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

by Merrill Markoe

  When my dog Stan died, there were a couple of weeks when I lived pet-free. I fantasized that finally not being tied down to a dependent would give my spontaneous nature a chance to grow and flower. Then I realized that not only didn’t I have much of a spontaneous nature but that the reason I wasn’t partaking of the constant barrage of interesting activities and social events all around me was because I was a lazy ne’er-do-well. Eventually this caused me to see myself in such an unflattering light that I had no choice but to go straight to the pound and come home with a puppy. And since that time, I have never had to look my own inadequacies squarely in the eye again because I have been blessed by the constant inconveniences of pet ownership. Which brings me to our topic here today:

  The Importance of Pets for Single Women

  I. A Bottomless Source of Guilt

  A good, loving pet can provide his or her owner with reasons to feel guilty pretty much twenty-four hours a day—something that might be in short supply for the happy-go-lucky single woman. I have four dogs and every time I shift in my chair one of them gets up and runs to the door, wearing an expression on his face that reminds me of a small child on Christmas morning. If he could talk (and thank God he can’t; I’m really not up to hearing him go on about butt itch) he would be saying: “Are you ready to go? You need a few seconds? Fine. I’ll wait right here. Lalala two three four. How about now? No? Take your time. No problem. What about NOW? Okay. Fine. How about NOW?” And there I sit, knowing that while at no point did I have any intention of going anywhere, my cavalier lack of specific recreational intentions seems to have caused several creatures, whose only purpose in life is to show me constant love, intense disappointment if not searing depression.

  And then, to make matters even worse, how about those occasions when I do have intentions to go somewhere but for wacky, selfish reasons of my own am planning to make the excursion unaccompanied by dogs? Now suddenly I am confronted with a sea of demoralized faces, silently blocking my path to the door, mouths agape as they beg me to reconsider the consequences of my actions. “You wouldn’t enjoy yourself at my dentist,” I explain to them. “The magazines are old. No dogs go to the dentist. Don’t feel hurt. No one wants to get fitted for crowns,” I say as I squeeze through the door with a heavy heart, wondering what kind of callow, unfeeling slob I am after all … only to return several hours later—tired and grumpy and sore—to be greeted by dogs who are really ready to go somewhere now. Anywhere. And this time they are really not kidding.

  II. Dietary Benefits

  When you are single you tend to lapse into eating patterns that can be self-indulgent. But when you are a pet owner you never again have to worry about consuming a lot of empty calories because the motto of any self-respecting pet of any sort (in fact, a lot of them have it embroidered on pillows) is “Please. I’m starving. Let me have all of what you are eating right now.” To eat in the presence of most dogs is an experience not unlike sitting down to a picnic lunch in Bangladesh. And quite frankly, nothing puts a damper on the old appetite like many pairs of pleading, desperate eyes riveted to your every fork and mouth movement. This is something most pets are willing to do for you at all times, regardless of how recently they have been fed, thus enabling any reasonably sensitive person to lose three to five pounds a week with ease.

  III. Practice for Living with a Significant Other

  Living with an actual man can have a variety of dangerous side effects. He can break your heart, threaten your sanity and your physical well-being, and cause you numerous personal and professional dysfunctions that can take years of costly and time-consuming therapy to unravel. So you don’t want to mess with the wrong man: You have to choose your shots very carefully. On the other hand, you don’t want to get so enamored of your own company that you get out of practice entirely and possibly lose the desire to cohabit. (Or do you? For the sake of argument, let’s say you don’t.) Pets can help to provide you with many of the same irritants that living with the man of your dreams will entail.

  For instance, one of the hallmarks of every serious relationship I have had with a man has been uncomfortable sleeping circumstances. By this I refer to the cramped positions and rasping mouth noises that sleeping with a large unwieldy human male can often involve. And these inconveniences are cheerfully duplicated by any pet that you allow to share your bed (which in my case is every pet I have ever had). At first it is cozy and cuddly and cute—just like with a guy. And then, like with a guy, they fall asleep in some unlikely-looking position—adorable, trusting, and peaceful. And even as all the feeling in your legs begins to vanish, you are reluctant to wake them. When at last you do try to shift because you feel as though you may have severed your spinal cord, you realize that it is now impossible because they are dead weight—no easier to budge than a giant sack of lawn clippings. And so you wake the next morning, feeling as though you have been through hip replacement surgery, happy in the knowledge that your furry little pal hasn’t missed any of his or her mandatory twenty-two-hours-a-day sleep.

  IV. Practice for Being a Parent

  Before a woman takes on the enormous responsibility of parenting, is it not a good idea to do a test run? This is where raising a pet can provide some interesting data. For instance, my dog Lewis, who is the only creature on the planet who truly reflects my influence (because he has lived with me since he was only six weeks old), is an overweight, whiny, badly groomed, poorly behaved, inconsiderate, and pointlessly defiant giant boy who drools constantly and has incredibly high self-esteem. And so I have learned that any child of mine may well turn out to be an annoying big fat dumb guy who has no respect for the rights of others.

  Lewis is currently dating one of my couches and seems to care nothing at all about the fact that he is also destroying the object of his affection in the process. This teaches me that I have also managed to duplicate in my dog the kind of behavior I have come to expect from the men I date. I don’t know what the horrifying Freudian truth behind this fact might be, but I do know this: It would be in the best interests of everyone concerned for the government to pay me a monthly subsidy not to ever have children (much as they pay certain farmers not to grow crops). I think we all have quite enough to worry about as it is.

  V. A Flawless All-purpose Excuse

  When you are single you find yourself getting talked into attending a lot of functions you would avoid if you had any kind of real life. To say nothing of the potentially nightmarish circumstances provided by dating. In which case “I have to get home and let out my dog” will serve you much better and be kinder to say than “If I have to sit here and listen to one more tedious phrase tumble out of your big rubbery head I think I’m going to have to start taking hostages.”

  So—summing up—pet ownership offers the willing single woman a wonderful world of experiences and opportunities. At least that’s what I keep telling myself when I wonder what in the world I’ve gotten myself into.

  A Little Intimate Exploration

  Last week I had to go to Boston on a business trip.

  I stayed in Cambridge, in a pretty hotel right on Harvard Square. Never having been to the area before, I had certain preconceived notions about New England being a more conservative, more tradition-oriented-type of place than my constantly ridiculed homeland of Los Angeles.

  However, I had an experience on my second night that turned my notion of New England on its ear. It also made me think I understand men even less than I had previously not understood them.

  First, I should say that I hate staying in hotels alone. I wake up all night long, starving as though I haven’t eaten for weeks. The selection of foods for sale in what they laughingly refer to as the Refreshment Center is a diet-conscious person’s nightmare: Snickers, Pringles, honey-glazed peanuts, a small vacuum-sealed can of macadamia nuts (43 million calories, economically priced at $19.95).

  Yes, yes, I know, I could call room service, but that means a twenty-five-minute wait and guarantees finally falling back
to sleep twenty seconds before that frightening wake-up call rings through.

  So, with these concerns in mind, I made a special note to myself during check-in when I saw the giant bowl of apples in the lobby. Hmm, I thought, I could stash a couple on the nightstand and then have something sensible to snack on when I wake up.

  Which is why, on evening two, I was headed down to the lobby at eleven at night wearing blue sweatpants and a pink sweater, my hair pinned on top of my head in a barrette. I had a brief discussion with myself re: “Am I too slobby for the lobby?” But then I answered, “No, I’m fine. I will dash in and out of the elevator, fleet as the wind. I will be but a fruit-bearing apparition.”

  So down the elevator I rode. But when I returned, wielding apples, I noticed there was a casually dressed middle-aged white man already on board. Average-looking. No apparent disfiguring scars or frightening facial deformities.

  Like most women, I have a moment’s hesitation when I get into an elevator with a man I don’t know. But this being a fairly expensive hotel, I wasn’t too concerned, even though, as we began ascending, I had the feeling he was looking at me too intently. However, I have been reluctant to make any assumptions since the time at the bookstore when I sensed that a man was staring at me. I was assembling my face into a frosty expression to indicate that I was far too busy for the likes of him when he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Your dress is on inside out.” Looking down, I noticed that the interior seams of my stretchy black dress were in fact exposed. “I know,” I said with a world-weary haughtiness meant to imply that I sometimes preferred to wear my dress inside out.

  Then, once he left, I made a beeline for the ladies’ room.

  So I wasn’t going to draw any overly quick conclusions about Elevator Guy until he started talking to me.

  “Are you interested in a little intimate exploration?” he said offhandedly.

  “Excuse me?” I answered.

  For a minute I thought “intimate exploration” might be code for some quasi-religious cult that would teach me to chant “Nam myoho renge kyo” and the next thing I knew, I would owe $30,000 and have to hire a deprogrammer.

  “What does that mean?” I asked him.

  “Sex,” he said.

  Now my jaw hit my knees. My internal alarm systems all started blaring to me. Get off the elevator. Get away from this guy.

  “No!” I said to him. “No. No. No!”

  The elevator doors opened. I exited. So did he.

  The doors shut behind us. There we were, together, both of us on his floor.

  “I find you very attractive,” he continued.

  “Thank you,” I said reflexively, heading down a hallway to no place in particular, “that’s very kind of you. Thanks a lot.”

  (“Was I really just thanking a man who I was scared was a psycho rapist?” I asked myself as I looked for some other way to get back to my room.)

  Once I was in my room a few minutes later, alone and eating an apple, the questions started flooding my brain.

  Why did this happen? Was this guy riding the elevator at eleven at night waiting for any living breathing single female to get on board so he could ask this question? Or was there something about me and my demeanor that made this guy think I’d be interested? Did my sweatpants and sweater say something slutty? Is this how the prostitutes operated in Harvard Square? Did they work the hotel elevators dressed in sweatpants?

  “No,” said my friend Andy, “if he thought you were a prostitute he would have asked, ‘How much?’ In which case you could have answered, ‘Two apples.’ ”

  Ultimately, it was the abrupt nature of the request that was so shocking. Had he said to me, “The bars are still open. Can I buy you a drink?” I still would have said no, but I would have thought of his behavior as making sense in the American culture as I have come to know it.

  Once when I was in college, at UC Berkeley, a similar thing happened. A preppy-looking white guy in his twenties followed me to my car. “I’d really like to f— you,” he said to me. No offer of a drink or a movie and dinner here either. “Oh, uh, okay. Thanks a lot,” I replied, getting into my car so quickly my land speed record for door locking has never been meaningfully challenged. (Perhaps this was where my tradition of thanking a would-be rapist started.)

  But that was, after all, the early seventies, on a college campus. My “gentleman caller” looked like the kind of delusional accounting student who had taken some advice from a Penthouse letter that said, “Yeah, the college coeds want it, pal. Just go up to them and tell them and they’ll go home with you.”

  The puzzling part about the other night was that this is so not the seventies, which raises the question “What was this guy thinking?” Had this ever worked for him? Are there women willing to go from zero to one hundred without even a warm-up hello? Was there ever a woman who said, “Hmm, intimate exploration! Sounds good! Your room or mine?”

  And then I started to wonder, Well, what if he’d been incredibly attractive? What if he’d been, say, Brad Pitt—well, what then?

  Of course, I still would have said no. But I bet I would have offered him one of my apples.

  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

  Through my very special home-brewed blend of insecurity, moon blindness, and some sort of nonspecific mineral deficiency, I have spent much of my life totally unable to accurately read the sexual signals sent me by the opposite sex. So truly terrible am I at this, I have actually had men I invited into my home (after a pleasant evening out together) hanging around until three or four in the morning and still not been able to tell if it was safe to interpret their behavior as evidence of sexual interest. Perhaps, I would reason to myself, they are grateful to have found shelter and are harboring the delusion that if they hang in a while longer they might eventually receive some hot soup.

  It always seemed to me that to presume anything more was to open myself up to the risk of a painful rejection. And thus, the only clue that such a date was actually interested in a physical encounter of any kind came after the man in question had passed out cold, having endured all he could stand of hours on end of my fascinating childhood reminiscences. Any subsequent attempts I might make to try to revive him would amount to the only contact that would ever take place.

  Of course, that was the old me. Now I know better. Not because I have become more astute but because over the years I have had it repeatedly explained to me by numerous men of reasonable intelligence that the adult human male does not hang around endlessly in a place he does not want to be unless he has a sexual motive. I have been bluntly advised that it would be safe for me to go ahead and presume that any man exhibiting a willingness to listen to even one consecutive hour of my fascinating childhood stories is interested in more than just another hour of my fascinating childhood stories.

  Okay. That understood, I have moved forward and developed a slick method of seductive maneuvering that can carry a person forward from that point.

  Merrill’s Five Steps to a Sexual Seduction

  Offer him something to drink. It is, of course, incredibly important to remember to have something drinkable somewhere on the premises. How many were the times when I have made this offer only to discover, to my embarrassment, that the only remotely drinkable liquid in my refrigerator was a small amount of either canola oil or no-fat ranch-style dressing. And the truth is, even when served on the rocks in a lovely cut-glass crystal goblet, neither one seems to get a very favorable response.

  This accomplished, next comes the old “Let me slip into something more comfortable.” This step, too, is fraught with pitfalls if you, like me in most instances, make the mistake of wearing something quite comfortable in the first place. Now you are faced with the seemingly unsolvable dilemma of trying to find something more comfortable than the jeans and sweater you already have on. Forget about anything you may have purchased from the Victoria’s Secret catalog.
That stuff is all much less comfortable. Which is why you must commit to memory this critical dating rule: Always wear something uncomfortable out on a date. Only then can you really provide yourself with the fullest range of eventual changing options.

  Now sit down with your potential beloved on a piece of furniture large enough for two and attempt to initiate a seductive vibe through eye contact. The best way to kick this off is to encourage him to talk about something he finds fascinating—like why Ferraris are cooler than Porsches. In many cases this will amount to something you can barely pay attention to, but do not worry about that because this type of man tends to feel that the act of hearing himself talk about something of interest only to him in fact constitutes having a conversation. The rest of the good news is that later, when he thinks back on how the evening went, he will recall that you were a really good conversationalist!

  Meanwhile, use this important downtime to begin reciting silently that most powerful mantra of seduction—the one that is virtually guaranteed to draw the attractive man of your dreams to you like malaria to a mosquito. Say it with me now: Come here. Go away. Come here. Go away. I love you. I really don’t want you. Come here. Go away. Come here. Go away. For maximum effectiveness we must now borrow a page from that most successful group of seducers—the serial killers. Deranged? Nuts? Yes, absolutely, but never without willing sexual partners or a date on a Saturday night. Why? Well, perhaps it is that magnetic facial expression which seems to combine a radiant vulnerable loving smile with the detached gaze of a slaughterhouse foreman or a movie star on his way into a drug rehab program. Why this works is not important. It works, that’s all we know. (In fact, we’re all better off not knowing why it works, aren’t we?)