My name's Brandon, and I would like to share.

An old Art Director from my previous life as an Ad Exec. stole my heart. That’s how the dream went anyway. I lay on my back atop a conference room table, my chest opened and the skin pulled back like a dissected frog’s, while he stood over me explaining that a person’s heart can be removed from the body for a brief period of time with no harm done. “You can actually hold your own heart in your hands and watch it beat,” he said. “The heart’s pretty neat like that.” He reached into my chest cavity and rummaged around, disconnecting my heart from it’s many important wires, and pulled it out and showed it to me as if I had just given birth to the thing. “See?” Sure enough, it was still beating, and I was still very much alive. “Bad ass,” I must’ve said or something to that effect as I watched my glistening heart contract in the palm of his hand, like a dry-heaving newborn pig. He began playing with my heart – pulling and pushing, stretching and twisting – to test the durability of my heart tissue. At one point he clamped his thumb and forefinger around it and squeezed the way you might squeeze a deflated balloon, making one end translucent and bulbous with excess air. He grinned and nodded maniacally at me. “Ain’t this just the coolest?” “Ok, Kyle,” I said. “Let’s go ahead and put my heart back.” He never did specify how long one could function without one’s heart, and I was beginning to feel lightheaded. “Right, right,” he said and focused his mania on my empty chest cavity. He placed my heart in, took a step back and eyed it perplexedly, then rotated it 90 degrees clockwise before nodding, pleased. I felt a strange tingling sensation in my lips. He fumbled with my inner circuitry, reattaching my heart to its various input and output connections as if connecting his DSL modem for the first time. “Please hurry, Kyle,” I said calmly, euphoria setting in. He mumbled to himself and traced the path of each important artery. “This one goes here, that one there, this one…” he trails off and does some counting on his fingers. “Hurry up, Kyle.” I can’t remember if he connected me in time.

Finish your blood.

Sra sau is a surprisingly smooth and refreshing Cambodian concoction. It’s a homemade rice wine, tastes much like Japanese sake, and is easy and dirt cheap to produce, thereby making it a favorite among the Cambodian working class looking to get tipsy. I, myself, have a zest for all things fermented, and only minutes ago, a messy-haired and strikingly pretty small Cambodian girl shuffled across the flimsy bamboo slats of this rural restaurant clutching my first glass of sra sau in both hands. It was full almost to the brim and swirled with her every step.

“Awkun,” I said in thanks then quickly emptied the glass. I needed to calm my nerves. I needed courage.

I’m now sitting Indian style on a straw mat, elevated 20 feet above a Cambodian swamp and gazing out at expansive rice fields and crystal blue skies when I finish my first glass and my second is delivered to me. It’s in a water bottle this time and is accompanied by a small convoy of four shoeless children and a shirtless Cambodian man in pleated slacks who is carrying a meat cleaver, a chopping block and a bulking and writhing plastic bag.

 Rewind to three days ago.

Sherry and I arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia and were ushered off the plane and into a taxi driven by a young, shaggy-haired and slouching man. “Where you from?” He asked in a gentle voice. “Ireland,” I said sticking to Sherry’s and mine agreed upon alibi without making even the slightest attempt at an accent. “What about your lady? She look Asian, yeah?” “Khmer, actually,” I said, delighted at my interracial marriage, and suddenly he too was delighted to have a fellow countryman in the backseat. “Bong aiyn Khmer?” he looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Cha. Yom Khmer.” Then Sherry slipped into a surprisingly fluent exchange with our driver, whose name was Bun, and watching the two chatter back and forth in unknown vowels and syllables and somehow understand and deliver the appropriate responses to one another, I fell in love with her all over again. My introduction to Sherry’s life killed her bilingual skills – or so I thought, and apparently so did she, because I could see the surprise in her eyes at how quickly her mother language was coming back.

“Ask him about cobra blood.” I murmured quietly from the corner of my mouth, because Bun also spoke English, and I was too shy to ask. Sherry shot me a reproachful look, as she's terrified, absolutely terrified of snakes, but did ask him a few minutes later. He did know of a place where I could consume a cobra’s life force – where they would kill a cobra in front of me, drain the blood from the body and serve it to me in a glass - and suddenly my spirits were lifted with the realization that this trip to a third world country wouldn’t merely be a trek through the predictable paved streets of South East Asian tourism.

Rewind to several years ago.

I suppose my obsession with drinking cobra blood began when I saw Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach. At the beginning of the movie, he narrates a montage and condemns travelers for visiting far off lands to simply do what they could do at home. Watch movies. Eat hamburgers. Speak English. Sleep in beds. Then cut to Leo in a dimly lit backroom somewhere in the bowels of Thailand, surrounded by several menacing Thais, one of which has an eye-patch, if memory serves. Leo boldly and unflinchingly slams back a shot of freshly drained cobra blood, bangs his hands on the table and makes a hasty exit.

“You have to do that,” said the goblin living inside me as I watched the scene. “No dude, that’s sick,” I said. “You have to do that,” he told me again with a gleam in his eye. “Why?” “Because everyone else is too chicken shit to.” “No, dude.” “Yes, man.” And the goblin was right. I did have to do that. And at some point over the years, drinking cobra blood was officially placed at the top of my unofficial things to do before I die list (along with getting a tebori back piece and getting shot three times by a Mexican gang). It became that mountain peak that was too tall and treacherous to climb. It became the line that separated the sensible person and what they are resigned to experience in a lifetime from the extraordinary person and what they are willing to subject themselves to in the spirit of being alive. It became the gauge that I compared what I was to what I wanted to be.

Fast forward to 45 minutes ago.

Bun pulled his silver Celica to a hut at the side of the road, rolled down his window and hollered (later translated for me by my darling, bilingual wife). “Hey! You got any snake!” The proprietors of the hut made a quick phone call – to the keeper of the snake, I assume – and there was one cobra restlessly waiting to be bled and devoured, anxious to merge his spirit with mine. So, we got out of the car as a lady ran at the same time from the restaurant and whizzed away on a moped to fetch the snake, and we made our way across the flimsy bamboo flooring of the restaurant and settled on a straw mat in a far corner. Four children stared at us from a distance, from behind a sofa. I asked Bun if I could have a glass of rice wine. I needed to calm my nerves. I needed courage.

Fast forward 25 minutes, to now.

Hanging awkwardly at the side of the shirtless Cambodian man in pleated slacks, the bulging plastic bag rotates just slightly with the restrained movements of its contents. It wriggles and writhes in a seemingly endless twisting of scales and sinew. In one brief twist of the bag I see the cobra’s hood flare, the telltale sign that it’s feeling threatened – rightfully so – and is ready to fight for its life. The man sets both the chopping block and meat cleaver on the bamboo floor and pulls a small aluminum wire from his pocket. He studies the cobra inside the bag and then with a sudden snake-like strike of his own, seizes the cobra’s head and pinches its mouth shut. He fits the aluminum wire around the snake’s neck, just behind its eyes, and briskly twists the loose ends together as if he’s sealing a bag of bread. Then the plastic bag is opened, the tail end removed and a female member of the family, who is to serve as the primary operator from this point forward, lifts the tail and stretches the snake horizontally. The shirtless man in pleated trousers still clutches the head within the bag. The snake is about four feet long and a glistening midnight black. The woman grabs the snake from the top and with a small cloth thoroughly swabs the oils off the length of its body. She then crouches down with the tail in her hands, lays it straight across the chopping block, picks up the meat cleaver and begins sawing.

A rooster crows incessantly. A baby cries in the distance.

Once it’s determined that the life vein has been adequately severed, the snake is held vertically over the water bottle of sra sau. The body contracts and relaxes. Twists and straightens, and losing its gracefulness, it cricks and jars like the links of a rusty chain. Our driver, Bun, steps in and together he and the woman squeeze the snake’s body between their fists, milking the blood into the water bottle, which is now a deep ruby red. When they finish about five minutes later, the empty shell of the snake is taken away, and the bloody bamboo flooring is doused with a bucket of water. Bun stands, swirls the bottle of blood and inspects it against the light like a seasoned winemaker.

It’s a lot of blood.

“I would like to share,” I say to Bun and make a nervous whirling motion with my arms, gesturing to everyone in sight. Bun looks confused. “I’d like to share.” I say again. It’s too much blood. “Chite, chite khneah.” Sherry says to clarify. “Chite khneah.” Bun smiles and examines the bottle again. “It’s good for two people,” he assures me and sits beside me on the straw mat.

Two glasses are brought out on a silver platter. One is a manly tumbler, which Bun pours the blood into first. The other, my glass, is a dainty snifter of sorts. “Any last words?” Sherry asks after Bun fills my glass and I study my drink. I do have last words. I have several.

What I want to do is release a throaty and cracking high-pitched mating call across the rice fields and into the jungles of Cambodia and deliver a diatribe on what it is to truly live and pound my chest and aggressively claim that King Kong ain’t got shit on me and go on and on about how I will wake up tomorrow a different man than I did today, better, faster, stronger, and then raise my glass and toast to truth, your truth and my truth, our personal truths, and finding these truths and following them to the end of the world if goddamned need be!

But instead I shrug and look to Sherry and the video camera she’s holding to document this experience, and I say, “There are no words.” I turn to Bun, who has his glass raised slightly and continues swirling the blood around and inspecting its density, flecks of the snake’s blood still splattered across his forearm. I raise my glass and nod. He does the same. We clink our glasses, toast in Sherry’s direction as well. And drink.

Much to my surprise, it actually tastes like my first glass of sra sau, but I shudder slightly still with the knowledge of what I just drank. I look at Bun as I finish mine and he takes the last swallow of his. Blood pools in the corners of his mouth. I wipe my mouth, smack my lips, and then I taste the blood. The unquestionable, undeniable metallic taste of blood lingers in my mouth, sticks to my cheeks and teeth, as if I just bit my tongue. I've been sucking on pennies.

Bun has disappeared. Sherry’s still shooting the video, narrating and asking me several questions, none of which I answer interestingly, eloquently or wittily. That’s what journals, memoirs and blogs are for. Before long Bun reappears with a small organ between his fingers, the snake’s gall bladder. He holds it over the water bottle and picks at the elastic skin of the organ as he explains how the bile inside will enrich the taste of the blood. He says something to Sherry in Cambodian, and she responds, “Bitter.” “Yes, yes. Bitter. It’s more bitter.” he says and breaks the skin of the gall bladder with his fingernails. The bile oozes out, glow-in-the-dark green like engine coolant, and dribbles into the bottle. We have a few more drinks, and it is in fact a bit more bitter, then Bun sets the bottle of blood on top of a karaoke machine in the corner and says, “We’ll leave the rest for later.”

As we emerge from the restaurant and into the sunlight, headed now to the floating village of Chong khneas, I bow emphatically to the family responsible for making me one with the cobra. “Awkun chranh, awkun chranh,” I say repeatedly. We walk toward the car, and Bun takes notice of the goofy white boy grin on my face. “You drunk?” he accuses and teases. Bun’s English is very good, but I’m not sure how to explain how monumental and important this afternoon has been for my personal evolution. “No, Bun,” I say. “Not drunk. Just happy. Very very happy.”

Fast forward to two hours from now.

While we’re away touring the floating village of Chong khneas, the family will cook the cobra and upon our return will present us with a cobra feast; stir fried cobra and cobra soup, from which I will pull sections of the body, peel away the rubbery earlobe-textured skin and devour the meat like catfish and then marvel at the engineering of the vertebrae. It’s like a child’s toy, I’ll giggle and wiggle it at Sherry, expecting confirmation, but she will just return a disparaging look and quietly scold me for playing with my food. Together, Bun and I will share several more shots of cobra blood laced with sra sau, each shot warmer and thicker and harder to take than the previous. With one drink left in the bottom of the bottle, Bun will instruct me in a fatherly tone, “Finish your blood,” and though the floating bits will make it damn near impossible to swallow, I will do as I’m told, with tears in my eyes.

Then we will drink several cans of Angkor beer, lie in hammocks and enjoy the breeze whizzing off the rice fields. Sherry will ask Bun about Cambodian weddings, and Bun will ask me about Obama, and I will ask Bun about Cambodia’s recent election. None of us will really pay too much attention to each other’s explanations. We’re all too full with the satisfaction that tomorrow we will wake up different people than we did today.

Links to a few of the videos, should you be so inclined: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=mR8pntlfVXc http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=doRPtQxN8zw

For the Record

I love Japan. And I love living in Japan, despite what my previous grumblings about old people in sun hats and censorship on pubic hair might have misled. (Really, I was only pissed that the dry cleaner was closed when I went to pick up my suit.) But even given my affinity for this country, teaching is an entirely different matter, and a career change that I anticipated would be immensely rewarding has been largely discouraging. Imagine, if you will, trying to explain to a confused and increasingly frightened Japanese child the verb ‘do’, one of the most fundamental words in the English language, without just flailing your goddamn arms about. So, ‘What did you do on Saturday?’ becomes, 'What (questioning shrug) did you (point point point) do (goddamn flailing) on Saturday (point to calendar)? Clearly, teaching is meant for someone with much more patience, tenderness and better control of their profanity, and it came to me one recent morning as I sat Indian style with a duck puppet on my left hand, calmly watching my student lick the bottom of his own foot: I don’t want to do this anymore. Around about the same time Sherry and I received matching folded letters in matching green envelopes from the corporate office. Mine was addressed to Brandon Sensei, Sherry’s to Sherry Sensei, and they were offers to renew our contracts for another year. Sherry and I conferred in a smoke-filled restaurant over a dinner of crab pizza and pork kimchee. I took a sip of my whiskey and she says ‘I want to quit’, and I say ‘I need to go to the bathroom but I don’t know where my shoes are’, and with that it was settled. The Jansas are coming home. We will return after the first of the year, which means I have approximately 5 months to master the art of ninja, embark on a mystical journey through the Shinto spirit realm and get a yakuza style back tattoo (Mt. Fuji set against the Cadillac insignia. Or vice versa). I will miss Japan tremendously, and reminiscences of our year here will remain a constant source of comfort throughout my life. But Sherry and I are ready for the next adventure. We miss family. We miss friends. And we have a small, white, mohawked pup at home whose absence has left a smoldering spot in our hearts, and who I'm anxious as all hell to get back to so I can have him plated with gold, chained, and hung around my neck in permanent adornment as if I were some bejeweled rapper from my iTunes playlist. Plus, I have a writing career to begin.

Troll

Uninspired. Haven’t felt much like writing. Discouraged. Two students told me the other day that I smelled. Then they said I was fat. Irritable. It’s rainy season and hot. Children are sticky and smell like pineapple. They form their fingers into guns and poke me in the anus. I don’t really care if they learn English anymore. I suppose this disheartened state I’ve found myself in is called homesickness. We’ve now been in Japan for five months, after all, and indeed there comes a time in all torrid romances when the kisses become routine, when the late night cuddling becomes cumbersome, the matching haircuts a bit misguided. Love loses its luster. Take big ears, for instance. Once so adorable on that girl you’ve been dating, holding her hair back so prominently, they were exactly what attracted you in the first place. So elfin and squishy between your fingers. But suddenly, while eating an IHOP breakfast, you notice that those ears look less elfin and more troll-like. It’s not that you love her any less, it’s just now you think she looks like a troll. So it is with my love affair with Japan. Love loses its luster. Dogs in peoples’ clothing. Old people in sun hats. The hours of the day being shown in military time. Censorship on pubic hair. These things have lost their charm as the months have gone by. And not a single person has mistaken me for Seth Green. Sigh. And yet, I keep reminding myself that these are the things I will miss when the time comes for me to leave this zany country. It’s like I tell Sherry when she complains of me overheating the taco shells or scratching my rear end for minutes on end. “One day I’ll be dead.” I say to her. “And these will be the very things you will miss most.” So it goes.

Brandon, you're shameful

It was the end of a long and tiresome day of PowerPoint presentations, team building exercises and whatnot when we all gathered for a happy hour of sorts in a bare banquet hall under fluorescent lighting. We milled about and greedily clutched dark beer bottles in our mits. Everyone unbuttoned their top button and loosened their necktie, took big satisfying gulps of beer and released long hissing exhalations between exhausted headshakes and bobbing, deflated shoulders. A communal sense of being human once again began creeping over our group, and we slowly began to recapture our individual identity by sharing college stories and quoting Office Space and high-fiving when the occasion called for it. With more full gulps of beer, the enthusiastic clicking of toasted beer bottles and an increased joviality, I decided to take my pants off, because I simply couldn’t be bothered with them any longer. Minutes later the doors swung open and in strutted – poised and dutiful – the former and current President Bush, flanked by the former and current First Lady and a stoic team of trained killers and bodyguards eyeing us each distrustfully. The mood quickly shifted, and we all began buttoning our top buttons and tightening our neckties and beaming toothy grins. I looked around frantically for my pants, which were nowhere to be found, and a line formed and we all made our way single file, as if through a receiving line, to introduce ourselves to our startling guests. Pantsless, I tried to blend in. I first introduced myself to the former President and apologized for not having my pants on. I didn’t know you were coming, I explained. It’s ok, he said, and on down the line I was shuffled, not being permitted to say hello to the First Ladies. I then introduced myself to the current President. We shook hands, and he repeated my name back to me, mispronouncing it. I respectfully corrected him, but he seemed unconcerned and unapologetic. I was, after all, not wearing any pants. I remembered this dream this morning while reading Jack Kerouac on a heated toilet seat and had to write it down at once.

Mits

Recently, one balmy Sunday afternoon, Sherry and I lay in bed delighting lazily in each other’s company and discussing any number of the infinite topics a drowsy couple in love might discuss on such an afternoon. The sunlight fanning in through the curtained windows. The air conditioner hissing indifferently. Sherry on her back, and I on my side facing away, she reaches over and touches my bare shoulders then creeps her hand around and begins rubbing my chest. I suddenly sit up with a jerk. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demand. “What?” “You were fondling me like I have tits!” “What? No I wasn’t. I was caressing you.” I narrow my eyes at her, guarded and accusing. “No, you were groping me the way I grope you. Pervert.” There’s a brief staring contest. The corners of Sherry’s mouth pull up in an ever so subtle smirk, almost unnoticeably, and I eye her with distrust before lying down and rolling back over. “My body is chiseled and taut. I’m a man of wax.” I grumble. “I don’t have man tits. I don’t have mits.” “I know, love." She says. "I know.”

Hello.

A Japanese girl in a bunny suit corrected my English this evening. In one of the Universe’s neat moments of serendipity, we found ourselves walking side by side and exiting the train station together. She looked at me, and I looked back at her. In addition to wearing a bunny suit, she was missing her eyebrows. “Hi.” She said. “Hello.” “Nice to meet you.” She said. “Nice to meet you.” Pause. “Too.” She added, helping me along with my response. Right. I thought for a moment about explaining to her that the weighty intonation I put on you at the end of my response was enough to imply too or also or as well, whichever your preference may be. I also briefly thought about explaining to her that we hadn’t actually met yet, seeing as though no formal introduction or exchange of personal information had taken place. We had simply said hello to each other. Therefore her “nice to meet you” was premature and jumping a few steps ahead of the natural conversational flow. But this tedious explanation would fall on deaf ears, I supposed, not to mention make me a real dick. And it was nice to meet her. So I simply flashed my winning American smile and strolled off into the night, repeating to myself over and over so I wouldn’t forget the line in my head. A Japanese girl in a bunny suit corrected my English this evening. A Japanese girl in a bunny suit…