Pseudosupra

I realized much too late how weird my living situation was. Well before I first donned the teal racecar t-shirt of Orthodox Georgian shame, I'd invited a bunch of foreigners to my host household for an end-of-semester supra. Weird Beard, the Irishman, and a nice girl named Leslie - in a few short hours, they'd be caught up in the thick of it, surrounded by adoring villagers from a village not their own, drinking, drunk, drunken. Nobody in my host family had seen more than two non-Georgians in their lives. That night, they were to see four of them in action simultaneously.

In Georgia, a supra is a nominally formal occasion in which the men drink homemade wine and homemade vodka to elephantine excess while the women set the table, cook a twelve-course meal, collect dirty dishes, wash them, drink a toast or two while remaining sober and clear-headed and servile, for they must constantly empty ashtrays and bring new ones, fix coffee, make dessert, mop up vomit ... The men are expected to drink. Is it ever exhausting to be a man.

The men drink shots, shots of cha-cha, shots of wine. There is no savoring, no nursing, and there is no drinking alone. There is no drinking at all unless a toast is proposed, and all toasting runs through the tamada: essentially, the Stalin of the supra. He appoints the toaster and he nominates the toastees. You may politely ask the tamada for permission to stand up and propose a toast of your own, but you may never, ever, under any circumstances usurp the tamada's toast. I had quite a notorious reputation for doing so without meaning to - particularly after that fateful tenth toast of the evening - and for that reason, I became known far and wide as The Rogue Tamada of Samegrelo Province, one of many nicknames I was to acquire during my ten months in Georgia.

As the night escalates, shot glasses and wine glasses are put away and the horns come out. They are literal horns, the sort that cuckolds wear: hollowed-out cow horns, hollowed-out bull horns. These, usually, can be found dangling from the walls of any Georgian living room, regardless of whether there is drinking going on or not (and there usually is). The tamada starts with the small horns first, then moves up through his collection until, by the end of the night, you find yourself drinking out of a horn the size of your head, something that might well have belonged to a mythical or prehistoric beast. And you are expected to guzzle everything down at a single go. This is why I described the supra as a nominally formal occasion. Things always start out formally enough, but how would Emily Post have you projectile vomit all over someone else's living room floor?

I could sense the electricity in the house when I woke up on Supra Bowl Sunday - it was the only electricity we'd had all week - and by noon I was nearly blinded by the mischievous gleam in my host dad's eyes. My liver ached preemptively. I paced the house while my host dad lugged around ominous-looking plastic jugs and my host mom dusted under our feet. I felt the need to coach my host parents, the way you might coach your actual parents before bringing over your girlfriend for the first time. But of course, there was no point in worrying about anything: the Georgians would be Georgian, the Westerners would be Western, and my host mom would be my host mom, and I would be horrifically embarrassed at some point, and the night would get out of hand in the weirdest of ways. This was all beyond my control. There was nothing to do but pace around and hope that everyone else got drunk enough at the supra for me to steer the morning-after narrative in my favor.

Weird Beard was the first to show up, just shy of 4 PM. My host dad was already out on the piss somewhere else. The rest of the family gathered around on the porch to analyze (and psychoanalyze) Weird Beard in a language that neither he nor I quite understood.

"He's so handsome," said my host sister. "His beard is much better than your beard."
"Uh," said Weird Beard, "what did she say?"
"She said that you're handsome, and that your beard is better than my beard."
"Thanks," said Weird Beard.
"We want you to live here, not Kiti."
"They say that you should live here, not me."
"I like my host family a lot," said Weird Beard, "but thanks."
"Here," I said, tugging Weird Beard by the sleeve, "lemme show you my digs."
"Dang," he said, "how'd your Georgian get so good?"
"It's not," I said, "but if it is, it's because these people run my life."

My room was much the same as any other Georgian room, but that's not what Weird Beard had come to see. He wanted to see the shirt.

"Good God almighty. She makes you wear that?"
"I know, right?"
"So."
"So?"
"Put it on for me."
"No."

Host dad came swaggering back home and summoned us menfolk to the living room. A Big Beautiful Babushka named Nino had showed up. A bottle of high octane cha-cha had appeared. The night had begun.

My host dad was tamada by default. He filled our shot glasses. He proposed a toast to mothers. I clinked glasses with him, with Weird Beard, with Nino. My host mom, meanwhile, was off scrubbing the toilet.

"Sheni deda, sheni deda, sheni deda," I said. "Your mother, your mother, your mother."

Weird Beard nudged me in the ribs.

"Dude," he said. "What the hell?"
"Eh?"
"Do you have any idea what you just said?"
Nino's face had gone red. It looked like her eyes were about to pop out of her head and go flying across the living room. Finally, she could keep it in no longer. She busted up laughing.
"Kiti," she crowed. "Oh, Kiti! Sheni deda!"
She smacked the flat of her palm against the top of her balled-up fist, Georgian Sign Language for "fuck you."
"Seriously? Is that what I said?"
Weird Beard nodded.
"Huh. I had no idea," I said, "but I guess that makes sense. Yo mama. Same in English, no?"
We drank. Off to a good start.

There was a toast to international friendship. Obama, Saakashvili, megobrebi - gaumarjos! A toast to family. Ojakhis gaumarjos! A toast to the deceased.

"Gaumarjos!" I chimed.

Weird Beard nudged me in the ribs. They were starting to hurt, the ribs were.

"Dude," he said. "Think about what you just said."
"What?"
"Dead people. Cheers!"
"Shit," I said.
"Nicely done."
"At this rate, I'm never going to get to be tamada."
"Give it a couple more toasts. You'll go rogue. I just know you will."

My host mom decided it was time for us to switch over to wine. So much the better, I figured. She snatched up the bottle of cha-cha, put it in a box and locked it away in a cupboard like it was the Lost Ark. My host dad left the room and returned with a couple Pepsi bottles full of wine. He filled our glasses. Then he proposed a toast to me. I raised my glass.

"To me, I guess."
"To Oaf Loaf," said Weird Beard.
"Kitis gaumarjos!" cried host dad.
We drank.
I glanced over at Weird Beard.
Weird Beard glanced over at me.
We sat there in silence for a minute or two while host dad topped us off.
"Hey," said Weird Beard. "Notice anything unusual about the wine?"
"Yes. You?"
"There isn't anything in it."
"You're right."
"It's grape juice."
"It is grape juice."
Panic.
"You'd better call the Irishman," said Weird Beard.

"Yes, boyyyyy," said the Irishman. "What's the crack?"
"You still coming over?"
"Aye, reckon I'll be there in an heur, so I will."
"You might want to bring some party supplies."
"To a supra? Are ye mental?"
"The wine," I said. "It's grape juice."
"Aye, fer fook's sakes ... "

Pounding shot after shot of bootleg Welch's. Livers growing bored. Kidneys failing. One by one, the neighbors came tromping in. A digital camera was produced. Videos were taken of Weird Beard and I sitting around, self-conscious as all get-out. The Irishman arrived with a mysterious black bag that he stashed in my room. He sat down and chugged grape juice with us. It was immediately clear that nobody liked the Irishman.

My host sister pulled me aside.
"The Irishman is very bad," she said. "Very bad. He have a very bad character."
"He's been here ten minutes," I said.
"He is stupid and very bad."
"Fair enough."

My host mom mocked the Irishman's English, made a chipmunk face and went bwah-bwah-bwah-bwahhh. Weird Beard shook his head.
"Is your host mom making fun of the Irishman?"
"I believe she is."
"That's bullshit," he said. "Only we're allowed to make fun of the Irishman."

The Irishman had broken out in a sweat. He is a man who knows when he is unwelcome. He tried to ingratiate himself with the family the only way he knew how: by speaking lousy Georgian to my two year old host cousin.

"Batara bichi! Modi, modi!" he cooed. "Little boy! Come here!"
My host cousin shook his head, no. He wasn't going anywhere.
"Batara bichi!" scoffed my host mom later in the evening. "Your Irish friend is an idiot."

Leslie arrived and could immediately sense that things had gotten weirder than planned. Everyone marveled at her red hair. She had stolen the show and I could tell she wanted badly to leave. To her credit, she stayed until the bitter end. We knocked back grape juice, took frequent bathroom breaks, snuck off to the mysterious black bag for a nip or two, reconvened in the interrogation chamber for up-close videos and personal questions and mild humiliations of all sorts. It was nine PM at a Georgian supra and the four of us were stone sober. Under much host familial pressure, I finally caved and did a miserable breakdance routine on the living room floor. Thank God they got that on video. When I returned to the couch, Weird Beard was shaking his head with disgust.

"Enough is enough," he said. "Dinner's over. We've been polite. We've done our bit. Let's head into town and speak some English."
"You think we can pull it off?"
"I'll do the talking," he said. "Your host family actually likes me."
We looked over at the Irishman, who lowered his head.

Weird Beard got to work on my host dad, who was several sheets to the wind thanks to a secret stash that his best friend - a sixty year old geezer with the improbable name of Hooha - had smuggled in without sharing. My host dad agreed to summon a taxi. I went to my room, put on some cologne, took a little nip, ran into Weird Beard in the hallway.
"We're good," he said. "I made your dad promise not to tell your mom."
"Excellent."
"Ten minutes. I'll give the signal."

It was very nearly the perfect crime. A cab pulled up in front of my house. My host mom was next door. The four of us bid the village adieu and piled into the cab.

"Tsalenjikha," said Weird Beard, "and step on it."
The cabby wouldn't budge. He was looking at something in his rear view mirror. Objects are closer than they appear, et cetera.
The back door shot open.
"Kiti! Where are you going?"
"Um," I said. "We. We are going. Going into town. Be back soon."
"Why? What's in town?"
"It was good," I said. "A good evening. Thank you for everything. But now. Together we will go. To town. Be back soon."
"They can go," she said. "You cannot go."
"But - "
"You cannot go."
"But - "
"But what?"
"But ... me katsi var," I squeaked. I am a man.
"You are going nowhere."
She grabbed my leg and started tugging.
"What the hell," I said.
"Drive," Weird Beard said to the cabby.
"Don't drive!" I shouted.
I was halfway out the door.
"Just go," said Weird Beard. "Now."
I could feel my shoe sliding off.
"Man up," Weird Beard said to me. "Say something!"
I could feel my leg sliding off.
"Mom," I said. "Mom."
She looked up.
"I'm 29 years old," I said. "I'm going into town with my friends."
"Okay," she said. "But you're in big trouble when you get back."
She slammed the door, very nearly on my leg.
"Are we ready?" asked the cabby. He was half-asleep by then.
I looked around and nodded.
"Yes. I do believe we're ready."

Unfortunately, no official minutes were kept for the night that followed. Our minds lapsed into time lapse mode. Weird Beard caught a cab home at some point. Leslie lived just down the road. The Irishman and I hiked eight kilometers in pitch darkness back to my house, ogled the constellations and waxed metaphysical along the way, slipped on cow patties times beyond number, got lost twice before realizing we weren't lost at all, finally slipped past the guard dog, tiptoed past my host mom's lair, and bolted ourselves in my room. We had a good laugh about it all and went to sleep. I woke up at eight the next morning.

"Jeesus," groaned the Irishman. "Where the fook am I?"
"My house," I said. I threw on my suit coat.
"What time is it?"
"Eight."
"What the fook are you doing?"
"Going to work," I said.
"How is that even fooking possible?"
"It just is," I said. "Get some sleep. I'll be back in a couple of hours. Want me to lock the door?"
The Irishman was already asleep.

An hour or so later, my host mom broke into my room to do God knows what. She found a half-naked Irishman in my bed. A certain scene from The Godfather springs to mind. My only regret is not having been there to witness it.

So there was that.

At any rate. Looks like I'm the only tamada left. So I'd like to use this final paragraph to propose a toast, if you don't mind. Here's to Georgia. Here's to America. Here's to David Bowie. Here's to The Wire. Here's to friendship. And here's to host mothers. Sheni dedas, gaumarjos!

Oreo

My friend Erin came to visit this weekend. Early that first morning, we packed a lunch and set off on a hobo tour of the Nanchong countryside. But we were unable to leave the apartment because there in the hall was a large black and white mutt, bearing its fangs and growling. It pounced. We ran up the stairs two at a time. The dog pursued us as far as the second floor, then turned and doubled back. We peered down from the forth story balcony and watched in horror as the beast belched and hissed and trotted in frantic circles.

A toddler went toddling by. The dog glanced up at him.
"If he goes after the kid, we're running down there and killing that dog," said Erin. I grabbed a bamboo rod from a nearby garbage heap and brandished it unconvincingly.
But the dog wasn't interested in toddlers. Nor did he seem to have an appetite for the Chinese, as my neighbors came and went without incident. But when we tiptoed back downstairs, there he was, snarling at us.

One of my neighbors saw us come scrambling up the stairwell.
"Eeeee?" she said, the standard Mandarin noise of befuddlement.
"Is the dog downstairs friendly?" I asked her.
"Yes, he's very friendly," she said.
"I don't think he likes laowais."
My neighbor smiled politely and escorted us downstairs. She made it out alright, but the dog caught whiff of us and gave chase. We ran back upstairs.

For the next hour and a half, we hid in the stairwell, studying the dog's movements from the balcony. He would disappear around the corner every so often, then he'd come back and pop a squat in the bushes. Then he'd go dig up somebody's vegetable garden. Sometimes he would run up to the top of a nearby hill and pose there, watching us. But always he would come running back to the front door of apartment building #62, grumbling to himself, ears flattened, lying in wait.

I paced back and forth and repeated the F-word, the way I do when absurdity descends and no escape routes present themselves. From the fourth story perch, I thought I could maybe plant a long-range loogey on the dog's head, but that might've only made matters worse. My next-door neighbor came down the stairs with his son.

"Hello!" he whispered, nudging the little boy. "Hello!"
"Hello," murmured the kid.
His dad pointed at me. "Uncle, uncle!"
"Hello, Uncle," said the kid.

They went outside. The dog perked his ears and wagged his tail as they passed. My neighbor got into a mid-sized Volkswagen and tried to park it across the street while the kid watched. After a few low-speed collisions, he finally succeeded in parallel parking it at a 45-degree angle. Then he dusted his hands off on his pants, hoisted his son onto the back of a motorbike, and the two of them zipped off together.

"The dog can't wait out there forever, can he?" asked Erin.
"I'm not sure," I said. "I suspect he can."

I thought back on the night I locked myself out of the apartment building. I had waited down there on the stoop where the dog now lurked, convinced that at some point, someone would have to let me in. Somebody would sneak out of the house for a nightcap, or somebody would come stumbling home from the massage parlor. I couldn't just wait out there forever, after all. But I stood around like a clod from 9 PM until the sun came up the next morning. I tried to nap on an abandoned couch, but after five restless minutes I developed a nasty full-body itch. The security guards came by. None of them had keys. One of them suggested I shout until somebody came down to let me in, but it was late, all the lights were off and I couldn't bring myself to do it. Eventually, one of the security guards sat down on the filthy couch, ripped a fart and drifted off to sleep. I paced around the courtyard for hours on end and peed in the bushes like a dog. Finally, at 7 AM, an old lady came down for her early morning tai chi exercises. I kowtowed before her and nearly kissed her feet.

I mention all this because, as Erin and I watched the dog circling like a vulture four stories below, I was reminded of past absurdities, and of the fact that when the universe decides to suck you into a vortex of absurdity, you can be stuck down there for quite a long time.

But then, all of a sudden, the dog turned around and trotted up the hill. He stopped to look back at us a few times before disappearing behind a row of apartments in the distance.

"Let's move," said Erin.
"I don't know," I said, squinting out the window. "He might be baiting us."
"Dammit, Petit," she said. "Get the sand out of your [expletive]."

So, with bamboo rod firmly in hand, I scampered down the stairs. No sign of the dog. We took off at a dead sprint. Then my phone rang. It was Shelley, my laowai neighbor.

"I can't talk right now," I said, panting. "We're being pursued by a rabid beast."

Shelley, familiar with the terms and conditions of my daily life, wished me luck and hung up the phone. Then, after Erin and I had put about a quarter mile between us and the dog, Shelley called again. She was laughing.

"Your neighbors just introduced me to your rabid beast," she said. "His name is Oreo. He's great with kids. He lets the babies pull his tail. Everyone loves him!"

Yes, everyone loves Oreo. But what did it mean, this personal vendetta of his? He was good with children and didn't seem to mind Shelley, a fellow laowai. He did not appear to be a racist dog. No, it was Erin and I - only we could incur the wrath of an otherwise harmless neighborhood mutt.

But harmless or no, even after we had left the campus far behind us, we saw Oreo in the face of every approaching pekingese. We saw his lanky silhouette lurking behind every rapeseed bush, heard his growl in the whinny of every passing motorbike. We walked at a brisk clip, stopping every few feet to kick coaldust over our shoeprints.

We opted to postpone our hobo tour, figuring that in the countryside, we would only encounter nastier, more depraved Oreos. Kimchi cravings took us to Nanchong's one and only Korean joint. Neither of us spoke for a full thirty minutes, drugged as we were by the onslaught of antioxidants.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and I whirled around to see Jacob, a fellow volunteer, and Lisa, the owner of The Jack Bar.

"Goddamn. That was the best meal I've had in a year," said Jacob.
"I know," I groaned. "God, I've missed Korean food."
Lisa was sulking.
"I mean, Chinese food is great. Really great. It's so hao chi," I said. But by then Lisa was inconsolable. She pointedly changed the subject to my guitar playing.
"Tonight you play five songs," she said. "Is enough. Enough."

The two of them departed. I tried out some rudimentary Korean on the wait staff but every last one of them proved to be Chinese. Erin and I split a bottle of Korean lager and the 4% alcohol-by-volume swam through our heads. It was the kind of meal that puts you in a coma. I sat there a while, half-asleep, with one hand stuffed down the front of my trousers. And then all of a sudden Erin's eyes got big. I heard the voice behind me and bolted upright in my chair.

"What's this? No time to say hello to an old friend?"

It was Oreo. The beast stood on his hind legs, glowering over our table, his ears slicked back and his blue eyes glimmering with omniscience. He was dressed in a suitcoat and creased pinstripe slacks, a checkered cravat knotted over his flea collar.

"Oh, come now. I'm just teasing. I myself find it hard to speak when in the presence of such ... delectable foreign fare." He licked his chops and slid his claws over the surface of our table. My forehead grew damp with sweat. Erin sat staring disconsolately into her lap.

"Old friends, old friends," sang Oreo. His voice quavered in the lower register like Berlin Trilogy Bowie. He rested his paw on my shoulder. "Though we've much to discuss, I do so hate to be a bother. So I suppose I'll leave you to your chow. Eat slowly, as the Chinese say."

He scratched behind his ear for a moment, then pitched a crumpled napkin onto our table. He turned and walked away, toenails clicking off into the background. I sat watching the shivering napkin expand. Erin leaned across the table and grabbed my arm.

"We need to get out of here. Right now," she whispered. "I don't like this Oreo character, not one bit."
"I don't like him either. But what are we going to do? Hide from him for the rest of our lives?" I took a swig from the bottle. "I don't know about you, but I for one refuse to live in fear."
"Here's what we'll do. I'll get up and pay the bill. You wait for me outside."
"He's a dog," I said. "He'll smell us leaving. And anyway, we're safer here. He's not going to devour us at a Korean restaurant. Hell, they're more likely to eat - "
"My ears are burning!" Oreo had materialized behind me. He scratched himself with one paw, then the other. "Though it is almost certainly the fleas. Of course, neither of you would know anything about that. But I must say, they are persistent little buggers ..."
His brow furrowed. Erin and I stared into the tabletop.

"Right," said Oreo, clapping his paws together. "Well, friends, far be it from me to act as an enabler, but certainly a toast to one's health never hurt anybody."
He produced three shot glasses and a bottle of maotai, then he filled the glasses one by one.
"Let's not forget that we live in a toasting culture, my friends, and - how does that old adage go? When in Rome," he paused meditatively, then smiled, "do as the Chinese do."
He hoisted his glass and we lifted ours from the table.
"What shall we drink to?" asked Oreo, searching our faces.
"To humanity," said Erin.
"Yes," said Oreo, staring into her eyes. "To humanity."
We drank. Oreo slammed his shot glass down with such force that the bean paste stew overflowed.
"Ahh, now that wasn't so bad, was it?" he said. Then, with a flourish, he bowed to us and sauntered out the door, twirling his pocket watch and humming Rigoletto.

The next day, Erin returned to Yunyang and I returned to bachelordom. I spent the afternoon organizing my book collection alphabetically by author. Then I paid an evening visit to Little Prince Coffee and took my usual seat by the window. The waitress filled my glass with water. I asked her if she had eaten, but she said nothing, just shot me a worried glance and rushed back to the espresso bar. The table of Koreans across the aisle hurriedly paid their tab and left. The swinging door whooshed shut behind them. The empty coffee shop fell silent.

I pulled out my notebook and got to work. A moment later, the waitress came by, but she did not have my usual Caffè Americano. She slid a folded note across the table and I waited until she had gone to open it. It took me a moment to decipher the characters.

"Man man si," it said. "Die slowly."

I heard a burst of slow, rich laughter from the darkest corner of the coffee shop. Behind a plume of blue smoke, I could just make out a leather-bound book and the top of a bowler hat. Slowly, the book descended and I saw those blue eyes, that snaggletoothed muzzle. It was Oreo. He shut the book and got up on his hind legs. The waitresses disappeared into the kitchen, drawing the curtain closed behind them. As Oreo drew nearer, I saw that the book in his paws was Crime and Punishment.

"They say that Dostoevsky was humanity's first psychologist," he said, "but I have always taken him to be your greatest humorist. Consider the following passage. Oh, where is it -"

He sifted through the book.

"Ah, yes. That's the one," he said, clearing his throat. "'If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be punishment - as well as the prison.'"

He sucked on his pipe and nodded briskly before closing the book.

"Now, you might not find that remark particularly funny as such. But the wit of Dostoevsky, for me, lies not in any deliberate humour noir on the author's part, but in his uncanny, almost superhuman eye for sublime human truths. Do you mind if I sit?"

I said nothing. Oreo chuckled softly and remained standing.

"I admire you travelers. I believe you call yourselves 'globetrotters,' yes? Yes. I admire you globetrotters. So idealistic, so brave. You believe in escape. In 'getting away from it all.' And perhaps in a very limited way you do succeed in escaping from some things. Responsibilities, social norms, the dull grind of a forty-hour work week," said Oreo, "but in a certain sense - in a Dostoevskian sense - it all strikes me as hopelessly naive."

He took a long draw from his pipe, then bent down to snort the smoke out his nose, sending it cascading across the tabletop.

"The Grand Inquisitor," he said. "The self."

He seemed to pick up a faint aroma in the distance, and sniffed reflectively, almost sadly. Then he grinned.

"In the end, how can one ever escape from oneself? To what extent can you even hope to succeed in breaking out of the greatest institution of them all?" He leaned in close and stared me in the eyes. Then he tapped his skull with his paw, making a hollow clucking sound with his tongue. "This one - right - here." He laughed and sat down across from me, crossing one leg over the other. I flinched and felt around for my cigarettes.

"Oh, allow me," said Oreo, pulling a lighter from his trouser pocket. "Or - I see. Suit yourself."

He smiled and watched the smoke rise.

"Listen. I don't like you," I said. "I don't want to see you anymore. So here's what's going to happen. You're going to tuck your little tail between your legs and walk out that door on all fours. Then you're going to check into the Humane Society, the dog pound, whatever. You're going to stop coming around. You're going to disappear."

Oreo stroked his goatee.

"Are you familiar with the word cur?" he asked. "No, I don't suppose you would be. It's archaic - an old, nasty word. From the Middle English curdogge, meaning a mongrel dog, especially a worthless or unfriendly one. Happily, the term is no longer widely in use. But that old, nasty word of yours was once used to describe canines of my sort. Strays, you call us nowadays. Junkyard dogs."

He lowered his pipe.

"There's an expression in your language. I hope I am wording it correctly. The saying goes: you can take the dog out of the hood, but you can't take the hood out of the dog," he said, and chuckled. "Frankly, I think you humans have it completely backwards. It seems to me that you can take the hood out of the dog, but you can't take the dog ... out of the hood."

He rose to his feet and took his billfold from his vest pocket. He counted out forty kuai and pitched it onto the table.

"Believe what you will about me. That I'm dirty, uncultured. A junkyard dog. A cur, if you must. But I am no one's pet," he said. "Your neighbors love me well enough. But I am not theirs. They call me Oreo. But I am not Oreo. Do me a favor and think about that. Now if you'll excuse me, I must be off to mark my territory."

The swinging door whooshed shut behind him. It was twenty minutes before the waitress brought out my coffee and she didn't give me my usual membership card discount.

This afternoon, I came home from lunch and found Oreo there in the courtyard. He didn't seem to notice me at first, immersed as he was in frolicking with the neighborhood kids. They were squealing with joy, chasing him, yanking his tail, hopping on his back and riding him for a few seconds at a time. Oreo was exuberant, barking, yelping, jumping up and down, lapping at the children's faces. Oreo's ears perked as I passed. We exchanged a glance. Then he resumed rolling in the dirt with the kids, tormenting them with the cold wetness of his muzzle. I shut the door to my apartment and sat at my writing desk with a blank document in front of me. Through the open window, I could hear the children laughing and shrieking. Oreo! they shouted, Oh, Oreo! After a while, the kids must have gone inside, because all fell silent except for Oreo's steady barking. It took me a few minutes to notice that he was barking a melody, and it wasn't until he reached the refrain that I realized what it was: O Fortuna by Carl Orff.

The Thin White Duke was Here

I was the first person in line for the Beck show at Columbiahalle. Other German hipsters may boast, may have the lie tattooed across their biceps. But it was I, standing on the kerb, ticket in hand, who was uncool enough to show up two hours before the bouncers did. It had been years since I'd attended a concert where you actually had to buy tickets beforehand, so I'd grown accustomed to waltzing through the doors in an altered state midway through the third opener, sidling up with whomever I knew at the bar and slugging my way to the front after the lights had dimmed. But this was Beck and this was Berlin: I erred on the anal side and showed up three hours before the doors opened. I had to ask a wino whether I was at the right place. Then it started to rain, so I ducked into a nearby pub whose clientele reminded me of American war vets, though they were probably just retired Krautrock scenesters. I sat and ate a pickle and langenscheidted my way through Die Andere Seite and waited for the rain to stop.

When I returned to Columbiahalle, I was no longer the first person in line. There was a German girl with Beck pins covering both lapels of her frockcoat and a Spaniard wearing the Beck t-shirt that I had left at home.

"So, ehh, you guys like Beck much?" I asked.
As they talked about Him, their eyes glazed over in a way that mine did not. But like all music buffs, I nurtured the belief that they didn't appreciate Beck the way I did, and like the rest, I was probably right about that.

The bouncer let us in and we pressed as far forward as the guardrails allowed. We sent the Spaniard out for drinks and we sat injun-style on the floor and waited.

There may have been an opening act, but I have no memory of it. I remember Beck walking out on stage - already some Germans were chanting "Loser" - and I was surprised to see him sporting his Loser-era locks, his Mellow Gold shades, and the sneer to match.

It was an underwhelming show, or perhaps it was just me who was underwhelmed. I hadn't slept in a fortnight and after a month in Berlin, my body was turning to Nutella and currywurst. I remember little about the concert, just that Beck was surly and anhedonic, that I was dissecting the performance too much to enjoy it, and that the German girl in the frockcoat had fallen in love with me, but I dissected her to bits and so lost her to an autistic Swede. The whole night would have been a wash if a German graphic designer hadn't adopted me after the show and paid for me to dance at the rockabilly club until the sun came up over Kreuzberg.

A week later, Radiohead came to town. This was, for me, the mother of all shows; was, in fact, the reason I had allowed myself to linger in Berlin for so long. The night before the concert, I tried to get a good night's sleep, and so I stayed up 'til five. I tried to get geared up in the hours before kickoff, and so I found myself listless and lifeless as I slipped through the turnstile.

There was an opener, the much-hyped Modeselektor. I was able to cut through the crowd with unexpected ease, so I was close enough to the stage that Jonny Greenwood's hair was whipping me in the face. And yet I can't say I enjoyed the show. They played songs - i.e. all of them - that always put me in a visionary trance when I listen to them at home on my oversized headphones, but there, live and in the moment, I couldn't build an enthusiasm that wasn't false. In truth, I wanted to go home and see what Ben was up to.

Through incredibly dumb luck, I scored a free ticket to see R.E.M. the following week. I figured that expectations were at the root of my rock show impotence, that perhaps a band whose lyrics weren't already tattooed across my cortex might stir me out of my slumber. And R.E.M. did, but not as much as I'd led myself to expect. I'd never heard "Electrolite" before, which remains a staple on any mixes I make for girls. And Michael Stipe was lively and carefree on stage, as Michael Stipes are wont to be. But as the drunken hordes pushed through the black forest towards the nearest U-Bahn station, I was haunted by the suspicion that I had missed something.

I was crashing in Schöneberg at the time, which is where David Bowie lived while he was recording the Berlin Trilogy. Twice I set out to find his old digs, where one imagines the Thin White Duke lavishing himself with a spongebath in a porcelain tub overflowing with Nutella and cocaine. On my first expedition, I walked in the complete opposite direction and found myself merging onto the autobahn. The second time, I grew confused by the apartment numbers and gave up, settling instead for a döner kebab and a Franziskaner for the road.

And then my cash ran out and I was ejected from Germany like a bad organ. I wasn't disappointed, not exactly. I had expected Berlin - and at least two of those performances - to transform me. And in some way they had. Everything always transforms you. But the moment has a way of eluding me. The attempt to measure the moment renders the moment, like the electron, nonexistent: a smear in time and space. The moment only becomes a moment after the moment has passed, often years and years later.

If I am to be honest with myself, and to my readership (who will judge me), the only rock show I ever enjoyed the way a rock show should be enjoyed was the Counting Crows concert I saw when I was sixteen. It was my first show. For me, the electric guitar was a recent discovery. I remember standing in a garage with one of my cronies as he plugged his amp into the wall. There was a screech of feedback, then the unexpected power of the non-chord he strummed, the disproportionate relationship between the sheer volume generated and the 106-pound nerd who had so amateurishly generated it. The electric guitar, for me, was the first great equalizer between brawn and intellect, though I would discover others as I went along in life.

At that young age, live music thrilled me. It wasn't something to be dissected or inspected for quality. The sound of a savage beat on a thrift store trap set was enough to set my legs joggling against their caucasian will. And so the Counting Crows show was a spiritual experience for me, though I would cringe and probably vomit to see something like it now. Adam Duritz - I believe he was wearing pleather pants - tightroped along a stack of amplifiers with his arms outstretched and his head thrown back in an unabashed Christ imitation. The band broke into seemingly impromptu interludes in which Duritz sang what was glossolalia to me then, though I know now that they were just Byrds lyrics. And on the drive home, there was no debate as to whether what we had just seen was three hours of contrived bullshit: we knew the mind of God and were content to say "Wow" over and over again. We were also buzzing to be in a car - a 1992 Plymouth Acclaim - driving back on the interstate from a rock show in Iowa with no adult supervision. It is hard to tell whether the enthusiasm of youth is misguided, or whether it is more pure than anything we will ever experience again.

There were other good shows, of course. I saw The Fiery Furnaces four years ago and I appreciated the performance several months later, though I struggled to understand it in the moment. Devendra Banhart came to Omaha a while back with his band of sleepy-eyed beards, and he suspended us between sleep and waking for two wonderful hours. I saw Low once and the Sokol Underground was unusually sepulchral for the occasion: nobody spoke, and people shooshed you when you did. We were hyped up on something, laughing way too much, and Will was acting goofy, so we removed ourselves from the show before it got too sublime. I have seen Bright Eyes on three occasions. The first time, Conor was so hopped up on quaaludes that he smashed his guitar midway through the second song. The other two shows were in Council Bluffs, and though they were four years apart, I found myself in the same predicament: drinking with Will, about to leave my main squeeze for the weird, wild East. Strangely, perhaps cruelly, life functions like a broken elevator and, despite an infinity of other possibilities, will deliver you to the same floor several times in a row: step in, please - sixth floor - women's hats and coats, lingerie and perfume - step in, please ...

Pannonica

I have often looked upon life and thought: if one's lifetime is all one knows of eternity, then life is an eternity. There remains time for endless revisions and reincarnations. I think of Dylan and Bowie. I think of Orlando, though I read that in another lifetime and cannot remember the book, just that one can play infinite roles and both genders and a multitude of selves foreign to oneself if one allows oneself.

I think of myself ten years ago and myself ten minutes ago and see them as different novels written by different authors.

I think about the next sentence and what it holds in store for me. Perhaps I have drank too much, perhaps I will vomit. Or perhaps the gate to my apartment will be locked and I will have to beg entrance from the nightwatchman. And perhaps he will not have the key.

Then I focus on now, which is five shish-kebab sticks and two cigarette butts smoldering on an aluminum tray, the beer I cannot finish, the owners of the restaurant waiting for me to leave so they can close, the shouting of drunks pushing each other into the back of a taxi - and this moment, too, is an eternity.

There seems to be no solution - rational or otherwise - to the problem of time but to concede that the moment is infinite, a lifetime moreso, and eternity even more infinite than the both of them combined.

And wonderfully, all of it is as fleeting as the cigarette given me by the nightwatchman, now smoldering on the aluminum tray with the five shish-kebabs and the moment that passed away with them.