Jade Lady Burning Read Online Free PDF

me slowly, shuffling his plastic slippers.
    “You could be a very good student, one of my best, if you’d only work harder.”
    “I will try,” I said. “It’s this job.…”
    The worst part about every tae kwon do workout is the stretching exercises at the beginning. My skeleton had set into a brittle knot years before I ever thought about taking up this stuff, and to get my head to my knees or my ankles behind my neck was perfect torture.
    We had a couple of American girls in the class, mainly there to ogle Mr. Chong, and they went through the stretching exercises like eels through a net.
    Later, when we finally got back on our feet and into the endless repetitions of our kicking and punching routines, I felt a lot better; the sweat flowing, air coming hard. And then the solid feeling of knuckle and instep smacking against the swinging heavy bag.
    It was during the free fighting that Mr. Chong always got me.
    “You defend yourself too much, George. You must open up. You must attack.”
    That was difficult for me to do since I’d always thought that the best offense was a good defense. And I was about twice the size of most of the people in the class. How can you open up when you don’t really intend to hurt anyone?
    After the cool-down exercises, more stretching and bending, we bowed to Mr. Chong, in unison, and were dismissed. I walked over to the weight room and, still in my gi , pumped iron for a couple of hours.
    In the sauna room I thought about Miss Pak and her short career.
    A lot of GIs, especially those just in from the States, are always hung up on whether a girl is a professional or not. As if there’s some sort of clear-cut, fluorescent line between a person who is evil and one who isn’t. I’ve done enough things in my life to be ashamed of that I don’t have much problem with a girl who lives alone in a drafty hovel, works for a salary of thirty dollars a month, sees a couple of boyfriends, and then asks me for a few bucks the morning after.
    I’m a GI. I clear almost five hundred dollars—cash—a month.
    And I’ve got a free place to live and free food to eat. Not to mention medical care if I get sick. I’m like a millionaire compared to Miss Oh.
    To be honest, there are some totally straight girls around, ones who aren’t as desperate as Miss Oh. It’s sort of hard for a GI to meet them, though, especially if you’re like me and Ernie and spend all of your free time in the village of Itaewon.
    I did once.
    Ernie and I were pulling security, along with about eight thousand other guys for some big mucketymuck from the U.S. government who was visiting the Israeli Embassy in Seoul. Ernie was driving a big unmarked sedan and I rode shotgun. We spotted her leaving the embassy, walking towards the bus stop, so we slowed down and offered her a ride. At first she didn’t understand me but then I spoke Korean to her and everything was all right.
    I took her to lunch at the Naija R&R Center downtown and then on a date where we walked through Duksoo Palace, and one afternoon I even went home and met her oldest sister. I don’t know what came over me. Just going along out of curiosity, I guess. Anyway, I took her to the Frontier Club after that on Yongsan South Post, let her listen to the live band, and bought her a Brandy Alexander. We spent the night together in a little yoguan I know in Samgakji. It was the first night she ever spent with a man.
    I saw her a couple of times after that but then I got tired of it and I stood her up once and then I wouldn’t return her calls. Her brother-in-law, a Korean man of about forty, called me and in faltering English told me I couldn’t do that to her. I was hung over, in a bad mood, and I told him to go screw himself.
    I’ve never seen her again. I’d be afraid to now. It’s things like that that have piled up in my life, that keep me aware that I’m no better than Miss Oh or any of the girls in Itaewon like her.
    However, I’m not completely