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A Night out with the Public Affairs Chief
Back in Seoul, Public Affairs swings by my hotel room to take me down to Itaewon and show me the ropes. We start at the Veterans Club where we drink shots of vodka as two black stockinged, mini-skirted waitresses force "Haven't seen you in a while." We watch a Korean woman in traditional dress strip on a stage flanked by military and U.S. flags.
Then we drive off post to the clubs in Itaewon, an odyssey of small bars where we consume shot after shot and buy drinks for the hostesses so they'll pretend small talk. Public Affairs is known by almost all the hostesses in the different clubs. He buys them drinks as they sit on his lap and he goes through his koochikoo routine, telling me which ones he had, which ones he almost had.
After a while we need more money so it's a drive back to post to the ATM. Public Affairs is almost certainly legally drunk by now and I don't have a military ID to get on post. He lets me know that if he follows procedure and gets out of the car to sign me in, the gate guards might detect alcohol on his breath, so I pull out an expired student press pass, flash it and the gate guard waves us through.
On the way back downtown, Public Affairs alludes to a past incident when the authorities took away his car, the mistresses he has all over the world, the secret bank accounts that the government can't touch. During one conversation on military policy he announces with utter conviction: "The Army will absolutely not tolerate sexual harassment."
Then it's more bars, more shots, hostesses hanging on us, asking for more drinks, making more small talk through almost gritted teeth. Public Affairs occasionally calls over to see how I'm doing (he likes me now, I'm one of the boys). I'm in a booth with a hostess trying to play the I'm-not-like-the-rest-of-them game, as my hostess grows further disgusted, at one point reaching into my shirt and yanking out the press pass that hung around my neck, thinking it was dogtags and I was really a lowly GI, not the quasi-respectable kija (reporter).
I want to see this through. I ask Public Affairs about the prostitution scene he's so knowledgeable about, I tell him I'll help out with the cost. He's game and we get into his car and inch through the packed streets of Itaewon, up Hooker Hill. He pokes his head out the window and asks two women sitting on a bench if they want to have some fun. They negotiate a price and get in the back seat. After about ten minutes they ask where we're going and Public Affairs says the name of my hotel.
We get to the room and there's a pairing off, Public Affairs asking Kim and Sun Young* which one of us they want. Sun Young, who is paired with Public Affairs, asks about condoms. He says he doesn't have any. She's reluctant, confers with Kim in Korean. Public Affairs pressures, she relents.
Public Affairs takes her into the bathroom while I stay in the other room with Kim. After a few minutes he comes out and asks to borrow my blanket and pillow to lay on the floor. Kim speaks practically no English, says she's 18, but looks younger; a nervous, chubby teenager, obviously not experienced in this. She manages to tell me she has a husband who will get mad if she has sex. I tell her no problem, I'm a kija and try to ask her questions, looking up words in the Korean/English pocket dictionary. She gets a kick out of this. She says "You are a gentleman," though she later says the same to Public Affairs.
We lay on the bed as Kim flipped through a copy of Rolling Stone I gave her (it had one of my articles in it; I was using it to convince the soldiers that I wasn't CID), getting excited recognizing the big name ads.
After a while Public Affairs comes out of the bathroom announcing, "She couldn't give a blowjob, 
but she sure was a great piece of ass." Sun Young starts intently describing something to Kim in Korean. Kim listens for a little while, then goes over to get the dictionary, leafs through it and finds a word in Korean. Keeping her finger on it she brings the open book over and offers it to me. I follow her finger to the Korean and then across the page to its English translation: "abuse."
*Not their real names
