Mad Atoms

Everybody’s got their story of how the met their long-time spouse or girlfriend, a generally boring story that gets trotted out from time to time when you meet new people. But even if yours is strange and interesting, I guarantee it is not as weird as what’s going on right around the corner from Los Angeles, every weekend in Koreatown. 

That’s because they have a practice in clubs here called “booking.” Here’s the basics: Bunch of Korean guys get together, go to a club and secure a table where they are assigned a special waiter/bouncer to attend to them. They order expensive liquor, smoke cigarettes and adopt a cool pose and stare at the girls on the dance floor… and here’s where it gets fucked up. 

At this point, the guys “book” certain girls on the dance floor; that is, they tell the bouncer they want one and slip him some bills. He then goes and gets a girl, who must pretend to struggle as though she were being kidnapped or taken against her will as she is taken to the table. She must fight, kick, squirm, yell – she has to really look like she’s being taken hostage.

Once there, she has to keep up the act and appear to be ready to bolt, whether she is or not. It’s all part of the courtship act – in order to keep from looking slutty, she has to fight like a cornered puma to keep away from the men – who must do anything they can short of a beating to keep her there.

Strange? Yes. Excessive? Definitely. But here’s the part I love – picture the story this guy will have to tell his granddaughter 40 years from now when she asks, “How did you meet grandma?” You can picture gramps leaning in and going, “You see Kim, it was like this. I went to a club and bought some Crystal and got wasted. Then I paid a guy $90 dollars to randomly pick out some girl from the dance floor, isolate her like a baby wildebeest, then abduct her and physically force her to sit next to me. I mean, this guy had to literally pick her up she was fighting so hard not to be brought to me, clawing and spitting and everything. Then, at her first chance, she ran away from me, but I paid a second guy to bring her back, and this time I physically restrained her until she was too drunk to flee.

"And that’s what you call love.”