Legendary

Doug's been in Korea a lot longer than I have, four years to be exact. I arrived in 2003, he in 1999. The five years I've been here have been great, and I've enjoyed myself immensely, but I don't think I'll ever adapt to the country the way Doug has. I certainly won't drink sweet potato lattes like he does; and -- I hope -- I'll never exhale orgasmically after a spoonful of hot soup, the broth and vegetables still in my mouth.

Don't get me wrong, I admire Doug. He's able to switch between eastern and western personas like Freddie Drummond in Jack London's short story, "South of the Slot." I've never met anyone else who can one day wear hanbok to a friend's wedding and the next a Tennessee Titans jersey to a company dinner. Plus he speaks near-fluent Korean, which has helped get me laid on one occasion and out of trouble more times than I should admit to.

I suppose I'm a little jealous of him. His job is a lot better than mine, and he makes a lot more money than I do; his girlfriend looks like a model, mine like antimatter (which is to say I don't have one); and he's always so aloof, preternaturally so. Nothing ever appears to affect him. Once we were at a club and he was dancing with his girlfriend. Some guy, obviously drunk and with a yule log-sized chip on his shoulder, pushed him so hard that his arms pinwheeled backwards and he knocked over a chest-high circular table, soaking the patrons sitting at it with beer suds and knocking a cell phone, an ashtray, and their empty mugs to the floor. Embarrassing, right? But it's like he put a spell -- "did a Jedi mind trick" was the phrase I initially used when we talked about what happened a few hours later -- over everyone. With Doug nothing's ever awkward, and as though to test his gift he was presented that particular incident. First he turned around and apologized to the customers whose table he'd knocked over, smiling just enough to appear sincere, yet more than to appear cocky and less than to look like an imbecile. It worked like a lullaby. The couple actually effused radiance from the encounter. Jesus, after what happened next I wouldn't be surprised if he immaculately conceived His child in Her Womb in some bizarre riff on the nativity story.

He walked over to his girlfriend (who, to her credit, was almost as fluid as he was in her calmness), put his arm around her waist, his hand just beneath her bra, whispered something as unintelligible as Bill Murray's last line in Lost in Translation, then walked forward a few paces to the guy who had pushed him, who was leaning elbows-up against the bar, smoking a Dunhill, eyes watery from inebriation and the prospect of further mischief. Doug wedged an open hand between the bar rail and guy's back, knocking his left arm off of the bar then grabbing it by the wrist with his own hand before it had a chance to fall limp, like a virtuoso maestro conducting the perfect score.

What I've just taken a paragraph to exposit in reality took less than two seconds. Afterwards, Doug put his right hand on the small of the guy's back and whispered something in his ear that looked eerily similar -- yet, to my imagination, ostensibly more bellicose -- to the inaudible message he'd spoken to his girlfriend less than twenty seconds prior.

The guy, a Korean for those slow on the uptake (not that it matters to me), looked at Doug first with defiance. Then with what looked like familiarity. Then, I thought, defiance again.

Doug led him up the club's basement stairs like a Stygian escort. I'd never known him to mete punishment, even to those deserving of it, but right then I was convinced he was going to murder the poor bastard. It was unreal. The guy's friends must have felt the same way, because despite the club's pounding bass, its strobe light, and their mutual drunkenness, they rushed upstairs hot on their tails. Doug's girlfriend did the same a split second after. Me, I stayed downstairs longer than I should have. I was frozen.

I was Uatu, however, and I knew my role. Document. Document. R.E.M.'s 1987 album, Document.

When I got outside and tasted the crisp winter air, all parties involved (as they say), were standing around, laughing and making merry like some sort of drunken high school reunion. Doug's girlfriend was distributing popsicles to all present. I was -- and here's a fucking understatement -- nonplussed.

But that's Doug. He unites people. He looks like David Bowie. He once told me he can tell how well a Korean girl speaks English just by looking at her smile when she walks past, and, damn, he proved it, too.

He's great. I won't use the past tense, but I should. Because he's still alive, somewhere.

Just not here.