I stumbled out of the subway station, my clothes sticking to my skin in the moist hot air, and traversed up concrete stairs to a raised pedestrian bridge. Shelma and Alex walked near behind. We were going to the Noryangin fish market after a long day admiring old Buddhist temples and a huge hyper-commercial mall and the plastic surgery district in Gangnam. All in close proximity. Jia dropped off earlier to tend her partner Kael, at the time suffering from an unidentified case of horrible food poisoning, back at the apartment. She felt slightly guilty enjoying the day while he nursed a digestive system doing somersaults.
The pedestrian bridge crossed over a large railway pit. Trains loomed by. The floor was lined with a cheap recycled rubber padding. It’s same kind that’s used for making the floor of public elementary school jungle gyms back in Los Angeles. A drunken man was sleeping in the middle of it. More drunken men, and even some women, laughed and pointed as they walked by. One man was tempted to kick him but refrained from doing so.
We descended into the warehouse fish market and peered over a corroded grey concrete balcony. Hundreds of small stands, as far as the eye could see, sparkled with bright blue tanks, filled to the brim with the fruit of the sea. It was fucking amazing.
A pungent sea smell, strong and corrosive, filled the air with its stench. There were fish of all kinds and sizes; squirming octopus and squid; crabs, lobsters, oysters, and countless crustaceans beyond my categorical skills. Some guests were eating the fish straight from the tanks, cut into thin slices of sashimi on white cabbage. Others took their prized purchases to restaurants hidden down cavernous alcoves. If we came at three in the morning, then the wholesalers would be there, chucking thousands of sea animals to the trucks.
After half an hour of walking around the vendors, some serious rumination and tense argument, we decided on a two-and-a-half kilo king crab and some octopus. We received both in plastic bags and were directed to a basement restaurant where they would prepare the meal. A faint rumble of the train shook the floors. The octopus came first: cut into small pieces. The legs riggled as if they were still alive; the suctions still worked and stuck to our fingers. We dipped them in sesame oil and put them in our mouths, where they stuck tongue-to-cheek, without any wink, and somehow tried to evade our stomachs.
But then the crab came, and oh the crab, what a beautiful beast of the great oceanic abyss! It was huge and magnificent. We cracked the legs open and juice came flooding out in surprising bursts. The meat was fresh and tender, delicious beyond anything of its kind I’ve ever come across. There was red paste sauce and sesame leaves, garlic and peppers for taste. And it was so beautiful; we got high on its flesh only as good meat should ever do to the soul. When we finally scrapped the shell as much as we could, we ordered a rice dish made of its remains, and it was the final gasp of satisfaction plastered onto our faces like an ecstatic benediction on St. Theresa’s lips. If only Bernini knew the bliss of carnal pleasures from the dark sands at the bottom of the ocean, not just the horizon beyond the end of the stars.
Note: pictures to come
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