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

by Merrill Markoe

  It isn’t because I haven’t had access to successful relationships. For the past three years, I have been in a really good one, perhaps my best ever. In it, not only have I learned to talk through disagreements instead of driving around for hours in my car with a packed suitcase, but have gazed with astonishment at my partner as he actually listened when I talked. I even have proof: I have given him a number of pop quizzes. And still I remain the quiet calm spot in a tornado of peer group weddings, the only person who has never made all her friends shell out money to buy her china and silver and matching flatware and therefore does not yet have any of the aforementioned and is frankly a little pissed off about the whole thing. Especially when I add it all up and realize I have paid for so many sets of other people’s pricey wedding-registry china that I could easily host a dinner for the entire State Department if I could stand to be in their presence.

  Oh, sure, the first guy I lived with played the marriage card during our breakup, in one of those desperate eleventh-inning maneuvers that I never fall for because they remind me of nothing so much as an evening of avant-garde theater. And the next guy and I actually once went and had premarital blood tests. But I think it was because he just liked going to the doctor. In his perfect world, a marriage license would also have required a brain scan, an electrocardiogram, and a sphygmomanometer reading.

  The key point here is that it wasn’t as if I were the poor little wan and weeping thing who was left at the altar, or the frail victim of heartless commitment-phobic womanizers. Although, of course, I have enjoyed the company of such men on many delightful occasions. No, I had no intention of ever marrying any of the guys I have loved. I’ve never even had a fantasy about how my wedding would be. Occasionally I would want the men who claimed to love me to say that they would like to marry me, but that was really an exercise in positive reinforcement, like when you make someone tell you over and over they don’t think you look fat.

  When my father was dying, I asked him what he considered the biggest success in his life. When, without hesitation, he answered, “My marriage,” it made me wonder for a moment if he was a closet polygamist. Because the marriage I saw him in was one that sounded like this: “I said I love you. Now what the hell else do you want from me, for Chrissakes?”

  On a related topic, not long ago I was reading through my childhood diaries and I found that as early as fifth grade I wrote, “I am never getting married. I am never having kids.” Of course, a couple of pages later I also wrote, “I am never having my period.” Apparently I had the foresight to rethink that one.

  So why, then, when I attended someone’s wedding recently and the bride threw the bouquet to me, did I turn and duck so it bounced off my shoulder? Why does the idea of announcing to the world in a ceremony that you belong to someone and they to you, forever and ever, give me the feeling that I am tied to a chair in a windowless room, unable to reach the phone to find the number of Rush Limbaugh’s doctor and beg him to prescribe me some of that OxyContin? The craziest part of it all is that I like the idea of being in a monogamous relationship with someone I love. And when I’m in one, I do my best to make the object of my affections happy. I have even been known to take a Vivarin at midnight in order to cook and serve dinner at three A.M., when my beloved shows up and is hungry.

  Which is why I find myself wondering: What do those 6,000 gay people in San Francisco have in their hearts that I don’t have in mine, besides an obsession with Barbra Streisand? What do they and all the much married people of America all know about love that I have yet to comprehend?

  But then, as soon as I find myself getting wrapped up in romanticizing, I begin to think: If other people have so much more emotional depth than I do, why are there so many marriages that last only a few months? Or marriages where the sex has been dead for decades? Why is there so much cheating and complaining, so many vile divorce-related postmarital lawsuits where both people are trying not only to rob each other of everything they own, but also to impose stiff penalties for having been stupid enough to agree to the marriage in the first place? Why are there women who marry one violence-prone alcoholic, or drug addict, or pedophile after another? What rational justification can there be for the marital track records of an Elizabeth Taylor or a Liza Minnelli? And when I think about all that, I wind up right back where I started.

  Which brings me to the only solution to my dilemma that I can think of. If I could get George Bush and his band of goofballs to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting me from getting married, I feel fairly certain there would be nothing that could keep me from insisting on getting married as soon as possible. Suddenly, like all those marriage-hungry couples of the gay community, I would find there was nothing I could imagine wanting more.

  The Dog Diaries

  I pick dogs that remind me of myself—scrappy, mutt-faced, with a hint of mange. People look for a reflection of their own personalities or the person they dream of being in the eyes of an animal companion. That is the reason I sometimes look into the face of my dog Stan and see wistful sadness and existential angst, when all he is actually doing is slowly scanning the ceiling for flies.

  We pet owners demand a great deal from our pets. When we give them the job, it’s a career position. Pets are required to listen to us blithely, even if we talk to them in infantile and goofy tones of voice that we’d never dare use around another human being for fear of being forced into psychiatric observation. On top of that, we make them wear little sweaters or jackets, and not just the cool kind with the push-up sleeves, either, but weird little felt ones that say IT’S RAINING CATS AND DOGS.

  We are pretty sure that we and our pets share the same reality, until one day we come home to find that our wistful, intelligent friend who reminds us of our better self has decided a good way to spend the day is to open a box of Brillo pads, unravel a few, distribute some throughout the house, and eat or wear all the rest. And we shake our heads in inability to comprehend what went wrong here.

  Is he bored or is he just out for revenge? He certainly can’t be as stupid as this would indicate. In order to answer these questions more fully, I felt I needed some kind of new perspective, a perspective that comes from really knowing both sides of the story.

  Thus, I made up my mind to live with my pets as one of them: to share their hopes, their fears, their squeaking vinyl lamb chops, their drinking space at the toilet.

  What follows is the revealing, sometimes shocking, sometimes terrifying, sometimes really stupid diary that resulted.

  8:45 A.M. We have been lying on our sides in the kitchen for almost an hour now. We started out in the bedroom with just our heads under the bed. But then one of us heard something, and we all ran to the back door. I think our quick response was rather effective because, although I never ascertained exactly what we heard to begin with, I also can’t say I recall ever hearing it again.

  9:00 A.M. We carefully inspected the molding in the hallway, which led us straight to the heating duct by the bedroom. Just a coincidence? None of us was really sure. So we watched it suspiciously for a while. Then we watched it for a little while longer.

  Then, never letting it out of our sight, we all took a nap.

  10:00 A.M. I don’t really know whose idea it was to yank back the edge of the carpet and pull apart the carpet pad, but talk about a rousing good time! How strange that I could have lived in this house for all these years, and never before felt the fur of a carpet between my teeth. Or actually bit into a moist, chewy chunk of carpet padding. I will never again think of the carpet as simply a covering for the floor.

  11:15 A.M. When we all wound up in the kitchen, the other two began to stare at me eagerly. Their meaning was clear. The pressure was on for me to produce snacks. They remembered the old me—the one with the opposable thumb, the one who could open refrigerators and cabinets. I saw they didn’t yet realize that today, I intended to live as their equal. But as they continued their staring, I soon became caught up in their obsession. That
is the only explanation I have as to why I helped them topple over the garbage. At first I was nervous, watching the murky fluids soak into the floor. But the heady sense of acceptance I felt when we all dove headfirst into the can more than made up for my compromised sense of right and wrong. Pack etiquette demanded that I be the last in line. By the time I really got my head in there, the really good stuff was gone. But wait! I spied a tiny piece of tinfoil hidden in a giant clump of hair, and inside, a wad of previously chewed gum, lightly coated with sugar or salt. I was settling down to my treasure when I had the sense that I was being watched. Raising my head just slightly, I looked into the noses of my companions. Their eyes were glued to that hard rubbery mass. Their drools were long and elastic, and so, succumbing to peer pressure, I split up my gum wad three ways. But I am not sure that I did the right thing. As is so often the case with wanting popularity, I may have gained their short-term acceptance. But I think that in the long run, I lost their real respect. No dog of reasonable intelligence would ever divide up something that could still be chewed.

  11:50 A.M. Someone spotted a fly, and all three of us decided to catch him in our teeth. I was greatly relieved when one of the others got to him first.

  12:20 P.M. Someone heard something, and in a flash, we were all in the backyard, running back and forth by the fence, periodically hooting. Then one of us spotted a larger-than-usual space between two of the fence boards, and using both teeth and nails, began to make the space larger. Pretty soon, all three of us were doing everything in our power to help. This was a case where the old opposable thumb really came in handy. Grabbing hold of one of the splinters, I was able to enlarge the hole immediately. Ironically, I alone was unable to squeeze through to freedom, and so I watched with envy as the others ran in pointless circles in the lot next door. What was I going to do? All of my choices were difficult. Sure, I could go back into the house and get a hacksaw, or I could simply let myself out the back gate, but if I did that, did I not betray my companions? And would I not then be obligated to round us all up and punish us? No, I was a collaborator, and I had the lip splinters to prove it. So I went back to the hole and continued chewing. Only a few hundred dollars’ worth of fence damage later, I was able to squeeze through that darn hole myself.

  1:30 P.M. The extra time I took was just enough for me to lose sight of my two companions. And so, for the first time, I had to rely on my keen new animal instincts. Like the wild creature I had become, I was able to spot their tracks immediately. They led me in a series of ever-widening circles, then across the lot at a forty-five-degree angle, then into a series of zigzags, then back to the hole again. Finally, I decided to abandon the tracking and head out to the sidewalk. Seconds later, I spotted them both across the street, where they were racing up and back in front of the neighbor’s house. They seemed glad to see me, and so I eagerly joined them in their project. The three of us had only been running and hooting for less than an hour when the apparent owner of the house came to the front door. And while I admit this may not have been the best of circumstances for a first introduction, nevertheless I still feel the manner in which he threatened to turn the hose on us was both excessively violent and unnecessarily vulgar.

  Clearly, it was up to me to encourage our group to relocate, and I was shocked at how easily I could still take command of our unit. A simple “Let’s go, boys,” and everyone was willing to follow me home. (It’s such a power-packed phrase. That’s how I met my last boyfriend!)

  3:00 P.M. By the time we had moved our running and hooting activities into our own front yard, we were all getting a little tired. So we lay down on our sides on the porch.

  4:10 P.M. We all changed sides.

  4:45 P.M. We all changed sides again.

  5:20 P.M. We all lay on our backs. (What a nice change of pace!)

  6:00 P.M. Everyone was starting to grow restless. Occasionally, one of us would get up, scratch the front door, and moan. I wrestled silently with the temptation simply to let us all in. But then I realized I didn’t have any keys on me. Of course, it occurred to me that we could all go back through the new hole in the fence, but everyone else seemed to have forgotten about the entire fence incident by this time. As they say, “a word to the wise.” And so, taking a hint from my friends, I began to forget about the whole thing myself.

  6:30 P.M. The sound of an approaching car as it pulls into the driveway. The man who shares this house with us is coming home. He is both surprised and perplexed to see us all out in the front yard running in circles. He is also quickly irritated by the fact that no one offers any explanations. And once he opens the front door, he unleashes a furious string of harsh words as he confronts the mounds of garbage someone has strewn all over the house. We have nothing but sympathy for him in his tragic misfortune. But since none of us knows anything about it, we all retire to the coat closet until the whole thing blows over. And later, as he eats his dinner, I sit quietly under the table. As I watch him, a pleasant feeling of calm overtakes me as I realize just how much I have grown as a person. Perhaps that is why the cruel things he says to me seem to have no effect. And so, when he gets up to pour himself another beverage, I raise my head up to his plate, and, with my teeth, I lift off his sandwich.

  Let’s Party

  About once a year it occurs to me that I owe a lot of people a social debt and really ought to have some kind of a party to try and pay them back. I’m not saying I act on this impulse. I’m just saying it occurs to me. And when it does, it is followed immediately by a sense of panic that makes me feel like one of the members of that Chilean soccer team that survived an air crash and had to contemplate eating a former teammate. In other words, I freak. The next thing I do is begin paging compulsively through books on the subject of “entertaining at home.”

  Of all the volumes in print on this topic, none fill me to overflowing with as much simultaneous loathing and secret envy as the combined oeuvres of Martha Stewart. Each one of these intimidating tomes is expensively bound and bursting with many, many beautiful color photographs featuring captions such as “a dramatic croquembouche surrounded by fresh flowers makes a spectacular centerpiece on the table in the library” or “Hepplewhite chairs, grandmother’s plates, old silver, and long-stemmed Italian poppies grace the dining table set on our porch.”

  The author is a pretty blond woman with good bone structure and an uncanny ability to make whoever is her closest competitor for the title of Little Miss Perfect appear to have a learning disability. Her chapters have titles such as “Cocktails for 50—a Festive Occasion!” or “Summer Omelette Brunch Outdoors for 60!” I didn’t even scan that one, since it is nearly impossible for me to get even one omelette out of a pan not looking like something I found at the bottom of my purse. But these are not the kinds of problems that plague Martha Stewart. “I always have baskets everywhere filled with fresh eggs,” she tells us, perhaps while relaxing on the veranda of one of her summer homes in the mountain region of Neptune where I believe she spends a good deal of her time. Why? Because she simply gathers “eggs of all shapes, sizes, and hues from our Turkey Hill hens.” She has her own hens. She has her own bees. She probably has a trout stream and a cranberry bog. She’s always somewhere picturesque ladling something steaming into something gleaming.

  The most pernicious thing about her is the way she makes the thing she recommends appear somehow vaguely doable. “To entertain at home is both a relief and a rediscovery,” she says offhandedly, perhaps while seated pertly in the spacious living room of her weekend place on one of the moons of Jupiter. “It provides a good excuse to put things in order. Polish your silver. Wash forgotten dishes. Wax floors. Paint a flaking window sill.” Of course it does. Especially during those long Jupiterian winters that I understand can go on for decades. Nothing puts me less in the mood for thankless chores than the swelling sense of panic that comes from planning a party.

  So here at last is advice for people such as myself, busy, frazzled, with no innate hosting a
bilities or graces.

  Merrill Markoe’s

  Home Entertaining Guide for

  the Panicky Social Debtor

  Chapter One: Planning the Event

  1. THE GUEST LIST

  Martha Stewart says, “When you meet someone interesting at a party it is a natural reaction to think of all the other people who would like to meet him too. Sometimes I do this years in advance—putting people together in my mind.” And I say to her, “Have a licensed professional sit you down and tell you all about lithium.” I begin by inviting only those people I am so sure like me that virtually nothing I could say or do would sway their opinion. If this total does not get you beyond the fingers of one hand, add a select number of others who you know suffer from weight problems and/or eating disorders. These are people from whom heavy calorie consumption is always a problem so if you screw up the food, it won’t matter. If it does happen, your guests will be secretly relieved.

  2. THE MENU

  Checking back in with Martha Stewart, we learn that “a dramatic spicy taste is an inappropriate way to begin dinner.” Therefore, it only makes good sense to begin by offering each and every arriving guest an enormous peppery bean burrito. “Cocktails that last much longer than an hour jeopardize the shape and momentum of the evening,” Martha cautions. Since these are the very things that are most terrifying, figure on a two-hour cocktail period minimum. Now you’ve got everyone right where you want them: feeling fat and sleepy with a limited desire or ability to eat anything.