After every Halloween I like to write a little something I call "Halloween Headaches" about my experiences on Halloween whether I'm in New York (thank goodness I'm not there right now, stay strong Big Apple) or Colorado or Korea. Well, here we are at the Fourth Annual "Halloween Headaches" and once again, I'm in Korea…for the third year in a row!
Koreans don't really do Halloween. They don't trick-or-treat. No candy gets passed around to little kids. They don't really seem to like dressing up like slutty witches, skanky nurses, or Loose Mother Goose. But, the foreigners who live in Korea like all this stuff. Phew!
This year I decided to head to Itaewon, the main foreigner district. This is a place where you can find a decent burger, canned chick peas, shoes that fit a normal person, books in English, drunk African dudes, drunk English teachers, drunk random foreigners, drunk US Army dudes, drunk Korean chicks looking for non-Korean dudes, and all types of other necessities for nice little boys and girls.
For my costume, I decided to do a repeat. Last year the weekend before Halloween, I wore a red flannel, grew a beard, and dressed up as a lumberjack. As a buddy and I checked out some slutty Angry Birds he asked, "You're all in red, got a beard, and doofy looking. Why didn't you just do Mario?" So for Halloween proper, I shaved my beard into a handlebar mustache and threw on some red clothes and a red hat with an "M" on it. Boom! I stepped out the door and was an instant celebrity. Well, I'm a celebrity anyway because I'm the only white person living in the ten-block radius, but I was also Super Mario! I thought even if a white person was on fire, Koreans wouldn't try to make small talk with him. What a lie! Put on some Mario clothes and Koreans young and old, on the bus or walking down the street, will stop you and beg for a quick photo. Or give you a high five. Or just laugh. Even as stupid as I look usually, I had never received that kind of attention. And when I arrived at school the lovefest continued even more. My kindergartners and university students both went wild over Mario.
So, since I already owned the red hat and suspenders, and had grown a beard, I decided to do Mario again this year.
The problems started when I ordered a new red Mario hat along with a Luigi hat. Only the Mario hat came, and it was gigantic and stupid. The crappy one I made looked ten times better.
Then my Luigi decided to take a trip with his girlfriend. My other Luigi declined because he was on his male period. My girlfriend said "no" because she hates Halloween.
So I tried to solve things by drinking.
And you know what, it kind of worked. I met up with my friends Robot and Huey. I also ran into Gong, one of my old Korean university students. We sat down for what was supposed to be just a burger and a beer. That burger turned into a few more beers, and then it turns out Gong had never taken a Jell-O shot before. So we did that. It also turned out Gong hadn't ever drank that much, so we decided to drink more than that much. Then it also also turned out Gong had never drunkenly hit on a white girl, so we also tried to show him how to do that (I asked permission and told her boyfriend what was up. He wasn't too pleased, but I'm pretty big and mean).
In between all the drinking and instructing Gong on the better parts of life, Huey decided he wanted to find some green stuff and be my third Luigi.
Pretty soon Gong needed to be stuffed into a cab home. Huey and I walked home and drank some road beers. In case you were wondering, drinking in public is not only totally legal in Korea, it's almost the thing to do for all ages.
As I neared my girlfriend's apartment building I saw a group of four college-aged Korean guys. Like any gang of toughs, they said, "Hey you! Speak English?" I gurgled a little bit. They replied, "You're cool. Want to drink?"
This is absolutely the last thing I needed, but I was so drunk that any idea sounded like a good idea. I bought the boys some beers and soju (Korean rice wine) and we walked around looking for an open bar that was not a whorehouse. We couldn't find one so I slowly made my way home, woke up my girlfriend, and forced her to talk to me and watch me almost barf. Then somewhere along the line I fell asleep.
I snarled awake the next morning and wondered how full of shit Huey was. And I wondered if I could possibly hit the town again.
In the afternoon, a few hours after the second time I woke up Huey texted me: "I found a hat and a shirt. You ready to rock?"
And that's how the hottest couple since Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man reunited.
Come back tomorrow for the story of KC Mario and Huey Luigi's second night of partying, chock full of costume photos!
More in the series:
Halloween Headaches 1.0 (2008)
Halloween Headaches 2.0 (2009)
Halloween Headaches 2.51 (2009)
Pre-Halloween Headaches (2010)
Halloween Headaches (2010)
Halloween Headaches (2011)
Pre-Halloween Headaches (2012)
Halloween Headaches (2012)