Seattle, 2000s
I had fallen asleep on a couch while Kai was playing in a friend’s living room on New Year’s Eve. The party seemed to be dying down, people had started leaving and it was well past midnight. I had no competition left for the couch.
When I woke up, there were people sitting on my feet, people sitting on the arm rest, and people leaning over the back of the couch. There were dancers and tambourine players and at least two accordions. There was a two-year-old with a bottle clapping out a polka, and no one was speaking English.
For a minute I felt like I was having my own “It’s a Wonderful Life” and, as it turned out, had I never been born, the cold war would have ended very differently. It was four o’clock in the morning and I didn’t know it yet, but I had just started a new chapter of my life with the band–this was the Bucharest Drinking Team.
