What does going fishing and dating in Korea have in common? A guide to 어장
There are plenty of fish in the sea. And there are also plenty of fish in some fish tanks. Literally. And Metaphorically. Why I am telling you this? Because I am one of them. And if you live in Korea, I am pretty sure so are you.
You see, I recently stumbled across a dating phenomenon Koreans call ‘어장’ (which … you guessed it … means fish tank) — something I’ve found myself begrudgingly falling into head over heels throughout the past weeks.
It all started a month ago with a casual, but long awaited menage-á-deux with an acquaintance of mine I had called dibs on back in the days, when he was a struggling DJ, scratching vinyls in one of Itaewon’s underground Hip Hop Clubs, dressed in shapeless, washed-out college-style Jerseys, with a bleached military buzz cut. Our love story is probably as unromantic as that whole sloppy ass fish tank metaphor itself: He was available. I was horny. Dressed in a scandalous merger of fishnet stockings and leather, I ended up in his apartment, a typical bachelor flat with color-faded posters of a bandana-wearing 2Pac hanging above a collection of scrupulously organized High Tops at the door, spending the next twenty hours with greasy Pizza, Netflix and six rounds of scandalous hangover sex. And as I was doing the infamous walk of shame the next day, teetering from side to side (shout out to you and your dick bicycles, Ariana), I quickly found myself in one of Korea’s infamous ‘some relationships’– a weird label-less netherland between a nice one-time-fuck and actual couplehood, filled with cheesy I’m-feeling-some-type-of-way-messages and the hard-to-get-mind-games my girlfriends told me about in middle school.
You’d probably expect me to tell you how our steamy Sunday sex marathon turned into a match-made in K-Drama-heaven (a.k.a the KBS Studios) with him kneeling down and tying my shoe laces as we’re walking to Namsan Tower, while Shinwha’s love song ‘Angel’ magically plays in the background. But to my misfortune and your entertainment, my mediocre, chronically-sleep deprived life is not a drama script penned down by the infamous Kim Eun Sook herself (it contains too little piggy back rides and too much liquor, swearing and sex), and the anticipated reality-check followed shortly after like the inevitable morning with your body hunched over a toilet bowl after a night out.
“He doesn’t want to date you. You’re in his 어장”, Jieun, one of my ride-or-die kind of girlfriends from university, enlightened me as I was venting to her about my sexy but stagnating, label-less relationship to former-blond-hair-military-buzz-cut-boy halfway through a platter of spicy chicken feet.
“He’s keeping you in a fish tank”, She explained, noticing the confused and slightly drunk look on my face as I was passive-aggressively drowning my sorrows in my second bottle of Soju. “He keeps you as an occasional fuck, along with others. You’re a booty call.”
And just like that she brought my, now passive aggressively drowning my sorrows in spicy chicken feet self back to reality. That night Nahyun made a point and it started dawning on me: I am stuck. Stuck in a nasty ass fish tank with probably old ass water that hasn’t been renewed since former-blond-hair-military-buzz-cut-boy’s last STD test (if he even ever had one), blindly falling for a manufactured reality like the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave, only that the shadows I mistook for the real world were created with diabetes-inducing sugary-sweet good-night messages and empty promises.
You see, I pride myself with my ability of having sex like a man. I keep my circle of booty calls close. My friends with benefits even closer, telling them that they can fuck me anytime as long as we stay far away from any fatal strings that could potentially get attached in the future (I am simply too busy grinding and paying my bills to go on movie dates). The rules are simple: Don’t catch any feelings. And fuck with others. I don’t want you to be exclusive to me just like I don’t want to be exclusive to you. No need for rudimentary relationships. No need for fucking fish tanks.
But granted: If my dating life was like a movie, Finding Nemo is definitely not the one I’d be aiming for. Instead I have always pictured myself as a dirty , nymphomaniac version of Carrie Bradshaw in a Korean style Gossip Girl Spin Off, mixed with occasional episodes of Sex and the City, and not as a crippled fish with the voice of a 5 years old boy caught in a fish tank, patiently waiting get to played with (or rather fucked with) just to get thrown in there again.
How the fuck did my 21st century feminist booty even get to this point?
Truth is and I hate to break it down to you dear: That fish tank bullshit is something we all go through at least once in our life — it’d be the ex-boyfriend we occasionally fuck with out of convenience or the ‘It’ boy from our English Literature class, whose I-promise-I will-take-you-out-on-a-proper-date-once-finals-are-over-excuse still lets you keep up the hopes of one day you could be the sought after girlfriend by his side.
From here on you either accept your fate of being one of his back-up fucks on constant energy-saving-mode (which, #spoiler, will turn you into an emotional maniac, checking your Instagram-feed by the minute, deciphering if his latest Instagram-story containing a lyric from Taylor Swift’s ‘You belong with me’ could possibly be directed to you, OR you do what I decided to do: Say goodbye to any tipsy ‘I-want-to-see-you-baby’ messages with your middle finger up high, leaving that fucking fish take with your legs shut (break up sex is overrated at this point) and most importantly: learn your goddamn lesson.
Like I said: There are plenty of fish in the sea. It would be a shame if you stayed in that small fish tank forever, right?
xoxo Laura
