The Third Place

For every man must have somewhere - to go.
- Marmeladov, Crime and Punishment, as read by Anthony Heald

I am a man who is constant need of somewhere to go.

In a broad sense, in an abroad sense, I am always moving, always leaving the country or on the verge of leaving it. Sprinting like Mr. Zip to make a connection, zipper undone, shirt half-tucked, parti-colored strips of underwear flapping like Tibetan prayer flags from the jawline of my suitcase. Or snoozing with a backpack for a pillow on the cold, unforgiving floor of the International Departures lounge of Chicago O'Hare in the wake of a connection that never arrived. I have returned to America several times since I left it in the summer of 2006, but I have never really been back. I have always been in transit, between jobs, between countries. I have spent a good part of my youth on the lookout for Malthusian industrial nowherelands in which to fritter away my youth. And I have spent the better part of my youth living in those Malthusian industrial nowherelands, frittering away my youth.

In a momentary sense, I am fidgety to a fault, never quite at ease in my apartment, or in a loveseat down at Starbucks, or perched upon a barstool at The Brothers Lounge. The moment I get cozy, I am no longer cozy. I am forever doing the same Last Man Shuffle I wrote about in a blog post, oh so long ago. I want to move. I want to be comfortable. I move in order to find comfort. And by now, after four years of shuffling, I suppose motion is the state that has become most comfortable to me.

My Last Man momentum carried me to China. Then the Peace Corps shipped me to Nanchong for two years. And so it was that I somewhat unwittingly committed myself to the Akron, Ohio of China. I fell into her arms, and she caught me in a vice grip. I am no longer in motion. I am suspended in midair, trapped in amber, frozen in carbonite. I am stuck in an eternal layover. I am in Nanchong. I can make excursions to the Big City on the weekends, if I have the money. I can take leave, should I so desire. But I am anchored here, shackled here, Chinese fingertrapped here in Nanchong. I cannot leave this town very often, or for very long. For the next year at least, Nanchong is pretty much the only place I can go. And after one full year in Nanchong, the only Chinese city I know, I have not yet found anywhere - to go.

There are coffee shops, yes. And bars. But on my paltry Peace Corps stipend, a cup of actual coffee is far too dear to make a habit out of it. And the bars here are not really bars, just very loud and confusingly decorated rooms where a bottle of beer costs ten times more than it does at the mom 'n pop shop next door. And anyhow, the bars and the coffee shops are either so crowded that I'm liable to start a passive-aggressive riot just by ordering a drink, or so empty that I'll have three waiters and five waitresses fawning over me while I'm trying to read Crime and fucking Punishment. So, where does one go in a town like Nanchong? Beats the hell out of you. Beats the hell out of me. At the very least, I know where the Chinese people go. They go shopping.

Shopping is a contact sport in this country. It is also what people do for fun. But me, you couldn't pay me to go shopping in China. The people. The screaming. The beshitted toddlers. The flashing lights. It stresses me out. It freaks me out. I have seizures, or at least I fake them, just to get out of the store in the most expedient and least violent manner possible. In short, I don't see how shopping in China could appeal to anyone with a functional limbic system. But when I ask my students what they did over the weekend, even the surliest dudes in class will tell me, "Uhm, like, ohmigod, I went shopping!"

There are bars in Nanchong, but most of the establishments here sell clothes. Or clothing accessories. Or clothing accessory accessories. Or, I don't know, crap.

In the beginning, all the neon lights intrigued me. That first deceptive cab ride home gave me the misguided impression that Nanchong was a city with a thumping, pulsating nightlife. But nobody's partying here. The moment work lets out, everybody's out buying fake Gucci purses. For themselves or for their girlfriends. Or for their wives. Or for their mistresses. Or for their other mistresses. At 11 PM on a Friday night, everybody's out buying pre-torn jeans. Everybody's out buying skirts that look like they were bitten in half by a shark. Everybody's out buying facelifts and whitening skin lotion. Everybody's buying.

When I first met Meghan, my new sitemate, she asked me whether there were any good Mexican restaurants in Nanchong. I busted up laughing. Mexican restaurants! That's a good one. But then I choked back the giggles, and I felt kind of mean for laughing in the first place. It was an honest question. And really, I wasn't sure how to answer it. Because I didn't know. I didn't have a clue as to whether there were any Mexican restaurants in Nanchong. I'd never bothered to ask. After my first couple of weeks in town, I just figured there weren't any and got on with my Sino-Bohemian existence.

I ought to have asked. Because there could very well be a Mexican restaurant nestled somewhere in the irritable bowels of Nanchong and I'd be the last one to hear about it. Nanchong is a big place. Bigger than Denver. And I haven't explored very much of it, to be honest. So who knows what diversity lurks beneath the Han Chinese veil? Once upon a time there was going to be an Italian place, but The Italian died last summer. My friend Holly just opened a fantastically realistic American coffee shop downtown, and if I hadn't known her, I wouldn't have known about her coffee shop. So I could be missing out on all sorts of cosmopolitan monkeyshines.

But over the past year, I have come to doubt it. I don't know Nanchong very well, but by now, I know what to expect from it. It is, as a Korean friend of mine often said about his motherland, a place where nothing is impossible, but nothing is possible.

For better and for worse, China is one of the few countries left on earth that has stubbornly refused to become anywhere else. When I left America four years ago, I left in search of somewhere else, somewhere that wasn't America. Somewhere unchained from chain stores and unbranded by brand names. Somewhere authentically itself, whatever that means anymore.

I certainly didn't find what I was looking for in South Korea, where the Jack Daniel's flowed like wine and the Franzia flowed like whiskey. And when the whiskey and boxed wine were finally tapped out, when we'd polished off the last of the Guinnesses, we would hit up Burger King for some 4 AM munchies. Or McDonald's, if we were desperate enough. There was a Bennigan's downtown, and you can't even find those in America anymore.

Poland was no better, and no worse. And Mexico - well, Mexico was Mexico. The only thing missing was Taco Bell, but there was no need for Taco Bell in Mexico. Because it was Mexico. No shortage of tacos. No shortage of bells.

So I came to China hoping it would be different, that I would finally break free of America's gravitational pull. And I suppose that I have, though not quite in the way I had anticipated. It's more like I've rocketed out of the earth's orbit altogether, sailed countless light years across the galaxy, only to crashland on some desolate, hyper-polluted asteroid that Colonel Sanders colonized in the mid-1950's, then abandoned to the natives.

The very worst of America is on display here. There are two McDonald's franchises in Nanchong, and at least four KFC's that I am aware of. I visit them only sparingly, i.e., when I am very drunk. Uncle Sam is there when you need him, in desperate times, in drunk times. And he waits for you with open arms. Come to papa, he says. And when you're drunk enough, you obey. His restaurants wait patiently for your hard-earned cash, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They are strewn about the city like little fluorescent-lit oases of processed lard in an endless Sahara of nutrients and MSG.

I won't lie. I do, on occasion, succumb to my bestial cravings for genetically modified meat. But for the past year, I have subsisted for the mostpart on Sichuanese cuisine. And I have enjoyed it. I cannot complain about Chinese cooking. Sichuan food is what I will miss most when I leave, and it is the one thing I can say that the Chinese have done right, and done right proper.

There are plenty of places to eat in Nanchong. But I have yet to find somewhere - to go. I do not have a coffee shop or a bar. I am not a regular anywhere. Imagination goes a long way when you're living abroad, but I can no longer pretend that the coffee shops here are coffee shops, or that the bars here are bars. I can't even stomach the places anymore, to be honest. They just depress me. On a Friday night, I'd much rather have a cold beer in my apartment and screw around on the internet. On a Saturday morning, I'd much rather pound Nescafe and read a book in bed. I no longer want to go out on the town, so I don't. Perhaps this strikes you as sad, but the alternative, to me, is even sadder still. Getting pestered at a coffee shop while Kenny G ovulates through the loudspeakers, being force-fed unwanted beer at some hyperkaraoke meat market juke joint. It's no fun. It's negative fun. And just think of all the money involved. No, I'll pass.

For the better part of a year, I've quipped to myself that Nanchong would get its first Starbucks the very day that I left town. Not the day after, mind you, because I'd never know about it that way. No, the City Planning Commission (if indeed there is one) would be sure to time things such that the Mayor of Nanchong (if indeed there is one) would be cutting the red ribbon on my day of departure, as I peered, rubbing my disbelieving eyes, from the backseat window of a green Nanchong taxi on its merry way to the train station. Snip. A round of applause. And the proletariat masses would rush in for their very first Venti Green Tea Frappuccinos.

It's not that I am all that enamored of Starbucks Coffee, though I secretly kind of am. It's more about what Starbucks would mean for Nanchong. For a city that will always have x number of McDonald's, and x² number of KFC's, and a handful of funky pizza places of the sort that consider "tomato sauce" an extra topping – for Nanchong, another McDonald's, another KFC, even a Pizza Hut would be redundant and meaningless. But a Starbucks would suggest to me that a corner had been turned in the Chinese hinterlands, that a new multicultural Golden Age lay shimmering before us somewhere on the smog-smeared horizon. To acquire a taste for processed lard is one thing. Human beings love lard. However much we fight it, our lard lust is innate. But for Nanchong to finally embrace coffee - an occidentally reviled substance that local folklore places in the same category as black tar heroin - that, my friends, would be revolutionary. Nay, counter-revolutionary.

And hell, it would give me someplace to go. I can't go anywhere in China without attracting unwanted attention, not even McDonald's or KFC. Even at McDonald's, I am a foreigner. Only the Starbucks in Chongqing and its sister franchise in Chengdu are sacrosanct. In Starbucks alone I am safe. Starbucks isn't 'Nam. There are rules at Starbucks. The Geneva Convention specifies that one may heckle a foreigner in public places or locally owned establishments during daylight hours, but that all embassies, consulates, and Starbucks Coffee franchises are strictly off limits.

I forget why I even looked it up. It was a Monday night. You look up all sorts of garbage on Monday night, just so you don't have to go to bed and find yourself on the wrong side of Tuesday. I typed the words "Nanchong" and "Starbucks" into Google and pressed enter. And what popped up on screen was a road map.

"Well," I said, "I'll be damned."

It had been there all along. Starbucks Coffee, not even a mile from the Old Campus. True, it strained the imagination, pushed the boundaries of what few things are possible and what many things are impossible in Nanchong – but there was the name, Xing Ba Ke, and there was the logo. So I took out a notebook and jotted down the directions, in the way that I jot down directions to myself – not in that paternal shorthand one uses when directing misplaced out-of-towners, but in the sort of vulgar prose-poetry that lights a fire under my ass.

Dear Pan Da,
Listen, shitbird.
So you get out of class and people heckle you. Fuck that noise.
You walk down past the campus hotel. Some undergrad flips you the bird and tells you to go fuck yourself. Who cares? Then there's that really pretty street on the left, the prettiest street in all of China ... don't go down that street. No, you want to take a right and walk down that fucking grody avenue that slogs along the lake like a human-sized sewer runnel.
Follow that avenue until you get to that shady four-lane highway where you're no longer sure whether the women on the streets are just women on the streets or ladies of the night. Take a left.
Then, you will walk for a long-ass time until you come to a government-issue blue sign that bears the following confusing Chinese symbols: __ __ __. Take a right.
Walk until you're about to die of exposure. Hopefully, you'll hit Crush Imperialism Road well before then, but no promises. In the event that you reach the intersection before rigor mortis sets in, hang a left on Crush Imperialism Road.

And so on. Upon second thought, the Starbucks was far more than a mile from the Old Campus. It only looked like a mile on Google Maps. But maps, especially Google Maps, are deceptively small. It would be a hike. But hiking I can handle, as long as there is a destination at the end of the hike, a place where I can sulk and brood with my Amazon Kindle projecting samovar-hot Russian literature, a steaming cup of Unfair Trade coffee firmly in hand, a Zoot Sims b-side warbling on the house stereo, some cultureshocked Chinese dudes tearing the condiments bar asunder, spilling organic brown sugar everywhere, spiking their coffee with six kilos of nutmeg and sixteen cows' worth of creme – and as long as those dudes don't harass me while I sulk and read my Dostoevsky ... for all that, I would walk five-hundred miles. And I would walk five-hundred more, as the song goes.

So I set out on Wednesday after work, a young Ahab looking for his Venti White Whale Latte. I walked at such a ferocious clip that my secondhand wingtips seemed to devour themselves with every step. I'd bought them for a dollar at an Omaha thrift store almost two years ago. They were scuffed and winestained when I bought them, but relatively intact. After a week in China, they turned black and hard as dried lava. And by the time I reached Crush Imperialism Road, they looked like a couple of abused Brillo pads strapped to my feet. Still, I walked. I would violate the Starbucks No Shirt, No Shoes policy if it came to that. But I would get my coffee. And I would get my Dostoevsky. And I would get my solitude. That much was certain. I was not to be denied. Not on this particular Wednesday evening. From Hell's heart I stab at thee ... hey, come to think of it, wasn't Starbuck a character from Moby Dick? It is now 7 AM, and this blog post is starting to get weird.

I wandered into new territory, parts of Nanchong so foreign to foreigners that the people in the streets didn't know whether they should heckle me, or kiss my feet, or call the police, or what. I passed a beautician offering "NEW SLEEK HAIL STYLE," and I laughed. I passed a restaurant that utilized none other than Saddam Hussein as their logo. And not just Saddam Hussein, but post-Operation Iraqi Freedom Saddam. Bearded, delirious, tortured, raising a single defiant finger in the air. The name of the restaurant was "B.T.," which I guessed was shorthand for bian tai, Chinese for "fucking crazy." It made sense, in a sense, but why it would make for good restaurant marketing was beyond me. Saddam Hussein is not exactly Colonel Sanders, though they were both military figures in their day, and at least in monochrome, they do bear an eerie sort of resemblance to one another. But Saddam Hussein doesn't make me hungry. The visage of Colonel Sanders, on the other hand, does. And here I leave it to the reader to determine just how perverse it is that otherwise sane, non-cannibalistic human beings can be driven to the point of salivation by caricatures of deceased colonels.

I kept walking. There was a ruckus in my wake as the people behind me suddenly realized that a foreigner had passed them by, as they realized that they had let me get away. Some desperate HAH-LOOs in the background. I kept walking. Eventually, I reemerged onto a fairly familiar stretch of road. Yes, this road, I remembered, led to the inter-provincial bus station across town. Which meant I was way out in the sticks. There were high-end car dealerships and high-end apartment complexes. At the same time, there were bona fide peasants, and vegetable vendors, and garage stall cigarette shops. At the very least, the Chinese rich are not above buying from the Chinese poor. The cars whooshed past on the highway, like spaceships from an era both before my time and far ahead of it. I kept walking. I trusted my directions. They promised me that a Starbucks would be coming up any moment now on the left. Still, this didn't seem like a Starbucks neighborhood. I began to doubt, not without some small amount of pride, that a foreigner had ever walked this street before. And the shopkeepers were certainly baffled enough to flatter me in that respect. They gasped. They gawked. Black BMW's shuttled past. Here was wealth. Here was poverty. Here was a part of China that had long since been developed, but hadn't been tidied up for foreign eyes. That should have been my first tip-off.

I kept walking. Altogether, I walked five miles in pursuit of what I ought to have known was perfectly unattainable: that Starbucks at the end of the smog-smeared horizon. After an hour or so, I got in such a walking rhythm that I didn't really want to stop. So when I finally found the place, I didn't quite know how to react. There was the sign, and there was the logo. XING BA KE, the Chinese word for "star" and the Chinese transliteration of "bucks," spelled out both in Chinese and in English. Starbucks. And there was the logo, or something like it. I had found it. The Starbucks at the end of the smog-smeared horizon. But I knew immediately that no, this was not a Starbucks. I was greeted by a primly dressed hostess standing behind a podium. I sensed that I should've made a reservation beforehand. Pan Da, party of one. Through the window, I could see plush couches sandwiching glassine tables with ashtrays planted smack dab in the middle. I could make out the estrogen tones of Kenny G, and I lingered around just long enough to hear that the track was playing on repeat. No. This was not Starbucks. This was a Chinese coffee shop. This was the kind of place where Chinese salarymen go to sell themselves for prices that make my Peace Corps stipend look like a financial hiccup. So I bolted. Or at least, I walked swiftly in the opposite direction. And where that would take me, I could only guess.

In the end, it took me to an empty restaurant. The owners had never seen a foreigner before, and brought a two year-old of theirs out with the food to practice his English.

"Hi," I said.
He spit up on himself.
"Hello," I said.
He put his fist in his mouth. His parents tissued up the spittle.
"How are you?"
He toddled away.
I ate my twice-cooked pork.

The night was still young and I didn't really feel like going home. The sun had set, but it was only 7 PM. I didn't have to work in the morning, so perhaps there was some mischief left to be done. I retraced my steps and walked my way back downtown. I passed a trio of places that billed themselves "pubs," and thought for a moment that maybe I'd step into one of them for a pint and shoot the shit with whatever clientele happened to be around. But the windows were frosted and bolted shut, which meant that they were whorehouses. Or worse, whorehouses masquerading as bars, so I'd walk in and get hustled by some college girl turned poolshark. She'd ask me to buy her a drink and thirty minutes later, I'd walk out 200 kuai lighter without so much as a consolation kiss on the cheek. So I passed. I kept walking. I found myself back at the Old Campus, where I tried in vain to hail a cab.

When you need a cab in Nanchong, they are not to be found. When you couldn't give a damn about taxis, they will very nearly run you over trying to get you inside them. Such is the nature of the Nanchong taxi system. It doesn't make much financial or existential sense, but both the cabbies and the locals seem to put up with it. The cabbies change shifts during the morning commute, and change shifts again during rush hour, such that eight vacant taxis in a row will pass you by when you're trying to get to work, and eight vacant taxis in a row will pass you by when you're trying to get home from work. If you're lucky, maybe they'll slow down just long enough for you to blurt out your destination. But inevitably, your destination is not in line with theirs. They're off the clock. They don't have to take you anywhere if they don't want to. They're off to park their car in some back alley, and then, off to go out boozing with their fellow cab drivers until the next shift begins. And who can blame them? But at 10 PM, when you're just trying to make your way to the convenience store without being crushed by a Volkswagen Santana, they'll come swerving out in front of you, wondering whether there's anywhere you'd like to go.

"No, nowhere," you'll say. "Just that shop across the street."
"But what about downtown? Lots of bars downtown, you know. Lots of coffee shops."

I lucked out on the night of my ill-fated Starbucks crusade. It was rush hour, and I managed to catch the sixth cab. But as he was swinging over to the curb to pick me up, a moped slammed into his bumper and one of the passengers went flying out into the street. She lay there startled for an instant, but once she realized what had happened, she started bawling. The pilot, her boyfriend, parked the moped and rushed over to scream at the cabbie. Then he went out to the street to see if his girlfriend was alive. Then he returned to scream at the cabbie. Tentatively, I got in the backseat.

The cabbie was stoic, unsympathetic. And for my part, I was rooting for him. I was willing to testify on his behalf in Chinese court (if there is such a thing). The cabbie had signaled and slowly glided towards the sidewalk. The moped, meanwhile, had been riding his ass, and the pilot had been speeding along inattentively, on the wings of love, as the song goes. His girlfriend was alright. Sniffling a bit, but alright. In any case, Mr. Moped seemed more concerned about his ride. But his shitbike was alright, too. Still, he kept demanding money from the cabbie, and kept stealing glances at me in the backseat, as though I were somehow to blame. Of course, I was the obvious suspect in all this. Car accidents are a rare event and foreigners are a rare event, so in the rare event that those two rare events collide, it makes sense that they should be connected.

Eventually, Mr. Moped made a gesture that might have been obscene, and the cabbie reciprocated it. Then the cabbie hawked a loogie out the window, lit a cigarette, and asked me where I wanted ... to go.

"Take me home," I said.
"Home," he grunted.
"The New Campus," I said. "The First Wing of the New Campus. The Big Gate of the New Campus. The Teachers' Apartments on the New Campus. Building number 61."
"So that's home," laughed the cabbie.
"It'll do for now," I said. Or something like that.

You Are Here

I woke up this morning to the tune of a heavy metal nightmare. A demolition crew was sledgehammering the nape of my skull in the name of Progress, and I could not regress into sleep. I groaned and cursed my way into consciousness. Who, and where, was I? Neither question yielded an immediate answer. "Hungover" was the first word that sprang to mind. So I popped the VHS cassette labeled "Friday Night" into my memory and rewound the tape to see if I could count just how many formaldehyde beers I had imbibed the previous evening. When I got back to around 10 PM, I pressed Play. I fiddled with the tracking knob and trolled through the night's festivities scene by scene. Then I rewound some more. And then, shaking my head, I rewound even further. When I finally arrived back at lunchtime yesterday, having found naught but sobriety, I pressed Stop and ejected the tape. Jesus. I hadn't had anything to drink at all last night. Why, then, the demolition crew? Why, O merciful Christ, the hangover? That was when I sat up, parted the curtains, and remembered that I was still in China.

If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening. All over this land.

Peter, Paul, and Mary: you could've written goddamned national anthems. China hammers in the morning. It hammers in the evening. And it hammers, and ball-peen hammers, and jackhammers. All over this land. People and Republicans alike, beware: the People's Republic, until further notice, is under construction.

The clock on the bedstand told me that it was 9 AM, and it's never been one to lie. I held my eyes open until they stuck that way. The sun was up. The Chinese destruction workers were up. So I figured that I might as well get up, too. It was well before my out-of-bed time, but there is no sense in even trying to get back to sleep when somebody somewhere is simultaneously renovating and annihilating the very apartment building you're sleeping in. So I wrestled myself out of bed, put on today's t-shirt and yesterday's jeans, slipped on 1967's shoes, fixed 1984's hairdo, and sauntered off into the mildly carcinogenic mist of 21st Century China.

I walked for several hours, walked from the sunblasted flats of the new-and-improved campus, across the murky, undeveloped netherlands, along the shoulder of the highway, over the dusty bridge that gracelessly hurdles the drooling river, through the exhausting haze of industry, past the gaping maws of gawpers, between the catcalls and heckles and beckons and leers and sneers and jeers and HAH-LOOs that are the bread and butter of my Chinese existence, and finally, into the throbbing, stomping twelve-cylinder heart of downtown Nanchong.

I was on a mission of sorts, you see. After a grueling three-day work week, I was on a mission to stamp my own passport and check out of China, if only mentally, if only for a couple of hypercaffeinated hours. I was on a mission to sit down and write. And I was on a mission to find Holly's Bakery, a coffee joint downtown that my Mennonite neighbor had opened sometime over the summer, while I was so busy stiffarming floods. There would be coffee, or so she had told me. Real coffee, or so she had reassured me. The only trouble was, I possessed not even the scantiest idea of where in the hell to find the place. And what with my nonsense of direction, what with Nanchong's labyrinthine streets, what with the daredevil taxis and kamikaze mopeds playing scotch whiskey hopscotch all over those gibberish roads - what with all that, I began to doubt that I would live long enough to pound that elusive espresso at the end of the doubleshot rainbow.

I drifted for an hour. The city tied me in double windsors. It made a balloon animal out of me. Eleven AM rolled around and, right on schedule, a rough-and-tumble crew of caffeine-withdrawn destruction workers set to work jackhammering my prefrontal cortex. I lit a cigarette but it did nothing for me. You cannot smoke coffee. Coffee cannot be smoked. In the streets I was descended upon by a flock of shrouded women belonging to a nondescript religion, and they made me sign things that I wouldn't have agreed to in English. And just as I'd given up hope, just as those dreaded Nescafe DTs started to kick in, I chanced to trip over a stream of pee, ejaculated by a nearby Chinese toddler, which sent me tumbling over a guardrail, which sent me hurdling towards an unusually western windowframe, and so it was that I stumbled across Holly's Bakery - nearly stumbled into it, in fact. I mashed my face against the glass and saw that the place was open, and empty. I went inside.

And I could smell it. Coffee. Real coffee. I need not describe the aroma. No description would suffice.

Coffee. I had arrived. I had awoken from a long, sweaty Nescafe nightmare and ascended into a finely ground Columbian wet dream. After wandering for forty days and forty nights through the freeze-dried desert, I had staggered and stumbled, clambered and crawled and finally collapsed at the pointed toes of a pair of Bogota snakeboots, had gazed slowly upwards, following the endless khaki to a golden belt buckle that segued into a sky blue button-down that collared a scruffy neck that reset its watch to a five o'clock shadow that spread into a lush Latino mustachio that just begged a sombrero - and there he was, the man himself: Juan Valdez, standing there proudly, austerely, alongside his loyal donkey, saying something rather congenial in Spanish, a bottomless pot of brew extended in his caffeine-palsied hand.

I had arrived. Holly's Bakery. The place reeked of coffee. But still I had my doubts. Odors can be deceiving. Especially in China. Trembling there at the counter, flipping through the one-page menu, teetering on the ledge between heart-palpitating hope and decaffeinated woe, I ordered a double espresso. The nice Chinese girl with the hipster glasses said hao and disappeared. I sat down in the darkest nook I could find. I tried to read, but the sentences kept repeating themselves. I fidgeted. I twitched. I paced while seated, if that is possible. And then, from the kitchen, came the soothing wail of an espresso machine. I allowed myself, then, to hope. Ever so slightly.

I sat waiting for a stranger to approach and ask me for English lessons, for my phone number, whether I could use chopsticks. But there was no one in the cafe except for me and the hipster barista, and she didn't seem like the type. I watched the binge-shopping Chinese masses scroll by in the street, and they every so often stopped to watch me - sitting there, doing nothing - through the window. I felt like a goldfish. So I puffed my cheeks out. And then the barista came with the coffee. She set the cup down upon the table, and the cup steamed. Then she handed me a goblet of real cream. And two packets of real sugar. I thanked her. No thanks, she said. Then I mixed the stuff together with a junkie's abandon and drank it all down in a single esophagus-razing gulp. And it was good. And my soul rejoiced. I sighed and sank into my loveseat like it was a Jacuzzi. I jittered around a bit from the shock. Then I pulled myself back up to my feet so I could order an Americano.

I had come to Holly's Bakery to escape, to drink myself walleyed on real coffee, and eventually, to write. I suppose that at any given time, I am meaning to write. But existence has a way of getting between me and the nude, white, college-ruled page. I appreciate existence for that reason. It gives me material to work with. It fills in the blanks for me. It dissolves my writer's block. I welcome the interruptions of the world, its distractions, its non sequiturs, as long as they don't involve a stranger asking me for English lessons, or my phone number, or whether I can use chopsticks, and so on. Before my Americano had arrived, before I had time to even think about uncapping my pen, the bell jangled, the door opened, and in came Meghan, my new Nanchongmate. An odd coincidence, but a perfectly welcome interruption. Shortly thereafter, Shelley, wearing a Vietnamese rice paddy hat for some reason, arrived, along with Christy, Jacob's successor. I put my notebook away, brushed the bohemian dust off my shoulders and assumed my role as Peace Corps mentor.

Which is a strange role for me. After a year in China, I feel like I know less about the place than I did before I got here. Thankfully, The Force is strong with these young Peace Corps acolytes. I am sure that they will do wonderfully without my help. They have already learned most of the things I was supposed to teach them in the first place, have learned many things that I do not know myself. So the less I explain, perhaps, the better. They are curious, of course. They have questions about China. And when I do shoot off at the mouth, I'm surprised at how much I have learned, and how much I've adjusted to over the past year. But I can well remember what it was like to arrive in Sichuan - naked, as it were; how new everything felt at first, how bizarre it all seemed. And I enjoy reliving those sensations, albeit vicariously. Because they remind me that I am still in China, that I can never assume anything, and that I can never quite be sure what, exactly, is coming down the pipe next.

We talked for a long time, the four of us, then we paid our tab and left. Out in the street, we were suddenly laowais again. Points, stares, laughter. The other three foreign devils went their way and I went mine. I had a cab to catch and a tutor to pay. As I approached Medical School Avenue, I ran up against a crowd of people. I pressed my way through the crowd until I collided with a pack of police officers shoving us all back. The police were waving their arms at us and shouting. It took me a moment to figure out what they were saying, and after I'd understood it, I wasn't sure how to react. Probably, I should have turned and run for my life.

"GET OUT OF HERE! GET OUT OF HERE! GO! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!" the police were shouting. They were shoving us away from the street. A second later, I heard women screaming, and saw a handful of people running in the opposite direction, away from the police. And a second after that, I saw even more people running towards the street, towards the police, to check out whatever calamity was about to take place. And then I heard a high-pitched hissing and glanced up to see that a massive electrical transformer some twenty feet above, some ten feet away - and nestled ever so cozily against the wall of a four-story apartment complex - was spitting bright blue sparks into the air. It was then that I understood. Ah, yes. Death. So I backed away, but not very quickly. I was still interested, still rubbernecking. I took a few steps and turned to look back, not quite sure what the magnitude of the situation was. Then there came a shrill scream from the crowd as the sizzling transformer splashed fireworks against the sky. Everyone started to run. So I ran, too. After I'd put about fifty smoker's lung yards between myself and the pending explosion, I ran into Meghan and Christy.

"You again, eh?"
"Yeah!" I gasped, panting. "Yo, check it. That transformer over there is about to - "

BAM!

" - explode."

I should stop apologizing for my Chinese existence. Unbelievable, bizarre, and horrific things happen in this country every day. And every now and again, I am lucky or unlucky enough to witness them. And I write about those things when I can. I just hope that you don't disbelieve them. I do switch insignificant events around so that they read better, and sometimes I airbrush them so that they look prettier. But that's part of my job. Otherwise, you couldn't bring yourself to read it. For all that, there are certain things that I do not and cannot bullshit. And the above sequence of events went exactly as it reads. Yo, check it. That transformer over there is about to - BAM! - explode. And it did. Anticlimactically, I thought. I had turned my head just in time to see it burst. It blew out in a bright blue box of fire. And that was all.

A minor disaster. Thankfully, not a major one. But you dodge minor disasters left and right in China. And up and down, for that matter. Every cab ride is a five-slug game of Sino-Russian roulette. I often forget the existential caprice you sign up for when you decide to live in China. I'm used to it by now. But life anywhere is worthy of a million-page waiver. No day is a sure thing. The morning promises nothing to the night. Even within the stumbling distance between man and coffee house, nothing is certain, nothing is guaranteed. So don't you let me forget that. I am here. In China. And as long as I'm here, I might as well just cozy up to that fact.

Saloon Doors

By the time I finished that last blog post, I had so much Nescafé in my system that I was peeing every twelve seconds and trembling on the verge of a grande latte seizure. Lisa called and wanted me to come play at the Jack Bar, so I jitterbugged my way outside and launched myself into the back of the nearest cab.

Lisa was profoundly drunk somewhere, so I was able to play fourteen songs instead of my usual six. And for an audience that didn't once acknowledge my existence, I played the best guitar of my life. My setlist was as follows:

1. Via Chicago - Wilco
2. Long Way Home - Tom Waits
3. Our House - CSNY
4. Random Rules - Silver Jews
5. Nobody Does It Better - Carly Simon
6. Lola - The Kinks
7. Love Song - The Cure
8. Lonesome Whistle - Hank Williams
9. Sad Songs And Waltzes - Willie Nelson
10. I Wish I Was The Moon - Neko Case
11. Joan Jett Of Arc - Clem Snide
12. Ruby Tuesday - The Rolling Stones
13. Do It Again - Steely Dan
14. Restless Farewell - Bob Dylan

As you can see, I am no longer covering albums front-to-back. I have opted instead for a schizophrenic barrage of songs that I like, or that Chinese people might like. But of course, Chinese people don't like my songs. Only I like them. I usually screw up a lot, but this time I played to my satisfaction. So I bid the crowd a restless farewell and took my seat at the bar, grinning broadly. The surly teenage cowboys slid two Bud Ices my way. I saw that they had scavenged a bottle of wine for themselves, so it was a good night all around. I picked up the bottle and gave it a look: Cabernet Chawuyvnon, the label said.

"This is fake," I told the cowboys.
"Fake? It's French!"
"No, it's Chinese. This name's not right."
"But it cost 200 kuai!"
"Fake," I said, and offered them a couple of consolation cigarettes.

But fake or not, the cowboys had scavenged a bottle of 200 kuai wine, which was nothing to laugh about. They were triumphant, chatting on QQ, chainsmoking and passively watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And I, too, was triumphant, though with Lisa out of commission and the teenage cowboys lost in the interwang, I had absolutely no one to talk to. I went to the bathroom and there I heard a girl weeping in the stall next to mine.

"Are you okay?" I asked. "Do you need help?"

She stopped weeping.

"Hello?" I called.

No answer. Perhaps I'd scared her sober. I washed my hands and returned to the bar.

It makes for an odd social scene, Nanchong. Nobody wants anything to do with me unless I've been introduced by an affluent Chinese woman. Without Lisa, the only affluent Chinese woman I know, I was powerless. I sat watching the salarymen play their dice games. A college kid ushered his girlfriend into the bathroom, where she vomited loud enough for all to hear, and then he ushered her back to his table for more drinks. A gentleman.

I began to daydream. I can't play acoustic guitar here forever, I thought to myself. That's background music. That's Kenny G. I ought to put a band together. Maybe get Poodleface to manufacture some synth-pop beats for me, enlist those hyperenergetic Mennonites to play percussion, hire Jacob to do some popping and locking and heckling. Something to get a reaction out of these people. We'd call ourselves Kung Pao Panda and show up at the Jack Bar in glam sunglasses and funny hats. We'd gain a steady following in Nanchong and move onto bigger and better: Chongqing, Chengdu, Changsha, Shanghai, Beijing. Then we'd succumb to substance abuse and spend the next two decades pursuing ill-fated solo careers, paying off our alimonies with the proceeds from our Greatest Hits box set. That could be fun, I thought to myself. And then all of a sudden it was closing time. The cowboys removed their hats, the strobe lights went out, the cavemen dragged their booze-clubbed cavewomen out into the street, and the saloon doors hit my sorry ass on the way out ...

Instant Guanxi

My favorite street in all of Nanchong is Yuying Lu, Teach Bravery Road. It is the only street in town that you might be inclined to call "pretty." Absent are China's ubiquitous coal-stained, white-tiled, blue-windowed, barred-in twelve-story apartment buildings. The shops that line Yuying Road are two stories and two stories only, and they are made of red brick. On Yuying Road there are trees and wide sidewalks, and bicycle lanes that the cars keep out of most of the time. In short, it is a street that feels as though it were designed for humans. Yes, the city planning commission must have thought things through for at least five minutes before they started building Yuying Road.

I will often take the bus to Yuying Road simply for the pleasure of walking beneath the relatively green boughs of its relatively living trees. But it also happens to be home to the only bar worth going to, and the only coffee shop worth going to.

The bar specializes in overpriced Coors Light, and it reeks of burnt popcorn at all times. The owner has an affinity for badly scratched Celine Dion CDs. Still, I will be charitable and maintain that it is the only bar worth going to in Nanchong.

There are two coffee shops on Yuying Road, but only one of them is worth going to. The other seems to double as a massage parlor, as its windows are painted over with cleavage and thighs, and I have never in all my passings seen anyone go in or come out.

The coffee shop I go to is named Little Prince Coffee. I like to go there with an empty notebook and sit for hours, deluding myself that I am making progress in some direction or another. The first time I went, I thought about walking back out straightaway, as the house brew cost a staggering three dollars. But I decided to treat myself, and in so doing, began to accumulate that mysterious socioeconomic grease that the Chinese refer to as guanxi.

The first day, they charged me full price for two coffees, but gave me a membership card. The second day, I got one free coffee, and the waitress asked me if I had eaten. The third day, the waitress bought me a pack of cigarettes after I had run out. Tonight, the owner himself asked me whether I had eaten. When I answered in the affirmative, he insisted that I sit with him and eat again.

I have rounded a corner with Mandarin: people laugh less at my mistakes than they do at my jokes. That is not to say that they don't laugh at my mistakes. Nor is it to say that my jokes are the least bit witty. My Chinese humor runs in the Seinfeldian vein: what is the deal with Chinese drivers? what is the deal with hot pot? what is the deal ... and so on with the deals. But I am happy to be of some amusement to people. I imagine my Chinese self as a kind of deranged, wild-eyed Slav who goes on long tirades in his sub-Russian brogue, mixing up the words for household objects and school supplies with those of vegetables and genitalia. "And then I opened the potato, walked in, and discovered that my ass had fallen off!" he might shout, amidst much laughter that he doesn't understand.

After dinner and many such ill-fated tirades, the owner gave me a free bag of espresso ("We're closed during the daytime," he explained) and after I'd paid my share of the bill, he offered to drive me home. A few of his long-haired friends tagged along. I asked whether they lived near the university and they all shook their heads no. "We have some important business to do in the neighborhood," explained the owner. And in saying that, I noticed that he had slowed the car to scope out some of the nightclubs we were passing.

"What about that one?" he asked the other guys.
"They won't be there tonight," said the kid next to me.
"Okay, then how about this one?" He stopped the car in front of a place called "1984."
"Hao, hao, hao, hao, hao," said the kid. Good, good, good, good, good ...

Lush Life

Because I have not yet mastered the art of smoking and drinking coffee in my sleep, I wake up in a foul mood. The earth's gravity seems to have multiplied in strength and after a wild and fecund night, the crickets in my bedroom have multiplied their numbers. I light a Shuangxi and dump several spoonfuls of Nescafe into a water bottle and all over the kitchen floor. Coffee and cigarettes get me to the shower, which drizzles a leaden stream of lukewarm onto my scalp. My toilet is a few inches from the shower head, so I multitask. I bellow along with the Johnny Hartman/John Coltrane album I bellow along with every morning, but my morning voice doesn't reach high or low enough, so I sing the verses and choruses in different octaves. As I sit and shit and shower and bellow, the lesson plan for the week's classes is mitosisizin' in my brain.

I teach seven classes with 50+ students apiece and I am a volunteer, so photocopies are not financially prudent. That means I need to come up with a lot of speaking activities and deliver them like Barack Obama on benzedrine. Luckily, I teach the same lesson seven times a week, so a single flash of inspiration is enough to get by. I plan for my lessons the way a snail might if it had the cognitive capacity to teach Oral English: I start with a pebble and build a spiral of saliva around it as the week goes by until, by Friday, I have a spit-shined, well-rehearsed presentation that makes me feel like a real, actual teacher of sorts.

Today is the second run-through of "Bon Appetit," my guide to American cuisine and dining etiquette, so the lesson is only a sketch and my scripted jokes will be jittery and Bob Newhartesque. As I walk into the classroom, there is a chorus of oooooohs and a brief round of applause. I look around and remember that I am wearing my suit coat. I take a bow. Then I bust out my jug of coffee and set it on the podium and there is another long ooooooh. I explain that the American professor is fueled by caffeine, that without it he is a zombie. And zombielike, I guzzle some coffee and start writing on the board.

Ideally, an Oral English class should be an interactive vaudeville act. The trick is duping your students into believing that they are actually caught in the scenario you have presented them with. If they are supposed to be dining out at Red Lobster, they should be able to hear Savage Garden piped down from the styrofoam ceiling tiles. If they are supposed to be the United Nations, the Chinese contingent should loathe the Japanese contingent with an undying contempt, and vice versa. In short, you must suspend all disbelief, otherwise your students will rote memorize a handful of stock phrases and mumble them to each other like little lobotomized HAL 9000s. Setting the stage for a productive class is a lot like writing the start of a novel: there must be background, complications, and some sort of impetus to push the whole thing forward.

Today's class goes well. I briefly explain the American tipping system and demonstrate an untippable waiter.

"Whaddya want?" I snap, putting on my surliest Waffle House sass. My pen twitches at the ready. The poor girl giggles and hides her face in her hands.

"You ready to order or what?"

"Yes. I will have the chicken."

"Chicken soup? Chicken salad? Chicken nuggets? Chicken sandwich? Fried chicken? Chicken a la king? Kung pao chicken? General Tso's chicken?!"

By now she is so embarrassed that it looks like she is having an out-of-body experience. Thankfully, my phone rings: one of my stalkers calling for the sixth time that morning.

"Hang on. It's my girlfriend."

I dart into the kitchen, fake a kissyface conversation, and swagger back to Table 9.

"So. What'll it be?"

"I'll take the fried chicken."

I storm backstage and bark at the short order cooks. Then, I return bearing a half-rotten apple which, through the power of mass delusion, is starting to look more and more like a drumstick. I stumble over my shoelace and send the apple flying into the crowd.

"Oops. There goes your chicken."

By then, my students are rearing to dine-and-dash, so I turn it over to them for the rest of class. I am pleased with the results and the following dialogue almost makes me weep with satisfaction:

Waitress: Here is your food.
Customer: Excuse me, ma'am, but there is a fly in my soup.
Waitress: Impossible!
Customer: Look. You see it! I would like to speak with the manager.
Manager: [approaches with a clipboard] What seems to be the problem?
Customer: There is a fly in my soup.
Manager: Don't worry about it. Your dinner is on the house.
Customer: Thanks. And could you do something about my waitress?
Manager: What would you like me to do?
Customer: Fire her immediately.
Manager: Okay, I will fire her at once.

Of course, part of the reason these roleplays are so amusing is that they are painfully awkward and quite a ways off the mark. But accuracy matters little to me. Every morning as I walk to the bus that takes me to the campus across town, I hear English majors in the bushes, reciting speeches by Henry Kissinger. From a young age, Chinese students are given the task of memorizing the entirety of the English language, with the end result that, after twelve years of English, they can barely muster a "Hello" without second-guessing themselves. My classes are about giving Chinese students the cajones to use the language, and in order to grow a pair, they need a heavily padded environment, an English laboratory in which they are free to mix and mismatch nouns and verbs and adjectives until they find the combinations that make sense.

In China, the expectations for us foreign teachers are high. We are widely believed to possess the ability to heal rhotacism with the laying on of hands. Hell, I used to think I had that power, but over the years I have set more modest goals for myself. And I would love to talk about them, but night has fallen on China. The young emperors at the internet cafe are yawning and removing their headsets. The rats have come out to slurp pools of Red Bull from the floor. And my cold, hard bed with its dreams of coffee and cigarettes is calling to segue me into tomorrow and whatever red tape that entails.

Walking home.

I feed the beasts some word puzzles and while they tear each other apart, my mind melts into the white paint on the wall. It is six something and I have taught nine classes today. Two of them weren't anywhere on my schedule, but I taught them anyway, because I am a slave for children.

Walking home. I'm two blocks from my dumpy little flat where a clogged toilet and a 50-pack box of Quaker Oatmeal await me. It's like the afterlife. But first, I stop for a bowl of take-out kimchi stew. When I get inside the restaurant, the owner guy approaches and embraces me. What? Oh, right. This man befriended me whilst he was staggering drunk one night several weeks ago; I think it was a Tuesday. He insists that I stay and eat at his restaurant, so I do. I'm sitting by myself and in Korea, this means you are insane. The table of high school girls next to me bubbles over with giggles.

The owner guy asks me if I want a cup of coffee and I say yes. I wait outside in the cold, breathing clouds. He comes out and hands me a little pee cup of sugary milkwater and then practices his English on me for half an hour. He seems to know 30,000 vocabulary words, but not how to pronounce or use them. He embraces me again, says he is very jubilation, and asks me to come by his restaurant every day for good pood. I say sure.

A block away from home, I stop by the bakery for a cornbread thing. I'm browsing the cornbread thing shelf when the door opens behind me and one of my middle school students walks in.

"Teacher. Buy me pood. Puh-lease-uh," he says.

Ordinarily, I would drop a quip and disappear into the night, but my will is so decimated at this point that I cave in and buy him a pig-face cheese danish. He says thanks.

"One day," he says, "I buy you pood."

I'm in the convenience store across the street from my apartment. My canned coffee rings up for three bucks which strikes me as vaguely ludicrous, but I'm too spaced to argue. As I pull my wallet from my back pocket, it vomits all my cards out on the floor. While I'm bent over trying to claw the cards up off the tile with my untrimmed fingernails, five Korean geezers cut in front of me in line. When I finally get out of there with the coffee, I'm stopped at the door by a woman holding a gurgling fetus/baby thing that's about six hours fresh from the womb.

"Excuse me," she says, "please talk to Jae-Min."

Me: Hello!
Jae-Min: [ogles, spits up on self]
Mom: Say hello, Jae-Min!
Me: Hello, Jae-Min!
Jae-Min: Wagghhhhh.
Mom: Say hello, Jae-Min!
Me: Hello!
Jae-Min: Blughhhhh.

Mom thanks me, bows, and walks away.

I shut the door and lock it behind me. I'm home. On the dining room table is a 50-pack box of Quaker Oatmeal. In the bathroom is a clogged toilet.

Portrait of the Sham Teacher, As a Teacher

3:26 PM -
Sips his instant coffee. Glances at the clock. Puts down his book. Sets to work emptying his pockets of cellular phones, loose change, the crumpled receipts of compromising purchases ... Deposits them into a hidden backpack compartment. Drops the backpack and kicks it under his desk. Seconds later, a pigtailed grin bursts into the teachers' lounge with a search warrant, shoves her hand into his pocket, comes up with nothing, sticks out her tongue and screeches off into the distance. Nods, sips his instant coffee.


4:19 PM -
Notices that the new six year-old in his phonics class has a small but distinct cannabis leaf embroidered into the back of his sweater. Sits in the front of the classroom pondering this as the kids horse around with fire extinguishers. Bell rings. Gets up, opens the door, finds the door handle covered in yellowish slobber. Wipes his hand on his pantleg.

"Fuck," he says.


4:43 PM -
The ten year-olds are tapdancing on their desks. Stops writing on the board. Face reddens. Eyes narrow. Whirls around, throws an eraser, kicks a desk, screams, "Michin babo-ya!" Roughly: "You crazy idiots!" The ten year-olds laugh, laugh, laugh, sense their fleeting lives are in grave danger, continue to laugh ...


6:07 PM -
Is summoned during dinner to teach a middle school class. Grabs a greenish book from the shelf and enters the classroom to find four heads faceplanted into desks. Asks the heads a barrage of questions, no answer. The lights drone; he whistles, reads the graffiti on the walls. Asks another barrage of questions, no answer. Wishes he had a samurai sword to impale himself upon. For lack of one, turns to the markerboard and draws a stick figure, begins to tell the story of his life. The story starts like this:
"In March of 1983, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, there was born a very fat baby. That very fat baby ..."


7:14 PM -
Is writing on the board with his back turned when a nine year-old boy charges, rams the pointed end of an umbrella up his ass. Lets out an anguished growl. Kids laugh. Stands stunned for several seconds.

"Well," he says, "you got me."


7:35 PM -
Takes a bathroom break. Unbuttons, unzips, whizzes. Stares out the open window at the spazzing lights of the city. Notices it is extremely cold. Notices it is snowing. Notices what he perceives to be an icicle dripping down from the window frame. Curiosity entices him to reach out and touch it. Finds it to be a wet strip of toilet paper.

"Fuck," he says.


7:49 PM -
Talks briefly with a Korean coworker, an English teacher who speaks no English. Tries out his Korean, says something mildly offensive. Korean coworker is amused, says, "Kisu! I am shocking!"
Nods, smiles. Thinks, "We are all students."


8:13 PM -
Grades a 4th grade listening test.
(Student's answers are underlined)

Leroy: Do you know Evel Knievel?
Sangmin: No, who is he?
Leroy: He's that gay on the motorcycle.

Grins.


8:43 PM -
Sits at his desk with headphones on, listens to Silver Jews, reflects on another inconclusive year gone by. A very short girl bursts into the teachers' lounge, snatches his headphones, puts them on. Stands grimacing for several seconds. Removes headphones, hands them back.

"Teacher, no," she says. Disappears.


9:15 PM -
Nibbles on cornbread thing. Forty-something Korean teacher looms over his shoulder for several minutes, finally gestures and pidgins that he would like a piece of the cornbread thing. Breaks off a bite for Korean teacher, gets up, goes out in the hall to refill his coffee. Comes back. Korean teacher is gone. So is the cornbread thing.


9:42 PM -
Interviews new foreign teacher, Melissa Something, via Director's telephone. Director stands just behind him, featherdusting.

"How's Daegu?" asks Melissa Something.
"It's disgusting," he says, "but, I'm that kind of guy."
"How's the school?"
"The school," glances back at Director. She smiles, featherdusts. "is chaos. But, you know."

An interstellar burst ...

I have voyaged to the edge of the world, I have sailed over the edge, I have fallen into another rut.

I wake up at noon, drink two coffees.

I teach.

I become a mountain, a crash test dummy, a trash can for children. I laugh with chilling authenticity at the same gags every day - laughing though I don't find them funny, although I find it funny that I don't find them funny, so I laugh at myself - let's call it doublelaugh.

"Teachel wolf-man!"
"HA HA HA"
"Teachel clazy!"
"HA HA HA"
"Teachel stinky and clazy!"
"HA HA HA"

My kids love me. Kind of.

I go out, eat intestines. I don't ask from which animal.

I come home. I pluck "Blackbird" on the guitar. It's late, the neighbors are sleeping. I leave the guitar on the sofa. I drink hot cocoa and read books about physics and space until I can no longer see straight. I strap on my sleep visor. I sleep.

I wake up at noon, drink two coffees.

I teach. Kind of.

They even want my chitterlings!

Provided I don't snap in my next lesson and start bellowing "Deutschland Über Alles" as I goosestep up and down the aisles, I will pass my CELTA course tomorrow and leave Krakow the day after. I'm anxious to get out of here. Krakow has been kind to me, but I am ready to step onto a train and go someplace else, to drink coffee and brood on my own for a few days without the company of a stumbling gaggle of British lechers.

Thursday morning, I am taking the train to Berlin. I might stay the night there. Over the weekend, I have a job interview in Darmstadt. It is possible that I will be living there. Then again, a lot of things are possible now that were just a daydream yesterday.

Gdzie są toalety?

I got my hair cut today and it looks damned good for the time being. I told my Polish stylist to take a little off the top and she proceeded to straighten my hair and give me a kicky postmodern do. I look like Falco. When it was done and I'd forked over my four bucks, she asked, "You have all things at home?" I assume she meant all of the equipment that was involved in the styling of my hair, which included:

designer shampoo
designer conditioner
designer gel
designer hairspray
designer mousse
designer hair putty
designer water
an electric hair straightener
a Polish hair stylist

I shook my head, no. I do not have any of those things.

"Oh," she said, "then hairs will change."

So, my fleeting Polish sex symbol status has already been dealt its death blow. At the stroke of midnight - when I take my midnightly Suave For Men sponge bath - my straight hair will frizz up into its usual high-entropy state and my seven hours as a slavic heartthrob will come to an end. It's almost like Flowers for Algernon. I'd better walk down to the square and make the most of this precious time. Veal kebab and coffee it is.