Foreword

It's been almost a year. Almost a year- since our old friends called me up, since my family sent me texts of condolences, since even the occasional supportive gesture from a stranger. "How to move on from the death of a loved one." I keep a little folder on my phone that holds all that junk advice doled out by people who don't know the meaning of the word "love," let alone what it means to lose someone you'd loved. There's itineraries of all the experiences I should be having, listing off the anger and the pain and the denial in consecutive lists as if there was a program you could follow. I suppose that's how we find comfort- we want to somehow stabilize the mayhem with computer programs, Idiot's Guides, Q 'n A boards, articles & stinkpieces, peer support on social media, etc. Hunched over with our feelings, our confusion, trying to find a greater purpose in a world which seems to spin so delicately and perfectly without it. That's what I tell myself as I blankly stare at my screen, looking at the same pictures, the same texts, over and over again.

"You really just think too much." You told me as you do your hair tie at the edge of my bed. I follow the curvature of your neck, from the slender nape, down the back which was formed by tender dunes and little crevices of skin. Towards the dimples further down below, the flesh gets softer and more rounded and I can't stop myself from grasping it in my hands where it feels warm and pliant to the touch. The differences between us sometimes staggers me- the pink hue of my hand seems even more pale next to your olive complexion. It always delighted you to point it out when I boiled in the sun like a pudgy prawn.

"What 'chu lookin' at?" You don't smile when you turn to me as I pinch your body. Delicate strands of dark hair fall onto your ears, your forehead, even on your stubby nose which always twisted & bent when you were skeptical. It's strange how certain irrelevant things become a part of how you remember someone when they're gone. Your lips had the aftertaste of American Spirit, which always hung in the air while we stared at my ceiling babbling endlessly about the little fantasies that came to your mind. "Imagine the perfect day. It starts with the perfect breakfast. I'm thinking blueberries. Imagine someone, maybe a matron with a rich bosom, who gathers the blueberries together and picks just the sweetest and juiciest ones. Then she opens the oven, and the entire house becomes overwhelmed with the smell of buttery English muffins."

It's always the same image that comes to me, with their accompanying sounds- the lingering sensation of touch. I try to remember your voice, how it would rise from its throaty depths when you'd become excited. The sharp, unrestrained laugh. I think of how you'd whisper in my ears as you wrapped your hands around my neck, and how your inhales became more strained as you pressed your teeth into your lips. That same laugh between little taut kisses, your lips touching my ears and then my nose and then my cheeks and then my neck and you keep laughing with that little hee-hah as you kiss my chest and I can only say "please" when you look into my eyes, "please" and you want me to keep begging. "Please," and suddenly I feel like you're the cruelest person in the whole entire world.

She reminds me a little bit of you. She laughs at the same jokes you did, and somehow it feels like we are honoring your memory. It's that smell of American Spirit. She's watching me, nodding along to my tired old stories, her brown eyes alit as she flicks the ashes off her cigarette. The black roots of her hair are starting to show underneath the dyed blonde locks, done up into two ponytails that lay at the sides of her delicate ears. "I'm trying to be a writer," she says with a self-aware smile. Her smile all wide shows plenty of teeth, different from your pursed lips that only slowly revealed incisors. "You know I'm actually a cashier, but I like to write." She pulls on the shiny red baseball jacket draped over her shoulders, and I couldn't help look at the soft shapes of her breasts that were only suggested by the black cotton obscuring them. "I'd love to write something... erotic, sexy but also delicate and soft-spoken." I sucked on the straw of my soda. "Mumble porn," I answer. She looks at me with her head lazily resting in her hand, her fork digging into a pile of guacamole. "You're funny," she says without laughing.

Her car is a lot like yours. I find a reservoir of coins in the drink holder. There's granola bar wrappers under my feet. Each little piece of trash tells me more about her- tiny figurines bought from souvenir shops, cigarette butts, little dried clumps of weed, skin moisturizer, two CDs with broken plastic, and a sticker that said "Proud Vietnam Veteran." She stops in the parking space under a light... even though we're only minutes away from her apartment, she's looking at her hands expectantly after turning off the engine. You were shy too, imploring me to acknowledge your modesty as you took my hand and placed it on your neck. I debated whether to wait for a signal, but she placed her hands on my thighs and tells me she'd hadn't had a real date in a long time as she stroked my skin. The shadows make us bolder, and I didn't answer. I touched her legs, sinewy and taut under the jeans. She moved her hands to my face and stroked my lips with her thumb. "I have roommates," she whispered. My hands traveled to her waist, pulling her closer with our legs trying to find room in her cramped little Honda. I felt her body grind up against mine, a big smile forming on her face as her pelvis passes by the stiffness I feel just yearning to reveal itself. Her kisses are softer than yours, slower, never restlessly exploring every feature of my face- but still tasting of American Spirit.

"Do you want it bad? Tell me you do," she murmurs as her hands undo my belt. We laid side-by-side, squeezing into the space between the glove box and the passenger seat. I touch her fine breasts, shaped like soft fruits that felt warm to the touch. "I do," whispering as I sucked on her neck. Her fingers pull to expose me, engorged & twitching as each stroke moistens the red skin further. My lips rise to her ears, kissing them between excited groans. I felt my pelvis grind up against the car seat, fucking the air, seeing only pitch blackness. "Please," I hiss. Her strokes become violent movements, the tension in my body reaching a fever pitch, with a devious toothy smile on her face... watching liquid spurt from the slit, kissing my face as I writhe and moan, and slowing her strokes as it becomes flaccid in her wet hands. "You are so cute," she giggled as strands of white goo hung from her fingers. I nuzzled her neck, and my new found gratitude would form lasting red marks on her throat.

She sends me a message once in a while. Months may pass without any contact, until I hear a chirp or a buzz in the middle of the night. Technology seems often to spare us hardships we'd have to endure otherwise- an affair between two strangers, breaking apart as easily as it came together with no stakes or losses. She's moved to Los Angeles, working the stock room at a Whole Foods. In my weakest moments, re-enacting rituals in the dark when my memories of you and the little ball of angry sexuality within my temples keeps me from sleeping, I respond to her message from one of the seedy, needle-littered, rat-infested alleyways of my imagination. "I saw these two cute Korean college girls looking at fish in the grocery store and I thought of you." She rarely responds immediately. "What were they wearing?" Her responses often are accompanied by a little smiling red face fearlessly baring its horns. "One of them was wearing a skirt. I thought about her sitting on my face, inhaling her scent as she grinds the cotton of her panties into my face." When she responds with multiples of that strange face, proud of its own imploring grin, it's as if a wave of water is crushing itself up against a barrier yearning to be freed from its constrictive shape.

"I wish I could be there to watch you pull her panties down to her white sneakers. I wish I could hold her down as you rub her little pink pussy, and it's getting all wet even though she's pretending to fight it." I have to admit, sometimes her fantasies manage to shock me- in their clarity, their brutality. "I wanna see her face get all worried and red as you put it in." I always indulge her further, seeing her hiding in the restroom, a pounding in her heart becoming louder than any voice of reason could hope to be. "Yeah yeah yeah... It would be so hot to hear her squeak like a chew-toy while you fuck her silly."

You'd be shocked- or somewhere between disgusted and amused, offended and entertained. "How fuckin' absurd," you'd yell after punching me in the arm. Yeah yeah the inherent misogyny of our culture is recreated in our imaginations- both men and women alike. I know, to fuck the cute Korean girl is an assertion of power, masculine and totalizing, reducing her to an exotic sexual object. She holds her down, without remorse, not deaf to the pleas of "why, why eonni" but delighting in it as an assertion of her own sexuality, her own identity, her own agency at the cost of someone like herself. She tells me that as a child, she'd always felt apart from the others, and she laughs when I say it's because of her breath smelling like garlic and fermented cabbage. "Please don't pity me," a yearning in her eyes. None of the hopeless platitudes I can muster will make those feelings disappear. The shame & humiliation always follows you like a wretched metallic stench, it's always there in the nostrils and it's the quiet & vulnerable moments of intimacy that really let the taste come through.

I've seen footage of Sri Lankan males, piercing their bodies, bringing pain and mutilation onto willing bodies. Metal hooks pulling on the flabby skin of their backs, while arrows and spikes cut through the mouth and the cheeks. I imagine her standing by herself as she watches, overcome with her own loneliness. It must be that of a caged bird watching its cousins fill the trees with the chirps of love. She watches them in agony, in ecstasy- she knows this strange ritual reveals something, but the thought dissipates as quickly as it came and leaves her mind once again to its own dreamy, empty world. "I fucked that little Korean girl," unsure of what motivated me to lie. I wanted her to feel as jealous as I did, though my jealousy was not towards her but rather towards a greater world in which we are encouraged to express & follow our urges but could never hope to fulfill them. "She cried at first when my cum gushed out of her but she begged me for more and more and wouldn't let me leave." I awaited her response anxiously, but it never came. "Her hairy pussy was so tight," I felt stupid and wished I could take it back, blocking her to regain some sense of power.

I toss, I turn in the cold of my sleepless night. I feel a weight in my bed as I drift in, I drift out of consciousness. In the dark of my room I see the faint brightness coming through the dusty blinds brush onto your body, a cold blue band of light that kisses your naked legs & arms as your body turns on its side and reveals itself to me. I blame myself for your death, because it is partly I who have killed you. You smile- it was always a soft smile on nights like these, made by those soft petals of flowery tulip resting on your face. You giggled- the spontaneous excitement, the rage, the stars in your eyes that seem to pull you to a place far from here. I felt myself moved- astonished by your creativity, seduced by your boldness even when your voice was merely a creaky whisper. "Sometimes I have a dream. I'm naked on a beach. I've been walking... I dunno how long but I've been walking a long time because I look behind me and I see the footsteps, my own footsteps, they're disappearing in the horizon." I pull you closer to me, your legs entwine with mine as I feel for your tits in the dark- I squeeze the tender fruits in my hands but your eyes seem set to something far beyond the walls of my room. "They're disappearing in the horizon, and I feel a lot of pain in my feet but I keep walking. I walk over these rocky cliffs, I don't know why but I feel something is calling to me." I kiss your neck as my hands stroke your soft belly, fingers kneading your warm flesh. "At the top of the cliffs, I looked over into the crevice and saw this city made of glass under me. There was light dancing all around, colors playing together and the city sparkled like some kind of perfect diamond." My hand travels down to your sex; I spread you with my fingers and I feel you turn to sand under my greedy grasp. "The light formed these vines, little bursts of fruits, berries, as big as me and they rose from the crevice. They smelled so sweet, so fragrant and when I tore them apart with my hands I felt the warm touch of another person." You giggled and squeezed my hand- you pulled me closer, a rare moment of clarity, you whisper to me. "Oh, it's something so beautiful. I wish you could see it with me." It was as if you'd shouted them from a departing train, leaving me by the station only to watch you leave, knowing we'd become strangers once again as the vision took you completely.

"I hate you for leaving me behind, for making me pick up the pieces after your episodes," for inhabiting my dreams and thoughts while your own grew to become so convoluted and colorful that I was relegated to a secondary character in my own life- yet still, you haunt me even when I'm touching someone else. I see you in the sparkle of the eyes of every one-night stand. I feel a flash of brilliance, as bright as you were, that blinds me when I feel up someone's breasts. "There is a part of you in every minute I keep on living, and not even death can make us whole again." A response never came.