Hello, My Name Is Tristan

The thing is: I can make this story hilarious. There are wild gesticulations and crocodile tears and three different voices, as well as a punch line about why Sober Tristan still has asthma. I can spin any of Drunk Tristan’s exploits until my listeners cry from laughter. Bits about Drunk Tristan kill. I didn’t quit drinking the first time I got thrown out of a bar, nearly thirteen years ago. The Devlins were playing an encore, and I decided to rush the stage and climb on an amp.

We Were Happy

“Now, when you go out of the house,” I say to my two new American students, “You move your object to the lower shelf.” I put the pewter fish on the lower desk shelf to show them. “You see? Here. I am the fish, so when I leave, I put it here.” The white girl is nodding, but the black one looks confused. Liz. Kiara. I must learn their names. “And when I come home, I put it again on the top shelf, like so.” I demonstrate. “Okay? You understand?”

Fellowship

That should have been the end of it. An unexciting stop on an otherwise interesting journey. Unfortunately, I had not kept an eye on Ruby. While the rest of us had been gnawing fried bread and swatting flies, she had been chatting away with our hosts in a manner that was far too loose and animated to be strictly decent from a Kyrgyz perspective. They seemed taken with her — the man, his mother, his sisters, and his aunts. So taken that when we all stood up to go, they said she should stay.