Category books

My complicated dog

I believe my dog came from the womb with some serious issues. First, I should say she was a brilliant Harvard educated lawyer, that’s a fact. She mocked her profession by seemingly only taking on the worst of the worst with gusto and pride, all the while garnering millions in fees for representing drug lords, gangsters and former republican presidents of the United States. Her client list at one time included three of the FBI’s most wanted international criminals. She was well paid and disrespected in the legal profession on a world wide level.
She was a racist. From the time we met her to the last time we saw her if she saw a black person, she was filled with a deep rage and singular hatred that was remarkable in its passion. I am almost positive that she never had a single bad experience with an African American, at any time in her life. But I could promise you this, if a young black man walked by our house, minding his own business, ear buds in his ears and a slight dance in his step, my dog would run from the farthest recesses of our house, throw her nose against the front door window and bark like she was intent on stopping the second coming of Hitler.
Speaking of Hitler, my dog was the most anti-Semitic creature I have ever encountered and I know and love many Jews and they can be the most anti-Semitic people you can every imagine. We did not know of her deep seated hatred for all things kosher until one simple, quite evening as the kids and I gathered for a typical night celebrating one of the nights of Hanukkah. At one point one of my daughters just started to sing the dreidel song and our dog went ballistic. She howled like a police siren was blasting in her ear. She would have none of that Jewish singing in her house. From that moment until her very last, if she heard the opening words of the dreidel song, she would bark, yelp, jump and completely tea-bagger crazy on us with relentless carping until we would stop singing. In the last 6 years we have been completely unable to sing the dreidel song in its entirety. That was the power she had over us.
She was also an out and proud lesbian. Now, I personally know way too many gay people, almost all of them are in one sense or another out and proud, but I am not sure if they are really proud of be gay, or that they are at peace with it and could care less if anyone else has an issue with it. Proud or confident in their position in life, it is not really important. My dog, on the other hand, she was proud. When you looked at her, a little chubby sometimes, her hair uncombed, her attitude relaxed and confident and beautiful, she was the epitome of proud. She had a long term lover, a lazy and inconsiderate cat named Momma Kitty, a strong black woman that always made us wonder how such a racist like our dog could be so madly in love with an African American cat.
At a young age Momma Kitty began to be sexually active and as it always is with the irresponsible youth, she got herself pregnant and had some babies. A few months later this moronic bag of horniness and abject desire did it again, pregnant a second time within a three month span. In a short month she spewed out another eight unwanted children. It could not have been two months later that her belly swelled, she moaned and grew even more unpleasant and she gave birth to six more babies. This time it took a surgeon to end her misbegotten ways.
Through all this sex and baby making, Beth seemed to fall deeper and deeper in love. I, of course, lost almost all respect for Momma Kitty, who was a prolific baby making machine, but kind and everything, but uneducated and disrespectful in almost all other aspects of our personal interactions.
We were not friends, but since she soon became Beths longterm partner, I learned to tolerate her, as she did me. I believe in my heart that she thought I was truly a sloth and a bore. Her look alone made me anorexic and neurotic. Beth continued a devotion only available in fantasy relationship rom-com movies.
A week ago Beth and Momma Kitty passed away, at exactly the same time. So maybe I should be kind of happy that the souls of a racist over educated anti semite and a lustful, irresponsible bisexual hater have moved on,but I have to say, I wake every morning and I miss them with a broken heart and a yearning I can’t even explain. Beth Libitard

I ask

I used to have a part of my bucket list that had me laying strapped to a gurney, a broken bone in my spine, pushed into a well lit closet in a trauma unit of a major city hospital, with my eyes fixated on a clock hanging on a blank wall just within my sight, as unknown doctors patrolled the aisles outside of the room. I could see the minutes roll by until 20 had passed, laying in excruciating pain, no medical personal in the same room, and as my mouth dried from recent smoke damage and my back screaming in vile pain and as per my bucket list posting, I would begin screaming out “help” in hopes than any medical professional within earshot would respond. But because my bucket list is a little S and M project, I would lay there for another 15 minutes periodically screaming help, but the busy white coated doctors and their assorted staffs would fail to respond.

A week ago, for whatever reason, I was able to mark that particular adventure off my bucket list, thanks in large part of the careless and moronic staff at Allegheny General Hospital. For those moments of sublime torture, I thank them for their inaction. One more thing I can remove from my list.

Shirt mitzvah – or why you should trust strangers

I learned something important this week, that is – you should always trust strangers you meet on the internet.
First a quick slap of recent history. I posted some pictures of t-shirts I was about to send to a friend of mine as part of a decades long competition where each of us continually send the other fabulous and unique shirts we find during our various travels. The photos contained one shirt that someone who happened upon my blog found awesome.
So, we corresponded back and forth, and soon enough I was sending a seemingly nice midwesterner the shirt he could no longer live without. He promised to send me some mystery t-shirt that I was sure would be equally amazing. Yesterday I received the shirt he sent and today I got an email from my internet friend who expressed happiness with his shirt.
Meanwhile I also packaged up and sent a box stuffed with remarkable and beautiful shirts to my friend in New York. The lesson I learned is that the world is filled with a vast majority of nice people who do nice things.

The day I learned my lesbian dog was nominated for a Grammy

I have been ghost writing a fairly well known professional fly fisherman’s life story, for a fee of course. The book, which I call “Dumpsters Overflow” is really one of those lovely stories where a nice guy finds a way to do fun things for a living.
Which got me thinking, my lesbian attorney is up for a Grammy Award this year and she called from Beverly Hills last night, obviously a little tipsy and slurring her words, which are generally slurred anyway, but last night, she was particularly hard to understand.
“Obummercare is ruining California,” she began, immediately, without me even saying hello.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Is me, Beth, Ima kina drunk.”
“Obvious…”
“An I’m pissed off about Obummercare.”
“Yeah, I got that too.”
“Unner pressure to perform at all the Crammy Events.”
“Did you say Crammy events?”
“Yeah, all week there’s these Crammy events and I was asked to…”
“You did say Crammy.”
“Yeah, Crammy events are scheduled all week.”
“It’s Grammy, Grammy events.”
“I know. Anyway, I was at Ringo Starrs party and these plastic surgery women kept asking me about my nomination.”
“I had no idea you were nominated for a Grammy.”
“Crammy gives awards for all kinds a shit.”
“I’d imagine.”
“‘There’s No Smoking Gun Here,’ it was a series of poems I wrote and recorded while I was in Tuscaloosa.”
“You wrote a book of poems and called it ‘There’s no smoking gun here?“
“Yeah, it was number one of Amazon for 17 weeks.”
“Seriously?
“Yeah, what do you think I do when I am not suing multi-national corporations over workers wrongs?”
“Don’t you mean workers rights?”
“Who cares about workers rights?” She asked, almost drunkenly outraged.
“Someone must.”
“Libbraerals,” she slurred.
And she hung up the phone. Or the phone went dead, either way, the conversation with my lesbian attorney disappeared. Which was probably for the best. I was knee deep in a chapter of “Dumpsters Overflow” that dealt with the authors first brush with fame when he was fishing on a small lake in California and he rescued Dan Blocker, one of the actors from Bonanza, from drowning.
I looked at the darkness of my blank phone for a second, and then back to the screen where “Dumpsters Overflow” was glowing and I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath.