Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why It Often Sucks in the City, or Who Are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me? (26 page)

Maisy and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Most Spoiled Dog

I’
m dreaming about the salty tang of a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. There’s a plate of them in front of me, crisp and golden with just the right amount of spice, and I want them desperately but I’m having trouble getting to them. They’re so close to me that I can smell them, yet they’re out of my reach for some reason. I feel myself pitching forward, stretching and angling, and just about the time I’m near enough to take my first bite, I wake up when Maisy kicks me in the mouth with a corn-chip-scented foot. I groan and try to shove her onto Fletch’s side of the bed, but when Maisy sleeps she turns from pit bull into a wet carpet, making her as heavy and difficult to move as depleted plutonium.

This sleeping in the bed with us business isn’t new. A couple of years ago when we went from our penthouse in Bucktown to the mean streets of Sucktown
1
we had to disassemble the dogs’ crates on moving day. Exhausted from ascending stairs and descending a lifestyle, we didn’t put their crates back together, instead allowing the dogs to roam free during the night for the first time. Because Loki is a good boy, he immediately settled into a nest of pillows across the room and slept quietly. Maisy, on the other hand—and despite having been crate-trained for almost a year—peed on every new rug in the house, then ate and subsequently threw up half a pizza box before demanding entry into our bed and diving under the covers.

And she’s been there ever since.

For days we tried to coax her back into her crate, or, barring that, a dog bed, but she wasn’t having any of it. We later read that once a bully finds something she likes, such as sitting on the couch, she will spend the rest of her life attempting to replicate that action. No matter how strong your will is, hers? Is stronger. Now she sleeps in the bed, under the covers, spooned with Fletch, and yes, it’s more than a little disconcerting when I lean over in the dark to kiss him good night, only to connect with a cold, wet muzzle.

In addition to needing to move for myriad neighbor-related reasons, we’ve got to find a new place so we can have a room large enough to accommodate a king-sized bed. I’m tired of losing the Battle of the Bully and the Queen Bed and sleeping in the office. As a van by the river simply won’t do, we continue with our Hunt for Lease October, much to my chagrin. (If there’s such a thing as heaven and hell, I’m pretty sure I’ll be spending eternity riding in the backseat of some broker’s smoky Ford Taurus, looking at an endless loop of apartments filled with Harvest Gold appliances, tiny closets, and no fewer than five flights of stairs.)

We have yet another brokerage appointment today so I grudgingly get out of bed when the alarm sounds. I throw on my bra and a pair of slippers and go downstairs to start morning duties. First, I dump out the drip bucket in the kitchen. We’ve discovered that the occasional sprinkles of ceiling water are in fact condensation from the air conditioner, which, while not exactly sanitary, is a damn site better than the sewage from before.

I open a couple of tins of Friskies to stop the cats from yowling. The way these creatures carry on, you’d think they were starving despite their 24/7 access to a tower of dry kibble. The truth is they’re all so fat I have to assist them onto the counter, where they circle around the plate of wet food like spokes on a wheel. I lift them all and they begin to gorge, energizing themselves for a long day of sharpening their claws on the chenille couch and trying to trip me on the stairs.

Next up I start the coffee, because if I don’t I’ll get similar histrionics from Fletch. I wash out the dogs’ dishes and give them clean, cold water and I pour in dry food, topped with a can of Science Diet. I made the mistake of giving Maisy some at my parents’ house once. God forbid we don’t have it in the house now, because I cannot take a day of her sitting in front of her bowl, grunting and yipping until I serve her
exactly
what she wants. Before I call everyone down for breakfast, I open all the curtains in the living room, checking the patio for Winky.

Winky, thusly named because of his permanent squint, is a twee little reddish-brown
2
squirrel so darling and cute I’d want to make him soup or perhaps carry him in my pocket if I didn’t hate him with every fiber of my being. Ounce for ounce he’s more evil than bin Laden, and I actively pray for his demise. You wouldn’t think four pounds of puffy tail could inspire such passion, but that’s where you’d be wrong. Every day he sits just on the other side of our glass door, waiting for seeds to magically fall out of our bird feeder. In so doing, he causes the dogs to lose their minds. They’ve already yanked down a set of curtains and torn $400 worth of custom mini-blinds
3
trying to claw through the glass to get at him, while he lounges just out of reach, so relaxed it’s as though he were hanging out in a Parisian café reading
Le Monde
with his orange pressé and croissant. Other than the house actually catching fire, there’s nothing more distracting while trying to write than two dogs barking their heads off, running up and down three flights, and hurling themselves at windows.

Unfortunately, whenever I try to chase Winky away, one of the neighbors manages to walk out at the exact time I’m brandishing a broom, shouting, “Oh, I will
give
you something to gobble. Eat straw, you little bastard!” That said, it’s not as if they didn’t already hate me after I went all Sean Penn on them during the Tracy debacle, so at this point I guess it doesn’t much matter.
4

I flip on the news to watch Shepherd Smith report live from New Orleans about the post–Hurricane Katrina devastation, but before I can even take my favorite Cisco-logo mug out of the cabinet, the dogs have inhaled their breakfast and want to go outside.
Now
.

As I hunt for poop bags and truss them up in heavy canvas leashes and stainless pinch collars, I think again of how much I’d like a house with a yard. Right now taking the guys for a spin around the block in the outfit I slept in isn’t so bad because it’s still summer. But there’s nothing worse than getting out of a warm bed at six a.m. and putting on layers of sweatpants and sweaters, followed by a coat, scarf, gloves, hat, and boots in order to walk the dogs in the icy darkness, only to be yanked clean off my feet the second they spot another animal, be it dog, cat, rat, or, God forbid, squirrel.

Some people fantasize about threesomes or winning the lottery—in my daydream, I see myself in flannel pajamas and thick socks, standing in a bright doorway, mug of coffee in hand, while Maisy and Loki gambol predawn through freshly fallen snow. I love the idea of a private, fenced yard where the dogs can run and play and not get all distracted by the smells of the thousand other creatures that were there before them. I bet not even a ride in the car to Dairy Queen for cups of soft-serve would make them happier than their own little doggie park. The great irony here is we have a gated patio, but the condo Nazis dish out fines to anyone letting their dogs relieve themselves on their own private property. Sure, I don’t like walking the dogs, but not $100 worth.

Leashes firmly attached to my arm, the dogs and I explode out the door, as usual. Unfortunately, in the ten seconds it’s taken them to eat, Winky has returned and the dogs dislocate my shoulder lunging at him. He squawks his demonic little squirrel laugh and scampers up a tree to taunt them from a safe distance.

Since the beasts are now in a lather, they aren’t content just to take their usual lap around the block. Oh no, they want full-on “walkies,” which sucks because I’m still in my V-neck and cutoff jammie pants with the dancing hamburger, hot dog, and French fry print. Although I’m okay with the hateful neighbors seeing me in what I sleep in, roaming the entire ’hood, where I have to pass people waiting for the public transportation that will take them to their jobs, is another story.

As we walk, I hobble because I hurt my back at the grocery store earlier this week when I slipped by the front door. Were I to choose to take action, I’d probably have a lucrative lawsuit on my hands since the incident was caught on the security camera. Unfortunately, before exiting the car I donned a produce bag from the fruit market to protect my hair from the rain. Fletch declared, “You appear to be wearing a giant condom on your head.” I shot back, “Yeah, but my hair will be dry and you
wish
you had this kind of self-esteem.” And then I’m sure the folks in the Jewel’s security office laughed their asses off as the chick with the giant prophylactic skidded on the broken bottle of Italian dressing and flew ass-over-teakettle, landing in a near-perfect split.

I fear that someday while eating pork chops in front of the television, we’ll see this video on the Fox special
When Fat Girls Fall Down
.

I continue walking hamstrung behind the canine Teds Kaczynski and Bundy all the way past the spot where I like to pick wild sunflowers.
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Normally this is a good, long constitutional, yet these rotten dogs still aren’t satisfied with our circuitous route. Our endless perambulation continues and all I can think of is how I would kill for a fenced yard right now.

The dogs drag me over to a little wooded area that banks up from the expressway. With its dense pine trees, green grass, and mountains of garbage, it looks like a lovely place for a picnic were one perhaps a crack dealer, prostitute, or of the homeless persuasion. As we proceed, the dogs are practically crossing their legs knowing the walk is over the second they relieve themselves. Under one of the pine trees, I notice an abandoned magazine, so I pick up what turns out to be the January 1991 issue of
Honcho
—a gay porn magazine.
Hmm,
I think,
I guess my neighbors had a picnic here.

I open it and begin to thumb through the pages. I’m standing in this grassy spot until the dogs just
go
already, so I figure I should have something to look at. As I scan photo after photo, I realize I’m always using “gay porn” as a punch line in my writing, yet until this very moment, I’ve never actually
seen
any. And…wow. All I can say is that being in a gay men’s pornographic magazine requires careful shaving. A
lot
of careful shaving.

I briefly debate taking the magazine home and stuffing it in Fletch’s computer bag, but then the dogs finally begin to potty in tandem, drawing my attention elsewhere. Business complete, I’m dragged back to the apartment, where Winky sits in the center of our brick patio, perfectly positioned so when the dogs spot him they dislocate my
other
shoulder.

“Okay, how about, um, see any movie starring Lindsay Lohan?” I ask.

“Yes.” Fletch nods. “Yes, I’d rather see any Lindsay Lohan flick, particularly if she’s starring in it with a Volkswagen Beetle. Your turn—and keep in mind death is not an option—how about discuss your feeelings
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with your bat-shit crazy mother?”

“She’s not
really
bat-shit crazy, Fletch. Her mental fitness surpasses us all.”
7

“Yeah? Then how come she’s afraid of towel bars?”

“I don’t know that they
scare
her, per se; I think it’s just that she hates them. Or, maybe her fear is of dirty towels, and if there are no towel bars, you’re never in danger of using one that’s been soiled, right? Although I’m pretty sure she does fear closet doors. You notice the last time we were there, she’d succeeded in getting rid of all the ones upstairs?”