XXXMAS SHOPPING
Christina got a dog for Christmas
The acquisition of a canine companion, the first cuddly, cliche step toward millennial family planning, was something Christina and I had fought off vehemently for years. Who wants a dog when its inevitably followed by kids, minivans, a failed mortgage, divorce and death? Better to disrupt the standard Southern California middle class life cycle by dodging its preliminary step.
And yet, while delay has been the order of the day, I’ve still never been able to decide—not until recently—whether I’m some kind of infantile coward or a visionary guru tapping at the rusty gate of immortality.
I remember when Christina and I first met, we used to joke about getting married, buying a small dog, and moving to Phoenix where our relationship would rapidly collapse. The subdivisions of Phoenix had perfected the geometry of middle-class suburban apocalypse. In the final scene, snaking along the arabesque of some freeway offramp in our Pontiac Aztec, we would arrive late to an already full IKEA lot and park in the final row that looked out over a vast expanse of desert. We’d open our doors and climb out. A mile away, the blue castle of the big box store wobbled in the asphalt heat haze, too distant to pursue or believe in anymore, just a mirage or far off mountain range. An argument would ensue over the Starbucks latte I’d ordered non-fat instead of skim up the freeway while our precious chihuahua, Jimmy, sat in the open center console of the SUV blinking and shivering even though it was 121 degrees outside.
I would touch Christina then and tell her that I was trying extremely hard to be patient and she would snap back, saying that my hands were cold.
The fight would then evolve into the question of who got to carry Jimmy into IKEA. In the course of this argument Jimmy would emerge as the true protagonist, the only friend to each of us—Jimmy that we both had to rescue from the other. Jimmy who the inhuman rapacious cunt was now smothering. Jimmy who had to be spared the intolerance of the impotent narcissistic pig. Jimmy who loved me. Jimmy who agreed with her. Jimmy who she bought but Jimmy who I fed (including his prescription anxiety meds). Suddenly Jimmy emerged as the hero, the only hope, the final force binding us together… the rope we each now held… in an expanding tug of war. She pulled at his head while I ripped at his hind legs and Jimmy thrashed and gnawed, kicking and tearing at his beloved parents with all a wolf’s savagery. While both of us cursed and cried to let go and give me my fucking dog, the IKEA doors opened and closed automatically in the distance. And poor Jimmy, God love his soul, he continued to fight hard until we eventually exploded conventional narrative structure: the central protagonist in our unhappy lives, Jimmy, was soon torn in half. Blood and intestines filled the empty cup holders, one of which had previously held an undrinkable latte that now lay absorbing into, but not really staining, the adobe-colored passenger side carpet. Neither Christina nor I knew what happened after Jimmy’s death, but we decided it was up to us to find out.
We both agreed that the only future more awful to contemplate than Phoenix, a future so unfathomably farfetched it didn’t bear mentioning, was if Christina and I ever settled dogless and loveless in the sprawling sunshine metropolis that had inspired such an unsustainable desert wreckage as Phoenix or Las Vegas, and that was of course the City of Shattered Dreams—the Angel City, Los Angeles.
It should come as no surprise then that our first outing with the dog led to an altercation.
It was a hot day before the recent rains—eighty-five-degree winter weather in Los Angeles. Christina thought it would be fine to leave the dog in the hot car.
“We’ll just be real quick!”
“Bullshit.” I wanted to go into Erewhon and buy a $23 Hailey Bieber ‘Skin Glaze’ smoothie as part of the ongoing research for my lame blog bit about the grocery store, but I didn’t think it would be safe to leave the dog behind.
“Suit yourself,” Christina scoffed, slamming her door. While she stormed off to browse the dresses at Reformation, I stood alone at the back driver’s side door, staring through the dirty windows at the Great Dane lying flat on its side. We’d bought it up the road at an estate sale in Laurel Canyon and the trunk the was full. Some happy couple had completed the life cycle, died of cancer, and now a company was selling off all their crap. Most of the good stuff had gone except the dog. “Please,” Christina begged me in the back of their laundry room. “Please, Barret.” There was a lot of good Tupperware back there, some plastic storage bins, and a paint bucket. “What about these?” I said, lifting some broken bathroom waste basket. “These are practical.” Christina moaned. “You promised me, one day, we’d get a dog!”
I figured if we ever had to eventually acquire a canine, a life-size porcelain harlequin Great Dane hand-painted in Italy probably couldn’t be the worst one, so smiling, I kissed her, “Merry Christmas,” and in my mind imagined the cameras, saw ourselves inside the big studio picture—American Beauty 4: Judgement Day—the young couple poised at the precipice, hanging at the edge of someone else’s dirty laundry room, the joy, expectation, fear, and wonder playing over their faces as they were forced to confront the sudden momentous decision that would dictate the rest of their days.
What damage could it do?
Yet in truth, in order to preserve the sacred life cycle of Southern California, even if there is but a remote .00001% chance that the porcelain Great Dane glistening on the back bench of the Toyota Camry might be a real corporeal canine, property must be destroyed—Otherwise, what might become of our collective destiny, the glorious sequence of death, divorce, mortgage and minivan, kids and coitus, if the dog dips out in the opening credits?
There’s a good reason the dog never dies at the start of the movie. The only exception, John Wick, has spawned a vast franchise of violent ninja assassin films.
And so it was that I was disappointed but not really surprised to discover, sucking down a Hailey Bieber ‘Skin Glaze’ smoothie an hour later, that some anonymous American patriot had busted the back glass to rescue our dog and our lives. “I told you it was a bad idea.” I think they did it not only for us, but for themselves, for all of us, really—but mostly for the dog.
The dog lay there on its side staring up at us. Christina touched its ear, the tip of which I now noticed was chipped.
“Poor Jimmy,” she said.
