An Offer to Spend the Night

I was standing outside Daejon train station wrapped up in bags when the old woman approached me.

"Sex?" she said. I rifled though my head to figure out what that could possibly mean in Korean.

I had so many bags because I had just come back from Seoul. I went up there with friends because they wanted to buy new laptops (to go along with my new one--I guess I've started a trend. They even bought the exact same model as me), and I wanted to buy accessories for my new computer.

My friends decided to go out after coming back to Daejon, but I had a cold, so I wanted to go home. This meant that it was me carrying all the bags back to the apartments. So it goes.

Now, I was already on guard because I know that people try to rip off tourists at the train station--and wrapped in three bags made me look like nothing if not a tourist. Still, I wasn't read.

"Sex?" she said again.

"I don't understand," I said in Korean.

"Sex!" she practically yelled. This woman must have been approaching 70 years old. She's what you call an "adjuma" here in Korea: a woman of the old Korean style, usually really strong willed, usually short and stocky, usually tough as the sole of a shoe. Imagine a mean old grandma and you're pretty close.

"My motel," she continued in Korean, "sex." Then I remembered: "sex" in Korean means "sex." I was trying to figure it out, and it was exactly what my first instinct told me it was.

I can only assume she was a madame, because I can't imagine she'd have gotten too much business being 70 and bundled for the weather. She was definitely as tough as the sole of a shoe, but that also meant that she resembled the sole a little too.

"No," I said. "I'm not interested."

"Then sleep," she said. "You come to my motel, and you can sleep." I find it funny that she offered the sex first and then the chance to sleep at her motel. I guess they think that tourists have a very unique set of priorities.

"No," I said. "I live in Daejon. I'm going home."

"Then you need to find a taxi," she said. "It's getting cold."

She was right; I needed to find one...which was what I was doing before she stopped me.

R