To eat dog is inhuman.  Unless, of course, you’re Asian.  Then that just makes you a non-vegetarian.

I ate a dog once.  It was quite good.  It tasted very much like chicken but a bit…doggier.  Just know it was totally by accident that I ate an entire puppy from head to tail.  Actually, that’s a lie.  There was no head.  The restaurant didn’t include it.  I think they used the puppy heads to make some sort of anti-impotency soup for horny asian dictators and westerners looking for the Rod of Thor.  Anyway, without a head, a puppy carcass filleted out, Chinese-style on a dinner platter looks very much like a chicken or a duck.  That’s how they served it to me and that’s how I accidentally ate the little canine creature.  The whole thing.  By accident.  Woof, woof.  Please don’t judge me…

I had spent the past 3 hours lost, deep within Chinese bush.  It was not pleasant.  A typical Chinese bush is hot, humid, and dense like a jungle.  From the outside it is enticing and rather seductive.  But once you dive deep within it’s moist folds, you can easily become disoriented and lose your way.  Spend too much time down in Chinese bush and it can consume you, depriving your mind of logic, your body of soul, and your spirit of dance.  Luckily for me, I found my way out, starving, dehydrated, and sticky.  At 98 degrees and 100% humidity, the jungles of the Yunan province is no place for the leisure set.  I was headed to the small border town of Xi Shuang Ban Na as part of my continuing chase to capture purpose and to see if I could sneak into Myanmar and nab me a few bolts of fine Burmese silk.  Eating dog was never on my itinerary.

I was starving my ass off so I darted into the nearest “restaurant” that I could find.  It was basically a concrete shack with a giant, black tarp tied to coconut trees to protect the outdoor dining area from the monsoon rains.  I sat down at my table and my chair immediately lowered about 6 inches as it squished into the wet and muddy floor.  This was not a Morton’s Steak House by any means.  There was no menu.  And to make matters even more challenging, the dialect used in the Yunan province was a far cry from the Mandarin I knew and learned from Chinatown hostess clubs.  Unable to communicate with the unusually attractive Yunan waitress (she looked like a yellow trailer park Michelle Kwan), she escorted me into the kitchen to physically pick out what I wanted to eat.  Entering the kitchen was like entering into an Oriental house of culinary horrors.  There were giant bee larvae, giant tree wasps, other larger-than-normal insects in varying states of gestation, a myriad of freshly harvested organs that looked very human-like, and a few fresh vegetables with flies laying their eggs on top of them.  Welcome to Yunan, may I take your order?  Frack no.  A cyanide pill seemed more appetizing at that moment.  So I left the Chinese autopsy kitchen and went back to my midget table and indulged in the only canned/bottled drink that they had in all of Yunan: fresh coconut juice.  I drank 6 cans, back to back, trying to dull my hunger pangs through sheer liquid volume (I would soon regret this move, btw).

man's best friend sans skin

And then I saw it.  I had just cracked open my 7th can of coconut juice when I noticed a dish that two old local dudes, who both eerily resembled a tanned James Hong with long ear hairs, were eating at the table next to me.  It looked like a whole chicken or a duck with nice crispy skin bathed in a syrupy brown sauce.  The “James Hongs” were picking at it with their faux ivory chopsticks, shoveling a nice helping of white rice into their mouths with every meaty bite.  Perfect.  I then signaled over to my country ghetto Michelle Kwan waitress and pointed vigorously at the “chicken/duck” dish.  She nodded.  I nodded in confirmation.  She then nodded to reconfirm my confirmation.   I reconfirmed her reconfirmation.  We had a sexy moment for sure.  It was time to eat some delicious meat.

The dish was really good.  I ate the whole thing fast.  I systematically rowed through the “bird”, left to right and top to bottom.  Leg to thigh, wing to breast, white meat to dark meat.  Awesome.  Even the white meat was juicy.  I ate so quickly that the two local dudes turned toward me, impressed.  They were smoking cigarettes (ironically called “Long Life”) and drinking red sorghum wine.  They toasted me and were shouting something in Chinese.

“Wai guo ren xi huan guo!”

With glasses in the air, I thought the two old dudes were trying to get me to drink with them.  Not wanting to be impolite, I waltzed over to the jade-ring-wearing duo to indulge their request for alcoholic companionship.  I sat down, grabbed a cup, poured myself a tall glass of China’s stiffest and exclaimed, “Lai, he jiu!”  (“Let’s drink mother fuckers!”)

The two old dudes looked at me in confusion.  Obviously something was getting lost in translation.  Finally one of the old dudes laughed and said back in a correcting tone, “Bu.  Wo suo ‘wai guo ren xi haun guo.’”  Oh shit.  I understood that.  Even through their thick, Yunan-accented Mandarin I realized I had mistaken their last word of dog (guo) for the chinese word for alcohol (jiu).  Chinese is funky like that.  They were not asking me to drink with them, they were saying, “The foreigner loves DOG (guo)!”  I had just unknowingly eaten man’s best friend.  I had just become a canine cannibal.  Woof, woof, barf.

After a minute of shock, I came to.  ”When in Rome, when in Rome,” I thought, trying very hard not to regurgitate Fido.  What else was I supposed to do, eat an insect salad?  Or even worse, dine on a prix fixe of human body parts most likely harvested from drunk westerners who dared to venture into Chinese bush (idiots like me)?  So instead of being repulsed by my mistaken actions, I embraced it.  I grabbed my tall glass of red sorghum wine and stated, “Dui!  Wai guo ren hen xi huan guo!!!”  (“Right! This foreign mofo really loves DOG!!!”)  That declaration was met by cheers from the locals.  Even my country-flavored Michelle Kwan sat down and joined us for a few toasts.  She got sexier by the glass.  Unfortunately for me, she was the girlfriend of one of my newfound drinking buddies.  Turns out one of the old dudes was a pretty big opium trafficker in the region and had a penchant for sexy, nubile restaurant workers (just like me).  I was tempted to save this local girl, but my bowels prematurely thwarted my liberation efforts.  Turns out that coconut juice is a natural laxative and a very strong one at that.  A few cans of coconut juice will liberate any constipated bowel guaranteed.  But 7 cans?  Everything and anything in your intestinal track will be coming out asap, digested or not.  So I plopped a few RMB on the table, gave my drug dealer friends a few awkward American high 5′s, and seduced my country time Michelle Kwan with a lingering look.  I could tell she wanted me hard.  But not wanting to soil myself in front of my new friends, I smiled and darted into the Chinese bush and found a nice jungle thicket where I relieved myself for what felt like 6 hours.  To say the least, it hurt like shit to shit this shit.  The girth of undigested dog meat popping out combined with red sorghum flames shooting out of my rectum made for a very painful anal experience.  Plus, jungle leaves have a chaffing quality not conducive to a long bout of #3.

So there it is, my dog eating story.  I ate a dog by accident in my youth.  Was it good?  Yes.  Was it memorable?  Without doubt.  I have many anus scars to prove it.  Is there any lasting, negative effect?  I don’t really know.  What I do know is that every time I go to the park and I see a cute little puppy, I find myself taking pause wondering if I should hug the pooch or lick it.  Hug or lick?  Hug or lick?  Hmm…perhaps another adventure deep into the Chinese bush will be necessary.  But this time I will bring the Charmin.  Woof…