Meat Don't Grow on Trees (Part 1)

I saw my first animal killing in Turkmenistan as a Peace Corps volunteer. It was on a winter’s day and the sky was like marbled silver. My host brother Merdan selected a goat from our hay den out back. It was a sickly little goat with spindly legs and horns that twisted out diagonally from one another.

Merdan grabbed the goat by its up-pointing horn and dragged it across the yard. He pulled it out the gate and around the corner to the neighborhood dump. Two of his friends were waiting there. One carried a rope in his hands and the other, a dull knife with a yellow handle. They all greeted each other and Merdan took the knife from his friend. He wiped the blade off on his pant leg and crouched, pulling the goat down with him. He dug a small hole in the dirt and placed the goat’s neck over it. I pulled out my video camera and clicked it on. When Merdan heard the “beep” he looked up at me.

“Please, don’t film this,” he said in Turkmen. “Just go.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because nobody in America will want to watch it. And if you watch it, it’ll change your psychology.”

To emphasize this he lifted a finger to his temple and twisted it into his brain. I ignored him and continued filming. He shrugged and pinned the goat with his knees. He placed the blade carefully on its throat and thinned his eyes. Everything froze for a moment. Then like a mechanical toy, he charged to life and sawed open the goat’s neck. Steam rose up from the wound and blood poured down. The goat let off a burbling cry. From behind the safety of my viewfinder, I watched as its animal eyes slowly turned to frog eggs. When the last drop of blood left its body, the goat was no more – just a wooly carcass with a tongue hanging from its mouth like an arm from a coffin. I felt bad for a bit but that passed. The viewfinder had acted as a shield, protecting me from the reality of the killing. Now that the goat was dead I barely had an ounce of sympathy for it. This remained the case as it was strung up, gutted, quartered, and carted off into the house.

That evening, my host mother and sisters prepared a birthday feast for an uncle. They used every part of the goat, including its guts, brains, tongue and testicles. This was a real treat for me as I’m a huge carnivore. In my travels, I’ve eaten everything from alpaca heart to yak's tail. I must admit though, that a few of the dishes they prepared baffled and disgusted me. For example, I didn’t understand why it was necessary boil up the intestines and serve them in a bowl of scalding broth. Despite my aversion to some of the dishes, I enjoyed the feast and the sense of community it created. All us guys were huddled into one warm room where we picked at hunks of meat and organ, swilled cheap vodka and told stories of our various exploits.

By the end of the night our bellies were distended and our lips were caked in goat fat. We bid each other adieux and staggered off to our respective rooms and homes. Before going to sleep, I replayed the killing in my mind. I remembered Merdan’s words. Though I’d felt sorry for the goat as it gargled its last breath, I didn’t feel like witnessing its killing had “changed my psychology.” Maybe I was cold-hearted, or maybe I was just a coward who’d hidden behind his camera. Whatever the case, Merdan’s little phrase was a mystery to me. It remained as such throughout my service. Eventually, it faded from memory, becoming nothing more than an enigmatic bead lodged deep in my brainstem.

….

 

The years passed and I came to Prague. I knew no one here and that made for a sad existence. After a while, I made a few friends but it was nothing like what I’d had in Turkmenistan. I missed the feeling of living with a host family and participating in their traditions. I spent most of my days alone. Teaching students helped, but not much. I tried to use them as vessels to learn about this place. But traditional culture is largely watered down in the city, as is the case with most big cities. I gleaned what morsels I could. Then one day while teaching a public course on “American Customs”, I got a break.

“Have you heard about Czech custom ‘zabíjačka’?” a female student asked.

I looked at her like she’d just farted in my coffee mug.

“No.”

“It is great. Vee do it in countryside.”

“Oh, so kinna like a hippie-orgy sorta deal?”

“Vat? No! It is ven family hire butcher to kill pig. Dis is big celebration. Vee drink, vee smoke, vee eat. It taking all of day and food is wery, wery delicious.”

I felt a tingling in my neck. It crawled up and around my brain and widened my eyes.

“Is that so?” I said.

That night I got on the internet and checked it out. I learned that a “zabíjačka” or “little killing” is a tradition practiced in Central and Eastern Europe during which a farm animal (usually a pig) is slaughtered, gutted, cut into parts, and then used to prepare various dishes such as “jitirnice” (liverwurst), “tlačenka” (head cheese), and “ škvarky” (fried pork rinds), to name a few Czech favorites. The article said that these “pig-slaughters” generally take place during winter months so that the meat preserves better. It also said that recent EU regulations regarding sanitation were slowly wiping the zabíjačka from the left cheek of Europe. This last bit troubled me. I decided that before I left The Czech Republic, I would participate in a zabíjačka come hell or high water.

During the coming months I hounded my students incessantly for more information. I became an un-scratchable zit in the middle of their backs. To stop my pestering, they asked family and friends if they knew of any zabíjačky going on in the near future. But all of them were either clueless, or unwilling to invite me.

Any normal person would have given up the hunt after one year. I, on the other hand, continued it for three straight. Many of my repeat students knew me for this. Come wintertime they’d preempt my start-of-the-class question with:

“No Hans. Vee don’t know any zabíjačku.”

At which point I’d say.

“Alright, shit. Well if you hear of one, let me know.”

….

 

This past fall, I geared up for another go-around. I even started prodding my students a couple months early but it was all a big waste of time. By early November I was ready to just say “fuck it” for 2013. That’s when I got a call from Bert – a childhood travel buddy who’d moved to Prague the year after I had.

“You ready to hear some shit?” he said.

“I don’t know. If it involves you and that chick with the crush on you who looks like Rodney Dangerfield I think I’ll pass.”

“Hilarious. Look, Pavla’s Dad is having a birthday party in two weeks out at the cottage. We’re all invited. There’ll be a keg and a bunch’a liquor. And get this …”

When Bert says “Get this …” it’s usually followed by something lame. I was expecting him to tell me some banal bit of information like his girlfriend, Pavla was bringing an extra nice bottle of slivovice (Czech plum brandy). He cleared his throat and let it fly. I was only half listening when he said:

 “We’re gonna go in one car and split the gas three ways to save money.”

“Wow,” I said. “Sounds like a plan.”

There was a pause. Bert cleared his throat again.

“Oh, and bring some Tupperware.”

“What in God’s name for?”

“All the pork. We’re having a zabíjačka.”

I dropped the phone and flew into a manic episode. I started bouncing around the room like a schizophrenic clown with a hot poker up his ass, screaming:

“HOT FUCKIN’ DAMN!!!”

This woke my dickhead flat-mate from his afternoon nap. He pounded on his wall and yelled:

“Close the fucking mouth!”

I ignored him and continued. When my energy was spent I climbed down from the shelves. I picked my phone up and put it to my ear. Bert was chuckling on the other end.

“Ya’ get it outta yer system?” he said.

“Haha, chea hea.”

“Ait. We leave two weeks from today.”

It was a slow crawl to the middle of November. By the night of (Thursday) the 14th, I was ready to burst from my shoes. I packed everything and placed it neatly by my door. All that was left to do before bed was charge my camera. I drew it from its case and plugged it into the wall. As I did, I felt that strange tingling again. It reached up through my nerves and gripped my brain. An image flashed that drained my face. I saw that little goat getting its neck sawed open. I saw myself, hiding behind the camera. I remembered Merdan’s words and tightened my fists.

“Tomorrow, I got this,” I said.

….

 

Morning came and I went to my only class. It was a beginners’ conversation group and everyone in it was eager to hear about the upcoming event. I told them we’d be driving out to the countryside that afternoon. We’d slaughter the pig at around 15:00, drink, have some dinner, drink again, and then the next morning, wake up and prepare a bunch of traditional foods from the meat. This provoked a wave of questions on which dishes we’d be preparing from which pig parts and what their English equivalents were. Like a good boy, I’d done all my zabíjačka homework beforehand so I knocked the skin off that bitch. By the end of the interrogation, the white board was scribbled up green with obscure, pork-related terminology in both Czech and English. I stood back and admired my work. A final student raised her hand. Though she didn’t have a question for me, but a bit of advice.

“Ven you see zabíjačku,” she said. “Wery important is, you no look to eyes of pig.”

I clicked my jaw and scratched my bald spot.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“I can’t explain you. Just no look to eyes.”

I’d have dismissed this as total nonsense, but everyone else in the class was nodding in agreement. I chalked it up instead to some sort of “sympathy plea” and moved on. The minutes ticked off and the class ended. I tipped my hat and hit the metro. A half hour later I met Bert and Pavla at the end of the red line. I tossed my shit in the trunk, got in the car and we sped off through the fog ...

Note: I reserve the right to occasionally alter the character names, descriptions, and/or event details in my posts for the purposes of identity protection and “fluidity of story.” If this puts a kink in your panties, read someone else’s blog, homey.

Four Poems

I know I said my next post would be about my first ever “pig slaughter” in The Czech Republic, but due to technical difficulties (i.e. I’ve been jetlagged as fuck and can’t seem to turn out a decent word) that post has been delayed until further notice. In the meantime, I thought it would be nice to share with you guys some poems I read recently at “Alchemy” – an open-mic event held on the first Monday of every month at “Napa Bar and Gallery” (Prokopska 296/8, Prague 1). There are four poems in total. The first three I wrote while on holiday in California this Christmas. The last one I wrote about a year ago here in Prague.

Now, I know y’all are used to my filthy, knife-in-the-throat humor, but these poems are a bit different. At the very least, give them a quick read-through and if they don’t tickle your fancy, I promise to castrate myself on camera with a lemon-juiced razorblade (just kidding).

Laughing About the Moon

I have a group of friends

They are old friends that go

Way back to the time

When I was fishing for boogers

And scraping my elbows on the asphalt

We’ve done everything together

We’ve even bounced the

Globe around and spun it

On our fingertips

I  Love these guys

And it’s sad

When I have to leave them

Every so often we see each other

And when we do

We sew our friendship back together

With booze, pot, and stories

On rare nights you can find us

In my garage

Sipping smoke from a

Jeweled horn

And laughing about the moon

Birds

When I was a child

I hated birds

So much so that

I scoured the canopy of our backyard

For their nests

And when I found them

I plucked up their eggs

And smashed them

To the earth

When I got older

And more murderous

I bought a gun

I loaded it with

Pellets

And tiptoed around

The trees

And when I spotted

A swallow

Raven, dove, or finch

I cocked the hammer back

And blasted it

From its branch

In a “POP” of feathers

Now that I’m a man

And the rage inside me

Has slowed to a

Trickle

I can watch a bird preen itself

Without wanting to

Crush it

With my boot heel

Have another Sip

I sat in my

Tiny room

And watched Bukowski

On my computer screen

And ate ham

And swilled whiskey

Meanwhile

Bombes burst

Far away

In skies I’d never heard of

And mothers’ hands

Went up against the flashes

While they huddled their

Children

Into mud-brick homes

Before being blown away

In so many flakes of ash

And I thought

Who am I

To be sitting here

Watching Bukowski

While all this happens?

Then I took another sip of whiskey

And forgot all about

Those mothers with

The ash-flake hands

Gods of Yesterday

We’ve shut them out!

Gods

Ghosts

Ghouls

Everywhere they turn

Another door

Is slammed in their faces

As they roam the streets

Forests

And riverbeds

Men with gasmasks

And weapons

Come to collect

They heard them into corners and bathe their bodies in fire

They hang them from the trees and let the crows pick out their eyeballs

They strip them of their skin and make shopping malls with it

They drown them

Till the streams

Rivers

Seas

And oceans

Are FILLED

With twisted and dead limbs

Those of our kind

Who take pity on theirs

Who listen to what they have to say

And keep the door open a crack

Are called crazy

And either locked up for life

Or given the same treatment

As those we used to worship and fear

What changed?

Why are the Gods of Yesterday

The branded figments of today?

Can’t the killing stop?

Can’t anyone give them a home?

They’re cold and scared

They’re us

A Week in the Life

I can’t talk about my week without talking about my bed first. Every day starts and ends with the fucker.  I gotta give credit where credit is due.

 

My Bed:

My bed … is a piece of shit.

Lemme rephrase that.

My bed … is a four-legged slab of donkey excrement haunting the corner of my room like the week-old corps of a murderous clown. Its sheets are holey and stained. Its blankets are ragged and thin. Its pillows are lumpy and old. Its mattress is flat and saggy. The cheap wooden frame that houses its diseased organs is shaky at the top and ribbed at the bottom. The ribs aren’t nailed down so they often slip from their positions, allowing my boney ass to punch through the gaps while trying to get comfy. This phenomenon has made for fun times when I’ve had female company. I won’t go into any details. Let’s just say that on more than one occasion, my liaison and I have gone crashing through the under-planks “mid-hump,” and ended up in some extremely unflattering positions.

With this bad-boy as my cradle, I rise up and greet the week. Every day of it is different. I’ll give you a taste of each.

 

Monday:

Most people despise Monday like a bitchy mother-in-law. I for one don’t mind it. There are many reasons for this. The biggest is my chances of having a hangover are slim. I almost never drink on Sundays. And when I do, it’s just a few beers. This means I’m able to embrace the next day with less-than-achy limbs – a reality that makes all the difference.

I have three classes on Monday - two of which are with pretty ladies. The lessons are light and friendly. Most times, I laugh right through ‘em over coffee and fresh fruit.

My workday ends at 14:00 (yes, I’ll be using European time). I take the tram home and make myself lunch. When my belly’s full, I get on the computer. I don’t have a girlfriend so I like to look at flowers on the internet. I usually start with daisies then move onto roses. Sometimes I throw in tulips or the odd dandelion. When that’s finished and I’m nice n’ relaxed, I take a nap. At around 18:00, I rise and make dinner. Afterwards, it’s straight to the writing desk. I shell out a chapter or two, toss in a movie and fall fast asleep in the arms of my shit-wagon.

 

Tuesday:

If Monday is a slender goddess kissing me on the lips, Tuesday is a pair of goat testicles slapping me in the mouth. I wake up at 7:30 – which may not sound very early to some of you but keep in mind I spend most nights writing until 3:00 am. I shit, shower and shave. Then I race to catch the metro line to the other side of Prague where I have my first class. When it ends, I’m off to see the Don. My next lessons last till well into the evening and they’re scattered around the city like the body parts of a mafia snitch. Come home time, I’m dragging my heels. I enter my seedy building, unlock both doors and board the elevator.

I’d like to take this time out to tell you about my elevator. I call it that, but really it’s not. It’s more like a screaming wooden head being dragged up and down a mineshaft by its metal hair. As it has no door, I can see the floors as they pass. Many tenants have made use of these bare concrete halves to hone their drawing and writing skills. This means I get a moving comic book of dicks, balls, and pussies, replete with clever dialogue such as “Pisssssss!” and “Asssssss!” It’s a real treat at the end of a long day.

When I get inside I’m too tired to make food or look at flowers. I simply shed my backpack, strip down to my skivvies and crash. At around 20:30, I wake up. Since my time is short, I usually zap a cardboard pizza, scarf it down and hit the keys. This carries me into the wee hours. I’m a shadow by dawn.

 

Wednesday:

What a vacant lot! What a goddamned travesty! Wednesday is nothing. Wednesday is less than nothing. It’s a bee fart in a hive of shit. It’s a zero lost in a digital sea. I don’t love Wednesday. I don’t hate Wednesday. I don’t give two shit-flingin’ fucks about Wednesday!  As far as I’m concerned, Wednesday can crawl into the sewer with its ugly wife, Tuesday. Christ, it can eat my day-old cantaloupe rinds! FUCK YOU TO INFINITY, WEDNESDAY! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

 

Thursday:

The only thing worth mentioning on Thursday happens at a park near the banks of the Vltava. It’s a crappy little park, ringed with blue benches and some grass in the middle. I pick a seat there and open my bag. Inside it is a sandwich. It’s a miserable little sandwich, made with old ham and cheese, dry onions and tomatoes. I grab it and take a bite. As I chew, its brown mustard collects at the corners of my mouth. I swallow it down and the thoughts pop up. I think of where I’ve been and what I’ve done - the hundreds of roads I’ve kissed with my footprints, the thousands of tears I’ve spilt over my lips. At about this point, I cross my eyes. Staring back at me like an ugly asshole is that fucking sandwich. I often feel like throwing it against a tree and screaming:

“Is this is it?! Is this where all those roads in all those countries have taken me?!”

I pull out a pen and start writing. The anger flows nicely against the page. Before I know it, I have a poem. It’s enough to get me through my sandwich.

 

Friday:

My eyes open. I rub them and creak out of bed. I go in the bathroom and twist the shower on. The water runs hot and steamy. I grab the nozzle and circle my body with it. As I do, it wakes him up. He opens his eyes and crawls from his cave. As he enters the bathroom, I leave it. I get dressed and walk out the door. While I’m teaching, he does his business.

First, he bathes his red skin. Then he takes a razor to his oval face. After that, it’s on to his teeth. He plucks the meat from his gums and brushes the pink from his fangs. This continues for a few. Now it’s time to see. He squares his shoulders and lifts his chin. His lips pull back to bear his grin. It’s long and sharp and clean and gleaming. It looks like a crystal chandelier. He lets it glint in the mirror. Then he leaves the steam. He enters my room and selects an outfit – a checkered shirt and jeans perhaps, two pointy shoes and cocked grey cap. At about this time, I come home. I slip into bed and snooze. The hours roll by, one, two, three. Homeboy’s perched on a box in the corner, smiling at me in the dark. My alarm goes off and I get up. I stretch and yawn and scratch my junk. Four steps forward and then it hits. We clap together and join our wits.

….

What happens next is anybody’s guess. Sometimes I drink so much that my eyes turn yellow and my only goal is to waltz through Prague with my dead grandmother’s ghost. Sometimes I walk aimlessly in the cold for hours watching the snowfall erase my tracks. Other times I sit on a bench under a streetlamp and write poems to the frozen pile of leaves next to me. And sometimes, just sometimes, I get lucky. When this happens, the moon lights up and the skin of the earth convulses. I am a skeleton, screaming in a river of babies. Once the panic ends, my partner and I collapse and curl together. Sleep takes us like a gentle beast.

 

Saturday:

My Saturday morning takes three possible forms. I’ll go from the incredibly rare to the embarrassingly common.

1. I wake up next to a beautiful stranger with whom I share a delightful breakfast and an interesting conversation.
2. I wake up next to a hideous stranger with whom I share a bottle of water and a curt goodbye.
3. I wake up next to Death with an eye-splitting hangover and the need to vomit.  

Once I’ve finished with these things, the rest of the day is mine. I usually spend it watching movies on my computer or trying to decipher the nonsense I scrawled into my pocket-journal the night before.

….

When evening arrives, I have two options. I can either go out and brave the frosty jungle again, or I can brew a pot of tea and write. Now that I’m a rickety thirty-something, I often go with option B. It saves my nerves and liver, plus it sharpens my pen.

 

Sunday:

If you’ve read my first post (or my first book), you’ll know that my childhood friends and I speak our own dialect of English, which we call R.O.A.S.T. (short for, “Result of a Small Town”). Central to this dialect is a phrasal verb we concocted using the name of our friend “Chuck,” who is notorious for his ability to lounge with gusto. The verb is “to Chuck out,” and in Standard English, it more or less means “to lay on your fat ass and let the stress dribble from your joints like so much grease from a roasting turkey.” “Chucking out” is a truly “baumish” (meaning, “awesome”) affair and as you might have already guessed, I elect Sunday to do it the hardest.

There are many ways in which one can “Chuck out.” One might lie in a supine position doing crossword puzzles on their stomach. Another might sit on the throne for hours reading the daily news. I however, prefer the “Sultan’s Choice” – a hookah packed with mint tobacco on one side, an icy bottle of soda on the other, a tower of fluffed pillows at my back, and a TV screen flickering just above my toenails. Hmmmmmmmmm …

….

Welp, that about does ‘er! Hope y’all enjoyed yeehaw’n though my week. Stay tuned for next month when I discuss the finer points of my first “pig-slaughter” in The Czech Republic.

Ciao.

 

Note: I reserve the right to occasionally alter the character names, descriptions, and/or event details in my posts for the purposes of identity protection and “fluidity of story.” If this puts a kink in your panties, read someone else’s blog, homey.

Promise to a Cousin

My cousin Erica and I had the same dream when we were kids. We wanted to travel the world and write about our adventures. After high school, we chased this dream like two bloodhounds on a limping fox. We got involved in journalism, scoured the globe with backpacks, did volunteer work in developing countries, and had experiences unmatched by most people we knew. On the home front, when we weren’t studying obscure languages or doing temp work for pocket change, we were fluttering the keys till our fingers bled in an effort to craft our tales.

By twenty five, Erica had surpassed me in her pursuit. She was a senior staff writer at a well-read newspaper and was even set to intern under Wolf Blitzer at CNN. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous. She was “making it” on this path we’d chosen, while I, for the most part, was still in the Styx, picking ticks from my underwear and washing my balls with creek water.

One day while visiting my folks, I got a call. It was Erica and she sounded elated.

“Guess what, Hans!” she said.

Ummm let’s see, I thought. You’re being personally awarded the Pulitzer by Dan Rather in a g-string?

“Joe and I are having a baby!”

“Huh?!”

I was blown to shreds. I knew she’d met a guy and gotten married, but I never expected her to go the kid route so soon. I congratulated her, of course. Underneath, I wondered what would become of our little dream.

Over the next few years, Erica moved further and further in a different direction. Where once she strapped Vipers to her feet and braved snowcapped peaks, she now strapped diapers to her tyke and rode hub-capped Jeeps. That’s not to say I wasn’t happy for her.  I was just disappointed that I no longer had a companion to run with and a competitor to run against.

By 2010, the nomad’s footprints had all but faded for Erica. She was now living the domestic life with her sweet baby and hard-working husband in a small condo just south of LA. Before moving to Prague, I went to visit her. She cooked us chicken tikka masala, and we looked at photos of my recent trip to Africa. As we flipped through pics of me cliff-diving in Zanzibar and off-roading in Ethiopia, I noticed her eyes. They were flecked with a tearful longing for something long since forgotten. At one point during our viewing, the super-tramp in Erica kicked through her skin and twirled her to life. She started bouncing up and down around the living room and yelling:

“Joe! Wouldn’t it be awesome if we went to Africa together?!”

Joe, though kind and curious at heart, is hardly built for the road. He just sat there in his loafers, gripping his kneecaps and sweating his crew-cut to a shine.

“I think we’d do better in Florida,” he said.

Erica popped like a teardrop on a stove coil. She withered to the Indian style position and sagged her head. I told her and Joe it was time I got going. I gathered my crap and hit the door. As I reached for the knob, Erica stopped me. She turned me around and pinched my elbow.

“Bring me back some stories, will ya?” she said.

I told her I would.

….

A month later, I boarded my plane for Prague. I had three bags of a junk, a hundred bucks in my pocket and a drinking problem the size of a church spire. By the skin of my nuts, I got a job teaching English. I set up shop at a crappy flat in Žižkov – the grittiest hood in the city – then commenced learning the local tongue and exploring the local bars. In the three years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen, done and written some wicked shit. But this post isn’t about all that. It’s about keeping my promise to Erica.

Last July, while at home for her brother’s wedding, I saw her for the first time since leaving. The minute she got the chance, she sat me down and opened her peepers up real wide.

“So tell me about Praaague!” she said.

I folded my arms and chewed the side of my mouth. Had Erica been one of the boys from back home, I’d have spilled my filthy stories like a bag of used condoms. Truth was, I was ashamed to tell her most of what I’d done. Not cuz’ she’s woman, mind you, but because she’s, let’s say, more “religious” than I am.

But Erica’s no dummy. I’m sure she sensed her alcohol-and-caffeine-free spiritual affiliations were puttin’ the pinch on my inner devil. Even still, I could see her eyes were filled with images of castles and cafes and torrid romance. I had to give her something. While I thought about how to address this, she rephrased her question.

“Well, can you at least just tell me what the average week is like for Haaans in Praaague?”

Like a jerk, I spit her alotta horse crap about “interesting students” and “beautiful sights.” I should’a ditched my pride and told her the following …

 

 

 

Note: I reserve the right to occasionally alter the character names, descriptions, and/or event details in my posts for the purposes of identity protection and “fluidity of story.” If this puts a kink in your panties, read someone else’s blog, homey.

Till My Fingers Give Out

The inspiration for this blog came from a conversation I had with a colleague about a month ago. The events of that Monday evening are hazy. I’ll try to recount them as best I can …

I arrived at the bar at around six. I was meeting a fellow teacher there who had expressed an interest reading and editing my first book. My confidence that he’d take on either task was low. This is because last year I sent my book to about twenty editors and they all rejected it. One even more or less said it was “the most unreadable pile of horseshit that had ever fouled the sanctity of his work space.”

With this rattling around in my head, I found my colleague (we’ll call him “Don”). He was sitting at a table by himself, smoking and sipping a shot of Becherovka.

“Have a seat,” he said.

I parked it and ordered a beer. It came to me and I took a long pull.

“So um, tell me about your book."

“Well …”

What fumbled from my mouth was the same half-polished string of anal beads I regurgitate at anyone, who asks me that question. It goes something like this:

“My book is a fictionalized account of a trip I took around the world with my childhood friends back in 2006. It not only details our day-to-day adventures, it documents the development of this pseudo-culture we’ve created both at home and abroad. We’ve got our own nicknames, initiation rites, deities and spiritual philosophy. We’ve even got our own dialect of English, which we call ‘ROAST,’ for ‘Result of a Small Town.’ With every trip we take, we add a little more to our culture. But this trip in 2006 added the most to the pot. That’s why I decided to write a book about it.”

I was expecting Don to excuse himself from the table and hail a cab. Instead, he raised an eyebrow.

“Sounds like an interesting book.”

“Really?!”

I ordered another beer and a shot. I inhaled the latter and gulped the former.

“So you wanna read it?” I asked.

“Of course. But first tell me a little more about your body of writing. Do you have a blog?”

The word “BLOG” exited his lips and moved across the table in slow motion. Before I could duck, it crashed against my face like a loaded baby diaper.

“I fucking hate BLOGS!” I said, spitting the word from my mouth.

 “Why?”

“Because! They are the antithesis of literature and the destruction of good writing! People set ‘em up with little consideration of ‘why’ or ‘how.’ Then they just go on there and puke their unformed thoughts up on the page for the whole world to see without ever taking the time to really hone and compile them into what might have become a decent book. All this ‘blogging,’ and ‘tweeting,’ and bullshit is the same! It’s ruining the craft of writing and I for one will not participate!”

Don breathed in half his cigarette then flabbered the smoke out of his mouth.

“Hans,” he said. “Get over yourself and step into the twenty-first century. Every writer worth his salt has a blog these days. And yes, some people do use them to ‘puke their unformed thoughts up on the page,’ but not all. In fact, I know some people who have become much better writers because of their blogs. What's more, they’ve expanded their fan bases and created forums to showcase their work. How else is that guy in Brazil who just might love your writing, ever gonna get to read it if you don’t have a blog?”

The man I had a point. I considered it with a sour face and ordered more drinks. Time rolled by like a beer barrel. By eight thirty, I was tanked. I gave Don my book and thanked him for his advice.  Then I paid the bill.

“Remember what I said about starting a blog,” he said.

“I will.”

….

I took the tram from Nové Město. It whined through the center then descended into Žižkov like a finger down the Devil’s throat. It coughed me up at my stop. I staggered down the hill, trying to avoid the doggy landmines littering the sidewalk. At about the halfway point, I felt my bladder squeak. It was filled to the splitting point and in desperate need of release. I found the nearest tree. I widened my stance, unzipped my pants and pulled my dick free.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” I breathed.

The piss drained from my tip in outrageous quantities. As it did, I thought of my blog. I decided I’d write the damn thing but wondered what to call it. I zipped up and continued walking. A minute later, I had to pee again. I did so against a building. I finished and walked the two blocks to my flat. When I got inside, amazingly, I had to piss for a third time. I went in the John and did my business. As the water tinkled, I remembered a phrase I’d read earlier in an urban dictionary. The phrase was “Breaking the Seal.” It means “After having consumed large quantities of alcohol, urinating once, and because of said act, having to urinate again and again over a long period of time.” The beauty of it all hit me like a pair of tits to the face.

“That’s what I’ll call it!” I screamed.

….

What you’re reading now is the byproduct of that Eureka moment. I’ve broken my seal on these pages and will continue to let it flow once a month, till my fingers give out.

Hope you all enjoy ;)

Note: I reserve the right to occasionally alter the character names, descriptions, and/or event details in my posts for the purposes of identity protection and “fluidity of story.” If this puts a kink in your panties, read someone else’s blog, homey.