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My name is Kim ‘Miho’ Taeyeon; but no one calls me ‘Miho’ anymore. I grew up in a small city called Jeonju, South Korea (which also happens to be my place of birth too.) My mother was a ‘renowned’ e and my father, a pimp. What they had wasn’t really love; and it certainly wasn’t romance either. Their relationship was a little more tarnished than the average peachy love story depicted so often in dramas (I used to watch them through a small crack in the neighbour’s home before they moved away). They had a history that I suspect wasn’t particularly great, but I never asked and they never informed me. What they had was a dependence upon each other -- for survival in this cruel world. They were … in a ‘working relationship’; he offered her protection and she, in return, sold herself to men (and women) to earn money for us all.

I kept to my own devices and so did they. We were a detached little family living each day as it comes. I never questioned my existence -- or theirs, and they would leave me alone. They fed me, I ate. They told me to sleep, and I slept. I didn’t know better, and it had been routine my entire life. A canary bird doesn’t know it’s caged if it’s never been (or seen) further than the confines of its entrapment. 

Like many es, my mother had an awful drug addiction. I remember how she used to frequently come home with a small packet of coke, pour the powder into thin lines of white before sniffing them up with a rolled up one thousand won note. I’d never been enticed to try it despite her scattered attempts to persuade me into slipping into a chemical high with her; I suppose I had some sort of ‘natural common-sense’ from birth. Gradually her intake increased- it was proportional to the amount of time that passed us by.

Perhaps it was the stress of her enervating work-life, or the deterioration of the phantom semblance of love between her and my father that caused her to resort to such a thing. She’d overdosed for the first and last time on a late spring night. I wasn't surprised --or shocked. It sounds austere of me but I didn’t feel anything for her passing. Our relationship was tenaciously restricted to the few (rather shallow) social interactions during a 24 hour period. I didn’t love her—and I don’t think she loved me either. If she did, she never showed it. My panic was purely out of selfish regards as I rushed forward from my makeshift bed to rouse her from her sudden seizure. Of course, I couldn’t do anything. My father was soon at the scene; and I was pushed aside as he carried the convulsing, slender frame of my mother past the front door and into the seats of our battered, white van (the back doubled as a bedroom for emergency (and unexpected) clients). Even with my father’s fast reactions, it was too late. And my mother met an unfortunate demise before we even arrived at the hospital. 

My father….I think… lost himself. He became even more distant from me – and from the world. I caught him, only once, sleeping with my mother’s silky cerulean dress clutched within the iron-grip of his hands; expression a face of, what people might consider to be a, heart-wrenching pain; but I felt no sympathy, and I couldn’t help (as a result of my lack of emotions) but to idly question my membership in human society.

The following morning, wordlessly, silently and under the impression that I was asleep, he left a suitcase full of the conserved money at the end of my ‘bed’ before slipping out. I thought it strange, so I immediately followed after him. We walked for a while. It was still early hours, so the street consisted only of the undesired women who couldn’t capture the attentions of any clients, the wanted women making their ways back home after a weary night and the homeless souls who society have rejected. I was tired, and my calves ached, but I didn’t turn back. This was an unusual behaviour for him, and my childish curiosity begged to be sated. We arrived at a beach, after what felt like an eternity, and I chose a place of shelter behind a brick wall; it provided me with a suitable level of security (should he suddenly turn back). But, he never turned back. Instead, he took off his shoes… and walked straight into the crashing waves. I watched him disappear into the sea of blue.

I waited, and waited, and waited until I realised that he wasn’t just going for an early morning swim. That was the moment where I truly acknowledged that he held feelings for her. It had driven him to commit suicide (I think this was the stimulant for my philophobia). 

The money he left me was enough to last me for a year; probably because I rationed out the money for necessities, and begged for scraps at the local Korean home-cooked restaurant. I existed as a small statistic of contemporary society. Initially, it was a little weird. After all it was my introduction to freedom; and I can’t say I liked it – but I can’t say I hated it either. Indifference. I was always so indifferent. I think I was about twelve at the time; not quite an adolescent nor a child; slap-bang in the centre, and the living definition of insouciance.

At the age of sixteen, by chance, I came across an ex-client of my mothers, Man-sik. He was charming whilst I was just a naïve young girl; life on the streets had led me to trust a face that I recognised from my past. It was a foolish mistake. He was brazen and had muscle-- and I had little strength to fight him off. I lost my innocence to him after getting drunk on spiked fruit juice. Although I was intoxicated... the ordeal... I can still remember vivid snippets of it. It hurt; so bad. I thought I was going to die. Obviously, I didn't, and I woke up, the next day, on the corner of a secluded street with a plentiful wad of won notes tucked into my ill-fitted black bra (an item that used to belong to my mother) and bloody, sticky thighs as a remnant of the previous night. That was my first experience of getting paid for . And… wasn’t the last. I followed the footsteps of my deceased parent; some might say it was inevitable-- I wouldn't argue with them. I managed to play my cards right, after having being exposed to the techniques of my mother I was something of an unpractised veteran in the ‘arts’.

Sometimes temporary ownership of my body was exchanged for tutelage under certain admired crafts; I learnt to read (and write) with a client who worked as a university professor, to draw with an underground artist and to speak properly with the help of an underrated newscaster. I thought (and think) of myself as a modern-day courtesan. I live well… enough to survive, but emotionally, mentally I knew that I had a few problems. That didn’t matter. Money took priority, and this was the only way for me to get it. 

Currently, and I think forever, I’ll be trapped in this business -- no one wants to hire a e. It’s a truth I’ve come to accept. But, I do have a single passion in life. I like to draw; to sketch everything that surrounds me, create a permanent fixture of an ephemeral scene onto a thin sheet of humble paper. It sounds outlandish doesn't it? A having such a pastime, but it’s the one thing I that I do that can make me feel human again.

. . . Anyway, welcome. . . to my mess of a life. Enjoy your stay; I'll try and make it worth your while.

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