Bulgogi

  three shorts about eating

  by   Soyon Im

 

    images by Sara Kitamura

    issue 56, 7 sept 2009

 

 

 

 

Shin-Li was one of the few Asian guys I dated. I nicknamed his penis bulgogi, because the foreskin was brown and wrinkled like a piece of meat. He had an MFA in poetry, which made me think, wow, a poet. Maybe he’ll write a poem about me. He took me to Korean restaurants with good food but dirty bathrooms. I was a vegetarian, but I broke down when I smelled the beef sizzling at the table, drizzled with soy sauce and garlic, burned crisp at the edges. I always paid, for Shin-Li didn’t have much money, though he had enough for beer, records and cigarettes. We dated for two months; the break-up dragged two years. Sometimes, he’d come to my apartment, booze on his breath, and sing my name toward an open window. I’d rush, like a Pavlovian dog, hungry for the scraps of a relationship he threw my way.

 

 

Betty, my best friend in high school, was cheap and proud of it. During a trip, we ate Fig Newtons for lunch and dinner. When I suggested going to a restaurant, she said, “Oink, oink.” In Boston, I spotted a flyer advertising a free 100-course feast. We walked for hours to a brick townhouse. Inside, a crowd was sitting on the floor, chanting, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.” We didn’t know what that meant, but we wanted to feast. The chanting intensified. I started singing along, half-afraid I was being hypnotized. At midnight, the music stopped. I stood up and shook away the pin pricks from my legs. A monk in an orange robe handed me a plate. I was disappointed. There were five courses, all cold. But the monk was nice. He was 23, old for me then. I could tell that if he’d had hair, he’d be very cute.

 

 

My father made curry when he came to visit. Unlike Umma, who cooked with speed and agility, Ahpa took his time. He chopped onions carefully, deliberately, as if he were cutting diamonds. He peeled the potatoes and cubed them neatly. He simmered the beef until the meat fell off the bones. His curry, as a result, was thicker than I was used to. Thicker like Ahpa, who seemed fatter and grayer each time I saw him. Ahpa worked abroad, and he sent me postcards from places like London, Paris, Madrid. I showed them off to friends, whose dads seemed suburban and boring in comparison. But once, I found a computer print-out of all the days Ahpa had spent with us that year. There had been three trips, but they amounted to eleven days. Eleven days. Not even two weeks. Maybe that’s why my father was so generous with the curry.