Page 2 of Teach Me K-Pop

The final bell of the day rings as I head back to the circulation desk, and I pass by the girls again, just in time to hear Jenny telling the rest of them, “You know who’s really hot? Señorita Gonzalez. Like, whoa.”

I wonder, for just a second, where the rest of the staff falls on their list, but decide it’s probably better for all of us that I missed the rest of that ranking. Hopping up on the desk, I sit and survey the library. Aside from a few chairs attempting to escape from the makerspace and someone having changed one of the computer’s screensavers to a rather explicit meme, the room looks pretty good.

These few minutes of quiet before the afterschool chaos begins are always a welcome respite between the regular hours of the school day and whatever the space will hold next. The one thing that everyone gets wrong about the library—at least a high school library—is thinking that it’s quiet. It’s literally never quiet, except for times like this, when it’s just me. The noise and activity are actually some of my favorite things about this place, this job. Working with high schoolers is kind of the epitome ofnever a dull momentand I love that. No day is the same and I’ve learned to thrive on the drama and energy that these walls hold.

Thankfully it’s a Friday, and there’s nothing scheduled in here over the weekend, so I can run out sooner rather than later. I’m just about to slide off my seat when a yawn takes over. I’m stretching it out when Tyler strolls in, the picture of athleticism and awakeness in his varsity coach’s tracksuit. “Home or away tonight?”

“Away, unfortunately, which means I will absolutelynotbe getting any when I get home after we roll back in at midnight or whenever,” he grumbles, dropping into a chair at the table closest to me and propping his feet up on the tabletop.

I chuckle. “Guess the honeymoon phase is really over, huh?”

Tyler groans. “I just don’t understand what happened. For months she couldn’t keep her hands off me, and now it’s just me and internet porn most of the time.”

“That is indeed tragic,” I agree. “Maybe you just need a date night? Take her out, be romantic, set the mood and all that?”

“Oh, what would you know? You don’t even like girls,” he says, using his default excuse for when I’m right and he doesn’t want to acknowledge that fact.

“Please. Gay men are the world’s leading experts on women. Everyone knows that,” I tell him, sliding off the desk so I can go remove the dick-based humor from the computer before I forget.

“How is that even fair?” Even as he complains, he gets up and puts the misplaced chairs back where they belong, which I appreciate.

“What? That we can get all the women you can’t?” I laugh when he flips me off as if he’s 17, like most of his players. “You should be thrilled I’m not bi. You’d really have had no chance then.”

“I hate how true that is,” Tyler tells me as he ambles toward the door. “Why do I come in here to talk to you again?”

I shrug. “Because no one else listens to your shit like I do?”

“Yeah, that’s probably it.” Leaning up against the doorframe, he asks, “So what are you doing this weekend?”

“I plan to spend the better part of the next 48 hours in bed. Sleeping. Alone. Well, as alone as I can be with a small dog who takes up 85% of the available real estate.” I smile. I can’t help it. I love my dog, okay?

“Wow. You know how to have a wild time, man. You should really consider slowing down some,” Tyler jokes. His watch beeps and he startles. “Gotta go. Have a good weekend, Jase.”

I give him a wave before he steps out the door. “Good luck tonight.”

With a few clicks of the mouse, I’ve restored a school-appropriate screensaver. I doubt it’ll stay until mid-day on Monday, because… teenagers. Taking one more look around the media center, I decide all is well enough for now and go to gather my things. I shove my water bottle and a truly shameful number of coffee mugs into my messenger bag to take home and run through the dishwasher. I don’t even really like coffee, but I have come to accept that I cannot survive the hours I keep without it.

Yawning again, I am extremely cognizant of the fact that here at 3 pm, I’ve been up for nearing 12 hours already, which is obviously insane. But it’s pretty normal at this point—one of the hazards of having a side hustle on the other side of the world. The time difference between here and South Korea is not insignificant, and if I want to be accommodating to my students (kind of a necessity if I want to get paid) I work with them during the hours they’re available. And the afternoon or evening for them is the wee hours of morning for me.

Locking the doors and walking to the parking lot, the mugs clink and clatter against each other in a way that should probably concern me more if I don’t want broken pieces of ceramic all over the inside of my bag. They were all freebies from various conferences and vendors trying to talk me into exclusivity agreements with their book companies, so I’m not exactly attached to any of them. I know better than to take the things I really care about to school with me after losing a few too many sentimental objects to bizarre student-related circumstances.

Even though I worked with grade-school students while I was teaching in Seoul, I never had anything get broken or go missing. But American high school students? They seem to be able to break and/or lose literally anything in an impressively short amount of time.

Which reminds me, I have to pick up treats and a new stuffie for Noel. Despite her small size, she can disassemble those “impossible to destroy” toys like some kind of tiny chaos demon fueled by aggression and rage at being forced to live this life as a miniature poodle-chihuahua mix. The most recent victim—an octopus that was supposed to be able to survive the wrath of large dogs with outrageous bite strength—had lasted about two days before I found it tentacle-less in a heap of cotton fluff behind the couch. Two of the eight arms were never recovered, and I can only imagine what kind of fate they met.

A quick trip through the pet store somehow manages to ring up at nearly $75 of impulse purchases, but she’s got turkey tendons and pork rolls, and possibly the most abstract looking butterfly I’ve ever seen, as well as a very sparkly, fuzzy bottle-shaped squeaker that reads “pup the champagne,” because she deserves it. My mother accuses me of spoiling her and she’s not wrong, but she has kind of come around as well, even having a sticker on the back of her car proclaiming her love for her grand-dog-ter.

There’s nothing quite like coming home to Noel and seeing her waiting at the door, tail wagging and paws tippy-tapping on the floor. I realize that it’s just as likely she’s excited about the bags I’m carrying and less so that I have returned, but I’m still going to assume that I am the source of her joy.

??

I toss Noel a chew bone as I glance at the clock. Knowing how extremely punctual Kija always is, the phone should be ringing right about… now. I can’t help but grin at the sound. It’s nice to know there are some things that will never change. I tap the screen to answer. “Hello, Kija.”

“What’s up, brother?” he asks, chuckling because American greetings still amuse him.

I can picture his annoyingly handsome face, smiling. Sometimes we video chat and I am never not a little bit jealous of just how incredibly attractive he is, maybe even more so now than he was when we met years ago. I’d thought for the briefest of moments that maybe we could have been something more than friends that first night at the bar, before realizing how unfortunately straight he was.

Kija had been a stressed out university student trying to drink himself into relaxation, while I was homesick and frustrated at the pressure my students were feeling to succeed even as seven-and-eight year olds. Bonding over bottles of our favorite brand of Korean beer, we’d become fast friends, meeting up regularly while I lived in Seoul and staying in touch even as I returned home to the States.

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