fobby love

He is a skinny international student from Korea. He wears black plastic rimmed glasses, a beanie, skinny jeans, and chuck taylors. He might even have a slight mustache (or perhaps a few stray hairs above his upper lip and on his chin). He can be seen smoking outside from time to time, his gangly, lanky frame leaning against the building wall like a limp piece of kong namul.

She is an international student from China. She has big eyes, long black hair, wears tall boots and short skirts, and looks like Sailor Moon. She has a saccharine, high-pitched voice but keeps to herself and only speaks to ask questions or give one-word answers.

Both of them have a few things in common:

(1) They speak very little English.
(2) They look really young, like late teens.
(3) They both like to listen to their ipods while in class and never respond when the teacher talks to them.
(4) They are both in my printmaking class.

So I’m pretty sure they didn’t know each other on the first day of class. But as the weeks progressed, I noticed that they were getting more and more friendly with each other. One Saturday morning I was in the lab and happened to share a work table with them. I was on one side of the table, facing them. I watched as they flirted with each other, dabbing each other with paint, teaching each other words in their own language, pretending to fight with the wash rags. Maybe if they were alone, frolicking in the park, it would be okay. Maybe if it wasn’t Saturday morning during art class, it’d be different. Maybe if they weren’t acting like they were the only ones in the room, I wouldn’t feel like barfing. But it was pretty awkward and uncomfortable to witness this nascent stage of love unfolding before my eyes. And yet I was standing right in front of them, rolling my inks on the table, trying hard to look down at my work but whenever I looked up I would be forced to watch them or hear them gigglin’. It’s like sitting on the bus next to a window that has wingoo on it — you want to look outside since there’s naturally nowhere else to look, and you try to avoid the human face grease, but you have to strain your eyes, and whenever you want to relax, you automatically go back to staring at the wingoo. It’s unavoidable.

Or it’s like being forced to watch a really cheesy, bad movie. Like the time I stood in a long line in London during the Asian Film Festival, so that I could get in the theatre for the free screening of Windstruck, the prequel to My Sassy Girl. This turned out to be one of the most disappointing and unbearable movies I had ever seen. I was tempted to leave in the middle, except that I had waited for so long in the line; plus they were handing out free bottles of bulgogi marinade at the end. Oh, what I had to endure for that marinade.

Part of me felt embarrassed since the three of us are the only East Asians in the class; I felt somehow a part of their awkward romance by sharing a table with them. They also do not engage with anybody in the class except for each other, further perpetuating the stereotype of the snobby, isolated international students from Asia who keep to themselves. Anyway, there are only a few weeks of class left so my aim will be to avoid sharing a table with them, and maybe I can also bring an ipod so as to block out their noises. Call me a miser, but I’m not that interested in witnessing fobby love on a Saturday morning. I mean, I’m not going to sabotage their romance or anything. I just don’t want to be forced to watch it. Especially if there’s nothing in it for me (read: free bottles of marinade).