For about two months or so, I have been going to see a massage guy who I call Dr Ouch. Like all the other Koreans I know, I don’t know his real name. All Korean names are the same and they all sound like a food, mostly something like Kim Chi or Kim Sun Chi or Kim Chi Sun. There are possibly only about six Korean names in total that everyone shares, and they just mix the order of them a little to make life seem just that little bit more interesting. Calling the roll in a classroom in Korea will just sound something like this: Kim Sun, Kim Sung, Kim Chi Sung, Kim Yung, Mi Yung, Kim Mi Yung, Yung Chi…etc. Often it is just better if I give them names of my own invention which helps me out tremendously. So, my students now answer quite happily when I call the roll with names like ‘Esmira’, named after an ex colleague, ‘Veronica’, the sexy one in the Archie comic book series that I read when I was a kid, ‘Misty’, my faithful and long-since departed pooch, ‘Lily’ (she wanted a flower name) and cinnamon. I guess the students have some inkling that Korean names mostly suck and are happy to have some exotic Western names to add to the mystique.
During the first of these, now weekly sessions of excruciating pain under the guise of ‘massage’, the only word this Korean guy knew was “ouchy”. Every time he would do something that sent the most intense pain signals straight to my brain, he would smile peacefully and ask, “Ouchy?” To which I would nod vigorously. Over the weeks and months, his vocabulary has magically improved and we now have faltering attempts at conversation. This development is just no good at all because I have to constantly try to decode what the hell he is saying through this absolute intense pain that, in the course of an hour massage, has me writhing and even screaming out for about 15 minutes of that time. It seems that Dr Ouch and I are the same age, he is one year older in Korean age (Koreans count the time spent in the womb toward their age; I guess Koreans aren’t exactly down with the whole abortion thing then) but we were both born in 1968 which makes us both the Chinese sign of the monkey and he knows that I am the sign of Cancer the Crab. He thinks this hilarious and calls me King Crab.
I get a lot of back pain and he really is trying to help me with this. It seems that he puts it all down to air; not enough air getting in so the heart is not pumping as it should and all pain stems from this.
What follows is a fairly typical example of our conversations:
I enter the small massage room and he pokes his round smiling Korean face out from behind the screens where he is busy inflicting pain upon a fellow Korean (Dr Ouch has had some foreigner customers before but I suspect I may be the only one seeing him now, and that’s really only because I’m a complete masochist).
“An yong hasayo”, I say.
“Oh, Glenn.”
Koreans always start any interaction with a foreigner by using this mock surprise “Oh!” like the whole surprise of this foreigner standing before them is just so incredibly surprising (they even text message it, “Oh!…Professor”), even though I had an appointment at that time and it’s no surprise at all. Actually, I don’t mind this, it’s cute and they do it to be polite I guess.
I sit in the waiting area and try to not get involved in the sounds of muffled pain coming from the other side of the screens. Instead, I get involved in the television where there is a traditional Korean drama showing, set hundreds of years ago before the internet; there is a woman dressed in traditional Korean clothes chopping vegetables. Every week it is always the same show and the only action I have ever seen take place is this woman chopping vegetables. Actually, she is very skilled at it, but, it’s no wonder since she does it every week. It’s a far cry from the Bold and the Beautiful, being as there’s a lot less focus on vegetables on that show and a lot more focus on sex. I wonder quietly to myself why they don’t make shows that mix together sex and vegetables…and, just as quickly, I remember that they do. Then, suddenly, my head is filled with this particular scene I once saw involving a woman and a zucchini. I chide myself, focus Glenn. Focus on the imminent pain. Be the warrior. Yours is the path of abstinence. But I’m really struggling with the squash fest playing in my head.
Ten minutes later, that round smiling face appears again and I am gestured toward the massage table where I lie down facing upwards and wait for the pain. We move into our conversation slowly, Dr Ouch and I, but the pain usually gets going within the first few minutes.
“Ouchy?”
“Yep, ouchy.”
He is now able to say, “Pain?” and Deep Pain?” so we can delineate between the different levels.
“Eat dinner?” he asks.
“No, no dinner.”
“Food many?” he asks patting my stomach. “Big.”
“No, not food many.”
“Eat what? Beef?”
“No. No eat beef. Eat chicken. Chicken cheap. Beef not cheap.” I say these things through the fog of pain.
“Handsome face.”
It will always be only about five minutes into the session when he will look down at me smiling and say, gushingly, “Handsome face”. He will say this maybe a couple more times before we are finished. I did wonder if he was gay being how he spends so much time inflicting pain around my groin area (he assures me that this area is connected with the pain in my back) and saying ‘handsome face’, but he’s shown me a photo of his wife and kids so he’s probably not gay.
“Not handsome. Old face.” I say. He laughs. I always say this and he always laughs. It’s like that poor woman, forever chopping the same vegetables in some Kim Chi infested Groundhog Day.
“Turn side”
I turn.
“Chicken good. No rice. Beef little.”
“Waist soft”, he says.
“Waist soft, good or bad?” I ask.
“Good, not strong. You know octpu?”
“Octopus? I should eat more octopus?”
“No, waist soft like octopus.”
“And waist soft like octopus is good?”
“Good”, he says, not strong.”
He starts massaging my arm. “Big arm, not strong”. I can bench press 80kgs so I’m not entirely in agreement with this but I let it go.
“Yeah, big.”
“King Crab!” he says, as he raises my arm to his mouth, pretending to bite into it. He laughs heartily at this. I laugh but I’m much more comfortable with a woman and her zucchini than all this. Then again, maybe I’m just being narrow-minded.
I wonder if this is money well spent but that’s the thing about Korea, there really is nothing to do here. Why not spend $30 a week on excruciating pain whilst giving free English lessons?
During these sessions, Dr Ouch concentrates on pretty much all the areas of my body except my lower back which is where so much of the pain is, but, at the end of the session, it really does help.
Dr Ouch works six days a week and is booked up all of that time. I’m not sure that I would like to continue these weekly sessions forever but, for now, it’s all part of the bizarreness of the Korean experience.
