When I was stationed in Korea at the 5th Preventive Medicine Unit (PMU), I was a regular customer of the King Club in Itaewon-Dong. I can’t remember if it was the second or the third time that I went down to the King Club, but I believe that it was the second time. I went with the guy who would ultimately wind up being the best man at my wedding. His name was Donald Koenig. His wife was also in the Army, and they were command sponsored. And both of them were stationed in Seoul. Donald or Don as I called him, introduced me to a waitress in the King Club. Her name was Miss Kim. I got the feeling from the introduction and the conversation exchange, that Don was trying to hand her off to me. And I thought to myself, “Why would he do that, Wright? Well, one possibility is that he’s dating her on the side. Do you really think so, Wright? Well, do you have a better suggestion? No. But he’s married. Since when has that ever stopped anyone from sowing their wild oats? Never. Exactly.” And that led me to conclude that he might be cheating on his wife. Well, I also had one other clue. His wife didn’t exactly trust him either. He would disappear from work during the day for stretches of an hour to an hour and a half at a time most days of the week. And his wife would call and ask for him at work usually during those times when he was gone. But she wouldn’t call just once or twice. Oh no. She would call like every 10 minutes over and over and over again. And her questions would always be the same, “Hello. Is Don there? Do you know where he went? Do you know when he’ll be back? Did he say where he was going?” After the second or third time that I got the third degree from his wife, I cornered Don and said, “look I am sick to death, and tired of the third degree from your wife. When she calls over and over and over again, I don’t have answers for her incessant questions. And I ain’t going to lie to her. Where in the hell do you disappear to?” I got no answer. Well, it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes very long to do his detective work to solve this case, and you sure as hell wouldn’t need a rocket science degree to assist him either. But the next day, Don walked up to me and said, “Hey Wright, I gotta go check on some parts at one of the Korean auto-parts outlets. I’ll be gone about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. If my wife calls, tell her I went to look for parts. I couldn’t think of anything that we needed parts for. So, I thought, “That’s a bullshit story if I’ve ever heard one.” And sure enough, his wife called. So, I gave her the bullshit story. I guess she bought it because she hung up and didn’t call back. Gull-e-bull. Gullible. But who am I to judge? And this orchestrated clown show went on for a while until maybe two or three weeks before my wedding. But that’s another story. Anyway, Don introduced me to his lady friend, Miss Kim. As Korean women go, she was good-looking. She was a very attractive woman. I could tell that she really liked Don. When I say she really liked him, she really liked him in the biblical sense of the word. I could tell they had that type of a relationship. I don’t know if Don was worried about something, but he knew he had to unload some baggage. Thus, the introduction between me and Miss Kim. Miss Kim kind of played cat and mouse with me at first. And if you haven’t guessed by now, I was the mouse. It took me a while to figure out that she was playing games, but I caught on. One time when she had the night off, she told me to meet her at the Seven Club. The Seven Club was located up a long alley at the top of the hill from the King Club. However, she didn’t go to the Seven Club. The next night, when I went to the King club, I asked her where she had been. She said that I must’ve misunderstood her. I didn’t misunderstand. She misled me. Strike one. Shame on me. Another time, she told me to wait for her after her shift. Her shift didn’t end until 11:50 PM. The problem was that curfew started at 12 o’clock midnight. Everybody had to be off of the streets by midnight. There was no way I could make it back to Yongsan by midnight. After I had been in Korea a few months, a minor problem like that would not have bothered me. I would have just dashed through back alleys where the Korean National Police (KNP), the Korean Military Police (KMP), and the US Forces Korea (USFK) Military Police (MP) usually would not be looking. Then, when I got to the small pedestrian gate at the South Post of Yongsan, I would just slide the gate guard 1000 won to let me slip through the gate. But a greenhorn doesn’t know those kinds of things. A greenhorn doesn’t take those kinds of risks. So, naturally, I didn’t take those kinds of risks. Strike two. Watch your ass. We had a dilemma. The clock said it was 11:55 PM. We needed to get somewhere quickly. There was literally nowhere to go. She didn’t want me to go to her place. That right there spoke volumes. That right there told me everything I needed to know. Miss Kim liked me but she didn’t like me in any biblical sense. And I gathered that our relationship would never blossom into that type of a relationship. Time to head on down the highway. Except, now was not that time. We were standing in the alley outside the back door of the King Club and time was running out. I thought for sure tonight would be the night that I would go to jail. But somebody upstairs must really like me. Why, you ask? That is an excellent question. Cuz just as the sirens announcing the start of curfew started to blare, the back door to the King Club opened. Guess who popped out that door? No. It wasn’t my fairy godmother. No. It wasn’t the tooth fairy. No. It wasn’t the Wizard of Oz. Do you give up? It was one of the band members. He had stepped out to smoke a cigarette. When he saw Miss Kim and me, he asked, “Did you get locked out after the curfew?” What an obvious duh moment. Miss Kim replied, “Yes we did.” The band member asked us to come in so we wouldn’t get caught by the police. After that fiasco, I stayed the hell away from Miss Kim. I think she got the message that I was avoiding her. Cuz after about two weeks, she tried to turn the charm on with me. I told her, “Miss Kim, I am not playing your cat and mouse game anymore. Find a different guy to screw with.” She asked, “Don’t you like me?” “It’s not a question of liking you. You act like a jerk around me. You act like you don’t like me. Or, if you do, you do not respect me.” “Don hurt me. You know that, right?” “Yes. I get that. But I’m not Don. And didn’t you know he was married? How did you think things with him were going to end?” “I didn’t know he was married until you told me.” “Really? That’s kind of hard to believe.” Anyway, Miss Kim and I worked out our issues and became good friends. However, we were not destined to become friends in a biblical sense. Later, Miss Kim would ultimately quit her job as a waitress at the King Club to emigrate to New York City. My relationship with Miss Kim had proven to be just another exercise in futility.
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