The fat drummer was flailing wildly at the cymbals while the lead singer loudly encouraged us to rock and/or roll. He was largely ignored by the audience with the notable exception of some extremely intoxicated Filipino factory workers with tremendous hair. I thought about the two-year old Tabasco sauce and concluded my friend was probably right.
As far as I can remember, which isn't especially well, when I moved out of my old apartment I left behind the following items: seven packets of dried seaweed, a small tub of pseudo-American peanut butter, half a bag of penne, an odd assortment of spices {salt and pepper are the only ones I'm certain of, though they were mostly empty}, large bags of peanuts and sunflower seeds, and the aforementioned Tabasco. There were some other things in the refrigerator/freezer, but again my memory is fuzzy. I think there was a bottle of aloe juice and some very frozen packets of Korean dumplings {mando}, however.
I started thinking about these things because the guy I was talking to that night happened to be the same guy who replaced me at my old school, Cheonan Wonderland. He had, as we discussed at some length, basically become the "new Nick". By that I mean he now inhabits the basic environments and roles that I once occupied. He teaches my old kids, sits in my old desk, poops in my old toilet Being replaced isn't that unusual in Korea - few people make a lifelong career of teaching kindergarteners here. But not many ex-teachers get to sit down with their replacements and hear an analysis of the life they left behind from the person who now lives that life. It was interesting, to say the least.
Before going further I have to mention the oddly antagonistic relationship I held with my cabinets in Cheonan. When I arrived in August last year, I was intrigued and mildly horrified by the contents of my kitchen. The cabinets were coated with a strange dust that looked oddly reddish, as if someone had spilled a bottle of paprika and then let it sit there until the grains had some kind of Vulcan body-meld with the wood. I made a few extremely half-hearted attempts to scrub some of the dust off but to no avail. In some places there were darker reddish-orange circles - it reminded me of the ring a very hot/cold cup of coffee leaves except this coffee was the color of Ron Howard's hair.
Over the next twelve months I existed in a weird state of detente with my cabinets. I did not try to clean them, and in return they did not smell too badly or attract insects. A co-worker living several floors above me {and her eventual replacement} was plagued by cockroaches during this time and I didn't want to risk an infestation by altering the cabinets' natural equilibrium. I have a very basic grasp of science mixed with a strong superstitious streak, and my thinking ran something like this:
"There must be some combination of herbs and spices within the confines of the cabinets that is keeping the insects at bay. {Co-worker} is female and thus far more hygienic than me in most ways. What prevents me from suffering the same fate as her? Guess it's the protective scum-layer."
During the entire time I lived in that apartment, I never had a single problem with roaches, spiders, ants, or any other creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. No harsh ecosystem destroying disinfectants = no insects. And I do remember my co-worker being a compulsive germophobe.
In fairness this is the same type of mental gymnastics that leads Chinese people to believe ground-up panda cocks are a remedy for male pattern baldness. Science is not on my side here. But I'm wandering way off track - the important thing is what my dirty cabinets said about their previous owner.
I'm not sure where to begin with that question just yet. But for an interlude, I will describe the various cabinets of my new apartment and what I assume their contents say about the girl who lived here before me.
First, let me say that moving into a Korean apartment is far more pleasant if the preceding occupant was female. This place was stocked. Granted, many of the items were baffling to me - I'm not sure why an outwardly healthy single-headed human needs three hair straighteners. Does a sock drawer really need an air freshener? But I'm not complaining - it was great.
In the kitchen, she left behind a wondrous assortment of foods that I mostly didn't feel like eating. I bequeathed that poor bastard some stale pasta - she gave me four different kinds of ramen. Plus curry, though I am pathologically terrified of Korean curries and won't eat it unless the alternatives are fish-based or even more yellowish. There was a large box of sugar-free crackers that I did eat, feeling mildly homeless as I munched on saltines while walking by the local galbi place where people sat demolishing giant slabs of meat.
There were at least three boxes of fabulous teas, all of which bore the images of pajama-clad teddy bears, gently snoozing moons, piles of thick warm blankets, and other things that subconsciously encourage you to go the fuck to sleep. I tried a cup or two and it seemed to really work - though I was hellaciously exhausted
and in all likelihood an IV of Red Bull wouldn't have been enough to keep me awake at that point. So the people at Celestial Seasonings still have my slightly hesitant trust.
Beneath the gas range there were enough varieties of cooking oil to perform some kind of task that requires a hell of a lot of cooking oils. Olive, canola, peanut, sesame...some other things that I didn't look at closely. Also a couple types of vinegar and something called "balsamic", though I am pretty sure that is just a fancy vinegar.
On to the bathroom - this is where things get interesting. Not in that way. Or I guess really any way, to a normal person. In any case there were no sex toys, lubricants, or other items that would suggest the bathroom was used for non-personal-cleansing purposes.
But there were Q-Tips. Oh, were there Q-Tips...and an obscene amount of combination mini-flossers/toothpicks that stood with their points in the air like a tiny phalanx bent on making my gums bleed. And a nice large bottle of knock-off Advil, or something like it that presumably contains most of the same ingrediants. Tons of bandages, but no anti-bacterial ointment. No toothpaste or mouthwash either, though there were some bottles of apparently expensive shampoo and conditioner {so I was informed by my girlfriend}.
The thing that really stood out for me, though, was the cold medicine. There were at least a few dozen packets of cold-remedy powders designed for every conceivable time of day. In my life I have been accustomed to curing cold symptoms only with soup or pills. Possibly Sprite at times. I understand the drinking fluids part - it makes sense to prevent dehydration and promote regular cellular function and some other stuff as well, I assume. What doesn't make sense to me is purposely making those fluids taste so horrible that swallowing them is more unpleasant than the cold itself. But I gave some to my girlfriend, who had a pretty awful cold at the time, and she seemed to get better after taking them. So maybe there is some payoff to the horrible taste, though personally I will stick to Campbell's.
One more note about the cabinets - kitchen, bathroom and "main room" {I'm lumping those in with the others even though traditionally they'd probably be considered closer to dressers} - they were all occupied by air fresheners. The air fresheners were all purplish in color and smell remarkably unobtrusive. My dishes, toothbrush, and jeans don't smell like lilac or lavender at all. Nor do they smell bad - the air fresheners just establish like a scent vacuum so that no smells exist at all.
So what does this say about the girl who lived here before? I feel confident in saying that she liked things to smell nice and made an investment of sufficient effort and capital to ensure that her dwelling did not smell like a locker room. I can also assume that she valued a good night's sleep and did not like sniffling. Also that she was at least a semi-skilled cook who enjoyed making food and did not resort to peanut butter toast and apples four times a week like I do.
Behind those fairly certain theories lie a vast array of entertaining and irresponsible hypotheses I could make. She might have had so many Q-tips because she had abnormally dirty ears...or cleaned a lot of computer keyboards in her spare time. She was either hopelessly addicted to camomile or just liked the sound of hissing kettles. She flossed three times a day to maintain her movie-star-perfect teeth or to correct years of Britishly bad dental hygiene. There's really no way to find out without asking her, which I probably won't do.
So if such an extensive and intimate stash of evidence can tell me so little about the character of a fellow human, what is my poor replacement supposed to make of some legumes and crusty Tabasco sauce? Maybe if he heard my explanation he'd understand that I'm not really a Pledge-averse dietary freak - that there are perfectly reasonable reasons why I left things in the condition I did { I should mention that my diet consists of more than seaweed and sunflower seeds - I just ate all the good stuff before leaving}. It could change his opinion of me, possibly. But I don't think that I could really explain to him who I am or other deep metaphysical ponderings just by describing my housekeeping routines.
I think this is why it's hard to really know someone without making a concerted effort to dig into their brains, and past the brains, in many cases. Even the things we surround ourselves with can sometimes cause misleading impressions about our personalities and what we consider important. It's tempting to classify folks into neat Odd Coupleish categories, especially with oodles of evidence, but this strategy can lead to completely false conclusions.
I didn't have a bottle of Tabasco sauce in my cabinet because I loved it so much. In fact I'd never used it once during the whole year I was there. I hate Tabasco. I just didn't throw it out because it made the cabinet feel less empty between shopping trips.
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