September 12, 2009; Down Low

Keeping a low profile

When I was in the pound there was a rottweiler who had a more interesting sad story. (We all had our sad stories...yawn.)

He had belonged to a young, female student and he'd been given to her by her parents when she went away to university; his job was to protect her from the vicissitudes of the big city which the parents saw as blighted by crime and loose morals. But they needn't have worried; all the girl did was study, study, study and use the dog as a kind of sounding board for her work at school. Two things happened: the dog became amazingly erudite and the dog became progressively more squirrely. Needless to say, the poor beast needed to get outside and run about but she didn't really have the time and so once a day, near the end of the day, she would play with him and it was wild and mad and all it did was get him flustered and jumped up just before bedtime. In bed, the girl would go back to the books and he would try desperately to simmer down, licking his own dick like a contortionist queer on E.

Then, one day—and as happens to all reds (what we, in my world, call rotts)—the hound grew up—big and muscular—and the play was likewise. He bit her face, rather badly, and she brought him to the SPCA.

There, in the pen across from me, he awaited his fate with all the nihilism the dog of a philosophy student could have. He explained to me the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her famous stages of grief (as he felt he was not only mourning his lost mistress but also awaiting the death that was surely and inevitably his as a biter). He explained he had passed through denial and anger, bargaining and depression (all this while the eggheaded little cunt was crying about her mutilated face and setting up the trip to the pound); he had done so in a series of simple acts—saying to himself, "She can't possibly do this...she loves me" then pissing on the floor and chewing a rug when he heard her pursue her plans, then sucking up to her like a jonesing crack whore, then just staring out the window and yay-yo-ing like like the broads in a Greek tragedy.

There, in the pound, he was accepting. (All for naught, as it turned out, 'cause the people at the SPCA saw his inner goodness and placed him with a nice couple covered in tattoos, torn leather and denim, and a-bristle with pointy things.)

All this to say that I must have been on crack when I wrote the last blog entry, and right now I would be more than happy if Mook A got hit by a bus. Indeed, I suspect Mook B would be similarly relieved if the bastard bit it because in the last few days he has been tearing around the stages of grief like a hyperactive housebound poodle with a flea up her cooter and has settled on anger. Sure he did a little bit of the other stages, in his own Mookie way.

Bargaining came in a convo with a nurse. Her: You might consider giving up smoking in preparation for the operation. Him: Not in a million fucking years.

Denial was this little diatribe. "Do you think God and the medical community can find more fucking ways of fucking torturing me? I cannot believe what the fuck is happening to me again—it can't be true! I keep thinking I'll wake up from it, but nooooooooo there the shit is on the breakfast table and just because you put maple syrup on the shit doesn't make it a motherfucking pancake, does it!"

That's when the anger kicks in...or rather, the rage. "Answer me! Does syrup turn a pile of steaming shit into a motherfucking pancake! Give up fucking smoking? Why don't I go out with a fucking bazooka and start smoking a few asses, while I'm at it? There's a whole world of fuckbrains who should share the misery, don't you think!" Then the list is elaborated upon: politicians (like the one who called Obama a liar), blue collar criminals (he'd like to dig up Ken Lay and kill him again) and the guy on the bike who didn't observe the stop sign and nearly mowed us both down during a walk (which was not a walk so much as a forced march with His Lordship muttering and bitching the whole time).

Mook B and I are doing our level best to stay out of his way—hiding in the bedroom, doing pretend work, not making too much noise...ever! But there is the bellowing A with his epic fits of wrath—cursing the fates and using language (in two languages—three if you count the gibberish) that is teaching even me a few tricks about blue material. The five-act opera with overture and ballet he performed for us over a fork left in the sink, yesterday, would have shamed a fat Callas and a chorus of castrati.

All we can do, of course, is wait it out. I thought the sobbing was bad, but this is absolutely mind-bending worse.

The only thing to be hoped for is a slip of the knife, on September 24th, and the two of us can stop sleeping with one eye open.