An outdoor batting cage stood between the Pyeongtaek (평택) train station and a lane where, it was said, the mafia controlled the sex trade. Red light.
American soldiers were off limits to the sex workers, and vice versa. The women lounged and catwalked in lingerie behind street-to-ceiling plate glass windows. Like zoo animals with expressions of, I don’t know, sadness, disdain, fear?
On streets elsewhere, like in Anjeong-ri (안정리), “the ville” huddled at the guarded American gates where I was stationed at Camp Humphreys in my mid 20s, women would make proposals to virile American men passing through the midnight fog between watering holes and subterranean dives.
Promises of “love you long time” and “number one fucky-fucky.”
Real phrases from real women pitched in haste to passersby. Just like so many brothel workers and alley hustlers portrayed through Hollywood’s lens. Worn women offering soldiers and sailors on R&R in Southeast Asia a good time. Like, in “Full Metal Jacket” (Vietnam) and “An Officer & A Gentleman” (the Philippines).
Those near that batting cage that stood as connective tissue between Pyeongtaek Station and Pyeongtaek pleasures, however, would not suggest such promises. Or anything else. Which gave credence to the stories, it seemed. They knew something, a reason not to lift so much as an eyebrow in the direction of us Americans. It was palpable.
I walked that back street that faced the train tracks a few times with friends. At least once as fools drunken, mouths full of marbles and soju (소주) discharging the awkward Korean phrasing our rice vodka-addled minds conjured. Almost daring mafia thugs, by our loud and leering presence, to show themselves, to let us know the gossip was real, that the bogeyman was watching. (And if so?)
When I would go to Seoul on weekends, I’d take the city bus from outside the main gate at Cp. Humphreys, in Anjeong-ri. Fifteen minutes or so to Pyeongtaek Station. I’d buy my rail ticket for the 45-minute ride north into the heart of Seoul. Then I’d walk back out the front doors of the station to the batting cage.
There, I’d slide South Korean won (₩1,000 = ~$0.80) into the machine and take cuts at the string of soft pitches that came my way. Passing time. I looked forward to that part so much that I’d get to the station with time to spare, so I could hit baseballs before the boarding call to Seoul.
I have many memories from that year lived in South Korea more than 20 years ago. Hitting in that cage is among my favorites. And, odd as it might seem, it’s the three disparate elements I’ve laid bare here that are interlaced within that memory always: train station, batting cage and the mafia’s zoo of apprehensive 매춘부.
So disparate. One, so innocent as to recall my youth. A second, seedy and fraught; and so far beyond youth. And a pragmatic third. Intertwined and inseparable all.
The Batting Cage is #Seventeen in the weekly memoir series, Among Other Things. What’s it about? Read Introducing ‘Among Other Things,’ A Weekly Memoir Series.
