September 8, 2005

  •                     The Northern VA Korean-American Girls Chronicles


                                  Story #2:  "The Cute Girl"


    I didn't know what else to call this chick.  I was going to call her the "Igoo Girl", but www.igoo.com is only one small part of her activities with the Korean community.  And she doesn't post anymore, she just reads.  I'd better be careful with what I write about her personal life because many of you, my readers, know who she is.


    I first met Cute Girl in May 2002 at a Korean-American Coalition Happy Hour.  Normally KAC happy hours aren't packed, but this one was.  I saw her and thought the kid was cute as hell.  She was born in 1978, so I guess that makes her old by xanga standards. But to me she was just a really cute kid.  She wouldn't give her info out, but she took my card.  A few days later, she emailed me and some others.  Soon, I ended up meeting FOUR girls at Cafe' Noir in Annandale, VA.


    I'll be brief with what happened at Cafe' Noir.  I kinda had a crush on Cute Girl.  Meanwhile, there were two sisters also there, one of whom was eying me potentially for marriage (and I might have considered this seriously if she had looked better - a WHOLE lot better).  The fourth girl was this girl a year younger than me that a Korean company had sent to the US to run its DC office and who  was a few days from leaving the US and returning to Korea permanently.  Not as cute as Cute Girl, she was still very sexy and attractive in a different way.  Sometimes she acted and talked a little snotty, but I could see overall she was not a bad person.


    I went to the gathering because Cute Girl was there.  I didn't give a damn about the two sisters.  The fourth girl, the one who talked a little snotty, I was planning to meet anyway later that week for lunch.  We all ate food and drank a LOT of beer.


    We all went on our merry ways home around 2 am.  I called each of the chicks to make sure they had gotten home okay.  The last girl I called was the one returning to Korea.  She said, "Listen, this Friday instead of lunch let's have dinner together."  I replied, "How about this?  You come here and we drink some more."  After asking me if I was really serious, to which I answered yes, she agreed.


    Nothing much to say about that night.  We did meet but didn't drink anything at my place.  The most memorable exchange between the Korean businesswoman and myself was when we were, uh, enjoying each other's company: 


    Me:  Why didn't you tell me you liked me?


    Korean businesswoman (still kinda talking in her arrogant tone and looking down on me - literally):  I called you first, didn't I? (Then she uttered some indecipherable exclamations that probably woke up my neighbor.)


    The businesswoman and I met up again on Friday for dinner.  She left for Korea on the following Sunday.  Never heard from her again.


    I did meet one of the two sisters for a few meetings, but to be honest, I had absolutely no interest in her or attraction for her.  So why did I meet her?  I guess I was bored.


    The one with whom I wanted to spend more time with was the Cute Girl.  I don't know how many of you living in northern VA remember July of 2002 when there was the World Cup Soccer event going on in Korea.  Well, for the night of the quarter-final match between South Korea and Spain, the two sisters had a slumber party planned for guys and girls.  Yes, I thought this was beyond lame.  I said I couldn't make it.


    On that night I got home from work late.  It was a Friday night.  My cell phone rang.  It was Cute Girl.  She asked if I was going to the party.  I said no and asked her if she was going.  She said no and that if I wanted, I could join her for the public viewing of the game in Annandale.  I said sure.  I ended up watching Korea beat Spain with Cute Girl, her mother, and her mother's friends.  We were at a PACKED audience in Annandale watching a public showing of the game.


    She and I hung out as friends afterwards, just the two of us.  But I'll admit, I did have the beginnings of a crush on her. 


    We talked a lot.  She told me about her previous boyfriends.  She had been deeply in love with her first boyfriend (I guess while she was in college).  Meanwhile, according to her, she was being stalked by this older married Korean man (with kids at that).  The man had passed on to the girl that he was going to kill the boyfriend.  So, if I remember correctly from what she told me, Cute Girl decided to sleep with her boyfriend....and then leave him.  Without a note or phone call or anything.  And I think this took place in Korea when the two of them were traveling there together, to make matters worse.  Poor guy, what a way to be dumped.


    I asked her why, if she loved her boyfriend so much, she just left him.  She said she did it to protect him.  Okay, don't ask me to explain because I am STILL as confused as all of you are.  Anyway, she moved to VA from Tennessee with her family not long after that and changed her English name.  I'm not sure if it was the case, but I think she, her mother, and her brother moved there because of the whole stalking experience from the married guy.  Weird sh*t.


    She dated another guy after that.  She broke it off and said she and this second ex-bf were still good friends, and that they made better friends than bf and gf.


    She would like to tell me that she would make a good wife to someone, like her mother was.  She just KNEW it, she said.  As for OUR relationship, we shifted back and forth from friends to younger-girl-to-oppa (older male friend to younger girl), to having the occasional sweet moment where we held hands and didn't say anything.  But we were more friends than anything else.  Every now and then she would call me to meet her at Nul-Bom in Annandale where I'd find her crying.  She said it was because she was so mad at someone (she wouldn't say with whom).


    Cute Girl talked about how she ended every relationship she was in.  I asked her subtly if this was a way of maintaining control, that she ended it out of fear that the relationship would fail.  She said that that was a possibility.


    But we also used to argue.  About STUPID sh*t.  We were both argumentative, and neither of us backed down.  I tell ya, she was one FEISTY girl.  One or the other of us would hang up on each other and not talk for months on end.  No sh*t.  This, more than anything else, is what prevented ANY possibility of anything developing between us. 


    At one point, she and I were arguing about something again.  She was getting so angry that she said, "You're just an ahjushi, and you're never gonna get married!  No one would have someone like you!"


    I didn't take this comment personally.  But I can talk some sh*t back.  I said, "What about you?!  You're freakin' high-maintenance.  By the time you're 30, you'll have married some guy, had two or three kids by him, divorced him, remarried to some other guy you think you love, divorced him, remarried to a third guy, and then divorced him....."  I didn't mean any of this (I don't think), and I was saying it without much effort or emotion; just talking sh*t in a monotone.


    She was silent.  Then she said, "WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT!!??!!!!"  She started crying.  Then, "DO YOU HAVE FUN BEING SO CRUEL???!!!"  And she was really crying and sniffing now.  Geez, how many of you chicks out there would have been offended by what I had said?


    I was confused.  And then I remembered that she had told me that her mother and father lived separately.  Though not divorced, they were separated and had been since Cute Girl had been in high school.  In fact, it was Cute Girl's suggestion that they separate since they argued all the time.  But when Cute Girl had told me this, she seemed all cool with it as it was nothing.  Apparently it was something.


    I told Cute Girl I didn't mean what I had said.  "Yes, you did," she said calmly but sadly.


    "No, I didn't.  I was just responding back to you.  You said some sh*t to me and I said some sh*t back.  That was all.  I didn't really mean it."  She finally stopped crying.


    This conversation proved to be the end of what was sort of a close friendship thing between the two of us.  Occasionally I would call to say hello, and we'd chat before things got argumentative between us again.  And they almost always did.


    The last time I spoke with her, I was able to learn that she had eventually gotten a new boyfriend, this lawyer who was part of a very rich family.  I had wondered if this time it was for the long-term.  But I knew the girl enough to know it wasn't likely.  She would eventually leave him out of fear of failure.  Again.


    The next year I joined this community called www.igoo.com.  I even went to an Igoo happy hour.  And guess who I saw there??  After that, it wasn't hard to figure out who she was on the online site.  And then she started dating one of the Igoo guys there from MD (which told me that she had ended it with the lawyer dude).  I knew with confidence, but a sense of sadness, that this was going to go nowhere as well.  And it turned out that way after a few weeks.  Poor chump.  I won't say who HE is, but a lot of you know him, too. 


    Since then, I've heard Cute Girl has entered relationships with other guys but then left it before any DEEP feelings developed.


    Like I said, I did have a crush on her when I first met her.  At the time I wish I had sorta dated her (hell, maybe I should have ASKED her).  But in hindsight, I'm glad I didn't and that our relationship stayed at the friends/oppa-dongsaeng/arguing-companions stage.  Why enter a relationship with a girl who's just too scared of having the relationship fail so she leaves it before it BECOMES a SERIOUS relationship?


    Anyway, I wish her well.  I just hope to God I never end up dating a girl like her.