Kurippi in Korea: Going to a cathouse
by Chris Maupin, created Saturday, January 19, 2008, with permalink
The Shadowy
Underside of Korea
Experience with the oldest profession, in South Korea
It’s a March Friday and I have been pacing for an hour in the cold night outside a nondescript stairwell between two empty buildings in South Korea. Twin red-white-and-blue barber poles spin furiously just outside the black corridor between the buildings. I have circled this block ten times now, still lacking the courage to walk down those stairs.
What if it’s just a barbershop? Nonsense. Barbershops aren’t open at 12:30 A.M.
The brothel:
What if it’s expensive? — What if they don’t cater to foreigners? — Finally, I’ve never done this before. Round and round the barber pole in my mind spins, only to end up again at What if it’s just a barbershop?
I circle the block once more killing another ten minutes.
The stairwell again. My heart is a rib-ramming fist. Inside: a pungent cocktail of terror, teen-ish intrigue and curiosity. Outside: two barber poles and a taunting stairwell.
I’m inching my way sideways down the stairs now—my back to the wall and my palms soaked. My heart is an earthquake. I crane my neck to see the bottom of the stairwell. A glass shop door stands completely opaqued by a pink vinyl decal save for a five-by-eight inch rectangle. I knock softly with a trembling hand. At first, nothing. Then, like a magic-eight-ball , a woman’s ghostly face floats through the inky black to the small pane. She examines me with a polite smile before letting me in.
In the dim parlor I see her murky apparition. She is frosty pale with hair just blacker than the rambling catacombs of the brothel. * Visage (‘vizij) » noun [usu. in sing. ] poetic/literary » a person’s face, with reference to the form or proportions of the features. She is maybe 38, but her visage* seems older. Painted toenails in cheap flip-flops join two frosty white legs that disappear under a pair of pink silk shorts ringed with black lace. † Camisole (‘kameh-sole) » noun » a woman’s loose-fitting undergarment for the upper body, typically held up by shoulder straps and having decorative trimming. Above a matching camisole† hovers her face, punctured by two completely black, mascara encrusted eyes.
Almost apologetically she motions to the slippers by the door and then disappears behind a curtain to a nearby room. Two low whispers carry through the womb-like brothel. In a television’s flickering blue light I can make out a large space filled with random furniture covered in bed sheets.
“Zing!” the curtain slides back revealing the whore in pink leaning over a sofa talking with an obese woman in a huge T-shirt. The fat woman glances over her shoulder to size me up, mutters something to the whore and then returns to watching her soap opera at a near-mute volume.
“W60,000,” ‡‡ $60 USD the soft-spoken prostitute informs me on her return. She counts the bills and then hands them to the sow behind the curtain.
“Do you want a massage or — (crude palm fist gesture indicating sex)?”
I mimic the palm and fist gesture.
“This way.” She motions.
A chilling thought enters as I follow her through labyrinthine underground brothel: Is that woman her pimp?
We pass two dark, curtained rooms with doctors’ tables and hand showers. The rooms appear completely water-proof with drains in the floor. How large is this place? I wonder. I trail her, adolescently gawking at her trashy shorts shifting in the dark. My cock is hard with fear and lust when she stops. There, at the end of a shadowy and narrow hallway is a small ten-by-ten foot room with a weak red incandescent bulb and a short curtain door.
She utters something in Korean and motions for me to undress. How much do I undress? Is this where we have sex? But before I can ask she has already disappeared again. Lying naked and paralyzed on a cotton floor mat, I gaze at the office-like drop ceiling in the pale red glow. In another room, I can hear her rummaging through cabinets and boxes. A sink runs then stops. I can’t help but be reminded of that awkward wait between assistant and dentist.
She closes the draw curtains behind her and kneels into the room. This time she brings with her a couple of plastic tubs similar to the ones in the shower rooms. Two steaming white towels accompany a condom and two plastic bottles. Frozen, I listen to her alien chit-chat.
“‘I like Americans — they are kind to women.’ The comment’s irony isn’t lost on me.”
Squatting near me, she begins to scrub my cock with the hot wet towels. For me it’s an awkward elephant in the room; for her, an occupational hazard. Next, she removes her flimsy dime store lingerie with an almost masculine crudity—unabashedly exposing her brown anus as she bends over to step out of her pantyless shorts.
I endure a joyless blowjob, while examining her soft body — soft from a life of lying in a cot and waiting to be bought. § Warren » noun (also rabbit warren) » a network of interconnecting rabbit burrows. • a densely populated or labyrinthine building or district : a warren of narrow gas-lit streets. • Brit., historical an enclosed piece of land set aside for breeding game, esp. rabbits. A ceaseless existence, spent here, in this warren §, sleeping and being slept with. A condom package snatches me from my daydream.
Now underneath me, she spreads her limp legs revealing a hairless cunt. Her breasts slide limply over her bony ribcage. My mind drifts to an old lover who had a rather loose yet shallow pussy. The whore’s pink eraser nipples are rubbing my chest. Before long, I am filling her with jets of semen.
We attempt some limited small talk while dressing. In a dreamy opiate haze, she tells me she wants to see America someday. I tell her she should do it — but somehow we both know it’s fantasy. But who is the trick to call the whore deluded?
Back at my shoes she compliments me on my penis-size. “I like Americans — they are kind to women.” The comment’s irony isn’t lost on me.
At a different stair, she pats me on the rear and tells me to come again. I exit the plain metal door at the top and step outside to find myself in a completely different building on the street above—nothing to suggest that I just emerged from a brothel.
How clever. How thoughtful.