like a fish out of water
like a fish out of water
pg
jiyong-centric. includes hints of gdragon/top.
“I knew you’d decide to be all right,” he says. The televisions on the wall play the news, a music video, a documentary on human rights violations. The children are skinny and small with big heads, like drawings of aliens.
Jiyong is watching the flies dance from refugee to refugee and doesn’t answer, at least not for a few minutes. Then his eyes focus and he nods and stands and bows, the way his body knows how to, a smile stretching at his cheeks. When he leaves, he holds the door so that it doesn’t slam. It clicks into place, the thick metal bar filling the wooden hole, the cool knob twisting of its own accord.
In the rooms there are people practicing. He can feel the thump of bass beats and the synchronized stomping of shoes, the shout and callback of instructors and dancers, all the things that thrill him. They don’t come in clear enough to hit him in the heart this time. Instead, they float down and ping against his consciousness like fishing hooks in water. His toes curl in their shoes and he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his soft blue sweater as he winds his way out of the building. When he emerges the wind is soft and the weather muggy. He sneaks past the waiting van and begins to walk home.
There are people everywhere. People eating things as they walk, men holding suitcases that bounce against their legs, children in uniforms and old women in uniforms and young girls in uniforms. The girls’ eyes dance under blunt-cut bangs and the children’s uniforms are all dirty and the old women sweep the streets and Jiyong feels out of place here, in this city, with his stretchy plaid pants and his cap pulled over his head, so he ducks into a thrift store and sells it all, emerging from the darkened door with a plain white button-down, slacks that are too short, no-name tennis shoes, a maroon oversized beanie. It makes him feel clean.
He moves past buildings and streets and walkways and houses and soon he is on the long sidewalk that leads to the hostel. The sky is dark and he would check his watch to see what time it is, but he’d sold it, so he soldiers on. The cars whiz by, flinging particles of soil and miniscule rocks at his feet and into his face. He wonders about the van, where it is, how many rocks and dead insects are stuck into its grills, how many dirt clods are wedged into the tires.
Inside the lobby he greets the doorman and goes up the elevator and slips into the house. It is silent for a second, and then there are dogs running and clawing up his legs, slipping on the cheap polyester. Jiyong walks into the kitchen and funnels dog food into the three bowls and steps away from a curious Gaho. He shuts the door in the dog’s face and goes to bed, covering his head with a pillow so he doesn’t hear the scratching.
---
“Don’t watch me,” he says. “I don’t like it.”
Gaho is there and Charlie is there and Seunghyun is there, at the desk. The computer is on but he’s got one of the dogs in his arms, scratching behind its ears. “Who says I’m watching you?” he says, but the computer is flipping through an iTunes album covers screensaver, the monitor dim, and Jiyong knows.
“Don’t treat me like that,” he says. Seunghyun doesn’t have to say like what because Jiyong can read and in the slope of his eyebrows, the downward set of his mouth, he sees disappointment, he sees pity.
“They drove all around the city,” Seunghyun says, “looking for you.”
He says nothing, wishing the pillow were still there, settled cloudlike against his face.
“They called your parents.”
Jiyong watches his hands open and close on the white bedspread.
“Maybe you should take another vacation,” he tries. “We don’t have anything going on after your concert.”
French pastries and coq au vin and coffee, lots of coffee, and clothes to bring back in suitcases he has to pack. Jiyong musters up the energy to turn over, to find his pillow.
Seunghyun is silent. Then he stands. He can hear the snuffle of dog noses and the whine of his puppy and then the door closes and everything is quiet.
---
I make music for teenage girls, he writes, and I can’t do anything better than that.
The characters are black and bold on the scales. He is in the studio and there are people playing guitars and drums and basses and violins and pianos and he thinks it’s all for naught. It’ll get drowned out in the mindless screaming anyway. He folds the paper into squares and pockets it. He has to lead this rehearsal so he drinks soda and smiles for the cameras and sings and dances with his body.
His mind is still at home, pillowed in his clean, quiet room with the windows open, but only enough to let the air snake in and out.
---
“Make me feel better,” he mumbles, and Seunghyun is pushing him away, zipping up his jacket, buttoning up his jeans for him even though he’s just undid them. Seunghyun cranes his neck away like Jiyong’s mouth hurts him, he cups his face with his fingers and tells him to just sleep, tries to tuck him in but Jiyong doesn’t want sheets, he wants to burst out of the water fresh and clean like a salmon wrenched out by the mouth.
“Go to sleep,” he says, and his voice is rough, and Jiyong knows he can slink back into his arms and push and push until he gets what he wants, but there is no challenge there and he is already tired so he settles back against the mattress and closes his eyes. Then there are fingers ghosting along the pale planes of his face and breath feathering against his cheek and then the bed dips and he is alone. Jiyong thinks of the music Seunghyun likes to listen to, how he can catch bits and scraps of the English, she said ‘space is not just a place for stars’.
He pads out of the room, past a frozen Seunghyun in the hallway, and slinks in between his own blankets, his own comforter. He stays there.
---
The room is bursting with color. There are crowned lights in the audience and big florescent tubes packed together on the stage, the heat pulsing against his back as they switch on and off. The dancers are white and then black and then all different colors, different silhouettes and shapes. Jiyong goes from one style to the next, coordi-noonas peeling the sweat slicked layers away like a fishmonger sloughing off scales, and then Jiyong is dancing, the mic light in his hand, pressed up to his mouth, and his mind is right there and he’s trying so hard to commit this all to memory, he wishes he had film slots up behind his eyes to catch every crying girl and every strobe and every bead of sweat that drips onto the stage and the cut of his hand through the air.
This is what I want, he thinks, just this.
---
“Don’t,” Seunghyun snaps, slamming the laptop shut with so much force the hinge breaks clean in half.
Jiyong frowns and swears and fingers the broken plastic. “What was that for?” he asks.
A Naver search on his cell phone tells him everything he needs to know. He can feel Seunghyun’s eyes boring into him, hear the aborted murmur of an apology that isn’t his to make, but Jiyong only shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says, and he can’t help but laugh. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
Outside he takes a breath, the cigarette smoldering in his hand. He takes a drag. It burns deep into his throat, down into his lungs.
It’s like drowning.
pg
jiyong-centric. includes hints of gdragon/top.
“I knew you’d decide to be all right,” he says. The televisions on the wall play the news, a music video, a documentary on human rights violations. The children are skinny and small with big heads, like drawings of aliens.
Jiyong is watching the flies dance from refugee to refugee and doesn’t answer, at least not for a few minutes. Then his eyes focus and he nods and stands and bows, the way his body knows how to, a smile stretching at his cheeks. When he leaves, he holds the door so that it doesn’t slam. It clicks into place, the thick metal bar filling the wooden hole, the cool knob twisting of its own accord.
In the rooms there are people practicing. He can feel the thump of bass beats and the synchronized stomping of shoes, the shout and callback of instructors and dancers, all the things that thrill him. They don’t come in clear enough to hit him in the heart this time. Instead, they float down and ping against his consciousness like fishing hooks in water. His toes curl in their shoes and he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his soft blue sweater as he winds his way out of the building. When he emerges the wind is soft and the weather muggy. He sneaks past the waiting van and begins to walk home.
There are people everywhere. People eating things as they walk, men holding suitcases that bounce against their legs, children in uniforms and old women in uniforms and young girls in uniforms. The girls’ eyes dance under blunt-cut bangs and the children’s uniforms are all dirty and the old women sweep the streets and Jiyong feels out of place here, in this city, with his stretchy plaid pants and his cap pulled over his head, so he ducks into a thrift store and sells it all, emerging from the darkened door with a plain white button-down, slacks that are too short, no-name tennis shoes, a maroon oversized beanie. It makes him feel clean.
He moves past buildings and streets and walkways and houses and soon he is on the long sidewalk that leads to the hostel. The sky is dark and he would check his watch to see what time it is, but he’d sold it, so he soldiers on. The cars whiz by, flinging particles of soil and miniscule rocks at his feet and into his face. He wonders about the van, where it is, how many rocks and dead insects are stuck into its grills, how many dirt clods are wedged into the tires.
Inside the lobby he greets the doorman and goes up the elevator and slips into the house. It is silent for a second, and then there are dogs running and clawing up his legs, slipping on the cheap polyester. Jiyong walks into the kitchen and funnels dog food into the three bowls and steps away from a curious Gaho. He shuts the door in the dog’s face and goes to bed, covering his head with a pillow so he doesn’t hear the scratching.
---
“Don’t watch me,” he says. “I don’t like it.”
Gaho is there and Charlie is there and Seunghyun is there, at the desk. The computer is on but he’s got one of the dogs in his arms, scratching behind its ears. “Who says I’m watching you?” he says, but the computer is flipping through an iTunes album covers screensaver, the monitor dim, and Jiyong knows.
“Don’t treat me like that,” he says. Seunghyun doesn’t have to say like what because Jiyong can read and in the slope of his eyebrows, the downward set of his mouth, he sees disappointment, he sees pity.
“They drove all around the city,” Seunghyun says, “looking for you.”
He says nothing, wishing the pillow were still there, settled cloudlike against his face.
“They called your parents.”
Jiyong watches his hands open and close on the white bedspread.
“Maybe you should take another vacation,” he tries. “We don’t have anything going on after your concert.”
French pastries and coq au vin and coffee, lots of coffee, and clothes to bring back in suitcases he has to pack. Jiyong musters up the energy to turn over, to find his pillow.
Seunghyun is silent. Then he stands. He can hear the snuffle of dog noses and the whine of his puppy and then the door closes and everything is quiet.
---
I make music for teenage girls, he writes, and I can’t do anything better than that.
The characters are black and bold on the scales. He is in the studio and there are people playing guitars and drums and basses and violins and pianos and he thinks it’s all for naught. It’ll get drowned out in the mindless screaming anyway. He folds the paper into squares and pockets it. He has to lead this rehearsal so he drinks soda and smiles for the cameras and sings and dances with his body.
His mind is still at home, pillowed in his clean, quiet room with the windows open, but only enough to let the air snake in and out.
---
“Make me feel better,” he mumbles, and Seunghyun is pushing him away, zipping up his jacket, buttoning up his jeans for him even though he’s just undid them. Seunghyun cranes his neck away like Jiyong’s mouth hurts him, he cups his face with his fingers and tells him to just sleep, tries to tuck him in but Jiyong doesn’t want sheets, he wants to burst out of the water fresh and clean like a salmon wrenched out by the mouth.
“Go to sleep,” he says, and his voice is rough, and Jiyong knows he can slink back into his arms and push and push until he gets what he wants, but there is no challenge there and he is already tired so he settles back against the mattress and closes his eyes. Then there are fingers ghosting along the pale planes of his face and breath feathering against his cheek and then the bed dips and he is alone. Jiyong thinks of the music Seunghyun likes to listen to, how he can catch bits and scraps of the English, she said ‘space is not just a place for stars’.
He pads out of the room, past a frozen Seunghyun in the hallway, and slinks in between his own blankets, his own comforter. He stays there.
---
The room is bursting with color. There are crowned lights in the audience and big florescent tubes packed together on the stage, the heat pulsing against his back as they switch on and off. The dancers are white and then black and then all different colors, different silhouettes and shapes. Jiyong goes from one style to the next, coordi-noonas peeling the sweat slicked layers away like a fishmonger sloughing off scales, and then Jiyong is dancing, the mic light in his hand, pressed up to his mouth, and his mind is right there and he’s trying so hard to commit this all to memory, he wishes he had film slots up behind his eyes to catch every crying girl and every strobe and every bead of sweat that drips onto the stage and the cut of his hand through the air.
This is what I want, he thinks, just this.
---
“Don’t,” Seunghyun snaps, slamming the laptop shut with so much force the hinge breaks clean in half.
Jiyong frowns and swears and fingers the broken plastic. “What was that for?” he asks.
A Naver search on his cell phone tells him everything he needs to know. He can feel Seunghyun’s eyes boring into him, hear the aborted murmur of an apology that isn’t his to make, but Jiyong only shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says, and he can’t help but laugh. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
Outside he takes a breath, the cigarette smoldering in his hand. He takes a drag. It burns deep into his throat, down into his lungs.
It’s like drowning.