Liaison at the 포장마차 / bOtTLe caFé, Gwangju, Korea

Liaison at the 포장마차 (street food cart)

The man was short, his white cap matched his scuffed white track jacket, I think, though I didn’t get a good look at either. He was already done with one stick of 오댕 (processed fish cake) when I turned to look at the couple; his thin lips were chewing, smacking, stuffing the stuff past his teeth. The 오댕 stick was marked on the end with red paint, and it had flaked a bit on the tips of his fingers. He grabbed another stick and I stole a look at his companion. Her hair was dyed a shade of brown/red, the same shade I find my college freshmen favor, finally freed from 6 years of forced middle and high school dress code conformity. She was maybe 42, or perhaps 34, not any older than 45 and certainly not 29. Her shirt was unbuttoned one too many, not totally obvious but certainly adding to a general sort of atmosphere about her. Her hair stood out, mostly tucked behind ears, a few strands escaping at the temples; here in Korea, it stood out in much the same way a belly button ring would stand out on a mom-aged woman back in the States. Her glasses were framed with an ornate, spidery kind of wire that looked like it might frame the borders of the diary of a teenage vampire wannabe. She was the sort of person who you could tell was wearing a lot of makeup from say, 50 feet away, at a glance. The possibility of high boots disappeared under the sheen of gray business pants, and the frills of her white blouse contributed to the overall impression that she was just off work. She seemed simultaneously too well poised and too much sex for this man in the ratty white track jacket, loose khakis and blown out sneakers.

They spoke to each other in clips of sentences. I caught “one more?” as they reached into the bubbling broth for more fish on sticks, piling up spent sticks like kindling in front of them, fueling up for some ferocious activity or perhaps refueling after the same. I noticed the way they conjucated verbs - he spoke in 반말 (informally) and she in 존댓말 (respectfully). The woman at the cart blithely stirred the two vats of 떡볶이, and I munched on my 순대; we all ate around the 포장마차, brought together by the food there glistening, propped up on metal trays or laid out resplendent and magnificent, sugar glazed and spicy and marvelous, a cornucopia of Korean fast food. 닭꼬치 (chicken on a stick) sat lined up like matchsticks, and at their stick/feet sat hard boiled eggs, looking oddly and intensely fertile and glaringly unpeeled and white against the glazed brown of the chicken on their sticks. The man nudged his companion, he was ready to go and started walking, strutting and stretching his legs an impatient 10 feet from the truck; she looked back at him and asked “국물?” (broth?), and she ladled some of the 오댕국물 into a paper cup and he stuck his hand out and had at it, in the same way I imagine a hawk might approach a paper cup filled with broth, if gripping a paper cup was ever a possibility for a bird of prey. She handed the vendor a fiver and grabbed her change over the nubs and nodules of steaming food, and they clipped and scuffed their way down the street behind me.

As they left and I sighed and I took it all in, at all this food filling every possible surface of the transformed rear of this woman’s truck (it was indeed just an elaborately unfolded truck, blocking the end of a pedestrian street in Gwangju downtown), an end of a toilet paper roll serving as napkin/papertowel/whatever else, unfurled a little too much and blowing in the wind, the edge of chill in the late September air breathing a growing reminder of fall weather, and the street itself, this truck food cart in the middle of sidewalk and street with cars rumbling past, neon lights of cafes and banks and shops pulsing and situating the stroller or the street cart eater in the exact center of Korean society, at the epicenter and the keystone of it all, happening all around, as said eater munches on sugary/spicy fare in lieu of dinner. I had a little more broth in a paper cup, paid my 4,000 won (a little less than $4) and kept walking.

bOtTLe caFé, Gwangju, Korea

I was a little hesitant to go in, alone, but something about the gray painted steps and the Spanish music enticed me. The decision was made for me, thankfully, my feet dropped, one in front of the other, all the way up the steps. I nearly don’t remember the decision to just, enter. The music was loud upstairs in the restaurant, it was some sort of Spanish rhythm with instruments I can’t name but would like to. The lights were incandescent and you could tell – the light reminded me of an artist’s loft in a warehouse, or an Ikea, or a Home Depot with smooth painted concrete floors with snaking white cracks built right in, smooth and imperceptible to a finger’s touch (though I didn’t touch the floor, I’m guessing). The clientele was entirely, 100%, Korean girls in their 20s gesturing gently to each other and smiling.

I was greeted by half a dozen servers in white chef’s aprons, befuddled that I was alone but happy to see me. I indicated I wanted to sit at the front, on one of the two chairs conspiring with a couch around a coffeetable in front of a screen projecting some sort of movie featuring an Orthodox Jew shoveling his sidewalk. The sound was off (Spanish music had changed to something reminiscent of snake charmers and woven baskets).

I sat down in one of the chairs, which looked like it might be more comfortable on a porch somewhere tropical, and instantly felt like I was on safari, and knowing that this reaction was very misplaced, I continued to relentlessly believe it. The feeling was intensified by a very odd plant/tree – with a stick of a palm tree’s trunk and what looked like a tiny aloe vera cluster of fronds at the top, the palm-like trunk veering sharply to the right at the top, as if swaying to a windy day in a Dr. Seuss book.

Each and every table and chair in this café is different, and it's intentional. Curved back wooden chairs sneer across a white table at their straight backed metal counterparts. The center cushion of the couch opposite me is a different brown than the others. A leopard-ish print pillow sits against one side of the couch, waiting.

A menu arrives, and I order a glass of house red, and it comes in a kiddie swimming pool a couple of minutes later. I open my laptop to write something else, and then I started writing a sentence or two about this café, and then I couldn’t stop.

This place gives you an entire repurposed wine bottle full of water and a glass to start, and I had slurped ¾ of the way through mine before I even realized it. I guess I’d been thirsty.

P.S. They just gave me free nachos.