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But once his waiter starts bringing girls to his
table, Jeff has no problem charming them into more than one drink. He's had
plenty of one-night stands from booking, he tells me, and has divided them into categories. California girls are gold-diggers and passive.
New York girls are aggressive and don't give a shit about your money. Korean
girls are polite and naïve, while Korean-American girls are bitchy and savvy. Ajamas,
or women older than thirty-five, are desperate, sexually adventurous and willing to risk the stigma of booking guys.
When
I told a Korean friend that I was writing about booking, he looked
at me nervously. "Why?" he asked. "To show how fucked up we are?"
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"The ajamas are easy," he says. "They're pretty pushy. I was booked to this one ajama, and she took me to a dance floor and was groping me."
As it turns out, like most of the guys I meet at Le Prive, Jeff is old fashioned. "I guess I like younger, shy girls," he muses. "They're more of a challenge."
The second time Clara is booked, I follow. The waiter deposits her at a table
of college kids who look barely pubescent; one of them is celebrating his birthday. "Whas your name?" whispers the sloshed birthday boy, putting his arm around Clara. He peppers her with questions: How old are you? What do you do? Are you having fun? Curiously,
clubbers always ask your age. In Korea, it's the first question asked in casual
conversation: men need to know if you're older than they are, so they can address
you in the honorific form. At Le Prive, where everyone speaks English,
the question is vestigial.
A
UCLA professor says the scene isn't exactly innocent. "Many women are dragged against their will," she
says. It's problematic and not safe."
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Turning away from Clara, the birthday boy spies my notebook. "Whas that for?" he asks. I tell him I'm writing about Le Prive. "I don't want you talking shit about this place!" he says. "I don't want you to close it down!" I tell him that's not my intention, but he doesn't believe me.
Indeed, many young Koreans are oddly protective of booking. When I asked Le Prive clubbers about it, they all seemed to offer the same response: Why are we explaining this? they
sighed. You're Korean. You know what it's all about. When I told a Korean
friend that I was writing about booking, he looked at me nervously. "Why?" he asked. "To show how fucked up we are?"
 Booking began in South Korea during the early '90s, as the nation's youth culture began
shedding its Confucian chain mail and fumbling toward a sexual revolution.
As the national economy boomed, Euro-style cafes and discotheques sprang up
and became wildly popular. But social mores held fast: in Korea, loyalty to
family remains paramount to individual choice.
"You have to understand how heavy the influence of arranged marriage has been," says Kye Young Park, an associate professor of anthropology at UCLA. "Courtship hasn't been developed in Korea, so booking became one way to compensate. There's a strong belief in romance in the U.S., but Koreans and other East Asians believed that was superficial. What was more important in choosing your spouse was if your family respected that person."
In Korea today, young adults still live with their parents until marriage. To compensate for the lack of independence, couples go to love hotels, private karaokes and video rooms for quickies. Booking may have developed as a transitional derivation of arranged marriages, partly because there is no pretense of choice. Girls can maintain the guise of chastity because they're forced into pairings; men can parade their masculinity without sacrificing their egos. It's a set-up without the chance of humiliation.
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"I used to see the club scene through drunker eyes," sighs Grace. "Now, I see a lot more stupid shit than I care to." |
As for the popularity of booking in a Western milieu like Los Angeles, most clubbers say they go to places like Le Prive just to hang out with other Koreans. To them, booking isn't the draw; it's actually a pain in the ass.
Park says the scene isn't that innocuous. "These clubs are a very profitable business," she says. "There is so much excess and expensive drinks being brought. These entrepeneurs use a lot of influence on politicians: there are more liquor licenses issued in Koreatown than anywhere else in Los Angeles." Park also says that several of her female Korean students are furious about booking clubs: "Many women are dragged against their will," she says. "And there are female entertainers who are hired by club owners so that men will come back and buy more liquor. Women get promo tables, but they have to promise to book. It's problematic and not safe."
But what I see isn't that sensational. Watching the action in Le Prive, I'm reminded of the awkward rituals of middle-school dances, sweaty-palmed boys and bashful girls are unable to relax and have a normal conversation. It's a tribute to social dysfunction.
 The crowd at Le Prive isn't exclusively Korean. Japanese, Chinese and Filipino
kids are also regulars, and the club is reputedly a favorite of gringo celebrities
like Nicolas Cage, P. Diddy, Oliver Stone, Mickey Rourke and the members of
Linkin Park. When a celebrity is sighted, girls line up to get booked to him.
Grace, twenty-four, is a friend of Clara's who works at a law firm. Her trophy booking story is that she was once matched to Vince Vaughn.
We decide to experiment by booking a guy.
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That was a few years ago. Grace has gone clubbing in K-Town since she was sixteen, when she was much wilder. She tells me that when she was underage, one club manager would let her in for free but expected sex in return. "I used to see the club scene through drunker eyes," she sighs. "Now, I see a lot more stupid shit than I care to."
The next night, Clara, my friend Jen and I hit another nightclub, Saga. It's
smaller and more Koreancentric, but otherwise there's the same music, the
same $200-per-table fee and the same overuse of neon. At Saga, booking is more
frenetic. When Clara arrives to meet me, she has barely enough time to take
off her jacket before she's whisked off by the waiter. When she returns, we
decide to experiment by booking a guy. As per custom, when a table wants to
attract the waiter's attention, someone lifts up a candle. I hold ours for ten
minutes. Finally our waiter arrives looking surly, and we make our request. The waiter raises one
eyebrow.
"What if they don't want to?" he asks.
We're annoyed. As if he asks the same question of men. "Can you ask?"
"They might get angry," he replies.
"Can you at least ask?"
No matter how much of a Barbie-bashing feminist you are, once you're inside the booking environment you begin to adjust.
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He relents, and we scan the crowd. These guys are more attractive than the ones at Le Prive, but not by much. Clara points to a preppy kid in a black polo shirt. "Him," she says hungrily. "I want him."
But Polo Guy is booking, so the waiter pulls over two young men who can barely speak English. We pour them drinks, and I introduce myself to the taller one in rusty Korean. His name is Alex; he's thirty, has recently moved to Los Angeles from Seoul and works in a Pasadena liquor store. He's actually pretty attractive: broad shoulders, endearingly naïve. Of all the guys I've talked to, he's the only one who hopes to meet a girlfriend here.
The two of them finish their drinks and begin to pour more Crown Royal into our shot glasses before realizing their faux pas. We booked the guys, so we're in charge of the liquor intake. I take our half bottle and pour him a shot.
"We're so sorry," Alex replies. "We're drinking all of your alcohol. We'll bring more from our table."
Alex's friend whispers to Clara that he is also sorry. Alex's friend is sorry about a lot of things. "My English is not so good," he says. "You must not like me." Clara attempts to reassures him, but he bows out. After five minutes of small talk that ends with the three of us staring into our drinks, Alex leaves too.
 Around midnight, Clara's been booked a few times. She doesn't particularly
mind it tonight. In one nightclub in Korea, she was booked thirty times in
an hour. It's more intense over there, Clara says, more awful. When she first
started booking, she liked the attention and the free drinks, but the formula's
getting harder for her to swallow. "It's sexist, but it's not just the guys," Clara says. "The girls like to
get booked. They order expensive drinks, then they leave."
Even the frattiest guy will admit the booking is sexist. But no matter how much of a Barbie-bashing, bell hooks-reading feminist you are, once you're inside the booking environment you begin to adjust. As you watch waiters toting around an endless stream of K-town Aguileras, you begin to think you wouldn't mind being booked yourself. When I was armed with a tape recorder at Le Prive, I couldn't understand why these women were willing to be pawned around. At Saga, I'm trying to pass as a customer, and I feel vulnerable, nervous that a waiter could swoop in at any minute. But after a few of them pass our table without even glancing at me, I get a little huffy. Insecurities appear like flashbacks to middle school: Maybe I'm not cute enough. Maybe I don't have enough make-up on. Aren't I bookable?
When a waiter finally approaches me, I'm relieved. He leads me to a table where a thick-necked guy is flanked by two grim-looking girls. I sit down awkwardly.
"What up," says the guy, who immediately pours me a shot of Crown Royal. "Let's drink."
I finish it, and he pours me another shot. I tell him I shouldn't. "Drink, yo," he demands. He says his friend, the one who booked me, is in the bathroom. One of the girls at the table is wearing so much liquid foundation I'm surprised she can speak. She also encourages me to drink, so I take a shot and wait for my vision to blur.
Then the guy I'm being booked to returns. His name is Chang, and he's obviously drunk. I ask him how old he is, and he shouts out "73!" I ask him if he enjoys booking, and he shakes his head: "I don't. But I don't have a choice. I sit down and the waiters just bring the girls. What can I do?" I give him a pass on that one, and ask about the girls: doesn't he find the Neanderthal act just a tiny bit troublesome? "They know what they're getting themselves into," he roars. "If they don't like it, they shouldn't come here. They all get booked. They all want it."
Once I'm back at my booth, Alex, the sweet boy from Seoul, sits down next to
me and takes my hand.
"I'm drunk," he says. "Can I have your number?"
He invites Jen and I to do karaoke, and we follow him upstairs. Alex croons a Korean love song, swaying and gripping his chest with his palm. The accompanying video shows a montage of soft-focus beach scenes and a Korean woman peering wistfully out of her rain-soaked window. Jen and I opt for Skid Row's "Eighteen and Life."
At two a.m., the lights flare up, and the crowd begins to funnel out the door. Jen and I locate Clara, who had disappeared for an hour talking to friends. Intimacy seems to be the last thing on anyone's mind. Almost everyone is leaving with the groups they came with.
Alex is the only anomaly. Earlier, he told me all that he wanted was to settle down in a nice condo and have children with a woman he respected. As we're leaving, he asks for my number again. I take his instead. "I'll visit you in New York," he says. "There we can make more music?" I tell him that sounds nice, and we leave him sitting among the evening's detritus of empty beer bottles, platters of fruit rinds and stubbed-out cigarettes, the only man searching for someone to sing a book of songs with in a place where matchmaking speeds by in a stream of one-minute medleys.
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Cathy Hong writes
for The Village Voice and moonlights as a poet. Her book Translating
Mo'um was released last year.
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©2003 Cathy
Hong and
Nerve.com
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