In Twilight Regalia

There’s this chick below us that is unique in my linguistic experiences. She arrives home at four in the morning most often, sometimes a little earlier or later. She and her probably completely dominated boyfriend throw their glass door open and she steps out onto her balcony below us on the enclosed courtyard with her cell phone flashing torment when we try to get that last 2 hours of needed sleep.

You must understand that our courtyard is like a giant metal trashcan in which sound bounces scientifically perfectly from one diagonal end to the other (a fact I’ve proved by angrily tracking down an ongoing alarmclock one morning, but that’s another story). It actually MAGNIFIES sound. It’s amazing. I can hear the murmur of a mom cooing her baby to sleep at the other end of the building.

But back to the cell chick at 4:30 in the dark wee hours. Her conversation is all in Korean, and I know some bits of Korean but not nearly enough to tell what it is. But you have to understand, she’s from Seoul, and she’s obviously watched every soap drama there is to be had in Korea, because she sounds just like them. They WEEP. They SWOON. THEY GUSH. and they WEEP and cry again. She makes a dramatic swooping rise and fall of her speech, particularly when she’s pouting and whining, which she does …. well, almost all the time. I’m sure she thinks it’s her signature style. She’s the drama diva extraordinaire of our nore-bang of a building.

Language is a curiosity of mine, I like it. And music and sound of all ilks, even to certain John Cage pieces. The Koreanness is not annoying to me. Her face, which I have seen, is not annoying.

But her voice is like trailing an ambulance. Picture your hair flying straight back and your eyes barely keeping closed in the G-force of it.

It’s the kind of grating sound I once noticed that Nancy Reagan had tried so hard to tone down, but that still clung on, making her hated by so many. But try turning it way up, both in pitch and volume, into a field call, into a whining anime brat of a cartoon. Let’s just say she sounds like she has pigtails without them and somebody just stole her Pocky.

We figured she had to be drunk from the pitch and rise and whine and fall and pout. Maybe she’s had too much soju? we thought. She seems to fall into whining fits, go back to giddy laughing, return to whining, followed by more wailing.

We waited in a pause. Maybe she’s just psycho? But that was after we had already decided she had to be muffled, stuffed into a bag and pitched off the balcony and her cell phone confiscated and picked clean of all its dingly-dong things.

If it were English:

Drunk Chick with Loud Mouth: Hey?!!! Heh-YUN wassup?? Are you coming out to party with us to tomorrow? I need you to cut my hair again, you gotta come. NOOOOOOOOOOO!! You gotta!!! YES REALLY GIRL, you GOTTA!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEAAAAAAAAAAA. Hell no! I don’t wanna! Heeee.

HUH???? who else is going? NO I didn’t take it. No that’s my belt, the pink one, and I left that blue one with YOU… huh???? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!Did you get that one???

(—————pause long enough to lull you back into partial sleep——————–)

HUHHHHHHHHHH????!!!!! NO FUCKING WAY!!!!!!!!! (a gunshot could have been less painful to the ear)

Yeah I DID. YEAH YEAH YEAH. HEEEEE HEEEE hHHHHEEEEEEEE.
Oh NOOooooooooo don’t say THAT!!! You know he likes you!!!

NOooooo. Huh???? I gotta go…

Mumbling Boyfriend: memmmemmfnnmm mmmm mbmbmemm bmmmmbm.

Drunk Chick: WHYYYYYYYYY???? (starts to sound like she’s five years old and you just stomped on her birthday cake) I NEVER did… Why you always say THAT????? You always hate me. I know you do. YOU DO DON”T YOU!!! (cries and sobs in ridiculous tantrum like fits). YOU HATE ME.!!! WAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Mumbling Boyfriend, noticing that everyone’s glass doors onto the courtyard are slamming shut: mmmm mmmfjfjmdmsj dfjmammda smsmmsmsm dddd. Memmnnf.

Drunk CHICK: I DIDN’T, I never DO THAT.. ….. I FUCKING HATE you, you know that? I hate you, you never let me do ANYTHING…. WHY do you hate me when I love you so much????? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
EAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHwhimper whimper AAAaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

By now the Dad-guy across from us in the courtyard, who’s the noisiest member of the noisiest family in the bunch, who sleeps through anything because he has a snore like a chainsaw that we can all hear, is awake and he’s PISSED de la fuego. He opens up his glass door to yell something unrecognizable at her in Spanish.

I hiss out my window, “She’s ….. ummmmm…. (I pause)…. dang, how do you say that….La Senorita es barracho? barracha?”

I’m getting too old for this shit. Language lessons at 4:30 in the morning.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.