Afterglow_a dog memoir

by Eileen Myles

  Why now she asked, stroking Rosie’s head. She was stooped down on the floor with us.

  You don’t think she’s ready?

  We’ve all been waiting for you. It is time.

  The room kept filling. All the people with their young cats and dogs watching us in our sorrow. Did you know what was going on? Anna and Ali blew in. Rose Anna said crouching down. Is there anything we can do. Has she eaten? What would she like—How about some carne asada, Rose would you like that. Anna waved the money off. I’ll be right back. Oh Rose said Ali her face growing big.

  Anna fed Rosie the whole serving by hand. Rosie’s eyes were large, bugged out like the only parts of her alive were the screaming whites of her eyes, the dark flat irises and her mouth. Prayerful but getting it down.

  OK said the vet opening the door. It was Doctor Todd the old one. So it’s time huh Rose. Do you think I’m rushing her. This is the hardest thing in the world she said ponderously but in her heart. My partner and I put our boy down a few months ago. It was the hardest thing we’ve ever done and we’ve lost a few. She’s been ready for a while. It was you that was holding on. She didn’t need to hang around all this time did you Rose. She was holding a syringe up. It was pink. This is an anesthetic. That’s all that she needs poor thing. I’ll give her half and see how that does her. She pushed it in. Maybe her ass her thigh. She stopped. She put her stethoscope down on her heart. She’s gone. It was just a bear of her being still. It was all her black and white my father’s touchable body. I’ll leave you with her for a few minutes. Take your time. There was a thin young tech, gay I guessed who dashed out of the room the moment her heart stopped. He came back & he put a posy orange and red flowers tiny at her neck. He knows she’s Rosie I thought.

  He knows the rhyme. It looked so good with her colours, her enormous mouth going slack. The inside of her mouth was all out the scar of her lip. Her long jaw. We all cried and hugged. Do you want to be with her? Yes.

  The world was outside the door. It was Saturday morning. It was so generous. To let us be in here now like this. Just us. She was a city dog, born on a sidewalk or a roof. There was always concrete and talk. The world out there now on the other side of the wall. In here, just us.

  How will I ever let go of you girl. The first one ever mine. I hugged her long body. Her mouth so still. Her eyes, closed I think. I don’t know.

  I saw this movie about the jungle. The man died under a tree. His friends were leaving him. Travel well I said. All the seeds of you; and the dream of you, the rot.

  Then I stepped back into the world.

  The Puppets’ Talk Show

  OSCAR, the host is a puppet. He has shiny black painted hair and bright red dots on both his cheeks. He’s wearing a pair of blue overalls with very baggy suspenders and a blue and yellow striped shirt. One of his feet is gone and his pant-leg is empty.

  OSCAR: Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello. Our guest tonight, Rosie (a dog!!) is here to set the record straight …

  ALL PUPPETS: YAYYY!

  OSCAR: … Yes Rosie is our guest. Thanks for coming, Rose.

  ROSIE: (Nods.) Glad to be here, Oscar. Very glad, in fact. (ROSIE leans forward a bit in her chair, adjusting her butt.)

  OSCAR: Puppets, and dogs. A lot of folks probably can’t see the connection between our kinds. I say balderdash …

  ALL PUPPETS: (Drumming.)

  OSCAR: Our studio audience, the kids …

  Camera pans to “the kids.” Just to the left of OSCAR and ROSIE is a short row of puppets: BEDILIA, who has black yarn hair, MONTGOMERY, a young guy, with painted reddish hair, CASPER (a ghost) little more than a white clown head and a sheet and finally CROCKY, the crocodile. A pair of paper mache jaws going clack clack and a lower body of red and green upholstery material. Behind them are hundreds and thousands of puppets going back endlessly into the horizon which becomes mountains and hills also covered with puppets, all the puppets in the world.

  ROSIE: (Turns and returns to OSCAR smiling.) Wow.

  OSCAR: Yeah there’s a lot of us. The meeting of puppets and dogs has been a long time coming and you can see how important it is to our kind. Puppet Nation. No, puppet universe …!

  ROSIE: I hope I can do my kind justice. I mean there’s only one of me—and there’s a lot of dogs …

  OSCAR: What do dogs want, Rosie. I don’t mean to put you on the spot. But you agreed to come in today and you can see what your being here means to us. And I hope you don’t mind me being honest. You guys are generally considered the enemy. For good reason. Dogs, historically, have torn a good many puppets apart. Tore us to shreds.

  Camera close up on OSCAR’S face and tiny tear is dripping down …

  ROSIE: I get it, Oscar. A lot of wrong has been done. But those do—

  OSCAR bows his head then lifts a white hand.

  OSCAR: … those were ordinary dogs, Rosie. Is that what you were going to say.

  OSCAR looks over at his wife BEDILIA and all the puppets up in the hills. He regains his composure …

  ROSIE: I think I would feel more comfortable on the floor. (Hops down and plants her head on her paws, looking innocent.)

  OSCAR: Forget it, forget it! You came here to talk with us and … it’s time to move on. Dogs are pawns and puppets are pawns. Let’s face it, puppets are puppets. People put their hands inside us, they enter our heads and our bodies and make us say things whether we believe them or not.

  ROSIE: (Over her shoulder.) People have us on leashes. People feed us on the floor. They put us to sleep. People put us down.

  OSCAR: Right, and that doesn’t happen to us. But now that you’re animated we’ve got a lot more in common. All it takes to see things fresh is the right opportunity. A good invite. (OSCAR looks around proudly.) To be on our show …

  ROSIE: (Hops back on chair.) And how many dogs get this, Oscar. How many dogs are called. I’m grateful I was called. I always was. I guess that’s why I’m here.

  OSCAR: What was it like?

  ROSIE: What was what like?

  OSCAR: I don’t know how to put it. The fame. I mean you’re definitely getting famous. Right now. You’ve been written about. Like Lady Di. You’re basically being deified. (Flips through the pages of a galley. Nodding.) As well as defiled …

  ROSIE: No great shakes, Oscar. Big dog, little dog. All the same. Humans are the problem. I think you’ll agree …

  OSCAR: (Nodding.) Hmmmm.

  ALL PUPPETS: (A murmuring begins with OSCAR’S low hum and cascades all the way back up the mountain like a growly bell or a quake.)

  OSCAR: You just touched the rock, my friend.

  ROSIE: The one I had rode me like a car. She was interested in how she abused me—she wrote about it. She wrote about it extensively. I mean that’s why I’m here, right? When I died she described the ways my body was treated: paw pushed in plaster like a criminal or a child—they made a Rosie souvenir before they threw me in the fire—then and only then, and oh yeah and when I was dying, get this, when they’re wheeling me around town like a man who has money—then she writes on her long legal pad “puppet, puppetry.” She gets the idea that I was used. Treated like I was empty. Great. Yeah well how about my whole long life, Eileen.

  OSCAR: That was your name for her.

  ROSIE: No it was not. I called her Jethro. That was my name for her and believe me I got in more than one fight defending that name. I tell a few other dogs in the park—ugh here comes Jethro when she’s loping towards me with her big smile and a rope like it’s good news I’ve got to go home for hours and sit on the floor. Yet I had a certain amount of loyalty. The dogs in the park got snickering and telling all the other dogs. Look, look, Jethro …

  I wasn’t down for that shit. Laughing at her. That’s part of why dogs—dogs in captivity but that’s pretty much all dogs—we’re known for our loyalty. We stay with the hand we were dealt and we generally will fight for it. Dogs do have choices. Unlike you guys we can move on our own and some dogs totally do. Go to Mexico for inst
ance and live your own life, though you also can fucking starve on those streets. But yeah there’s a lot of us down there. I guess anything’s better than getting gassed as a pup but—my point was I was very often defending her and getting myself in fights in the dog run for years and did she have any idea. First she tries to get me knocked up—had me raped—and that is in the book, to her credit. Later she decides NO … THAT THAT’S NOT WHAT I WANT then she has my insides yanked out.

  PUPPETS look aghast. ALL PUPPETS.

  ROSIE: You didn’t know about that. Spaying?

  OSCAR: They take your copy thing away. That’s it. Isn’t it, Rosie. Still, do you want more dogs. Isn’t that the argument. Alleviating dogs’ suffering?

  ROSIE: Yes we want more dogs. Do you want more puppets. (ROSIE turns and looks up the mountain and beyond.) We want to outnumber humans and turn it around. Not in a warlike fashion but gentle, you know. We’re doing it from the inside out already. That’s what this book means. We are talking to our ‘masters.’ Very gently and subtly. Dogs are true leaders and strong teachers as the life of Eileen Myles after my own life will show. Life is short. That’s the problem. It’s very hard for one dog to do much in one lifetime. Sixteen years. By the time you hit your message your body’s failing …

  OSCAR: So there’s some truth …

  ROSIE: Truth to what. (Eyebrows raise) Hmmph?

  OSCAR: Well here’s your book. Afterglow. It’s right on my knee. And what I’m hearing now from you is that it’s not so clear how much of the work here is yours. (OSCAR turns towards the camera waving the book.) Authorship! Who’s writing who.

  (PUPPETS take the cue and start drumming.)

  ROSIE: Want the facts? Ok here’s the facts …

  My lawyer wrote Eileen Myles ten years ago and she did nothing. I was begging her. For years. At least make us some money. The pages my lawyer wrote were brilliant. Can we throw them up on the screen. It’s a little long …

  OSCAR: We’re in Puppet Time. Do puppets have time?

  ALL PUPPETS: O YEAH! (Rolling up the mountains and the hills …)

  (Projected on a screen behind OSCAR and ROSIE is the following …)

  “Dear Eileen …”

  (PUPPETS drumming)

  “… I take the liberty of calling you ‘Eileen’ to begin the unpleasant duty of forcing you …”

  ROSIE: (Off-camera.) Oscar, have you read this before?

  OSCAR: Letter or the book?

  ROSIE: Any of it.

  OSCAR: I read the whole book. Nothing gets on the show I don’t approve of.

  ROSIE: Okay so I totally wrote the letter.

  OSCAR: What are you saying?

  ROSIE: There’s no lawyer. There’s no money. I … I never said it because it kind of confuses things. I put it in her head. It’s what we always did. She feels she wrote it.

  OSCAR: God there’s some legal issues to this.

  She must … hold on …

  “… foundation in their will for …”

  OSCAR: We’ve got plenty of time. She must know.

  ROSIE: She knows. You know how humans are. Particularly this one. Vague. The stuff early on about “the hand-addressed letter” is fiction, just covering her ass. I don’t know. Maybe she’s trying to give credit to the post office.

  But um (leans forward) I sent her something else. A dream. It’s short. Can I send it to your phone?

  OSCAR: Now? (Awkwardly pulls his large phone out of his overall pocket.)

  EILEEN’S DREAM

  At the party I was talking to Peggy …

  OSCAR: … Peggy the dog? The one in Ireland.

  ROSIE: No! That’s later … it’s Ahwesh, the filmmaker …

  … I was talking to Peggy and she

  asked me how I’d been. You know it’s

  very lonely in California but

  I’m doing what New Yorkers do

  out there. I’m working on myself. I

  mean there’s no people. There’s

  people but you don’t see them.

  Everyone’s in their houses.

  So you can’t help seeing yourself. I

  went there with a girlfriend you know

  and in less than a year she’s up in LA

  fucking around. I wind up in a very

  large bed, a California king, they call

  it …

  ROSIE: (Looks down at her own phone, smiling.) I loved that bed. Did you get to that part?

  OSCAR: … Yeah. Let me check on …

  “… the explicit purpose of identifying dogs who were likely litigants, candidates for beginning the long and arduous process of getting the ball rolling on dogs’ rights. It’s been clear to my client during her life …”

  OSCAR: We’re still okay …

  Eileen cont’d

  … One night as I was falling asleep

  which had been very fitful

  that winter, trying to get myself

  adjusted to sleeping alone in a giant

  bed inside an empty house I began

  seeing a slow fading slide show of the

  faces of all the women I had ever been

  involved with. Each of them was looking

  at me with love in their faces, and as I laid

  there in my giant bed I found it hard to

  believe that that had been my life, that

  anyone had ever looked at me that way.

  It was a painful lonely feeling and then I

  fell asleep. I woke up anxiously in the blue

  of morning. I looked out the window

  at the eucalyptus trees and felt a stab of

  anxiety and realized I must get up. I

  jumped out of bed and went into the

  front room which had a door which looked

  through a tiny yard with a fence out onto

  other houses in a suburban street. At

  that moment a light went on in the house

  across the street. It was the house of a

  large depressed lesbian named Junie

  who I had determined wanted me by the

  way she impulsively grabbed me once at a

  meeting. Oh God Junie’s going to be

  awake now I thought as if by standing

  there looking out on the street I was

  responsible. I stood in my doorway taking

  all of it in when suddenly I saw myself

  standing there looking out as a toy, a

  wooden puppet with a pointed nose

  nodding benignly, smiling and looking

  out …

  OSCAR: (Lifts his head smiling.) That’s very sweet!

  ROSIE: I’m glad you think so. Humans will think it’s creepy …

  OSCAR: Humans NEVER like thinking of themselves as puppets. (Puts white gloved hand on Rosie’s paw.) Your secret is safe with me. I think we’re going live right NOWWW …

  … There is one today, the dog formerly known as Rosie. She has been left a significant sum of money in my client’s will. She may spend it as she pleases with the single stipulation that she obtain counsel and press charges against her owner for a variety of abuses and crimes against dog kind. As you know, Eileen Myles, that owner is you.

  OSCAR: Okay! That’s the kind of history we like!! (He rocks a little bit, looking at all the other puppets.)

  ROSIE: Powerful document, I agree. And anyone with half a brain would have written a dog’s desiderata on behalf of us or even a serious defense of herself and we’d be set. No old Jethro shows it around a bit like look at the brilliant piece of writing I don’t know what to do with and whoosh slides the letter into her files. Maybe she publishes it in a student magazine. Years pass. I listen to her whining and huffing. What’s wrong with my life. Why can’t anyone see I’m a genius. On and on. She took me to nature, to the sea, to the forest. She did her best. When it coincided with what she considered “her career.”

  PUPPETS: What’s that?

  ROSIE: They put their hands inside of you, don’t they?
Same idea. Using whatever they’ve chosen—law, sex, poetry, whatever they choose … they try to do that to the world. Animate it. Put their hands inside the thing and shake it at the world and wanting everyone to go whoa. That’s pretty much how I understand a human career. And we are feathering their beds. So yes I taught her to write. I showed her the way. Work changes in 1990 when I came on the scene. Check it out. She admits it but people think she’s being poetic, humble, theoretical. Cut to the end of our so-called story. I’m basically unable to walk to the door to say I need to relieve myself … We’re sitting on the green chaise lounge in the yard and she’s got the yellow pad out and now she’s writing to break your heart. Now, you fucking loser. Now? Yes now. The book is here, our book and yes I have helped mightily. Just as I wrote virtually every poem by Eileen Myles from 1990 to 2006 and she wrote nothing nothing in the intervening months, no years. A cat writes a poem. I don’t think so. A cat does not have a poem. A cat stays in. It’s a whole other kind of thing for them. I’m not really in touch with them yet.

  OSCAR: Cats?

  ROSIE: Yeah cat. We picked a pretty doggy one. Ernie. Black guy. He was wandering around wondering if this was the right place for him. We took him in and I liked him very much and the pair of them were devastated after my … departure. But there’s no poems in that.

  You know the person you should talk to is Dawn Allen.

  OSCAR: Who’s that?

  ROSIE: She’s a talker in betweener.

  OSCAR: You mean …

  ROSIE: Yeah, she’s a puppet. She’s our puppet. She’s practically a saint. People call her up and for a very reasonable rate she lets us speak. Eileen Myles waits till the end of my life to see what I was hanging around for. Was I her father—that’s a very big part of this book about me. Humans are always looking for … the obvious. Very low, very base, very banal kinds of puppetry. They can’t imagine their own animation ending. They decide that god’s got his little paw in them. (Laughing) I know that sounds a little sleazy …

  OSCAR: Not to us.

  (Murmuring echoes up the mountains.)

  ROSIE: They decide their children will be their future puppets. They build institutions and write books to carry on their names. Quack, quack, quack. Everything will speak their name while they are alive, and especially when they are gone. The pathetic thing about humans is they think that everything is in their hands, and their hands are in or on everything. Pat, pat, rubbing behind the ears, looking in your eyes for years.