What the Dogs Have Taught Me: And Other Amazing Things I've Learned Read online

  Praise for Merrill Markoe

  What the Dogs Have Taught Me

  “Merrill Markoe has a keen eye for the little lunacies of modern living.… Hers is a special talent, desperately needed these days.”

  —The New York Times

  “You will gain an appreciation of the silly from which you may never recover. You may begin to collect windup toys at airports, catalogs of exotic nightwear, and unemployment ads for stun-gun salesmen.”

  —Time

  How to Be Hap- Hap- Happy Like Me

  “Markoe is the funniest woman in America and, please, let’s have no arguing, okay?”

  —People

  “Hip, hilarious, a neurotic’s delight … Markoe presents a stupefyingly funny guide to the universe and everything in it.”

  —The Houston Post

  also by Merrill Markoe

  The Psycho Ex Game

  It’s My F—ing Birthday

  How to Be Hap- Hap- Happy Like Me

  Merrill Markoe’s Guide to Love

  The Day My Dogs Became Guys

  2005 Villard Books Trade Paperback Edition

  Copyright © 2005 by Merrill Markoe

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Villard Books, an imprint of

  The Random House Publishing Group, a division of

  Random House, Inc., New York.

  VILLARD and “V” CIRCLED Design are registered trademarks of

  Random House, Inc.

  Portions of this work were originally published in What the Dogs Have Taught Me (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992), copyright © 1992 by Merrill Markoe, and How to Be Hap- Hap- Happy Like Me (New York: Viking Penguin, 1994), copyright © 1994 by Merrill Markoe. In addition, some of the essays originally appeared in Buzz, LA Weekly, Oxygen.com, and ModernHumorist.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-49869-4

  Villard Books website address: www.villard.com

  v3.1

  To Stan, Bob, Bo, Tex,

  Winky, Dinky, and Puppyboy,

  but most of all to Lewis

  Foreword

  On the eve of the republication of this book of short pieces, I cannot help but reflect on how much has changed since the nineties, when many of them were written.

  Back then I was single, and coping with dating, while living with my four head of dog in an underfurnished house in Los Angeles. I was cynical about the importance of the Internet or the need for e-mail, and scared silly about the frightening specter of El Niño, the unstoppable Ebola virus, skyrocketing electricity prices and the nightmare of rolling blackouts, the coming catastrophe of Y2K, the crazy war in Kuwait, and the number of fat grams I was consuming each day. I was also worried sick about the cavalier destruction of the environment, the rising censorship by the religious right, the lack of regard the current administration was showing for the truth, and the puzzling desire for a return of the seventies. Some things don’t change.

  Now it is 2005. I am coping with living with one head of man, and two head of dog and cat in the same house in Los Angeles, but has become overfurnished. Now I am cynical about the need for a cell phone that is also a camera, and scared silly about skyrocketing gas prices, the specter of the worst fire season ever, the unstoppable West Nile virus, the crazy war in Iraq, and the number of carbs I am consuming each day.

  On the bright side, all this time I have continued to learn from my dogs, who have always been there to make life look like a hopeful, happy place. They have taught me, by example, that it is possible to wake up each morning in a wonderful mood, worried about absolutely nothing, excited about breakfast, thrilled every time there is a knock at the door. How can I ever forget the reaction they had to the last big fire scare in my neighborhood, when the fire department came to my house to suggest we evacuate? While I was frantic, running around trying to determine which of my possessions to save, the dogs all were leaping with glee at the prospect of some kind of event that was going to involve not just leashes but also the car.

  Through constant and ceaseless example, the dogs have taught me that this bottomless joie de vivre is available to each and every one of us. All it takes is someone looking out for your health and your grooming while serving you nutritious meals plus vitamins every day as they selflessly make sure you get plenty of exercise and love and comfort. It also helps if they pay all of your bills.

  Since I have had no one to rely on for those things since high school, I have been a nervous wreck for decades.

  But my dogs are always the picture of health and happiness. And isn’t that what’s really important?

  MERRILL MARKOE

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  A Conversation with My Dogs

  Just Say “I Do”

  The Dog Diaries

  Let’s Party

  Showering with Your Dog

  Sexual Secrets and Other Self-improvements

  Something Extremely Important

  An Insider’s Guide to the American Woman

  A Dog Is a Dog Is a Dog

  I, Lewis

  Look Before You Eat

  Dominatrix 101

  Diary of a New Relationship

  Home Alone

  My Romantic Dinner with Fabio

  What the Dogs Have Taught Me

  My New Career in Porn

  It’s a Wonderful Lewis

  Ed Is Coming to Town!

  Come Dine with Me in 1093

  If I Could Talk to the Animals

  Cell Phone Etiquette

  My Career in Stun Guns

  Firing My Dog

  A World Without Men

  Conversation Piece

  Zen and the Art of Multiple Dog Walking

  12,000 Square Feet of Fun

  Greeting Disorder

  Deranged Love Mutants: The Story of Romeo and Juliet

  Viva Las Wine Goddesses!

  Pets and the Single Girl

  A Little Intimate Exploration

  How to Please a Man Every Time and Have Him Okay Maybe Not Beg for More but at Least Not Demand a Whole Lot Less

  Hip, Pretentious L.A.

  One of the Most Thrilling Days of My Life

  Psychic Comparison

  A New Closet for Merrill

  A Tenacious Grasp of the Obvious

  Things to Do While Waiting for the World to End

  Zombie Clerks Are Messing with My Mind

  What I Did on My Summer Vacation

  Top Dog

  A Full-Disclosure Candidacy

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  A Conversation with My Dogs

  It is late afternoon. Seated at my desk, I call for my dogs to join me in my office. They do.

  Me: The reason I’ve summoned you here today is I really think we should talk about something.

  Bob: What’s that?

  Me: Well, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I get the feeling you guys think you have to follow me everywhere and I just want you both to know that you don’t.

  Stan: Where would you get a feeling like that?

  Me: I get it from the fact that the both of you follow me everywhere all day long. Like for instance, this morning. We were all together in the bedroom? Why do you both look blank? Doesn’t this ring a bell at all? I was on the bed reading the paper …

  Bob: Where was
I?

  Me: On the floor sleeping.

  Bob: On the floor sleepi …? Oh, yes. Right. I remember that. Go on.

  Me: So, there came a point where I had to get up and go into the next room to get a Kleenex. And you both woke up out of a deep sleep to go with me.

  Stan: Yes. So? What’s the problem?

  Bob: We like to watch you get Kleenex. We happen to think it’s something you do very well.

  Me: The point I’m trying to make is why do you both have to get up out of a deep sleep to go with me. You sit there staring at me, all excited, like you think something really good is going to happen. I feel a lot of pressure to be more entertaining.

  Bob: Would it help if we stood?

  Stan: I think what the lady is saying is that where Kleenex retrieval is concerned, she’d just as soon we not make the trip.

  Bob: Is that true?

  Me: Yes. It is.

  Bob (deeply hurt): Oh, man.

  Stan: Don’t let her get to you, buddy.

  Bob: I know I shouldn’t. But it all comes as such a shock.

  Me: I think you may be taking this wrong. It’s not that I don’t like your company. It’s just that I see no reason for you both to follow me every time I get up.

  Bob: What if just one of us goes?

  Stan: And I don’t suppose that “one of us” would be you?

  Me: Neither of you needs to go.

  Bob: Okay. Fine. No problem. Get your damn Kleenex alone from now on.

  Me: Good.

  Bob: I’m just curious. What’s your position on pens?

  Me: Pens?

  Bob: Yes. How many of us can wake up out of a deep sleep to watch you look for a pen?

  Me: Why would either of you want to wake up out of a deep sleep to follow me around while I’m looking for a pen?

  Stan: Is she serious?

  Bob: I can’t tell. She has such a weird sense of humor.

  Me: Let’s just level with each other, okay? The real reason you both follow me every place I go is that you secretly believe there might be food involved. Isn’t that true? Isn’t that the real reason for the show of enthusiasm?

  Stan: Very nice talk.

  Bob: The woman has got some mouth on her.

  Me: You mean you deny that every time you follow me out of the room it’s actually because you think we’re stopping for snacks?

  Bob: Absolutely false. That is a bald-faced lie. We do it for the life experience. Period.

  Stan: And sometimes I think it might work into a game of ball.

  Bob: But we certainly don’t expect anything.

  Stan: We’re way past expecting anything of you. We wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself in any way. You have to rest and save up all your strength for all that Kleenex fetching.

  Bob: Plus we know it doesn’t concern you in the least that we’re both starving to death.

  Stan: We consume on the average about a third of the calories eaten daily by the typical wasted South American street dog.

  Me: One bowl of food a day is what the vet said I should give you. No more.

  Bob: One bowl of food is a joke. It’s an hors d’oeuvre. It does nothing but whet my appetite.

  Me: Last summer, before I cut your food down, you were the size and shape of a hassock.

  Bob: Who is she talking to?

  Stan: You, pal. You looked like a beanbag chair, buddy.

  Bob: But it was not from overeating. In summer, I retain fluids, that’s all. I was in very good shape.

  Stan: For a hippo. I saw you play ball back then. Nice energy. For a dead guy.

  Bob: Don’t talk to me about energy. Who single-handedly ate his way through the back fence? Not just once but on four separate occasions?

  Me: So you’re the one who did that?

  Bob: One who did what?

  Me: Ate through the back fence.

  Bob: Is there something wrong with the back fence? I have no idea what happened. Whoever said that is a liar.

  Stan: The fact remains that we are starving all day long and you continually torture us by eating right in front of us.

  Bob: Very nice manners, by the way.

  Me: You have the nerve to discuss my manners? Who drinks out of the toilet and then comes up and kisses me on the face?

  Bob: That would be Dave.

  Me: No. That would be you. And while we’re on the subject of manners, who keeps trying to crawl into the refrigerator? Who always has mud on their tongue?

  Stan: Well, that would be Dave.

  Me: Okay. That would be Dave. But the point I’m trying to make is that where manners are concerned, let’s just say that you don’t catch me trying to stick my head in your dinner.

  Bob: Well, that may be more a function of menu than anything else.

  Me: Which brings me right back to my original point. The two of you do not have to wake up and offer me fake camaraderie now that you understand that once a day is all you’re ever going to be fed. Period. Non-negotiable. For the rest of your natural lives. And if I want to play ball, I’ll say so. End of sentence.

  Stan: Well, I see that the nature of these talks has completely broken down.

  Bob: I gotta tell you, it hurts.

  Me: There’s no reason to have hurt feelings.

  Stan: Fine. Whatever you say.

  Bob: I just don’t give a damn anymore. I’m beyond that, quite frankly. Get your own Kleenex, for all I care.

  Stan: I feel the same way. Let her go get all the Kleenex and pens she wants. I couldn’t care less.

  Me: Excellent. Well, I hope we understand each other now.

  Bob: We do. Why’d you get up? Where are you going?

  Me: Into the next room.

  Stan: Oh. Mm hmm. I see. And why is that?

  Me: To get my purse.

  Stan: Hey, fatso, out of my way.

  Bob: Watch out, asshole. I was first.

  Stan: The hell you were. I was first.

  Bob: Fuck you. We’re getting her purse, I go first. I’m starving.

  Stan: You don’t listen at all, do you. Going for pens means food. She said she’s getting her purse. That means ball.

  Just Say “I Do”

  I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the idea of getting married lately. Ever since President Bush decided to go out on a limb and give “marriage” his ringing endorsement, thereby proposing another forward-thinking political initiative on behalf of the Republican party that may at long last lay the groundwork for a full slate of all the other things your mother always told you to do, such as getting the hair out of your eyes, standing up straight, changing your tone of voice when you talk to me, and not leaving the house looking like that.

  Bush’s real agenda, of course, is to address the considerable pressure being applied by conservative religious organizations to back a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Opponents of same-sex marriage like to cite the ability to have children as the significant line of demarcation between a real marriage and a fraudulent same-sex facsimile. However, in making this case, they conveniently forget to mention some of “real marriage”’s famous offspring—for example, Adolf Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Enron guys, and the terrorists who engineered 9/11.

  Statistically speaking, gay marriage stands alone as the last outpost of marriage’s most pristine ideals, since same-sex couples are the only ones whose marital track records are untarnished. If we are going to question the validity of these marriages, then that proposed constitutional amendment ought to also contain a subclause restricting certain heterosexual unions that have, in the fullness of time, proven to be totally futile. For instance, the marriages of movie stars to anyone, straight or gay, especially if they have participated in a People magazine article in which they have declared that they are “very much in love.” Or weddings involving people under twenty-eight who have known each other for less than a year and intend to say their vows while wearing a parachute, scuba gear, or anything else that celebrates their hobbies.

/>   In fact, when you look at the big picture, it is easy to conclude that the best thing for our culture might be to just give marriage to gay people and let them refurbish it the way they do run-down neighborhoods. Once they have restored it to its original authentic beauty, plus added all the modern upgrades, heterosexuals can be permitted to return to it and continue their pattern of systematic debasement.

  But here’s the part about the whole issue of who can get married and who cannot that really has me puzzled. Back in February, when San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex partners, 3,000 gay couples rushed to the altar. That’s 6,000 adults who couldn’t wait another minute for the opportunity to be eligible to sue each other over common property, pay alimony, and take out mutual restraining orders. And that’s what I found unsettling. Not because the idea of gay marriage gives me pause, but precisely because the only marriage I seem to have a real problem with is my own. As a certified straight person (and yes, I did take the trouble to become certified), I have been legally entitled to get married for over four decades. Yet never once have I been able to motivate myself sufficiently to push a relationship further in that direction. Although I have been much live-togethered, I have never walked down an aisle that doesn’t have something I need that is on sale.