being social is scary

last night i had some marinated beef with a friend whose even-temperedness and banality always suprises me. our friendship is devoid of a sexual history or future (is that why it's boring?). anyhow, he asked me if i ran my home korean or american style, which meant could he (and others) come over often and unannounced, or should he call first? i told him that in this case i'm unambiguously amurrican.

since most koreans live with their parents and siblings until marriage, a buddy with a bachelor pad is wow-worthy. online or face-to-face, the first 2 questions from komos (korean homos) are invariably: 1) how old are you? 2) do you live alone? initially, the thought of my place being a happy refuge for local gays sounded nice- i could finally retire my "posse-less" issues! but i know it would be only a week or two before my place would be overrun by the little fuckers who would think nothing of emptying "hyeong's" fridge and liquor stash.

i enjoy social opportunities like having people over... when i can adequately prepare. preparation means clean home and clean self, but most importantly it means preparing myself for the interaction. recently i realized that lack of preparation is basically why i don't like answering phone calls. sms/txt messages are better but email is best since the sender doesn't know when i read it so i can reply when i'm ready. this weird aversion to unprepared social interactions is exacerbated by living in a foreign land. even if i loved to talk excessively to everyone (like canadians do) i'd still feel like chewbaka since my well-meaning whiny grunts would be met with polite confusion from the locals.

i need to work on my aversion to spontaneous social encounters. luckily, there's a curious phenomenon to help me do it. almost every week, my doorbell rings and the little screen above my couch shows a 30-something man outside my door. usually i just tiptoe around until they leave rather than engage them in an awkward staring match where i say "hello. who are you?" in accented korean and they, surprised to be face-to-face with a foreigner, get flustered and usually say nothing (but still have the wherewithall to peek inside my apartment).

i don't know why they keep coming. they never have pizza or kimbap in tow so i wonder if my address has been written in a men's bathroom stall somewhere. hopeful thoughts of bad porn scenarios usually follow. ok fine. smelly, mud masked or naked, next time the two of us will have tea.