Wayward: Fetching Tales from a Year on the Road

the underdog

I wasn’t even thinking of eating dog until I met Alec. He had a way of smiling and raising his eyebrows that suggested trouble, the kind of trouble that I just had to get into.

Alec was German. He could have been my boyfriend if he didn’t have a girlfriend. He giggled at my unspoken jokes (a nod at a kid picking his nose) and spoke excellent English. Alec was also insanely hot, a triathlete who still drank enough beer to not be featherweight but carried enough muscle to have a tight, convex chest.

During our first drink, he told me about the time when he cheated on his girlfriend back home. It had been after a long bus ride through Laos, during which a beautiful girl had suggested they seek accommodations together. After dinner and drinks they headed to her room. Just before they started making out he felt a bit sick but his hormones got the best of him and he forged ahead. Halfway through the act, with her on top, he began having severe gastric pains. She thought he was getting more turned on and thrashed harder and faster, which made him offer a clenched whimper. At that point, Alec confessed, “I shit on bed.” This made him my best friend for life.

“You know. We should go for dog.”

We were out at a balcony bar drinking whiskey at four in the afternoon when he offered it up, straight from the ol’ Lonely Planet. I could only hear Anthony Bourdain whispering in my ear not to be a wimp, not to be the safe American consumer. I agreed to eat man’s best friend. Alec was thrilled. I was thrilled to thrill him.

Our drinking continued into the evening with free beer on the roof of our hostel, the well-run, Australian-owned Hanoi Backpackers. Alec looked at me and tried to speak code as we batted off two frumpy Polish girls who would not stop hitting on us.

Alec. Giving me the accent. “Time for D-O-G now?” Certainly.

We hailed a taxi and headed to a decidedly sketchy neighborhood near the airport. It’s a universal rule that no good comes of establishments near an airport. There were no people, no cabs, no stores and no cyclos, only a semi fancy shack.  “Dog!” said our driver, pointing to the entrance. “Woof Woof.”

The anxiety of eating Lassie was quadrupled by the shocking neighborhood and certainty that we would never get home. That feeling worsened when we realized that there were about ten canines wandering below the eatery’s ten empty tables. The reality that dog came from DOG was almost too much. Bourdain kept whispering in my ear, cooing me closer to the tables. Before I knew it, my shoes were off and I was sitting at a Japanese style table on the floor. It bears repeating that Alec and I were the only customers.

Two men served as our cook and waiter. They looked more like mechanics more than restaurateurs. Between the two of them, they knew three words and gracefully laid out the dining options. “Boy Dog? Girl Dog?” We shrugged our shoulders and told them to pick what they wanted. Not understanding a word of what we said, they moved quickly towards the back. Chef ’s Special it was.

I worked in a rib joint once and it is best that the customer never knows what really happens behind the door that swings both ways.

Dinner arrived before we could even think about bailing out. Two small plates of grilled dog were placed in front of us, with three equally mysterious dipping sauces. The meat was brown and rump-like, chunked and sliced. The smell coming off of it made me momentarily gag. The dogs continued to whimper beneath the floorboards.

Our two hosts were now watching to make sure we partook. I grabbed my chopsticks and shoved a piece in my mouth before I really had time to process what I had in front of me.

Dog was a completely new and distinct taste to me. It had never struck me that at my age I might discover a new taste. It was like the first time I tasted licorice or lemongrass or coriander. Except more horrible than anything I had ever eaten in my life. Years of Liver Night as a kid had taught me how to convincingly fake-eat with a quick napkin spit, which is exactly what I did. Unlike in my childhood, the dogs under this floor would probably not appreciate my palmed scraps.

“Boy dog,” said our waiter as Alec took a bite from the same stinking pile. Some people turn green - he turned neon green. Our waiter departed and he hacked out his bite into a napkin.

We should have stopped right there but we didn’t. Neither one of us was leaving until we successfully downed one piece. We both went for the other sliced pile and I guess that I can compare the taste of female dog as something pork-like. It was only half as bad as the first pile, which was ten times worse than anything I have ever had. We swallowed. Dog had been ingested. We pounded our orange sodas and looked at each other with grim faces.

There was no pride in the achievement. We were just two dumb guys doing something for the sake of saying that we did it. Neither one of us enjoyed a single second of the experience and neither one of us felt good about what we had done. We had psyched ourselves into doing something because it felt adventurous and non-touristy. It was a horrible mistake and a nasty decision.

We paid quickly and left as if it was a brothel, wandering for an hour before finding a cab back to the city. It charged us three times the going rate and neither one of us cared. We just wanted the night behind us. We deserved to be ripped off.