TWO WEEKS LATER, THE moon hits an appropriate phase for dog eating one night while I'm in Nha Trang, a coastal beach town on the South China Sea. I begin spending my evenings cruising on a rented moped in search of thit cho restaurants. I find several places that have been closed since Tet, but on my third night out one of these restaurants has its lights on. I look in the door and notice a dog hanging from a meat hook above the cash register.

The atmosphere inside is a world apart from the buzz of the dog restaurants two weeks ago; the difference reminds me of that between a neighborhood bar on a Saturday night and the same joint midday Monday. This place has a scattering of men in their twenties and thirties, sitting around smoking cigarettes and drinking beer over plates of grilled dog and mam tom.

The sight of a Westerner traipsing into a dog restaurant is causing a ruckus. I'm toasted many times. One of the waitresses, who speaks
English, says, "Vietnam man like American who be one of them." I look at the plates of dog meat and think, In that case, they might not like me.

By now I've put much of the mystery of dog meat behind me, or at least I know enough to know that I'll never understand. I've pressed dozens of Vietnamese about the issues of luck and the mysterious heat, and I've gotten dozens of different answers.

Cham gives me the most thorough explanation of the phenomenon. "There are three unlucky foods," he says. "Duck is unlucky because the duck is stupid. Squid is unlucky because they have black ink. Dog is unlucky because ..." Cham proceeds to tell a story that I've never heard from anyone else, nor will ever find any reference to: Long ago, a man violated the Buddhist prohibition against meat offerings and laid the flesh of a dog on an altar. The smell so insulted the monks that it became bad luck to eat dogs.

"Then why is it good luck at other times of the month?" I ask.

"Because most animals will go away from man, but a dog will come to him. The dog is our friend, and that makes the dog lucky."

Mai tells me the story of her brother. He used to eat dog every month because he was unable to have a child. Then, ten years ago, his son was born. With this piece of luck, he quit eating dog.

I ask, "If the dog helped bring him good luck, then why not keep eating it to get even more good luck?"

"Now he has the good luck," she says. "He doesn't need dog."

I start to think of dog meat as kind of like electricity. Electricity is powerful and helpful, but it can burn and kill, so we use it with incredible caution, and for many purposes. When someone's having a heart attack, a sudden bolt of electricity might resuscitate him. However, that doesn't mean it's always a good thing. After all, a shock of electricity can give a healthy person a heart attack.

You might not find many Vietnamese who would totally agree with my analogy or even understand it. But I've spent a couple of weeks trying to assemble a cohesive comprehension of the nuances of dog meat, and that's the best I can do. As I sit down to my last meal of dog and look around, it occurs to me that the men in this restaurant would have a very difficult time understanding my own feelings about dog. I imagine getting up and telling them about Bo-Bo II the beagle, and maybe even Muffin Man's limp little foot. I'd get laughed right out of the restaurant.

My meal comes. One dish holds little strips of dog dredged in sesame seeds and grilled to a crisp. The other has cross sections of boiled dog leg, not unlike Christmas ham. I lift some crispy dog with my chopsticks and chew it up. Then I have another strip. Then I have a piece of boiled dog. I'm trying to will myself into a nonchalant attitude—just a guy in a restaurant eating his meal. I can't do it. I'm forcing it down, and it is not enjoyable. At this point, I've answered for myself the question I wanted answered: If your culture and your culinary curiosities go head to head, culture's going to win. It'll win even if you're rooting against it.

The only thing left is the heat. It has risen in my chest just like I knew it would. I concentrate on the heat, as though I might someday have to describe it to a doctor. It's not the spices. I believe it's more psychosomatic, equal parts adrenaline, fear, and shame. It's centered right on my heart.