I’m on an apology tour currently, and what this means is that I’m tired. Yet I press on, for to make amends not only provides closure but affirms life itself. Thus I seek out old roommates and exes. The friends I let slip away. And when they ignore me, I don’t push them. And when they engage, I apologize doubly.
This afternoon I’m on Facebook, waiting to see if Tara from high school will let my message sit or read it right away.
Aha, so it’s seen and processed, and there’s that typing bubble on her end.
“Lol,” she writes. “Hey, I guess.”
At a house party one weekend, I asked her who she was even though she sat behind me in History class every day of that year.
“We’re 35?” she adds now. “What prompts this shit, dude?”
“Coriolanus,” I tell her, and I get it, it’s weird to cite Shakespeare. But I listened to a reading of the play recently and am reflecting on my own trail of ruin. My broken families left in the rubble of burning cities.
I mention this, then offer a rundown of the major plot points, and reiterate that I’m sorry I made her feel invisible, when really I thought about her all the time and didn’t know how to say so.
“Uh huh,” she replies, six days later.
The truth is that Coriolanus being banished from Rome resonated with me. I looked at my own lot: eight years removed from a relocation to South Korea, about as far as I could get from Wyoming, my homeland. Six years removed from the start of a good marriage, three from the mostly amicable divorce, two years from therapy at long last, and one from an autism diagnosis I absolutely wasn’t expecting. I’d been banished from my own self and history, I decided. I too was placeless. And while this doesn’t excuse the harm, it does explain it.
Part of Coriolanus’s downfall is his refusal to show the plebians his wounds from battle. I do not shy away from wounds, meanwhile, and to this end I apologize.
Another week passes before Tara writes to me, “So I watched the movie and like, you want me to kill you how Gerard Butler does?”
“The point is to live,” I clarify.
“What’s in it for me, then?” she asks. “Besides words?”
“I don’t know. What do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
The tour’s like this sometimes. It’s murky and strange. My once-friend Michael, who throughout college always had to contact me first, until the one day he didn’t, said it’d be cool if I sent him some postcards or something from Seoul. Lane, my once-girlfriend I never knew how to truly show up for, whom I strung along for years, said not to contact her again. Done and done.
And thusly I stand, the author of mine own self, mine eyes sweating compassion, my throat presented to those whose throats I constricted. My actions barricaded against the mind’s common cry of curs, whose breath I hate, and who say to set fire to everything. Down with the neurotypical, ableist world that banished me. Etc., etc. To this, indeed, there is an elsewhere.
Another week passes, and Tara says, “Why are you in Korea?”
To teach English, originally. Then somehow I was recording listening exams for high schools in Bundang. Then I got a spot on some cartoon as the drawling Eeyore character, the oddball, given my voice and affect are what they are. I’m a flatliner who says the wrong thing 100% of the time.
“Did she divorce you because of that?”
“Because of what?”
“You saying the wrong thing.”
“No.”
Then she claims that what’s in it for her is I answer her questions whenever she asks them. I’m about to go into detail when she adds, “I don’t mean that, sorry. If you don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me.”
It’s not that. Sometimes if I have to text a lot, my vision narrows, and I end up picking at the skin on my cuticles until they bleed onto the sofa. So an hour later I switch to WhatsApp and send her a voice-note about how Seon-ae and I couldn’t conceive, after which I wanted to adopt. But Seon-ae, she wanted to do her translation work in Dubai for three years. Her own novel adventure, worth plenty of coin. I was tired of traveling, so we split.
12 days later, Tara writes, “My niece is in Korea, you know.”
“Really?”
“Fresh off the boat with her boyfriend. All of 22. They’re teaching kindergarten together.”
“Where at?”
“Korea.”
Aha. “Do you like being a paralegal?” I want to know next, but this question goes unanswered for more than two weeks, and when she does reply, it’s to say she’d rather not complain about work to me. Late hours, lots of duties, not enough money, not enough respect, not enough free time to do what she’d like. You get it.
“What would you like?” I ask her.
“I don’t know. To do a triathlon or something. Hike the Rockies in a bikini. Like that woman in Thailand.”
Her Facebook page is staunchly barebones, like mine. Yet what I have gleaned from it is that she works in Fort Collins, graduated from the University of Northern Colorado, and maybe at one point was learning to juggle knives. There are pictures of her drinking coffee on a terrace, drinking coffee on a mountain, and drinking coffee on a rooftop.
“Are you married?” I ask.
“No. Was.”
“Did you enjoy Coriolanus?”
“Not particularly.”
Which, that’s fine. I’m not saying it’s a masterpiece or anything.
“That woman in Thailand froze to death, didn’t she?” I say, days later.
“Yeah, but I’d only do the hiking part.”
I am itchy to know more, I find, and about all of it, the bikinis and ex-husband and niece, the kindergarten, as well as why Coriolanus didn’t move her, especially in the final act, what with his mother pleading like that not to sack the city he grew up in? But I’m asking all the questions now, I realize, and this tells me she’s not super invested in what we’re doing. So I let the chat sit and recede into observatory mode, to remain alert to some sign I should persist. A month and a half passes, and I make other stops on the tour: to Ji-yeon, whom I asked out multiple times despite us being co-teachers who worked in the same office. To Bryce, whom I kissed at a bar once, even though he didn’t want to be kissed. And to Mom, who gets that it’s a joke, mostly, and hahas when I bring up the obsession I used to have with wiping my young ass on their eggshell carpet.
Ghosted by Ji-yeon, whose profile picture on Kakao is her current homeroom brood. Bryce, bald, says he forgot that ever happened.
I’m recording in a studio near Habjeong Station when a message pops up from Tara that says hello in romanized Korean. Annyeonghaseyo. Followed by an exclamation point and two question marks.
“Yeah?” I write back.
“Tori taught me a word.”
“I see.”
“And?”
“Ne, chingu, chalhaesseoyo.”
“She only taught me one, dude.”
It’s here that the sound engineer clicks in to ask if I’m all right and remind me we’re mid-scene.
“No, I’m good,” I say to him, when in fact I’m not. I am very much distracted by Tara’s questions, which are: “Do you speak this? It’s hard as shit?”
Well, do I speak it? No. Have years of lessons and practice taught me enough to fumble my way through interactions with agents and producers? Yes. Arguably so. I have few problems at the bank or hair salon.
I have never been a good talker anyway, in whichever language, unless there’s a script involved. The truth is when I started learning and using Korean spontaneously, I found it therapeutic. People expected me to be messy, so when I was, the exposure was more positive than negative. Which, this is not to say the messiness departed or ever will.
“Charles used to say I needed therapy,” Tara tells me then.
“Charles?”
“Yeah, not in a mean way, but he did say it.”
“Your ex?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for sharing that,” I say.
“You’re welcome?”
And maybe she senses my itchiness, or maybe not, but that night I receive a series of voice-notes about her marriage. The story’s nothing groundbreaking: they met in college and moved to Fort Collins after graduation. He became a coaching assistant for the university’s football team. They had little in common, it turned out, and so started watching a lot of TV together. Episode after episode, until the day he met someone else.
The real star of this show, as I see it, is her voice, which I haven’t heard since high school. And which is all fucking over the place. Was she like this in History? The stops and starts, the tangents, the going back and back to explain this thing and that thing, and here’s context that itself doesn’t make much sense? Yet she’s aware of her disorganized quality, and remains neither ashamed nor apologetic.
“Do you always sound like this?” I ask.
“Why do you think I’m a paralegal instead of a lawyer?”
“I don’t know what that means,” I say, and she doesn’t clarify.
“So did you go to therapy or not?” I ask next, which garners a response 18 days later. She did, yes, and for a while, and got medication for dysthymia and ADHD, which both helped her and didn’t.
“But whatever,” she says. “Like, I’m self-sufficient, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I have a mortgage and stuff.”
“Nice.”
“I think it’s cool you live in Asia,” she notes.
“Thanks, me too.”
“Lol, you too.”
“Tell me why you didn’t like Coriolanus,” I ask of her. “Please.”
“Should I like some arrogant man who doesn’t listen to anybody except his mom? Calls the commoners lazy? Shouts? I’m really asking you here.”
And there’s stuff I could argue, I suppose. That I don’t think he’s prideful in the way the Internet summaries say he is. That he’s cool and logical. An eccentric who’s averse to pointless social formalities. A bit Autie, if you ask me. And that the point, or at least one of them, is how the killer sees the true nature of his killing, yet tragically cannot share via the proper amends his new knowledge. But no, instead of all this I say sorry for recommending it.
“That’s weird,” she states.
Then it’s another season altogether, and Tara is telling me amid rain that she’s finally divined what’s in it for her.
“You’ll like it,” she adds. “It’s about revenge.”
“Why would I like revenge?” I say.
“Who reads only the tragedies,” she asks, “and then doesn’t like revenge?”
So much wrong with this question, and so much lazy about it, but before I can dig into why, she’s past it and explaining. Her niece, you remember Tori, well get this her boyfriend Travis is a dipshit. And Tori, being young and in love, doesn’t understand why being a dipshit is not okay. She doesn’t see that she can forgive someone while also kicking their cheating ass to the curb.
Apparently, he slept around a bunch, then gaslighted her into thinking she’d agreed to an open relationship. And he’s still on goddamn Tinder.
“It’s not our business,” I remind her.
“Isn’t it, if she’s hurting?”
“Nor am I in the business of revenge,” I go on. “I don’t even know these people.”
“No, that’s the thing,” she assures me. “They saw your show on Netflix. They’d love to meet you.”
“So?”
“So meet them, please.”
“And do what, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Torture him a little.”
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“I mean, no?” she says. “Like, don’t scar him or grind him up. But bring him down a notch for us.”
“I am not,” I claim, “in the business of torture or notches,” to which she counters yes, I absolutely am. I’m the one unearthing ancient traumas for my own benefit. I’m the one rubbing my exotic lifestyle in other people’s faces. I’m the one torturing myself, moreover, with this stupid tour of my own faults, probably because I’m grieving Seon-ae and the child we never had.
“You see it, right?” she says. “You’re not stupid.”
“So you’re the therapist now?” I wonder. “You who’s banished from her own self? Never knows what she wants or wishes for. Dreams of grand and impossible schemes. You took a year almost to come up with a single answer to a simple question.”
“I’m telling you point-blank what I want.”
“And I’m saying no to it.”
“Well, fucking fine, I guess. But I thought you’d care, man, given his new thing is faking being autistic for money.”
“Whatever that means,” I say.
“He’s faking being autistic,” she repeats, “on TikTok. For money. She showed me his page, go look for yourself.”
So I follow the link she’s provided and do. And yeah, I admit it, he’s certainly up to something weird of late. An #actuallyautistic person abroad, reads his brand, just sharing my experience of the disability^^. Just trying to be an inspiration in the big city :-). Donations @ my PayPal^^. A lot of the videos on his page center his pretty face and involve acting like a baby in touristy spaces.
Tara and I don’t talk for a month after that, during which I reflect on many things: our most heated conversation to date, for one. Also, our fastest. My show too can be patronizing and misguided, no doubt. And for all I know, the kid’s self-diagnosed, for which there are valid motivations. Who am I to judge anybody about anything, especially if other folks find it helpful?
I pause the tour temporarily and review some of my old apologies. Are these torturous or life-affirming? Or selfish? I scroll endlessly through Seon-ae’s Instagram and like some of the photos of her in the desert. On dunes, with this handsome stranger. I scan my chats with Tara again and fixate on one line that seems a bit pointed and out of place. Grind him up, Tara? Really?
“You read Titus Andronicus,” I say to her.
“No,” she replies, “but I did watch the movie with Anthony Hopkins.”
“Why?”
“Why, what? I watched all the tragedy movies recently. I got curious, you could say.”
“Because of Coriolanus?” I ask.
“I guess so.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, a whole two weeks later.
And this here is the morning I decide to do it. Yes, though clearly I will not hurt him. I’ll simply go and aim for notches and sense. Much to the dismay of Tara, my friend, who would at least like some spit in his coffee.
The plan is dumb, and at the café the following month I immediately regret participating. The theme here is archery, thus half the establishment is targets and bows strewn about.
“I’d like to buy,” says Tori, leaving me alone with Travis, who’s on his phone.
His purity, I swear to God. Of course it’s contrived. Show me the autistic divorced from the comorbidities. The anxiety, the depression, the hypervigilance. The psychosis, or awkwardness, or whatever it is. His teeth are way too straight. And he’s got no lines on his face.
But I’m careful about this, for it’s unnerving and uncomfortable to reside on this side of the fence, the gatekeeper demanding to see wounds.
“Can you say hi for a video?” he asks me.
“No, thanks.”
“Come on, my followers want to see you.”
“That’s all right, I hate being onscreen.”
Up goes his hand, though, and he’s filming the table nevertheless. In a higher register, he says my name and my character’s name and reports that I’m shy.
“This guy sucks, people,” I can’t hold in. “This. The philanderer? You have made fair work, Travis.”
“What?”
“Away with you!”
“What are you doing?” he asks, switching off the recording. As a barista with faded Latin tattoos brings our drinks.
Not following the script I wrote before coming here, I suppose. Alas.
“Why’d you cheat on her?” I say.
“Huh?”
“What?” says Tori.
“And why didn’t you listen to me? What even are these videos you’re making?”
“I thought we were going to collaborate,” he says, “as advocates?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Isn’t that how your aunt framed it?” he asks Tori.
“Yeah, partly,” she says. “But, like? I don’t know.”
“Well,” I say. “Fucking, well. Fair work of this, indeed, people.”
A few minutes later, I’m in the bathroom in the hallway texting Tara, who wanted to stay awake for the operation but very possibly succumbed to the time difference. I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to this. Of course I’d turn rogue and bungle it. I just can’t go in with ulterior motives. I can’t remain sly or smooth. And I’m certainly no moral authority. I’ve ignored countless calls, blown off countless hangouts, and lied and cheated myself on people I said I cared about.
So I’m fully prepared to apologize when I reemerge into the café, at least until I see our table empty and our coffees unmanned. I really like Tara, I’m discovering, so I hover over Travis’s cup and let slip an army of saliva.
“Excuse me?” a person is saying. A woman. In Korean. Beside two of her mortified friends.
Aha, so it’s not our table, and not our coffee. And here’s the cute barista again to ask me in English to go.
On the street outside are Tori and Travis, arguing through traffic about something I can’t hear. She’s visibly upset, to his open sky of a face, and as she turns to go, he spots me and jogs over.
“Hey,” he says.
“There’s no virtue in being obstinate,” I tell him. Among the Bard’s best advice.
“Why do you talk like that?”
“Why are you an asshole?”
“I really thought we agreed to be with other people,” he says, and starts pulling his own hair.
“Yet you’re still on Tinder.”
“Yeah.”
“And you are autistic?” I ask him. “Or not? What is this, dude?”
“I can’t afford the evaluation,” he admits, before seeing a taxi and hailing it.
At home that night, I find Tori’s Instagram and message her that I’m sorry. I approached the meetup dishonestly, I write, and that’s not okay. It’s rotten. It’s ghoulish. And it’s not who I am now.
When she does respond, the following evening, it’s to thank me for apologizing and confess the whole thing is weird and embarrassing. And good, perhaps, despite this, because it definitely seems that her life and Travis’s are beginning to diverge.
“Sorry,” I say again.
“So do you love my aunt, then?” she says. “Or what? I mean, to do that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, sure. But how it matters at this point, I don’t know.”
“That’s cool. She’s cool.”
“Yeah, she is.”
“Did you see Travis’s latest video?”
“No.”
And nor will I, I decide, not even when Tara shares the link and says it’s hilarious. Says it’s a real gem. But I’m good. Just let the idiot do his work. What, am I going to mentor him? Channel my bitterness and experience into wisdom for a wayward soul? Who’s got what, 1,500 fans in an increasingly saturated online industry? Please, I have nothing worthwhile to say.
Besides, I’m busy having fun with Tara, whom I talk with more and more. She’s so funny, like once she gets herself going. “Hoisted by our own petard,” she says the day she and Tori reconcile. When I ask what she means, she says it’s Shakespeare, dipshit, so get it together.
And sure enough. It’s the mad Dane and his pirates. And false friends.
“I’m trying,” she says to me.
“I know. Me too.”
So I take her on a tour around Seoul. I send voice-notes as I walk through Gangnam and Hongdae. I send videos from the Seoul Trail, through Olympic Park and the Yangjae Citizens Forest. Tori and I return to the archery café one afternoon and keep Tara updated on who’s winning. It’s never once me, not for a second, not for a single round.
“You’d think,” they suggest, “that a Wyoming boy would know how to shoot?” Well, okay, fair enough.
Near Namsan Tower, we finally give Facetime a try, and I learn quickly that she’s deaf in one ear. She keeps getting distracted by the tourists walking in and out of my shot. Asks me again and again to repeat this or that for her, which gladly I do.
Our second Facetime, we broach the topic of visits. Whether she could come here, or me there. Or both of us to Wyoming, possibly, to sync up time with the parents, who miss us. This last feels the most feasible option at present, and to me the most appealing of them, given I’ve not seen Mom and Dad face to face in going on four years.
The other week, I was on the train back from a studio session, and Tara was telling me about her hiking trip. The bikini thing, after all. Yep, she drove somewhere and did it. And while on the peak, she lost her top to some stray branch and flashed her tits to a family with twin boys. And their faces, she told me, and the birds flying by, and the cool wind on her hardening nipples, which are uneven, and the first time she showed a boy her breasts, she was recalling, to this kid Brendan Harris from Wolf Creek, this douchebag who drooled behind a dumpster at CY Junior High School, which famously is sliding glacier-like down a hill toward the Kroger.
Anyway, I was laughing so hard and rocking so forcefully that the rush-hour crowd got annoyed with me. The sidelong glances and stink-eyes. The stares at the foolish foreigner monopolizing the space. And trust me, I get it. So while my apology tour has long been concluded, I did tell them. And oh, how genuinely I did say it. That I’m immeasurably sorry, world, I am, but the day is good.
Tim Raymond is an autistic, nonbinary writer based in South Korea. Their first novel Flee is forthcoming from Button Poetry in November, 2026. Their fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Joyland, among others. They contribute comics to ONLY POEMS and share stories and dialogues on Instagram at @iamsitting.