April 19, 2010; Explanations

Pining about my sorry state—the disappeared Cleo with whom I am in love, Ginger who treats me like crap, Benjie who seems to be in love with me, Mr. C who is promising to make my life a living hell—I toddled into the bathroom after Skeeter today and only noticed, after he had closed the door, that he was not there to shave or brush his teeth. (I don't know why, but I find the morning rituals of humans fascinating.) He was going to "change his appliance."

Now I've written before about how I sat through this hideous process once and never wanted to see it again, but that was before the two of us got to talking. Although this time wasn't promising to be any less hideous, at least it would be informative (if I could only talk instead of dry-heave).

I opened with, "I don't really want to be here, you know."

He said, "Neither do I. But you don't have to, so if you want you can go."

"I would, but I sorta want to know what the hell has happened to you and what this is all about. I suspect it would explain some things—"

"—things?—" he said as he took out all sorts of gizmos and gadgets and set them out around the bathroom.

"—your generally pissy moods, for instance." He grumped a little and then started to cut things. "So what is all this crap and why do you have to do it?"

"I had an operation. They took out a huge chunk of the tail-end of my digestive tract, and now what is the new tail-end actually comes out of a hole in my belly."

"To do what, exactly?" He said nothing but he didn't have to because it was a 'tard question—to do what the old tail-end used to do, I realized. I said, in a weak voice, "Fascinating!" and tried to mean it.

"So every four days or so, I have to remove the appliance, as they call it, and clean the part of my body under the appliance and put on a new appliance."

"And this appliance is what?" I asked, jumping up onto the toilet seat to get a better look (instead of, like last time, cringing and wincing in the corner). The way I was now seeing it was that this was about shit. Dogs know shit. We don't care about shit. We even like shit. Humans, on the other hand, seem to have a phobia about it (unless it comes out of a baby and then it's like Christmas Day, for some reason).

But Skeeter was just going along, placing things and removing things and cutting things like this was the most banal thing in the world and for that, I gotta say, I admired him a little. Then there was something—something coming out of him and I couldn't help freaking. "What the fuck is that!!!"

"Simmer down," he said, as he worked with and washed around the thing coming out of him (do you get me? IT WAS COMING OUT OF HIM!!!). "That," he said almost proudly, "is my intestine except now they call it a stoma and it has to be tended to like a baby and protected and cleaned and the skin around it too and that's the worst part of the job and also the most interesting part because—let's face it—not everyone gets to fiddle about with their own internal organs."

"Wow," I said and it truly was fascinating right then.

After he'd done the cleaning and what not, he placed a big plastic plate around that thing which glued down to his skin and then over the plate he clipped a bag (the engineering here is mind-blowing—that bag clipped right to the plate...a perfect fit). Then he sighed very, very, very deeply. "There, the worst is done and there was no accident."

"Accident?" I asked, looking at him through the mirror.

"Sometimes the thing is...uh...active and then it gets messy and you have to move fast but if you move too fast nothing works and—"

"—you start screaming and swearing like a whore on Saturday night!"

"You've heard," he said, and smiled.

"The whole fucking neighbourhood has heard. They think Boo-Boo beats you."

He laughed and I snerfed a chuckle. "So now you know," he said. "Any questions?"

"Does everyone know you have this?" I asked.

"Good question," he said as he tidied up the bathroom. "Everyone who wants to know knows because I don't hide it. But there are a lot of people, even in my own friends and family, who just don't want to know."

"Why, do you think?"

"I've thought of that," he said, finishing up the cleaning. There was a silence until he was done and then he picked me up and carried me out and over to the La-Z-Boy. Finally he spoke, "Because it is what it is. Because it's not polite dinner conversation. Because it's horrifying to many (as it was to me at first—I used to cry and cry). But that's not it, mostly." He paused for a second and we rocked in the chair for a bit. "I think it's a case of: 'there—but for the grace of God—go I.'"

"Hunh?"

"People don't want to know because they don't want to imagine it happening to them. It's like cancer and the throwing up and shit and hair-loss. You can say, 'Poor you, you have cancer,' and mean it to a certain extent but no one wants to know the full extent of the bodily upheaval that comes with cancer or this or any serious illness because it's too easy to imagine their own fragile, aging bodies someday becoming a victim of that kind of upheaval. It's why people fear doctors, hospitals, surgery (lordie—just the talk of a possible surgery turns people in jelly) and it's also why some people would rather die in their sleep or get hit by a car, tomorrow, than have something like this. It's mortality. It's the slowing down. It's facing the end."

"And for you?"

"I used to think like that too. I could never imagine I would be like this, doing this, even a few years ago. But the oldest cliché in the book is utterly, utterly true..."

"'Where there's life, there's hope,'" I mumbled.

"Yup."

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"Nope."

"If I grabbed on it and chewed it while we were play-fighting?—"

"—you would probably win the fight, but I also might punt you across the living room."

"Ah!" I mumbled, "the woes of being a small dog."

"Oh boo-hoo," he said and, unlike an hour ago (before the appliance change) there was a whiff of sarcasm and good humour in him.

It was turning into one of those icky-sticky, touchy-feely moments I hate so much so I said, "Let's watch 'Bargain Hunt.'" And we did.

April 16, 2010; Cleo...

Kitty Liter(ature)

Cleo, your Leo

Is weeping for you

The neighbourhood's empty

Without your sweet mew.

I want you, I need you,

My loins are ablaze

For that hot pussy pussy,

I'm still in a daze.

There's not even a danger

We'll spawn out a "dat"

Cause my goolies are pickling

In some sick fuck's vat.

Though my balls are a phantom

My heart is still blue

And my willy's a-willing

And waiting for you.

Our miscegenation

(So "wrong" so "taboo)

Would get an ovation

From hearts that are true.

So Cleo, your Leo

Is pining for thee.

Come back to our street

Show our love can be free!

April 13, 2010; A Messy Life

Things are not ha-ha in Boystown (formerly: La Maison Mook and Mook Manor). Yesterday, the two of them disappeared together and when they came back they were not happy campers. Turns out they had been to the specialist nurse and Skeeter had received a pile of crap news. They weren't discussing it when they came in, but over a bunch of phone calls Skeet made over the next hours, I learned all the details.

It turns out that the wound the nurse found last week is not a good thing and that it may explain a lot about what's going on deep in the surrounding tissue (or it may not). So Skeeter has been handed off to a plastic surgeon, is now going to the clinic five times a week and is going to start a new round of antibiotics. However you slice it (pun intended) it looks like he's going back in for surgery...reconstructive surgery...on his butt.

I know, I know, it's wicked of me to giggle a little but even as he was telling his various groupies, he had trouble keeping a straight face. The thing is, this is serious surgery; however, where it's being done—and at his age—it's not difficult to associate it with middle-aged, dyed-blond, skeletal matrons getting their asses lifted. Sure, you can call it reconstructive surgery all you want, but it still involves a plastic surgeon and trying to make that formidable mass he drags around behind him into something less horrific!

After an evening's profound depression (even Boo-Boo was red-eyed) and a night's sleep, things looked a little rosier today, though Skeeter was still pissed about having to go to the clinic every week day (and as it turns out, the specialist nurse wanted him to go on weekends too but he threatened—jokingly, one suspects—to kill himself). The clinic treatments and the drugs are a last ditch effort no one thinks will work, which is why he has the referral to the plastic surgeon (which Skeet has been warned is an asshole). So all of this together could be a lot of Sturm und Drang in the next months but, also, highly amusing.

"Let's face it," I told Skeet, "it's not like you were using it anyway?" He did not laugh.

Hey! I've got probs of my own, dammit! For one thing, the Chinese lady at the convenience store who gives me treats from time to time and gets me all excited by playing chase with me around the store...well, she's leaving in May; closing up shop and retiring. Free food and entertainment like that is nothing to sneer at and she will be missed. Moreover, I haven't seen Cleo in days, Ginger is still showing me her cootch (and not in a nice way) and snerfing at me disdainfully if she says anything at all. Meanwhile, every time I run into him, Benjie is hysterical with happiness. He was out on a walk the other day and he was trying as best as he could to gallop over to me while dragging his 90-year-old biddy-hen behind him! I think he's gay for me, alright, and I'm going to have to think long and hard about how to handle it.

Speaking of gay, on Sunday, do you know what we did in this household? We curled around the TV and the two of them watched "The Wizard of Oz", singing along occasionally. If you ask me, I think that's actually sadder than Skeet going under the knife again.

April 10, 2010; On puppies and popes

Yesterday, I was just snoozing in the kitchen, pretty much minding my own business. Boo-Boo was away at a meeting, Skeeter was at the clinic. I was alone and I liked it. Then Skeet came home, grabbed me up, threw himself into the La-Z-Boy and started sobbing into my fur.

I was feeling really itchy, didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say, and he was starting to knock the wind out of me he was holding me so tightly so I burbled, "So! Pope Benedict! He's a nut, eh!"

He laughed and—thank Keerist!—loosened the death hold he had on me. He was still giggling, though wiping his eyes, and all this meant I would have to say something else. (I so missed being alone, snoozing, in the kitchen.) "So what happened? Did some burly male nurse violate your personhood?"

"I wish."

"Well, what then?"

He sighed deeply and said, "Somehow another deep wound has opened up."

"Deep?"

"Four centimeters."

I snerfed angrily and said, "Could you forget the commie measurements and tell me in American, please!"

"About an inch, an inch and a half."

"That doesn't sound so bad," I said.

"Well, it ain't good!"

"Granted," I said lamely. Finally he just sighed. "Shall we talk about something other than your rotting, quasi-cadaver?" He agree laughing and it was a real laugh and I was deeply relieved. This touchy-feely stuff, especially between two males, makes me profoundly uncomfortable. So we did talk about the pope. "Why are Catholics so retarded?"

"It's in our genes," he said.

"Oh, sorry. Didn't know."

"I don't brag about it," he said, "and besides, I'm actually an undeclared apostate."

"Undeclared?"

"Too lazy to do the paperwork."

"Tell me," I went on, "the sick sex...is it because you consider it so wrong that you all want it so badly?"

"Hey! It's not like they're all diddling altar boys!"

"But management is!" I snorted. "Sort of makes it official, wouldn't you say? Sanctioned, almost. Nearly a ritual! Like communion. 'Would you like some jizz on that wafer?'"

"Oh...my...FUCK!" he said, horrified and delighted at once. Sort of the same noise you'd get from a schoolgirl who's just learned you can't get pregnant giving a blow job. I went on, "What I don't get is why the true story...the bigger story...is ignored, so far."

"Bigger?" he asked.

"Bigger as in broader, not more important. Let's face it: if pedophilia is a part of the clerical culture—even if it's taboo and spoken of in hushed tones—then surely homosexuality has to be a much bigger part. All those seminaries full of young, healthy and horny men! It must feel absolutely normal to fool around with Brother Tom's Harry Dick. You get what I'm saying?"

"Not sure..." Skeeter mumbled and added, "I'm not sure I like where you're taking this," and then, à propos of not much, said, "I nearly went into the priesthood."

I snerfed at this as it was sort of making my point, but I went on. "If the pervy parish priest is boinking die kinder, so to speak, and, I'll cede, even the queerest of queer boys knows that's wrong, wrong, wrong and is not vaguely interested in doing it—then, don't you think that in an all-male, youthful and fairly virile community being a fag—

"—gay—"

"—gay would be seen as absolutely okay?"

"But the Bible," he said.

"Bible Schmible! Find me the part that says fucking deaf kids is fine, yet somehowa whole bunch of them got cornholed."

"Hm," he said, smiling strangely. It looked like he wasn't listening to me at all and was instead imagining what his life would have been like had he become a semanarian, the dink.

"Blessed are the chicken hawks, for they shall inherit the preschools," I mumbled. Again he shriek/laughed with horror/delight and hugged me hard. I grunted uncomfortably.

"You know," he said, "back when there were actually very out queer popes."

"Nothing surprises me. The minute you take something personal like spirituality—and I mean the-colour-of-the-inside-of-your-foreskin personal—and try to organize it, give it rules, leaders and call it a religion—something is bound to go terribly wrong; men in dresses in charge and women in burkas being called nuns, f'r'instance."

"So dogs don't believe?"

"Oh! We believe! But we never, ever, talk about it!"

He said, "Hm," and then there was a long, long silence.

Finally I said, "The soul's not made for Facebook or Twitter."

"Thus spaketh Pope Leo," he said and soon we nodded off to sleep and all was good.

April 7, 2010; Fritz!

Yesterday, while walking along with Skeeter, I fritzed.

It's the only word I can use to describe it. I started to shake, yank at the leash, whimper, growl. You name it, it was there and I felt like a big sissy. But this has happened before and I'll tell you—as I told Skeeter later—why it happened now.

All was well. It was a decent, gray day. Gray days, with no wind, keep the smells close to the ground and make the colours pop. On bright days, the sun burns off the smells and the colours all blend together to become one big phantasmagoria that people don't see but that most animals do and pretty much treat as hum-drum. But, suddenly, we came across this one house with the door open and a moving van in the front.

This is what I smelled and all the smells there was no happiness:

the things in the van (the sofa and beds with all their human stinks of food and lust and filth and, especially, the baby bed with its particular smell, the kitchen table—which still had traces of food stuck to the edges of it, some chairs where some dog had pissed on the leg—a female dog, and clothes, some smelling of toxic cleansers, others not); the moving men (three of them, one of them smelling of money problems and cheap cologne, one smelling like unwashed humans smell and one smelling more like cigarettes than anything else); the people moving in (three—mom on the rag and smelling of it and tears of anxiety, dad smelling of anger and his work in an office—quickly-pressed shirts, ironed over sweat-stains, and baby smelling like a baby: a little powder, a little ointment, a little shit and lots of piss); the people who had moved out (a couple, a wrecked couple, screams and anguish and rage sticking to the walls still—things gone terribly, terribly wrong; beyond the wrongness of a normal couple breaking up but brutal-wrong, blood-wrong).

And it all came into my nose and formed nutsy pictures in my head that made me a nervous wreck and I just wanted to get away away away and, thankfully, Skeeter saw this and didn't tardy and we walked on and soon I got a grip. When we got home I told him everything and he answered with, "There were stories about that couple" and left it at that.

But then he said he absolutely understood and told me why. "A few days after 9-11, I was still in a bad state. I had the TV on 24-7 and just absorbed it all. Read all the newspapers, watched all the specials, surfed the net for more and more information. I was reaching that point: a fritz..."

"Yes, yes," I said, "that's it. Good word."

"And then, the morning that the stock markets were going to open in New York, I sat in front of the TV. On the screen, at any given time, you had images of that day, you had a pictures of the president or someone, you had, in the background, talking heads or newscasters discussing the event. In the corner, larger than usual, was the stock ticker telling us how the market was responding—going up and down and up and down but mostly down because Wall Street types are monsters—and at the bottom of the screen you had the news crawl with more and more and more and more news." He sighed. "And I fritzed. I cried and went to bed and stayed there for two hours and when I came back I started all over again because that was all there was to do."

We were very quiet.

"Yes, yes. That's it," I muttered.

And we both thought of the same thing: TV and Twitter and Facebook and Google and newspapers and books and worlds and worlds of information coming at you all the time all the time all the time...

...and a couple across the street who had moved away if not apart.

April 4, 2010; Easter Schmeaster

"the look"...which apparently no longer works

'K, so it's Easter and as these two haven't gone to church since they were being diddled by the priests, not much of a religious nature is going on here. Oh! sure—lots of food and chocolate, but—of course!—not so much as a solitary fucking lollipop for yours truly, the twats. (In fact, when I tried "the look" when they were scarfing down steaks, Skeeter just told me to "knock it off; you know I don't fall for that anymore.")

But I did get a bath and, as you know, I so love all that warm water shooting up into my various orificii, and then there's the soaping and massaging and let's not forget the drying...

...unhhhhhh...

I even sort of like it when Skeeter talks dirty to me: "You're enjoying this, you little fucker, aren't you! Tell me how much you like it, you dirty little pig dog!" Except that this time he started getting a little verbose (and explicit) and I told him to knock it off.

Anyhoo!

It's nice to have the two boobs on an even keel, if only for a day, 'cause it's been like living with two time bombs. Skeeter is a biological bomb, threatening to explode in one great splat! of bacteria and infection all over the walls, the furniture and us. T'other is a psychological time bomb because it's term's end and his students are playing him like Ashley MacIsaac's fiddle (but without the water sports). When he's not moaning over his computer, he's staring out into grim space. If anyone should be on anti-depressants it's him. He's also on a very short fuse. Yesterday, while he was passing the vacuum cleaner, it was more like he was beating the walls and body-slamming the furniture.

With all the rage, thumping around and sheer risk of being here, I realize I'm living with the least sissyish queers in history; sorta like being in a homo version of "Hurt Locker" (though that was pretty homo sometimes—that fighting scene? puh-leeeeeeeze!).

Aside from all this, I am no getting e-mails from Mr. C, Cate's dog. The little queer is trying to cozy up to me, fully realizing, I think, that when I see him I'll kill him. You see? Dogs understand simply from the vibes of their mistresses and masters. Often you don't even have to say anything...

...like Happy Fucking Easter.

April 1, 2010; No April Fool I

Skeeter and I were watching—dull—TV and he asked me about my past. So I told him about the puppy mill and Frank and then about Frank's daughter and how I was abandoned in the middle of the city and found by the SPCA. He listened with rapt attention. Then there was a long silence. He finally said, "Don't you want to know about my past?" "Tell it to Mr. C." I said, still chafing at his disloyalty from last Sunday.

Meanwhile, it's April 1, it's spring and love is clearly in the air and I am trying not to be a fool about it. But my love life is something for the psych textbooks.

For instance, just when I started to ignore Ginger she started playing very close attention to me and, especially, to me and Cleo. She doesn't holler all over the neighbourhood anymore, about me doing the kitchy-koo with a cat, but she does whine and mumble obscenities when I pass by (that bitch has a mouth!). Cleo and I, meanwhile, have hardly seen each other the last little while. True, it has been rainy and cats are not known for their love of the wet stuff, so I guess she's been sitting inside, by the hearth (as I like to imagine her), her glistening coat catching the colour and light of the flames.

But the oddest part of my sordid little triangle (or quadrangle, I'd guess you'd call it now) revealed itself yesterday. I was walking with Skeeter who had just watched, the night before, another episode of the cocksucking Dog Whisperer and was in that zone—that strange Cesar place dog-owners get into when they've watched the guy and intend (at least for the next couple of days) to worship at his altar. It's when he's in the Cesar Zone that Skeeter treats me like a dog instead of someone who now converses with him and it pisses me off no end.

As we walked along this fucking German shepherd with a 'tude walked past and mockingly snerfed at me. No one could hear the snerf but me and I went ballistic. The Nazi dog walked on, giggling, and I strained at the leash to rip his throat out. This is when Skeeter, in complete Cesar Milan zombiehood, threw me on the ground and held me there so that I couldn't move. "Calm down!" he whispered angrily and I couldn't do much else except run in the air, my legs trying to get a grip of something so I could teach that fucking dog a lesson.

That's when I heard it, "LET GO OF MY BUDDY, YOU FUCKING MOOK!!!! NOBODY FUCKS WITH MY BUDDY!!!!" Skeeter and I looked over and there was Benjie, in full fighting mode. He was trying to come at Skeeter, but the little old lady who owns him misinterpreted it and thought he was coming for me. (She's a little lost, is the lady, as everyone in the neighbourhood knows that Benj and I are pals.) Benjie going batshit was surprising enough for Skeeter to loosen his grip on me and for me to get up and go over to Benj and say thanks and snerf a little conversation about what a tool Skeeter was and—Jesus! just how old is that lady anyway! He and the old biddy walked away and I came back to Skeet (by this time the fucking shepherd has turned the corner and there was nothing I could do about it).

"What the hell was that about?" Skeeter said.

"He was pissed at you and wanted you to let me go."

"Why didn't he just tell me."

"Oh, he will never speak human. Not while she's around. She already spends every waking hour dithering at him and it would be downright hell if she found out he understood her and could participate in the dither-fest."

Later, in front of the TV again, the two of us were mulling over the "news" that Ricky Martin and Sean Hayes were really gay. We both had a good laugh at that as everyone—straight, gay, animal, vegetable and mineral—had known about those two (and a good many others) for a long time. That's when Skeeter said, "So, what do you think of Benjie's crush?"

"Hunh?"

"Well, clearly he has a little thing for you. Look at him: he's the littlest, sissiest dog in the universe and he was ready to take me on 'cause I was messing with you."

"Hunh?"

"Think about it."

I did and it worried me. This had never happened to me before and I said so to Skeeter. "Don't worry about it," he said, "We queers are always falling for the straight ones. We get over it but it's still messy, messy stuff..."

That's when I said, "Okay, tell me about your past."