Well, a classmate from my Korean class had offered to host a Halloween party at his house on Halloween (which nicely fell on a Saturday). Since he lived within walking distance of the major foreigner district the plan was to drink and eat at his house for a bit, then walk to the bars and continue the fun. A good plan it was. However, due to my general lethargy and manner of dicking around on that particular Saturday, I was gonna be late and was contemplating not even going. And man, would I have missed out.
The party was set to start at 7pm and by the time I finished my daily errands and traveled to the venue, it would have been about 9pm. I didn't know the folks in my class that well and I was certainly uneasy about showing up to a party that incredibly late. Also, they didn't seem like the party animal type and I was worried that the party would end soon after I arrived. So before leaving I called the host to tell him I wouldn't be able to make, as it was already too late. But he assured me it would be no problem showing up that late and that people had only just started arriving, so no worries. Well, if there wasn't a problem, then I might as well show up, I thought.
Though it took a bit of searching, I did indeed finally find the classmate's house. Because I arrived so late, everybody else was feeling really loose thanks to the heavy alcohol consumption. Not sure it could have been any other way. The gang consisted of Koreans, Americans, Australians, Japanese, and Russians. Clearly no non-drinkers in that bunch. Anyways, we drank, ate, and generally fooled around for a bit before deciding to head to the bars. Because we were amongst the Russians and Russians never fuck around when it comes to drinking (its amazing that Americans and Russians could have been enemies for so long, as we have so much in common), they decided not to let the last quarter bottle of vodka lay sad and alone back at the apartment. So they decided to bring him along! Thank you Korea and your lack of open container in public laws. Drink away in public to your heart's content. The host even decided to add to the vodka by pouring in all the remaining OJ to make a Smirnoff bottle full of Screwdriver mix drink. And somebody had the foresight to bring plastic Dixie cups, so we didn't even need to drink from the bottle. Awesome. So off we headed to the bar scene, taking several drink stops along the way to sip our mix drinks.
This is the point where stuff really got interesting, as one of the ladies started getting cozy with me, of all people. No, really. It happened. Cross my heart and hope to die. It's the truth...fine, don't believe me. As I was saying, at this point, there was indeed an interesting development. While I had been walking and talking with another of the classmates, this particular female came up between the both of us, latched on to both of us and expressed a desire to have us help her get to the bars. Why she need our help getting to the bars, I can't say. Perhaps she was having difficulty walking from the alcohol? Or perhaps she had that second been stricken down with a debilitating paralysis from the waist down? We shall never know for sure.
After a bit of walking together, the other fella I was talking to just disappeared, leaving myself and the said female by our lonesomes. As I was actually talking to a female and this is the closest I can hope to get to having a female show interest in me, I decided to go for it. As an aside, I myself can take no credit for this particular "manning up", so to speak, or its consequences. It was all the booze and its liquid courage. Had I been in this situation sober....I probably wouldn't have soiled myself then run away. Thanks beer!
Where was I? Ohhh, yes, the female. Well at this point I had had enough to drink so as not to be a spineless coward, so I went for it. Sure I only put my arm around her, but I'm starting out small. Baby steps, baby steps. And would you believe it? I didn't get slapped or screamed at or hurt in response. MINOR VICTORY!!! She even expressed her pleasure in having me hold her thusly. While repeatedly telling me to "help me get to the bars" or "take me to the bars", she tossed out the best line of the night. For the background info, this female is not an English native speaker. Her English is very, very good, so we talked almost entirely in English, but she is not immune to mistakes in speech. We continue our story....So as we were walking and she was talking about going to the bars, she suddenly spits out "Eric, take me." Yup. Now, every native speaker knows there is a large difference in meaning between "take me to the bar/store/bathroom" and "take me". Did this girl know that particular difference in meaning? I have no idea. Could she have possibly meant it in both ways? Perhaps. I errored towards her simply not knowing the meaning and chuckled heartily to myself.
Now our little group had arrived in the foreigner district. The only question was where to go to drink. Here ensued a terribly entertaining argument over which direction X bar was located in. Both arguing parties were a little under the influence of alcohol and thus absolutely convinced that the bar was in the opposite direction of what the other guy was saying. In the end, we went with the Australian's directions as he's Australian and thus has a 6th or 7th sense about where bars are. It's genetic. But our Aussie friend was not content to just lead us to the bar, no he insisted on chasing down a girl dressed as Hawkgirl and stealing away (maybe he asked politely for it, I don't know) her mace/weapon thing. Somehow she didn't yell at him or hit him or mace him or anything. Lucky us. Here's Hawkgirl if you didn't know (and most probably don't).
But he wasn't finished. As we neared the bar, he spotted a SUV driving slowly through the alley we were in. This SUV unfortunately had the driver side window rolled down. So our Aussie friend decided to hop in. I kid you not. He was hanging with his ass in the air, his feet off the ground, his stomach balancing on the window and his face probably in the driver's lap. I remember seeing the driver's face and how calm and not freaked out he was and thinking to myself "Must not be the first time dude's gotten road head."
Finally, we had arrived at the bar. After some momentary confusion where everybody got separated from each other in all the hubbub (the bar was packed for a Halloween costume contest), the group found its way to the bar and settled in. The lady and I continued chatting, drinking and watching the costume contest. A good time was had by all (despite several of the costumes certainly having a PG-13 or R rating attached to them). The group at this point decided we should move to a new bar to meet up with some other mutual friends. Okay, head on out. But since the bar was full and group members had disappeared, gathering everyone and departing as a group was considerably complicated. So the majority of us waited. This is where the villain of our story materialized. Well, villain is harsh. More like the asshole of the story. Every story's got one, so it was bound to happen. Enter the 38 year old Japanese businessman from our class. Up till now he had been super cool whenever we went out for drinks. However, I had no idea he was in love with this particular lady. I probably should have assumed as much, since there were 2 other males in class that were crushing on this girl. But those guys weren't at the party, so I figured I was in the clear. Also, if you are curious, our class had 9 males including me. So 3 out of 9 was pretty damn good for this girl, no? Once the group had departed the bar and was waiting in the street for the stragglers, this particular Japanese guy began talking exclusively to the girl....in Japanese, as the girl also spoke Japanese. This seemed super sketch when you realize that nobody else in the group spoke Japanese and everybody can communicate with each other in Korean or English. Yeah, sketch. Ohhh, also, when we had been walking to that first bar, he had come up behind me when I had my hand around the girl and grabbed my arm, twisted it to remove it from the female's waist and then scolded me saying shit like "no man. That's too much." or "not cool man, not cool." Awesome.
Now after the arm pulling, I wagered that the guy was in one of two camps: 1) He's trying to cock block cuz he wants her for himself (ding, ding, ding we have a winner) or 2) He's just trying to look out for a classmate and make sure she isn't taken advantage of due to how much she had to drink (albeit going about it in a super douchy way). Because I was in a good mood, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was number 2. Silly me, giving people the benefit of the doubt. To further prove how stupid I am, he offered to help the girl find the bathroom before the group moved to bar 2. Odd, but whatever, I'm not threatened by a 38 year old, super short, ugly asshole. He's gonna need a lot of booze to con most ladies. Which I guess was his thinking exactly, as after 20 minutes of waiting and finally going searching for the two of them, I found them drinking at the bar downstairs from the one we were just at. Mother fucker.
Now, at this point I'm getting really annoyed with his bullshit and would have loved to yell at him or just pop the asshole, but the girl clocked him harder than I could have ever done (figuratively speaking, of course). As soon as arrived, the girl immediately returned all her attention to me and latched back on as well. Yeah, that's right....fuck you buddy. burned.
Finally the group could move to the next bar. Nothing terribly dramatic on the way to the next bar except the asshole tried ouch more to extract my arm, by force, from the lady's waist. When that failed to disengage us, he just fucked off. He just up and disappeared. We couldn't find him. We called him like 8 times and he never answered, then later called back like 5 times but nobody heard their phones. So we were rid of him. Good riddance.
At this bar, the lady and I continued getting cozy until we ended up kissing a little. Well, it was more than a little but I thought we were subtle about it. Wrong. All the other classmates saw it, as they told me in detail the next week at class. Ooops. The weirdest thing was that one of the other females in class, who had promised to help introduce me to some ladies, brought over some of her mutual friends (not from the Korean class) and was trying to throw us together. I love the effort on her part, but I just happened to already have a lady on my arm. I'm no pro (hahah, obviously) in male/female relations, but I'm pretty sure its poor form to just up and drop one girl for another mid-evening.
With the evening wearing on, it was time to send the lady home cuz she had had enough to drink. Hey, its not like I was taking advantage of her. Don't look at me like that. Sure, she was gone, but so was everybody. The problem was that she was one of those people that doesn't know when to stop and keeps thinking they are okay to drink until they vomit or pass out. She had been sneaking some drinks when we weren't looking, despite our trying to cut her off. So it was time for her to go home. Hell, it was 3am, so it was basically time for everybody to go home. Well, the plan was to send her home with the couple in our class. The couple would see to her getting home first, then they would go home themselves. Seems like a fine plan. I offered to walk her to the cab, then I'd go my separate way.
But then the asshole showed up again. He arrived back on the scene just in time to pitch a bitch-fit about me walking the girl to the cab, so everyone agreed that I should just allow him to walk her to the cab and save everybody this ridiculous incident. I relented because, again, I didn't think this guy was that big of a prick. Again, I was wrong. 10 minutes or so after the first group of folks departed, the rest of the gang decided to call it a night and we all broke rank and headed home. But what should I see at the bottom of the hill? The asshole and the girl, still standing on the curb. Well, now I've clearly had my fill of this ass, so I quickly walked up to them and none to politely asked why she hadn't been sent home. He gave me some BS about how she's fine to drink more and that they are gonna go back to the bar and that I don't have to worry as he'll watch over her or something. I obviously wasn't going to let that happen and told him that we needed to send her home IMMEDIATELY. We then turned to get her say on the matter. And again, as only a female could, she cold-cocked him. Figuratively, obviously. Her answer: "I'll do whatever Eric is doing." GAME. SET. MATCH. What you got to say now, dickwad? That's what I thought. And who said woman have bad taste in men (not to say I'm any catch, but I certainly have to be better than this guy).
So, as I was again in a good mood thanks to the massive ego boost, I offered to have all 3 of us share a cab and take the girl home, so nobody could try any funny business. I was again feeling generous, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was just looking out for her and didn't want me taking advantage of her. I know, I know. It was stupid of me to think that way, but I did. Blame it on the booze. Not ready to relent, the fucker again started talking to her in Japanese just so I couldn't understand what they were talking about. He didn't get the answer he was looking for and finally relented to the cab ride home. Upon getting into the cab, the lady chose to sit with me in the back, thus forcing the jerk to sit in the front. Again, he must have been dying on the inside. Down to his last gasp, he continued conversing in Japanese but clearly didn't get the answer he wanted and finally gave up and jumped out of the cab after about a block. Hmmm, guess he didn't really care about the girl getting home safe. Maybe I was wrong about this guy the whole time. Maybe.
Well, as we were alone in the cab (excluding the cabbie obviously, but I'm sure he's seen much worse in the back of his car), so we continued with a little making out. A little. In between she kept making sure I was coming to Korean class on Monday. I told her I would, regardless of how awkward it might be. Hell, I'm the king of awkward. I have reputation to uphold. No way I could run away from that. So we dropped her off, then the cabbie and I had a long conversation about what just happened. We also talked about the Brewers and the Cubs. Don't ask how it got there, as I don't know. But generally I'd like to think I made his boring evening just a little bit more interesting.
End of the story, right? Wrong. We've still got all the drama when everybody had to go back to class. Well, Monday rolled around and I was ready for some hella awkward interactions with my classmates, namely the girl and the asshole. But as it turned out....the asshole wasn't there. He quit the class! He gave another classmate some excuse about a lot of work stuff suddenly popping up and how he was super busy and whatever, but quitting with only 2 weeks left certainly looks pretty fishy. I win, I guess. The girl, she was cool and professional about the whole thing. Phew, crisis averted.
Now that night's dinner together after class? Super enlightening. I learned that everybody else had seen the girl and I making out, that I was now the big dog in class for managing to snag the girl, that the asshole had pissed everybody off (it wasn't just me who was not pleased with him), and the kicker: the girl has a boyfriend. ooooooooooppppppppppppppppppppppppppps. I'm that other guy. Usually, at least in the movies, the other guy is much more attractive, muscle-y, and more attractive (did I already say attractive?) than me, but I guess she was really desperate. Or she's from one of the billion countries in the world that idolize white skin, thus making even the most average whitey (like me), suddenly super attractive. And I'm tall and I guess people like that. Not sure why.
Not to worry though, as the folks gave me the green light to continue pursuing her, cuz she supposedly really doesn't like her boyfriend but is just waiting for somebody better to come along. Ummm, okay. Fair enough. And try I did, but I was shot down. Sigh. She probably didn't feel it would be wise to break up with her bf since I would be leaving Korea in 4 months. How did she know that, you ask? ha, well I kinda told her.....
I know, I know I'm stupid but that's what I did. On that first day of class back, she and I had hardly interacted until, when practicing some various grammar points in Korean, she asked me "When are you leaving Korea?" Now, I may be many things, and unobservant is certainly one of them, but I wasn't so dense as to not see that this question was more than a simple grammar practice question. She could have asked that question to any other student for practice, but she did not. She asked me. I even got another female in the class to vouch for the loaded-ness of that question and women can see things that are invisible to men. Well, I sensed this was a serious question and my answer was....not so good. I stuttered and stammered for a bit, then finally spit out "I'm leaving in 4 months". DOH!!! Stupid Eric. You should have said "I don't know yet" or "I'm staying in Korea for a long time". But I didn't. Why did I fail so bad? Well, I wasn't drunk, that's why. I told you I'm hopeless without liquid courage.
So finally ends our story. Interesting, was it not? The big thing to take away from this story, the moral, so to speak is obviously "Lie to Women." Clearly, as you say, only bad things can come from telling women the truth. Never tell them they look fat in those clothes or that they are wrong or anything. Just lie.
About the only way this story could have been any crazier is if the girl in question was actually my Korean class teacher.................................I'm just kidding. Of course it was another classmate. That would have been pretty crazy if it was true, though?
So what did you guys do for Halloween? Heh.
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