Raging Bull

“You can totally call bullshit on that. Now say it with me: ‘I totally call bullshit on that.’” I’ve only been talking to my Korean RA for fifteen minutes and already I’m preparing him for a violent ass-kicking. All the Korean students I’ve met here at Yonsei or other Universities have been not only painfully polite but are enthusiastic to practice their English with a native speaker. When they can’t find a native speaker, they talk to me.

Once, in high school, a friend and I silenced a German exchange student for an entire quartet by only speaking gibberish to one another. “Melt polka doting tree sheep sheep the tree?” I’d ask. “I car the ran…very mighty,” he’d answer while making little chicken bobs with his head. The more I think about it though, my average conversation is all that far from this display.

When their access is denied me, I can only think of big words. “Et tu, Brute?” I might say when my RA stumbles sleepily into the last bathroom stall, “a somnambulate vexation!” It isn’t my intent to be a jerk, so it must be in my genes.

Part of the problem is the explanations seem to clarify little. “Isn’t saying ‘bullshit’ very rude?” my RA asks. “Yes, but that’s kind of the point. It’s like a friendly rudeness—like sarcasm.” He gives me a confused look; he doesn’t know ‘sarcasm.’ “It means to say one thing but mean another.” He understands this: “oh…like lying.” Here’s where things get complicated. I could sit him down and explain that sarcasm (from the Greek meaning to cut the flesh or bite the lip in rage) is saying one thing and meaning another but in a way so obvious—typically determined both in levels of absurd sincerity as through tone of voice and body language—the listener detects both the untruth and the teasing associated with it. “Yeah,” I say, “kind of…”

Of course the longer I’m here the harder it becomes to recognize English. Normally this would be balanced by my picking up Korean, but really it’s more of a Robinson Crusoe style linguistic isolation. Today my professor asked me a question and I ignored him, assuming he was speaking Korean which no one does to he dopey bald white guy. “Erik” he said, and I looked up the way a dog does when you call it’s name. I’m in constant competition with man’s best friend while I’m here: I’ve got opposable thumbs but I’ve retrieved no one’s slippers , so I don’t know who’s in the lead.