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

  3. THE THEME

  Martha Stewart says, “Your own dishes, possessions, and personality will determine the style and tone of the occasion.” That is why I like to use as my theme “the breakup of the Soviet Union,” my table settings and decorations reflecting with amazing accuracy the chaos, poverty, and desperation of a culture in the throes of disintegration.

  Chapter Two: Day-of-the-Party Preparations

  As soon as you awake, begin your futile attempt to remove the vast quantities of pet hair that have settled over everything in your house like a gentle dusting of snow on a wintry morning. Pick up as many of the saliva-coated pet toys as you can find and hide them somewhere. Anywhere. Especially the squeaking vinyl turkey leg with a face.

  Martha Stewart thoughtfully reminds us to “Remember to empty a coat closet” to accommodate the outerwear of your guests.

  So, take all the stuff you have in there and move it to the … no, the garage is full. So is the bedroom closet. And the hall closet. Which is why I recommend that you just put everything back into the coat closet and lower the heat in the house so that your guests will not be inclined to take off their coats or sweaters.

  Begin to anesthetize yourself. It may be politically incorrect in this day and age, but as much as you might like to, you aren’t going to be driving anywhere. So isn’t it worth it just this once to provide yourself with an impenetrable smoke screen between your problems and anxieties and your own ability to perceive them?

  Don’t forget that “music can establish and sustain an easy mood.” I prefer a simple loop tape of AC/DC singing “Highway to Hell.” But select your own favorites, depending on your theme.

  Clean the pet hair off everything again, making sure to notice that there is just as much this time as there was before you spent all those previous hours removing it. But this time, if you are sufficiently sedated, you may enjoy taking all the saliva-coated pet toys and assembling them into a colorful centerpiece, surrounded by fresh flowers and grandmother’s old silver. Place the squeaking vinyl turkey leg with a face proudly in the front. Or go directly to

  PLAN B

  Turn out all the lights in your house and greet arriving guests in your bathrobe and pajamas. Wearing an expression of sympathetic, quizzical bemusement, say to them. “Geez—this is kind of embarrassing. The party was last night. But hey—come on in. Can I get you a cup of tea?” They will probably stay only a few minutes—just long enough to get angry about already getting pet hair all over some cherished item of clothing. But because the error will seem to be theirs, your social obligations will be paid in full!!

  Showering with Your Dog

  I don’t allow just anyone with mud on his tongue to fall asleep on me. (Well, not anymore. Not since the sixties.) After several years of expensive therapy I’ve learned I have the right to require more from a relationship with a man. But, I must confess, it is the mark of how completely in love I am with my dog, Stan, that I almost always find this kind of behavior endearing in him.

  Stan’s status in my household has been steadily on the rise ever since that black day in September when the indoor dog population of my home was reduced by 50 percent. That was when half of my two head of dog went off to the giant overturned garbage can in the sky. At first I was concerned that the remaining member of the team would be lonely, troubled, maybe racked with guilt, the way Timothy Hutton’s surviving-brother character was in Ordinary People. Then I began to observe that Stan was actually kind of glad Bob was gone.

  I shouldn’t have been too surprised. After all, on frighteningly frequent occasions over the years, Stan had, in a pretty straightforward fashion, tried to kill Bob. I always wrote off these murder attempts as poor impulse control rather than genuine malice-aforethought, homicidal-type acts. But now that it’s completely apparent how much he enjoys the perks that come with being a solo dog act, I’m not so sure, especially after witnessing him nearly kill the puppy I briefly tried to add to our strange little family. And the fact is, he really does get perks now. For instance, I used to find it much easier to get into my car dogless when there were two dogs standing at the front door making those “We’d rather be dead than be left here” faces. I would think to myself, Ah, screw it. They’ll be fine. They’ll entertain each other. Then I’d leave the house with a clear conscience, imagining some kind of secret doggy confabs that came alive only in my absence—maybe intense, animated discussions of heartworm or something.

  But when Stan stands alone at the front door making that “How can you do this to me?” face, I almost never drive off dog-free. My anthropomorphic fantasies rage much more violently out of control now that there’s just one dog. Even at the expense of the reasonable maintenance of my car, which at this point is evenly coated with dog hair, even under the hood and inside all of the spark plugs.

  On the plus side, riding around with Stan can be fun. It’s certainly much less stressful than riding around with the average man. For example, he always lets me pick the radio station, and he greets my every choice of destination with boundless enthusiasm. And there are those special times when he leans over to nuzzle me with his snout—which I always take to be an incredibly moving tribute to the amazing bond that our species are able to share … until I remember, too late, that most of the times he does this he is simply looking for a cozy place to throw up. The most memorable instance of this was the time I was having the house fumigated for fleas and had been instructed not to go back inside for four hours. And so I was left trying to figure out an afternoon of activities appropriate for a woman covered with dog vomit.

  I guess the point I’m getting to is that I’m completely off the deep end as a dog parent now that there is just the one dog, because in a lot of ways he seems like more of a roommate. And as a roommate, I have to say he’s doing a nice job. Anything I prepare for dinner seems perfect to him. From a handful of popcorn to fettucine Alfredo to small, hard bits of gristle in a plate of warm beer (a personal specialty), he has never failed to exhibit anything less than exuberant delight in my menu planning. No man was ever this easy to please, that’s for sure.

  Okay, yes, there is a certain amount of unsavory cleaning to do out in the backyard, but it’s actually minor compared to what’s required after a man has blasted through a house like a raging tornado. And, yes, he does leave a lot of hair and stuff on the bed, but he also never hogs the remote control and forces me to watch hours of TV shows in five-second increments.

  Unfortunately, there’s a complication. Since I have conferred on Stan the status of roommate it has become increasingly difficult to compel him to undergo traditional dog humiliations. Like bathing. I used to tie the boy up in the yard and hose him down (the way you might, say, your parents) but that no longer seems fair. No basic pet-care book deals with this type of readjustment. And since it is my goal here to fill the holes that others never knew existed, I would like to help bring pet care into the nineties, advising those for whom a pet is a significant other. Or if not, certainly an insignificant one. My first topic: showering with your dog.

  Let’s face it. Even the most beloved dog can be very stinky at times. And where pet hygiene is concerned, the enlightened pet guardian (and, of course, by that I mean me) has no choice but to share the indoor facilities with the animal.

  Step 1:

  Choosing the Proper Wardrobe

  When showering with your dog, it is advisable to wear swimwear. I don’t know whether the dog would know if you were naked, but you would know.

  Step 2:

  Getting the Dog into the Shower

  Nothing can really proceed until this is accomplished. Often the dog will exhibit a little initial reluctance … perhaps because he has watched too many horror movies on TV in which showers are presented in an unfortunate light. Many dogs have never given any thought to the concept of “fiction” and so do not know that most showers are not just another death trap. Rather than confront the animal with a lot of mind-blowing philosophical concepts, I recomme
nd one of two less complicated strategies that work for me. The first is what I call the old “ball in the shower” approach, in which you, the parent or guardian, relocate to the inside of the shower with some favorite sports equipment, making it appear that you have selected the location not because of its showering capabilities but simply because it is the best damn place for miles around to hit fungoes. If, after fifteen or twenty minutes of enthusiastic solo sports maneuvers, you have not managed to interest the animal in joining you, I suggest you switch to the immediately effective “chicken skin around the drain” approach. It’s a well-documented fact that only a minute amount of chicken skin can accumulate in the lower third of any area of the world before it will be joined by a dog.

  Once this has happened, simply close the shower door behind him, or pull the curtain. (For the more squeamish among you who worry about the mess in the shower, you can count on the dog to clean it all up. If he should happen to miss a little, and some chicken skin remains, don’t worry. It will simply be taken by any future showerers as a remarkable indication of how seriously you scrub yourself when you wash.)

  Step 3:

  Moistening and Soaping the Animal

  This may be trickier than it appears, because the animal tends to move to the parts of the shower where there is no water. And so it becomes your perpetual task to keep moving the water to the parts of the shower where there is a dog. During this phase, apply shampoo and try not to take personally the animal’s expression, which indicates a hatred and loathing so extreme that he is trying to figure out how he can reconnect with his long-buried primitive instincts to kill and eat a human being. It may be useful to let the dog know that showering is not a punishment but something you actually find pleasurable and relaxing. If this does not help, now is an excellent time to explain to the animal that the legal system is built primarily around the rights of humans, and, if you want to, you can take him back to the pound where you got him and then his life won’t be worth a plugged nickel.

  Step 4:

  Rinsing

  You are now dealing with increasing desperation on the part of the dog, who may be getting ready to make a break for it. This is why nature gave the dog a tail, to help you as you try to restrain him before he runs through the house all matted and soapy and gets big hair-encrusted stains all over your cherished possessions.

  Step 5:

  Toweling the Dog

  This process is designed to help you avoid the splattered, soaking mess that results when the dog shakes himself off. No matter how diligently you perform toweling, it is futile. When you’re through, the dog will disperse the same astonishing amounts of water and hair as if he had never been toweled at all.

  Now you may release the animal, perhaps deluding yourself that he is thrilled at his cleaner condition. You should return immediately to the shower and shovel out the three to five pounds of hair you will find lodged in your drain. This brings me to the final but most important step.

  Step 6:

  Remove Any Bottles of Flea and Tick Shampoo

  Take it from someone who has lived through every unfortunate scenario that can result from simply leaving the bottle around. This needs to be memorized and remembered.… I know I have helped you.

  Sexual Secrets and Other Self-improvements

  Here’s something that New York and Los Angeles have in common that hardly ever makes the comparison charts: Both have big piles of free extension-school course schedules sitting out on streets and in stores everywhere. I have been grabbing them for years now, simply for the pleasure of taking them home and saying in animated tones to myself, “Who attends these things?”

  For example: “Writing Erotica: Sizzle Sells.” Who the hell shows up at that one? And what do they even mean by teaching a course called “Charisma: How to Achieve That Special Magic”? So I thought I’d find out. I turned down “Learn About Your Season Through Color” and “Start Your Own Cooking Business … Now!” in favor of a couple that looked even more intriguing. As luck would have it, I turned up at part two of each course.

  1. “Sexual Secrets of the Orient”

  As I walk up a flight of stairs in the lobby of a large hotel near the Los Angeles International Airport, I can’t help viewing everyone else headed up the stairs with suspicion. Are they here for the sexual secrets, too, and if so, why? Are they dangerous? Which is why, when I meet the instructor (in a meeting room full of rows of gold oval-backed hotel chairs), I am surprised. She is a short, stocky woman with no-nonsense graying hair and large earrings. She speaks with the deliberate manner of a grade school teacher, and she insists on giving me a name tag. “I don’t want you to be just a no one,” she tells me, not realizing that I am not the type to want a high-profile image at a class called “Sexual Secrets of the Orient.”

  Slowly the other class members are filtering in … and they are a pleasant-looking group of mostly white adults between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five—about half men and half women. There’s a guy in a loud sport coat who looks like Dabney Coleman, two couples who look like Esalen Institute graduates, four cute guys in their twenties who seem to have come by themselves, and the regulation number of perky single women.

  The instructor, whose name is Ginny Dingman and who is an R.N. with some degrees in human sexuality, begins to grill the assembled group. “Did you all write a sexual fantasy this week? Yes? No? Please remember to do that this week because it really gets the sexual energies flowing. What about drawing a picture of yourselves? Did you all look at yourselves in the mirror like you were supposed to?” She suggests to us that the women in the class might like to develop a nickname for their sexual organs. “The guys sometimes have names for their dick or their peter,” she tells us, “so you can have a name, too. Like maybe Matilda. Or Melissa.” She pushes her glasses up into her hair and walks up and down the aisle. “How many of you played with yourself this week? I want you to make a contract with yourself that you’re going to play with yourself two to three times a week. Come on, guys! You laid cold hard cash down!” As she distributes our first handout I am thinking to myself that these secrets of the Orient are a lot more accessible than I had figured. Now we read about the pubococcygeal muscle, which, she tells us, is used to start and stop the flow of urine. “I’ll call it the Kegel muscle, and I want you to start becoming a Kegel muscle exerciser on the freeway with me. I am working my Kegel muscle right now, as I talk to you. And when I get stuck in freeway traffic I just sit there going Kegel, Kegel, Kegel, Kegel, Kegel.”

  As cute as she is (and she is cute), she does have a compulsion to tell the class more personal information than I have ever really wanted to know about one of my teachers. We learn that she is fifty-seven and has a fifty-nine-year-old husband who has no erectile problems, that she was a bed wetter until she was sixteen and never had an orgasm until she was forty-eight, that it takes her a long time to lubricate, that she was once in a car wreck that gave her horrible intestinal problems and constipation for a time, and that she and her husband did drawings of their sexual organs that now hang proudly in the bathroom of their home. The class is a one-woman tour de force for Ginny, who, at other points during the evening, massages one guy’s back, one woman’s leg, and another woman’s butt, walks around the room touching everyone with a vibrator, shows us how to bounce testicles in our hands, demonstrates a palms-on-the-nipples massage technique on her own ample breasts, and previews for us a wealth of unusual poems and reading materials, including but not limited to the Cunt Coloring Book.

  Things do take a turn for the slightly more Oriental as we move on to the semi-exotic Ben Wa balls. “When I first started wearing these I had had four babies and three abdominal surgeries,” Ginny says, holding a set up, “and I had no muscle tone in there. And they’d fall right out. I was the goose that laid the golden eggs.” Ben Wa balls, she tells us, were developed by Oriental women to strengthen the Kegel muscle. “So what happens is they roll around and go doodledy-doodledy-doo.” “What do th
ey feel like?” a woman in the class wants to know. “Thank you very much for asking that,” says Ginny, who explains that during intercourse men find them pleasurable but women report it doesn’t feel that great. “Is there any way they can be pushed in so you can’t get them out?” asks another woman. “Oh gosh, you ask wonderful questions!” says Ginny, who counsels us that if they do get lost, “just take a bath. Wash the dishes. Don’t worry. They’ll come out.”

  During the break I talk to a thin, waiflike blond woman who says she prefers being called Ocean (although her name tag reads AGNES). She tells me she is a private tutor in reading improvement, vocabulary building, and intellectual enrichment who is taking the class to aid in her quest to become a “four-star A-double-plus lover,” because she believes that “being a disciple of Aphrodite is one of the best uses of your time while you’re here on Earth.”

  The cute guy with the beard who is sitting in front of me turns out to be a business-machine repairman who came here from Russia seven years ago. He doesn’t think they had any similar classes in the Soviet Union, but he does feel he picked up some useful tips here tonight. He has previously enrolled in windsurfing and hiking classes.

  As it turns out, there are many repeat offenders among course graduates. The blond woman in front (who appears to be with her girlfriend) says she has also taken “Letting Go and Moving On” and “Direct Mail: The Marketing Phenomenon of the Decade.”