Kangaroo Mama & the Boy Scout

An excerpt from the China chapter of Kangaroo Mama & the Boy Scout Tom and I have never compared notes on exactly what thoughts were coursing through our individual heads during our anxiety-filled night in Chengdu, but I remember quite clearly that I was convinced that, any second, the local vice squad was going to come storming through the door of our hotel room and mete out the Chinese government's standard punishment whenever two men were identified as being homosexual: Chain them to a ramshackle pagoda on the outskirts of some small village in a distant province, slather their bodies with fresh goat blood, and send in a pack of freakishly skinny, half-starved dogs to have their way with the errant ho-hos.