Not long ago, I was under the impression that alternative lifestyle was defined by hairstyle and the sag of one’s pants, that maybe a person’s strut signified something. But now, I realize that is all a crock of shit . . .

Sometimes I look at the others. The single expats here, living the wild single-guy lifestyles we westerners imagine so unique, edgy, cool. The lifestyles filled with booze and broads and late-night drunken motor-scooter adventures in our exclusive Korean-Westerner micro-culture here in Pusan. Then I wonder if my lot in Pusan is rather dull. I am not one, as much as I have tried at times, to enjoy the Gonzo, too-cool lifestyle. I am married, with two kids and live with my mother-in-law. I work a hellish schedule, hoping one day to afford specific economic opportunities for my wife and boys, and of course for me. It is dull. I get sick of the brats and mothers, and college class-skippers and baby crying, day in and day out, all of this seemingly never ceasing its monotonous cycle.

But occasionally I slow down enough to really look around. I sit on the floor next to my mother-in-law and we are nibbling Korean pickled pigs feet before bed. I do live with my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law is a dong-dong-jue bootlegger for neighborhood oldies. She makes it in the kitchen with rice, molasses, flat loafs of barley and packages of yeast. She checks her potion by holding a flame over the crock, watching how it burns. It is ready when, if the cap is on too tight, the wine bottle bursts from the pressure of excessive fermentation. I look into the unheated, brown honey-pot of rice wine. The dong-dong jue potion is in motion, fermenting, churning as if the crock were simmering on a low heat. Above the humid and sweet-smelling crock of liquor, swarms of tiny drunken fruit flies blissfully dance about.

Every morning at ten o’clock the house is rocking with elderly drunk–junkies cheering on my son, who is probably center stage, dancing on the table amongst the butts and ashes, pork ribs and fish bones, and various liquors of the Korean sorts. Holding a spoon in his hand for an impromptu microphone, he blurts out his new versions of mommy-daddy trot music and wiggles his butt as the drunken old women clap, howling in hysterics. My neighbors get drunk two to three times a day after retirement, and seem happier for it aside from racking coughs and occasional rheumatic attacks. And of course there are those neighbors who should never touch alcohol. One neighbor binges once a week. He is nice until the dong-dong-jue takes hold, then he is a sleepless, quarrelsome vandal for three days and forces all the neighbors to kick his ass or chase him out with a broom. Even my young son is allowed to hiss at thi! s local wino. In a few days the man sobers up, disappearing for a week, preparing for his next humiliating episode.

Our house sits upon the top of a tiny jungle hill teeming with wildlife. Weasels fight feral cats and brown rats for garbage at three in the morning. Large, hairy spiders nest next to our beds in webs, basically refurbished homes created from last year’s remaining webs. When I kill them there are twice as many tomorrow. So I leave them nest. On summer evenings, when all the neighbors sit outside drinking and barbecuing, perched upon homemade tables, avoiding the musty heat of their cramped little jue-tek houses, children, furtive and fearful, peak into our dusty old courtyard. It is a maze kimchi pots, ramyun boxes and massive spider webs within which roost goblin-black spiders big enough to gobble up a large roach. Occasionally in our bedroom, a seemingly arm’s-length centipede treads up above us. We hear his feet-steps softly click upon the wallpaper. The wife uses a hammer to kill him. Sh! e shows me its fangs before the bug disappears into a broth for dinner’s stamina side dish.

Down the street is a gang of neighborhood thug dogs. Not the American gun-totin’ thug dawgs, but a real pack of half-wild heel nippers. There is even one burly little miniature Doberman. But he is not the top shit-dog. The top shit-dog could care less about tough looks, papers and lineage registry. The top shit-dog is a young pup whose mom is in heat a lot. They all flock around this bitch’s house, wiry, wil’in and free, while the truly feral dingo-like Jin Do dogs remain chained up and pacing in the courtyards of my neighborhood. One neighbor has a tiger-striped Jin Do dog that looks part wolf. We keep our fair distance, him and I.

In the morning on a cool spring day with a warm summer breeze, my wife kisses me goodbye, ties my oldest kid to my back and I step onto the side of our little mountain. The hills are terraced, blooming with kale and cabbage and soybeans sprouting and a small park sits on top. If I squint and avoid gazing too far into the smog; if I suck in deeply the aromas of wet and pungent vegetation after a light rain, it seems I have found a tiny piece of Tibet or Nepal right here amongst the whirling racket of industrial Pusan. I have no hangover and the boy on my back is singing a self-made family love song. Finally, I clearly recall what life as a young bachelor really was, at least for me. Desperately, drunkenly crawling from pub to pub with loneliness and frustrated yearning churning within and without my self, a churning not un-similar to the churning of my mom’s freshly brewed dong-dong jue potion. Fi! nally, I realize that dong-dong jue churning, bubbling and brewing beside me fits so much better inside me.

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