Dog Problems.

Happy Thursday, lovers!

I have a confession to make. Sometimes in your twenties, you get pretty desperate for money. By “you” I probably mean me. There are only so many internal organs one can comfortably survive without. An even smaller percentage of said organs are worth anything on the black market. Also. Sometimes your tires, eyeballs, and wardrobe all need to be replaced. These things cost money, which is a real bitch when you spent your last dollas on a plane ticket home.  This month my financial options shook out to giving hand jobs on 82^nd or house-sitting for my boss. Desperate times, desperate measures right? As such, I’m currently the indentured servant/maid/bitch of two very small dogs.

I know what you’re thinking, and you're wrong. Don’t give me that “oh they’re so cute and you’re getting paid to play with puppies” bullshit. You guys, these dogs aren’t terriers. They’re terrorists and they’re waging war on my sanity. I used to think I was a dog person. I’ve changed my mind.

The trouble all started when I forgot to be a superstitious human. Normally I’m on the ball. Spilled salt always goes over my left shoulder, and I avoid crossing paths with black cats. There are ways a sane human being just doesn’t tempt fate. Like stating something with absolute certainty and not knocking on wood.

(Example: “Dog-sitting always reminds me why I love being a cat owner. Cats are so low maintenance! I could leave mine alone for ten minutes or ten days and she’d be just as irritated to see me when I came home”.)

Or picking up a facedown penny. Particularly in the Tik Tok parking lot on a sunny Saturday morning when you have lots of plans. Maybe it was the weather, or the Bloody Mary bar, or Tik Tok’s Cinco de Mayo breakfast specials with homemade guacamole. I’ll never know for sure, but I got careless. When you combine stupid assertions with inevitable bad luck, you’re asking for trouble.

When we checked on That Cat before commencing our Sunny Saturday plans, Lew and I discovered she was busily trying to die. Glazed eyes, voiceless meow, tried-to-jump-into-the-window-sill-but-missed-and-slid-down-the-wall trying to die.

You guys. When life is slowest I’ve occasionally wondered how I would behave in stressful situations. I like to imagine myself a stoic, making careful and objective decisions. Unfortunately, it turns out my first impulse is to laugh uncontrollably. My second impulse is to flail about ineffectually and maybe do more harming than helping. Luckily Lew kept me from killing Murphy in my efforts to save her. She held my hand, righted the upside-down cat purse when my too-fast corners sent it flying across the backseat, and gave me play-by-play updates on That Cat’s status.

           

After a physical exam, subcutaneous fluids, and a shot of steroids the doctor told me I needed to give That Cat antibiotics twice daily and shouldn’t leave her alone overnight... Thus began the turf wars: terriers in the loft, Murphy locked in my bedroom.

A Brief Compilation of Observable Terrier Facts:

1.      Terriers possess two different fuel reserves. They use one for general existence things like breathing, eating, walking, etc. They reserve their secondary and potentially limitless energy reserve for driving their house-sitters fucking insane.

2.      Preferred terrier activities include nose-whistling, running laps around the living room and barking at neighborhood children, cats, shadows, pieces of lint, and imaginary shadow creatures threatening your safety.

3.      Terriers are capable of forgoing food, water, and sleep if there is any potential they will be able to stalk, mangle, or otherwise interact violently with a cat.

4.      Terriers can comfortably knock a full plate of caprese salad onto the floor in the time it takes you to grab the pepper shaker. They will not eat said salad, because vegetables. But they will have spoiled it for you. This is enough.

5.      While we’re on the subject of terrier speed: they can de-bag a garbage can, clean a litter box, and eat chicken poop off the porch in the blink of an eye.

6.      Terriers’ weaknesses include four-year olds, inflatable swimming pools, and “terrier barriers” (constructed entirely out of empty cat litter cartons and 10 lb. dumbbells).

7.      Not all terriers are built equal. Sorry Doris.

There’s a story from my childhood that may or may not be a memory. We had a cat that loved to play with plastic bags. At night. When everybody was trying to be asleep. Plastic bags were especially wonderful if we had to wake up early. The earlier the better, right? It’s a plastic bag party! Err’body get cray!

At this point in his mid-20s, my father had options. He could 1) clean shit up so the cat didn’t have access to plastic bags 2) accidentally “lose” the cat under mysterious circumstances, or 3) enact revenge in a more subtle manner. Of course he went with that last one, because humans are pretty simple animals. By all accounts my father collected a handful of plastic bags, waited around the house until the cat decided to nap (which, let’s be honest, is approximately 15 hours a day), and snuck up on her. I have a very clear mental image of him poised over that sleeping cat, preparing to rustle the bags in her face and disturb her napping.

Aha! That’ll teach her! Except no. That’s not how animals work.

Goddamn I wish that was how animals worked. At this moment I would be snuffling, scratching and whining at the terriers’ crate door. Because obviously if I obnoxiously intrude on their space they’ll understand that I need mine. Right? Fuck.

As I write this both dogs are innocently sleeping and making me feel like a real asshole. So I will end this post with how Andrea Gibson feels about dogs. Trust me, it’s a lot better than I feel at this point.

I love you creeps, and don’t forget it.

-b

broken sticks & broken stones

…will turn to dust just like our bones, again. 
It's words that hurt the most, now isn't it?

Tonight I drove across the bridge from Vancouver into Portland with the full moon bleeding yellow, looking the way I imagine Yellowstone smells. Like something dangerous, about to implode. The radio tried to tell me a story about loving people’s rough edges, but only half of me was paying attention. The other half was headrush hung; suspended between city lights and stars the way bridges span land masses, or separate sky and water.

The moon and music and the way roads grind under tires always make me lonely in a forgettable way. Like the times you want to tell someone about That One Thing and how it reminded you of them. Except you don’t have their number anymore because shit happens. Because you don’t know them now, and maybe you never did.

The path of least resistance is catching up with me again today.

This world is full of triggers, our memories like ammo cartridges waiting to combust. The way hotel lobbies take me back to Denver where I’m chain smoking, hugging my knees and watching the fire the way I can’t watch you. You told me your dad still think about her sometimes, says she was his biggest regret. I wondered if you’d be my biggest regret, and sometimes I still wonder but less often since the birds came back from wherever birds go.

I have so many totems, good luck charms collected alongside memories: a piece of string around my left wrist, stuffed rabbit for good luck, mood rings and bracelets and tiny keys all assimilated into my story. My ring has been on my lover’s nightstand four days now. I feel off balance every time I gesture with my hands. I don’t even know what I miss anymore.  

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I just know I needed to let you know I’m still alive. I needed to let you know That One Thing reminded me of you, and I hope you’re still breathing. I want you to know the only constant these days is a sense that everything is temporary, and that’s ok. I don’t cry anymore, and that’s ok too.

If you get a chance tonight, go look at the moon. You won’t regret it.

Many miles of love.

-b

This is our Decision, to Live Fast & Die Young

Hello, kittens.

 

I’ma need you to bear with me, as I’m currently lying in my bed drinking beer and feeling sentimental. Last weekend a friend from Hometown, Montana visited. Saturday morning, 7:30am and we were driving north on Naito. Around the corner the trees were blossoming heavy and white against sunrise in a way that made me ache. I didn’t know then those branches would be bare by Monday. I didn’t realize how much I missed her until she was talking Sedona and dog bites, motorcycles and drugs and yoga. I didn’t know I almost lost her until she was talking headlights and emergency rooms, staples and muscle contusions.

It's a strange sensation, talking to somebody from the past. I never realized how deep history runs or how heavy it can be. Like all of your old selves are coalescing into each other because there’s this human being and she knows your mom's name and remembers when your sister was born. She held the pipe the first time you smoked weed on the dirt road. That day J almost singed her eyebrows off when a seed combusted and I didn’t know if I should laugh. I didn't know what "high" was supposed to feel like but I learned about camaraderie.

I know this: we’re the kids who start road trips with shots of vodka and ignore our friends’ crosses on the highway.

Friday I went to a party I don’t remember. I’ve got flashes: an orange dress, a broken toilet handle, shots and shots and shots. Sometimes you pick a stranger's cigarette off the bar because it's the only thing your eyes can focus on. I don’t remember leaving the club, but I made it to the exit/alley/side street. There was a boy with a lighter and nowhere better to be. Eventually C found me smoking and "freestyle rapping" with him. It was one of those nights that make you feel young and stupid like maybe you should have died but you didn't, so you laugh about it the next morning when you walk to get coffee with your friend. She doesn’t know this new you. 

I don’t really know this new me. Lately everything feels temporary, like I’m waiting for something. I’ve been stretching this skin like the last $20 before payday. I’ve been treating this body like I’ll get a new one. I’ve been letting life blur around the edges because trying to focus just makes me dizzy. I don’t know guys. Lately I just want to sell everything I own and disappear. I know, I know. I just moved here a year ago and self-sabotaging security and so on and so forth. But there’s so much world out there! I think I'm making this existence harder than it needs to be. What if this whole life could be an afternoon in the park? 

I love you all. I hope you’re chasing your dreams the way I’d like to be.

-b

Before You Knew You'd Know Me.

and finally wake, rise from
9 days of fever dreams.

Sometimes for just a little while you’ll remember what it used to feel like to be you. Don’t think about it too hard or for too long, the sad wants that to happen. The heavies want that to happen. The you that used to feel good is still under there. You are layers of stratified emotion. You can’t dig through this scar tissue. You’ll just make a bloody mess. Sometimes that you throbs beneath this cracked new self the way you feel something from far away; familiar and muted, like running your fingertips over your open palm after you dip your hand in glue.

feel heaviness lifted
from shallow bird breaths,

This feeling will not be your best friend reading to you while you fall asleep in her bed. It’s not your best friend at all. You haven’t heard from her in months, and even that ache has become less familiar than your new lonely. But you have a new friend who wants to take you bow-tie shopping. She says you give the best hugs. And there is a girl that you worry about when the weather is bad or when the mood is dark or when the whole fucking world feels wobbly because you don’t want her to hurt.

the chest expanding 
deeper and deeper and deeper.

You are the best at causing hurt. But you can’t seem to stay away from her bed or her couch or her skin. Her skin. There are lines where she grew into herself, immense root systems. Sometimes they are irrigation lines. She carved herself deep wells, attempting to grow. You are learning her body with all your parts, nibbling absently on a shoulder, her neck. You want to fossilize the indent of your teeth in the clay of her breast, but the impressions are never permanent. Press your ear to the open embrace of her pelvis like you could hear the ocean in there.

shake the dust from your tongue,
bathe your bones in restoration.

She took you to the ocean once. The sky was trying to be spring but the water was slate. You kept your shoes on. You were still strangers then and shy. She hid behind the black box and you made yourself invisible. Drawn into yourself, you pretended to have big thoughts because maybe she would ask you about them. What would you have said if she had asked?

Driving home, Orion spent two hours toppling backwards through space while the tires hummed and the streets were streets that never learned straight lines. There was snow in the rest stop parking lot.  Or maybe there wasn’t, maybe that’s a memory from a long time ago. Back when snow still knew how to make walls between you and reality.

let honey drizzle across 
the inflamed lung tissue,

When she told you the worst parts you held her hand. You hoped it was enough because it was all you had. It is still all you have. 

let sunshine shatter the impervious
sheen of pallid winter skin. you
are not a ghost anymore.

That’s enough.