‘Both poised and ready, she said ‘One shot!’ indicating for us to down our drinks at the same time.

The drink was both sweet and sour, almost rough and raw and she was quickly refilling for me, and I for her.

‘This is really nice,’ I said, ‘the best thing I’ve tried in Korea, by far.’

‘Makgeolli was a farmer’s drink. It’s beer. Made from mixed grains and fermented; it gives strength,’ She laughed, I guess wondering whether I got her joke. ‘Ah, you just need a good guide.’

‘Thankfully, I have found one,’ and looked straight at her.

‘Yes, you have,’ she giggled. ‘Okay, now we play!’

With that, she deftly undid the soft belt around my bathrobe and found my penis, already hardening in her chubby little palms. Then she kneeled between my legs and took me in her mouth, working my shaft into the mollusk of her mouth, bringing her tongue to bear, on occasion, from root to cock-head; and soon she changed her strategy of arousal by putting the whole of my scrotal sac into her mouth and rolling the testicles around like small, hard-boiled eggs.

‘Mmmm,’ she said and then worked me harder and faster. Already aroused from the shower, I couldn’t hold myself back any longer and came prematurely with a loud release, jetting my load between her lips.

‘Mmmm,’ I heard her say again, sitting up now before me and swilling my viscous whiteness around in her mouth, giggling and making eyes at me, letting some dribble out the side and then playfully pushing it back in with a finger. Then, without swallowing, she put her powerful arms around my neck and kissed me with the mouth full of my own cum. The residue of the white rice beer in my mouth merged with that taste of semen. I had never tried anything like this before. It was indescribable. My wife, Pearl Lin, would have died of shock.

June passed the load into my mouth and followed with her tongue sucking it back and forth, giving and taking, giving and taking—her pink tongue moving like a sea worm in our salty current. It grew in volume with our saliva, the full flavour of those two white essences perfectly matched and mixed now into one white cocktail of human sugars and acids. Then, with the same trademark deftness, she sucked my ejaculate back into her mouth, took ownership of it, so to speak, withdrew from my lips and swallowed it down with a satisfying release.

‘Ahhhhh,’ she said licking her lips and fingers. ‘Thanks for the vitamin pill. So nice. Now you know the secret of my young complexion,’ she laughed. ‘This is June’s own special technique for drinking Korean rice beer,’ she said with a slutty twinkle in her eye. ‘You like?’

‘I like. That was awesome. Come back here!’ With that I grabbed, but despite her dimensions, she had easily out-manoeuvred me to the side of the sofa and was now pouring me another cup of the milky beer. I took her cue and did the same for her.

‘One shot!’ We both said, and holding each cup with two hands, drained our drinks.

‘Now I must check on dinner and I will take my little shower. Okay?’

‘Sure. Please.’

Yes, I was in the hands of a big Korean sea-nymph who was kind, creative and sexier than I could ever imagine. After the entree, I wondered what was coming next.

The jazz played on in the background and it seemed that the fish in the aquarium were swimming in sequence to the beat, now turning this way, flashing another direction on cue. Despite the violation of etiquette, I poured myself another cup of rice beer and even picked at the side dishes, trying the pancake slices. Yes, kind of like a Korean pizza, I thought, and munched happily on one. I even tried a forkful of the black seaweed and a cube or two of pickled turnip. Downed with the rice beer, they weren’t too bad. In fact, they complemented each other. But I still steered clear of the kimchi.

The fish continued their technicolour routines in the aquarium and now I looked around and saw a painting on the wall. It was a portrait of the old haenyo.

Wang and June had brought me to see these famous women divers along the Jeju coastline earlier in the day. Her mother had been a diver, and June herself had imbibed from a young age that same trait of fierce independence of the haenyo, who didn’t rely on husbands to earn a living. I thought this was most unusual in an Asian culture; certainly different from my Singapore upbringing.

I got up to study more closely: Two women were sitting on the rocks.

The grandma in the blue one-piece was smoking a cigarette, the other had a white cloth around her loins and was stretching and scratching the back of her head with her magnificent breasts and orange-tipped nipples exposed to the afternoon sunlight. In the background, you could see the green-mesh trap with its orange float and a small trident used to loosen shellfish from underwater cracks and crevices.

They were coarse, Rubenesque, heavy jowled, with almost bulbous red clown noses. Perhaps this was the result of prolonged cold water diving and holding your breath at depth. I looked at the right bottom corner of the painting. There was a name or inscription written in Korean and a date: 1956.

I couldn’t help myself, so I found my phone and took a picture of the painting. It was so beautiful, and June Park could be found in every centimetre of it.

I felt as if I was swimming in the sea and moved and swayed in time with the jazz and the fish, until the next pleasant surprise of the evening: June had bathed and there she was dressed in traditional Korean red-and-white costume with her hair made up. I had seen photos of this courtly garb before, but had not realized that it really was a ‘fat’ dress. The red blouse at the top came up just under her breast-line and the skirt fanned out conically below into a wide circumference touching the floor.

‘Wow, June!’

She giggled and moved as if on invisible dolly-wheels in my direction.

‘Let me take your picture,’ I said, positioning and snapping her from various angles and in different poses—some serious, some girly, some comical, some down and dirty. She was so connected to her feelings that she was a natural model. I took some near the back-lit lampshade, another in the bedroom doorway, one looking out the high-rise window and others near the colourfully lit aquarium.

‘What can I say? This dress… It’s so… you, June!’

‘So now, Mr Singapore, this is my present—gift—wrapped in my traditional Korean hang-bok. Am I pretty?’

‘Pretty? You are gorgeous!’ and I meant it. She had really brought me to that point of appreciation for unpretentious pleasure and a belief in the importance of living lustfully in the moment. We joined lips and embraced for a long time with the oxygen filter gurgling in the background.

Primed and confident, I now felt it was my turn to give and not just receive. I was ready to fold back her inner sound of fabric and started by running my hands down her red-necked blouse over its breast-points, so elegantly and classically tailored with all the grace-lines of Korean history and ceremony intact. Then, I knelt to find her hidden ankles and kissed them.

She then helped by turning around and bending over, spread legs wide, while gripping the back of the sofa seat. She knew what she wanted. I put my hands underneath and lifted outer silk and inner petticoat, finding fleshy hand-holds and wet dew trickling down the inside of her thighs. I was soon rubbing my two palms up warm flesh and feasting my eyes on the curvature of her dimpled buttocks, scored with life-accumulated cellulite as if they were star-indents of real experience and accomplishment, not the bane of some prurient weight-watcher’s programme. Yes, she was most un-Hollywood, an unabashedly dimpled daughter of the sea, a traveller’s insulation against cold days and lonely nights. She was ever—prepared for picnic or camper fun, carrying like a small jumbo—her own howdah of excess baggage.