The Spearfisherman

 
By spacing my drinks out over the past four hours, I had managed to maintain both an entirely lucid state of mind, and an annoyingly sober disposition.
The bar was remarkably empty, remarkable because it was a peak hour on what was normally a busy night, remarkable because it was normally frequented by locals and foreigners alike, and because this was a country without a last call, where bottles of booze could be bought at 4am for pocket change. (Then again, I was a foreigner myself, fairly new to the island, so did my notions of “remarkable” and “normal” even apply?)
It wasn't 4am yet, but I was already thinking about the relative comfort my stiff mattress and meagre bedding could provide compared to this smokestale room.
I was talking with a couple of female acquaintance's about the apparent voices in a madman's head, (voices that had told him to stab, kill, and decapitate a stranger sitting next to him on the bus, then proceed to cut off parts of his face and eat them), when a man in a ski mask stumbled in. This was strange, if not slightly off-putting, considering that this was a semitropical island, and the guy was huge. He lumbered towards us, pausing a moment to perform a sort of drunken dance, before continuing on to the bar.
He returned a minute later, mask pulled up and draft in hand. We were all slightly wary of this, but considering that we were virtually the only other people in the bar, we figured he had little choice. Within seconds, he managed to offend both girls to the point where they walked off, never to return. He had been ranting about the debaucherous lifestyle of foreigners on Jeju, the drinking, the fucking, “you gotta' break out of this cycle, get out and experience the island, the people, something real, this world, this here, is never ending...foreigners get caught up in it and they never get out.”
I had heard the same argument before, two months ago, (in some other foreigner bar across town), where this brute had told me that he frequently dove 20 meters to spear fish, without oxygen. (I remember poking him in the chest when he told me this, and saying, “20 meters?” He hadn't hurt me then, so I figured I'd be okay now.

“You're the spearfisherman, right?”
“Yeah. Mick. Have we met?”
“Once, a while back, at Blue Laguna.”
“Oh yeah, that was probably the last time I was out.”
“Yeah?” (I failed to point out the hypocrisy of the fact that he was ragingly drunk then, and even more so now, raving about the shallowness of foreigner life on the island on both occasions).
“Those girls didn't like what I had to say. Those chicks. I love offending people, it's so easy.”
I imagined it would be, if you really wanted to.
“Well, I'm not that easily offended.”
“Good. You know, I've been all over this island, all over. Been here seven years now, and I was like you once, like them. The girls are there if you want them, foreigners are dying for a lay, and locals are happy to get a guy that lasts more than one pump. They'll be banging on your door for it at all hours...and then there's the hookers, girls that'll lay you down, soap you up, and jerk you off. All you gotta' do is lay there and be a man. But I got away from all that, started fishing, started diving. Seen some crazy shit. Saw an octopus kill a shark. Saw a dolphin give birth. Swam under a school of jellyfish, thousands of animals, for over seven minutes.”
“Wow,” I said, taking a sip from my beer, noticing that he held his with three fingers, like a teacup, because his pinkie couldn't fit.
“Yeah, once spent twelve days living in a cave, totally isolated, fished for my meal every day, and cooked it on the beach...you know, if you go down to the docks, act real nice, you can get aboard a squid fishing ship, go out with the local fisherman, it's quite a fucking experience...”

During the course of our conversation, the spearfisherman told me that he could kill me--could kill me very easily--twice. Said he had been trained in some martial art or another and used to be a bodyguard. I wondered why anyone so big would need to know a martial art at all in order to defend themselves (or someone else); who would fuck with a 6”6 guy in a ski mask?
I finished my beer and left, walked the still-noisy streets past exposed legs and flicking cell phones, pausing a moment to watch a cat eat some vomit off the pavement, and turned towards home.