Supplement 1 to Article 8: THE GIRLS

After we had been in the bar for about twenty minutes or so, he asked me if I wanted some girls. I said no, that I wasn't really comfortable with that. I was almost certain that he meant prostitutes, and that's pretty far from what I'd consider a good time.

"Are you sure," he said. "You do like girls?" I confirmed that I did, but that it would be really weird for me to pay a woman to be in there with us.

"They'll only drink and talk. That's what they do. I'll call them." Against my better wishes, he called from a white phone on the wall and asked that the girls be brought in. "I'll just feel more comfortable with them in here," he said.

The girls cam in a few minutes later. They were well dressed in very casual but conservative attire. They were young, I later found out that they were 19 and 23. And they were both college students making their way through college by doing whatever the hell this was.

Neither of them spoke English, and it only took me a few minutes to wear out my Korean. My Korean is getting decent, but I'm still a long way from making small talk. They were enthralled by me. I was quite the anomaly in that bar apparently. They squinted and really wanted my eyes to be blue, but, I told them, they were brown. "Me too," said the one girl happily. Everyone has brown eyes in Korea.

But what really astonished them was the fact that I had stubble on my face. Sure, I had shaved that day, but that stuff comes back fast. I can't even imagine what they would have done if I had still had my beard.

"You look like Jim Carrey," the more brazen of the two said. I don't, and I said so. "Then Leonardo Dicarpio." Again, I don't. That one was even farther off. The might as well just have said you look like every Western person that I've ever seen on TV.

The girls ate our food and drank our beer. Apparently this is what he was paying them for: to make idle chit-chat and take our stuff. Money well spent.

My benefactor shoed them away after the brazen on guessed my age wrong. "31?" she said. I furrowed my brow. But then the quite one chimed in, "27" she said and was right on the money (I'm 27 here because of a different age system). When I confirmed she was right, she scooted closer and put her hand on my thigh. I scooted away.

Still, my Korean friend was unhappy with two slip ups: the Jim Carrey and the wrong age. They left, and I can't say I was sad to see them go. Although it was the most banal and innocent form of prostitution I've ever seen, it still felt like prostitution to me and didn't sit well.

Korea is odd sometimes.