This weekend the OAF and I went out a couple of times. Both times we were in boites populated primarily by ajummas. For two Calis it is bracing to watch ajummas out with each other. They seem to return to the skinship of their youths.

I suppose another way to say this is that they party and cling.

Well, in our small sample.

I suppose this is a goddamned reductive way to look at fellow humants. ;-)

In one case the ajummas were at the Pirate Bar and drinking with Betty, the proprietress. In the second case they were at a new chicken restaurant that opened up down the street, right across the street from where I used to live.

There is a lot of talk, probably most of it palaver, about how Korean marriages stay formally intact while the husband and wife withdraw from, even hate, each other. The story goes that Koreans are forced into marriage after childhoods in which they never interact in meaningful ways.

The women are princesses and the men are princes. I mean “princess” and “prince” in the most exactly bad way that those terms can be used. The girls are spoiled and the boys are spoiled more. Thus, the argument goes, Korean women expect Prince Charming while Korean men are something more like ogres who cannot see beyond their own needs. This is a perfect non-reflection of Confucianism. ;-)

This construct is discussed a great deal in the expat community. It seems based on some truth, but even as I type that I also see it as the expat community risking elbow-dislocation as it pats its own cultures on their backs. After all, we would never be so barbaric. We’ve always treated women according to their skills and means.

Heh, I kill myself!
well.. someday

I should also note that this construct is primarily discussed among older expats who are.. eh… to put it politely, struggling for relationships. So let’s call it a cross-cultural thing in which long entangled relationships can become long estranged.

Which is a long introduction to how we viewed this wonderful ajumma thing… a bunch of old broads drinking, eating chicken, and pouring themselves all over each other. It seemed a public, yet intensively personal, demonstration of friendship and allegiance.

When one of the ajummas started missing cups when she poured beer?

She still got to pour beer, but her hand was guided.

Now that’s farking love.

I suppose, tangentially, this recognition of kinship in the “other” is a recognition all of y’all I miss.

Pour my beer, biatches! ;-)