion, lacking sincerity. A lie to elicit a desired effect. A lie to issue a flimsy remedy. It is like the “Yes, Mom”s and “No, Dad”s uttered by teenagers plagued by exasperation. Like a hammer that drives a nail into your skin… and the only way to alleviate the pain is to drive the nail that much harder and deeper into the person who gave it to you. And past utterances of the words linger like those nails in your memory, with remorse, regret, and a scoff. The love word is a hardened criminal that lurks in the shadows before striking, brutally murdering any trace of impetuousity and breezy cheeriness with overbearing obligations and wanton acquisitiveness. This whole love business, it’s enigmatic. Full of doubt. Perhaps too much, for the I love yous of the world to be worth pondering and perusing at all.

But like… I like you is like the sound of a tiny soprano hand bell reverberating through a giant concert hall – clear, light, yet resounding. It is the dewdrop that rolls smoothly off a young morning leaf and falls in the water below, creating soft ripples that flood the cool calm of the unfathomable grey… that makes the surface waver, even if for just one moment. It is the cold wintery air that chills your mouth and throat and lungs and body as it is inhaled deep into your soul.

No one lies about I like you. It is a phenomenon that lies dormant, then threatens to boil at random, bubbling over before you can swallow the spill. A quiet whisper that declares itself no louder than the breeze that touches my cheek and vanishes before I can catch and hold it in my hand. Like a single tear that escapes my eye, then falls, leaving no trace of its existence. It is innocent in its simplicity, profound in its sincerity.

When we walk, he likes to shift me to his right side, hold my left hand, then lift his hand over my head so that his arm rests on my shoulder. I have to reach to lean my head against him because of the near foot I am lacking to match his height, but despite the resulting awkward gait and the bump bump of my head against shoulder, I would choose this over any pillow in the world. We walk down the lighted streets, enjoying the chilly November air as it engulfs us in its refreshing gusts of wind. Seeing a fake snow machine, we quickly rush over and walk through the flakes, only to discover that the flakes are actually suds. I stick my tongue out in disgust, and we both laugh at our small indulgence in this whim. Hungry, we walk into an Italian restaurant. We both order wine, but our excitement about being yuppies is killed when I realize I am missing proof of my newly attained right to consume alcohol legally. Pouting, I order pasta instead.

While we wait for our food, we talk about our families. I describe my ten years of living in Korea to him, explaining that its rich cultural heritage is something I am proud of even though, as a second-generation immigrant, I cannot entirely claim it mine. He asks me if I have a Korean name. I answer in the affirmative. He asks me what it is.

Hae-yon, I tell him, but point out that most of my family calls me “Ippi”; unless I am about to face parental reprimand, in which case “Park Hae-yon” seems to suffice just fine. I also explain that Ippi is a distortion of the word i-ppeu-dah, which means “to be pretty.”

A tad bashfully, he responds by telling me about how his family calls him “Boging.” Boging? I ask. He explains… he stops to remark that my pronunciation of the name is “Not bad!” Then he proceeds to explain that the name comes from a nickname of his dad’s.

I nod in response.

“How do you say your name again?” he asks..

Ippi-ya.

He tries to say it himself. Where my parents usually implement an upwards lilt towards the end of my name, he begins at a higher intonation then falls to a lower pitch by the end. It reminds me of the characters in Riccola commercials. Ippi-ya, Riccola, Ippi-ya, Riccola. I chuckle.

“Am I not doing it right?” he asks concernedly.

I tell him it’s fine. Ippi-ya, mo-hae? I remark as I think of my parents calling me from one end of the house to the other.

“Ippi-ya, mo-hae?” he repeats after me. He performs the same drop in tone with the word mo-hae.

The next morning, he calls me just before I step in the shower to wash up for work.

“Ippi-ya, mo-hae?”

My own personal Riccola commercial.

* * * * * * * *

For my birthday, he takes me to Jazz at Pearl’s, where we are seated by a tall, graceful hostess at a table near the stage, and a blond lady donning a wild summer dress chants her Portuguese Sambas. I am dressed in a black velvet dress with my hair clipped to my head; he is dressed in a sweater and dark grey slacks. It is now three weeks past our first romantic encounter, and all I can wonder as I play with the small flame of the votive candle in front of me is what compels him to escort me all the way out to this locale in the city. He catches me stealing glances at his countenance, attempting to fathom what thoughts of me fly through his mind.

He shifts in his seat and asks me why I keep staring at him. I tell him how attractive he looks to me. He puts his arm around me and kisses me softly. Squeezing my shoulder, he turns back to watch our musical performers jamming to their heart’s content. He sighs contentedly.

Somehow, I find myself unable to enjoy the same sense of ease. Butterflies flutter wildly in my stomach, and even rapid consumption of alcohol doesn’t seem to douse their spirits. Still, I order cocktail after cocktail: a Cosmo, a Lemon Drop, and the killer, a Long Island Ice Tea. It’s not long after that we’re leaving the club and I find myself unable to cease stumbling over my velvet stilettos. Somehow, we manage to stagger over to his car, and he drives us back to his place down south. Once there, he carries me from the car into his room, where he places me on his bed and throws his blanket over me. He carries me back to the bed after I rush over to the bathroom to purge my stomach of ethanol evil.

I lazily open my eyes later to the sound of the television turned on to his daily dose of the morning news. I blink a few times, then I sit up to rub the sleep out of my eyes. He looks at me and smiles wickedly.

Here it comes, I think.

“Do you remember me carrying you from the car and from the bathroom last night?”

Pride not admitting, I feign innocence. I claim that I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“You know, now that I think about it… you’re the first person to ever yack in my car!”

Dammit, you’ve got to be making this up.

“It’s okay, just admit you can’t handle your liquor!”

I know it’s childish to submit so easily to peer pressure, but my teeth grit themselves when I am handed a challenge, whether in word or material. Upon realizing my utter defeat in this particular test, I attempt to preserve what’s hardly left of my dignity and deliberately stomp to the bathroom where I begin to brush my teeth vigorously over the sink. I barely hear his voice over the sound of plastic and enamel friction.

What did you say?

“You looked really nice yesterday,” he says.

I bite myself to stop the smile threatening to curl my lips. It was nothing spectacular, I only spent an hour in front of the mirror trying to perfect my makeup and hair…

“Stop,” he says, always as if he is father scolding daughter; then he pokes me and accuses me of fishing for compliments.

I protest and poke him back, but meanwhile I think, Am I really?!

“Stop, stop!” he says, falling back on the bed as I throw myself on him and continue to poke him. Still feeling as if I’m getting scolded, I stand up and pout with annoyance. He grins at this; my “huffy puffy”ness, he calls it. Then he sits up and, lifting my shirt up ever so slightly, he kisses my stomach. He pulls me gently down so that I am sitting in his lap and kisses me on the lips.

“Teach me more things in Korean,” he says, eyes brightening.

I raise an eyebrow and hum to myself. I consider my choice.

Nuh-neun i-ppeu-dah.

“Nuh no ipatun?”

I repeat the phrase one syllable at a time. He recites it to himself a few times, then, satisfied with his rendition, asks me to throw him another.

Nuh-reul jo-wah-hae.

I watch him and imagine I see his inner child, delicately placing marble words in his mouth, delighted by the way these delectable round glass orbs roll around his tongue, his mouth, grating against each other with satisfying intensity. He laps up these foreign phrases like water to feed his thirst. I’m impressed by how quickly is able to make the phrase his own.

Five minutes later, he’s forgotten both lines.

I teach him his phrases again, and he repeats them over and over to himself. He asks me what they mean.

You’re pretty. I like you.

He calls me the next day, saying, “Ippi-ya, móhae? Um, nuh-neun i-bbeu-dah, nuh-reul jo-wah-hae.”

The butterflies settle down into content respite.