by Eileen Myles
I took such care of her when she was dying. I relished it. She made me go slow. I’d hear the rustling of her limbs and I’d run to her because she couldn’t get up and there was generally a puddle already there. In my house I have beautiful wooden floors. Now I had a pile of facecloths, torn towels, rags. I’d mop up her urine with a clean dry towel and then I’d come back and wash her ass. I’d come back with a damp one, wash it again and then I’d wipe her dry. I made sure she was really comfortable. I’d do it with love. I attended my dog’s ass, the collapse of her rear legs that I saw as little high heels. I imagined her a drag queen or a young girl unsteadily teetering. A touching failure. I swooped in and made it better, made it comfortable. I felt loving. I felt like a god too. I felt less ambivalently loving than I have ever felt in my life. Now I know what love feels like. I do it and I think it. I love feeling this. Love loving your doggy ass. My home became a shrine. The bird of paradise around the door. The late night and early morning dog barking in the dark canyon beyond the yard. When I bought the house it said on the deed: disclosures. “Dogs in canyon.” What could that mean. Hundreds and hundreds of dogs barking day and night. Not all the time. Just when any one of them got an idea. Then they all got it.
There’s a growly picture of me standing in the screened-in porch light flooding in over that canyon and I look like an animal. But the animal looks great. You see a movie sometimes in which someone is doing something really difficult, waging war, defending their family, walking very far, and very long and they look terrific, they look great. The hair looks good, the person looks well, they look hot. And I would watch these spectacles with a doubleness. I’d keep watching cause unless a movie is really bad I’m usually enthralled but I always think no one would look so good doing that. But in fact people often look radiant suffering. How often have you told someone they look fabulous and they say thanks cause I feel terrible. And you can see it right behind their eyes. Terrible puts a candle in there. Terrible turns on the light. You wonder if people are just empty when they’re moving forward with the plan. When it’s all on the outside and the world is full of light, but when you suffer the light is in. It’s all yours.
I’d mop the floor after I took care of her body and I’d wash the animal print rug. The sound of the washing machine churning was a huge part of the day. And I felt it deeply. The expensive cost of water. On the west coast you are living on this shaky shelf that’s gonna get choked. Everyone knows one day will come when there won’t be any water. California is crazy. Water’s getting sucked there through those long pipes from Colorado or someplace. Where are they getting this water from. I think Colorado is it. Some underground world slowly getting poisoned. Or drained. It’s all very thin and it’s going to end soon.
But we’re spending the end of your life together. That is our vacation, our purpose. First Myra came and stayed with me and she agreed it was hard. I can’t believe you’re doing this & alone she said. I know but I love it I said. I understand she twinkled. Myra’s around 50. It’s interesting to see your friends grow old and when I say she twinkled I mean the moment Myra smiled all the versions of her were twinkling right at that moment. It’s not just the dying who are filled with light. Myra was smiling from her experience which was cute. It was a light from far away, from many places, arriving here now.
Watching Rosie die made me a little in love with the whole wash of light, of time, its twists which must be why I ended it with Paige who visited me next. She was a young Canadian artist, and I met her at an opening in New York in the midst of a crowd of people all her age mostly female which is just like this world in San Diego where I’m living except in New York there’s not a school. Here there’s millions of young women. I almost can’t see the young. They’re like the greenness and the sky and the beach. Paige comes up to me at the opening. Are you you she goes. Ten years ago someone told me you’re the only one your age who goes out. Now they don’t go out. They’re gone. People turn and look at me and say she’s here. I’m like a breeze, I’m like punctuation on a text which is them. Which is why I am grateful to be home in California with my dog who is dying. Who is now dead.
California has great dog beaches. There was one in particular I was very fond of which was next to a naval base. You’d get to the end of the road and turn to park but there was this guard building and a guy in uniform standing right in front of it with a gun. Behind him the giant base perched on the beautiful beach with the ocean rocking all around—an island in California and we’d be driving there over the dazzling bridge from the mainland—you with your nose sniffing out the rear window—the window that when open produces what I think of as the convertible effect.
The most perfect thing about being there is that it is an island. You can feel it most of all at night. When you walk around the air comes from every direction and it reminds me of P-town, of those bars on Commercial Street in the summer. Here all that beauty and sexiness is owned by the military which is strange. The air in Provincetown was prowling around us inside and out and you could hear things not far away, knocking in the water, old, clunking and honking. That one dimly lit music club that was open to the street. You could see the wind rock the orange lamps inside. Inside it reminded me of something else, all the air. Is it necessary for there to be a first air—an air that simply is yours? A place supremely young and old where you’ve spent your whole life. Growing up dying, going down to the beach, drinking, kissing. Are there people who have never lived in their air. Is this mine. I have never been one of a pair of young lovers, a young couple—but this air is mine. I know my air. Drifting, never landing, a life at sea. The sounds and the smells of that restless night, the lights, the feel—a body, if an animal didn’t need a body. A drift.
I’m thinking of the beach I used to bring you in the morning—really early, about nine. About twelve years ago. The light was magical. It was just you and me and one fag—a waiter and he was swimming nude. It was his ritual. My own shirt was off—it was an abandoned part of the beach in a pretty gay town. All the other women were way on the other side of the beach. I liked this loner set up and I felt I was more than a bit of a man. A friend of mine used to have a crush on this waiter in New York. He had a kind of over-developed upper lip like a duck and he was slim and combed his hair back in a classic old-fashioned style. Not extravagant at all, but he was hip in a continental way. The fact that he could be with me on this beach in another city almost fifteen years later and not recognize me at all made me comfortable. It was like family. I had my dog and I had him who didn’t know me. I have a striped towel—orange and dark blue. One of two. I buy one, forget it and buy another one. You’d think it was a straight town now. The beach is littered with couples and people with kids. Some man flies his kite delightedly and I want to say hey can you please go back the other way, you are taking way too much space. Yet I think it’s wrong to talk to people like that. I can leave—go to the gym I think staring at the dunes. I can go walk the street looking for people to have dinner with. Then I put my nose in my notebook and I’m writing again.
Save.
The problem with getting Rosie to the beach on the little military island is that you have to walk here from way back down there cause the beach is right here by the guy with the gun. So the dog would have to be able to walk that far and this dog can’t. This dog has become a puppet in her own life. I lift her up and talk to the dog head she is now. The permanently alive dog breathing in here. In fact I’m writing this book to keep talking to her.
Paige came to visit (I told her it’s not going to be a vacation, she said very seriously I know) and she would get out with the dog at the mouth of the beach and I would go park and then join them. At some point sitting on the beach in the morning it seemed like maybe about a hundred guys in crew cuts went by running. She took a picture. She smiled at me and shrugged. It was the army training on the beach. I thought of her being Canadian. This was a whole other kind of beach.
After you died I went over there
and I heard on the radio that the president George Bush was there and I stuck my head out the window and started screaming at people. He’s a killer don’t you know. Then I realized I couldn’t go there anymore. You know they took Emma Goldman’s boyfriend out in the desert here and anally raped him. The San Diego paper said they should do it to her too. It’s still that paper. That’s why I was so mad. He’s my president too.
She changed suddenly that week. We went up to LA for the weekend cause there was nobody left in San Diego she could stay with. It was getting harder and harder to find anyone to stay with a dying dog. I’d call this one and she’d refer me to that one. Since about June which was when the fits began I’d wake up every morning thinking about it and unable to plan the future because of it not knowing where to be and frankly also feeling a little chased out of town by all the different kinds of young women. I felt overwhelmed by them. A college town is like totally bugged. You can’t be old. You can’t be invisible. You’re just walking around being lonely. That’s why everyone’s married. You’re either wrapped or unwrapped. There’s too much youth. That’s the job. It’s too erotic. I came with someone and it didn’t last. I had you.
So we took you up to LA for the weekend with us. And there was a dog lady you could stay with. She reminded me of the couple with a kid on E. 7th Street you stayed with when you were a puppy. This lady just had dogs, maybe cats too. No husband just animals. Cushions all around. You looked a little stunned when we left. It was just for the night and then we took you home.
How was she. She wouldn’t eat dog food. She just had steak. The woman shrugged. Like it was cute. She must’ve liked that we laughed. To be an animal owner you get to be broad. Even a little deceitful. Nobody can speak up for herself. It’s like an eternally silent child. Who you trust. Who shouldn’t trust you. Who just keeps playing with the same ball and likes the same walk and is getting old.
We stopped off at that great place in San Juan Capistrano and got food and you had your own little taco. That was fun. We all ate in the car and drove home. I don’t remember being happy. It was dark. I remember being full. We were all in the car. It was nice, everyone had food and we drove down the coast.
These places are all catholic places. San Diego. San Luis Obispo. I think of the monks who started the missions and the story they told us in school about the monks having boiling water poured on their heads. The Native Americans were making a joke. It was that one detail they taught us forever.
That first night Paige was gone I was standing out in the front yard in my bvds holding up your ass in a puddle of piss. It was like dawn. It was all night long. It kept happening. And my arm hurt and your legs were gone and I thought we can’t do this anymore.
You would not eat dog food. Never again. You would only eat sausages and little steaks. And meanwhile you no longer would shit. You would never shit again for the rest of your life. She’ll shit on the other side. That was my joke. Meanwhile I can no longer eat these sausages you get in health food stores that you liked because they remind me of your turds. Your whole insides aching, waiting for relief.
I went out on Friday night to read in that sex shop in North Park with the big back room where things happened. You were so quiet when I left. You were barely breathing. You were almost gone. There was this ottoman at the window where you were lying. You were so still.
Before Paige left she lowered the bed. To make it easier for you to get up cause you couldn’t jump. But it was like changing the world and she won’t be in it long. I remember thinking that. I liked it low for a while.
I used to clean this woman’s house in New York. Years before. Her cat died and the cat was in bardo on the bed when I cleaned. I worked with this guy David who got me the job who died of AIDS and he said go look in the bedroom. It somehow made the house feel very good when we cleaned. Having a dead body in there.
I like to make it heavier sometimes. Saying versions of the same thing. I mean here. You probably already guessed it but I like saying it again. That one little piece again with a twist. And a thud. I don’t feel this way about everything but there are moments that need to be heavy. As a fact. Not an idea.
When I got the puppy when I was a kid my father said go in the bedroom Eileen. It was my mother and father’s bedroom where I was never allowed so I hated him telling me to do it. It didn’t make sense. It scared me. Go in the bedroom, Eileen. The little dog walked out.
I read for Rosie that night. Read every poem she was in.1 Dedicated it to her. Not that she needed it. She did not need poetry.
She was it. Mainstay of my liturgy for sixteen point five almost seventeen years. She was observed. I was companioned, seen.
I read a long one about dogs I wrote before I ever even had one. It was about attachment. How I wanted it. Needed it. Least I had habits said the poem since I didn’t have a dog. There was one about walking on the beach with a dog and hearing things. Hearing old people groaning as they walked in the sand. One was about counting things when I walked her. Almost losing her once. The color of her leash. My friend dying and its color getting mixed up with that. Her leash was so important. I started assigning numbers to each of the colors of the world like it was a paint-by-numbers that year before she was dying. I filmed her too. I was scared. The painting was fading. I was having my religion torn from me. Her body smelled corny. Her fur smelled like corn to me always and I never bathed Rosie till she was sick. I bathed her if she rolled in shit or dead fish. That was her P-town trick. & I never washed a floor. Not in my life, in all my worlds I never looked down. She had sores on her body all her life. All the puppies in her litter had bumps on their bodies. I got worried but after a while I’d just leave them there. I had a girlfriend who thought that was cruel. I went to the vet when I had money. You died when I had money. Most of the other puppies in your litter died. There was Africa who was last seen running between parked cars, scared. He was with that cute young couple but they must have abandoned him. There was “38”, who someone in the neighborhood found and dropped off at the pound. What’s going to happen to him now the guy asked as he was leaving. Gas said the woman at the counter. No one wants a pit. What cage is he in asked the guy. 38. He went back and got him. We used to see 38 all the time. There was Buster who lived in Tompkins Sq. Park with a homeless kid. We saw him sometimes then I heard he ate rat poison and died. Point is that I am a fucking saint. There was your mother Lucy, white with a handful of pale black spots who lived with the restaurant woman on 4th street, then Lucy was gone. We used to see her up on the fire escape all the time.
I needed to talk to you about things. This was in the fall. You died in December. I heard about this woman who could communicate with animals. I was having dinner with two friends one from the west coast one from the east and they had both heard of such a woman and it turned out she was the same one. That’s good.
Rosie’s in California, I’m in New York the woman is in western Mass. The way we do it Dawn Allen said is you tell me what you want me to ask her. It’s going to be silent on the line for a few minutes because I’ll be talking with her. I’ll tell you what Rosie has to say for herself.
Dawn came back giggling. This is an amazing dog. I’ve never heard a dog talk this way before. She’s quite a little poet. Oh she must have known everyone says. I don’t know. My question was what was keeping Rosie around. She likes the smell of the world. She likes the feeling of the wind on her fur. She likes grass. She loves San Diego. She’s very happy there.
She says she’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it in reference to moving to LA. That’s my family’s talk. I knew it meant she wouldn’t be there. It’s how we say no.
When I came in from the reading she was on her hassock by the window. Again very still. I had to stare to catch her breathing. I crouched down. We’ve been together for a while I said. If you’re ready to go it’s okay. I got down with her eye to eye. It was grey. I felt like she was swimming in some fluid and I was in there with her. It was our intimacy. A s
ilent place. I felt I was guided by her. Her deep prescient calm. I would miss her so much. I wanted to keep swimming with her. But I couldn’t help it. I pulled out. I had to say no. I’m not dying with you. But who will I be without my dog. And I carried you to the bed.
1. Note: We should do a little pamphlet of Rosie’s poems.
The Death of Rosie
In the morning she felt very still. I felt like I could pick her up like a little football and pass her through. She hadn’t moved all night.
I called the vet. It was Saturday morning. What’s it like in there now. It’s very quiet but you better get in here fast.
I called Ali and Anna who said they would come. Were coming. We need coffee. I grabbed her and my sleeping bag. I carried her, rolled up. I put her in the car.
There’s a few ahead of you said Marcy as we came in. That’s okay. I’m waiting for my friends. Why don’t you take her into the corner said Marcy who was one of the people who stayed with her. Everyone in the animal world has a little business. They work at a vet’s and they have dog walking cards on the counter.