October 30, 2009; Couplehood

What it's about: being able to snooze

I was sitting with the Mooks watching one of those idiot talkshows which features the same-old, same-old when one of the guests, a D-list celebritard, decided she was going to expound on couplehood.

First she explained that she had several kids, each from a different man, and that the kids all had a relationship with their father but that none of the fathers lived with this woman. She also explained that she liked it this way and that it gave her, her various exes, and her children a sense of freedom. I thought, "My God, she'd make a great dog! Fucking whatever walks by when she's in heat, putting out a litter of puppies, and then getting on with her life until it was time to wave her little snatch into the wind to attract the next batch of horny males!"

But the silly cow would not shut up while she was ahead and went on to explain that she thought that monogamy did not work and that she had an ideal situation everyone envied and that everyone was happy in it.

As I listened to this little nit, I had a good long look at my local couple—the Mooks—and wondered what they were thinking about what she said and about how, after 16 (going on 17) years, they accessed their relationship. I mean, there are mobs of people—dicks in hand, fingers in twats—who will line up to tell you that couplehood does not work and that they are all doing what comes naturally to all animals: waving their weary, chapped gonads at anyone who might sniff. But is this really true?

The Mooks, as I may have mentioned, do not swing from the chandeliers naked or plow each other up against the stove when the mood strikes (and I am profoundly glad of it); but they have discussed the success or failures of their life together. Lately, because Mook A is sick and is deeply grateful to B just for being there, they seem content. Also, when B comes home from work and natters on endlessly about the people he has to deal with, A actually listens and B is pleased by this. I mean...this is something, isn't it? I suspect that the aforementioned quasi-famous dunce doesn't have much to talk about with her various exes (Kee-rist, she doesn't have much to say, period...), and I suspect her only form of communication is shooting something male a glimpse of her crotchless panties, falling on all fours and then singing a rousing chorus of "Let me smell yo dick."

Here, in La Maison Mook, beyond the "I'm sick" and "I hate my job" stuff, there is a very quiet communication and I am a central part of it. These guys are tired...a lot. Someone is always sleeping in the living room—A on the La-Z Boy or B on Couchzilla—and whoever is not sleeping lives around it. There is no resentment. How do I fit in? Well, it appears that it has become my job to jump up on whoever is sleeping and snore along with them. There is a kind of peace.

Occasionally, when they are not tired (or eating—their second favourite passtime), they are discussing a movie or the news and really getting into it. I'm not saying they agree on everything (indeed, they agree on very little), but if you want to see the energy of couplehood looks and sounds like, this is when it happens.

Sure, in terms of mad, hole-driven fun the dithering TV twit is ahead in the race and, sure, there are more body fluids spurting about her place and, yes, her apartment probably has a more heady aroma (something like a crack whore's cooter), but I'll bet you good money that the starlet's kids are not nearly as centered or calm as I am (and that, in the future, one of them will make an appearance on a water-tower).

And another thing: when it comes to monogamy and couples and what have you, she doesn't have a fucking clue what she is talking about.

September 30, 2009; B

Even when you stare at them for hours, you don't always understand.

The nurses' visits each morning are still a lot of fun for me, but the same cannot be said for Mook A who, behind the closed doors of his bedroom, lets out some noises which are...well...animal-like. I try to see from the window of the bedroom, but the nurse is hunched so close to him that all I can see are shapes...like A's legs flying all over the place—I guess when the nurse is touching raw nerves as she works.

Though I accept that A is going through real pain, I also have to say this: he's the household's drama queen. Even when not actually in pain or being treated by the nurse, the man takes up a lot of space—if not as much physically anymore, emotionally every corner of the house has him in it. Whether he's laughing, crying or yelling (usually at me), it's kind of hard not to trip over him.

Which makes Mook B—the "partner"—more interesting.

As I have said in the past, I can't really get a read on the physical whys and wherefores of this particular couple, but I am beginning to get a bead on what makes them tick and a lot of it has to do with B. A is high-maintenance; B, from what I've seen, does the maintaining. A lot of what makes B interesting is stuff no one sees. For instance, when A is in the room with the nurse and B is not working and is present to hear what is going on, you can see all of his muscles tighten everytime A lets out a shout of pain. When A was in the hospital, last week, and B came home to feed me and walk me while waiting for the operation to be over, you could tell he was at loose ends...not sitting down and enjoying the blessed peace that A's absence brings about, but instead acting like there was a hole in the structure of our home that was all wrong and that was driving B crazy.

When A has one of his periodic crying jags, B holds him and lets him sob it out, but afterwards, when B and I are alone, you can tell that the echoes of A's sobs are still lingering in the air; B just holds me on his lap and stares out into a kind of darkness that often envelopes him...doesn't even respond when I try to tease him into playing with me.

Now don't get me wrong: it's not like B doesn't have his own little set of peculiarities. He can obsess on work, taking a job that A would polish off in the time it would take a tick to fart, and spinning the work into days and days of nervous sweats, rage and confusion. Also, B does have a tendency to zone out—be in the middle of a conversation with A and then respond like they're having a conversation about something completely different. (This drives A hilariously mental. If I didn't know better, I would think B did this kind of thing just to re-establish the upper hand in the relationship; keep A off balance.) Also, as I've said before, B has never seen a mirror he doesn't love; before he goes to work he'll primp like a bride the morning of the wedding (which explains why he's always late for work) and then, before he rushes out the door, he'll drown himself in cologne. Yes, it's expensive cologne but the smell of it stays glued to the walls of the apartment long after he's gone and my sensitive little nose is slammed so hard by it I have to hide in another room...stick my beak into something that smells normal (garbage works nicely for this).

Anyone who saw these two together would automatically assume that it's A who reigns supreme but I can say, after eight months of observing, that if it wasn't for quiet (though stinky) B, A would be a pile of human detritus on the floor of some nuthouse somewhere, a chronic masturbator and mumbler of ersatz-literary inanities only he understood.

But that does not mean B is a strongman...an island. For A's tick, he's the tock. For A's operatic emoting, B's the base notes sustaining the melody (and without which the melody would simply be annoying...like a car alarm). But without A, B would be a pile of prissy little foibles—he's be a poindexter living with his mother or one of those old queers I see, alone and walking his morbidly obese little lap dog (whose birthdays are celebrated and who has his own wardrobe full of home-made doggie knitwear).

Together, the Mooks are mightily annoying. Separately they would be impossible to stand. Together they are grandly absurd. Apart they would be sad and ridiculous.

But here's the thing...

Together they are the perfect storm for someone like me. A is the disciplinarian and when there's a penalty to be paid (for instance, yesterday, when I peed on the leg of Couchzilla), it's A who will pick me up by the scruff and fly me across the room to my bed for sequestration. However, I know that no more than 15 minutes later, if I let out just the right sound (sort of a soft, mournful whistle that sings an epic ballad of lonliness and sorrow) Mook B will begin to plead my case with A, suggesting I've suffered enough for my "sin". Before long I am prancing over to him and landing myself square on his belly as he sprawls across the selfsame anointed couch. When I am cuddled up to B, then, I will let out a little sigh of contentment. This serves two purposes: thanks B for freeing me from my bondage and bonding me closer to him; and telling A, "Look, retard, I won again!" A smiles at my little sigh, but there is something sinister about the smile; something that tells me that this is just a battle and that the war goes on.

Without two Mooks in my life I would not get four walks, two meals, cuddling when I want it and play when I demand it. Without two Mooks, I might very well have one or the other clinging to me the way they sometimes cling to each other and—sorry!—I am no one's fucking life raft. Without the Mooks singing their off-key little duet, I would have too much of the fuck-upedness of either which, as a pair, is quaint but sung solo would be like bad Wagner. They'd be on my ass all the time, or they'd just get on with their sad, single lives and ignore me like so many singles do who have pets as accessories instead of as companions.

What works between me and the Mooks (when it does work, which is not always) is when we are a trio. They have this thing that I will never fully understand and in other circumstances it would be virtually impossible to penetrate (in the figurative sense, filthy-minded readers). For them this thing works.

But what works best is that it allows me in and, on rare but very special occasions, to dominate, to manipulate, to be King of Mook Manor.