I Like You Just the Way I Am (12 page)

My limited income in those days came from tutoring. After college, I hooked up with a friend who ran a tutoring business and I agreed to help him out part-time by teaching English as a second language. Every week, he’d send me handfuls of eager clients hoping to improve their grammar and pronunciation, and I’d work with each of them for about an hour. The reality was, I had no idea how to teach English. But I did know how to speak it.
So how hard could it be?
A typical session at the Jenny School of Immersion would start with me making a pot of tea, requesting twenty bucks, then spending an hour overenunciating whatever thoughts and feelings popped into my head. If I had auditions, I’d make my pupil practice lines with me, then drill them on whether or not they thought I was believable. Sometimes it was hard not to feel guilty taking money from innocent people, but at the end of the day, Teets needed bison chews and I needed to memorize my lines.

After some serious thought, I warmed up to the idea of moving in with Hersh. I was an overeducated, unemployed actress, and the only man in my life was neutered. Herschel had a stable job, no sex life to get all over my linens, zero interest in stealing my clothes, and more than a little cash to spend on a killer pad. To top things off, his Jew ’fro sort of looked like a poodle, which made me feel safe. Us joining forces would mean less tutoring, a bigger apartment, and a hairdo that in the right light could pass for a brother figure for Teets.

Over time, Hershel got used to giving Teets commands in German and I got used to hiding my Canadian bacon in my car. We were like
The Odd Couple
. He was the pious, left-brained, mathematical genius who taught me how to tip at restaurants and never used a brush, and I was the right-brained artist who only went to temple on high holidays and exposed him to his first painting of a girl being unintentionally fucked in the ass.

Teets came to know him as
“der Uber Juden,”
and I simply thought of him as “the Chia pet in the master bedroom.” Then, in early spring, an incident occurred that changed everything.

*   *   *

Amanda was in town
for a day, so we decided to take Teets to The Grove, an outdoor mall on the east side of town, for some lunch and passive-aggressive bonding. Teets trotted along beside us as we tore through Forever 21 with the desperation of women over twenty-five.

Now weighing in at a whopping nine pounds and eleven ounces, Teets was too big to hang around my wrist in a rainbow-colored Louis Vuitton. Also I wasn’t Asian, so I didn’t own a rainbow-colored Louis Vuitton. Instead I put Teets on a leash to ensure we wouldn’t get separated and went to work trying to out-shop my sister.

The only problem with having a dog is that they often attract kids. I was in the middle of explaining to Amanda that a size 2 at Banana Republic actually means you are a size 6 in the real world when a little British girl jumped out of nowhere and started strangling Teets.

“Mommy, look at the puppy!”

Teets looked up at me for help while I answered the typical series of non-dog-person questions. The red-haired four-year-old hung on to her mom’s thigh and stared at me like a demented Chucky doll.

“He’s two. Yup, a poodle. I know, he has human eyes, right? I kind of consider him a little man in a fur suit! Hahahahaha.” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Amanda forcing a saleswoman to undress one of the mannequins in the window. Amanda was going to get the last
BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN
baby-T in the store if I didn’t act fast! Yanking Teets away, I started to walk.

“What’s coming out of his bum?” The little girl pointed, nonplussed.

I turned to Teets and saw what looked like a shit-strangled condom drop between his hind legs. He had been trying to pull himself out the door to a nearby pot of ivy but couldn’t because he was tethered to my side.

“Ewwww!”
Amanda screamed across the store like a prepubescent boy in a sex ed class.

Before the mother could usher her daughter away, a second condom peeked out of Teets’s winking asshole. This one, however, wasn’t going anywhere. Teets was overdue for some manscaping, and his excess hair seemed to somehow tangle itself on the rubber, preventing it from falling. Amanda started to hyperventilate. I picked Teets up and shook him vigorously, but the prophylactic poop was going nowhere. Within seconds, a small crowd of shoppers formed around us like we were those living-statue street performers.

Seconds later a manager walked over. “Ma’am, we are going to need you to leave Forever 21 forever.”

“She’s not beating him. This isn’t abuse! There’s something stuck on his fur,” Amanda assured both the manager and the crowd.

“Whatever it is, we’d like it outside. We’re a Christian company.”

I ran outside and held Teets over the closest trash can I could find. Amanda followed.

“Just so you know, everyone at this mall thinks you’re the biggest slut right now.”

“I don’t even have boyfriend!” I said.

“Sluts usually don’t.”

“Just— Will you hand me a receipt or something so I can pull the rest of this out of him?”

Amanda rummaged through her purse but found nothing. Thinking fast, she ran over to the ivy and uprooted a fistful.

“How about a leaf?”

Having no choice, I folded the flaccid vines in half, turning them into makeshift tongs. Still holding him over the garbage can, I then took a deep breath and gingerly extracted the digested latex from my dog’s sphincter.

Teets looked at me, mortified.

“Walk along, folks, nothing to see. She’s not throwing him in the trash. Just doing some grooming.” Amanda continued chattering out of nervousness, even though there was no longer a crowd.

It was the first time in Teets’s life that he’d gotten himself into such a bind that rolling over on his back and flashing his penis couldn’t get him out of. He knew that I knew that he knew better than to eat semen, especially when that semen didn’t belong to anyone I was fucking. But he was his own man. I wasn’t privy to his every move.

I had no idea where he could have stumbled upon a stomach’s worth of Trojans. Was Teets a drug mule? Did he have AIDS? Why didn’t I have a boyfriend?

We drove to the vet, where Teets was X-rayed and a final condom was discovered in his intestines. The doctor prescribed some laxatives and told me to call if I didn’t see number three in Teets’s number two later that evening. He assured me that the problem wasn’t behavioral and that Teets wasn’t involved in any sort of underground drug ring.

“Semen is a salty and delicious snack in most dogs’ eyes,” he said. “He’d do the same thing if he came across a T-bone steak. Just instinct.”

I was picturing my vet cumming into Teets’s mouth when Amanda nudged me to hurry up. She needed to get home and we had driven in the same car.

Amanda dropped Teets and me off at our apartment and thanked us for a memorable day. When I walked inside, Hershel was standing in the hallway, holding one of my bathing suits. I was too weak to mention how the perks of living with a man were supposed to include my clothes going untouched. Instead, I said nothing and proceeded toward my room.

“I was just returning this because Olivia needed something to wear in the hot tub,” he said guiltily.

In all the years I’d known Hersh, I’d never heard him mention females. I’d started to believe his faith prevented him from engaging with them, like shellfish. Hersh’s awkward demeanor had only two possible explanations: He was either ashamed of being in the hot tub with a woman, or he
was
that woman. The latter seemed easier to believe.

“No worries,” I said, making a mental note to tell Hersh he ought to reconsider Olivia as a drag name. He needed something more fitting, more personal. Perhaps Penny Pinscher.

“She’s still here. Wanna meet her?”

“Like she’s with us right now?” I looked around the room, hoping to catch a glimpse of Hersh’s drag spirit guide.

“Umm. Yeah.” He looked at me perplexed as he walked back into his room.

I took his leaving the door ajar as a sign for me to follow. As I peered around the corner to the en suite bath that was costing Hersh an additional 150 bucks a month, I saw a woman on all fours. She looked like Hershel but not enough to be his drag alter ego.

“Someone got into your trash,” she called out, continuing to Windex the floor.

I knew what had happened and I didn’t like it. Hershel was having sex, and my dog was reaping the rewards. It was like Teets was Augustus from
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
and Hershel’s trash can was a chocolate river, only it was actually filled with jizz.

Hershel tried to introduce me to Olivia, but before he could, I turned to him and unloaded the frustration of a day’s worth of cleaning awkward dumps.

“Teets has been eating all your used condoms. Is it kosher to swallow? Because I think that would really help all of us if she would.” I extended my hand to Olivia and smiled. “Nice to meet you, by the way. Oh, also you two aren’t cutting a penis hole in any of my good sheets are you?”

Later that night, Teets hatched Hershel’s final sperm baby and I went through my phone, looking for someone I might be able to reconsider as a boyfriend. Unfortunately, nobody compared to Teets. Regardless of the semen slurping, he was still a total catch with perhaps even stronger nails and better skin than before.

*   *   *

As time went on,
Teets did eventually have to share me with other men and the occasional woman. But nobody lasted long until I met my husband.

When Teets first met Jason, he was cordial. Each time Jason came over, Teets greeted him with a perfunctory tail wag, and whenever Jason got near the bed, a look that said, “Don’t fucking think about it.” Teets never saw himself as stepson material. As good as Jason was at giving butt scratches, Teets still considered him an outsider.

Nine months later, Jason and I were married and Teets gained not only a dad but also a brother. Jason entered the relationship with a bit of baggage. Which is a nice way of saying, he had an asshole miniature pinscher. Harry was a three-year-old uncivilized dick who controlled Jason almost as much as his mother had. Unlike Teets, Harry demolished shoes, barked at inanimate objects, and took giant shits wherever he thought you might walk barefoot. Because of our vastly different experiences, Jason and I didn’t always see eye to eye on how the boys should be cared for. I believed that Teets should have his own seat at the dinner table and that Harry should be taken out into the backyard and shot.

At home, it was easy to get away with customizing each dog’s routine (Teets in bed, Harry in the canyon wrapped in bacon), but when we traveled it was a different story.

In my single days, Teets and I had our flying routine down pat: I’d look all doe-eyed and vulnerable while he’d don a
SERVICE ANIMAL
vest and escort me straight through security. We’d board the plane in front of the elderly and always sit by the window. When my food tray was up, Teets slept on my lap, and when it was down, he requested the cheese plate. My behavior appalled my husband for several reasons. The main reason being that he is a total rule-dork.

Jason is the type of guy who uses his blinker every time he makes a left turn on a green arrow. And he’s the only guy I know who’s never returned anything already worn to Nordstrom. He plays by the book and obnoxiously expects me to do the same. His other problem is that he is a celebrity and hates being seen getting preferential treatment. Once we were married, he made me promise I’d make a more concerted effort not to pretend to be blind, deaf, German, an English tutor, or diabetic just to make my life easier.

As a gesture of love, I did something I rarely do. I compromised. We were headed back East for Christmas, and both dogs were coming with us whether I liked it or not. Jason didn’t want me lying about having a therapy animal, and I didn’t want to spend three hundred bucks to not even be allowed to have Teets sit on my lap. To be honest, I felt like the airline should be paying
me
to have Teets on board. He was a joy to be around, a spreader of light and goodwill. So I made Jason a deal. If he helped me smuggle the dogs on the plane, I’d keep them hidden in their carriers the entire flight and never make mention of the fact that Teets was a “working dog” or that I was mentally ill. I assured him that he didn’t need to buy the dogs tickets, because that just leads to more questions about paperwork I didn’t have. If we did things my way, nobody would ever know they were there, he wouldn’t have to deal with any weird looks or whispers, and our journey would go off without a hitch. Reluctantly, he agreed.

The four of us were scheduled to take a red-eye out of LAX. Before leaving the house, Jason fed Harry his tranquilizer, and by the time we were going through security, he looked like a drunken Janice Dickinson. Just before boarding, Jason stuffed Harry into a carrier. I put Teets in a matching carrier and planned to transfer him onto my lap once we took off. I tried explaining to Teets that only service animals are allowed to be out during flight and since Jason wouldn’t let me use the therapy vest, he had no choice but to remain hidden under my blanket, like a third boob or a weird stomach pooch. Teets was offended but too gentlemanly to argue.

Once we were midair, I reclined my seat, popped an Ambien, and pulled Teets out of his carrier by his head like I was delivering a baby. Teets settled happily into my lap after taking a moment to passive-aggressively step over Jason’s ball sack. Jason scowled at me, but he held back any objection.

Natalie Portman was about to tell Ashton Kutcher she wanted to be
Friends with Benefits
when I passed out. Roughly four and a half hours later, I woke up to a tapping on my shoulder, presumably preparing me for landing. I opened my eyes to see Jason staring at me, panic-stricken.

“Where’s Teets?”

I looked down at my empty lap. The blankets I’d cocooned in earlier were strewn across the floor, and Teets was nowhere in sight. I quickly peered into his carrier. It too was vacant.