My Seoul Man

Chapter 60

I said, "That's you," and paused, beer bottle poised in the air where I'd stopped in mid "salud" when I realized the song I was hearing, and that couples were swaying to on the tiny dance floor up by an even tinier stage, was the one AJ'd written about me.

He winked and nodded, looking almost as drunk as I was.

And boy, I was sloshed. From gulping down lots of sweaty bottles of cold beer into my hot sweaty body, trying to get at least a few minutes of relief.

My clothes and hair were wringing wet. Clinging to me so bad I was afraid to get up out of my seat with my dress all stuck to my butt and boobs like that.

But I managed to focus as he pointed his bottle at me and said, "It is. Charted all over Asia, Europe--made the Top 200 in the States, too."

"But not Korea."

"Oh, it charted but there was this big brouhaha about it. That the company had done the mass buy thing. And botted the stats."

I frowned--he'd lost me there. "Whatted the who?"

"They buy the albums themselves, the companies. Which is both environmentally and ethically fucked up. Cause they just dump 'em out somewhere--huge mounds of CDs and packaging material and all that, dumped and deserted. As for the bots, they're from these massive networks of computers. I don't understand the technology all that well, but it's like having millions of phony fans voting for your artists on those promotional shows we all go on for every comeback or new mini album or whatever. If your company's well connected, you're going to make the top 3. If your company's really well-connected, you're going to win."

"So... all that voting stuff I saw... the posts telling fans to download apps and copy and paste this hashtag and that URL--"

"It's not totally useless, but it's just a drop in the bucket. And every now and then it makes a real difference if the stats are particularly low in one category. Though sometimes I think the companies do that on purpose, to make it look more legit."

A tipsy twosome bumped our table--the ruddy-cheeked male half of the pair offered profuse but almost unintelligible apologies before they stumbled back onto the dance floor again.

"Your company did that for you? With all this crazy shit going on?"

"Oh, they hopped right on it, yeah. They need the good PR. They even got their hired media hacks to write some push back articles with titles like, 'Controversy Can't Stop the Music.' All about how well my new music was doing despite all the controversy. And then the bots dove in with the adoring comments to match."

I glared. Glowered, more like.

And he sat back and sung a few bars at me. Reaching out to me all theatrically, like they did in the silent movies back in the day.

I couldn't help but laugh. Drunk as I was.

But also because of the setting it was happening in. We'd decided to actually get up off each other and go somewhere--to the American inn I'd heard so much about. We got what I thought was called a tuk tuk (it's "xe loi" or "xe lam" in Viet Nam, apparently) to take us the 10 miles uphill to what almost looked like an abandoned movie set from some kind of kitschy 50s movie.

I mean those really wrong World of Susie Wong types of movies about Asia, with the beautiful Asian woman, usually a "geisha" or a prostitute or something like that, who falls for the American G.I. or reporter or some big shot who can't take her back to the States because of the prejudice or military rules or because he's already married or something else complicated that keeps cropping up throughout.