—I’m very interested in how the world works.
—A laudably broad interest for a “creative.”
Silence. Anxiety had caused me to blurt out whatever came to mind, and I was regretting having come across as rude. But he didn’t seem to care—he looked as though he was considering his next words carefully, poised to reveal some great secret.
—Actually, I’m working on a philosophy book.
—What?
—I’m an editor at a publisher that puts out books on theory. Or I used to be. Now I’m a subcontractor at the same company.
—Uh . . . OK.
He had such an unexpectedly normal job that I was surprised to the point of rudeness. I should’ve known. All the paper inside his backpack, the sewn-on Korean flag, the fine felt-tip pens in red and black, plus the pre-sharpened pencils in the pencil case—these were all items that screamed “editor at a book publisher.” Like most revelations, this one came way too late.
—But really, I’ve always been interested in the universe. It’s curious. Why the world looks the way it does, why there are so many stars in the wide, vast sky, and how pitifully absurd I am, that kind of thing.
—Yes. Human beings are absurd. Pitifully so.
Although not as absurd as his philosophy, apparently. He sighed deeply and added one more thing in a somewhat overly serious tone.
—Thinking about it makes me very lonely.
His eyes did look very lonely, it was true. I didn’t know what to say. All of the social skills I’d mastered during my twenty-five years on Earth seemed useless, so the only thing to do was apply myself to the raw flounder hwe in front of me, my chopsticks conveying the morsels of fish to my mouth at an almost competitive speed. He had his chopsticks up against his lips as he looked at me, smiling. Is there something in my teeth, why are you looking at me when I’m eating?
—What do you think you’re eating now?
—Flounder. Wait, is this rockfish? I can’t really tell fish apart. I just like whatever’s expensive.
—You’re right and wrong. You’re eating rockfish right now, but what you’re tasting isn’t rockfish. The taste on the tip of your tongue is the taste of the universe.
—What? What (bullshit) are you talking about?
—The rockfish that we eat, and our own bodies, these are all part of the universe. Therefore, we’re universes tasting the universe.
—Uh . . .
—Each of us is a universe and, as part of the larger universe, we live and move and have relations with each other—isn’t that fascinating?
Now that I thought about it, his gaze did look a little unfocused. Was he part of some cult? I suddenly remembered hearing about all the weirdos who drifted into extension courses like ours. I had one hand gripping my bag in case I needed to make a run for it, but he didn’t seem about to drag me off by the scruff of my neck to a meeting. And now that the topic of conversation had reached the existential matters of the universe, there was nowhere else for it to go. My gaze drifted back to the tattoo on his fingers, and when he noticed me looking, he quickly tried to draw his sleeve down to hide it.
—I like your tattoo. I’ve been wondering about it since the first time I saw it. About what it might be.
—Actually, I was in a motorcycle accident in high school. I got the tattoo done to cover the scars.
—Oh, I see.
—It’s not like I was wild or anything back then.
—I can see that.
Unable to bear the silence that felt heavier than the universe, I ended up downing all the soju we’d ordered. He must’ve thought I needed more to drink because he kept refilling my glass as he sipped his own, and with all the fish and the pouring of each other’s shots, our faces soon became red.
—The more transparent one is the flounder.
—Excuse me?
—The more transparent one of the two is the flounder. That’s easier to remember. The chewier one is the rockfish.
—Why don’t you call me Rockfish from now on? Because I’m so chewy.
Jesus, I’m losing it.
—No, I’ll call you Flounder. Because I can see right through you.
The drunk man’s slowing speech made him a little cuter. I listened to his cute, awkward talk as I ate more flounder or rockfish or whichever it was. I’d become very drunk very quickly and for some reason was thinking about Umma. She hadn’t been allowed to eat anything raw since her cancer diagnosis six months ago, not even the hwe that she liked so much. Digging through the saury flesh that had come in the spicy stew, I had the uncharacteristically filial thought that I should bring her here when her treatment was over.
—Umma was always good at taking the bones out of fish for me . . .
Hearing this, he deftly ripped out the bones of his own saury and dropped the chunk of fish into my rice bowl.
—Oh no, I didn’t mean it that way, please don’t, I can’t take your fish.
—I’m happy to.
—Me too. Saury is tasty.
—I’m not happy about the saury. I like the universe that is you.
Was this how the lovers of Pompeii felt when the magma covered them? I was deluged by something very hot, and the world seemed to stop turning. Spinoza had distinguished forty-eight different kinds of emotion. Which one was I feeling right then? Desire, joy, awe, or confusion? And what did the man on the other side of the table feel for me? A mix of disdain and curiosity, or something similar to what I felt for him? In an attempt to calm my pounding heart, I tried to recall the many keywords from the Philosophy of Emotions course but failed. In the blue light of the aquarium, he seemed paler than before. It was too late by the time it occurred to me that he looked lonelier than anyone I had ever known. His face grew larger and larger as it approached, and I was kissing him.
I tasted something on his lips that I had never tasted before. The fishy, chewy taste of rockfish. Maybe the taste of the universe.
That night, we both went back to his place.
?
I lay down with him in the dark room and held him close.
I touched his hair, flattened from the cap he’d worn all day, felt his stiff neck and the tattooed skin that was cooler than the rest of his body. He put his arm around my shoulders. We lay still for a moment, holding onto each other without the least bit of distance between us. The shape of my chest, the length of my arms, my whole body seemed to exist in order to fit perfectly with his, and his warm head against my chest made me feel I was hugging something as vast and precious as a universe. Concentrating on the heat of his skin and the sound of his breathing whispering in my ear made me completely lose sense of who I was.
I became something not me, not anything, just another part of the world that was him.
?
I remember what he said after we first had sex.
—Spinoza died of a lung disease.
—Did they mention that in class? Wasn’t it tuberculosis or something?
—He was poor, he worked as a lens grinder, and the glass dust got into his lungs. He was an outsider among the academics. He couldn’t get a teaching job, could only find manual labor, and that ended up killing him.