Pony and Thom

Monica was making fruit salad. Her friend Pony was shucking corn. Pony's boyfriend Thom was putting something on the grill. The dogs were in the backyard. It was a potluck!

I was picking certain fruits out of the fruit salad and putting them in my mouth and watching Monica, Pony, and Thom playing a game that involved extreme pantomiming. It was dark outside and raining lightly. The ceiling fan was on and doing nothing. Burning Sand and Loving Hand were poking their heads into another room and then wagging their tails.

A scary movie was put on. The lights were turned off. Pony kept talking throughout the movie. "Don't go into that room, stupid!" Pony said. "Geez! How stupid can you be? There's a ghost in there!" Pony said. "Ha, ha, yeah, how stupid!" Thom said. "Yeah, so stupid. Oh my gawd, what an idiot!" Pony said. It was kind of annoying how Pony kept talking throughout the movie. It wasn't scary because of Pony's voice. I wanted to say stuff too, but I have self-control. I understand that fear makes a person stupid. Fear makes you go into rooms that you shouldn't go into. That's the way it is. In the movie, a mother was exorcised. When she was possessed, her face looked like a canvas of cantaloupe peel. Her eyes were small and terrible. She spit-up blood. But the demon was cast out of her, and her face returned to normal. The daughter she tried to kill loved her again. They shut the door to the house and never looked back. Pony didn't say anything about that!

Pony and Thom went home. Monica was cleaning the dishes. It had stopped raining sometime during the movie and it smelled good outside. I wasn't even a little bit scared.

Why Would you Stop?

Guy and I used to watch it, and talk about it. The part where he says "shove it up your nose". Guy used to get excited and he'd talk about what a feeling it must have been,  to be singing with that amazing band behind him, to be stoned out of his mind, and just to be Elvis. What a glorious mess. He can't stop. Would you have been able to stop?

Monica is looking at buying a house. She asked me if I wanted to come along with her to look at a few. Sure, I told her, why not, I am not a bad person. What a grown up thing to do! She says she likes my perspective, though I am not sure what that means. She has another date with the blind man on Wednesday. She says she cannot tell if she likes him or if she just pities him, and she has to figure it out. There was a blind man in prison I knew who was locked up for stealing a lot of money from a church. I am not sure if he was a bad person or not. Monica is not made of money, and the first house we see is very small. Too small for Loving Hand and Burning Hand I say, but she says, "I could make it work!" The second house is a wreck, there is an open house and everything is a mess and the owners are clearly hoarders who have let life get away from them.They are sitting in a van outside smoking cigarettes, and their 5 dogs (!) are sitting on the back porch pawing and scratching to be let in, or maybe just wanting to be told that everything is going to be ok. I wish I could tell them that. If I could be that guy. The carpets, the kitchen, everything, is a disaster. Monica says she sees through the mess and feels the potential of the place. All I see is sadness. I could not live here, but it is not my house hunt.

I have been feeling at times a big emptiness lately. I wonder what it was like to be Elvis, to have such success and such big thrills and to still have such huge appetites that were so impossible to sate. I think if I had what he had I might not have made it as far as he did. I am poor and lazy. What if I wasn't? Could I say no to so many temptations? I once read a biography of Elvis by Bobbie Anne Mason. She writes short stories that remind me of my mom. Elvis really loved his mom. I forgot that I read that book, and then I kept wondering how I knew so much of Elvis' life. Then I remembered.

Curt, you are so complicated! Monica says. I do not feel complicated. I just feel hopeless. Where is my great moment, my pinnacle? If you found yourself on a Las Vegas stage in front of an amazing band singing a great song, and you were Elvis again, wouldn't you want to stay there as long as you could? As long as you could sustain it? Forever if you could? Is there something better? Will I ever taste anything remotely like that?

Monica says that the blind man lost his sight when he was working in downtown Philadelphia building a skyscraper. He had a wife and kids and his life was good, and work was hard and tedious but he was excited to think that someday whenever he drove by that building with his family he could point to it and say "I helped build that," to his sons and his daughter and that they would know that there dad didn't just leave the house in the morning to do nothing, that he was a man who built things. Then there was an accident, and then his marriage was over, and then there was nothing left except that he was a blind man. All of his old adjectives turned into a single one. But he had turned to Jesus, and he was starting to understand things, Monica said. A man who could overcome something like that, Monica said. Monica was apparently drawn to broken people.

"Which house do you like better?" I ask Monica.

"I like them both," she says, "but I'm not sure how much. I'm not sure if I like them for me."

I try to picture Monica living in the houses with her dogs, and I can picture it, but it doesn't make things any clearer. Buying a house is a big commitment. You don't know how long the roof is going to hold out, whether something will happen and you won't be able to make your mortgage payment, whether a rendering plant will be built next door that will destroy the value of your property. Houses have secrets, I say. Monica says that good things can happen too, that maybe you buy a house one day and then find out that Elvis was born there and you won't have to work another day in your life! Sometimes there are good secrets, she says.

I remind Monica that there's only one Elvis, and she seems to have had enough of talking to me for the day.

Bad People

The day before today was Valentine's Day! Monica asked me for a favor. She was going on a blind date and needed someone to watch her dogs. Would I watch Loving Hand? Would I watch Burning Sand? Yes, I said. I would watch Monica's dogs. She said she was literally going on a blind date. Her date was blind. Wild, I thought, but it was, I hope it goes well, that I said.

Loving Hand and Burning Sand are medium-sized dogs. Dad is not a dog person. He is not a cat person. Sometimes, he is not even a person person. But I'd already agreed. There was Monica, leaving. She looked pretty. She was wearing something that looked like a dress, but really it was flowing pants. The dogs were in my care and into the house we went. Dad wasn't happy. But he wasn't necessarily mad either. But I think he'd had enough of my shenanigans. Then the weather turned icy.

My sister called to wish me and Dad a Happy Valentine's Day. Dad put her on speaker phone and Loving Hand and Burning Sand listened to her say stuff. It wasn't a very happy conversation because she was talking about high blood pressure and our family tree. "We were related to some bad people," she said. "How did we get unrelated?" I asked. "What do you mean?" she said. "Well, you used the past tense, like we're not related to some bad people any more." "Curt," she said. "What kinds of bad people?" Dad asked. "They went to prison," my sister said. No one talked for a while and then my sister said, "Oh, God, I don't mean to say that Curt's a bad person." "Whatever," I said. Dad looked at Burning Sand and Loving Hand and said, "Who names their dogs those names?" "What dogs?" my sister said. "Nothing," I said. Dad started coughing. "I want a chocolate heart," my sister said. My sister is a nice person overall. Dad took her off speaker phone. He was talking to my sister when Burning Sand pooped on the floor. It was easy to clean up, but I was kind of in shock. She did it in front of me and I wondered if there was something wrong with her. Of course there was if she was going to Doggie Daycare. Meanwhile, Monica must have been staring into the eyes of her literally blind date and wondering what happened to her date's eyes. When you are born blind, what is there to miss with vision?

This is where the story changes, dear reader. It is the same, but also, it is not. We will call him C.

C. picks up the dog poop. C.'s father puts down the phone. C.'s father sees the dog poop. C.'s father says, What is that, dog s**t? H**l no it ain't! Get those dogs out of here. C. has the dog poop in a tissue in his hand. The tissue in his hand is filled with dog poop and then C.'s dad walks over and looks at the tissue in C.'s hand. Out, C.'s father says.

It is icy outside. The dog's don't know what to do. They sniff a tree. They want to go inside the house. Don't poop anymore, C. says. When they come inside, C.'s father has calmed down. Dad, C. says. Am I a bad person? C.'s father looks at C. No, C., you aren't. Sometimes you don't think. That's all. You are an unthinking person. That sounds pretty bad, C. says. The dogs lick C.'s hand. C. never washed his hands after he picked up the poop. He washes his hands. The phone rings. It is Monica. She can't drive because of the weather. Her and her literally blind date are inside a warm building. How is the date going? C. asks. What? Monica asks. Oh, she says. Well, it's good so far. How are Loving Hand and Burning Sand? Just great, C. says. They didn't poop inside, did they? No, C. says. Good, Monica says. Sometimes they do that when they're nervous. That must mean they feel comfortable with you, Monica says. I guess, C. says. Well, I gotta go. My date's waiting. Thanks C. You're welcome C. says.

At night, C. lets the dogs sleep in his bed with him. It is like the good old days. He listens to the ice hit the window. Tap, tap, like a walking stick.

Missing It

It's not that I don't love Dad. It's just hard to see him sometimes. In the dark, his face looks young because I can't see it. But in the light, it is old. When it's in the light, it is hard to see him because I know that there will be a time in my life when Dad won't be around. Does this happen to you?

Someone told me today at the Doggie Daycare that if you broke bags of water on a horse's back, it would calm down because it would think for a minute or two that it was its own blood. This was brought up because a dog named Bully was being wild. They wanted Bully to calm down. Someone suggested they toss water balloons at him, but someone else said that it probably wasn't a good idea. Monica wasn't at the Doggie Daycare. Someone else said it was because her car broke down and she lives in the city. I thought about her in her car with Loving Hand and Burning Sand in the backseat.

When I rode my bike, I needed gloves and a scarf. My face was entirely covered. I must have looked like a different person. The dogs barked and barked. I thought, I could ride on forever and they would still bark and bark.

In the house, Dad is watching TV. He turns the volume up, up, up! When it gets dark out, his face will glow like the TV. They are dissecting a cow's eye on TV. What is he watching? They cut away the fat from the cow's eye and dad takes a big bite out of a sandwich. He is thrilled. Inside the cow's eye, there is thick fluid. It is what I imagine silicone to look like. But it probably isn't like silicone at all.

I am low energy today. I am missing something I don't know. I must have know it once. That is how I know I am missing it.