100 Love Letters I'll Never Send ("Buy Me Drinkie,") (C) 2017

Summer 1999 South Korea:

“Beware. The woman will take you to a back room away from everything; and in the dark shadows a man will be waiting to take all your money after they knock you out. Or they may just kill you. Another thing you have to be aware of is that they will put drugs in your adult beverage that will render you unconscious. Then you wake up in a dirty bathtub soaked in your own blood with a sign on the ceiling that reads ‘CALL THE POLICE.’ They have stolen your organs sold parts of you to the black market. Beware of the sexually transmitted diseases. They have something here called black syphilis. If you catch it you have to stay in this country.” 

When we, soldiers, came to the peninsula, that's what they call South Korea, that was probably the part of our briefing that engaged most of our attention.

But of course we did acts of sexually promiscuous behavior. 

I was talking about how wrong you did me to any one that would listen. The only one who sympathized and took me under his wing was my supervisor Sergeant First Class Toro. He told me “The only way to get over her is to get with another woman.” I felt this was a betrayal to you in that I was replacing you with something cheap.

He’d watch me at the clubs. First time I didn’t even know.  

"Didn't plan on doing anything," yea that's what I told myself. Yet once that six Korean beer got in me and she was more and more touchy feely on me the more I drank. She kept saying “Buy me drinkie, buy me drinkie.” The American dollar was worth more than their money, wan. Exchange a twenty and you got a pocket full of money. She grasped my hand and starting walking me toward the back. “Hold up junior,” Toro told me in his English with a thick Puerto Rican accent.

"You weren't seeing the bottle behind the bar. In that empty liqour bottle they put tea in it. They serve you more and more. They are sober as can be and you're getting drunker and drunker until you've spent all your money," Toro Told me.