Enlightening Nonsense

Like all the announcements of “The once in a lifetime eclipse” that I never seem to check out and my life seems just fine for the lack, this year a once in a lifetime event happened that I did check out, partly because I had no choice: Abandon and I were the same age! Sort of.

“Dog years” is really a human adaptation to adjust everything to a human’s point of view, the same way that we call a tropical fruit that comes from neither pine nor apple a “pineapple,” as opposed to its native plant language name of “HIDE—HERE COMES WHITE MAN IN GRASS SKIRT!” But, so those arrogant humans declare, each year in a dog’s life is equivalent to seven years in a human’s life. In other words, dogs age like those little kids with that aging disease that look all old and bald and ready to die at the age of ten.

So in February Abandon turned 6 and I turned 42. Up until this point I have been hesitant about announcing my age publicly. I would say that the reason was because I have been “living” for thousands of years and why should I confine my answer only to how long I have been occupying this particular vehicle? The real reason was because I wanted to sleep with young chicks and many of them are averse to dropping their panties for a guy who is over the age of 25 and not into anime and other childish shit, regardless of whether he still has fewer wrinkles under his eyes than on his balls.

After years of hanging around the grade and secondary schools, I’ve come to determine that a girl’s brain capacity is in direct proportion to the amount of pubic hair she has and, hopefully, has shaven off. I haven’t done a double-blind scientific study of this yet but I am certain it is the case.

I met Abandon approaching seven years ago. I was dating Celestial Seasonings at the time and we decided to go to North Shore Animal League just to see and play with some dogs. In hindsight, I think the only reason we went to Long Island and not to a local shelter in Manhattan was because I had seen there T.V. commercial a few times and, like the late-night infomercials, I was sold that their product could buff my car, wipe my ass, and still make a fresh-tasting cup of coffee.

While we had talked about bringing a dog into our family, I was a serious floater at the time and having to walk and feed and occasionally pet a dog didn’t seem to fit into the lifestyle of a guy who may spend eleven hours at a bookstore one day, only three of which being in the Gay & Lesbian section, and go away for the weekend the next day.

We took a train out there and when we arrived, were wandered around like Nazi prison guards deciding for ourselves which dog should live and which should be euthanized in a gas chamber. I had a few characteristics in mind for what I would like in a dog. Once it was clarified to me that all dogs urinate and defecate, I modified my preferences to what others would call “more realistic.”

I wanted a dog that wasn’t so big that it was like a small pony. As much as it would be fun to ride my dog around the block, I just had in mind something a little smaller. Not to mention that I couldn’t have it eat me out of house and home; Celestial was already taking care of that.

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I didn’t want a dog that was so small and faggy that the only people that I’ve ever seen with ones like that were yuppie rich middle-aged women and fruitcakes. Pocketbook pooches are just gay. A dog is meant to walk, not be carried around like Ali Baba by his forty slaves. (I actually started to look up on Wikipedia to see if that reference even made sense but got bored after a paragraph. I’ll have to rent Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves.)

I also didn’t want a dog too hairy, more for practical reasons than for style. I didn’t want to have to constantly be picking hairs off of everything I own. I also wanted to be the longest-haired dog in the household. They had one of those hairless dogs there but that thing belonged in a freak show and not in a home with an abusive parent like myself. With seven-year hindsight, I found out that despite Abandon’s shorter hair, she still sheds like a bitch.

We saw one big—but not too big—black Labrador mix that seemed sweet. When we took her out to walk around the shelter with us, she was a big, floppy ball of energy. This was too much for me. I am not so heroic to raise a child if I found out he was autistic, probably from vaccinations. I would take the little baby out to the backyard with a shovel and dig a hole. “Here’s your new crib, son. I’m gonna keep you warm now by covering you with dirt. There you go. Sleep, my little retard.”

Of course this was not totally fair, as I too would be jumping out of my skin if I was trapped in a small area all day by myself with nothing but a drain for my urine in the hard cement floor. Actually, reminds me of lock-up at San Quentin, only we had a shit bucket as well.

The next dog we saw was a Chow mix called “Bear.” He was a bit puffy for my initial “not so much hair” requirement, but looking into his eyes you saw a real old spirit. He was much more mellow and both Celestial and myself felt good knowing that he would be a great family dog for whoever would adopt him. I followed up with a call and found out he was adopted. I have a feeling Bear was looking after his new family.

And then there was Abandon. She was this cute black Labrador and Egyptian Pharaoh and maybe Greyhound mix, with white on her chest and paws and the tip of her tail. They said she was only three months old and I wondered why a cute puppy was sitting around with the other older dogs that were old and bitter, chewing their cigars and, in between spitting tobacco, condemning humanity with statements like, “All humans are the same. They rather lock everyone up than risk someone pissing on their perfectly manicured lawns!” Come to think of it, they spoke a lot of truth.

I think part of this might have been because they said she had Hyperosteodystrophy (HOD). Hyper means “too fast.” Osteo means “bones.” Dystrophy is something you tag on the end of any disease so that it becomes worthy of a Jerry Lewis Telethon. So this big, scary 19-letter word meant that she had a condition where her bones would grow too fast. This could cause pain in her joints and have even worse complications up to and including an untimely, painful death. Compassion filled my heart and I thought, “I’ll adopt her and then bury her in the backyard next to that autistic child of mine so they can play together in Retard Heaven.”

The suggestion was to feed her a low-protein diet, which actually worked well with the vegan diet I feed her. This is a longer story and a piece on this has been brewing in my head for over five years. Let’s just say that I was an avid animal rights defender at the time of adoption, and still am, and would not have taken in a dog if it required me to support the commercial slaughter of other animals in order to support her. I did my research, am probably the only person who has four different books on raising your dog vegetarian and Abandon is healthy and beautiful. We both eat mostly vegan, me by choice and her by what is opportuned. I also prepare every meal for her fresh, as opposed to pouring some processed, from the box crap into her bowl. But we can chat about this another time.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when I had her home and was boasting to everyone how smart my 3-month old was that I actually sat down and did the math. “They said she was 10-weeks old when she was brought in on…carry the three—uh, she’s really 5 months old! Damn it, now she’s not a ‘high-achiever’ but a

slow-learner’! How can I face the people at the dog run now?”

They had given her the gay name of “Sky” and that alone was enough for me to say, “Next!” I think this was not because of an aversion to the blue thing above us with white puffy cotton balls floating around in it that we see when we tilt our heads backwards a little, but because growing up there was a kid named Sky Buden (whose brother was named Clay, by the way. Clearly hippie parents) and he was a tough son of a bitch and I spent many nights of my youth crying myself to sleep thinking “the Sky Monster is going to get me!”

But we took little “Sky” out of her prison cell anyway for a walk around the joint. She was pretty hyper. I think she also pissed in the main area. When I asked her about this in later years, she said, “I was holding it in so I could make some human clean it up for the lack of dignity they showed us, having us shit and piss in our own small area”; I knew then and there she was my kind of rebel dog!

She also was very mouthy. Not so much in the sense she is today, racist and sexist and always cursing like a sailor, but in the fact that she would kind of bite you a bit. She wasn’t trying to hurt, unless you were responsible for the piss drain situation, but because she needed a friggin’ chew toy. In 7-year hindsight, I should have figured she would chew up the slew of electrical connectors and wires and books in my apartment and had her teeth removed.

It was kind of funny, as she would bite Celestial and my ankles and we’d be like, “OW!” and kind of laugh because you couldn’t kick her in the head without alarming some animal rights goody-goody who worked there. And then we dropped her back off. And then we left.

A couple of weeks later, I remember it was on a Friday, I went back by myself to North Shore Animal League, or to “The League” as the inmates called it. I decided that if “Sky” was still there, that I was going to bust her out of there. And if she wasn’t, it was God’s will that it wasn’t time for an irresponsible jackass like myself to take in a dog. I would probably then take another dog home because fuck God.

When I entered the main lock-up area, I went over to where “Sky” had been housed. The cage was either empty or filled with another dog that barely lifted itself up from lying in its own shit and said, “What the fuck are you looking at?” Well, I guess it wasn’t God’s will, or rather, God was just continuing to make a mockery of my life with all the spiritual monkey wrenches he throws my way.

I asked a worker. “Say, what happened to that cute dog with the savage bite and the 19-letter disease that was over there a couple of weeks ago? Was she adopted?”

“No,” she said and I figured they had filled a hole in their own backyard with that rebel dog. “We moved her over here.” This will go down as one of my most anticipatory moments, only slightly behind it being after I said, “So really, you’re gonna put it in your mouth?” and got my first blowjob.

She took me over to what was probably a solitary confinement cage. Abandon later told me she was put there for trying to shank a guard. And then I saw her. And she saw me. She jumped up with her front paws against the cage and I came up to her and said, “You’re coming home with me.” I think she said something adorable like, “Can we stop at Chuck E. Cheese on the way home?”

I had to leave her for a bit and fill out some paperwork. Abandon was like, “What the fu—? Where the hell are you going?” I told her I would be right back and that I’d never abandon her. When I got her home and changed her name to Abandon she smiled at me and said, “I’ve been Abandoned.”

There was some other young couples in the waiting area and this guy was being hassled because his references weren’t panning out. Ever since I dropped the penny off the Empire State Building as a little boy and killed a pedestrian below, I’ve always had a guilty conscience. Funny, on reflection I think my cheap Jew parents were more concerned that I had wasted a penny than that I had killed a man. I thought, “There’s no way I’m gonna pass this paperwork check.” But somehow I did and they brought my little girl to me on a leash.

Abandon was raring to get out of there and she was pulling and what have you. I think she thought I was busting her out and didn’t fully get that we were going to be a family.

And we were outside. It was a sunny day and Abandon immediately pulled towards the grass and took a piss. “I was holding that one for the lobby but I figured to let it go on fresh green grass instead of cold, hard cement would be even more pleasurable.”

I had to do a few final things to get the full release, and by “full release” I don’t mean that some Korean shelter girl jerked me off. They told me that I had to give a donation. I asked, “How much does one usually donate?” They told me, “It depends. Some give more; the Jews give less. $25 is standard. So I gave the full $25, even for a HODdy dog like her, as I wanted Abandon to know that I valued her tremendously. When we walked away from the counter she asked me, “How much did you give her for me?” When I told her, “Twenty-five dollars,” she looked ahead and smiled proudly and said, “Nice.” After a little more walking she turned to me suddenly and said quizzically, “I thought you were a Jew?” I told her, “Not really,” and she said, “Good, I wouldn’t want to have to wear one of those small hats on my head all the time,” and we walked on.

The last stop was a supply house on the general premises, where they gave me a bag of dog food and I bought a few things I might have needed, like a food and water bowl. I asked the girl working there how I was supposed to take her home, as dogs weren’t allowed on the train. She gave me a large cardboard box that was folded up and even with a doctorate in Origami I knew this would probably not work out too well.

I was waiting in the parking lot with my rebel dog smelling and pissing on everything as she shouted back to the shelter, “SO LONG SUCKERS! SMELL YOU NEVER—BUT YOU CAN SMELL MY PISS HERE! AND I’M GUESSING THAT URINE ISN’T GOOD FOR THE DAISIES I JUST PISSED ON,” when a young couple who had just adopted a kitten passed me by and saw I looked confused. Long story shorter: they gave us a ride!

In the car, Abandon was looking at the window and I was reminded of how easy it is to take things, such as the New York skyline, for granted when you see it every day and how a freshly-broken-out-of-the-shelter dog was completely mesmerized by something I saw as nothing special. Her butt was kinda half sitting on my lap, which I found very cute, especially because she was in that awkward size stage that too big to be a lap dog but not big enough to no longer desire a warm lap to sit your butt down on. I loved it. Until…

Suddenly the car was filled with a rancid smell that had us wondering whether we were passing Elizabeth, New Jersey. Abandon was not only letting off some steam but some seriously stinky gas as well. The young couple ignored the kitten as she was meowing from her box, “You’re not taking that DOG home with us, are you? Why don’t you just open the door and push her stinky ass out.” I came to see that while animals at shelters are very loving and appreciative to join a family on the outside, they still have a lot of bitterness from their shelter experience that needs to be, shall we say, defecated.

As a Master Herbalist, I knew I had some catnip at home and was going to send it to this young couple as a thank you. I misplaced their address and by the time I found it and sent the goods, it bounced back to me. Abandon was like, “What’s in the large envelope?” and when I told her she responded, “That friggin’ cat! I was farting in the car just to annoy that prissy little bitch.”

I remember the first time taking her to my second floor apartment. I started up the stairs and suddenly I felt the leash go taut. I looked back down the steps and saw Abandon paused at the first step. “What the hell is this?” she asked, never having climbed stairs before. I explained to her that just like how the dogs were stored side by side in the shelter and sometimes one cage on top of another, humans too store themselves side by side and over and under. But since we didn’t have other humans to bring us to our residences—unless we lived in an elevator building with an operator—we used these “steps” to bring us to where we needed to go.

“But you’re here. Can’t you just carry me to our cage?” she asked, as her tough façade dropped.

“Abandon, you need to do some things for yourself. It is the only way you will learn. And besides, after that stinky gas you kept dropping in the car, I’m a little hesitant to have that smelly butt anywhere near my vicinity.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” she said, “My first day here and already the abuse starts! Didn’t you have to sign some paper saying that you’d take care of all my needs?” I just looked at her. She looked at me in silence and then shifted her gaze to the stairs. And although tentative, she made it up the stairs on her own, with a little encouragement from me.

Every time thereafter when she would bound up the stairs, I would always think of that first time and thought how I would be that older father boring his kid how, “I remember the first time you climbed those stairs…”

“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” I asked.

“You still thinking about the stairs? I’m onto new business—let’s see our cage!” I thought to explain to her that it wasn’t really a “cage” but she was jumping out of her skin in excitement and that would have just been annoying.

I called Celestial up and told her to come over, that I had a surprise to show her. I think she said, “It better not be another red bow on your pecker!” to which I said, “Of course not,” as I undid the bow and put it back in the drawer with the gift-wrapping. When she came over, she was totally excited to see Abandon. Abandon was quick to tell her, “I go by Abandon now. Call me Sky and I’ll bite your ankle!” but warmed up to her right away. We took a bunch of pictures with her and looking back at them now, she seems so young and innocent and maybe a little smothered, not fully settled into her role as “part of the family,” kind of like how the first season of “Seinfeld” was pretty good but not quite there yet.

I remember calling my parents up and saying, “I got a dog.” I was totally expecting them to think I was bullshitting them but I guess after several decades of dealing with my bullshit, they could discern the difference between bullshit and bullshitting and didn’t even question the validity of my statement.

Concerning the name change…

I had thought of different cool names that I could use for me. I explored Native American, from “Broken Rubber” to “Skanky Mother” but those didn’t have staying power. I thought of hippie names like, “Earth Being” or “Starlight” but I thought those would make Eric Cartman roll over in his grave (that’s what I named my autistic son.) I thought of regular English words that could be kind of cool, like “Rebel” or “Candy Cane” but those didn’t stick.

I remember being an actor on the bus and truck tour of North America with “Man of La Mancha” when I was touched by Divine Grace and it came to me:

ABANDON

Just about everyone who asks my dog’s name will follow up with, “Oh, was she abandoned?” which has happened so often that I now have a prepared answer for it. “Fuck off, idiot!” It means “carefree,” as in “reckless abandon,” and is related to a free-spirited attitude that lives life like a gambler and not a miser. In case I didn’t mention it, Divine Grace was my seatmate on the bus and she was giving me a handjob at the time.

I never really used the name for myself and when I brought it to Abandon for her approval she was like, “Cool. Much better than that faggy ‘Sky’ name they tried to pin on me.”

Now I usually call her Bandhi for short, spelling it with a little “Indian” influence to give it a more spiritual feel and less of a gay one that a “Y” would give it. Just like humans, I often call her Abandon when she has done something wrong, such as the difference between:

“Hey Stevie, you wanna play some ball?” vs. “Steven, did you break this lamp?”

And she lives up to her name.

Because she is very “Alpha,” the first few months home she got into a lot of fights with other dogs, usually over something stupid like, “But that was my stick!” or “I didn’t mind him smelling my ass but the lick was uncalled for!” She banged it up with quite a few dogs, sometimes drawing blood.

One time when we were walking home after a fight in silence she asked me, “What are you thinking?”

I told her, “That maybe I should have taken Bear home from the shelter instead?”

She said, “Are you friggin’ serious?”

I laughed and said, “Of course not! You’re my girl. And fuck that other dog; he shouldn’t have licked your ass.”

She smiled at me and said, “And you’re my guy. Just don’t like my ass like that dog or those perverts at the shelter and we’ll be okay.” We both laughed but I never was quite sure whether she was making a joke or whether the staff at “The League” were pervs. Come to think of it, they did all seem to have bad breath.

Abandon’s favorite thing is running around in nature. She likes to wander “recklessly” and periodically check back in with me. It was worse in the beginning. I remember going for a hike with my brother and our dogs on a nature trail in Connecticut and Abandon disappeared for a good length of time and didn’t respond to my calling. I thought a hunter had capped her ass but she ended up coming back around 10-minutes later, out of breath with a big smile on her face.

I told her, “Abandon, you’ve got to come back when I call you.”

“Oh, come on! There was a deer I was chasing and I had it cornered and then her whole gang came out from behind a big rock and I was like, ‘I’m not afraid of you’ and they ran off and I shouted after them, ‘Keep running, pussies!’ and was feeling pretty good about myself. And then I thought about you and missed you and followed your scent back here; you eating beans the other night was helpful, by the way. It’s good to see you!” She licked my face and all was forgotten.

They say that dogs and their caretakers start to look and act like each other. Abandon and I are both wanderers and explorers that like to explore on our own and don’t like to be limited by rules and regulations but also like to check in and relax with a loved when we’re not off on some deer chase. We are both very affectionate and can also be very fierce if we feel the need. We have both killed small animals, although my bloodthirst has dried up for years while she still seems to get a thrill from murder.

My friends and family joke that she has killed rats and squirrels and birds and a baby raccoon because she is craving meat so badly. I asked Abandon about this. She told me, “Then I would eat them, wouldn’t I? I don’t.”
“So then why do you kill all those animals?” I asked.

“Because it gives me a thrill,” she said and suddenly there was a gleam in her eye that had me wondering if she was sizing up whether or not she could take me down in a hunt. That night I threw out my copy of The Most Dangerous Game, not wanting to give Abandon any more ideas. Truthfully, she was more of a non-fiction reader but I thought it couldn’t hurt to be safe.

Abandon is my best friend, my happiest experience and my best teacher. I’ve learned a lot from being with her and loving her and getting extremely frustrated with her. We spend a lot of time together, as I am mostly a bum, but I regret moments I waste not sharing more quality time with her, not just for us but to stimulate and challenge her to expand beyond her current capacities. Abandon is pretty cool. She’s like, “As long as we’re in the same vicinity hanging out together, I’m good.” This is a blessing but it can also be an easy trap to fall into for one with lazy tendencies.

It can remind all of us that it is the entropic way to fall into grooves and patterns in any relationship, whether it is with our four-legged friends or two-leggers, and that if we don’t put in the necessary work, we destine ourselves for mediocre relationships. It doesn’t mean they may not be considered “good” but good is not “great” and why not always seek to go further?

When I drop this body, I may fast forward my Life Review to the scene where I first saw Abandon in the second cage at the shelter she was moved to and how she saw me…and we both knew. I know she “chose” me just as much as I “chose” her, and that actually there was no choice really made—it was just the way it was; we were to walk our paths together, one of us on four legs and one on two.