November 29, 2010; Travels

I was sitting on my little raised bed (an ottoman) and I was strangely hypnotized by Skeeter's game, World of Warcraft. I couldn't hear anything as he was wearing his headset but his computer screen was a lightshow of explosions and little cartoon people fighting and killing and flying about and riding on what looked like fucking rhinos.

Later, I was in the La-Z-Boy with him as he tapped away on his iPad; doing his Facebook thing and Twitter thing and all sorts of things in a strange world in the air. Finally I had to say something. "You spend a lot of time elsewhere."

"Yes," he said, pretty much ignoring me and tapping away.

"Why?"

"'Cause."

"WHY!" I barked.

He gave me that impatient noise he gives Boo-Boo when he's reading and Boo wants to talk job, but he added the impatient face and the hysterically impatient sigh and finally stopped tapping away. "What the fuck do you want to know?"

"Why?"

"Because it helps me to escape this wretched world and even deal with it."

"Isn't that what travel is for?"

"Yes, and I did that before I was forced to go to a clinic three times a week, and besides, from what I read and hear, even if I could travel I'm not sure I'd want to."

"Why?"

"Stories about these new security measures in airports. One guy was patted down so hard his appliance came away and he had to board the fucking plane in a pair of piss-wet pants. He's come out publically and I admire him so much for that. And there's a guy in the network I'm part of online who had another agent who insisted he take off his appliance and he did and the agent actually barfed. The guy told this in a funny way but both stories just make me enraged!"

"Have you noticed you're like that a lot these days?"

"That's where WoW—"

"—World of Warcraft—"

"—helps. I can be in another place and when the anger of the real world gets to me, I can kill shit."

"Yee-ikes...kill shit."

"Well, that's how I feel sometimes, little one. But I do miss travel. I miss that sweet, sunny April day in front of the statue of Peter Pan in London, watching people exploring the bronze with their hands..."

And his voice petered off and he stared out into his darkness. "Snap out of it!" I bellowed. "You sound like fucking Mimi in La Bohème with her fucking spring flowers except you ain't going to fucking die of consumption in Act III. You aren't in fucking Haiti dying of cholera. You're not even your fucking blind girlfriend with diabetes. Get a grip!"

He stared at me then said, "You're right."

"When are you going to learn I am always right."

"And I will travel again someday," he said.

"Yes."

"And leave your little white butt in a kennel and be away from your mean fucking temperament for a bit."

"WHAT?!?! KENNEL?!?!"

He gave me a peck on the head and said, "I am impressed by your knowledge of opera."

"Just don't start with the fucking Wagner. And what's this with the kennel. No fucking kennel. I want to stay with Cate."

"Oh, my little idiot, everyone loves you, no one wants you."

"But you need me," I said.

"Oh sure I do," he said with more than a whiff of sarcasm.

November 26, 2010; The Lesson

We came home in silence, Skeeter cleaned off my feet in silence, and he settled into his L-Z-Boy—without me—in silence. I took a chance and hopped up onto his lap and into my little place, wedged between his tonnage and the chair.

"You've got some fucking nerve," he muttered, quietly but clearly enraged.

"So you're talking to me now."

"Don't push it. I'm telling you, Leo, I could rip your fucking head off. If there hadn't been so many witnesses, I'd've grabbed you by the tail and thrown you into traffic."

"You're a violent, violent man."

"And you're one mean little dog."

"Mean! What did I do?"

"OH, YOU CAN SELL THAT FALSE PIETY SOMEWHERE ELSE!" he bellowed.

"Look, is it my fault that dog was so stupid?"

"That fucking animal, stupid or not, was busy and I know—I JUST KNOW!—you set out to distract it."

"All I said was, 'How're you doing?'"

"OH MY FUCKING STARS AND GARTERS!! YOU ARE SUCH A LITTLE...FUCKING...LIAR!!!"

He was right, of course. The minute I saw that caniche royal/special Olympian cross I knew I could have some fun. I saw him coming and he was concentrating so hard on what he was doing, his ears so attuned to his surroundings, his eyes seeing a mile ahead; I knew that anything I did or said would send him into a lather. "Hey, suckface! Are you tied to that one forever or can you stop being a bumboy and get rid of him in traffic?"

"Leave me alone!" the CR whimpered, guiding along with all the focus, now, of a horny fruitfly.

Because yes, dear readers, the big, galumphing idiot was a guide dog in training and was leading a blind dude about with the trainer of both of them not too far behind. But I have very strict beliefs about working animals—as in, we shouldn't be. Skeet could sense trouble but as he does not talk Dog Speak he was just yanking me away instead of verbally intervening. But I didn't need contact with the other dog to fluster him. I just had to say, "That's it! That's it! Slave away for the Man, Princess."

Now the stunned pooch was looking at me instead of ahead and—boom!—the blind feller tripped on the curb and fell flat on his face. Nothing was hurt except the useless guide dog's dignity but Skeeter nevertheless apologized profusely and carted me home. I could hear the stupid son of a bitch (literal use here) squealing at me, "Look what you did! You made me fuck up! They're going to can me for sure, you bastard!"

"Stop being a pussy!" I hurled back and snerfed with satisfaction.

But Skeeter was mad. The silence on the La-Z-Boy was clinging. "Look," I began.

"If you try to justify what you did, I can't help what I might do—"

"Oh! Simmer down—"

"—they invested thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into that dog and you fucked everything up in a minute."

I've learned, with Skeeter, you have to take the upper hand and fast. "Now look, clearly that dog was not prepared for street training and probably was not meant to be a working dog—"

"—you're an insufferable little shit, you know—"

"—and you can be very unkind to me!" And I made a sound he had never heard from me—a little, gentle and profoundly poignant sniff of sadness. It stopped him in his tracks. But here's the thing: I know Skeeter and, unfortuneately, he's starting to know me. For instance, he knows he can rough-house with me—hard!—and I would die before crying out with pain or yelling, "Uncle." So it didn't take him long to figure out my little sniff of grief was a sham.

He stared at me. Would he kill me this time? There was a stare-down. Then I just curled a bit and closed my eyes, pretending to sleep.

He let out a long, deep sigh that probably prevented him from pitching a massive cardiac.

November 22, 2010; Gay Culture

Skeeter and I were, once again, cocooning in the La-Z-Boy, when he sparked up over something on TV (you can feel a shift in energy, when you're a dog who's trying to sleep). Then he started singing:

"Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day and certainly make it all seem worth while?
WELL IT'S YOU GIRL AND YOU SHOULD KNOW IT—"

I finally roared, "SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!" He did but when the Mary Tyler Moore show started he just hummed with happiness. I watched the show for a bit and then said, "This is so gay!"

He swatted me on the head and said, "It's no such thing!"

"Puh-leeze! It's Sex And The City without all the swearing and fucking."

"You're a little idiot," he said, swatting me again, "this is one of the most beloved series of all time—"

"—beloved by homos—"

Another swat and, "Look, I know it's not gay because I watched it with my father, religiously, every week. It was after my mother died and it was one of the few things that made him laugh hard."

"That's very touching. Did your dad also like Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand?"

"As a matter of fact he did!" But Skeeter got the suggestion and growled, "You're an asshole and wrong. He was not only a Catholic but also an officer in the army—"

"—the Canadian army—"

"—what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Isn't that one of those queer armies?" Another swat. "Stop doing that or so help me God I'll rip your bags off; skin and plastic!"

"Shut up, it's back." And he went back to Mary and the gang at WJM. After it ended, he was still humming but I had to know: "Why do all the gays like Liza and Judy and Barbra and Cher and opera?"

"We don't all; I don't like Cher—"

"—but a lot—"

"Yes. True. It's one of the stereotypes that still has a kind of truth behind it. I don't know why but we all seem to like these things from a very young age. I read an article once that said it had something to do with huge, loud emotions and how we, gay men, when we're young and in the closet have to keep our real emotions very small and hidden, mostly. There's something both right and wrong about that explanation. Not sure what, though."

"Hm..."

"Oh, look! Rhoda's on!" he squeaked and if I was feeling mean I'd say girlishly. Soon, in the program, there was a scene with Rhoda and her husband Joe in bed and Skeet hummed but not with contentment but with that thing he has when he sees a hairy chest. "Now this is gay," I said.

"Hm?" he said.

I went back to sleep and he went back somewhere over the rainbow.

November 18, 2010; Yogi's Cat

We were curled up on the La-Z-Boy and he was ignoring me—tapping away on his fucking iPad.

"Watcherdoin'?"

"Not much," he muttered and continued doing it AND ignoring me.

"I'm boooooooooooooored!"

"Go to sleep," he said.

"Look, despite what you've heard dogs do not sleep all the fucking time. We need to be entertained, or didn't you read that in your Googling."

"Oh God!" he sighed deeply. "If you must know I'm Facebooking. Right now I'm sending a note to my friend Yogi whose cat is very sick."

"Yogi? A CAT!!!"

"She's heard about you and I've heard about the cat and we share our stories on Facebook."

"A CAT?!?!"

"It's Yogi's cat!"

"And you've known this Yogi for a long time?"

"Yup. We spent an afternoon together once. I was higher than her and could protect her and so we went to all the dangerous places in Kalimdor and fished and I took her to flightpoints in Feralas and Desolace..." His voice petered out as it does with the sad, old and nostalgic. I didn't understand a word he said.

Then...

Then...

OH MY FUCKING STARS!!! World of Fucking Warcraft! "This is another one of your imaginary friends!—"

"—virtual friends—"

"—whatever. Do you ever live in the real world? Concern yourself with real things?"

"The fact that Yogi's cat is sick worries me."

"WHY?!?!?!"

"Because she's a real person and we like each other and she knows about Boo and you and, by the way—despite all she's heard—she likes you."

Hm....well, that was something even if she was a cat lover. "You've been tapping away an awful lot. Is it all about that cat?"

"No," he said and then he had a thin, grim smile—like a slasher-movie killer might get before jumping out of the closet to finish the deed. "I'm settling scores." Ooooooh! Now this sounded juicy. He didn't need prodding. "I was a freelancer at a daily. Always been happy as a freelancer and had no ambition to be anything more. But there was this one cow at the paper who just took a disliking to me. She had no logical reason except she was a tired, old, unionized-up-the-twat bitch who didn't like freelancers. She never once gave up making my life miserable. The weirdest this is that before she began this vendetta she was an okay journalist, but she put so much energy in her hatred toward me and a thousand more largely-imagined miseries that it showed in her writing. Her opinions—she was a columnist—become dull and badly-written. She became guilty of the worst sin of journalism—where you have to be a short-form artist: her work got flabby. She could spend ten paragraphs describing something before squashing in her opinion in the last two. But her vendetta had all the gusto her writing did not. When I got sick and then was laid off, I could almost hear her bitchy cackling."

"And Facebook...as in the point of this long-ass story?" I said.

He sighed with evident pleasure. "Her colleagues and friends are now all Friends of mine on Facebook. So now I can—utterly obliquely—rip her a new arsehole."

"How?"

"By praising her coworkers and saying things like, 'His writing has an elegance you don't see anywhere else in the paper.'"

"You live in an angry little world, don't you?"

"Not at all! It's pure sideshow amusement. I have lots and lots of good friends on Facebook and in World of Warcraft - "

"—like Yogi—"

"—like Yogi—"

"—and her fucking cat." He said nothing. "Just out of curiousity, what's this cat's name?"

"Taffy."

"Oh! For fuck's sake—why not a normal name! Why can't cats be normal?!?!?!"

"You assume you are normal..." he said.

"...and?"

"No animal on two, four or eight legs is like you."

There was a long silence and I said, "You've just insulted me with utter obliqueness, haven't you?"

"NEVER!" he protested.

Too much.

November 15, 2010; Politically Incorrect

We were watching a talkshow on television where some Parisian was pontificating on some damn thing or another—I'm not sure what, as I was half-snoozing and his grating voice and pinched accent was penetrating my rest—when I said, "Good Lord! these frogs are annoying!"

"Excuse me!" Skeeter and Boo-Boo said in unison.

"Oh! don't start!" I said.

"Frogs?" Boo started anyway.

"Get a grip, you're not a frog, you're French-Canadian!" I barked.

"Excuse me!" Boo bellowed.

"Jayzus, here we go," I muttered.

"No one says French-Canadian anymore," Skeet said.

"Okay, you're a pepsi, then!" I said.

"My God!" Boo nearly shrieked. "It's getting worse!"

"Look," I began, "maybe I'm wrong about the frog thing. That may be racist...But I thought it was like with the darkies—"

"—STOP THAT!—" Skeet screamed.

"—negroes—" I recovered.

Skeet picked me up and shouted into my face (incidentally spraying my beard with spittle), "MY GOD! HOW STUPID ARE YOU?!?!?!"

"Okay! Go for it! What's the right word this week?"

There was a long silence as they wondered if it was "African American", "Black", "people of colour", "Afro-American" or something else and I said, "You see? Now may I make my point, please. I thought I could say anything I wanted about gays, French-Canadians or white people (like frogs) because you—and by extension I—are all three. Like when Blacks use the n-word to each other."

There was a little silence and then Skeet said, "Not quite.On the white people, for instance; you can't say wop or spic—"

"—don't be a dink," I countered, "those are people of colour so of course I wouldn't say that. But krauts, frogs, limeys—"

"My God!" Boo said, "you're a foul little beast. I'm so glad you can talk."

There was another long silence and they stared at me as Boo tried to form an argument. Then he said, "Bottom line: you don't use any of those words. You are right, however, about people using some words like that amongst their own. Also, even if you are not part of a certain group, if people know where you're coming from they might make allowances."

"Hunh?"

"For instance," he went on, "I let my friend Robin talk about fags around me because I know she's a hard-core leftist, a feminist and she's goofing on me."

"So, where do I stand, here?" I asked. "What am I allowed to say about gays, for instance."

"We'll have to see about that," Boo said.

"Speaking about feminists," I said, "what about words like 'twat' and 'cunt'?"

"Hm..." Boo said.

Skeet said, "Well, look—and this is very personal to me, and as a writer—but for me those are simply hard words, not necessarily sexist. They're the last line of insult. In my opinion, again, they're like the word fuck and its variants used to be: taboo and used only in very special circumstances—hard insult. And not just for women. Guys can be real cunts too."

"Jeez..."

"What?" Boo asked.

"It's confusing."

"And another thing," Skeet said, "people chose what they want to be called. People of colour can decide—when they want!—that one word is no longer right and that's it. No discussion. When I was a kid, 'Negro' was the right word, now it's very much not and that's that. Got it?"

"Humans are fucked," I said. "And when you hear someone using a racial epithet what do you do?"

"I call it out."

There was a little silence and then I got a flash of blinding light. "And the other night, when Bill Maher was comparing stupid Americans to dogs and you were laughing your ass off...?"

"Well, dogs—" Boo started.

"Yes, 'Well, dogs'," I mocked.

And that ended the conversation among my fellow animal lovers and meat-eaters.

November 11, 2010; Delicious Crap

It's Remembrance Day and I am remembering my old pal, Frank, who was only old enough to serve in Korea but was refused when he volunteered because he had a bum ticker from childhood rheumatic fever. But he was a warrior in his own odd way: he loved war movies. But even odder: the worse the movie, the more he liked it. He cackled like mad at pieces of crap like The Green Berets with John Wayne but had no time for great films like Saving Private Ryan. He once said, "Movies are no fucking good if they try to be true. Truth is for books where the imagination offers something resembling the reality of the horror. With a film you can always say, 'It's only a film' and so something like Private Ryan with all its crazy pacing and violence can be accepted like any old slasher movie."

Because of this strange little philosophy Frank had a penchant for really shit movies. What was good, too, was that the video store near our apartment had a huge selection of great crap and we watched mountains of these things like they were eye and ear candy.

And what do you know...?!?!

So does Skeeter.

I was curled up with him on the La-Z-Boy as he was flipping around on the TV when he barked, "YAY! I've always wanted to see this!"

And there it was, in all it's wondrous, hideous beauty: The Exorcist II; Heretic! Oh! my friends, this was a joy for the lover of deliciously awful films and, suddenly, I liked Skeeter a whole lot more for within minutes we were both weeping with laughter. The film was "directed" by that guy who actually did the great Deliverance except when he made Heretic he must have been drunk. In fact everyone must have been drunk and you know, for a fact, the film's star was pissed out of his brains; I mean Richard Burton is like some zombie in a film that has nothing to do with zombies! But the cherry on the sundae is that there is this machine in the film that is supposed to be a real scientific discovery. The invention puts two people into a shared hypnotic state but it's basically a couple of Walmart belts strapped around the subjects' heads attached with string to some gadget that flashes light and makes weird noises. And here's the man who was considered to be the Great White Hope of British acting wearing a mind-meld boop boop machine! And then he tries to talk religion (as he plays a priest) with the machine's inventor (played with delightful retardation by Oscar winner Louise Fletcher) and what does she say? "Father, let's stick to science!" as the noise of the mind-meld boop boop machine still echos over the scene. Well that was it for Heretic as Skeet and I were just shrieking with merriment.

For the hour after the film was done Skeeter and I shared moments of "great" movie-making:

- all the films of Ed Wood, but especially Plan Nine From Outer Space (where Bela Lugosi dropped dead during the making of the film and was replaced by a guy who covered his face with his cape but who was a head taller than Lugosi)

- most of the Elvis oeuvre but especially that scene in Viva Las Vegas with Ann-Margret water-skiing in her nylons

- high camp musicals of the 70s and 80s but especially Xanadu

- Alexander (the film that proves bad movies are not necessarily low-budget): the gayest of gay films even before you get to the gay stuff

- Roger Corman films

What doesn't qualify:

- Films with Sandra Bullock, Adam Sandler or, especially, Rob Schneider because they're just bloody awful, not deliciously awful.

So Skeeter and I have found a game, a shared interest and peace and joy reigns in the land. Bless you, Linda Blair.

November 8, 2010; Autumn Thoughts

I didn't even realize I was doing it until Boo-Boo was asking me for an explanation.

We were out walking and it was a glorious autumn day—not too cold, but crisp and madly sunny which made the colours of the leaves on the ground, now, nutty-bright—which meant that everyone was outside. It was a weekend day so the world was battening down the hatches, preparing for winter: raking leaves, putting those strange sacks on the shrubbery, putting in the storm windows on the older houses and just generally tidying up the space that would soon be three feet of snow hiding mountains of dog shit. The weather also meant that the old folks—and the neighbourhood is rife with them—were out on their porches, sitting in the sun, or toddling with their dogs, saying hello to everyone.

That's when Boo noticed. There are a bunch of old men on the street who remind me of my last owner, the late, great Frank and because of this—when I first met them—I gave them the full cutesed-out treatment: the dancing, the licking, the jumping up and down, the nibbling on their fingers. Because it was so whorish, all of these men fell in love with me. I became the street's dog. There was the retarded janitor of the building at the end of the street. There was the neighbourhood pal and fix-it man across and down from us. There was the old, queer codger who is in and out of hospital and who truly adores me because I remind him of the little dog he had to get rid of when he got sick. At the beginning, when I saw them I ran up to them and we made each other happy (in the non-Biblical sense, if you know what I mean and I think you do). Then I simmered down. I would go and say hello, but I no longer did the whole five-act opera with overture and ballet.

Then they just said hello and I just nodded. I didn't even realize it had become like this 'til Boo mentioned it. "You're breaking their hearts. You're one of the lights of their lives, you know."

I sighed and said, "Do I need that?"

And that's when it hit me: I don't need all the love but that never prevented me from seeking it before and, even, of giving some to get it. You know what I mean: whorish.

Was it that I was getting enough affection and coddling at home? Well, no. The Boys were the same bitchy homos they had always been with problems to the ceiling into the bargain. Was it that I wasn't a puppy anymore and so didn't need to burn off all that energy? No. I still ran around the house like a fruitcake when I needed to and was always in the Boys' faces for walks, play or just energetic attention.

So what was it?

It was Frank. It was the whole thing of becoming attached. It was people disappearing. I mean, the three old men I had been nice to and, let's be frank, had liked a little too, were still there in all their stinky, lonely, old-guy glory. But something had happened on our street that I had noticed but the Boys had not.

There was a lady...

She looked desperately unhappy as she walked back and forth to the market or convenience store and it's no wonder because she had a widow's hump so pronounced she looked bent in two. She had always said hello to Skeet or Boo and me but that was all. And she's been gone for a long, long time.

Then there is the crazy Hungarian. He used to talk to me in baby talk in his native language (when he wasn't whipping out his dick to show Babs); he was more than half-senile. The other night someone with a flashlight was at his front door, banging on it in a kind of desperation that could only mean a few things: the old man had had his Great Passing or he had once and for all slipped into the dementia that had always been there to take him away permanently.

Then there is the cat lady or, rather, her mother. The older woman was always out there with her cat on a leash and I was friendly with both, if not crazy-loving. But something happened to her and she can't talk anymore and her stare is more vacant and she's so, so, old now. For all intents and purposes she, too, has disappeared.

I didn't share any of these thoughts with Boo nor, later, with Skeet. But I did wonder if humans were also like me: when they see the end coming for someone, they try to detach because the end is too hard. It's not sweet sorrow. It's just awful, full-blown sorrow. As I was sitting on the couch with Boo as the two of them watched their endless repeats of The New Adventures of Old Christine (Skeet has a non-boner crush on the Christines and full boner crush on Hamish Linklater), I realized something awful: my three old men on the street had let me go without a fight. They, too, had detached or, worse, had accepted that I had.

The next walk, with Skeeter, I ran into all three as it was a Sunday and it was a perfect day again. I went nuts on all their asses. I went so nuts Skeet had to rein me in because I wound the leash around the legs of two of them and threatened to take them down to the ground and maybe break their hips.

Skeeter and the old men were delighted but as we walked into the house Skeeter reminded, "You have to be careful with them you know, they're old and you could hurt them."

"Fuck it," I said, "that's life. You want the pleasure, you have to take the pain."