...and time seemed reassuringly cognate. With the memory of that light, white American, Kimberly Debecrois--or something French--pulling away from his gr... ...ully that he began to believe it himself. On canvas, distorting the French-American into an Asian half-breed and a lady of the night, he brought to hi... ...erything merely seemed. In his last conscious moment as he faced the tidal wave that he hoped would claim him fully into sleep--instead of those small... ...e that he hoped would claim him fully into sleep--instead of those smaller waves whose prehensile inundations formed such an ineffective grasp--he won... ...d uncomely Laotian, should seem sensual to him now. No, he thought, with a new idea repudiating the old, the only peculiarity was that as a casualty o... ... minute of temporary derangement that was quite natural in life, a game of musical chairs in which the chairs also moved. He further averred that a mo... ...mirrors could do. Still, while moving out of the toilet and pondering this new justification for male promiscuity within the corridor between the two ... ... all Thai holidays. For it was on such days that happy or speciously happy groups burgeoned rife on sidewalks as a type of rank urban wildflower; and ... ...e steps of shopping malls where the roots of these blooming and ambulatory groups more fully tangled his steps like seaweed washed on crowded shores. ...

... suffering a midlife crisis, he abandons supercilious makings of wealth for a train trip ride to Laos where he repudiates and ventures onto something new...

...and letting a cigarette dangle limp in a frown, Sang Huin realized that this new friend of his was not just straying off briefly, so he gradually went... ...world's biggest dummy. Sang Huin gave his typical defense of "Miguk sarem" ("American") which would bring on a confused and critical look--in this cas... ...rica, and so existing as a Korean only by birth and race definitely made him American in every way but a legal one. Most persons under such a scenario... ...en a month ago that Sung Ki had left him. Sung Ki: even now the name sounded musical. After the video pang girl's attempt at marital entrapment, this... ...wife and children unbearable, and even his hobby of playing a cello was as a musical dilettante. He looked out of the window and smoothed out his hair... ...nts at a language institute but stayed contained to his own students and his new friend, Sung Ki. That night they slept together; and the boy that had... ...a mokotong. He locked the locker and felt "Honja" ("alone). Even among large groups of people he was alone. When he went to restaurants he was usually... ... on the steam that rose above his head, exhausted itself on the mirrors, the waves that he had created which massaged his psyche in sight, feel and so... ...nd the mutilation calcified by experience. Seoul Tiger gets on a plane. He waves goodbye to his mother and father from the window. He feels the pla...

...This work is about a Korean American teaching in his homeland, feeling lost in Korean culture and that his own life is an outlier to this conservative society. As he lives there, making his living as an English teacher, he writes of Gabriele, a single ...