She had dimmed the lighting and some jazz was playing on the DVD player. I took my position again on the couch. There were cooking smells coming from the kitchen area that formed one side of the living room separated by a bench and bar stools. I smelled boiling water, salt, herbs and tomatoes and there was the sound of chopping. I didn’t look over my shoulder. I had decided to let things unfold and accept whatever dish of experience was offered.
‘Feeling better?’
‘Tremendous,’ I said lounging back into the sofa.
‘Almost ready,’ she said. I heard the ping of a microwave and also the opening and closing of a fridge door. In a moment she was coming to join me, humming something in Korean to herself, holding a tray: on it were three small white bottles and two small ceramic cups. There were also various pickles, seaweeds and something hot-pancake squares with all kinds of vegetables cooked into them. She must have had a supply and quickly microwaved them. There was also a kimchi for good measure, which still smelled like detergent. Some things one never gets used to. She poured with the right hand, while holding the elbow with her left, then passed me the bottle. The liquor was milky-white.
‘Now you pour for me,’ she said. Being left-handed, I transferred the plastic bottle.
‘No, no. The Korean way,’ she said, re-positioning it in my right with my left just below the elbow as she had done. It seemed strange, but seeing that I had decided to surrender to whatever came, I accepted her direction and filled her cup.
‘We always pour for each other. It is polite.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said.
Now she picked up her wine cup with two hands, nodding for me to do the same.
‘Both poised and ready, she said ‘One shot!’ indicating for us to down our drinks at the same time.
The drink was both sweet and sour, almost rough and raw and she was quickly refilling for me, and I for her.
‘This is really nice,’ I said, ‘the best thing I’ve tried in Korea, by far.’
‘Makgeolli was a farmer’s drink. It’s beer. Made from mixed grains and fermented; it gives strength,’ She laughed, I guess wondering whether I got her joke. ‘Ah, you just need a good guide.’
‘Thankfully, I have found one,’ and looked straight at her.
‘Yes, you have,’ she giggled. ‘Okay, now we play!’
With that, she deftly undid the soft belt around my bathrobe and found my penis, already hardening in her chubby little palms. Then she kneeled between my legs and took me in her mouth, working my shaft into the mollusk of her mouth, bringing her tongue to bear, on occasion, from root to cock-head; and soon she changed her strategy of arousal by putting the whole of my scrotal sac into her mouth and rolling the testicles around like small, hard-boiled eggs.
‘Mmmm,’ she said and then worked me harder and faster. Already aroused from the shower, I couldn’t hold myself back any longer and came prematurely with a loud release, jetting my load between her lips.
‘Mmmm,’ I heard her say again, sitting up now before me and swilling my viscous whiteness around in her mouth, giggling and making eyes at me, letting some dribble out the side and then playfully pushing it back in with a finger. Then, without swallowing, she put her powerful arms around my neck and kissed me with the mouth full of my own cum. The residue of the white rice beer in my mouth merged with that taste of semen. I had never tried anything like this before. It was indescribable. My wife, Pearl Lin, would have died of shock.
June passed the load into my mouth and followed with her tongue sucking it back and forth, giving and taking, giving and taking—her pink tongue moving like a sea worm in our salty current. It grew in volume with our saliva, the full flavour of those two white essences perfectly matched and mixed now into one white cocktail of human sugars and acids. Then, with the same trademark deftness, she sucked my ejaculate back into her mouth, took ownership of it, so to speak, withdrew from my lips and swallowed it down with a satisfying release.
‘Ahhhhh,’ she said licking her lips and fingers. ‘Thanks for the vitamin pill. So nice. Now you know the secret of my young complexion,’ she laughed. ‘This is June’s own special technique for drinking Korean rice beer,’ she said with a slutty twinkle in her eye. ‘You like?’
‘I like. That was awesome. Come back here!’ With that I grabbed, but despite her dimensions, she had easily out-manoeuvred me to the side of the sofa and was now pouring me another cup of the milky beer. I took her cue and did the same for her.
‘One shot!’ We both said, and holding each cup with two hands, drained our drinks.
‘Now I must check on dinner and I will take my little shower. Okay?’
‘Sure. Please.’
Yes, I was in the hands of a big Korean sea-nymph who was kind, creative and sexier than I could ever imagine. After the entree, I wondered what was coming next.
The jazz played on in the background and it seemed that the fish in the aquarium were swimming in sequence to the beat, now turning this way, flashing another direction on cue. Despite the violation of etiquette, I poured myself another cup of rice beer and even picked at the side dishes, trying the pancake slices. Yes, kind of like a Korean pizza,I thought, and munched happily on one. I even tried a forkful of the black seaweed and a cube or two of pickled turnip. Downed with the rice beer, they weren’t too bad. In fact, they complemented each other. But I still steered clear of the kimchi.
The fish continued their technicolour routines in the aquarium and now I looked around and saw a painting on the wall. It was a portrait of the old haenyo.
Wang and June had brought me to see these famous women divers along the Jeju coastline earlier in the day. Her mother had been a diver, and June herself had imbibed from a young age that same trait of fierce independence of the haenyo, who didn’t rely on husbands to earn a living. I thought this was most unusual in an Asian culture; certainly different from my Singapore upbringing.
I got up to study more closely: Two women were sitting on the rocks.
The grandma in the blue one-piece was smoking a cigarette, the other had a white cloth around her loins and was stretching and scratching the back of her head with her magnificent breasts and orange-tipped nipples exposed to the afternoon sunlight. In the background, you could see the green-mesh trap with its orange float and a small trident used to loosen shellfish from underwater cracks and crevices.
They were coarse, Rubenesque, heavy jowled, with almost bulbous red clown noses. Perhaps this was the result of prolonged cold water diving and holding your breath at depth. I looked at the right bottom corner of the painting. There was a name or inscription written in Korean and a date: 1956.
I couldn’t help myself, so I found my phone and took a picture of the painting. It was so beautiful, and June Park could be found in every centimetre of it.
I felt as if I was swimming in the sea and moved and swayed in time with the jazz and the fish, until the next pleasant surprise of the evening: June had bathed and there she was dressed in traditional Korean red-and-white costume with her hair made up. I had seen photos of this courtly garb before, but had not realized that it really was a ‘fat’ dress. The red blouse at the top came up just under her breast-line and the skirt fanned out conically below into a wide circumference touching the floor.