And the Glitter Spilled from Her Hands
People called him a kkab, some even went as far as to saying he was flamboyant. A lot of them questioned his sexuality but it didn’t particularly matter to Jokwon; he never likened to labels anyway.
Though, there was just one person whose opinion counted.
To Jokwon she was many things; a singer, a smile brighter than gems, a walking and talking pocketful of sunshine.
Most of all, as much as he detested reducing a person down to simply a category he was secretly proud that he could call her his own.
Her name was Tiffany, and she was his.
Jokwon’s popularity grew, faster than he had ever expected.
People change and Jokwon was no exception.
He tried brushing off these labels, but they clung everywhere he went, everywhere he looked. After all, the corporate world he worked in revelled on public consensus, creative freedom turned into demand by the mass; he needed to know what people thought of him. It was a passing joke here and there by has band mates, his colleagues, whether it be a friendly, playful slap on the ass or an off cut comment about the PD who was eyeing him before. And then there were those horrible internet comments that he couldn’t help but come back to.
He tossed over to Tiffany in their bed and pushed back her hair with his fingers.
“Miyoung,” he cooed.
“Hmm?”
“Do you ever worry that I’m not who I say I am and that the rest of the world is right?”
She opened her eyes, Jokwon didn’t sound like his usual playful self, “You mean the whole gay thing? I thought you said that you didn’t care.”
“But I might be. You don’t know that- I don’t know that.”
“Then what am I to you?” Tiffany said more seriously, silently panicking from within- Oh god maybe the rumours are true, “You’re not suddenly going to tell me you’re leaving me for a man are you?”
“No, God no. I love you, I really do. But you know, I’m not the manliest of men. I really like smelling good and looking nice.”
“And effeminate men aren’t allowed to find women attractive?”
Jokwon narrowed his eyes, “How about the other way around? Why do you like me? As I’ve said before, I’m not exactly macho or anything. You could be harbouring a latent preference for women that you don’t even know it. You know when I think about it; that Taeyeon, something tells me she likes you more than a friend.”
Tiffany chuckled, “Do I sense jealousy from the Jokwon? You forget that a man can be many things. Anatomically speaking what makes you man is your-”
Her unfinished sentence lingered playfully as her hand slyly slid down from his bare abdomen, only to have it slapped away, “No, seriously; tell me what is it that you like about me.”
“I love you because you do your own thing without caring what people think,” she pouted, “Or has that changed?”
Perhaps Tiffany had expected too much of him. The thing was, Jokwon didn’t know what to believe in anymore. Through his quest to find adoration from adorning fans, he had lost a bit of himself to the world and he wasn’t sure whether he’d get it back.
And then curiosity killed the cat.
With the constant verbal prompts and speculation by the media, it’s not hard to guess what came next. He started looking at men from a different light, wondering whether he’d ever be happier than he was already. God knows that most people are never satisfied with what they already have.
It wasn’t like he didn’t love Tiffany; he just wasn’t sure whether he loved her enough. They’d hit that plateau that every relationship has, where couples sit in comfortable silence with each other, where boredom and the uncertainty of whether you’ve found ‘the one’ test whether a relationship is worth the investment.
Maybe these were enough reasons for him to toy with fidelity, to find that peace of mind.
So when the moment came, where he found himself in that compromising position with the key grip, he wasn’t sure as to what to think, except for the fact that he receiving head- from a man. .
The man pulled away his hands still clamped around his buttocks and Jokwon’s fingers threaded through tufts of short black hair. All it took was a feral grin; Jokwon felt his stomach drop and his hands fell.
“You don’t know how long I’ve always wanted to do that,” he whispered hoarsely, roughly kissing the base of his neck.
The cool saliva that his brazen lips left as they trailed over Jokwon’s skin burned and branded him. He was now in a devastating predicament.
The worst thing was, there wasn’t a defining moment where he suddenly realized he didn’t like men, and there was only this horrible, crawling feeling of knowing something wasn’t right.
He told the man to go, not even having enough courage to sound his name, eyes cast elsewhere.
A door slam later; Jokwon was left in the cold stillness of the staff toilet.
It hurt to know that Tiffany was rehearsing for her group’s comeback, blissfully ignorant of anything that occurred within the past hour, probably laughing with her girlfriends talking about how great their boyfriends were.
God, he screwed up.
A lump clutched at his throat, tears mixed with sweat and he heaved his chest; the air so thick and humid. A rush of air filled his nostrils, down his trachea to his lungs and just like that, reality struck him like a bullet to the head.
Tiffany figured there was something wrong. She felt ugly, unwanted whenever he moved away when all she ever tried to do was to straighten down the stray ends of hair that stuck out from the back of his head.
A part of her knew that he’d done something he wasn’t meant to, something that would break her so, so…badly if she knew exactly what went down. She tried to save herself from the heart break; cautiously hoping nothing happened because she trusted him; he was always honest, with her and himself, especially himself.
Denial was her worst friend and her best enemy.
She snaked her arms around his waist by the quiet corner of the bookstore as he was flipping through a magazine.
Jokwon wasn’t reading a word from his page, though his actions spoke differently. It felt right, with her chest pressed against his back, her chin resting so perfectly over his right shoulder, her breath tickling his neck. And then he remembered whose lips had touched his neck so he punished himself, hurting her in the process and inched away, continuing to flip over the pages as if she wasn’t there.
He deserved none of it; her effort, her attention.
It wasn’t so much of a matter of ‘if’, as a matter of ‘when.’ The guilt was too much for Jokwon.
It was like every other night; he had his legs up on the coffee table, flicking through the channels. Really, he had no intention of watching anything.
The door clicked open and Tiffany came in. She looked so tired, hair loose around her shoulders, lipstick faded on her lips. For a split second, Jokwon wanted to back out; Tiffany didn’t need to know anything; she needed sleep, a shower, she could deal with it another day.
She smiled from across the room and Jokwon didn’t need to look to feel it’s warmth.
He itched to stand up and hug her, like he used to; ask her how her day was, what she wanted for dinner, tell her how beautiful she was. But he was weighed down by something bigger than him.
When he replied with silence, she sighed, leaning by the doorway to take off her heels and headed off to the kitchen.
This was what their relationship had boiled down to, not even a mere acknowledgement from across the room and it was his entire fucking fault.
He made his decision there and then, rising from the couch and stood across the dining table, scratching the back of his head.
Tiffany turned around from the fridge, a plate of preheated food in her hand. His sullen face gave it away, and Tiffany instinctively knew what was coming next.
“I cheated,” was all that left his lips.
For Tiffany, it was one of those things where she had to be told something before she believed it. She felt the truth pierce right through to the core of her bones and she dropped the plate; shards shattering everywhere on the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes pleading for some kind of response, but he was only met with silence as he saw the hurt wash over her face, “I’m so, so sorry.”
“With who? A man? A woman, who?”
They weren’t so much as questions waiting to be answered as more desperate demands.
“He was a key grip. It was nothing.”
And it was everything; only realizing how much he’d lost within the space of a few minutes from a stupid decision brought on by something he should have never believed in.
Tiffany scoffed. Of course.
“So what was it like? Sucking cock, getting butt fucked?” her tone seething with indescribable anger, that caused Jokwon to flinch, “Was it everything you hoped for? Is that the satisfaction you wanted?”
“No. I love you,” he responded hopelessly, fatalistically, truthfully.
She replied with a whisper so painfully soft that if it were anyone but Jokwon, would have missed, “I trusted that you didn’t care what they thought. I really, really trusted you.”
“I know, I shouldn’t have.”
And like some sick ironic twist, Jokwon had put thousands of nameless faces before Tiffany. He forgot about her, forgot how she was the one that was supposed to matter most out of the millions out there.
The silent disappointment that followed thereafter said it all and stung more than any scathing insult she could have thrown at him.
As quickly as Tiffany had stepped into their apartment, she left with the door clicking shut one last time and Jokwon made the mistake of not running after her.
She moved out and back to her group’s dorm. She left everything where it was but a few personal belongings; her clothes mainly. He thought that maybe taking everything else would be a painful reminder of their downfall he was responsible for.
Or maybe it was a sign that there was some chance that she’d come back to their place and forget that this ever happened. He just didn’t get that even though their apartment remained largely unaffected, the people that once lived there weren’t.
And Tiffany; well she was never quite the one to dwell on the past anyway. She ignored his calls, throwing out the flowers and little material gifts he’d send in return for her forgiveness.
It was all so typically cliché as break-ups went but it didn’t hurt any less.
He waited for her outside their dressing room, this time empty handed, only him. Tiffany wasn’t cheap; he couldn’t buy her way back into love.
She returned, arms linked around Taeyeon’s, stopping in her tracks at the sight of him. Her smile now vanished into a solemn jaw clench, she was probably whispering something along the lines of ‘get me the hell out of here,’ into Taeyeon’s ear.
Taeyeon shot him a heated glare and took her by the wrist, turning the other way.
“Wait,” he shouted from across the hall, turning heads from random acquaintances and strangers.
His voice sounded so weary; so different from anything Tiffany had ever known.
Tiffany pulled on Taeyeon’s hand, hesitating to walk on any further. She uttered quietly, and the girl whose hand she held glanced back questioningly, wondering if she’d heard right. Tiffany nodded prying off the small fingers off her wrist.
She walked up to the man, having second thoughts about her decision to even give him the satisfaction of looking him in the eye.
“What is it?”
When the moment came that he could finally try and win her over, Jokwon had close to nothing to say except for, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and ‘please forgive me.’ He hated how what he wanted to mean sufficed into less than ten words. It never seemed to say enough, but that’s was all he could muster.
“I’m just-,” he continued, “I’m so-, I can’t-.”
His breath snagged from his tightened throat. Jokwon never faltered in front of anyone but here he was failing at formulating the simplest of sentences at best.
Tiffany sensed the frustration from the force of his tone and it tugged at her heart, because she knew exactly what he was meant to say.
He was supposed to apologize for not running after her, for not trying harder than he already was, for fucking some random guy in the goddamn staff toilet cubicle, for being so impressionable, for changing, for not being perfect all the time.
She pressed a thumb against his lips, dragging it down to his stubbled chin, straightening down the stray curl of hair like she used to and shook her head as, it didn’t matter what Jokwon planned or didn’t plan to say, she’d already made up her mind before he had even started.
Jokwon has always had a fervour that was different from the rest. His passion was performing and it showed on screen. Tiffany faded into what she thought was the background. She had resumed to being one of his many spectators, sitting by the side still completely in awe of his blinding charisma.
From the exterior, Jokwon was still himself, as bold and daring as he was the first time he graced the stage.
On the inside he was more humbled. Unbeknownst to Tiffany was that he now performed less for himself, but more for the people that mattered to him; not the ones who’d only care about whether he was straight or gay and nothing else or the ones that laughed at him just because he was strangely different to what a proper man should be. He didn’t need people to telling him what he was and wasn’t.
He glanced knowingly into the audience space where he knew she’d be sitting, and belted his final note with absolute confidence and clarity.
She felt a glint of realistic hope, maybe not so much for them as a collective, but for Jokwon as a person. Change will forever be a constant and she could deal with that.
Tiffany could tell that Jokwon finally realized he was essentially, a league of his own.
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note: A key grip is 'the head of the grip department and chief rigging technician on (television show) set"- Wikipedia. Basically they manage lighting and stuff.
Thanks to my last minute beta.
I'd like to believe that the way you act shouldn't be defined because of what society expects from your gender. But, it never works out that way and maybe it shouldn't because categories keep things orderly...who knows.
Anyway, just an analysis on gender and sexuality.