I was fifteen and reckless, consumed with that persistent itch we all experience as young adults, to get away from all that is known and taken for granted, and go in search of the elusive dream or future or sometimes destiny.

Today that’s the only explanation I can give for how I ended up a makeup artist in SM Entertainment, traveling as part of a larger entourage with nowhere to go in life, stuck in the fantasies of my teenhood. You can’t do much these days without a high school education or at least a proficiency certificate or test scores. I have that degree of cosmetology lying around somewhere, but that’s about as useful as my job experience at Manhattan Salon in Yongsan.

People will ask, after examining my Prada bag and ascertaining that, yes, those Gucci sunglasses are real, “What do you do for a living?” I’ll try to skirt the issue, but I always end up spilling the beans. Inevitably, a double take and a diminished enthusiasm will follow, and I’ll shrug and say, “What can you do? I was fifteen and reckless, TVXQ was climbing the charts and my heart was pumping hormones through my body even while my gut longed for something more that I could hope to accomplish."