An English Teacher Under Quarantine in South Korea

Night Five: Guest Blog!

The following article is posted by a fellow detainee here.  

The Hole That M—- Built

So Soju is an incredible alcohol.

Those of you who haven’t had it just think of sake without the diarrhea taste.  You can drink a shit load of it before you’re even starting to get drunk.  Later on in the night is a different story however of mindless wandering bantering and singing on rooftops with short Australian kids.

Anyway my story is one that got around the detainment building real fast and I blame soju for most of it but crazy Koreans who lock doors for the rest.

So I’d say this all begins at about 3:00 am after downing about a liter of this wonderful drink of the gods. Just about 20 minutes earlier I was sitting out on a side step (through an emergency exit) with a friend of mine. We shot the shit for a while and then went back in. My friend decided to go to bed but for those of you who know me a drunk night isn’t over until some external force compels me to slumber. So in a slight drunken stupor I go to my room, take my pants off but decide to go out for one last smoke. So picture a drunk asshole in his underoos and Chairman Mao shirt stumbling out the emergency exit unaware of the fact that within this time the Koreans in charge locked all the doors.

So yeah it was a nice little smoke and I was starting to get sleepy. Mostly out of boredom cause I was the only guy still up. I hoist my pasty ass up and grab the door latch.

LOCKED!

This is a multi level building so I run to the upstairs emergency door.

LOCKED!

So then I go to the bottom level door.

LOCKED AS WELL!

So I’m completely locked OUT of a detainment building which has got to be a felony of some sort for ‘attempting’ to escape. Now the only way now to get back in is through the front which is crawling with Korean officials in their little masks and white coats. I’m in my underwear still mind you, eyes bloodshot and hair completely sideways (this apparently is the form soju takes on your face. I was a ‘soju superman’ if you will) So not only do I want to avoid officials thinking I’m sneaking out but they really don’t fucking need to know I’m shitfaced.

So the logical thing for me to do (this is when I start blaming soju) is to sneak in on a lower level. Oh I don’t have any shoes either by the way. So I wander through the darkness of a strange new world trying to find a way onto the roof. This is the closest I’ve felt to an escaped convict but they at least have a jumpsuit and boots. I felt more like an escaped holocaust victim. So after about 20 minutes of searching I think I find a way in.

In front of me seems to be a large pile of dirt with a narrow but very deep trench between us. But just on the other side of it is the fucking roof! Now picture this pile of dirt to be ground level. This actually was a hole in the ground that appeared like dirt came up to where my feet were. I wish I could explain this better so just bear with me. Ok great so drunken logic then tells me if I just hop on this dirt pile and walk across it it’s just a little skip onto this roof and I’m home free!

“Alright here I go,” I said. I spit on my hands, start swinging my arms stretch the old hamstrings, all the shit you see in cartoons before the big slapstick scene. “One, Two, Three!”

I leaped like Jesus would if he were on soju. And luckily I make the dirt pile. But in that same instant I realize it’s not a dirt pile at all. It’s a fucking canvas roof to a storage shed. Being made of canvas, my feet immediately slip and I fall on top of it.

“Ok no big deal just got to stand back up and walk across it.” I think to myself.

But this canvass was tissue paper thin so a hole rips in it large enough for me to plummet though. As my life flashed before my eyes I fall through this hole about 10 feet or so onto dirt and concrete. Not enough dirt to cushion my blow but just enough to get me filthy and imbed itself into the cuts and gashes I obtained during my dive.

I only lay there for a moment. My shoulder is beat to shit, my elbow is cut open and filled with AIDS or whatever and I’m sure I got the wind knocked out of me. But Soju man! It was my power and I hoisted myself out to escape this bunker. I gaze out of the hole I ripped and stared at the moonlight in longing and desperation but I had to complete my mission nonetheless. I wobble my way to an exit, my socks are jet black now and my back feels like a tractor rapped me. By this point I don’t care about sneaking in. I limp to the front and open the door to a bunch of gawking Koreans.

“Don’t arrest me!” I said. “I got locked out you cause you all locked the fucking doors. Don’t arrest me.”

So they poke and prod me for injuries. I feel like I’m in and S and M whore house. Lets just say it was all bad touches. So my night is now half way over. All I want to do now is go to bed but one of the officials said “we have to take you to hopital”

“What? No I’m fine.” I start doing a little Pinocchio dance to show I have no real joint damage. “See. I’m fine!”

“No.” they say. “It is for your health. We have to take you to hopital”.

So what was I going to do fight back?  I comply and they throw me in the back of and ambulance and we travel for like 20 minutes. They then throw me in a trailer with a bed and medical shit and make me wait another half and hour. Then a doctor comes in and pokes and prods me worse than the officials at the detainment facility. So this is what it feels like to be abducted by god damn aliens.

Then they told me I was fine which is exactly what I was trying to tell them an hour ago and send me back in an ambulance. Now by this point I’m so loopy from stress and still being in my underwear that I just begin to laugh about everything and nothing. They send me back to my room and I then out of stress begin to wander the halls looking for a guy with a lighter because I threw mine in the bushes after my dive of destiny. We weren’t allowed to smoke mind you so I didn’t want them to see my lighter. Why didn’t I put the lighter in my pocket? Because underwear don’t have fucking pockets!

Where was I? Ok so I wander around for another 15 to 20 minutes looking for this lighter but to no avail. The rest of the night is kind of a blur but I think I just went to bed pissed off and without nicotine.

So by the next morning I told one person this story and within the hour everyone here knew.

So what’s the moral to this story? I think every story should have one.

Honesty pays off in the long run?

Don’t drink to excess?