On Mr Koreana and Miss D

Mr Koreana was a very easy man to love. Only because he was very good at throwing that ball called love. That was how Miss D saw the politics of love – to her, the process didn’t have anything to do with some lofty disquisition – it differed only slightly from two people playing catch with a ball. May seem childish, but to Miss D being able to throw a ball straight and with just the right amount of strength was the clearest indication of a consummate lover. Miss D was aware not every man can always be relied to throw right. Most men just chuck the ball – it always came to her only after having to perform somersaults or rolls…and even if they could some how sort out their aim. There was the other niggling issue of being either to soft or hard. Seldom did she ever experience the satisfying joy of catching one where the feeling between desire and fulfillment was just right like the ones Mr Koreana threw at her.

He seemed born. No. Destined to throw her number 10 balls…that’s how she rated his throws, from one to ten…they were all tens.

In fact one could well be forgiven for believing – this skill in being able to throw perfect balls could really only have come from having been a lifelong prisoner on the island called Mr Koreana. Miss D knew a thing or two about how a man comes of age to throwing perfect balls.

She even suspected. What looked like gentle rolling hills on this placid island were in fact jagged blood stained ridges. Sometimes only a little of that showed whenever he was in the mood to talk. But nearly all of who he really was or what he once belonged too revealed itself in the starkest possible terms when Mr Koreana threw one perfect ball after another – it was as thought when he threw the ball. All he ever wanted to do was to reach out beyond the ocean of time into some distraught past.

For Mr Koreana must have been none other than a tragic victim of…whatever. Yes, whatever. As what really haunted him was always hidden by an impenetrable veil of mystery that Miss D could never hope to ever beacon out and so she termed it under the broad geography of whatever…. besides it was too faraway for her to ever imagine….as it all probably stood like a moss riven shipwreck…..another life of another man, possibly even another plane of existence and whatever little Miss D was able to make out was simply the sugar coated shell of the impeccable ball thrower – who she suspected could only have honed the perfection of his skills by throwing out letters stuffed in bottles from that deserted island where he was marooned – it was this quality of lingering detachment about Mr Koreana that always filled Miss D with longing. Whenever this feeling descended upon her, she would simply stop, let her arms flop and stare hard at Mr Koreana. As if to tell him – I know your secret…but no matter how hard Miss D searched with her eyes. All she could make out was his outward appearance of lovability as he prepared for yet another perfect throw of the ball. Even after when she had refused to play catch the ball any more unless he told her his mystery. All he could do was look at her pleadingly with that, ‘are you ready?’ expression of expectancy.

Even when Miss D insisted she no longer wanted to play. Mr Koreana could always be counted to supply his well crafted and heroic construction of why they should play on. And this feeling Miss D believed was intertwined, ultimately to the point of indistinguishability, with the very finality of Mr Koreana’s imprisonment in this fictitious island that he had constructed somewhere in his head; for Mr Koreana the perfect ball thrower. The act of was sharper than addiction, much more satisfying than fiction. It was probably his only means of redemption from the terrible past that haunted him.

Eventually the game would always end the same – they would both fall silent and stare at each other. As if each knew what was in the others head. That was at least how Miss D saw it in her mind’s eye – not anything near resolution. Rather closer to a point of indistinguishability where both their hidden lives would suddenly coaveslece into a sort of happy reverie resembling nothingness.

Nothingness being none other than the very form of Miss D and Mr Koreana.