Our Only Friend...

In my last post, I mentioned my desire to try, or rather, my acceptance to partake in, eating dog meat. In Korea, dog meat is a delicacy, mostly carried on by the elders, and shunned by the younger generations who can’t get past the idea of digesting anything resembling man’s best friend, no matter how amazing it tastes. The old men I meet say it’s delicious. At least the dogs, a special breed used for their tender meat quality, are a breed I don’t recognize.
Now, I’ve already eaten live octopus tentacles – swimming and squirming around on the plate in front of me, sucking onto surfaces before my chopsticks pry them off, until they’re in my mouth grabbing hold of my teeth and tongue as my incisors deal the kill stroke – and, well, unknowingly gobbled on some chewy chicken anus before realizing the dish in front of me was, in actuality, exactly what it... gulp, looked like.
I was ready. Not pumped, stoked or excited, but, curious, I guess. Why not? Right? We breed cows, pigs, chickens and other cuddly animals for slaughter. Why get all picky then when some Koreans want to throw Pluto on the barbecue?
A bus ride down the highway last week was all I needed to understand.
I was listening to Radiohead through my headphones, leaning my head against the giant window, closing my eyes in the hopes of catching some sleep amidst a bus full of drunk, and still drinking, westerners, when I came to the revelation that it was no use. I sat up, mouthed the next few Yorke lyrics, then double-took a glance out the window.
It was the typical beat-to-shit-blue cargo truck I’d seen swerving in and out of traffic practically every other hazy Korean day, but what made me look back the second time, and question whether to keep staring or turn back around and vomit into my friend’s lap, was a series of cages overflowing with mangled brown dogs, stacked one on top of the other, maybe six deep, limbs, fur and anything else skinny enough protruding through the chain link prison.
Why would you put dead dogs in cages? I thought, trying to remain rational despite the site. After a closer look: Oh, they aren’t all dead. Fuck, man.
One dog stared out at me blankly through pitch black eyes, as if it had abandoned all hope days, maybe weeks, ago. Rationality flew out the air vents. My heart hurt. I couldn’t return the dog’s stare for more than a few seconds, but he had all the time in the world to gaze at me.
We didn’t understand each other, but we had our assumptions. I looked scared, naïve even, in his presence, but still a creature with emotions. A decent owner perhaps. But such potential was being shuttled away from a weekend of mindless debauchery back to a job that had grown tiring and stagnant in a country thousands of miles from home.
He understood my fears, but he’d been there, gotten over it, moved on, metaphorically at least.
He looked unconcerned, accepting even, of his fate, on his way to the end, finally, maybe, after years of a forlorn existence squished between, beside and beneath brethren, unable to stand, walk, run, or move. He’d be tastier that way.
Maybe we both knew, but didn’t dare admit it.
With both our ends in sight, the sun sets in the west. While man sits down to a plateful of his best friend, we have not each other, all we have is the end.