Gwisin Girlie

Don’t ask me how I turned into a gwisin, I don’t know how. I mean, I’m barely even Korean. One minute I’m on the commute back to my Harlem duplex after a long shift serving cappuccinos to Patagonias on the Upper West, and the next I’m flat on my ass in a white hanbok in the middle of a forest surrounded by a bunch of other creepy ladies in white hanboks. I tried to ask around, ok, I really did. The second I woke up in the afterlife, I stood right up and started trying to get answers, but it turns out the guy in charge – God, I guess – only knows Korean, so whatever profound message he tried to give me really fell flat. Kinda thought the heavenly admissions team would’ve at least had a translator at hand, but apparently not.

The other hanbok hotties (that’s what I’ve decided to call us gwisin) weren’t so helpful either. Some of them knew a few words like ‘yes’ and ‘Anne Hathaway,’ but not enough to keep up a conversation, and I was certainly no help at all, so when they all grouped up and took off together I got left behind. Do you know how hard it is to be a monolingual gwisin? A monolingual gwisin whose only language is English? It’s not easy. So now here I am, dead and confused until I muster up the energy to finally learn Korean.

I wish I didn’t blame my parents for this whole mess, but I do. If they had just taught me Korean growing up I wouldn’t be in this mess. I could have gotten a cushy job as a translator for some high-up government official, and made enough money to afford nice clothes and a nice car, and then maybe I would’ve found a hot Korean boyfriend and we could have joked about people in Korean right in front of their faces like the aunties always did to me. Maybe I would have lived in a nicer apartment in a nicer part of town, and maybe then I wouldn’t have been collateral damage in a random drive-by right off the 2 train on 125th. Instead, they raise me right on 4^th and Lafayette – on J.R.R. Tolkien and Frank Sinatra and just a whole lot of pizza – and then leave to retire upstate of all places. Ridiculous.

Look, I try to be a pretty patient person, but the resentment is hard to get past. Anyway, it’s been two weeks since I died, and I’ve decided I have to make do with that’s become of me. Maybe I can find a hot gwisin who can teach me Korean. Maybe the jeoseung saja can teach me. From what I know of Korean mythology (i.e. from what I know about Goblin, the K-drama about Korean mythology), that is one hot sonofabitch. The only problem is, I’m still in the middle of nowhere and I have no idea where anyone is, much less the jeoseung saja. Last week I chose a direction, and I’ve been floating that way ever since, which is a lot of floating given I don’t need to eat or sleep or poop anymore. Of all the places to spawn in a ghost, I don’t know why they chose a huge fucking endless forest. It would’ve been nice if I woke up somewhere in Seoul instead; I bet there are a lot of really classy, English-speaking gwisin in Seoul.

I just got to the edge of a little pond – wow, a pond, that’s great – I guess I’ll take a swim? If I were alive I’d be kinda worried about the bacteria and all that, but I don’t think I have to worry about those silly little things anymore. I start to wade into it, honestly it’s so nice and warm and…

Oh. I guess as a ghost I don’t really get wet anymore. I get out to the middle of the pond but it’s not nearly as fun as I was hoping it would be. Swimming out here doesn’t even feel like swimming, I’m just floating in the water the same way I float on the–

“AHHH, WHAT THE FUCK?!” A head just popped up out of nowhere right in front of me. Scary as shit, holy hell. Sorry to be cussing like crazy, but if I wasn’t already dead I’d’ve just about had a heart attack. There’s just a fucking insane looking lady with wet-ass hair staring straight at me like she’s gonna sing a song to lure me into the water and then bite my head off and eat it with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Backstrokes, Esther, backstrokes; remember, you’re already dead.

“What the hell, man?” I shout as I swim away. “Who are you?”

“방탄소년단 알아요?”

”Bang tang what? What?”

”방탄소년단 알아?”

”Ah, go to hell.” I swim back to the shore and shoot the mul gwisin the nastiest glare I can manage before heading off in a direction a little to the left. Some people. It’s the sneak attack for me, ugh. Not to be all childish about this whole thing, but I wish I was home. I haven’t even eaten anything in two weeks, and it’s not like I’m hungry but I could do with some comfort food. I’m missing the halal carts right about now. And the honking. And the bars, and the clubs. And the Soho models, and the Wall Street Patagonias, and the thrifting. And the Metrograph, and Mei Lai Wah, and Lucia’s, and Maman, and the Strand, and the Coffee Project in Chelsea, and the bakery on the corner of 7^th and Driggs in Williamsburg with the cute baker who always gave me extra madeleines, and the wine bar near the Lincoln Center AMC with the cute waiter who always complimented my eyeliner, and the Met, and Central Park, and Prospect Park, and the 5^th Ave Christmas windows, and the pier by Brookfield Place, and that one Ethiopian restaurant near the Botanical Garden, and the Botanical Garden, and the broccolini pasta at Giano, and McSorley’s, and Split Eights, and the fruit vendors on Canal…

< Three weeks later >

…and Jimmy from the bodega, and Jimmy from the hotel across the street, and Jimmy from the 6:00am R/W train going from Astor Place to Times Square then coincidentally also the 1/2 train from Times Square to the Lincoln Center who I haven’t seen since I moved to Harlem, and Jimmy the concierge, and Jimmy the Thursday FedEx guy, and even Bushwick. And the smoking. I’m really missing the smoking.

What day is it? Whatever. It’s just going to be this for the rest of eternity, huh. Just me, floating on through a dank forest in Korea, missing things. Oh hold up, I see something? Ahead of me I see something kinda glowing. It’s actually really beautiful, like something out of a Ghibli movie. I walk towards it and it gets bigger, like a huge, pretty, glowing orb right in the middle of the forest. “Preeetty orb, preeetty orb, so cute and shiny and preeeetty.” (I’m actually a pretty good singer; spent a lot of my life at karaoke bars.) Close up is kinda looks like an animal. Like a peacock maybe, or… a fox?

“Oh. I know what you are. Kumiho, right? Well, I don’t know if it counts but you can have the liver from my body if you can get to it. I live in NoHo, probably buried somewhere on Hart Island. I don’t think it’s gonna be any good though; I was a beer guy back in my life.”

“No thanks, I only eat the livers of men.” Gasp! Double gasp!

“You can speak English?!”

“Of course, I’m kumiho. I’ve been around a lot.”

“That doesn’t explain shit to me. I’ve been walking around these forests for weeks, maybe months, and zip! Nada! Nothing! Even God wasn’t saying anything I understood.”

“Oh, God only speaks the heavenly language, he actually can’t conform to the contemporary languages that have deviated from his spoken tongue.”

“Bullshit. Does He have a manager? Does God have a manager? Cause I’m about ready to throw hands.”

“What is your regret?”

“Huh?”

“What is the thing you regret? You’re gwisin, right? Gwisin manifest when they have regrets.”

“Regrets? I mean I died really suddenly, so I think I probably have a lot of regrets.”

“It has to be big enough that you get turned into a gwisin though. Do you know what it is?”

“I don’t know. I regret I never found a boyfriend that was worth my time. I regret that I didn’t get to hang out with my sister more. I regret that I didn’t see Dune: Part Two when it was in theaters.”

“So what do you think did it?” I pause and think. It's not like I had a bad life at all, and there’s no one that comes to mind.

“To be honest, I think I did the best I could. I mean, who could’ve predicted I’d die like that? I did a lot of things wrong, but I did the best that I could. I don’t know what I regret.”

“If you want answers, I can’t give them to you. I can help you figure them out, but I don’t know what it is you’re looking for.”

“Why are you helping me, anyway? Is this some kind of trickster thing? What’s in it for you?”

She shrugs. “I’m just hanging out. It’s cuffing season, so I’m on vacation until there are more single men out on the streets again.”

I’m trying to think of what it could be. I didn’t really have any unresolved conflicts when I died, and I was on good terms with all my friends and my family and everyone. I didn’t hate my job either; being a barista was actually pretty fun most of the time. Sure, I didn’t become a millionaire or own a two-bed exposed-brick apartment on the Lower East Side or start my own fashion business, but I did the best I could. Although… there was one thing that always tugged at the back of my mind. One thing that always bugged me from when I was young to when I grew up. One little thing that I never got over.

“Goddamn,” I said. “I regret not learning Korean.”