Mi-Jun: My Sort-of Girlfriend, Kind of. To Some Extent. (And the Third Woman I Slept With.)

(Previous Story: Tracy, Number Two.)

This was an odd relationship I had while in grad school. For reference, the first two women I slept with (Harriet and Tracy are written about in other articles.)

In September of my first year in grad school, I was at a party that was being held for the first-year students. It was in a bar that wasn't too far from the University, and there were at least a hundred or so students present. We all had to wear those inane "Hi, my name is:" tags. I hate those, they always spend half the evening with two corners unsecured and, consequently, fall-off midway through the event.

I was standing in line for refreshments. I was kind of far-back in the line and was a little irritated because all the good food had already been cleaned-out. Suddenly, a tag fell-off the young lady in front of me. She was about five feet tall, Asian, and wore wire-rimmed glasses with ovular frames. I picked-up the tag. It said: "Hi, my name is: Mi-Jun Kim".

I handed it back to her.

"I hate wearing these. They never stick." She gave a curt, toothy smile. Her skin was flawless and smooth. The same color as coffee and cream. Oh yes, I certainly noticed her.

The rest of the evening progresses.

About a week later, I was walking through the library. Suddenly, sitting alone at a table, I see Mi-Jun. I walk-up.

"Hi, you're Mi-Jun Kim, right?" She looked surprised. Well, that's to be expected: a stranger comes-up and says your name.

"Yes, how did you know?"

"Oh, I saw your name tag at the party last week."

"Oh. Who are you?"

"I'm NiceGuy, I'm a first-year student in the grad program too. May I sit-down?"

So, I sit-down and start talking. I get to know her, she's from Seoul and this was her second month in the U.S. She spoke English fairly well. We're in one of the same classes, actually. The class was so large I'd never even noticed she was in it.

I'm being super-friendly. Boy, she looked smart and was fashionably-dressed. I'd love to have a girlfriend like her. As we talk, she asks me: would I be willing to help her practice English? I smile. Why sure! She offers to pay me for my time, but I'm too polite to accept payment.

So, we make a deal: I help her with her writing-intensive courses, and she'd help me with the math courses. (She was good at math. It's NOT a stereotype in her case, because she really was good at math. I, however, suck at calculus.)

I offer to take her to dinner later that week, she accepts.

Friday rolls-around, we go to a nearby Olive Garden, and I'm just pleased as punch to be with her. Afterwards she invites me back to her apartment. She offers me a beer and some dried squid (yum!).

So, we settle-down on her bed and watch Jerry MacGuire. I'd never seen the film before. We sip beer and gnaw on tough squid. About halfway through the film, she snuggles-up to me. My heart starts pounding in my chest. Ohmygod. I... I'm nervous as hell now. What do I do? I put my arm around her and we watch the film together. We slowly start to escalate the touching and cuddling as the movie progresses.

The movie ends, we start to kiss. Our hands roam over each other's bodies, and I can hear the blood rushing through my ears. She slides up into my lap and we start taking-off our clothes. I'm nervous as hell. I whisper nervously as I undo her bra.

"What do you want me to do?"

The bra flies into the corner. She tilted her head-back to look at the ceiling. I smooth my hands over her shoulders and down her arms. She closed her eyes and whispered back.

"Everything..."

The next morning.

"Holy crap! What do I do?!" I asked myself as I drove home. I'd woken-up minutes ago, and bid Mi-Jun farewell with a hug and a kiss. And I promised her I'd call her soon. "What do I do?!" My clothes looked like... well, as if I'd crumpled them up and thrown them in a corner.

I got-home, immediately called Carey, one of my female friends.

"What the hell do I do, Carey??" I asked. "I mean... she slept with me! This is something which has only happened... um... with two other women up until now, and I didn't like how those other two experiences turned-out at all. What happens if she thinks I'm not good-looking enough? What happens..." She interrupted me.

"Do you like her? Was she good in bed?" She asked.

"Um... yes and yes. She was wild, in fact. She licked me all-over."

"Well, she must really like you. Just relax, be yourself and enjoy." Very well. Relax, eh? Relax. Relax. Relax. I spent a whole weekend of stomach-knotting relaxation plotting my next move.

So, Mi-Jun and I started to date. We go to movies. We go to dinner. We spent the weekends together. I showed her the city, and we studied together. Best of all, we had sex. In fact, I had more sex with her in a one-month period than I'd ever had in my whole life up until that point. I thought she was turning into my girlfriend. It was so exciting, dating her. She cooked some really good Korean food for me, and I felt really happy being around her. (Plus, she screwed like a jaguar in heat!) Anyways, as time went-on, I found out that she didn't consider herself to be my girlfriend. And she certainly did not consider me to be her boyfriend.

So, then... what am I?

There were quite a few Korean students in my school and I was chummy with a few of the guys. (Hongchan, One of the guys who I often studied with was a former member of the Nuclear-Biological-Chemical Warfare division of the South Korean Army. Very nice and interesting guy to hang-out with. He described to me what it's like to do summertime battle drills in a full-body plastic suit with a 50-lb rucksack on your back. And, he also described what it's like to get slapped-around by a drill sergeant.)

But, when it came to me interacting with the other Korean students, Mi-Jun told me explicitly: "Never never NEVER tell any of the other Korean students about us." She instructed. "Never tell them that we're seeing each other outside of school."

"Why?"

"Because... they'll tell rumors."

"I see... wouldn't that be perfectly ghastly?" I snorted. "Do I embarrass you?"

She opted not to answer that one. She looked at the floor instead and mumbled.

"Okay, then. What happens if I see you in the hall at school? Do I pretend I don't know you?"

"You can say hello... but don't be too friendly." She answered, with some thought.

"Okay, what if Hongchan asks me if we have a relationship? You want me to lie to him?"

"Tell him that we're just friends."

Oh, gee. Thanks a lot. And like an idiot, I actually agreed to do this. I kept-up this charade because I liked being around her. That, and she was wild in bed.

Sigh.

The 1998 Asian Contagion.

It just so happened that global currency markets decided to take a major nose-dive that semester. The Thai Baht. The Indonesian Rupiah. The Korean Won. The Philipine Peso. They all did a big ol' crash-and burn. Suddenly, a lot of the foreign students on campus were without money and it seemed like they were all in need of a job. The Indonesian Student Association, for instance, lobbied the school administration to reduce tuition that semester. (With some limited success, I might add.)

This is something that Americans will, thankfully, probably never experience. Imagine this: you go to a foreign country to study. You have to deal with adjusting to working in American classrooms, doing English-language homework and all the stresses of adjusting to a foreign culture. Suddenly, the money in your pocket becomes mostly worthless.

Mi-Jun was no different. Suddenly, the allowance her parents sent her became a pittance. And, she also mentioned that her dad's business was being stressed because Korean interest rates were skyrocketing, the unions were rioting and people were pawning the family jewels to stay solvent. Every now and then, she'd angrily tell me that the International Monetary Fund was strangling her country.

A month after the big crash, she needed to pay the rent. Her Korean classmates were tapped-out, and she didn't have a job. So... she turned to me. Being a good 'boyfriend' wanna-be, I gave her a $600 loan. (I was a student too, by the way. I wasn't rolling in dough by any means.)

"Thank you." She said when I wrote-out the check. "I'll pay you back when I can. And I'll cook for you." (She never did.)

I also did other things for her: I helped her handle her insurance forms. I helped her write résumés. I wrote a few papers for her, even. (Aside note: since we were in the same class, I could reword my papers and give them to her to hand-in as her own. Oddly enough, our common female professor gave Mi-Jun better grades than she gave me!)

In short, I did anything that Mi-Jun couldn't do or didn't want to do herself. I didn't like the cold-shoulder she gave me in public, and she eventually stopped sleeping with me. I got really busy in school, and our contact got less and less. By the end of the year, I basically stopped making an effort to talk to her.

School ends for the summer; I go-off to visit Taiwan for a few wild months. (But that's another story...)

Summer's End

September rolls-around and school starts again. Back to crapola. I see her and walk-up to her on the first day of classes. She looks at me and makes a pained expression.

"Hi, Mi-Jun. I hope I'm not embarrassing you. Now, there's a little issue of $600 that you owe me."

She looks apologetic. "I- can I pay you back next month?"

"Next month?" I folded my arms. "I've been waiting since March. It's September. It would be too bad if other people knew about our history."

"How was Taiwan?" She looked worried. Don't dodge the question, honey.

"It was great; when will you pay me back?" Then, this other Korean guy walks-up. Mi-Jun puts her arm around his.

"NiceGuy, this is my boyfriend." She says pointedly. It turns-out that she'd been dating this guy over the summer. He was tall (well, taller than I am) and he was rugged and masculine. So... that's it then. No more sex. But then I realized something: I have her in an even more vulnerable position than I initially thought.

"Nice to meet you. I'm NiceGuy." I say to the fellow. He says hello back. "You know, Mi-Jun... your boyfriend doesn't know what a good friend I am, does he?" Her eyes seem to register that she knew exactly what I meant.

"NiceGuy, I can pay you back next month. I- I'm waiting for a scholarship." She stammered.

"Well, as long as you pay me back. What are close friends for?" I smile mysteriously. "Take good care of Mi-Jun." I say to the guy. "Cheers to both of you."

And, next month, she pays me back in two installments. She also treats me quite coldly from that day forward. (But- and this is the point- I got paid back. Huzzah for the veiled threat!)

Later-on in the school year, her cold-shoulder starts to gnaw on me a bit.

One day, when no one else was around, I blocked her in the hall and asked her to her face: "Mi-Jun? I know that you never considered me a boyfriend... but we did a lot of boyfriend-girlfriend things together. I consider myself as being a boyfriend to you. Was I a good boyfriend?"

She paused a second and thought. "Well- " She looked at me. "-at least there's nothing wrong with you."

Double sigh.

Post-Script.

Recently, I emailed Hongchan (back home in Seoul) about this experience. I wanted someone else's opinion. I told him the same story I've just told you. And at the end, I asked him if that was considered to be appropriate behavior for a woman in Korea. He writes back:

NiceGuy, I was surprised of your history.

Of course, I knew that you and Mi-Jun were good friends and I thought that you were her boyfriend but she always said that you are not her boyfriend.

I think that her behavior toward you is not good in Korea even in the US. The rule is always same applied to any nations. (That's what I figured. -- NG)

If she really likes you or loves you, she does not need to lie your relationships. Maybe, she was afraid that other Korean students are talking about your relationships with her.

Sometimes, Korean girl's story with foreign guy in foreing country do not helpful for her marriage in Korea later.

I guess that she was alone in foregin country and did not have self-confidence of her studying in English. Also she was staying in free country, America, quite different from Korea. It could one of the reason she slept easily with you. (In the month before she met me, I know for a fact that she slept with at least 2 other guys at my school. Free, indeed. Perhaps she felt her little sojourn in America allowed her to behave less-responsibly? Funny, that. -- NG)

Or it was what she is.

I think you and she seem not to be a good couple. You are much better.

It was what she is. How true.

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Mi-Jun should be buried alive; advance to Numbers Four and Five...

"Wars are caused either by women or priests." -- Czech Proverb

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