Not only was he tall, dark and handsome, but also endlessly charming. His
short afro looked lumpy, and he often wore rumpled clothes, as if he’d just
gotten up from a nap. On anyone else it
would have looked sloppy, but it only added to his allure. In the same way that he moved easily among
Asians, Africans, Europeans and Americans, he spoke in a mixture of
French-accented English and Korean, sometimes adding a Portuguese word here and
there.
A long-time resident of Korea, he’d become a well-known fixture in Seoul
expat circles. Women were immediately
smitten by his flirty playfulness, and men were quickly put at ease by his
clever banter. It wasn’t far-fetched to assume that he had a girlfriend in
every province plus two or three more in Seoul. A bit of a renaissance man, over the years
he’d held several jobs ranging from IT to academia to the arts. He seemed to know someone everywhere.
I once attended a party sponsored by the Angolan embassy. He was there tirelessly twirling the women
around the dance floor, and in between, schmoozing with the men. At one point he noticed me at a table. “Why are you sitting? Come dance!”
It was less of a request, and more of a command. He swung me so expertly to the rhythm of the
intoxicating kizomba music, that he made me look like a pro despite my feeble
partner dancing skills. I giggled
self-consciously and made a valiant effort to keep up.
One day we bumped into each other in the hallway leading to the toilet at
Laurent’s wine bar, Le Moulin. He struck
up a conversation that went a bit deeper than the usual superficial small
talk. He discovered that, despite my
baby face, I, like him, was in my forties.
In that instant, as if he’d just slid on a pair of new glasses, he began
to see me differently. Although I was flattered by the belated attention, I was
also wary. Korean women can be very
territorial. If he had a Korean
girlfriend (or two), I didn’t want to get caught up in drama.
Late one September afternoon, I ran into him near Noksapyeong. “Are you busy now? Come meet my friends in
the park.” He was headed to an evening
picnic by the Han River. We got off at the
wrong station, and ended up having to walk more than a kilometer to the meeting
spot. He talked a bit about work, his
family, his philosophy of life, and other things. He complained that he hadn’t
had a girlfriend in a long time. I was
surprised because he was so popular, and more than a few women had crushes on
him. “Yes, everyone thinks I have so
many,” he lamented. Dusk had fallen, and we walked along quietly on the dark,
empty road.
“What do you think of monogamy,” he asked, placing the accent on the last
syllable of the word. “It’s necessary,”
I answered. He sighed heavily, and went
on a mini-rant about how frustrating it is to live in a world where so many
people are unenlightened about relationships.
Monogamy is unnatural, and we should be free to love as many people as
we want, he said. I didn’t say much, but in my head there was a lot going
on. I wanted to say, “If that’s what
you’re into, cool, but you’re on your own with that. Glad you mentioned it now before anything got
started between us. Good luck finding someone.”
I’m not jealous by nature, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect
mutual exclusivity from a romantic partner.
It wasn’t ‘til much later that the irony of what he said dawned on me. One minute he was complaining about not
having had a girlfriend in a while, and the next, he was ranting about people
not being more accepting of polyamory. How are you going to complain about not
having one, then rant about people not being interested to be one of
several? Greedy. Also, what flavor of polyamory is he
into? Had I been willing to step into
that portal with him, would I have been sharing him with other men, women or
both? You know what? It doesn’t even matter. ‘Cause I’m selfish,
and everything isn’t meant to be shared.
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