The Day I Crashed a Motorcycle into the Bar

I was teaching kindergarten in South Korea and simply could not take it anymore. I don't have the fancy ADHD that comes with extreme physical energy, so I was intellectually understimulated for 6 grueling hours a day, while at the same time physically overtaxed. In June of 2011 I quit, and flew down to the Philippines with my Quebecois buddy François.
We spent two weeks drinking Boracay Coconut Rum, and next thing I know I'm no longer in the Philippines, I'm back in Seoul and it's Friday night. After a two-week long bender, I decided to take a break, said goodbye to François and started walking back to my moldy apartment in Haebangchon. On the way up my hill, I bump into my roommate and our army buddies. They insisted that I join them for some drinks.
Two Samaritans Helping me Regain my Footing.
Actually, that's a lie, I simply could not see someone going off to drink while I stayed home on a Friday night, so I decided to join them. Friday night turns into Saturday morning, and then I get invited to a birthday party. Saturday morning turned into Saturday night, and I'm playing Spin-the-Wheel at Sam Ryan's bar. With a meager 10,000 won, I managed to win enough beers and shots of Jäeger to put down a full-sized José Abreu.
I have been able to reconstruct the night given that enough women with cameras were following me around, and that was my last memory before I blacked out. I came to at around noon on Sunday, in a strange bed and in a strange room. I panicked because I presumed that I had gotten lucky with a camerawoman and couldn't recall her name, or what we had done.
There's nothing identifying the room, but then I noticed a Woori bank card on top of the desk, and realized that I was in my Irish friend Paul's place. "Damn, I didn't get lucky," I said to myself. I then called Paul, and he informed me that he was almost home. As soon as Paul gets home, he jumps on the bed and blacks out. He'd stayed up all night and was tired. I had been resting and wanted to get back into the action. "Wake up, you lazy Irishman, it's Sunday Funday!" I said, but he did not respond. After a few minutes of poking him I gave up, and headed to the Wolfhound.
The Wolfhound was before the summer of 2011 the best place to be on a Sunday morning, or a Sunday afternoon. The booze was always flowing and it was packed. Eventually they got fed up with all the alcoholics causing pandemonium, and banned everybody. I somehow miraculously escaped the ban, and decided to return.
On the way back to the Wolfhound I bump into my buddy François, who had been resting longer than me and was back at full capacity. On the way down to the Wolfhound we walk pass a motorcycle with a "for sale" sign in English; "200,000 won? This is a bargain," we say to ourselves. The English teacher who was selling the motorcycle was on his way out and needed to get rid of everything. François forks over 185 dollars, and we were by that point in proud possession of a high-powered Korean motorcycle.
We ride around Itaewon for a bit -- with me in the back -- determining that, yeah, the engine had a lot of horsepower. To celebrate François' new acquisition, we head to the Wolfhound and spend all afternoon drinking. It wasn't very packed -- Sunday Funday had died -- but there wasn't much else to do. Eventually the staff changes, and one of the new bartenders tell the bouncer that I had previously started fights in the Wolfhound, that I was associated with a certain degenerate of Greek descent who went to Boston College.
We kindly leave the bar, and I'm enraged. "I've never started a fight in there. If anything, I got attacked by a drunk Canadian with a medically-destroyed-through-alcoholism knee, and simply blocked all the blows," I said.
We're standing outside of the Wolfhound, I ask François to let me borrow his key, and then I revved the motorcycle. In my mind I was Arnold Schwarzenegger; I thought myself capable of simply riding the motorcycle through the glass door. Sadly, I'm not the terminator, and the motorcycle's acceleration was way more than I expected, so I end up just messing up a piece of the staircase, never making it up to crash through the door.
The crash into the staircase destroyed part of the motorcycle's ignition, and my right leg flew forward, leaving a gash just above the ankle, on my tibia bone. I didn't feel any pain, I simply grabbed a paper napkin, placed it over the gash, and rolled up my tube socks. I ran-limped my way to the next bar, lest I get a DUI without a license; not that it probably would have mattered much since drunkenness and foreignness are valid legal defenses in Korea.
The next day I wake up, barely remembering the massive gash on my leg, and make my way to the local Haebangchon doctor. I didn't need stitches, just a bandage and some fancy lotion. "You're lucky you have strong bones. Drinking too much is not healthy," the doctor said, but I immediately waved her off, and took off limping to have a few Monday drinks at the corner store.