Dog Days -- Part One

Dog Days
Part 1

I had a dream the day I committed suicide, the day the pills put me into a sleep that seemed to never end, but would not take me to the other side; the day I died and came back to life like a drunken Lazarus. I had a dream that day, and I have not dared mention it to anyone, much less myself, even though I have thought about the dream each and every day. I am afraid of being thought a lunatic (this from a man that tried to kill himself), for I dreamt that heaven is a psychiatrist’s office, an interrogation room, a confession booth where you come and tell your sins and God analyzes what is wrong with you.

“Who was your first lover?” asks God in my dream, without warning, without foreplay. He wants to get down to the nitty-gritty right away. I’m one hell of an obstinate sinner however, and I won’t play his game; not just now in any event. There are secrets that I keep to myself and that I won’t share even with God.

Jack! -- I tell God, the psychiatrist -- He was my first lover! The perfect lover. Furry all over, a good licker, jealous of anyone who would get near me.

“Jack?” asks God, sipping whiskey from an expensive glass tumbler. I can hear the ice rattling in the glass. “You mean, your dog? That miserable six pound mutt? The one made from fur, and full of spite, consumed with hate against the world?”

Yes, God, that’s the one. Jack. He was a neurotic toy fox terrier who liked no humans on Earth, other than me. For me he was licks and kisses, happy yelping and nose rubbing. For others, however, such as Anne, he was nothing but growls and teeth clenching. He was a pretty dog, and people often said he reminded them of a huggable stuffed animal. But those charming good looks were sheer deceit. Even when Anne would set down his food in a bowl, he would try to bite her hand. On a really good day, Jack would draw blood from Anne’s forearm and then come charging to sit between my legs, to protect him from her screams. This made Jack a happy puppy.

“I remember,” says God, putting down his drink, setting it on his desk. He pulls out his notepad and makes some notes. “Many a times I saw Jack sitting on your lap, snarling at all the passersby, and you would smile like an idiot. You pampered that dog the way a girl pampers her favorite doll. You hugged him, kissed him, allowed him to sleep in bed with you.” God lights a cigarette, and blows smoke in my eyes. “I am curious that you think of Jack when you speak to me. What is the significance of this dog and your perhaps unhealthy attachments? Tell me more of this behavior. Did you act in this pansy way at work?”

I am angered at God the psychiatrist. He is my in face, demanding that I share my intimacies with him. What does he mean about pansiness at the office? Is he insinuating something about my masculinity?

You know better than that, God! – I tell him. You were there; you saw me! I was tough at the office; no pansy, no cooer of small dogs! The called me “iron balls,” “ball buster,” the “machine.” I was the lawyer who had no fear of dreadfully long hours, tough deals, aggressive negotiations!

“God is not impressed by my ranting. He calmly takes down some more notes, puts down his pad, takes off his glasses and glares at me. I can see his dark brown eyes, his vibrant red hair. “But at home?” asks God, again taking a sip from his whiskey. “What were you like when you got home?”

You mean after a stiff drink and a quick dinner? OK, I’ll admit it. I became a subservient lover to a hairy dog. Jack was the tough one, the Alpha penis in the house. I was the mild one, the swooshy runt; the cunt if you will. I would rush home from the office, strip to my undies, and lie in bed with Jack, allowing his sandpaper tongue to explore every crevice of my heavily bearded face.

And inevitably Jack would pee on the bed from all the excitement, yes?” adds God. “Do you remember how your wife felt about that?” I see now that God’s face has turned into that of a woman, but not just any woman. He has aged and has transgendered, metamorphosed into another sex and into a deity, but it is her; it is the same woman who would take me to Villa Miseria wearing red rouge and high heels, walking among the poor as if they were flowers in the fields. “Tell me,” says God mother analyst. “Tell me how Anne felt about Jack?”

I hardly remember how Anne felt about it, seeing she was never home. She was usually on call, working at the hospital. But if she were home, for the sake of argument, if she did see me and Jack . . .

“acting practically as lovers,” adds God in a voice that is less than kind, leaning almost towards sarcasm.

. . . if she were home, she would say something that would express her disgust, something like “Take it outside, would you,” or “It’s unnatural.” I usually chose to ignore her, even if Jack peed on my lap, or on the couch, or on top of our matrimonial bed, with his penis pointed squarely towards Anne’s pillow.

God is wearing high heels. I know this because he has stood up, and is walking loudly against the over polished wooden floors. He is carrying his drink in his hand, and his legs jingle as they walk. The echo of the heels against the flat wood reminds me of distant memories, not to be remembered. God reaches the window which is only on the other side of the room, but from my small eyes appear to be miles away. He pulls the curtains with a furious jerk, and the light that comes into the room blinds me. I see now that we are in a city, that there are office buildings immediately across the street. God turns to me, and with a smile asks, “Who came first, the chicken or the egg. Anne or the dog?”

Don’t you remember God? Anne came first, always; I was faithful to her, always, or almost always. We met in college, when we were no more than seventeen. Both of us studied literature. I was the better student, even though she is the smarter one. After college, she ended up to medical school, and I want to law school. Throughout those many years we were lovers, and saw no one else, dated no one else, befriended no one else. We were each other’s best friends and constant companions, tender but inexperienced lovers. We married eight years after we met in college, two days after Anne graduated from medical school, one month before we moved to North Carolina, one year before we bought Jack in a Raleigh pet store.

You were invited to the wedding, that snowy day in September of 87, even though Anne was and is an atheist. She does not believe that you exist God, perhaps that’s why you have a hard time remembering her. But I invited you; in my heart you were there. We were married at Warwick City Hall, in Anne’s home town in New Jersey. Our witnesses were Celeste and the town clerk, but in my heart you were there too God, for I invited you. Did you not see Anne? She looked beautiful in a tailored white rose suit we had bought at Bonwitt Teller, and a pearl necklace and matching earrings I had given her instead of a wedding ring. You know that Anne wears no rings, God. And I . . ., looked handsome too God. I know because I have seen the pictures that Celeste took that day and that today remind me how very young and innocent we were that day.

“Tell me more about Celeste,” asks God. I don’t know why he asks so many questions. I stare out the window, and now it has turned dark, no transition from daylight to nighttime but simple darkness. I focus on the building across the street. It is a hotel. A man is undressing in the bathroom. He has left the lights on and the shades open, a blaring light in the night, and he is completely naked. He is hairy. He seems to be beckoning. “Tell me more about Celeste” asks God the psychiatrist, again. I stop my leering and focus on God’s question.

Celeste, Anne’s mom. Also an atheist, perhaps also unknown to you. Prettier than Anne, smarter than Anne, but not a doctor. She’s the flamboyant one in the family, the social butterfly; once a rebel maker, now a constant shopper. I met her almost the same week that I met her daughter, that first week in college. Celeste was helping Anne move into her dorm room. I was impressed by Celeste’s stature, her striking blonde looks, her expensive jewelry, the keys to her BMW. It was not, however, the best time in Celeste’s life. She was in the middle of getting a divorce from Anne’s father. To me, Celeste appeared confident and self-reliant. Anne however felt she was being abused by Celeste; too much information sharing. Celeste used Anne as her confident during the divorce, and said things regarding Anne’s father that no daughter would want to hear. “Your mother seems nice,” I said to Anne. “Not if you got to know her the way I do,” replied Anne. Celeste heard this, I'm sure. She chose to ignore it though. She wrapped a silk scarf around her neck, put on her leather gloves, and held her hand out for me to shake it. “It’s very nice to meet you young man,” she said. “I hope we can see more of each other as Anne gets to know you.” Anne gave an exasperated gasp, and Celeste left the room with her BMW keys dangling from her hand. I was intrigued.

Celeste was a shopper. She knew all the best stores in New York, and went out of her way to befriend the staff, the ones that could get her discounts or special showings. To Celeste, shopping was a profession. On her own insistence, after I proposed marriage to Anne, she helped us buy our respective suits for the wedding. Anne’s pearl white suit was purchased at Bonwit Teller; my charcoal grey came from Bloomingdales. Celeste got me a private fitting with one of her favorite sales attendants, Andre. He was well dressed, well coiffed, overly effeminate and overly attentive to my needs. I stood in the middle of the dressing room with my pants being hemmed by Andre. Celeste had convinced him it was okay if she and Anne came into the dressing room while he took my measurements. “You don’t mind if we come in while you’re taking the statistics, do you, Hon?” said Celeste to Andre. He gave her a discrete wink. “Just as long as I don’t get fired” he said. “That’s all I ask sweetie.” He leered at me. I felt like a naked man in front of a window, on display for everyone to see.

“And how did you feel about that?” asks God the psychiatrist. “About the salesman I mean, about his hands next to your crotch.”

It did nothing for me. The man was not hairy. You might think there was some sexual innuendo in all of this, but there wasn’t; not for me anyway. Nothing really happened in that dressing room. I was simply trying on what became the grey wedding suite, Ralph Lauren of course, perfectly matched to my rather short but robust stature, my dark looks. Andre pressed his hands against me, against my pant legs, against my thighs, as if feeling the fabric against the skin, making sure perhaps there was no allergic reaction. My crotch betrayed me, and got really hard. I turned frank red as his hands pressed too tightly and too close to my erection. “Bashful, isn’t he?” said the sales clerk, waiving his hand in the air for emphasis. “Just take good care of him,” said Celeste, noting my discomfort but hopefully not my bulge. “He’s a good guy, going to be my son in law next week and for a long time after that.” Bless her heart. If she only knew.

"Knew what?"

That some day I would break Anne’s world; that someday they would both think of me as nothing but a cocksucker.

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The dream stops here. If there is one thing I have learned in all my years, is that I am not very good when it comes to anything mechanical, technical, medical, engineering or mathematical. Words and phrases I can handle; arguments I can win; but anything that is the least bit scientific I will manage to botch up. We will have to add to this category the matter of suicide. I attempted it by taking 90 pills. I counted them diligently, and swallowed them all at once with a stiff drink. What I failed to realize, is that my sensitive stomach would throw up the pills soon after they were in my body. I woke from a deep sleep and a thunderous dream, and had to rush to the bathroom, to the small sink, to throw up everything in my stomach – 90 pills and perhaps all the liquor in my body. The pills are out of my stomach, or most of them, but I’m still drowsy and will be so for the next twenty four hours. On the way to the bathroom, and on the way back to my bed, I managed to fall on the floor and bang up my knees but good. One more fuck up I said to myself, as I went back to bed; back to sleep; back to the dream and God.

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“Go on,” says God imploringly. (Oh God, I ask in my dream, are you truly nothing more than an armchair psychiatrist, a perverted observer who will reveal nothing of yourself but ask everything of me?)

We moved to Raleigh in 1987, more than eight years after we had met in college, two days after Anne graduated from medical school, one month after we had gotten married, one year before we bought Jack in a Raleigh pet store.

In retrospect, it was a rushed and imprudent decision, to leave Manhattan I mean, and to move to the South where they had never seen our kind. Anne wore her hair very short, one would say almost manly although everything about her was feminine. She preferred not to wear any rings, or jewelry, or perfume or other signs of frivolity, except that she always wore her peal earrings and matching pearl necklace. They were the ones I bought her in New York as an engagement gift. Anne had grown up in the New Jersey suburbs, with rich but dispassionate parents. She was accustomed to cold weather, boring dinner parties with the neighbors, competing for best grades at school. She had never lived anywhere other than the aggressive but straightforward Northeast. The Southerners were truly strangers to her, too friendly and at the same time to distrusting. As Anne was by nature disinclined to public displays of affection or friendship, she found it difficult to fit in with the overly socialized women and men of the South. As for me, I had grown up in Argentina with neurotic parents, and when I moved to the United States I lived nowhere else other than New York. I was an Argentine New Yorker, an oddity. The American South was a mystery to me. To put it mildly, Anne and I were more than just oddities in Raleigh; we were social pariahs, freaks. Anne was going to do her medical residence training at Duke Hospital, and I was going to work for a prominent Raleigh firm. We would endure daily reminders that we could not, would not fit in seamlessly with the Carolina crowd, the DAR, the golfers and the good old boys. We were too New York, too Northeast, too not of this place. We were not part of “Carolina’s God Country.”

“I love that expression,” says God.

Not me; I hate it. It’s what the North Carolinians call their state, “God’s country.” The first few times Anne and I heard the expression we thought it was quaint, reminiscent of rolling hills and quiet back yards where God’s peacefulness might reign. However, as we soon realized, God’s Country was the expression favored by small minded bigots, the ones who think that God created North Carolina as a home for his chosen people Anyone else who was not born or raised in North Carolina might just as well have been brought up in hell. There is only one type of good person for these folks; and that’s North Carolina folks. Everyone else is either an oddity or a sinner, or both.

“Didn’t you know that when you moved there?” asks God. He is still nursing his whiskey, smoking his cigarettes slowly, taking notes sporadically. “Everyone one knows that North Carolina is God’s county. Everyone.”

Not me God; and not Anne either. We knew nothing. We moved to North Carolina, straight from New York, understanding nothing about life in the South. Idiotically, we assumed we would we be welcomed with open arms. Fooled by our Ivy League educations, and having been accepted in New York as successful Columbia graduates, we expected life in North Carolina would be pleasant, perhaps even charming. We had not expected that we would be judged on things about ourselves which neither one of us could change; our manners, our ethnicity, our sex, our very essence. That’s right God, now you’re starting to understand. The managing partner, at my law firm wore polyester pants but drove a brand new Jaguar. I drove a low end economy car, but I wore Ralph Lauren suits and Brooks Brothers shirts. Anne and Celeste had taught me how to buy and dress in New York office style. And I had acquired other New York habits which were not much appreciated in Raleigh, like gesticulating my hands, emphasizing every word with a waive of the palm or pointing of fingers, just as I am doing right now.

God puts down his notes for a second, raises his glasses to look at me, notices my waiving hands and nods. “Very interesting,” he says.

It didn’t take me too long to realize that this was not acceptable in a North Carolina law firm. When talking to the other lawyers in the firm, I noticed that they would stare at my hands.

"Yes, I remember. You moved your hands around like a taxi driver."

And do you remember also what the managing partner said about me? Did you hear him talk about me with Reggie, also an attorney at my firm? “Such strange customs,” is what he said about me. “He sounds like a Jew when he talks, and he looks like a girl when he waives those hands about.” That’s right. He said it as we were all leaving a meeting. He knew I was within ear shot; he meant for me to hear it. I pretended not to hear him, but I could not hide my embarrassment. You must remember that God; you must have seen me when my cheeks turned bright red. After that, I forced myself to talk in a calm, turtle pace pattern, my voice barely raised above a whisper, my hands always tucked firmly in my pockets. Do you remember my prayers back then? How the mighty have fallen, valley of darkness, outcast among enemies.

“I remember all that,” says God with a yawn. “But what about Anne? Tell me about her. Did she fare any better with the Southerners?"

No. Her experiences at Duke Hospital were pretty much parallel to mine. She was learning the perils of being a woman trying to fit into a man’s world. Duke, at the time (and I believe still now) was fighting any attempts to limit the number of hours medical residents would work consecutively at the hospital. Proponents of shorter hours believed that a tired doctor presents a risk to the patient and increases the chances of medical error. The Duke hierarchy, the good old boys who had done their medical training thirty years earlier, believed that it was important for the doctor on call to see a patient through from morning to night; continuity of service, is what they called it. “Besides,” they argued, “that’s how we did it when we were in training, and there’s no need to change the system.” What they failed to realize is that thirty years earlier caring for a patient meant no more than sitting by his side, taking his temperature, prescribing a pill. There was comparatively little back then in the terms of emergency medical care. It’s been a relatively recent development that medical advances have allowed doctors to propose a battery of treatment, time consuming and exhausting, that can keep the patient alive although not necessarily well. By flogging the patient, it is possible to stretch out his existence over several days, weeks, months, but without necessarily improving the quality of life of either the patient or his family. They are dying anyway but it is a slow death; observed, measured, diagnosed and prolonged, but death all the same. This was the dilemma Anne and her colleagues faced in medical training, learning to draw a line between providing actual worthwhile medical care and keeping a corpse alive. Anne’s attempt to avoid aggressive medical treatment in favor of allowing a patient to die in comfort was seen by the hierarchy as weakness. “She just doesn’t think like a man,” is what they said about her. “She just can’t hack the hours.”

During the nights, Anne and I shared a glass of white wine, always white, and our sorry stories from the days. She tended to laugh about the matter, whereas I complained bitterly.

“The good old boys were at it again today,” said Anne jovially. “Bless their hearts, they kept a comatose 85 year old man going for three months. He never moved a muscle nor an eye, but they kept his heart alive. Cheers!” She laughed, held her glass high and drank.

I was not nearly as jovial. “Those fucking bastards,” I said, referring to my fellow Raleigh lawyers. “Those fucking cracker ass bastards. They think I’m a taxi cab driver!”

Anne smiled. There was no magic cure either of us could share with the other. We explained it away, or told each other it did not matter, but in our hearts we knew we had made a mistake by moving to North Carolina.

I drank my wine, and petted my little Jack. He did all the growling for me.

Anne was to remain at Duke for a minimum of four years for her medical internship, more if she decided to get a fellowship (which she did), and so we were forced to endure whatever hostilities we experienced, whether perceived or real.

“You would make the best of it,” says God, always the prognosticator of things to come.

Oh, God, are you still here? I have stopped listening to him. I am still looking at the man across the street. I can see his hands. I see his nakedness, but above all I see his hands, and they are furry.

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The dream stops here, again. I wake again. This time I have more lucidity, and I am aware, conscious, trying to make peace with the fact that I am still alive. I remember that I took pills, and that I threw them up. I cannot, however, remember why I took the pills, what drove me to it. That will come, or is coming. I want to move, there is thirst in my throat, but I feel no control of my muscles. I don’t think I will be able to get up. Suddenly I have fear, ignorance of what damage I may have caused to myself. I feel an intense need to urinate and defecate. I want to but I don’t want to. I cant move out of the bed. The vowel urges overcome my thoughts; I shit the biggest shit of my life and pee a torrent of urine. I am disgusted. I gather sufficient strength to take off my pants and to wrap myself around a blanket. This will all need to be washed tomorrow; more laundry. I rest my head in the pillow. I imagine that perhaps I have died, that perhaps I am dead and simply don’t know it. I fall asleep.

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“I’m losing you,” says God. He has changed. He is wearing a chiffon dress with polka dots, the type considered quite fashionable in the 1950’s of Buenos Aires. He has also rearranged the furniture; no longer are we in a stuffy study; the room is airy, decorated a la mode of the ‘50’s, aerodynamic shapes, thin veneer tables, the flat lines of Danish furniture. God is also wearing lipstick and rouge; perfume from Paris, very large round pearls. The transformation is complete. “I am losing you,” says God again. He walks toward the window. We are still in the city and there is still the naked man across the street, beckoning. “Is the light from the building across bothering your eyes?” I don’t answer. God closes the blinds. I cannot see the man across the street anymore. My heart sinks. “Let’s change the subject,” suggests God. Tell me more about Jack. Where did he come from?

From Hell, I believe. Anne made a bargain with me; she would give me one child for each dog we adopted. As I had no pets before, I was leery of the suggestion. I was however, interested in having kids, and I also knew how much a dog would mean to Anne. We adopted Jack on an impulse, from a pet store. We did no research, knew nothing about his breed or disposition, did not consider how a dog would fit into our lives. We saw him in a pet store window and instantly fell in love with him.

Anne was very excited the day we got Jack. He was shaking from the top of his black nose to the tip of his white tail. I couldn’t get over his smell; dogs are definitely an acquired taste. Anne held him wrapped in a blanket, as if he were a baby. We had made plans to have dinner that night. Anne insisted in sneaking the dog into the restaurant. “We can’t leave him home alone, not on his first night,” said Anne. She swaddled him in a blanket, like a newborn. Fortunately Jack must have been all doped up from whatever drugs they gave him at the pet store, because he hardly moved and did not bark (that first night). When we left the restaurant, someone in the street stopped to ask if they could “take a look at the baby” that Anne appeared to be swaddling. “Of course you can,” said Anne, pulling back the blanket to reveal Jack’s hideously grotesque yet amusingly charming face. “Lady, that’s a dog you have there!” said the stranger. “You people are insane. Where are you from anyway?”

When we got Jack home, things took a different turn. Jack’s drug must have worn off, and his true nature started to show. He barked incessantly at anything that moved. He peed on our bed. He shredded to pieces yesterday’s mail left in the corner, and when Anne tried to move away from him he bit her on the hand, hard, drawing blood. They say that some small dogs are mentally retarded because of all the inbreeding. I definitely believe this about Jack. Anne and I took a fool proof approach to the doggy madness. We bought training manuals, determined to make this dog behave. In less than a month, Anne had bruises on her shins and fingers where Jack had bitten her. I, on the other hand, had managed to teach Jack to “come” on command (as long as he was always rewarded by a treat) and to shake his little paw whenever I stretched out my hairy hand to him. I’m not sure who was the better trainer though, Jack or me. All I could get him to do were these two tricks (come and shake), whereas he had me wrapped around his small paws. I would do anything for that dog, clean up his messes, allow him to lick my lips, hold him up high and away from danger.

The first time I walked Jack on a leash, he almost fell through a drain pipe. That was my fault. I had never had a dog before, and I had no idea how to walk a dog on a leash. I should have known better than to try to get a six pound creature across an open street sewer drain. Jack’s little paws feel right through the grates, and I had to pull him out of it quickly before he fell through entirely. After that, Jack refused to walk anywhere near that sewer. If he sensed that we were getting anywhere near the sewer, he would dig into his heels and refuse to move. He would not budge until I would pick him up and carry him a safe distance from the dreaded grates. As he grew older, his fear of the sewer grew stronger, and the perimeter of what he considered dangerous sewer territory became wider and wider. Eventually he started digging into his heels as far away as two blocks from the sewer. I dutifully carried him the whole way.

His red collar was too large for his neck. He was so small that I could not find a proper fit for him. He was able to squeeze his head off the leash if he really wanted to. But the funniest thing about him is that even though he was the smallest dog in the neighborhood, he acted as he was the top dog, the most ferocious. I could not take him for a walk around the block without having him raise his back leg every few steps to let out a pee, his marking technique. He would pee at every corner, on top of every post, at the crossroads of each driveway. Sometimes he would even pee on top of other dogs, usually much larger than him. Other people walking their dogs would chuckle whenever they got a sight of my hairy head and my wiry dog yipping and peeing incessantly. “Might big dog you have there, son.”

God is taking notes. Someday I want to get a close look at what he is writing. There’s a long pause as I take a deep breath and observe his note taking. He does not seem to notice that I have stopped talking, or he doesn’t care. He wipes his glasses, takes off his shoes to scratch his toes, and finally focuses on me again. “So,” says God. “Enough with the dog. Tell me what was going on with you and Anne. How was your relationship in North Carolina?"

Quiet, agonizing, deteriorating. It’s hard sometimes to remember that we loved each other, and what it is that we loved about each other.

I take a sip of water. God wants me to use one of his tissues, but I push the box back. I’m not teary eyed. I’m not emotional. This is old news God, nothing here to get excited about.

Little by little Anne and I gained if not acceptance then at least familiarity with North Carolina. Anne learned to maneuver among the male doctors at Duke, showing them that despite her femininity, or perhaps possibly because of it, she had more ability and love for medicine than most of her colleagues. She gained the title of Ms. Living Will. A living will is a medical manifesto from the patient or sometimes the patient’s family that the hospital is not to use extraordinary medical procedures to keep a patient alive if the doctor determines that the possibility of recovery is remote. Most doctors were too afraid or too lazy to speak with the families or the patients to obtain a living will. Anne developed a tack for it. She would sit with the patient’s family, and ask simply, “if it were you, and you were unconscious, would you want your body to continue to be manipulated?”

“Not her exact words. I should know. I was there. She had a motherly touch, a caring tone.”

OK. Perhaps she used different words. I’ll I admit I don’t have her feminine knack. But the message was the same, and it was invariably well received and acted upon. The good old boys started to take note of the many hours of needles medical procedures that Anne had saved the hospital by obtaining executed living wills. Since many of these procedures ended up being provided by the hospital at a loss, the hierarchy was glad of Anne’s efforts.

I pause. I disobey God’s unspoken rule, and get up from my chair, glide to the window, and open the shades. I look out the window, unabashedly. The hairy man is still there. He is standing in front of a full glass pane, naked, totally exposed. He is smiling at me. I can tell; I feel the desire.

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The dream stops again. The breaks and seizures are becoming more frequent, more pronounce. This time when I wake up I sense fear, horror, self pity. What if I really fucked up and not only have I not died but I managed to cause damage to myself? Will I continue to live in a vegetative state, no movement, no life, but constant thought? Have I become one of Anne’s proverbial vegetable patients? I fucked up; I really fucked up this time. I fall asleep again.

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God sees me. “What are you thinking of right now?, he asks benevolently. The fool, he thinks I’m thinking of Anne. If he only knew. “I do know,” he says. “You are my Adam; I am your creator. You cannot lie to me.”

I choose to lie anyway. I will not tell him what I am thinking; my obsession with hairy hands, hairy men. I change the subject.

I am thinking of Anne. I see clouds and rain, and unbearable heat, and I think of that day that I visited her at the hospital, one hot Sunday night, to bring her dinner. She was on call for the weekend, and she was glad for it. The weather had been miserably, insufferably hot for days, and even the rains would not take the heat away. Our townhouse was of poor construction, and the air conditioning could not keep up with the heat blast. At night, we sweated and stained the sheets with perspiration, especially me as Jack insisted sleeping on top of my legs. In a word, it was inhuman; the steam and the heat were insufferable, as only North Carolina summers can produce. Anne suffered the hell more than me. She is of German and Nordic stock, and was not bread for the tropics. She loved snow and cold weather, sweaters and windrows open to the cold air. North Carolina provided none of that.

As a student in Manhattan, Anne lived in a fifth floor walk up on 89th street. A small one room apartment with no air conditioning and very little ventilation. To escape the heat in those days, Anne would plan long trips to the local A&P supermarket on 85th Street, between 2nd and 3rd, well known for its excessively cold air conditioned isles. She would spend hours in the store, reading labels, examining fruit, planning menus, escaping from the city.

In North Carolina, her refuge from the weather was Duke Hospital, in Durham. No other intern was as happy as Anne to be called for weekend duty at the hospital. Much like the A&P in Manhattan, the temperature at Duke Hospital was kept at a chilly 60 degrees at all time. “I’ll work hard,” said Anne, “but at least I’ll be cool.”

“You were angry when she said that.”

Yes, but no, not exactly angry. Jealous I would say, rather than angry.

“Of what?”

That she didn’t care, that she did not see that I would be alone while she was in the hospital.

“It was her job. What did you expect her to do? It was part of her medical training. As you said, the Duke hierarchy expected all their interns to put in long hours.”

But she never complained about it. Her disposition was too sweet. She seemed perfectly happy to be there, at work, away from me.

As for me, as much as I disliked my law firm, at least I did not have to work on weekends. I would put in long hours during the week but was free to enjoy my weekends.

"And that meant weekends alone, didn’t it?"

Yes, as Anne was almost always on call; and if she wasn’t on call, then she was either resting, or gardening.

"And what did you do on those weekends alone."

The usual. I read the newspaper, jogged, listened to the radio. Played with Jack.

“You mean played and cooed with Jack, until he fell asleep. And then what; what did you do with your time after all that was done.”

I would get bored, I would get anxious. My mind would start to wander and I would have thoughts of. . .

Turn it off God. Turn it off! Turn the thoughts off. I would not then and I will not allow myself to have these deep, pleasurable, thoughts that could, if I allowed them to, fill my mind and body with exquisite desire.

“No sears maricon.” Ahh, God said it. I knew he was thinking it all along.

I would go to the movies, watch a horror flick, and then for dinner if possible, meet up with Anne at the hospital.

I squirm in my chair. I have no interest in telling God any of this. He has no right to intrude, to ask so many questions “Leave me alone,” I tell him. That seems to have settled it. He asks no more questions. There is an insufferably long and immeasurable pause, silence. God is glaring. He writes something in his notes. I can tell, I imagine I know what he is writing: Patient uncooperative.

“So let’s talk about that, lets discuss a typical weekend night when you have dinner with Anne at the hospital. Pick a perfect night, and describe it. Let me make it easy for you, its August 14th, it is 6 pm, and you brought Chinese food . . .”

I brought Chinese food which we ate in a medical conference room on the 14th floor of the “Tower” (as they called that part of the hospital – the tallest structure in downtown Durham, NC.) There had been a severe summer storm the night before, and the streets were almost empty of traffic. Form the 14th floor, we could see all the main roads, most of them flooded. Anne ate quickly, as she was afraid of being called at any minute to attend to some medical emergency. It was unusual that I ate slower than her, but I had a lot of time to kill. I was bored at home, without Anne, nothing to do. I would rather pass the time with her, even if it was at a dingy hospital. Anything to escape the boredom and the thoughts.

“And what did Anne talk about?” asks God.

One of her patients, an elderly woman from Chapel Hill who had tried driving in the storm, and ended up in a ditch. Her family members at first wanted everything done, but Anne convinced them that the woman was in pain and morphine and a dignified death would be more compassionate. “I can’t believe I got those hillbillies to agree with me,” said Anne while swallowing a Chinese dumpling,. I sipped soup and looked out the window, imagining that old lady stuck in her car. She had to wait six hours before anyone found her. By then, she had bled mostly to death. “You are the queen of the living wills,” I said, handing her the last dumpling. Anne’s beeper went off and she rushed out the door without even time to give me a kiss. As she was rushing out, Anne kept talking about the old lady, “Hell, it was a true act of compassion. I felt what she really needed was a good blue rinse and a new perm. Better that than medical flogging!”

I packed up what was left of the dinner and went home, alone, to Jack. He kissed me with his little tongue as soon as I walked in the door. I gave him all the leftovers.

“But there is something you are leaving out. When Anne was talking, what were you thinking about? Tell me. I was there, I remember; don’t you?”

Reggie.

“Reggie? Again?”

They’re all Reggie. Everyone one of them is Reggie.

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This time when I wake I can move around more freely. I can walk again, and I run to the bathroom. I would have thought that after a night of vomiting, shitting and peeing, there would be nothing left in my body to expunge. But I’m wrong. There is still a torrent of green muck that forces its way out of my gut, down my throat and onto the bedroom floor. I hold my vomit in my throat by covering my mouth, and I manage to finish up dropping the rest of the vomit in the bathroom sink. Much of it splashes onto the bathroom tile. More stuff to clean up, later. I’m not going to start cleaning it now, but I need to start thinking clearly about the future; about how I will get out of this hole. First thing is to call out for help. I find the cell phone that I normally charge in the bathroom; I have no other electrical outlets in the house. While sitting in the toilet, still expunging, I dial Anne’s number. Fortunately there is light outside, so perhaps I have not waken her and perhaps she has not yet left for work. I don’t know what time it is. She picks up the phone. “Anne, I need help. . . .”

After that I go back to bed. Anne will be here soon. I can rest until she comes. The dream resumes.

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“And who was this Reggie?, says God. He hasn’t missed a beat. He’s exactly where we left off before I woke up and went back to sleep. He’s still focusing on Reggie. He wants to know all about Reggie.

This was North Carolina Reggie; my first obsession; my boss. He was lean, athletic. He wore crisp white shirts, heavily starched, rolled back at the sleeves to expose his sinewy arms and dark villous hair. I was obsessed by has hairy forearms, the hair ran from his elbows all the way to this palms. The teeth of a comb could get caught if one were to try to brush that forest. I wanted to try; I wanted to run my fingers through his pubes; but I couldn’t.

"He was one of your bosses at the law firm, wasn’t he? One of the senior partners."

Yes. He was an attractive man, fifty something years old but slender and muscular. His blue eyes were captivating, so much so that I had to force myself not to look at him in the face for too long for fear that he would get ideas in his head about me. This Reggie had been raised in a North Carolina farm which had now become a fully developed, and popular community outside of Raleigh. He had money, connections, good manners, and a lover (his secretary). Everyone in the firm knew his secretary was his woman, but not one dared whisper a word of it. I don’t know how this Reggie had time to do everything he did, exercise at noon, negotiating deals during the day, his wife and family for dinner, his secretary during the night. The only time he had free most days was between six and seven in the morning. He would sit at his desk, in his enormous corner office, and would watch the sun go up as he drank the only cup of coffee he would have all day. I would report to him every morning, since I knew it was the only time he would have during the day to pay attention to me.

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The dream has stopped again. I have a couple of squirrels that like to scratch on my roof every morning; it is their morning mating ritual. My bed is immediately under the roof line, and I can hear the squirrels as they scratch the shingles and run across the tiles. I am glad to hear this noise today; normally it annoys me. It means that it is daytime; that the night has finished. This wakefulness will not last though; I feel very hazy. I am in pain, from banging up my knees, from peeing and shitting in my pants, from possibly having blown my health and my brains out with drugs. Anne, when will you get here? I fall asleep again.

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“What do you envision?” asks God. “What do you see?”

I envision, recollect, Reggie’s hairy hands now. As many other mornings, I have chosen to meet with him at six A.M. so that I can discuss the Thomas project with him. I need his undivided attention, which I know I won’t receive any other time of the day. I sit across Reggie’s desk, my yellow legal pad on my lap, with my chicken scratch handwriting, notes of things I wish to discuss. Reggie scratches his head, plays with his hair, thinning but long, grey but with streaks of brown and blond – and white. The fading color of his no doubt once blond hair. I envy men with fine hair, the type that flies with the wind. It always makes me conscious of my crisp black locks, helmet like.

He drinks coffee. He tells me that Robert E., an attorney across the street, has been complaining about me. “He says you are pushing too hard, Let me tell you something, clients don’t care if you have the prettiest looking contract. All the client cares is that the deal gets done. Don’t kill the deal.” He laughs. I stare out the window as the sun rises.

His secretary arrives. Her usual smile is not on her face. She says hello to me, but says nothing to Reggie. I guess that they must have had a fight lass night. Reggie continues sipping his sole coup of the day.

“Robert E is an idiot, “ I say. “He tried to change the documents to take out our option in year five to buy back his shares at a fixed price. As you know, our client has told us that this is one of the key elements of the deal.”

I must not stare at Reggie’s arms; instead I pretend to focus on my legal pad. I am not afraid of his wrath, his judgment of my legal talent. I am afraid of what ideas he may get if he thinks I am staring at his beauty. So hairy, so masculine.

Reggie’s secretary waltzes into his office again, as I’m speaking. She puts down a red file on the corner of the desk. It’s the correspondence file from our client. Sheepishly, I look at Reggie, catch him as he is staring at Anne. His Anne; not mine; his mistress, Anne. She has long legs. I see lust in Reggie’s eyes, for her, and I imagine what it must be like for him to mount her. I suppose that his buttocks are as hairy as his arms, pounding into her soft white skin. I yearn to touch that ass.

At the top of the file is a memo which I had prepared with a cross referenced index to each major point in the transaction. Reggie reads the bullet points:

“Paragraph 6: Option to buy out shares in year 5. See Notes from Client Conference, 2-02-94.” Reggie had forgotten about this point.

“And Robert E. says he has a problem with this point?” he asks.

I look Reggie straight in the eye; not a lustful look, I tell you; it was a stare you down look because I knew I was right.

“Robert E. did not want to include this in the documents, until I pressed the point. That’s when he called you to complain about me.”

Reggie’s secretary winks at me. Reggie sips some more of his coffee. He looks uncomfortable, which is unusual for him.

“Yes sir-ree,” he says. “You are right on this one. But try not to act so New York about it.” He puts down his cup of coffee, and stares at me straight in the eyes. He knows.

That night, I worked late. Reggie came into my office, closed the door the behind him; said nothing. We were alone in the building, and we both knew it. I had been thinking about Reggie all day; about our stares, our unspoken cruising. He wasted no time in unzipping his pants, pulling out his member, and brining it up against my face.

“You knew what to do,” he said. “And you’ll love it.”

He said nothing more. I knew what had to be done. I got on my knees and performed the first blow job of my life. And I loved it.

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My cell phone is ringing, incessantly. Each time voice mail picks it up, whoever it is that’s calling hangs up and calls again. I have counted the number of calls; ten times so far. I will not answer the cell phone; I left it in the bathroom, and I’m not moving out of bed. Now the house phone is ringing; it is next to my pillow, so I answer. It’s Anne. Her voice is shrieking; I hear terror in it. Not like Anne; not like cool passionless Anne. “Don’t hang up on me again” she says. “Don’t you ever hang up on me again. Stay awake.” Funny, I don’t remember hanging up on her. My memory is not what is used to be.

Celeste gets on the line. I can hear her voice on the other side of the phone. “Stay awake,” says Celeste. “Anne will be there soon. You have to stay awake.”

I fall asleep.

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“What did you see in that dog,” asks God, incredulously. “He was raw nerves, vicious, uncontrollable. Where was the attraction?”

I know God. Yet I would risk my life for that dog. That same night, that very same night I blew Reggie at the office, I decided to take Jack for a walk around the block. My closest neighbor, fat man, owned a vicious dog named Doggo. Doggo weighed 200 pounds and he was half sled dog, half Doberman, and all monster. Those beasts were quite popular in the early eighties. I did not particularly care for the dog nor his owner, fat man. He was a coarse man with rough manners, dirty fingernails and cigar stained teeth. He kept all his curtains and shades open, and had the charming habit of running around the house shirtless and without trousers, exposing his breast size nipples and doughy white stomach. Since his house was in back of mine, and we had no other neighbors, I always assumed that his state of undress was meant for my benefit. Fat man usually tried to engage me in conversation whenever I was out walking Jack, but I would never get past saying “hello,” or “nice weather,” to which he would always answer, “mighty nice, sure is mighty nice.” He would chomp on his cigar as his eyes obviously focused on me, south of my belt buckle. Fat man gave me the creeps.

I detested fat man, but Jack despised him even more. Jack snarled feverishly whenever he saw fat man or Doggo. Two weeks earlier, Jack even lunged at Doggo and his owner, but fortunately the leash on his collar choked him before he could actually bite them. “I’m so sorry,” I said to fat man. “Mighty nice,” he said, staring in the usual direction of my crotch area. “Mighty nice.”

So the night I blew Reggie at the office, the night I came home feeling like shit and not knowing what I was (or not wanting to admit), I decided to take Jack for a walk, the customary route, right towards fat man’s house. As we approached fat man’s door, Jack gave his obligatory bark at Doggo, and I expected to hear Doggo’s customary rough reply. Surprisingly, Doggo made not a noise. Instead, he rushed out from his house, ears pinned back, tail down, teeth exposed. Fat man had unintentionally or purposely left his front door wide open. Doggo headed directly towards Jack. I started hallucinating out of fear, I imagined Doggo would rip Jack and me alive; I even thought I heard fat man yell out “Kill Him! Kill Him!” Jack tried to jump into my arms, but I was too slow to react. Doggo reached us before I could reach down to pick up Jack. The wolf beast pinned Jack down, with one paw, bit him in the ear, drew blood, and proceeded to hump him from behind. Jack wailed as I picked him up. By that time, after Doggo had made partial penetration, fat man came and pulled his monster back.

“Sorry,” said Doggo’s owner. “I guess he just got away from me.”

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The dream stops here, for now, for this instance when I am half awake and partly in death, grasping for life, with soiled pants and a headache that will never end. I believe I am conscious, and I remember calling Anne. I am waiting for her to arrive, to rescue me, to mother and nurture me as usual. But this time I may have done it; this time it may not be salvageable. I think of Reggie. So many Reggies since North Carolina Reggie, so many men, and now I am not ok with it. Annie, when will you get here? I fall asleep.

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“What did Anne do that night?” asks God. “After you gave your boss a blowjob, after you neighbor exposed himself, after Doggo bit and raped your precious Jack.”

Hell of a night. I wanted to tell Anne all about it, and wanted her to know nothing at the same time. She arrived home at 2 A.M in the morning, after having resuscitated a vegetable gommer (get out of my emergency room), and putting him on life support. She was cheerful as usual, but she wanted to go straight to bed that night. She was tired from having been on call.

“So you didn’t tell her about the night’s events?”

That bitch didn’t even notice that Jack had been bitten. The next day she woke up at 6 am, and went to work for the entire weekend. Serves her right I sucked Reggie’s cock. Anyway, I enjoyed my solitude with Jack.

God clears his throats. He is reviewing his notes. He wants me to say something else, to add fuel to his fire, but I won’t play his game. He adjusts those damn glasses of his again, and scratches those yeast infected toes once more. God disgusts me, even if he is my psychoanalyst. I can do better than him I think to myself.

“Go on,” says God after he is done taking his god-dam notes. “Tell me more about Reggie.”

I search my memories. All the time I am focusing on the man across the street, even in and out of my dreams, my drug induced stupor, I can see hairy man across the street and he is holding his cock up high. I think I’m in love. I decide to talk to God instead. Tell him about North Carolina Reggie.

One time Reggie asked me to join him for dinner with a client. “It’s going to be good,” he said. “He’s thinking about selling his business, and I want to talk to him before any of the other sharks gets a bite into him. We’ll have a few beers, talk a little ball, and then wrap it up with a bid for his business. What do you say?”

It was a rhetorical question. I was supposed to say “sure;” no questions; tell me where and when and I’ll be there. But my little Jack, gnarly face, was waiting for me at home. Anne was on call that night, and I knew Jack needed me. Like an idiot, I told Reggie I could not join the business dinner.

“Why not?”

I told him. Told him about my love affair with a dog named Jack. Of course Reggie tried to convince me that I was making a big mistake passing on this client dinner.

“You are a strange fellow,” said Reggie. Maybe he was right.

Reggie unbuttoned the sleeves of his shirt, and rolled them up. He carefully put away his cufflinks, while I leered over his hairy arms. Reggie caught me looking, but he said nothing.

“You are a strange fellow,” he repeated.

I blew Reggie again that night. Tasted his sweet masculine cock in my mouth.

I rushed home to be with my dog, and Reggie went to the client dinner without me. We got the business anyway, my absence notwithstanding. Jack got to spend the night on my lap.

God does not look happy, and I am angry at him for this. You are supposed to be impartial, God, you are supposed to be all knowing and forgiving. But God does not know the rules.

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The doorbell is ringing. I can hear Anne and the kids at the front door, but I am too lazy, too drugged up to answer. Let her use her keys, that’s the reason I gave them to her; so that she could save me from my dreams and my suicide attempts.

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“We need to fast-forward this,” says God. I can hear Anne’s car in my driveway. In my dreams it sounds like the stream that crossed our back yard in North Carolina, beyond fat man’s land, but in my half awake state I know that it is Anne’s lesbian Subaru. It rolls gently on my recently paved bricked driveway, a pretentiousness I put down solely for the benefit of my Bethesda neighbors, the same snobs I tired to impress by mowing my lawn before suicide. The children are getting out of the car, slamming the door as usual, the snap of which wakes me up, as usual. I hear the key at the door, but the drugs won’t let me wake up. I fall quickly back to sleep.

“You don’t have much time left.” Says God, “Our hour is almost up. We need to wrap this thing up quickly. So tell me, eventually, what happened with you and Anne?”

Eventually? I wish I could kill this word.

Eventually – I tell God -- eventually, Anne and I moved to Washington DC, and had two children of our own, and they are now knocking at the door.

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