Pairing

Every year on my birthday, I would come back to Korea and drink whiskey at a hotel bar. One year, a man who said he’d been seeing me there for years struck up a conversation. A businessman from England, he confessed that what had started as a chance encounter had since become intentional. Sharing similar family histories and a deep sense of loneliness, we grew close quickly. Both of us were leaving the next day, so time was short. And so, using a glass of whiskey as my excuse, I headed to his room.