Kyung-ran Jo - Tongue

More than three pages of Se-yeon and Seok-ju’s pictures were featured in the magazine. In one picture they faced each other playfully in her soon-to-be-opened cooking-class kitchen, hands dripping with honey. Licking honey from each other’s palms to signify that they would share food and loving words was a Germanic tradition of promising love. This would have been Mun-ju’s idea. Although she didn’t want to, once she decided to interview them the editor in her would have done her best to get a good picture, an original one. Most don’t know the legend of honey. Mun-ju is the one who told me this story. Thankfully there wasn’t a picture of them licking each other’s palms. Mystics slicked honey on their hands and tongues to fight evil and realize good. I should be the one with honeyed palms now, not them.

Be careful. Love is like a mushroom—when you harvest mushrooms you shouldn’t pull them out of the ground but carefully cut them with a small knife. So they will keep growing . I want to say this to Manager Park and the saucier. But for me, love is no longer music or food or honey or mushrooms. Everything has changed now.

I hear something. Blood coursing, bones breaking, blood stopping. Cooks are knife-wielding artists. We express ourselves with our hands. The kitchen could easily become a scene of carnage. With my knife, I fearlessly pin the plump cock’s comb to the cutting board, the cock’s comb that glistens proud and red, like the arrogant tongue of a liar.

LOVE AND HUNGER ARE ONE just like the seed and germ of fruit. Physical symptoms that propel your life. Love and hunger, the most instinctive reflexes, are regulated by the same part of the brain. If neither is satisfied, you are overwhelmed with rage. There aren’t very many things you can do to get beyond rage other than to continue eating. Me yelling, me sobbing, me holding a bag of chips all day. A simple montage of me six months ago. When I chewed on thin, crispy chips, shrieks and bone-breaking crunches and sounds of strangling rang loudly in my ears, pounding against my eardrums. A chip is designed so that it’s impossible to put the entire thing in your mouth. The wider you open your mouth to stuff in the chip, the more it affects your eardrums, delivering the irritating chewing sound directly into your ear. I became addicted to chips because of the sheer joy of it—like a kid tasting the fizz of his first carbonated drink. As I lay on the couch for days and the chewing noise grew louder and louder, my inner instinct of attack grew stronger and stronger. I felt unease that I wouldn’t be able to control myself.

I wasn’t going to retrieve this love with rage. I put down the bag of chips and pressed my lips together. I couldn’t hear a thing. I got off the sofa slowly, in resignation. It was just an illusion that I’d never expressed anger. I’d revealed all of my emotions to him as he moved like a shadow through the house. I wish it hadn’t reached a point where he couldn’t bear it anymore. Now I regret it. I think that was when I developed a fear of opening my mouth. It’s hard to eat with someone I’m not close to. When I taste food in the kitchen I turn around, dip my finger in it, stick it into my mouth, and close my lips around it. But when I see round objects that look hard on the outside but are soft inside, like button mushrooms or an eggplant, I have the urge to chew and lick them. Is it a symptom of my unfulfilled sexuality? Or a gourmet’s curiosity? Once I had to clap my hand over my mouth when I was making an Asian-inspired salad dressing of mayonnaise, soy sauce, minced garlic, and sesame oil. Neither white nor yellow, half transparent, fairly thick. I recalled the man who’d stood upright and aimed directly into my mouth. It was like swallowing a mouthful of stew without thinking. Hot and sour and slightly bitter. I wonder what it would be like if I were to try it again—a common feeling after a first experience. When it was aimed at my mouth, I was surprised that I was able to open my mouth that wide, that I could be that instantly and quickly elated, that it was such a familiar taste. Who was making lip-smacking noises? Was it he who was holding on to my head, or me, lying on the bottom of the box as if in supplication? I tossed away the now-empty tube of mayonnaise. If I had an organ that I could pull out whenever I wanted and aim at someone, I think I would stand straight and stick it resolutely into someone’s mouth.

If he comes back it might be a while until we have sex, like when we first met. But I don’t think he will come back. Because he’s finally built a new house, the house he’s wanted to build, the house he dreamed of and designed with me.

Four years ago when we looked at spaces for Won’s Kitchen, he was disappointed that he couldn’t design and build the building. He would draw, erase, and redraw a squat, small building in red brick, the cooking class on the first floor, his office on the second, and our bedroom occupying the third. Pointing at the blueprint, I playfully said the third floor was too far from the first, where I would be spending all of my days. Then we can put in a long pole . He drew a long line down the middle of the drawing. I laughed, saying, I thought those things were only in fire stations where every second counts. If you use this it’ll only take a few seconds. I always wanted something like this for my own house . He smiled brightly, earnestly, as if he would really install a fire pole if he were to build a house. I imagined him sliding down the pole from the third floor. Food would never get cold and I would never be waiting for him. I nodded shyly and pushed my hot palms into his hair. We whispered to each other, Will that day really come? Of course it will.

I still feel his hot breath near my ear, but he’s already built the house. He really did put in a pole, and under the picture of him sliding down, all smiles, a caption reads, “Every second we’re apart is unbearable.” And a close-up of Se-yeon sitting on the sofa, her long legs crossed, gazing at him proudly. He looks different in the picture. He looks like a small brown baby monkey falling from a tree, I mumble unemotionally. And now in that house lives another woman. Not me. She’s opening a cooking class. The woman who couldn’t differentiate between parsley and mugwort last fall. The U-shaped open kitchen is identical to mine, and even the counters look as though they’re made of the five-meter-wide marble that we chose after serious discussion. It would have been difficult to build a better kitchen. So it would have made sense to make it exactly the same. I nod slowly. The former model’s cooking class in a kitchen designed by her architect boyfriend would be the talk of the town for a while. If Mun-ju’s right, they’re also starring in S Company’s new refrigerator print-ad campaign featuring various celebrities. It’s not the most fabulous comeback for a top model who had to leave the industry because of a damaged tendon near her ankle, but people will talk about it. Se-yeon looks vivacious and beautiful. This is what people in love look like . I feel saliva gathering in my mouth, like when I see an unfamiliar dish that tempts the eyes and the nose.

I thought love was like an olive tree, standing strong against winds and bearing green fruit as soon as the roots took hold. I’m sad, not because I can’t tell him I love him but because love is no longer an olive tree or music or delicious food. But there are things that do not change. There is the kind of love that can’t be redirected. Yeah, I mumble, though it’s more like a moan. It’s unbelievable that all of this has happened in half a year. I think it’s time for me to do what I need to do. As I slowly walk into an underpass, I wonder if the skillet I gave her is in her kitchen. The skillet was one of my cherished items, with its thick bottom of three-ply stainless steel that delivers heat quickly and evenly, ideal for searing or pan-frying a thick piece of fish. Se-yeon said she wanted one, so I gave her that Italian Lagostina skillet last fall. No, she probably doesn’t have it anymore. It’s the skillet she used to hit Paulie. I think it’s time to fetch the ball. Isn’t that right, Paulie?