by Linda Rogers
“I can’t talk; someone is trying to kill me, and my dog is pissing in the shower,” he said, and hung up. Translation, the copy edit had met an obstruction similar to the one that made a necessity of daily enemas and prune juice. I decided to cancel the bartender and the catering and wear the lovely new dress to a family wedding.
Have you noticed the world is ass over teakettle? We have had four major seismic events in the Ring of Fire over the past year; a hurricane has flattened New York and New Jersey; a bunch of billionaires have spent billions on an election that didn’t return as much as a loaf of bread; and Barney’s in New York is featuring an anorexic size zero, five-foot-eleven-inch Minnie Mouse in Jimmy Choo heels and a Vera Wang dress in their tweeners display.
So who cares if my book comes out? Well, me for one. I spent three freezing years living in igloos, researching sex in sealskins and polar bears with six legs.
Let me explain. I have in my small collection of aboriginal art a carving of a six-legged polar bear. The sculptor, grateful to a missionary for saving his soul and uniting him with his one true love in a Christian marriage, rewarded him with a sculpture of two mating bears. This makes sense. Were we not instructed by the gospels to go forth and multiply? However, the priest rejected the gift, praising the carver’s skill but insisting he could not own a piece of pornographic art.
The carver, a practical man, took back the sculpture, shaved off the head and forelegs of the male bear, leaving a female with six legs, a startling likeness to the current Pope. Now doesn’t that interesting artefact deserve the attention of the literate public?
Unlike my publisher, I do not have opiate dreams. Mine are of the pragmatic, straight-up archetypal variety. That is, when I am not in too deep a sleep to remember them. After the phone call, I closed my eyes and saw polar bears jumping from melting floe to floe, and come to think of it, wondered whence cometh that particular dream flow? My dictionary says it is from the Norwegians, who, after they die of cold are sent out to sea in burning boats. Perhaps someone will send my publisher a burning boat.
Whence the ice melt, and that is another story, perhaps enhanced by my desire for publication, the devil sacrament that uses up our sacred wealth of trees. Poor polar bears, balancing on shrinking floors, and not a rock in sight. So went my dream, and then I woke. Perhaps the bay window was penetrated by ice, and that would also fall into the deliberate column, deliberate but not so dangerous as a bullet.
I called him. “Maybe it was an icicle. Maybe the guy across the street was offended by your nakedness.”
“Not a chance,” he said, and went through the list of famous and beautiful men he had slept with, including the one who recently called a paparazzi a faggot, “I’ve never been rejected.”
“How is the edit coming?” I asked. He made a dramatic and probably genuine exhalation of breath, and I saw my pages melting like ice floes, my book sinking into a cold artic sea.
Months passed. I heard that the editor had edited out the most alarming assassination options and accepted the randomness of fate. He had reopened his curtains, unlocked his front door and taken his disobedient dog for walks in the urban jungle half a world away from my vanishing tundra and the nuisance grounds that provided me with so much priceless material.
“Can’t talk,” he said before putting down the phone. “I’ve just been traumatized by a home invasion.”
His Facebook account reported that a window washer had entered through the door on the second-floor balcony adjoining his bedroom. He had helped himself to the liquor cabinet, laid himself down on the bed and fallen asleep. The editor had arrived home on the late side, after an egregious literary event, a book launch (not mine, needless to say), and had fallen into bed without taking off his clothes. He thought the other warm body under the covers was his dog, and that was true, but his dog was just one of two warm bodies.
When he called 911, he reported a rape; but the story changed when the same officer who wanted to be a lawyer arrived with his partner, an attractive martial artist called Brenda, who was sleeping with him although both were married to other people. I mention this because it gives a certain frisson to the interview. In a subsequent call, my editor reported their conversation.
“You arrived home drunk.”
“Yes.”
“You took a cab, I assume.”
“Uh…”
“I’ll be checking.”
“Am I the criminal here?”
“You might be. Did you walk the dog?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t he have needed to go out?” The cop who wants to be a lawyer was once in the dog unit. He knows how much dogs need to be walked when their owners arrive home drunk, dew dripping off their nether lilies well after dew has fallen on the grass.
“I think I told you that my dog had been peeing in the shower.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I took off my shoes and fell into bed.”
“Then what?”
“I had a dream.”
“Yes?”
“I dreamed my dog was dying, and I had to give her mouth to mouth resuscitation.”
“And you woke up kissing your dog on the mouth,” Brenda guessed. She was learning vicariously.
“No, It wasn’t my dog. It was the man who was in bed with my dog.”
“And that man was…?”
“The window washer I hired on my way out the door yesterday morning.”
“Then what?”
“Then he raped me.”
“How did he do that?”
“The usual way.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He penetrated me.”
“I thought you were fully dressed.”
“I must have undressed in my sleep. I’m a thrasher.”
“You thrashed your clothes off, and then the window washer raped you.”
“Yes.”
At this point, Brenda and the cop who wanted to be a lawyer apparently lost their composure and had to retreat to their vehicle until they were able to handcuff their mirth.
I am a big admirer of John Irving who really gets the congruency of sex and death, baseballs in the forehead, penises bitten off during car fellatio. Perhaps my editor has bigger fish to fry, major popular novelist kinds of fish, and this is code for “Get lost. I have to see a man about a dog.” Dogs, to me, à la Vermeer, conjure domestic fidelity, integrity, loyalty, all good things. I am confused. Perhaps my editor’s dog is also confused. I doubt she’s in on it, which constitutes animal cruelty, in my opinion, and my husband agrees with me.
My grandfather used to say that to me about his mysterious disappearances—I went to see a man about a dog. I didn’t know whether he’d gone to the bathroom, to make a bet on dogs or horses or get in some putting practice. He certainly didn’t mean, “I’m about to get into bed with a man and a dog.”
I put my new dress in the closet, drank all the champagne (it was prosecco with the jar stopper lid, and we are going to use the bottles for vinegar, Christmas gifts. I doubt I will send one to my editor, but perhaps I should.). My husband, who shared the champagne and the loneliness of the endless nights I’d slept in the igloo a thousand miles away, suggested the shooter/window washer might be another writer.
We were now approaching the situation as a shaggy-dog story, vaudeville, a sutra with endless knots. We’d taken to role-playing, changing characters—some-times I was the cop, sometimes the window washer. He was always the editor, the dog and/or the female cop (falsetto).
We made a joke out of eight years of my life.
I made one last call late in November, tongue ready to either give my editor a verbal lashing or lick the stamps on the box that held the last bottle of vinegar. He picked up the phone after nine rings and paused. If I weren’t the caller and he the callee, I would have hung up. Those pauses never augur well. Most often it is someone in Asia or Nigeria who wants your money. Then I heard the dog barking. I made note of the timbre so I could encoura
ge my husband to get perfect canine intonation during our next pantomime.
“I was out walking the dog,” he said.
“That’s good,” I said. “So everything’s back to normal again.”
“N…n…n…o…” he answered. “Not at all. Someone shot at us in the park.”
“Shot at? Are you dead then?” I like the idea of talking to zombies. It has the warm bullshit feel of a Caribbean breeze.
“Yes. I was wearing my cashmere coat, and it must have stopped the bullets.”
“Ah, yes….” I wondered if that coat represented my share of his block grant, but pushed that thought back. I covered the receiver with my hand and told my husband to pick up in the kitchen, “….the Lamb of God. Did you feel it?”
“I felt a dull poke.”
“A dull poke?” My mind went to the purple vibrator one of my husband’s workmates used to beat up her unfaithful partner. But what I had meant by the question was, did he feel it in the religious sense, the Golden Fleece.
“Maybe it was nuns. Were you blocking the sacred path? Did someone poke you with a cane?” I have been to his house. It adjoins a convent, which is now a rest home for elderly nuns.
“That’s ridiculous. The nuns adore us.”
“Just a thought.” His little bitch might have left a love offering on the convent lawn. “Did you phone the cops?”
“Of course, I went into the public toilet and called them on my cell.”
“And?” I was thinking that was dumb. What if he’d been pursued in there, if being the big question?
“Nothing. I got the smart-ass cop who wants to be a lawyer.”
“And what did he say?”
“Three strikes and you’re out.”
I could hear my husband snorting in the kitchen. He couldn’t help himself. I married him for his uncontrollable laughter.
“That sounds about right.”
From now on, I’m going to write fairy tales.
THE LINEUP
Should we call it a cue, c-u-e, or queue with a q? It’s a Chinese braid, a ladder to the sky, a hint of this lineup. Since we’re all lined up for bread or butter or ladders to heaven, who cares how we spell it? Everyone’s hungry for a turn at the tap or the tit. Everyone wants to get in or out: end-games, ultimate goals, desiderati. How do we convince them the cue is everything, the stick that swings and mails eight balls to happy holes and chalk into felt. Rrrriiiiipppppp. Think tree of life, stick with branches. “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” Ask any golfer, or dancer or baseball player.
We’re all in the game, and we all want to know how the play turns out, which portal to take: in or out, entrance or exit. But what happens now in medias res, before deus ex machina? Hurry up, please. We have a toothache. Our hair’s too long. Our children are hungry. We need a Band-Aid, a fix. We have to pee.
But we are a rainbow, la vie en rose, red violet, indigo, hunter green, and the pot of gold is a box of chocolates, soft centers, artificial flavours, artifical colours, fake. Come on. Get in line. Now you will meet God and Beelzebub, the chorus of angels, whales connected by radar, the holy music, owls and ravens. Caaaawwww. Our cue.
I’m first. Thumbs up, middle finger, the body language meaning, I win, or fuck you, and in Cuba, first finger, not the Bernie wag but “ultimo,” me before you, but always first, even if you leave the line. Ultimo’s your body man, first through the door, and you follow, no matter what.
“Ultimo,” first on the bus, first in heaven or hell, first to jump off the end of the world, first to collect flannel bills stacked in deco banks with Tiffany lamps, where gangsters saved their money, first helado, first pan.
What did they do in the lineups at Dachau, where last was top of the pile, last puff of precious air. Not ultimo. What then? Da capo, from the top? Everybody died.
But this is theatre. We’re lined up for the play inside, the play with a name and a cast of characters, a beginning, a middle and an end. Fringe=avante-garde, meaning “in front.” Of course, there’s a hierarchy in heaven, all the angels lined up according to rank, ready to jump off or into the thing we call life here on Earth, the most fragile lineup of all.
I’m first in line, da capo, born headfirst, the bomb, head ready to explode like a watermelon, the first bar in music, the ultimo ultimo, and number two is my spouse, who knows a banjo player who stood on his head for an hour when his parents sent him to a psychiatrist. Why?
Because he wanted to be an artist! Imagine that, when there’s money in almost anything else they can think of: doctor, lawyer, captain of industry. Artiste?
Imagine their surprise when he pulled down his pants and put on a dress.
And number three, of course, because this is theatre and the whole world is the sidewalk outside a fringe venue, is Ladyboy, a shimmer of blue nails and elegant eyelashes, mascara mixed with tears running down his cheeks, followed by Girl With a Dangerous Weapon, her purse.
“Racist!” Girl yells, banging him hard. I won’t admire Girl until I know the context because I once did the same thing to Mountie, who announced in the corner store, “Someone got hit by the train last night, but no problem. It was an Indian.”
“It? Only a human life,” I say, now as then, gripping my handbag hard, ready to strike.
“What did you do? What did you say?” I ask the ante-preultimate ultimo.
“I don’t know,” Ladyboy wails, and I wonder about moral equivalency, and who has the right.
“You guys stop this,” I order.
Fat Woman with Fatter Shadow that stretches all the way down the block, who is next, says, “’Guys’ is not pc. You might as well have said ‘Bitches’ or ‘Niggers.’”
“Hey! All my relations, calm down.”
And, as soon as my quick thinking penultimo, once called a Girl With a Weenie by a big bully, pulls out his comb and sings into it, his coloratura falsetto almost as back-archingly beautiful.
“Nice comb, Dude.”
He responds by combing his beard.
Racism Girl huffs out most of her soul, at least twenty grams, and takes off, like a swinging door in a hurricane.
A mighty wind.
“I’ve got one drop,” she spits. One drop of what, I wonder?
“So what did I say?” Ladyboy still doesn’t know. None of us knows. We all shrug, and Ladyboy insists. “It’s gay bashing.”
Maybe it is. But we’re all glad it’s over. For now.
Ladyboy checks out the next person in line as Fat Woman with Fatter Shadow raises her pointing finger. Next Person is checking her program, She looks up, “Where am I?”
“Life,” I say. And I mean it, wondering where this lineup really leads.
“What’s the show called?” Next person checks her list.
“Life.”
“Serious?”
“No, comedy.”
Two more people have arrived. One wants to go to the front because she is deaf. “I can read faces, but not if I can’t see them. I need the front row.”
Penultimo aka Spouse aka Girl With a Weenie trades places, and Deaf Person begins a tirade about a show she says she couldn’t hear, even though she perks right up when the Ice-cream Man drives by.
“She was completely inconsonant, ran all her words together, and her tap dance was terrible.”
“I thought you said you were deaf?”
“It doesn’t matter. I could tell she was speaking too quickly.”
Oh, I didn’t think so. I turn to the line and give my alternating “Hutch’kwa,” Salish thanks and what-the fuck-gesture, hands up, palms out, and notice the slight fellow at the end of the line looks familiar.
“You look familiar,” I say, and Slight Fellow begins to tap dance.
Deaf and, shall I venture against political correctness to say, Dumb Woman fails to return to her shell like a snail assaulted by salt and sallies forth, ultimo finger pointed right in Slight Fellow’s face, to tell him what she thinks of his show. Her reasons are gre
at. She couldn’t hear. She hates tap dancing.
“Did you know that African slipper dancers adapted to tap when slave owners banned drumming between plantations? Tap dancing was Morse code, the only conversation between separated families. How does that make you feel?”
My face is in her face, and I know she can hear me. I know she can smell my breath. When I am mad, my breath smells like a maritime storm, fish stranded on the beach.
Ultimo starts to sing, “How does it feel?” and the line shrugs as Slender Fellow steps right out and taps on the sidewalk.
“He’s telling you to lay off,” Fat Woman with Fatter Shadow tells her.
“Back of the line,” I say when she tries to edge herself back in. “No perks.”
Dumb Woman does what she’s told. Takes up the caboose position and pulls pen and paper out of her pocket. She uses Slight Fellow’s back as her desk, and he lets her. Turn the other cheek, that guy said. Wow.
Girl comes out of the theatre, fully made-up, action doll ready for action, her purse in tow.
“Are you still here?”
“I will be, until I’m not.”
“Admit you said it.”
“Said what?”
“I said, ‘Welcome to Whiteoria’ and you said ‘What?’”
“What?”
“Yeah, what?”
“Sorry.”
“So you’re apologizing?”
“No, I mean sorry as in, what did you say?”
“I said, ‘WHITEORIA.’”
“I thought you meant Victoria.”
“No I didn’t. Look around you, everyone’s white.”
“Not me,” Fat Lady says.
“Not me,” Ultimo, unofficially Semitic, says.
“Not me,” says New Guy, an Aboriginal who just came by with the drum from his show. “I just took heat from a critic who said my two-thousand-year-old choreography was amateur.”
“The newspaper retired him, and not a moment too soon,” Ultimo says, and the whole line except Dumb Woman, makes the Salish thank-you gesture.