A night in which I gave the same answers a lot of times.

The Nice Men and I went out for drinks awhile back, to celebrate the end of the semester.

I feel I aught to warn you now that if you live in Korea this evening is going to sound so remarkably like the stories you hash over with your friends every week that it's probably not worth going through.  Otherwise read on.

I arrived at the bar on the back of one of the Nice Men's, (a P.E. teacher who spent several years as a FIFA referee), motor bike because no one's English was sufficient to direct me there on foot.  I sat beside the teacher I speak the most with, coincidentally the one with the most English, double coincidentally the one who was drunkest.  "Kyle," he said to me, his conspiratorial tone letting me know it was us against the world, "how many times have you kissed your girlfriend."  I told him that I couldn't count, but whether he took that to mean the number exceeded my ability to estimate or that these daliances took place so infrequently that the number had escaped me in the interim I can't say. The six of us were attended to by the two women running the bar.  We were their only business and they were very attentive to our empty glasses.  As always, I was generally inattentive to the hierarchy around me and for better or worst the presence of these women lifted the bulk of the intricate pouring etiquet off my shoulders. 

The other teachers slid into an easy conversation in Korean while the Nice drunk Man to my left monopolized me.  For a long time he put his arm over my shoulders and rahpsodized about the admiration he had for the teachers at the table who were older than him.  His regard fell especially heavy on the math teacher, who was both the oldest and, as he told me, the only holder of a P.h.d. in our school. 

"Do you respect him?" he asked me, motioning to the doctor in our midst and catching his attention.

"Yes, I respect him.  He must be very smart," I said, sounding more than a little like the robotic English that plays off the 7th graders English textbook DVD. 

"Do you respect him more than the principle?"  Something in the way he spoke, it sounded as if he were goading me.  I sensed a trap.  I paused for several beats, trying to let time disconnect his question from whatever I said next.

"I respect him lots."

"Yeaaahhhaawwww," he exhaled, so that the sound started at the front of his mouth and finished back in his throat.  He put his arm around me and rocking us back and forth a bit.  I had answered the question to his satisfaction.  

Throughout the evening he told me lots of interesting things.  He himself studied in Japan for his University career, and his two children were now in University and about to enter one respectively.  He told me about how he wished that his children would go abroad and learn not only through school but through experience.  He told me that he wished they could study how to accomplish their dreams instead of studying to memorize math formulas.  And he told me he could not tell them any of this.  I tried to get him to explain why this was, why he could not say anything despite his passionate feelings on the subject, (believe me, they were passionate feelings), but he'd only screw up his eyes and hold his fists in front of himself and say "I can't!"

When things wound down at the bar, we headed across the street to the ZEUS norey-bang.  Only one of the Nice Men opted out and headed home.  In our private kareoke booth we drank beer out of tall plastic cups and I was shaken many more times in affirmation.  I feigned singing Korean songs by looking ahead to the end of the line on the screen and holding the last sylable as they got there.  Everyone appeared to be taken in, or at the very least they were impressed by my efforts. 

At midnight, it was time to pack it in, but the drinkiest of The Nice Men had a litre of beer left, and he wanted me to finish it with him.  The others filed out of our room.  He offered to pour me another drink from the bottle.

"We're best friends now, yes?"

"Sure," I told him, and then "I think everyone is leaving."

"They're just going to the bathroom," he said.  "So we're best friends?" and on and on.

The ex-FIFA referee popped his head in to back up my 'leaving' story.  Outside, I was offered the bottle again.  Now it is not kosher to refuse a drink from your elder, hence my following stall tactics.

"Where will we drink it?"

"In the park."

"Isn't I getting late?"

"Ha ha, yes.  Maybe I will sleep at your house."

The other teachers had left, save for FIFA.  He stuck his helmet on his head, tied his bandana over his face and asked if I'd like a ride home.  I told him that I was ok, that my house was only 5 minutes on foot from here, but he asked again and then asked again.  I realized that maybe he was giving me an out from a late night and a shared bed with our friend the encouragable Nice Man.  So I took it.  I did promise my new best friend many times that it was ok for him to call me whenever he wanted, yes whenever he wanted, that he really shouldn't worry about it, just whenever he wanted, absolutely whenever he wanted, because of course we're best friends now, yes I mean best friends, sure we're friends, best friends.

So we'll see.