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

by Merrill Markoe

  Tuesday

  I arise bright and early and head off to the store to purchase Pirate, the romance novel that Fabio sort of wrote. As I inspect the only cover photo I have ever seen of an author scowling, bare-chested, and wielding a scabbard (except, of course, for the one of Eudora Welty) I cannot help feeling a pang of envy at the way my companion-to-be has achieved a career as a bestselling author without having to suffer the fatigue, torture, and endless irritations of actually having to sit down and write. If only he will share his secrets with me.

  By the time I get home, his press kit has arrived and soon I am awash in articles about Fabio published in every imaginable publication, as well, of course, as thousands of vivid color photographs. Fabio, astride a motorcycle, bare-chested and scowling. Fabio, holding a bouquet of roses, dressed only in tuxedo pants and suspenders, scowling as he heads out the door to the world’s most casual black-tie event. The anticipation is building. Yes, yes, I think to myself. I have dined before with many scowling guys. But always in the past they were wearing two or more shirts.

  Wednesday

  I spend the day consumed with but a single thought: What exactly is the appropriate attire to wear to a romantic dinner with Fabio? I try on millions of outfits, unsure of what I am even after. Perhaps it’s the name that’s so intimidating. Maybe if I think of him as “Ricky.” Then I only have to answer the question, “What do I wear out to dinner with Ricky?” Much much more doable.

  I have been told a limousine will pick me up at 6:45. By then my bosom is heaving so hard, I tuck some smelling salts in my purse. Eagerly I watch as the clock turns to 6:45, then 7:00, then 7:10. By 7:15 I am beginning to accumulate a light sprinkling of dog hairs. One dog has placed a filthy sock full of tennis balls on my lap, another has started a small snag in my pantyhose. Undaunted, I continue to wait breathlessly. But alas … by 7:30 I grow concerned. Mayhap he has been waylaid by danger? I daren’t phone his people for fear he will chortle scornfully and call me “a demanding little minx” like he did the girl in his book. So instead, I relax, take off my jacket, and fix myself half a toasted bagel.

  By 7:45 I am beginning to doze when I am awakened by the plaintive howls of my dogs. Hastily I re-dress and run to peer out my front window. The gate opens and … a limousine driver just stands there, holding my front gate open. When he keeps on just standing there, I grab my purse and head out the door. And behold! Out in my driveway: a limousine full of Fabio. When I realize this is part of the ancient Buccaneer custom of “waiting for the woman out in the car but also bringing two beautiful bouquets of yellow roses to distract her so she won’t be pissed.” I am appeased. Plus, there is another special surprise just for me. Fabio is wearing a shirt! A red cotton pullover with a V-neck zipper, under a blue-gray sport coat. I am deeply, deeply relieved. We say hello. Our eyes meet and … yep. My new friend Ricky looks just exactly like Fabio.

  The limo whisks us off to Geoffrey’s, one of the prettiest restaurants on the Malibu coast. Although I have been there many many times before, this is the only visit at which the entire female staff turned out to give us a tour. We are seated at a lovely veranda table with a view of the whole coast at night. The nearby heat lamp casts a golden glow on our powerful bodies. I ask him to tell me about his dogs, one of the things I know we have in common. His face lights up as he speaks fondly of his three purebred 175-pound Great Danes, one of which is on a list of “The 22 Most Beautiful Animals in the World.” I have never seen this list, so I do not know if any of my dogs made it. Nevertheless, we begin to bond on the topic of dog-related damage. “Oh yeah, nose prints,” he tells me. “The house have a lot of door windows and they have the nose prints all over. The house where I was staying, they almost chew through a wall,” he confides. “I am screaming at them when I catch them and they look at me like ‘I didn’t do anything.’ Except they are covered with white stuff on their big black noses from where they eat the wall.” He laughs bravely through his tears. “It’s a beautiful thing because they give unconditional love. Very hard to find.”

  The waiter arrives and Fabio orders oysters on the half shell. I order a Caesar salad. “You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” he asks. “I don’t want you to turn into a cucumber.” Our eyes meet again as I take out a pile of his publicity photos. “This guy lying facedown in the pounding surf, bare-chested and scowling,” I say to him, “what is he thinking to himself when he poses like this?”

  “He is saying ‘I am ready to seduce you. Let me be your man. Let me make you feel like a real woman,’ ” he tells me.

  “How about, ‘Let me come into your life and get wet sand all over your furniture?’ ” I suggest.

  He grins at me as he eats an oyster. “You are funny girl,” he says. “Bon appetite.”

  As we dine on pasta with shiitake mushrooms (or “shtucky mushrooms” as Fabio calls them) we speak of many things. His hopes: “I want to create a new superhero that appeals to men AND women. Schwarzenegger appeals only to men.” His dreams: “When you branch yourself out as a business person you see many opportunities.” “So will we one day awaken to see ‘Fabio’s House of Pancakes?’ ” I ask. “Well, I like food,” he replies. “But I would do healthy stuff. Shakes and omelettes.” The difficulties men and women have communicating: “People don’t say anything honest to each other,” he says wistfully. “People like to play games. I don’t like to play games. I don’t want to play games. I hate to play games.” “What kind of games exactly?” I ask as I quietly push the Parcheesi board to the back of my purse where it will not upset him. “Mind games,” he replies, “like when you see that a person really likes you and she plays very hard to get. I don’t like that,” he says, as he graciously accepts the rest of my dinner.

  My bosom is heaving, my trachea engorged with partially swallowed pasta, as I decide it is time to find out just who is this man they call Fabio?

  “Tell me,” I say as he gazes into my upturned face, “what would you do if you kissed a woman and she slobbered on you?”

  “Nothing turns me off about a woman,” he replies.

  “What would happen if you looked over at me and I had just dropped a huge forkful of pasta onto my lap?” I rally.

  “I would eat it,” he laughs. I hope he likes pasta with dog hair, I think to myself.

  “What if you were making out and a woman’s stomach started to rumble?” I continue.

  “I will try and get her a Pepto-Bismol,” he says.

  “And what if you went to her house and were making love and you found there were crumbs in her bed?”

  “No big deal,” he answers. “I block out. I don’t pay attention.”

  Things are moving very fast. There is still one question unanswered. “What if she got drunk and threw up on you?” I ask breathlessly, the wind in my hair.

  “Well, that’s heavy,” he admits. “I guess I go to the bathroom and try to clean up as best I can.

  “Let me esplain you something,” he says, as the gentle breeze blows softly through the remaining pasta. “Life is very easy. People complicates their life.”

  “I think life is kind of difficult,” I confess.

  “You make your life difficult,” he tells me. “Probably you didn’t let anybody at your same level come into your life. When somebody is equal, nobody has control. When you want to have control, the person you let come into your life is not gonna be your equal. The best feeling in love is to surrender to the other person.”

  Then he drops the bombshell that will change our future forever. “Now I have a person I spend time with. I’m really crazy about this person,” he says. “She’s a model-actress, extremely attractive, has a super super personality.”

  Okay, I accept that she is super times two, but what does he see in her? my heart cries out in the night. “How long has this been going on?” I ask quietly.

  “A month,” he tells me. “We have a great time and we are friends. We really don’t want to rush. People always rush to make love.”
<
br />   “So the relationship hasn’t been consummated yet?” I ask, thinking this may be more information than I need.

  “We have time,” he tells me. “Women sometime they rush and for the man it doesn’t mean anything. What me and this person did is we know each other well first.”

  I sigh deeply as I gaze mournfully through the pain, past the piece of lettuce that is resting on my knee, off into the depths of the deep blue sea. And I recall the words he spoke to me back then: “The dogs no inside the house.” I should have known then that we could never be.

  And so we went our separate ways—he back to his life of publicity tours and business opportunities, and I back to my house full of dog-hair wads the size of a man’s toupee. But late at night, whenever the gentle breeze blows through the pasta, I will remember the greatest love that never was. I will remember.

  What the Dogs Have Taught Me

  Daily Routine

  The day is divided into two important sections. Mealtime. And everything else.

  I. Mealtime

  1. Just because there does not seem to be anything visible around to eat certainly does not mean there is nothing around to eat. The act of staring at the underside of a table or chair on which someone else is eating sets in motion a chain of events that eventually results in food.

  2. It goes without saying that you should carefully check the lower third of any space for edibles. Mouth-size things which cannot be identified by sight or smell are considered gum.

  3. When you actually receive a meal, submerge your head into it as you would a shower. Never, ever look up again until a minimum of at least fifteen minutes after the obvious food is gone. This is important. Just because your dish is empty does not mean that it is time to stop eating.

  4. Remember that all food is potentially yours up until the time that it is actually swallowed by another. The lengthy path a piece of food will take from a plate to a mouth via a hand is as good a time as any to stake your claim to it.

  5. When it comes to selecting an appropriate beverage, location and packaging mean nothing. There are absolutely no exceptions to this rule.

  6. If you really see something you want, and all your other attempts at getting it have failed, it is only right to grovel shamelessly. As a second tactic, stare intently at the object of your desire, allowing long gelatinous drools to leak like icicles from your lower lip.

  II. Everything Else

  1. There are really only two important facial expressions to bother with: complete overwhelming joy and nothing at all.

  2. Any time that is not mealtime is potentially nap time. The best time to take a nap is when you hear your name being called repeatedly. The best location for a nap is dead center of any street or driveway. The most relaxing position is on your side, all four limbs parallel.

  3. The most practical way to get dry is to shake violently near a fully clothed person. A second effective method is to stand on a light-colored piece of furniture.

  4. Personal Security

  A. At the first hint of any irregular noise, run from room to room yelling loudly. If someone actually comes into the house, rush over to them whether you know them or not. Then kiss them so violently that they lose their balance or have to force you away physically.

  B. The greatest unacknowledged threat to life as we have come to know it is squirrels. No matter what you must do, make sure there are none in your yard.

  5. Recreation and Leisure

  A. Ball: No matter where you find them, in a bed or in a bathtub, no matter how they are dressed or how they behave, there is no such thing as a person who does not want to play ball all the time. There are two equally amusing sets of rules you will want to know.

  a. The common form, in which you receive a thrown ball and return it.

  b. The preferred form, in which you receive a thrown ball and eat it.

  B. Car: As you know, any open car door is an invitation to get in. Once inside, your only goal is to try to get out.

  6. Health

  A. In the event of a trip to the doctor, always be on your guard. If you are vaccinated, urinate on the physician.

  Afterword

  Since I have taken to sleeping under the bed, I have come to know tranquillity I never imagined possible.

  You never really know when it might be cookie time. And that’s what the dogs have taught me.

  My New Career in Porn

  “Did you know the adult-entertainment business is a billion-dollar industry that makes up to 65% of all money generated on the Internet?” was the question being asked in bold type under the headline for a class called “How to Make $$ in the Adult Entertainment Business on the Net.” “Remember the ONLY business making money on the Internet is the Adult Entertainment Business,” the course description went on to say. “The demand is great and there’s no end in sight.”

  Like most Americans, I’ve kind of gotten used to the idea that no matter how sophisticated the new technology, the most successful application of it in the United States is going to be in the field of pornography. It isn’t going to surprise me at all when the first retail business on the moon turns out to be an adult video store.

  “There are people making a lot of money with adult sites—and so can you!” the ad went on to say. This was the part that surprised me. I had never, for even one second, thought of myself as a possible Internet pornmeister.

  Of course, I had given a little thought as to how I might make the millions on the Internet that appear to be my constitutional birthright as a citizen in the year 2000. Was Internet porn the cash cow of which I had dreamed?

  Deciding to familiarize myself with my new field by paying a visit to “VIRTUAL SIN: the wildly popular adult web site” run by my prospective teacher, Phillip LeMarque, I find myself looking at a large photo montage of sexually preoccupied women that looked as if it had been assembled out of old Penthouse magazines. Beneath it, a menu offered, among other things, “This week’s story: A dick is a dick by Dick and Son,” which turned out to be a series of captioned photographs of people having sex that were shot in motel rooms and some kind of garage, at enough of a distance to make them not particularly erotic or even all that visible. Their unique distinguishing feature was that each one contained an oddly phrased, poorly spelled caption balloon making the people having sex appear to be speaking English as a second language. For example, a man with a naked woman kneeling before him had the caption “A little enthousiasm could do marvel around here.”

  And to think that the genius behind this was offering to share his wisdom with me! Which is why it was so odd that when the day actually arrived, I was feeling uneasy about attending the class. I practically wept with joy when my friend Susan said she would go along. Although I don’t think she was all that comfortable, either, judging by the prayer she spoke aloud as we walked into the vagina-colored main building of the Radisson Hotel in Culver City, where the class was to be held. “Dear God,” she said, “please don’t let them go around the room and ask us to say our names. Amen.”

  We were both delighted when no one bothered to look up as we took seats in the very back of a third-floor conference room, near a long, skirted table laden with at least fifteen separate half-full pitchers of cold water. This adult website business apparently can make a person very thirsty!

  There wasn’t a lot of bonding going on among the nineteen people spread out over eight rows of oval-backed hotel-room chairs. All were staring with rapt attention at our instructor, Mr. English-as-a-Second-Language himself, a short, fire-hydrant-shaped gentleman with longish black and gray hair, wearing a maroon shirt over a white T-shirt tucked into gray-green cotton pants. He spoke with the kind of French accent that makes a sentence sound like this: “Technology is moving faster than we spick.”

  “It’s a good time to get involved with the adult business,” he was saying as we sat down. “Video strimming is esploding.”

  A little enthousiasm could do marvel around here, I thought to myself.
>
  “What kind of a name are we gonna give our website?” he turned and asked the class, answering before anyone had a chance to get creative. “Let’s say we are gonna call our site ‘Mydickhorny dot com.’ So now what we gotta do is get a server to host our site.”

  Surveying my fellow pornmeisters, I noticed that they seemed to fall into a few general categories: an Asian contingent of two, both male and wearing glasses and plaid shirts, seated on opposite sides of the room; five white twentysomething males with pale skin and brown hair that featured strangely short fringe-y bangs, all wearing blue shirts; two plain-faced blond women in denim, one of whom had a fishing rod; three ratty-haired heavily made-up fortysomething women all in black. The rest of the men looked like steakhouse maître d’s with the exception of the guy in front of me, who had kind of a creepy Bernhard Goetz vibe, not helped at all by the fact that he wore abnormally thin white socks with his discount running shoes.

  “We produce nothing, put it together in a nice package, and we make money while we sleep,” our instructor explained, defining the complex tasks we have come here to study this evening. “But you are going to need five thousand dollars to invest for this to work. We are also going to need bandwith. About five to seven gigabytes a month is good. If the files are compressed properly you can probably get six or seven thousand hits a month. It’s going to be about eight months until you make any money.”