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

by Merrill Markoe

  And before you know it, you will leave the store not only without a needless purchase but with pockets full of spending money you didn’t expect to have when you came in! Plus the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from knowing you have avenged your fellow customers maybe for the first time ever.

  Psychic Comparison

  Los Angeles offers its own special homegrown version of the Welcome Wagon. It comes in the form of a verbal gift basket of insider lists, delivered by a current resident to each and every newcomer. The list contains such useful tidbits as the names of street intersections where famous people got raped or killed, and the names of famous straight celebrities who are supposedly gay, and/or have been known to participate in vile and disgusting sexual practices, and/or have unusually large sexual organs. Thrown in as a bonus are several spa recommendations, tips on attending TV tapings, and the names of a couple of psychics.

  Before I moved to L.A., I had never met anyone who had been to a psychic. But now, after living here for more than a decade, I can say unequivocally that every smart woman and gay male friend I currently have has been to at least a couple.

  The urgent motivating force behind most of these psychic consultations tends to be love-related catastrophe. Although the core of the lunacy may well be the fact that most of my friends have no religious beliefs, so we all desperately want to pretend there is someone somewhere with a greater scope of vision who can provide us with access to magical solutions more profound than the ones we offer each other.

  I am ashamed to admit that my own adventures in this dumb-girl realm have included a low point involving a middle-aged psychic with a henna rinse who replied to the questions “Do I have anything coming up work-wise?” with “I see something opening up for you in air-conditioning repair.” “Gee,” I remember saying, deeply disappointed by the direction my career was taking, “I don’t really know anything about air conditioners. In fact, I’m not really very mechanical.” “Well,” she replied, unfazed, “I see where someone is going to take you on as an apprentice.” Insane as this sounds, this was not the last money I paid to a psychic.

  That is why I was not particularly surprised a couple of weeks ago when my good friend Susan, deep in the throes of romantic turmoil, called to report that she had just had an amazing psychic reading.

  “She was phenomenal. Very detailed and specific,” Susan gushed. “For example, she told me, ‘You are with a man who loves you very much. He is a good man. But he is not the man for you.’ ” This rang such a bell with Susan that she went home and had the courage to finally break up with this guy.

  “And you know what else she actually said to me? She said ‘Who is Dan?’ ” Susan gasped. Dan was her previous boyfriend. “Then she said something really spooky. She said I would be going on three trips. ‘I’m not worried about the first one. And I’m not worried about the third one,’ she said. ‘But the second one … don’t get on a plane after eight at night.’

  “You gotta go see her,” Susan implored. “I am dying to hear what she tells you.”

  So I stored my sanity in a Ziploc bag where I hoped it would remain fresh, and drove out to the recesses of the San Fernando Valley, bearing the $80 I was willing to burn to hear a stranger’s glorious vision of my happy future.

  It did not seem like a good sign that there were two six-foot stuffed white teddy bears wearing crowns perched in the room where the reading was to occur. The psychic, a short-haired middle-aged woman with an unidentifiable Eastern European accent, told me to wait right outside on a couch by a gigantic scrapbook full of clipped and pasted magazine photos of famous actresses. Clients? I wondered. Or was she just the world’s oldest obsessive teenage fan? Once the reading began, I found myself facing a wall full of eight-by-ten glossy headshots signed by many of these same extremely famous actresses.

  The psychic shuffled the cards.

  “I get ‘D,’ ” she said to me. “Who is Dan?”

  “My friend Susan’s old boyfriend?” is what I did not say. “Something with a D,” she continued, when Dan didn’t ring any bells. “Don, maybe? David?”

  I had a David, so I let her continue.

  “There is a man in your life who loves you very much,” she said to me. When I tried to counter with the information that there was no such man, she asked me not to interrupt. “He is a good man. But he is not really the man for you,” she continued.

  He is an invisible man, perhaps from another dimension, I thought. Lucky for him, or I might have to go home and break up with him.

  “You are going to take three trips,” she said. “I’m not worried about the first one. And I’m not worried about the third one. But the second one … well, my guides tell me that you should not fly after eight o’clock at night.”

  I guess I just witnessed an exhibition of classic Los Angeles girl questions and answers, I thought, searching desperately for a bright side while trying not to think of all the things I could have purchased for eighty bucks. Well, I thought as I got on the freeway, at least I finally have concrete evidence that there are no psychics. Period. End of sentence.

  But just to be on the safe side, I thought, if Susan invites me to fly somewhere with her, better make sure it’s not her second trip.

  A New Closet for Merrill

  I believe the human race can be divided into two groups: those who gift-wrap neatly and those who don’t. Those of us in the latter group understand that if we were to just slow down by a second or two, we could upgrade to the former. But for the same reason that we don’t put things back on hangers with the top button buttoned, we can’t seem to care enough to buy ourselves the extra second.

  That is why, when last August a woman from Good Morning America asked me if it would be okay if the style editor from Marie Claire came to my house and organized my closet I said, without hesitation, “Absolutely.” Of course, I felt a selfless urge to share the contents of my closet with a knowledge-hungry public. But mostly I was excited because these were the only plans to organize my closet that had been formulated since I stopped living with my parents several decades ago.

  The day Mary Alice and her assistant, John, were introduced to my closet it was pretty much chaos in full bloom. The shelf at the top, which was loosely designated for sweaters and some pants, held a densely packed and crumpled heap of clothing the size and shape of an eight-year-old child. The hanging bar just below was so crowded that a crowbar was required to reinsert anything. And directly beneath that, on what would be the floor if you could see it, lay a hay-bale-shaped pile of shoes, some of which I hadn’t laid eyes on since the Reagan administration.

  Into this visual cacophony, carrying bundles of mysterious things, not unlike Santa and his helpers on Christmas Eve, stepped Mary Alice and John. Silently they went about their work.

  First came a double layer of transparent cubicles across the top shelf, transforming it from an unapproachable wasteland to a planned community of tidy clothing condos, ready for occupancy. They color-coded my sweaters into piles so perfectly folded that I thought for a second I was living in the sportswear department at Neiman Marcus.

  Next, the suit pants were wrenched from their hiding spots beneath suit jackets and relocated into a color-coded pants ghetto where Mary Alice now referred to them by the singular “pant.” (As in, “That’s a very good pant for you.”) Each pant was uniformly hung by its waistband.

  All the shirts were hung together. All the skirts were hung together. And all the clothes that were considered unacceptable for a woman with a closet like this one were put in a pile on my chair. For example, when Mary Alice saw my ankle-high cowboy boots with the low-slung buckle straps, circa 1988, she smiled at me patiently, like the exasperated mom of a demented child, then picked them up with one hand and hurled them across the room. I felt bad for them. Poor little boots. Once hot and sexy, now turned out by complete strangers like orphans on a cold winter night. Banished forever to a pile deemed too pathetic for the new closet.

  And
then—there it was: my intimidating new closet, looking like a department-store window that had been mysteriously inserted into my home. For the first time I had a closet that came with expectations I wasn’t sure I could live up to. It could do better than me. I wasn’t good enough for it. Suddenly it was I who was the interloper.

  For quite a few days, I didn’t go near the new closet at all. I would just quietly tiptoe past, so as not to offend its delicate sensibilities. It seemed like something I dare not touch with my bare hands, like some kind of a clothing museum. So I didn’t take any clothes out. I didn’t put any clothes in. I just left everything right where it was, fearful that I would introduce some new strain of bacteria into the fragile ecosystem. I also didn’t touch any of the shamed and laughable discards that were quarantined in the throwaway pile in the corner.

  Until, finally, there came a day when I needed to borrow a couple of clothes from my closet. Promising to bring them back in the condition in which I had borrowed them, I gingerly opened the closet and removed a pant and a shirt. On my best behavior, I carefully hung the pant back in Pant World and buttoned the top button on the blouse when I was finished borrowing them.

  But as I continued to labor in this nerve-racking fashion, ever vigilant in my hanger placement and color coding, I realized something interesting. My old closet wasn’t really gone. It was just in a dormant state, hiding inside my new closet, waiting for the right moment to poke its head through the way the Alien did from Sigourney Weaver’s thorax.

  It all began on the day that balancing my shoes on the specially designated shoe bars didn’t go as well as I would have liked. One shoe fell behind, and I was too lazy to reach in carefully over the back of the other shoes to retrieve it.

  Then the following day I was in too much of a hurry to put my jacket back in its appropriate neighborhood, since there was an empty space on the hanging bar right in front of me.

  Later that evening I got up the courage to unfold a manically folded sweater from the pile of sweater origami designed by Mary Alice, but I lacked the manual dexterity to refold it so it matched the rest of the pile. I had asked Mary Alice for a folding lesson when I saw her work her magic, but by now her exacting technique was out of my grasp.

  Once that had happened, the day when I put a black sweater on top of the blue pile wasn’t very far behind. Soon there was a gold sweater living among the carefully folded blue jeans. And a red sweater on a hanger.

  That was roughly the same time I corrupted everything else that was sacred by daring to reinsert my favorite items from the “banished forever” pile. Since then the decline has been steady, inevitable. It was always foretold. Nostradamus probably spoke of it.

  The closet still looks a whole lot better than it did before Mary Alice and John worked their voodoo. But now I know the sad truth: We messy gift-wrappers need to have our shoes in a cantilevered pile. We like our closets messy. It is our way.

  A Tenacious Grasp of the Obvious

  As a kind of a pointless brain teaser, I sometimes used to ponder what the irritating media equivalent of a televised sportscast for the non–sports fan might be … just in case I ever got a chance to inflict some sort of separate but equal revenge on an obsessed sports fanatic as retribution for the endless hours of sports broadcasts I have been made to endure over the years. What, if anything, I would ask myself, could possibly grate on their nerves the way the sound of droning play-byplay announcers intermixed with ambient crowd noises seems to grate on mine? And nothing seemed remotely hellish enough. Not the Weather Channel, not even Barney the Dinosaur … Until that sunny afternoon when I first encountered a home shopping show.

  I immediately realized I had found the excruciating revenge I was seeking. Except for one fatal drawback. I wouldn’t be able both to inflict it and stick around to revel in the results the way the sports fan can. Because home shopping is the only thing I have ever seen on TV that makes speedboat racing and afternoon golf seem not just watchable, but riveting and exciting by comparison.

  Recently I heard fashion mogul Diane Von Furstenberg and media mogul Barry Diller conjecturing that they really couldn’t visualize the TV owner who would not eventually be an eager home shopping participant. I suppose I ought to send them each my photo. I keep hearing that home shopping shows are popular, even addictive, but I don’t understand how anyone can bear them. Starting with the stunning fact that they have finally succeeded in developing a category of television performer even more vile, superficial, and witless than the game-show host and the wacky weatherman combined.

  I have heard it said more than once that these “shopping hosts” are like “family” to their regular viewers. And I can understand that, because in the real world the only circumstances under which I would tolerate this level of tedious empty-headed babbling are the occasions on which I have been trapped by tradition and politeness at various family functions.

  There is a simple mathematical theorem that clearly explains my discomfort. A: the fact that I am someone who does not like to be talked to as though I were an idiot PLUS B: the fact that I also do not like to hear the opinion of salespeople when I am contemplating a purchase at a store PLUS C: the fact that these hosts seem to have been hired primarily for their ability to go on endlessly stating and restating the obvious in thousands of different ways until the product is all sold out EQUALS D: a video presentation as close to my own personal definition of “truly irritating” as I am anxious to get.

  A portrait of one of these “hosts” written up in a Home Shopping Network publication called The Bargaineer listed among his qualifications “doing commercials for Toyota and Neutrogena Soap.” “He thinks the best thing about the job,” the article went on to say, “is the people calling in to talk. ‘They’re the real entertainment,’ he says, ‘they’re the real stars.’ ”

  Which brings us to the way in which home shopping has also succeeded in lessening the “minimum definition of entertainment”—a title that previously fell somewhere in between “calling a 900 number astrology forecast line” and “trying to get rid of the Jehovah’s Witnesses on your porch.” Not since Magic Johnson lost his late-night talk show has such boring, pointless conversation been available to such a wide audience.

  If a guidebook exists to advise the novice shopping host, it must certainly contain the following conversational instructions: “No matter what a caller says to you, only one of two responses is ever necessary: 1. A gasp. 2. A laugh or chuckle.”

  Consider the following typical exchange from QVC:

  Caller: Hi. This is Laurie from San Rafael.

  Host: (Gasp) San Rafael! That’s a great place to be from. Have you shopped with us before?

  Caller: Yes. I have a couple of your weskits and I like them very much.

  Host: (Chuckle) Oh! Those were a very good choice!

  Caller: What I enjoy so much about them is that you can go casual or you can go formal.

  Host: (Gasp) Very true! (Chuckle) Well, we’re glad to have you back with us again today. (More chuckling)

  Talk about real entertainment.

  But conducting dozens of conversations that never rise above this level is only part of the job of the busy shopping host or hostess. The real meat of the job, so to speak, comes in endless hours of improvised sales pitches. There must have been a training seminar where they instructed these people to begin each pitch with an elaborate definition of even the commonest of products, followed by an endless listing of its possible uses, as though the whole thing were being viewed by someone completely new to our galaxy who might not have even the most rudimentary grasp of any of our concepts.

  “It’s a polished silver picture frame,” I heard one guy begin his pitch on QVC, “great for any picture you might have. It’s perfect for those wedding photos or maybe you have some photos of your recent vacation—this is ideal, or perhaps some photos of someone who just graduated—this would be wonderful. Or how about snapshots of the new grandchild? Or shots from the big offic
e party …?” He was just getting started.

  “This is my first ruby ring,” I heard Charlene of Shopping with Charlene on the Home Shopping Network say. “Deep dark vivacious [sic] rubies. And whether this is going to be your first ruby red ring or perhaps your tenth or your sixth or you’re looking for something for the lady in your life or maybe adding to your collection …” Help! Somebody make these people stop before I go down there and do things I’m certain to regret!

  Which brings us to the lingo. The language choices on home shopping shows are so full of newly minted terms for things of questionable pedigree that it amounts to the sales equivalent of a Napoleon complex. Every piece of jewelry has a glamorous-sounding official name. What looks like a diamond on HSN is called “cubic zirconium.” It’s known as “Diamonique” on QVC. A recent viewing of the Discover Diamonique show on QVC featured “simulated emeralds” (“It puts the true emerald to shame. It’s such a lovely shade of dark green”), “Caribbean Ice,” and “Lilac Ice, which some people call simulated tanzanite” (“It goes with everything. A gorgeous ring. Just perfect”). Other pieces were “designer inspired” and laden with “faux pearls,” then “gold layered by techni-bond.” And all of these expensive-sounding terms go drifting by, unremarked upon, as though they might actually mean something. Certain things also come with “a certificate of authenticity.”