Hai La Masa, An Essay Published in Proximity

This essay, Hai La Masa, appeared originally in Issue #20 of Proximity, and was included later in the collection How The Quiet Breathes. 

It was also translated into Romanian and published in 2020 in Issue #4 of Scrisul Romanesc of Craiova

Find the published English version here: https://proximitymagazine.org/project/6-flynn/

Below are the first three paragraphs

Hai La Masa, by John Michael Flynn

Hai la masa! Hey you, get to the table! My Romanian wasn’t half bad, and I got the gist.

I sat with Vasya, who upon our first meeting had embraced me enthusiastically with his hairy, muscular arms. A gregarious, brawny village Moldovan with long pork-chop sideburns and wild black hair, he decided at that moment to open a bottle of White Stork cognac made in Bâlţi, a city an hour northeast of his village. It was nine o’clock in the morning. I sat there and drummed up all the ways to say, “no way in hell” in Romanian.

Vasya wasn’t having any of it. We were at table. Time to eat and drink and talk. He had friends in Bâlţi. Telling me about them, he downed a few brisk shots of cognac, toasting their health. He expected me to drink, as well, to match him shot for shot, and I started out okay, doing my best to ignore the hour....

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The pictures below were taken by me at various times in Moldova