September 21, 2010; Rumblings

I have decided to keep my continued correspondance with my sister to myself (unless there is a really interesting exchange) because I don't like personal stuff. It's boring. When somebody tells you they want to tell you something personal, you can be sure it has nothing to do with you and that you are free to let your mind wander. It's like when they say, "I had an interesting dream—" cut them off immediately by saying, "—if it doesn't feature you sucking my cock, move on to something else...or suck my cock."

Personal stuff is only interesting if it's a secret being revealed, the more sordid the better and I think I have a doozy. I think Skeeter is going to do something nasty, if you know what I mean and I think you do. The question, and I had no compunction about asking it was, "Why?"

"Hunh?" he said as he continued to surf about the web on his iPad.

"Why are you looking at info on male escorts?"

He immediatly flipped off the machine, put it on a table far away from the chair (like that would make the information go away) and said, in a squirrelly, guilt-ridden voice, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"What's with the Craigslist and the other sites—what's happening here?"

"I don't see how something of this nature is any of your business—"

"—if it puts my household in jeopardy it IS my fucking business."

He sighed deeply and it looked like he needed to talk but was in a tug of war with all sorts of middle-class bourgeois sensitivities about appropriateness. Humans are so fucked up about sex it's not even funny. What makes these two so weird—Boo-Boo and Skeeter, I mean—is that they're queer and this place, from all I have learned, should be a big whorehouse with toyboys coming in on conveyor belts. But things here are very tame. However, there WAS something here and it was something I wanted to know.

He sighed again and said, "It's this appliance business. It's that and my still out-of-control libido and andropause, probably—"

"—but what about Boo?"

"I can't. I can barely face this myself—I'm not sure I, myself, could handle sex with...someone who has what I have...I can't force him to deal with it if I can't—"

"—and so the whores..." Another sigh from him. "Um...how do you know the whores would be able to handle it?" There was another long pause. "You've asked around..." Still spluttering, me. He nodded. "Have you hire—?" I spluttered some more. His look said it all. Oh, Jesus! This was reallllllllly weird. "And Boo? Does he know?"

"He thinks it's something I've got to get out of my system." I just stared 'til he felt he had to speak again. "He's aging more gracefully than I am, I think." Loooooooooooong pause again. I continued to stare. Again: "Also, no one I know knows what this...thing...does to me and to my head and he would never presume to talk me out of something when his head is not in the same place...when he can't even imagine that place."

"Yes, he's a good guy," I said. "Have you thought that—before you see a wh—you might consider seeing a therapist?"

"Too late for that—"

"—WHAT!—"

—Tomorrow. His name is Joe—"

"—his whore name or his real name?"

"Shut-up."

"This can only end in tears," I muttered.

"Not necessarily. It might do me some good...help me deal with this. Who knows?"

Well that was a fact, all right: Who the fuck knows?

September 18, 2010; For My Sister

Hey there Buttercup! (I just farted I'm laughing so hard at that name)

You tell me that you live with two old biddies! Well, so do I!! The difference is that your biddies are sisters and so don't have sex (probably) while mine did have sex once, I think, though I don't like to let the images occupy too much space in my head.

Strangest thing, though: I was curled up snoozing next to Skeeter, the other day, as he ticked about on his iPad while watching TV (he's got the attention span of a fucking fruitfly in heat). Anyhoo...I woke up a little and noticed that he was on Craigslist. He was surfing about on the erotic services section and it looked like he was shopping. I said, "What's your price range?" He looked guilty but covered remarkably well with: "Craigslist says it closed down its sex trade services but it looks like that was just in the States." There's something here and you can be sure I'll be following up.

But enough about all these things which you can read in the blog anytime. I am just glad to hear from you and to hear about you? Are you "fixed" too? Do you have a boyfriend? Do the two old ladies let you run? I'm not allowed to run, not even in the dog park 'cause Skeeter says I'm too psycho, fucking dipshit. I yank-run...going to the end of my extendible leash and pulling for all I'm worth. This usually only serves to get me yanked back but on really good days I can yank at just the right moment and Skeeter ('cause it's always Skeeter) slips on the ice and falls flat on his face or ass. I'm hoping to do it in such a way, this winter, that he will either break his nose or, at the very least, burst that fucking bag he has strapped on.

I know this sounds mean, but you have to understand that the dynamic here are different from your place. I'm not with two old aunties who love me to pieces as I love them. I am with two homo halfwits who insist, despite all evidence, that they are smarter than I am and that they are in power. You see, your old ladies know you are the Queen of the House and you get all the respect and adoration you deserve. Here we have two queens who refuse to acknowledge their fealty to their king; it's a constant struggle with food, urine and violence—physical and verbal—used in the fray. For instance we "play-fight" but I use my teeth; they call it nipping but when they're scratched and bleeding and my mouth germs are working their way into their bloodstream toward a massive antibiotic-resistant infection, we'll see what they think of "nipping." They offer me a chip but I have to sing for it and if I don't then they shriek in me ear 'til I do. I pee on the bed, they have to do a washing anyway, but I end up snubbed and unloved for hours more than seems necessary. And on and on it goes.

What's worse is that Boo-Boo is such a stress case that he's not even nice to me. Yesterday he was "working" (I use the quotation marks because I know that he can take a job others would do in ten minutes and for which they're paid royally, and spin it into a labour of Hercules and is paid, finally, less than a Chinaman making iPads). He was "working" and the other one was still asleep and I was bored. So I started to jump on him, which he usually loves, but this time he just pushed me away. Well, no one pushes me away, dammit! So I started barking and running about and jabbing him and chewing his shoes and damned if he didn't yell at me to stop it, pick me up and throw me onto my bed! Do you believe it! I bet your Sisters would have bent over, played with you and given you a cracker as good housemates are supposed to.

Anyhoo, dearheart. Stay well, take care and keep writing. I haven't made any decisions about talking to Boo yet, but if he keeps cruelly mistreating me like this, I'm clamming up forever.

As you know I'm not a sentimental type so I'll just say take care and...well, take care.

Leo

September 15, 2010; Letter from Abroad

This came to me.

My beloved Dee

May I call you Dee because that is how I remember you and want to think of you; as my sweet, little brother—the runt of the litter who became strong and healthy because he was such a little hard-head. That's how you were, sweet Dee, and that's how I read how you still are (and what a mouth you have, you rapscallion!).

And you must call me, and think of me, as your beloved Ceecee, even though here, with my sweet little family, I am called Buttercup (or Cuppy). I laugh as I can almost see you flinch with horror at such a name and I know just how silly it is. But then the people I live with—two very, very old sisters—are rather silly too, and it's still amazing to me that they managed to stop dithering long enough to even find a name for me, however silly. But I love them both dearly.

I am very lucky to be able to write to you and it is all serendipitous! My silly ladies, who are called Milly (for Milicent) and Winnie (for Winnifred) moved in together in their widowhood. Their children (they have five between them) are scattered all over the place and all of them worried for the two dears. So one weekend one of their sons (a very nice man who is "that way" if you know what I mean and I think you do) came and installed a fine computer with all the bells and whistles. The ladies turn it on every morning, turn it off every night, and dust it in between. That's all. So there it was, unused; a very expensive piece of bricabrac indeed. So here I am.

How did I learn you were looking for me? Two ways. First, a very strange cat named Mordred, who lives with the old duffer next door, struck up a conversation with me and mentioned a Jack Russell he had heard about, a thousand miles away, who was looking for his sister. He had heard about this dog through the cat grapevine, which is a very potent thing! Then I read a Tweet from one of my friends saying that she heard about a blog written by a vulgar little mutt. And there you were, telling the world about your life.

I have read everything and love you and miss you more than ever. I am so proud of you. I suspect I will never see you again, as we are so far apart, but isn't it nice that we are in the same world and know the other is alive and well? That's so much more than many, many other sisters and brothers in the canine kingdom.

There is no way I will begin to speak to my Sisters, as you speak to your Skeeter, for if I began to speak and they, more importantly, thought I understood what they said they would dither me to death. There is so much prattle in this home—a spoon left on the counter can be discussed for hours!—and I desperately do not want to join in. When the two hens begin to dither, I find my pillow in a nice quiet corner near a radiator, and snooze. When we all come together is in front of the TV where, quite unbelieveably, they quieten down and watch police procedurals. We have an almost steady diet of CSIs and Law and Orders. The bloodier the show, the more they seem to like it! They don't gasp or anything when the people on the show fiddle about with cadavers. At the end of the program one of the Sisters, if the show has been particularly gorey, always says, "Now wasn't that delicious!" It sometimes make me wonder if they are grieving widows or Black Widows.

That's all for now, Dear Heart. Do get back to me. I love you and love you and kisses all over and isn't life grand!

Ceecee

PS: Don't let the fucks and twats get to you!

PPS: xxxxxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxx

I hate fucking sentiment but my little doggie heart could burst.

September 12, 2010; Secrets and Payments

It's nice that Pastor Fuckknuckle decided not to burn the Qu'rans like he said he would. Mind, it probably wouldn't have made a difference one way or another...some people burn the American flag and scream in the streets simply because it's a long-established tradition; bred in the bone, so to speak.

Meanwhile, during the morning walk the day after I shot my mouth off to Boo, Skeeter said, "So when are you going to tell him?"

"Why do I have to tell him?"

"Look, it was bad enough when we were both lying to him—I'm not going to have him questioning his sanity. With all the fucking stress in his life now, his mental health is hanging by a thread."

"Let me think about it."

"Don't think to long. Of course, if you're as profoundly stupid as you were last night, this might all take care of itself."

I thanked him for his remark by squatting and having a shit on the sidewalk at the exact moment a little family was coming out of the adjacent house. Mommy shuddered and Junior shrieked, "That's gross!" As Skeeter bent over to pick it up, I ran about him, tangling him in the leash as he tried to bag my offering, and then did a little dance for the audience.

Big mistake.

Later, after the afternoon walk, I was feeling the first mild autumn chill and thought I'd curl up next to Skeeter while he fiddled with his iPad (surfed porn, posted imbecilities on his Facebook page, Tweeted details of his life not a single person in the world gives a flying fuck about). The curl-up is especially great as the winter approaches. Skeeter's unbelievable mass gives off heat like a foundry and being squeezed next to him is better than crack—I just joyously haze out. He was tapping away on his gadget and I was slipping in and out of consciousness, utterly blissed-out when he said, "I wonder what your little friends would think if they saw you."

"Hunh? Shut up, I'm snoozing," I mumbled.

"I wonder what Slicer or one of those other animals you're always trying to beat up—the ones you act so tough with—what they would think if they saw your curled up here next to me, purring like a pampered pussy."

"—you wouldn't—"

"—Oh! I so would, Mr. Shits-on-the-sidewalk-just-to-humiliate-Skeeter!—"

—I swear to all you believe is holy I will never do that again!—"

"DOING IT ONCE WHEN YOU KNEW HOW I HATE IT IS ALREADY ONCE TOO OFTEN, YOU FUCKING LITTLE COCKSUCKER! I SHOULD HAVE KICKED YOUR FAT WHITE ASS UP AND DOWN THE STREET!"

"I swear! I swear! I'm so sorry!"

"You know how much I already hate picking up after you and especially when there are people around—"

"—Listen to me—" Oh! dear readers, I was peddling like I have never peddled before. "—I will find a way to make up for it. I swear. You never say a word about our thing here and I'll do something extra special for you."

He was intrigued. "We'll see." But I had no idea what I would do.

On our walk this morning we saw Shutup, the lab I have a lot of fun abusing, and my dick withdrew into my body I was so scared what Skeeter might say. "Pleasepleasepleaseplease," I prayed to him as we approached the other dog who mewed with fear of me. Skeeter hummed ominously, but then we just walked past the idiot dog. I thanked Skeeter over and over again for having kept his mouth shut. He said, "I better get payback pretty fucking soon, Buster."

And then all became clear to me. We were coming back to the apartment when I saw Babette sitting out on her porch while one of her owners sat beside her reading his newspaper. Two things: this particular guy loves me to pieces; Skeeter has got a full-metal boner for him. "Watch this," I murmured to Skeeter.

Ignoring Babette I went tearing over to the guy and just started jumping all over him. He fell back from the step he was sitting on and just hugged me and held me and I licked his face all over. He was wearing shorts and his muscular, hairy legs (just like Skeeter likes them) went flying all over the place. He was laughing his fool head off, and calling me "Sweetie!" and "You cute little thing!" as I just went to town. Babette barked, "What the hell are you doing?!" but I didn't stop until the guy was a sweaty mess, his shirt half-open and -off, exposing the kind of chest Skeeter dreams about.

Skeeter pulled on the leash—oh-so-half-heartedly—and I went back to him. "I'm sorry," he said to the young man. The guy, still laughing, said, "I am crazy about your dog!" Then he stuck out his hand and said, "I'm Claude." Skeeter shook his hand and may have said his own name. I can't be sure he actually said words because his voice was flutey and all over the place as his body wobbled about and a blush rose from his balls up to the roots of his hair.

We walked home, his legs barely holding him up. "Okay, we're even," he said.

"You fucking bet we are," I said.

Now I desperately need a bath to get rid of my whore-stink.

September 9. 2010; Brain Fart

I haven't always mentioned it—'cause it's tedious—but Skeeter has been on my ass for months to start talking to Boo-Boo and I've been resisting for a number of reasons:

- Starting to talk to Skeeter himself was probably a mistake. Not a critical mistake like the secret that all dogs can do it getting out (that's not such a big secret because most people don't or won't believe it), but a mistake because even when I'm snoozing or watching a program or day-dreaming there's Skeeter with his blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda stream of consciousness. He's like "Seinfeld": a show about nothing.

- I am convinced that if I start to talk to Boo, then Skeet will feel free to disappear into a book, a newspaper or his fucking World of Warcraft and leave me with Boo and his endless, stressed-out chatter about work (and things are getting worse because he's now tangling with the local union forewoman—a twat with a capital C who wanders the halls looking like the petty bureaucrat she is , dripping with cheap jewelry and stinking of one of those perfumes with an undertone of urine).

- When things go wrong in their queer little couplehood I don't want to be like one of those pathetic divorce waifs, forced to take sides and finally crying out, "Mommy and Daddy please stop fighting!"

- I don't don't don't don't want to "share" in both their sex lives. It's bad enough Skeet tells me about all his likes and dislikes when we pass men on the street, but to have to hear it from the other one too and be the one who holds the secret that these two old Marys are utterly incompatible would be too much for one little dog to shoulder.

- There are so many other reasons, all good, but the best reason is this one: I don't wanna.

But there was Skeet, always telling me how guilty he felt about this secret and how come I, too, did not feel just as guilty and there he was assuring me that Boo is just as fascinating as he, Skeet, is (which means precisely nothing) and don't I want to look into his world and doesn't Boo's world seem interesting. Most often I would just walk away, or simply ignore him when he went on and on about this.

But I'm an idiot, aren't I?

I was lying on the floor, while the two of them watched TV, and I was feeling content—a nice meal and a walk behind me, the end of the day and a nice sleep before me. I did what I always do: sighed deeply and let out a nice, long (but silent) fart.

Suddenly Boo yelled, "Oh! For fucks sake, Léo, did something crawl up your arse and die?"

I muttered, "Like it's fucking Febreze shooting out of your arse all night."

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

I did not move. Skeet pretended to hear nothing.

Then Boo said, "Hunh." Then there was more silence. The TV seemed really loud. I got up, went to the kitchen, sipped some water, let some time pass, then came back to the living room, jumped up on the sofa with Boo and curled up...like I always do.

Silence.

He said, "Hunh."

"What is it?" Skeet said, with a faux nonchalance that was rather admirable.

"Did you hear something?"

"Hm?"

"Something weird?"

"Weird?" said Skeet.

If a dog could sweat I'd've been sweating. As it was my mouth was dry and a couple of drops of piss were trickling into my dick-fur. I wondered how long this stupidest conversation ever would go on before it got somewhere.

There was more silence. I pretended to snore. Then Boo said, "I don't know. Nothing."

Later, when Boo and I went to bed, he sat up staring into space, then he picked me up and looked me in the face and just stared some more. Then he turned off the light, curled up to me and mumbled, "I wonder if I'm going nuts." And soon he was asleep.

I don't think I've dodged a bullet.

September 6, 2010; Eight-Paws

I like it when Skeeter talks about his childhood because it seems so far ago, as it is, and foggy (foggy from the fogey). I like to hear about family (especially now I'm looking for Ceecee). Not his family, fercrissakes!, 'cause as he ages he gets all maudlin and boring talking about them. No, I want to hear about my family: the great and noble clan of the Dogs.

Like yesterday. We were cuddling in the La-Z-Boy. It was a day off from the clinic and there was no appliance change and Boo-Boo was there in the morning, which meant Skeeter didn't have to get up "early" (ie: before noon) to walk me. He was content and when he is content I know he is nostalgic and I know I can hit him up for a story. "Tell me about your childhood dogs," I said. So he did. And didn't.

The dogs of my childhood were nice enough. But they weren't special—just there for us to ignore and my father to bitch about and adore. We had a pekingese named Kubie. We had a beagle named Mortimer. I don't have vivid memories of them. But there was a cat—

"—I don't want to hear about a fucking cat!—"

"—This one, yes."

I sighed and said, "Go on. I'll stop you if it gets tedious." He did.

When I was a little boy my father bought us our first house. It was in a brand new suburb and it was the first house in that suburb. The problem was that the subdivision's plumbing passed through where they also put the brand new city dump. We knew this for the first time because my older brothers and sisters were having a dance in our finished basement and one of their teenage friends went into the new bathroom down there and let out a scream like fucking Leatherface was behind the shower curtain. It wasn't a murderer; just a giant garbage dump rat swimming about in the toilet bowl. It was the first of many, many, many who began to show up and eat everything.

The rats were dangerous enough that in the morning my father had to get up and hunt and kill them with a broom before the rest of us dared put our toes on the floor. We had a dog, the peke, but it was as scared of the fucking rats as the rest of us. You could here them skitter in the walls and under the floor and their presence was in the ruins they left: eaten books and wood and even furniture. One day our pipes went down. When the plumber came he opened up the floor to get to the waterworks; he found a knot of drowned rats in the pipes where others had actually eaten a hole in the metal and gotten through and into the house.

Now my Dad was pissed. This problem was costing a lot of money. So off he went to the SPCA to get a cat. The problem was he brought my sisters with him and what they brought home was a cute little black and white thing that was gone so fast I don't even remember its name. Killed and partly eaten by the rats.

"Dead cats," I interrupted, "I like this story." Skeeter snapped me on my nose with his fingertips and went on.

Now my father was as enraged as I've ever seen him. He went back to the SPCA, without my sisters this time, and said to the good people there, "Listen to me: I don't want a kitty. I don't want anything cute. I have a rat problem. I want a ratter. So I want to see something that's up to the task." When they showed him what was in one cage, my father smiled. When he brought home the inhabitant of that cage and my mother saw it, she gasped and I think my little brother may have cried.

"Like Slicer?" I said.

"Slicer was a fucking little tot in a Catholic girls' school uniform, bobby socks and patent leather shoes compared to this animal," Skeeter said and went on with his tale.

It had a huge scar across it's face from fighting which made its whiskers go off in all directions. One of its ears was chewed off and the other messed up, also from fighting. On each of its four feet it not only had one huge paw but jutting out, a little above the walking paw, was another small—but fully-formed—paw. This meant that when it walked about it thumped about. When it met the peke, they both stared at each other and became good friends. My father thought the friendship was a bad sign but nevertheless, that night, he let, Sultan, the cat loose in the house and we all went to bed.

The first night, and for several nights after, it was like a motherfucking horror movie. That cat hunted. That cat caught. That cat tore apart. That cat feasted. That cat screamed as it did all of this and then shrieked with triumph after each kill and it was like a demon had been set loose; it didn't sound catlike, it didn't sound like an animal at all...it sounded like evil. And in the morning it joined the family at the breakfast table and stank up the place and then it played with the peke and then it slept. And then night would come again and, in fairly short order, Sultan solved our rat problem.

Then he broke into our new neighbours houses, through their basement windows, and one by one solved their rat problems as well. And then, one morning, after it had been away for a few days, my father opened the door to get the paper and there was Sultan, on the stoop, with some kind of cadaver of some wild animal no longer identifiable as anything that was once alive—Sultan was offering it to my father who now was head over heels in love with this insane being.

He stopped talking. What he described chilled my blood (this was, after all, a cat that could easily have killed me), but I wanted to know more. "What happened to him?"

"He just disappeared. There were still woods and wild fields not too far away, in those days, and I suspect he went into them and hunted to his heart's content. He was a good pet, but was never meant to be. Like Slicer. Sultan was something else."

"Indeed," I said and shuddered. Skeeter laughed and hugged me close like I was a terrified little girl. "It's the cold," I lied and he laughed again.

Then I fell asleep in his arms but the twat shrieked in my ear—an ungodly, hideous, guttural noise that made me leap up—and he laughed his fucking huge ass off and said, "That's a little what Sultan sounded like."

I heard that howl in my dreams.

September 3, 2010; Hap-hap-happy!

"Food tastes better," Skeeter says. "And when I get up in the morning I'm starving instead of having to force myself to eat over the successive waves of nausea that used to hit me the moment the alarm went off."

"Even sleeping," Skeeter says, "is real, even when it's not enough. I have real dreams instead of dreams about illness and hospitals and wishing that my surgeon still liked me."

"And the heat doesn't bash me anymore because it's just something," Skeeter says. "Know what I mean?"

"I haven't the fucking foggiest..." I mutter and hate myself immediately because this invites him to continue talking; the smart thing to do would have been to pretend to sleep. So he continues to talk.

"Well, you know how when something icky happens normally you just get through and get on with your life?" Skeeter says, rhetorically, I know this time, and say nothing. He goes on nevertheless. "Well, before the heat was one MORE thing...one MORE thing on top of everything. One MORE thing piled on top of my shitty
Iife just making it MORE shitty—"

"—yes, yes I get it. MORE. Yes, I think I've grabbed your meaning," I say in a tone that would shut up the most retarded kid on the short bus, but not Skeeter.

"And I never once," Skeeter says, "NOT ONCE!—suspected how huge the weight on my shoulders was. HOW FUCKING HUGE my anguish was about my surgeon treating me like this. HOW FUCKING HUGE was the abyss in my life because I began to feel I...HAD...NO...FUTURE! HOW FUCKING HUGE—"

Finally: "—FUCKING HUGE! MORE! MORE HUGE! HUGE-ARAMA! HUGE-ARRIFIC! HUGE-APALOOZA!" I trilled. "I FUCKING GET IT. YOUR LIFE IS BETTER! I GET IT! BOO-BOO GETS IT! EVERYONE WHO HAS LISTENED TO YOU IN THE LAST THREE DAYS GETS IT! THE FUCKING BIRDS IN THE TREES, THE BUGS ON THE BIRDS AND THE FUCKING BACTERIA ON THE BUGS ON THE BIRDS IN THE TREES FUCKING GET IT! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, PLEASE, PLEASE SHUT UP!"

Instead of crumbling under my words, he just grins stupidly and kisses my nose. I sigh. All he said is true. He is almost obscenely content and goes off to the clinic every day and comes back from it whistling and chirping and this despite the fact that he returns sodden with—ew!—sweat.

Don't get me wrong—he's still the pissy, tempermental homo diva he always was, but now he's in a good mood when he goes OTT like the drama queen he is. And just in time, too, because Boo is losing his mind with stress over the beginning of his school year and the fact that now that he's a manager he has to deal with whiney teachers...worse, unionized whiney teachers; think: men and women with PMS all the fucking time.

So...here we are. We thought the fucking opera was over but Wagner has another three turgid hours of shrieking fat Frauleins and bellowing hefty Herren to offer us.

Kill me. Kill me now.