Seoul: The City I Borrowed
The train that would later connect Airport New Town with Seoul wasn’t complete when I lived in Korea. Robin and I once broke into our partly built station to take stupid pics. Seoul instead came via the airport limousine buses. They carried me from Airport New Town, the grim site of my post-Kenken grief, into the first true metropolis I had ever lived close enough to borrow. Seoul was larger, grittier, darker and more thoroughly urban than Hiroshima or Osaka.
My story of Seoul is inseparable from my friendship with Nilesh. We spent many evenings out together, after which he generously lent me his sofa. I had a crush on him, but he was far too sensible to become further entangled with my drama, plus I simply wasn’t his type. Jae, a mature French-speaking friend then dating the French man who later became his husband, joined us for merengue and coffee at Iri. SY supplied romantic complication and art-scene access, while Robin sometimes crossed over from the island to party with me and Nilesh. Around them was a cool creative scene weighted more towards graphics and design than contemporary art.
The gay scene was fairly diverse, but largely domestic in character. In Hiroshima, Osaka and later Tokyo, a young twinky guy like Joa could occasionally become flavour of the month. In Seoul I was not even flavour of the weather. I found the city somewhat insular and queer life too closeted for me. Seoul’s American-style evangelical Christianity irked me too. While Seoul rescued me from Airport New Town, it never stood a chance of persuading me to stay.