i wake up feeling like shit. so i decide to do what any other sane faggot would do in my situation: go to a ball***. 

(*** By ball I do not mean ballroom, which is a very specific and important scene of black queer culture in America. Ballroom has expanded globally and I will be walking a ball as in ballroom sometime soon in Seoul…)


———————————

i wonder why i feel like shit. it’s not like i did anything crazy….

the night before, i was looking for work and freaks, intentionally choosing femme-drag for my armor. i donned my flowy red skirt and layered some croptops and bralletes to cover my nipples. its safer playing girl when i don’t know how genderbendy the scene is going to be. and if clubs here are anything like the ones in america, they prefer hiring pretty young girls to a twinky butch. 

i start my search in hongdae, again, looking for my working girls. but first, a fortune teller catches my eye. she has a full oval chin and round drooping eyes. i watch her through the window pulling cards with both hands and holding her phone against her ear with none. her eyebrows are perfectly drawn in two twinned thinned arches that bounce as she shuffles. i can tell when fortune tellers are real or not, and she falls somewhere in between. i walk in. even if she bullshits my future, its a good chance to practice korean. 

we breeze through my reading and i laugh in her face when she asks for 50,000 won. i leave 5,000 won lighter and make my way down this drunken alley. i make eye contact with this girl smoking in the shadow of a plushie storefront awning. i smile and lift my sunglasses. do you mind if i bum a cig? she hands me one and lights it with her white lighter. we start feeling the edges of our footprints. her mom’s korean but she grew up in paris and is working here (illegally) on a tourist visa. clubs like to hire foreigners so they can pay them in cash without paperwork or housing insurance. i talk to three more people like this, and smoke three more cigarettes. one offers me a job on the spot. i don’t know korean. well come back next week if you learn how to take an order by then.

a handful of men try to grab me either with their hands or slurred words. i am not afraid because my sun glasses make me invisible and i know i can fight and i know it won’t come to that. i know my girls are watching and we blow each other kisses before i make my way to itaewon to find more of the same. there is something about drunk straight people that always pisses me off. if that’s how you act with lowered inhibitions, maybe you should reflect on the person behind whatever those inhibitions are hiding. drunk gay people are splendid free in their energy, but i still prefer to smoke. 

itaewon is the allegedly gay part of seoul and i follow some twinks to homo hill.  i only found cis-men lipsyncing in each others faces and an older butch who asked me to identify as a woman before i could enter their bar. i know i love her and i sit at her table for a bit, but its just not really my crowd. i don’t know what exactly i’m looking for, but i know how to find my people, it’s just not here. i’m tired and i’m still on my period and i don’t want to drink even though it’s free for young girls like me so i go home satisfied with my night’s loot: the numbers of a handful of girls who will text me with job leads and a hopeful premonition for my future.

———————————

i probably feel like shit because i haven’t gotten dolled up since landing here. i need to find my freaks before i go insane. it’s happened before. i don’t like the spiraling paranoia i tend to stumble down when forced to hide in a rigid self-policing society for too long. has it happened to you? it happened to me for the first time the summer i turned 19. it’s the same summer i lived in seattle and had some pro tell me i was bipolar. i finessed an internship at microsoft. the work was easy, i only needed to clock in for two hours four days a week to finish all my duties. they paid me handsomly for 40 hours leaving me time and money to wander. i was a regular at the nude beaches building fires and smoking and swimming and perfecting my dive off this lone wooden structure standing about 100m into lake washington. i let these people take me to art studios and clubs and houseparties and along the way someone laughed eyes wild and told me i was manic mid kiss but i didn’t care. it’s seattle, people just assumed i was on ket (which i wasn’t) and didn’t bat an eye. and if my mania was feeling in flow with the universe and letting the winds of the milky way express through my body’s instrument, it can’t be too bad. it was just a little loud and a little raw. but it was never unsafe. trust me, camping in deep washington forests with trans strangers i met at a juneteenth houseparty the weekend before isn’t dangerous, it’s just apart of the pride experience.

the world is not like that bubble that showed me i am not crazy for needing more than a few drinks after a 9-5 to soothe my spirit. watching a queen covered in blood eat her girlfriend’s ass on stage healed my spirit more than any psychiatrist could fathom. this bubble is not a bubble, actually. it’s the realest world i ever walked until then. and it was messy. and painful. and there’s this kahlil gibran poem i think about whenever i think about that summer: on joy and sorrow. maybe i’ll speak on that life i lived one day, but until then i trust this poem to hold its memory.

on joy and sorrow

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

basically, if i’m not around my people, i go crazy, even though people try to tell me i go crazy when i’m around them. we live in a normative world, where certain behaviors and tendencies are considered normal and anything outside of that standard deviation is considered “crazy.” i go actually crazy when i inevitably have to leave my world outside that norm to face a world that is not so aware of its chains. or a world that is all to happy shackling others for a pinch of salt. it happens to my friends too, and i read blocks of text posted to close-friends’ stories on instagram expressing every paranoid thought brewing in tweak city. 

i swipe up on a couple cries scrolling through instagram. but i’m here to find the party for me, and i do within the hour. i’m glad it’s not too easy to find and fingerprints dot my screen leaving echos of my digital tracking. everyone in the comments is a queen or some royalty in between. i know my people when i see them, and i jot down the address before turning towards my half-unpacked suitcase. i’ve got nothing to wear.

my outfit sets my energy, and i want one that will let me walk like i was born to walk. when i’m not running away, i like to take an hour choosing my outfit in the morning. i look in the mirror and adjust my top, tuck my skirt, let my belly button hang out. and then i walk. i switch a top or an accessory and try again. it’s only when i love my walk do i leave the door. my walk is the root of my ever changing genders (i flip through about 67-1983 different genders every 24hours depending on the day), and i cannot bring myself as i come unless i can walk how i am.

i look up the nearest flea market, which happens to be in dongmyo, and take the train out to find a fit. i didn’t bother to take an hour to get ready this morning simply throwing on some black shorts, my tiny camo top, and my prescription sunglasses. i still love my walk, though. if i don’t love it, why should i ask anyone else to? 

i check my texts on the train. i have one from my mom continuing our conversation from last night: aside from your dress, your face isn’t korean. you have a very pretty face. have a blast at work. be a little conservative. don’t try so hard to be different. 🙂 tell me about work tonight. the still angsty teen i only left a couple years ago rolls my eyes: i don’t try to be different i just am different. but i know what she means is: be safe. and i am. 

———————————

when i get off the train i see homeless people for the first time since landing in seoul. they are all very old. one is sleeping on some cardboard while the other two are smoking squatting at her feet. their three pairs of feet form a triangle and their toes look like they whisper to each other in parallel conversation with their mouths hanging open to shout. i take the final step out of the station onto the street and their voices carry away. it smells different here. it sounds different here. the blazing rays reflects off uncles sheer bright sun waved shirts. warm pinks and cool purples dot the horizon of people beyond the block. 

i hear sirens for the first time in seoul. i hear car honks for the first time in seoul. when a particularly screeching one lets loose the people hustling past me curse at it. the flea market is easy to find. i see people squatting next to tarps holding fake louis and real flip phones lined along the block. i make my way deeper into the market and find myself surrounded by people haggling, digging, and crawling. a man with duct taped legs lies chest down on a tiny wooden slab with wheels. he performs a prayer before every arms push he makes through the crowd. he drags a box for donations next to him. i doubt his legs are actually that broke, but i’m pleased nonetheless when the only white person (complete with a camera and hiking bag) slips a sympathetic 10000 into his box.

i find gold buddha statues and ivory hair clips and jade bracelets and a box filled with dennis rodman t-shirts. i’ve never seen so many fake jordans arranged as a rainbow filling a tarp as tall as me and twice as wide. i find fake diesel designs with an A instead of a D. i find watches of all face shapes from circles to triangles to squares to pentagons to hexagons all the way up to polygons with 12 sides. i find baseball hats for every nba team, except toronto, and unmarked denim stacked to the ceiling and back. 

i see some couples in all black picking through clothes with pursed lips and pinching fingers. they touch nothing unless its with their thumb and index finger. i recognize their lot from 성수동. they stand out here, but looked so uniform there.

———————————

i went to 성수동 by taking the 2 until the stop matched the hour if the 2-line was a clock (it’s drawn as a circle on the train maps.) it was 230 when i hopped off in 성수동, but it already felt strange since 1. 

since a few stops before, more young people walked on drowning. groups of teens huddle together in almost matching jordans and baggy jorts and tiny tops boasting diesel, ‘property of atlanta,’ and chef curry’s face. it even feels like taking the train to Brooklyn taking the A then the L, but i try not to disassociate through these stops like i do there.  another (korean) girl walks on in classic cholo fashion: a large grey flannel shirt buttoned at the top over a white wife beater, a bandana tied around the head and pulled down just above the eyes, dark sunglasses, loose-fitting chinos, long silver chains, long socks, and white tennis shoes. skinny boys in all black and heavy ink tracing their silhouette from their arms up their cheeks back down their neck and spine get off with me. 

i’m met with aunties frying bread and serving odang as soon as i tap out at the turnstile and ads for the olympics complete with lebron and shacarri boasting usa on their uniforms. a couple paces down, there’s an ad for makeup tinged purple with a hollow cheeked androgynous korean man pouting next to the compact. he’s probably famous. it’s bright here and i squint against the sun. i walk down the only shaded sidewalk finding a Le Labo store: “FINE PERFUMERY 233 ELIZABETH ST NYC – SEONGDONG-GU SEOUL.” I walk past that store on Elizabeth Street between my uncles house below canal st and my hometown friend’s apartment in lower east. What the fuck is it doing here? It feels a little like the new gentrified brooklyn with lines for pop up shops hugging tall brown brick buildings. i pay it no mind and keep walking in search of coffee and a place to write.

down the block, i use both hands and my body weight to push through high wooden doors accented with iron. feeling coffee waft past my nostrils and SZA’s new shit filter past my eardrums. (They are playing snooze off her latest SOS album. i loved SZA since she dropped Z and i listened to CTRL every day since it dropped in 2017… but I don’t fuck with SOS like that. I’m happy for her she’s getting her bag but I can hear the industry got her. it’s all love though! just not my cup of tea…)

I’ve been in high ceilinged warehouse turned half-art gallery, half-cafe in brooklyn, and the parallel is undeniable. the cafe crowd is sparse when i arrive, but by 530 the post work rush hits and more people filter in. soon every table is filled with phone inflected conversations. soon, every floor length mirror in the jaunt reflected a camera three times over. drake starts playing and then not like us bumps after and i roll my eyes to look up at the flower garlands draped over exposed piping. 

i freeze shocked when this korean boy with dreadlocks (boy that is not good for your scalp), a tupac shirt, and a new york yankees jersey  (deadass that’s what he’s wearing) compliments my tats because he is so obviously exploiting black american culture for clout. he disgusts me and i tell him so, but he doesn’t know english. perhaps i’m too harsh, i don’t know enough about the place to pass judgement. i just know when something doesn’t sit right with my spirit. 

i’m tired and hungry and get up to find food. the farther away i get from the train station the more whispers and stares follow me. i forgot i didn’t hide my leg tattoos today.  i prefer the half-disdain half-fear all judgement of the elder generations because at least its rooted deep in their history. under japanese occupation (i.e. colonial rule) korean organized gangs (like jopok) adopted yakuza’s tattooing practices. tattooing and gangs became synonymous in korea until the recent modernization of korean society. a girl with a gorgeous dagger face tat bounces by in a shear yellow billowing dress layered over a pink slip and jeans. she looks like a jellyfish.

———————————

i catch myself daydreaming of food again, and try to refocus my attention on my mission to find a fit, but i’m too distracted by this beaten-up, pigeon-filled courtyard. it turns out to be the remnants of a temple from a different time. it has the symbol for a protected heritage sight on the plaque erected out front, but it seems more a spot for old heads to smoke and squat barefoot amongst the birds.

i pet the twinned dogs guarding each door of the shrine. hi lupa. hi echo. i have these temple dogs tattooed on my thighs in the likeness of my dogs, lupa and echo. i eat the 1,000 won sandwich i snagged at the entrance off them (my thighs). they form the perfect table when i’m perched at these steps. finally satiated and ready to hunt for my fit, i find this black distressed sweater with billowing sleeves and haggle down to 2,000 won. a raindrop hits the bill as i hand it over with both hands. i turn around and people shout 빨리! 빨리! and plastic sheets cover all merchandise within the minute. i turn back and the seller’s attention already shifted to bringing everything under her tent. its about to pour and i’m in the habit of forgetting my umbrella so i hurry down the block clutching my new drip looking for some coffee and a roof. 

i make it halfway down the block before the skies open and let bucket sized drops fall. i wait under a rainbow umbrella standing alone in front of a closed food stand. the grandpa manning the corner store runs out the back, gives an umbrella to a grandma walking down the street hand in hand with her grandchild, and runs back with a newspaper over his head. the rain makes my nose itch, but i don’t cry. i lift up my sunglasses and do. something about how violent and still things get in the rain… it makes me tender. i tend to cry with the sky and let the raindrops mix with my tears. they to win the race down my cheeks and finish on my bottom lip.

there are two men under the awning a couple paces from my umbrella. their skin pops gold in the blue stained air and the way they’re standing with a hip jutted out and a tall back makes me wonder if they are gay. but i’m not sure and i don’t think they are speaking korean or english but its hard to tell over the rain. they don’t look like foreigners though. but what do i know.

the rain lets up and i walk to the bus station. the bus comes but i don’t get on. i don’t want to go home yet, i like it here. so instead, i skip past puddles pooling on the uneven sidewalks and meander uphill through a stone paved alley. unlike everywhere else i’ve walked in seoul, people here ignore the cross signs. i let myself enter the stream of speeding bikes and sauntering pickup trucks and treck until finding a corner cafe at the top of the hill. colorful benches line the juncture and vietnamese signs and flags mix with korean ones. i catch glimpses of farmer’s tans as a men’s sleeves lifts with the boxes they load. two girls linked arm in arm yap loudly in vietamese clutching empty iced coffee cups they slurp anyway. the shifting the ice cuts through the motor noise. uncles in chonclas drive blue pickups loaded with boxes bursting at the seams in wife beaters and a healthy layer of dirt. a younger blonde boy races down on his bike. i like his silver drip and the tattoo peaking through the top of his collar, but he blurs by before i can parse any detail.

the bell hanging from the metal door jingles when i push it in. its heavy and i lean my whole body through my shoulders before it budges. two aunties yap in the corner with their sunglasses on. i take mine off and flick the wet off before tucking it in my pocket. the jazz is good and it makes me enjoy my breath mixing with the chords singing clear through fuzzy speakers. 

i order an iced cafe latte. i’m used to ordering americanos exclusively, but the milk fills me up more, and my friend told me only people who hate themselves drink americanos black. a man sitting on a stool gets up and helps his son behind the counter. we smile at each other and i take a seat next to a couple leaving. they say bye to the father and aunties, they all seem to know each other.

안 아파? asks the women with big hair and long nails and a phone charm dragging along the table as she scooches into the booth. i touch my lip piercing, 안 아파! (didn’t hurt!). i try talking more in my broken korean and she smiles and encourages me with increasingly larger gestures. the father laughs when she hits her glasses off with a flying wrist and she turns to berate him while his son behind the counter ducks farther behind his low brimmed baseball hat. people filter in and out and we play musical chairs so the cafe can always seat a new guest while always staying full. i get up to leave and return my cup. the auntie in the corner grabs my hand when i reach for the door. her 10 fingernails are sparkling indigo with bear and heart charms candying her set. she’s sitting butterfly with the souls of her feet touching each other on the chair and i see they match her nails. i don’t know what she says in viet but the uncles at the next table laugh and wave bye, so i bow with a smile and trot back down the hill.

———————————

i never walk back the same way i walked to. circles are good luck, so i veer right instead of left the way i came towards densely interlaced awnings. i pass tiny rooms with translucent curtains separating dingy fluorescent lit work rooms with elderly men laying almost naked face down and elderly women preparing vegetables with a knife and huge meshed plastic buckets from me walking 2 feet away down the alley. occasionally i pass a strong metal door colored black and gold engraved with two magpies circling a tiger. as i get closer to the awnings, it starts to rain again but i don’t hurry through. i make my way through the market with fishes swimming in tanks along the stone walkway.

the bus comes and i get on it this time. i’m surprised that people aren’t on their phones and prefer to talk or look out the window. i look at the window and watch the street change as i make my way back to mapo. the vietnamese words disappears from store fronts and the sidewalk evens out and becomes brighter. color drains from the streets, and a muted filter descends across the once colorful doors, curtains, and signs dotting the street. 

it starts raining again as we pass a free palestine march. they wield ‘genocide joe’ and ‘fuck netanyahu signs’ wrapped in plastic. some signs in korean, some in english. they chant in both languages, too. i put my fist up in the window and a man returns the gesture. the bus eventually passes the marchers and i see a gaggle of police waddling as yellow ducklings in their long neon rain coats directing traffic away from them out front. by the time i land in mapo, everyone is on their phone again. 

i give a lot of shit for the phone culture, but the first thing i do when i get back to my room is scroll for an hour. i grew up on the internet ever since 5th grade when mommy gave me her ipod touch she deemed inferior to her blackberry flip phone. i remember mommy held onto that flip phone for years as iphone continued dropping generation after generation. i think her first big screen was the iphone5c. she still has all our old apple products we never traded swearing they’ll eventually quadruple in value as a collector’s item. 

the internet… nevermind. it just holds everything. it’s a webbed interlaced reflection of ourselves and maybe the only thing i can definitely say about it is: tumblr is the culture. anyway, i don’t love the internet but i know i’m deeply dependent on it. i think to not love the internet is not loving a part of myself. i know pop culture is so important and its fun to get lost in that half reality half story dreamland. 

i doom scroll for an hour through i’m not sure what. but it feels good to be in my screen and when i’m finally satisfied with its dulling sedation, i start texting and sending voice memos to my friends back home and before i left i gave my friend my copy of Giovanni’s Room. She texted me her thoughts that are not mine to share but they make me feel full to the brim. i can’t help but feel through the jazzy sermon she sent for the rest of the hour and drift off to sleep to unconsciously process everything I learned and figured.

———————————

the third most important part about getting ready for a night out is sleeping. I knock out for a couple hours before I wake up stomach grumbling. i had a strange dream. you’re welcome to read it below, but there’s a moment of sexual assault. 

Dream…

Jobs taken under the constant cool of ac replacing whatever stale air can accumulate let’s Vogue stay calculating. Air alone is not the only thing changing moment to moment and to cognizantly die with each breath makes her the best psycological samarai. new air shaping around her body keeps her present. a bodily reminder for her brain to not be afraid of each death since its already happened the moment you remember it. 

this is important when your paid top dollar for top pleasure. maybe if it were real, Vogue’s boedy would take over and let her brain shut down. maybe if it were real, and not a job, she’d surrender her body to flow letting feel guide each reaction, wimply continuing the natural movement that feels right, or whatever that means. But Vogue wouldn’t know. It’s always theories until the heat hits and sedates her brain.

Smoke doesn’t push the stale air out but entwines itself with it, somehow making it heavy letting it sink through itself down past her chin settling in the concrete pressing against her spine. the heat let’s Vogue dream of a place not her own, but maybe it belonged to the egg she hatched from some generations ago. or maybe the egg she hatched from belonged to it some generations ago.

heat slows her ever rippling skin and she sinks with the smoke into a hazy memory churned into dream.

Vobuge does not wonder where she’ll go today and drifiting clouds eventually slow to a stop before reorganzing into a steady circular march. She blows an o through the ring hangin high above her in the atmosphere. dark descends around her in raining ash. In this darkness clouding behind the thin mucus film protecting her eyeball, Vogue feels the rigid edges of this egg. She let’s her skin bleed past its squishy shell until her senses permeate first the womb that carries her and then the body that coallesced around this womb.

She adjusts into this new body that she knows is her mother’s. Vogue, like her mother, will never be human but this body looks a little like one. Only on the outside though. The heat sedated all Vogues will to a still. She watches her mom’s body turn and the rough blanket covering her legs itches atrociously but Vogue has no will in these dreams. She can only watch and feel and there is no poing in calculating when any conclusion must be ignored.

All this already happened, afterall. Vogue is simply remembering. Vogue prefers gritting silently shrough sharp pain than the neverending dull itch, but it’s not her desicion to stay. It was her mother’s some years ago and that past cannot be changed only witnessed and felt passively.

It’s the only time Vogue let’s herself fall passive, because it’s the only time she can’t find a choice.

Her mom’s skin boils at the surface but Vogue knows its really muscles and bones undulating, shifting, warring underneath. She hears her mother’s voice cry out and resonate through her skull. Her body writhes on the floor kicking the blanket off her legs and the green flourescent lights singe her hairs as soon as they’re revealed.

It’s impossible to breathe and Vogues feels like she’s drowning in liquid fire but these dreams are the only time she knows it will be ok so she revels in a pain that’s promised to cease.

She hears a fuzzy screeching intercommed voice pierce through her knewly formed eardrums but the language can’t process the words over rolling iron clawing at her bones.

A hazmat human peers down at her through a tinted face shield. Vogue does not wonder why her mom refuses to move when she sees the needle only when its embedded between her two eyes. 

Green slime cools her brow as it jumps from neuron to neuron reshaping first her face and then her body.

She still doesn’t try to move. Vogue does wonder what her mom is thinking now. Why doesn’t she fight? It’s the only part of this memory she’ll never know. It’s the only thing Vogue knows she longs for, her mothers thoughts.

ANother human ina hazmat suit walks in a snd she seems him undress from the corner of her eye. her eyes stay unfocused and still trained above. she see’s the red light under the lab’s camer click off.

the man mounts her shirt still on pants half unzipped. She’s the fourth sex doll they managed to mold from her kind, and they take her for a short test drive.

Vogue is too calloused to care and waits for him to finish. He seeps around the egg holding Vogue accumulating as poison rotting hert insides. they leave and the red light flicks on then off. 

Vogue waits to wakeup but instead feels her mother’s body move against the glass and feels her shoulder press into it, then past it. Despite their cruelly specific experiements, they haven’t learned all her kinds tricks. They still have no idea what they can do. Her head and right arm hang out the glass and a hand that is not her own combs through her matted hair. 

She’s held still like this as her flesh rots into mushrooms from the inside. The scientists got it wrong, again, and tomorrow they will conduct more experiments but she refuses to leave nothing behind.

Vogue forgets she’s dreaming until the coughing starts. With each violent heave her egg, holding Vogue, jumps violently up bluntly bludgeoning through womb walls and stomach lining and baralling a tiny hole through her left lung until it sits at the base of her throat. one final cough and Vogue loses all sense of her mother’s skin.

She floats for a second and Vogue wonders if she’s waking up, but she winds up sitting in cupped hands. Vogue knows these hands. Vogue loathes these hands, but she cannot run as an egg nor can she rewrite what’s been done. The faint taste of vomit sweats in her mouth, maybe from the body she left on concrete but she quickly forgoes that sensation 

These hands flood with tears and dripping saliva half from her mom and half from the sweat pouring out of these heinous palms. She feels this water seep into her egg and mix hardening the shell as it realizes it has something to protect.

The new body swallows it and vogue wakes up when she hits the back of this new person’s throat.

It’s night when Vogue finally peels herself off the concrete. She’s surrounded by ash and covered in vomit. The cool night air seeps under her scalp reminding her brain to get up before someone finds her. Calculation that once ebbed in her dream churn again. 

She jumps and catches herself with crow’s wings on the late evening breeze that carries her home.

———————————

the second most important part about getting ready for a night out is eating. i think i’ve found the sweetest connections over food. the only korean i really know is ordering food, and its done me well. i go to the gimbab store i was too scared to go to my first day. i’m too hungry and too curious to care anymore. i know more korean than i realize and i can order and pay surprised that i understand everything she says. i sit in the corner and listen to what the lady behind me says as she pays, so i can repeat it later. 

i sit in the corner and it feels like home. there’s this dive hut in annandale that sells soojaebee out of the k-mart parking lot. Mommy would take me there when I was catching a cold. Sometimes she’d make it for me at home if I was really sick, letting me stretch the flour since i couldn’t give myself my own sickness. here, they have the same dark wooden table tops and boxy wood chairs. the same off white self serve watercooler and paper cups. the same metal chopsticks, spoons, and bucket at each table. a double ply roll of toilet paper next to it. they have the same calendar and samsung ac. a different ajuma with the same no bull shit attitude, apron, scuffle, and spoon. 

when i was halfway blind in my right eye and fully blind in the other i walked 7 miles across south side chicago for korean food. someone stole my speaker, it wasn’t hard since i couldn’t see where they were and my reflexes depended too much on sight to get a good swing. that’s alright, i have nothing better to do than to keep walking. what else was i supposed to do, call the cops? never that… and i didn’t care enough. my priorties shifted from the material in this state. i couldn’t see the restaurant that well, but i could hear and smell. the owner of the store tried to give me the menu, i could tell she’s ajuma by the sound of her walk and the way she yelled at her husband cooking in the back. she reminded me of my dead grandma from the smell that wafted from her kitchen to dance through my soul and no this is not dramatic because food does that to me. 

the first most important thing about getting ready for a night out is crying, at least the way i do it. i feel a lot, and sometimes i wonder if its worth the time it takes to release. i don’t know what exactly i’m crying about when i start but i get the gist when i’m done. i’m too embarrassed to share it let alone relive it in writing. maybe another time. 

i cry until i can’t do anything other than pray. i clutch my prayer beads and trace each sphere counting my breaths around the circle 3 times over before i can catch it again. i tilt my chin up to check the clock: 23:17.  it’s time to get ready. i put on my new top and some black cargo shorts and check my walk on the way out. i stop crying as i leave the hotel, the sun bends through moon flicking trails of salt framing my cheeks.

———————————

*** in part 2 i’ll introduce the namesake paris, the queen i met when i went out and about finding my people…