A misplaced needle

**It takes a while, because it sort of a MF love story, but one with a big twist. And it follows the contours of a very much true story**

*

The academic job market is tough, especially for an English major. The problem is that one becomes invested, you catch the learning bug. Luke caught that bug early. Coming from a small town like Robins, Iowa, there was not much to do. You could grow up, marry, have a family, and die there having lived a content and full life. But, there was no imagination. There was no romance, no notion of discovering something beyond—unless you wanted to join the military. Luke never articulated these feelings of dissatisfaction. They more hovered in the background like some small irritant that Luke could not quite place. But, they did affect his behaviour

After a particularly listless day in English class, the teacher, Mr Johnstone, asked Luke to wait behind for a moment.

"What is the problem, Luke? You seem to be a little withdrawn at the moment."

"Sorry, I am feeling a little stuck. I can't see the point of it," Luke replied with unexpected frustration. "Is my life a choice between the military and the farm, to marry someone I meet in high-school? I feel like everything has already been determined for me, like a train set on tracks traveling to a scheduled destination."

That was it. The cat was out of the bag. Luke had named something he knew to be true.

"Ah," said Mr Johnstone, "some people do indeed like the life you find in these parts, and if you like something then you often hope that others will like that life too. But, Luke, the world is a very big place with many things to explore and learn."

"Ha Mr Johnstone, I appreciate the pep talk, I fear that I have a way to go before I can explore the world."

"Well...let's start here," said Mr Johnstone as he pulled a book by George R. R. Martin called 'Tuf Voyaging' from his bag. "Trust me; it's worth your time."

So, instead of watching yet another mass-consumption-canned-laughter TV show with his parents and sister, Luke retreated to his bedroom and began to read, and he read and he read. 'Tuf Voyaging' was not about worlds as simple balls of dirt in which one dominant power bullied others, it was about choices, about introducing new things to a closed ecosystem and the consequences of those choices.

Luke was hooked. The next book was Miller's 'Canticle for Leibowtiz', followed by Huxley's 'Brave New World', Orwell's '1984', Heller's 'Catch-22', and Kafka's 'The Trial'. These dystopian novels spoke to so much of what Luke saw and experienced in Robins, Iowa, in the wider national political discourse, and in how anonymized bureaucratic systems imprisoned people in views of the world that benefited only a few.

That was it. Luke no longer belonged to the place of his birth and when he left for his English Lit program at NYU he did not look back. Success at NYU led him to a Master's program at Oxford and finally a PhD through Columbia. During this time, he had got married to Stacy Brown, a NY local he had been introduced to at some party or other, and they had two children while he was in grad school. Luke loved his wife and his little family. And before he knew it, Luke had graduated with responsibilities and a significant debt—but with no job.

The year was 2008 and the financial crash was ravaging Higher Education along with every other sector. To make ends meet, Luke engaged in the stereotypical work of bar-tending and editing the work of other people. He was back on the train tracks. As an act of desperation, Luke started contacting all the people he had met in various academic circles. Doors were closing around the world—except one. Jamie Smithers-Wood had been a fellow student at Oxford and had just returned to the UK from a small school in South Korea. The job was more one of a language teacher than an academic, but it was an academic post. So, it was in 2009 that Luke packed up his family and moved just outside of Busan in South Korea.

Things did not go out well at the very outset. First, the amount the institution had promised to pay was not what was offered on the much-delayed contract. But Luke had already gone through the process and cost of international relocation, so he was without a choice and signed on the dotted line. Second, Luke and Stacy soon discovered the peculiar Korean concept of 'gireogi appa'. Literally translated 'goose father' it refers to (Korean) fathers who work in Korea while the wife and children remain in an English-speaking country for the children's education. Luke's institution simply assumed that he would come alone and fly home during the inter-semester periods. The institution, though it had arranged visas and travel documentation for the whole family, failed to include sufficient accommodation and no avenues for schooling for Luke's young daughters. It was a difficult situation made worse by a serious personality clash with a senior academic. Within three months, Luke waved goodbye to his family as they flew back to New York to stay with Stacy's parents, and as he remained to finish out his yearlong contract.

Byun Mi-sun—she was the one ray of light. The institution had assigned this 27-year-old grad student in ecology studies to Luke as a Teaching Assistant due to her English language competencies. She had completed her first degree at Florida State and had returned to Korea to study environmentally sustainable practices within urban communities. A TA in Korea is not like one in the USA. In truth, many professors treated their TAs as indentured servants as far as Luke could tell. These were exploitative practices for Luke and he gave Mi-Sun as much freedom as she wanted. But for all this, she wanted to remain close. Mi-Sun also got on very well with Stacy, helping navigate those basic life tasks which are difficult when operating in a foreign language and alien culture. Indeed, Mi-Sun had soon become part of the family.

When Stacy left, Mi-sun was the only person Luke knew. She was a slight thing, 5'4 to Luke's 6'1, but full of energy and activism. The relationship was professional, Luke made sure to keep it that way because he had worked too hard in academia to lose that though improper contact with a TA (though that happens an awful lot). Yet, because Mi-sun's student accommodation consisted of four girls in a dorm room with shared toilets and showers, and because Luke had a two-bedroom apartment to himself, Mi-sun came visiting quite a bit. Their relationship deepened and they talked about their upbringings and what drove them in life. Luke talked (no doubt too much) about the simulation of imagined worlds, ones which exposed parts of life that preferred to remain hidden. Mi-sun talked of her family's compassion for justice, lessons learnt after living under the regime of Major General Chun Doo-hwan, but also of their conservative religious attitudes—and they were conservative.

In the course of watching something or other on TV, the standard joke was made concerning a male's inability to find a clitoris. After the compulsory rumble of laughter, Mi-Sun piped up: "what's a clitoris?" Luke response was one of those incredulous side eye stares that become instant memes.

"Seriously. What's a clitoris?"

"What?," said a confused Luke.

"We never studied sex education at my village school"

"So...you can ask a friend, or google."

"I could never do that. I would lose face."

"So, you think googling or asking your peers would case you to lose, but asking a foreign professor for whom you TA is not!? That makes no sense."

"You do not understand what losing face is; I cannot lose face in front of you," observed Mi-sun.

She was right. After a pause, and thrown by the direction of the conversation, Luke asked a question he immediately regretted: "Well, how do you masturbate?"

"I have never masturbated."

"oh...ok...well, there are different forms of sexuality. That is no big deal and nothing to be ashamed of," Luke stammered. Now the alarm bells were ringing. Luke stared ahead so as not to make eye contact with Mi-sun and pondered the ways in which he might resolve the conversation without causing offence or harm.

"Do you think that we could google it," Mi-sun asked with a quiet voice.

Luke looked at her and saw that she was embarrassed and vulnerable, and relented. "OK, google is our friend."

The next hour turned into a basic course in sex education, and then Mi-sun left for the evening. Needless to say, Luke, who had been sitting with a pillow over his 7" erection, stripped naked, lay on his bed and dreamt of giving his TA a live sex-ed demonstration.

This pattern continued for the next 8 months, and the conversations moved into other forms of human sexuality. Mi-sun's questions trended toward lesbianism, so Luke introduced her to the Kinsey scale and confessed that he was probably a 2 on that scale. He had often thought about male on male sexual intercourse, both oral and anal, but had never acted upon it. He mentioned that he and Stacy had even roll played his bisexuality using a dildo and strap-on. And Luke continued to masturbate after these conversations, imagining each theorised scenario as a reality.

Towards the end of the year, Luke received notification that he had been awarded a post-doc position in a small liberal arts college in Canada. He now had to prepare for another international move, and to meet up again with his family. Mi-sun accompanied Luke to the airport, and after a final goodbye hug refused to let Luke go. Luke squeezed her and felt her quiet sobs against his chest. He knew in that moment that he had done wrong. There was no sexual contact, to be sure, but he had allowed emotional attachment. It was selfish. He had leant nothing from the novels he loved about the improper use of power. He pulled away for Mi-sun looked into her eyes and turned for the security gate. As he took his belt and shoes off to put in the grey-plastic nondescript container ready for scanning, Luke looked back, saw nothing but knew himself to have acted as one his imaginative universe had warned him against.

Over time Luke's post-doc turned into a full position. His marriage was happy and children growing well. He kept occasional contact with Mi-sun, sending her emails on her birthday. Mi-sun asked him for career advice, reference requests, and editorial advice for applications. After finishing her own PhD, Mi-sun moved to Minamata City, a small city near Kumamoto, Japan to work on an 'eco-city'. As luck would have it, Kumamoto was chosen to host one of the big academic conferences Luke regularly attended. Luke emailed Mi-sun to see if he could drop by and say hi after the conference, to which he received a typically animated response cataloging all the things that they could do while he was there.

As they met on the train station, seven years had passed since their last sorrowful goodbye. Mi-sun was now 33 and looked as slim as she always had. Time had not past—for her. For Luke, 240lbs now hung on his 6'1, 44-year-old frame. After a quick hug and small niceties, Mi-sun took Luke to his hotel accommodation and then excused herself. Her flat-mate required some help with shipping some orders so that they could spend the next few days showing Luke around. Evidently Mi-sun's flat-mate was something of a seamstress who created bespoke modern interpretations of traditional kimonos that had become something of a hit in Tokyo. Left alone for the evening, Luke was again struck by Mi-Sun's depth and poise and seven years was not long enough for his penis to forget. As he stroked himself to completion, Luke imagined Mi-sun lying back on white silk sheets which offset her dark eyes and hair.

With the 9am knock at the door, Luke was greeted by two sets of dark brown eyes. Alongside Mi-sun stood her equally beautiful flat-mate Yui Takahashi.

"Let me introduce..." began Mi-sun, before she was interrupted.

"Hi, my name is Yui. Yui means 'elegant cloth' in Japanese."

Luke laughed. "Bright" would be the word to describe Yui. 5'8 with small breasts, 27 years old, but bouncy and alive. Long brown wavy hair with bangs and blond highlights, she stood holding that hands-on-knees-butt-out-bending-over pose popular in anime.

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Luke..."

"Oh, I know who YOU are handsome Mr Luke," interjected Yui again as she closed in for a hug.

"That's enough," said Mi-Sun dragging Yui back and stepping in for a hug herself. "We have a full day, and I hope that you brought some good shoes because before we go to Minamata City we are going to climb Mount Kinpo."

Luke put on his sneakers, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and headed out the door, only to be accosted by Yui grabbing him around the crock of his arm and skipping to the car. The conversation during the drive was polite. Luke felt constrained both by the time since they last met and by Yui's presence not to say to Mi-sun those things that he felt he needed to say. But perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps his seeking to talk about their time in Korea was about him trying to soothe his conscious more than anything else.

It was a beautiful day. Not too hot, but not a cloud in the sky meaning that the visibility would be peak. The walk was typically not a long one, taking only an hour, but Yui and Mi-sun were in a playful mood. Yui would run ahead in her flowing white dress with a turquoise ribbon threaded though the waist and hem, before we would find her lying in tall grass or picking various wild flowers. Mi-Sun wore a silk blouse tucked into khaki shorts and sensible walking boots; she was simply elegant. As it got steeper and turned into a single lane track Luke found himself staring at Mi-sun's backside and legs. Out of nowhere, Yui appeared behind Luke, jumped on his back and whispered: "You like what you see?" With that she was off again. As Yui rushed past, Mi-sun looked over her shoulder and smiled.

At the summit, there was a small temple which the three paused at for a bit before moving to the observation deck. This was covered in locks put there by couples to signify their love for one another.

"Did you bring one for Mi-sun?" Yui asked with a pout.

Mi-sun responded with a terse sentence in Japanese, and Yui a little downcast walked away.

"I am sorry about that," Mi-sun said. "Yui is full of spirit, but sometimes it blows in...complicating directions."

"Think nothing of it. It is beautiful here. How can one not feel the romance of the place?" Luke said with a faint smile as he remembered similar walks with Mi-sun in Busan.

Mi-sun lifted her hand to Luke's cheek and gave it a small rub with her thumb, then turned around walked up to Yui, put her arm around her, and together they began to skip back down the mountain. The car ride to Minamata City consisted mostly of Mi-sun and Yui trying to sing along to J-pop. Each fumble with the lines led to howls of laughter; they clearly enjoyed each other. Luke rolled the window down and appreciated the simple pleasures of warm company, warm air and passing scenery.

Minamata City became famous in the 1950s due to a mercury poising disaster. In a living example of Luke's dystopian stories, for 30 years Chisso Corporation had discharged its methylmercury tainted wastewater into Minamata Bay, poising the local food source. Eating this seafood resulted in 'Chisso-Minamata' disease, a neurological syndrome resulting from severe mercury poisoning. The government now recognises over 2,200 victims, of whom 17,000 died as a result. In memory of these victims, the city became an 'eco-city' with a range of creative projects and social commitments all reducing carbon emissions and creating an 'environmentally symbiotic region'. As we eat a late lunch, Mi-sun came alive talking about her work, the projects they had planned, and the buy-in from the government and the locals. Walking around, she explained each detail from the distribution of free reusable shopping bags, to recycling, to composting, to the creation of a "citizen's forest," and kelp farms.

"You see, Luke," Mi-sun said, "dystopia does not have to be the end. Restoration and life can grow too."

Mi-sun was in her element, no longer his TA, but a woman of authority and passion. Luke could not have been prouder. Indeed, Mi-sun was so swept up cataloging the work being done that Yui had to remind her of their erstwhile secret dinner plans.

Mi-sun laughed, "I have gotten quite carried away. You should have said something sooner. We were hoping that you would come back to our apartment to share a small dinner with us."

"You have to Mr Luke. Mi-sun has especially gathered all of the Korean food that you liked," pleaded Yui, bounding up and down.

"I would be honoured," Luke said with a little bow.

When they arrived at the apartment Yui and Mi-sun shared, Yui suggested that Luke come and look at some of her work while Mi-sun prepared dinner. Luke was most impressed. The work was beautiful and creative, and he pointed out that he could not see the movement and fall of the clothes unless someone was wearing them. So with a squeal Yui grabbed an outfit, dashed out of the room and came back modelling it, walking after the fashion of the highest catwalk. After a number of such parades, Mi-sun poked her head in to see what was happening and to say that dinner was ready.

As is typical in Japanese accommodation, there is an economy of scale. While sufficient for these two petite Asian woman, the living room lined as it was with books and a collection of remarkable pottery proved a little difficult for Luke to manoeuvre within. Typically, such meals would be eaten sitting on the floor, but Mi-sun knew of the difficulties Luke had with such things. So the dinner had been arranged next to a small legless two-person sofa which Luke would sit one, with a table in-between him and the two woman sitting on cushions on the other side. That was the plan at any rate. After a bit climbing over Yui, who had remained attired in one of her beautiful kimono creations, and because the table with all the Banchan (side-dishes) already arranged on it was so close to the sofa, and because the sofa was so low to the ground, the only way Luke could sit was by dropping straight down—which he did.

"FUCKING HELL," roared Luke as he jumped up causing the table and all the side dishes to go flying in the process. Food had flown everywhere, including the Kimchi, covering everything. A stunned Yui looked up at Luke, while Mi-sun ran in from the kitchen.

"What happened?" Mi-sun asked with a concerned look.

Luke was looking behind him at the sofa. He bent down and picked up a syringe with it's needle broken off. He handed Mi-sun the syringe and then looked down at his inner right thigh, just below his crotch, where blood had begun to spot on his jeans. It was not much blood, but it did mean that the needle remained lodged in his leg. To be honest, Luke was more concerned with the marks that the food would be leaving on the books. As soon as Mi-sun saw the syringe, its missing needle, and the blood on Luke's jeans, she understood what had happened. Ignoring Luke's attempts to rearrange the table, she grabbed his arm and walked him to the nearest room with a bit of space, her bedroom as it turned out. All the while she was issuing instructions to Yui in Japanese. In a firm tone, she told Luke to stand still, while she undid his belt and carefully pulled his jeans down so as not to disturb the needle.

"I hope that it has not gone under the surface, or we will have to make a trip to the hospital," Mi-sun fretted.

The lighting was poor given that Luke's body was blocking it, and his jeans only went down so far as his knees. The needle itself had penetrated high enough that it was covered by Luke's boxer shorts. There was no visibility and it was difficult to get a decent angle. Luke knew Mi-sun well enough to know that non-optimal working conditions were a frustration for her.