I'm Not Gonna Lie (6 page)

“I hope the dog's a girl,” I said.

“Of course. Well? What do you think?”

“Cute,” I said.

“Hold her.”

“No, that's okay—”

She pressed the dog into my arms. The puppy squirmed for a couple of seconds, then snuggled against my chest, got comfortable, and looked up at me with big round adoring eyes. I caressed her little head gently, and then, I swear, the dog smiled.

“Hold up. Did she just smile at me?”

“Yes! That's the test. You passed. She likes you.” Then she smiled, not so much out of happiness but from relief. “Our little family. This is going to work.”

•   •   •

I
like dogs. I've had dogs my whole life, starting when I was a kid. They mostly stayed outside, because my grandmother said she was allergic. I guess that's possible, although I don't ever remember her sneezing. Whenever I sneezed she told me to cut it out; I was still going to school. In order to skip school, I'd better be bleeding, which, by the way, she said she could make happen.

I think she just didn't want to deal with the dogs inside. Today she couldn't use that dumb allergy excuse, because people breed hypoallergenic dogs. They also combine breeds on purpose. I used to have a dog that was half spaniel, half poodle. We called it a mutt. Today there are no more mutts. That breed is now a very special and desirable breed known as a spanieldoodle. My dog was the result of two dogs that did it in the neighborhood. Today a poodle gets knocked up by a Labrador, you call it a Labradoodle, and it costs you $5,000 for a puppy.

People plan the mating of their dogs as if they were arranging a canine couples' retreat. They get the dogs together and let them romp and frolic and fool around like they're on some doggy getaway weekend in Maui. When I was a kid, you didn't plan anything. Your dog got out and came back pregnant. I'd say, “Hey, the dog got knocked up.” Then, when the dog gave birth to this spanieldoodle, I'd think, “I don't want this. My dog got laid by a cocker spaniel. It's ugly.” Not only does that ugly mutt now cost five grand; it's considered beautiful.

Dogs used to be just dogs. Modern dogs have become privileged, even elitist. I've seen dogs look at me like they're better than I am. You can see it in their eyes. They look down on you.

I once got involved with a woman who really loved her dog, a huge German shepherd named Hans, who I swear didn't like Mexicans. Shortly after she moved in, I got a bad feeling about Hans and their relationship, which should have been a red flag about her as well. Right away I got the sense that Hans didn't like me. There was something about the way he looked at me. He would sniff in my direction, turn his nose up, and make a face like I smelled. He would sort of frown, as if he accused me of farting. Usually you blame the dog. This dog blamed me.

I mentioned this to my new girlfriend. I told her I thought her dog was jealous of me. She laughed it off. “You have a great imagination,” she said.

“I do,” I said, “but I'm not imagining this. I'm telling you the dog doesn't like me. I know I'm right about this.”

I was so right that one night I came into the bedroom and found the German shepherd lying in bed spooning with my girlfriend. They were both sound asleep, snoring loud enough to wake the neighbors.

I froze in the doorway. “What the hell . . . ?”

The dog lifted his head, glared at me, gave me a disgusted look that said, “Oh, it's you,” then dropped his head onto the pillow and went back to sleep.

Now, I know some people like to spoon with their dogs, but this didn't sit well with me. I realize people are just being affectionate with their dogs, sharing a moment, and it's no big deal. It's not like that woman I read about a while ago who used to drink wine and watch TV in bed with her pet orangutan. Every night she'd pour herself and her orangutan a couple of glasses of a good cabernet, drop a sedative into his glass, and they'd snuggle and watch a movie, something they both could relate to, like
Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
One night, she decided to change things up and poured the orangutan a pinot noir instead. He got pissed and tore her face off.

I don't want to say, “Lady, hello, what did you expect?” but
what did you expect?
I'm not putting a panther or a chimp in my bed, even if I gave him a bottle of Scotch and a couple of Vicodin while we watched HBO. I know where to draw the line. Spooning is far enough.

I didn't think I'd have to worry about any weird behavior with my new twenty-something girlfriend and her Chihuahua puppy. This dog was into me, and the three of us liked to hang out. I did have to adjust to one minor quirk that kind of threw me off.

My girlfriend liked to dress the puppy up in dresses, skirts, and other girly doggy outfits. Come on; it's not that bad. Actually, dressing the dog up didn't really bother me. I kind of got into it. One day I put a Lakers jersey on the dog—same one I had on, only smaller—and the two of us settled onto the couch to watch the game. I even let the dog sip my beer.

Then a few months later, tragedy struck.

The puppy got sick and died. Just like that. The poor little dog contracted some rare illness and that was the end. Doggy heaven. Unbelievably shocking.

My girlfriend fell into a terrible depression. The loss of her little puppy knocked the wind out of her. She couldn't get out of bed. She just lay there, day after day, comatose, sobbing, not eating.

I was determined to do something to snap her out of her funk. I tried cheering her up with jokes, inviting her friends to visit, spending as much time with her as she wanted, giving her as much space as she needed. I even tried
listening.
Hard as hell for guys to do, but I did it. I didn't interrupt or nod off or reach for the remote. Not once. Nothing helped. I was at a loss. Then my friend RJ told me about a pet psychic.

“You won't believe this woman,” RJ said. “She converses with the dead.”

“By converses, you mean . . . You don't mean . . . What do you mean?”

“She talks to people's dead pets.”

“Okay, see, right there, I'm suspicious, because dogs can't talk,” I said.

“True, but they have thoughts. Supposedly. This pet psychic reads their thoughts.”

“I see. She reads their dead thoughts,” I said. “They can't be the dog's current thoughts, because the dog is currently dead.”

“I don't know how it works.”

“So, after a dog dies, the thoughts live on? Is that it? Where do they go? Do they get captured in a thought bubble? Or maybe dogs continue to have thoughts even after they die. Maybe their body passes on but their mind keeps going. Is that how this works? Help me out here.”

“How should I know? I'm just saying that maybe if your girlfriend talks to her dog, she'll feel better. Knowing the dog's in a better place and all.”

“Okay, I see, yes, well, this sounds insane. Off-the-charts nuts. Where is this pet psychic freak weirdo, anyway?”

“Hermosa Beach. You have to pay cash. Plus I heard she's not cheap.”

“I bet. She probably charges an arm and a paw.”

A pet psychic. I couldn't believe I was even having this conversation. Like I was ever gonna drive halfway to San Diego down the horrendous 405, the world's busiest, most congested, most migraine-inducing freeway, and pay through the nose—er, snout—cash, so my girlfriend could talk to her dead dog.

I told my girlfriend about the pet psychic, laughing pretty much the whole time, maybe being a little bit dismissive. I noticed as I was talking that her eyes got wide. When I was finished, she sat up in bed. It was the first sign of life I'd seen from her in a week.

“We have to go,” she said.

“To the pet psychic? See, I'm not sure she's legit; plus we have to go on the freeway—”

She slid back down into the bed and gave me what I can only call a sad, puppy-dog look. Melted me. That sealed it. I had no choice. I made an appointment with the pet psychic.

And that's how we ended up stuck on the 405 in rush-hour traffic at noon, which is not even rush hour, but on the 405 you're always stuck in rush-hour traffic.

I was intrigued. I actually wanted to meet the pet psychic. I've always been fascinated by death. I don't know why. It might sound morbid, but I've always wondered what it's like to be dead. I know, of course, that you stop breathing and people can't see you anymore and you can finally quit worrying about paying your car payment and your credit card minimum and your cable bill, but what does being dead feel like? As we motored down the 405 freeway doing a brisk three miles an hour, I realized I had a lot of questions for my girlfriend's dead dog.

Mainly, though, I wanted to find out the answer to the big question:

What really happens when you die?

Well, to start with, I think the body is a container for the spirit.

In fact, I've heard people say that you choose your body. That may be so, but as you get older, your body falls apart, and I don't think you choose that. Maybe you just choose your body in the beginning. How does that work? Does your spirit go to a showroom and pick out the body it wants? Is it like a dealership? Can you haggle?

“This body is short and dumpy, and I can see the hair is already thinning. I can tell that you're rolling back the hair. You're not fooling me with that comb-over. This body is going bald at thirty. How much for something taller and better-looking, with a thick head of hair?”

I know that whatever body you choose, it will deteriorate. And when your body goes, it does not go quietly. You will leave a little something behind—some farts, some pee, possibly a tiny bit of shit. That's why some genius invented Serenity protective undergarments.

So, yes, I had a lot of questions for the pet psychic.

I had never been to a pet psychic before—never heard of a pet psychic before—but I do believe in psychics. I think that some people have a gift: the ability to see into the future, even, in some cases, to connect with people who have passed on. You have to be careful, though. Not everybody who says they're a psychic is the real deal. I wouldn't stop on the way to the airport to get my fortune told by some psychic sitting outside her house in a folding chair. But if I got a solid recommendation from someone I trust, then I would see that psychic. I actually had an unbelievable experience with a psychic once, in the eighties. Totally freaked me out. And got me into a ton of trouble.

This psychic, I'll call him Bandini, was really different. He was a hyphenate: He was both a psychic and a comedian. I know that sounds like a joke, but it's not. He would perform his stand-up in clubs or at people's homes, and after he finished his set, he would do readings. I went to see his show with a woman I was dating pretty seriously. After his set, I wanted to go to my place and have sex, but she wanted to stay and have her palm read. As far as negotiating our plans for the rest of the evening, we were very far apart. But I told her to go for it. I wanted to make a call anyway.

While my girlfriend was having her reading, I found a pay phone—this was before cell phones—and called this
other
girl I'd been seeing. Casually. Once in a while. Couple of times. We'd gone to high school together and lost touch. Then somehow we reconnected and had gone out the week before. Casually. Couple of times. To a motel.

“How did it go?” I said to my girlfriend in the car after her reading, not really caring that much how it went. I cared mainly about getting her back to my place.

“Interesting,” my girlfriend said. “He read my palm.”

“That's kind of a cliché, isn't it? Not very original.”

“Call it what you want. He definitely saw certain things.”

“Really? Like what?”

I should say that at this point, I thought all psychics were full of crap, able to wow you by telling you a few “amazing” things that they figured out just by being observant.

“Well,” my girlfriend said, clearing her throat, sounding a little annoyed, “Bandini looked at my palm for a long time. Then he frowned and said, ‘I see that you're with somebody. The guy you came here with? Is he your boyfriend?' I told him yes. You are my boyfriend, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course I am. Sure. Why are you asking me?”

“Because Bandini said you're seeing someone else.”

I nearly drove off the road. “That's crazy,” I said. “The guy's nuts.”

“He saw a ‘J.' Very clearly. He thought her name began with a ‘J.'”

“A ‘J'? ” I started coughing. “Ha! See? Right there. That's wrong. I don't know anybody whose name starts with a ‘J.'”

“Well, he wasn't sure about the ‘J' being the first letter of her name.”

“That's because Bandini the psychic comedian is full of it.”

“He may have been confused.”

“May have been? He was definitely confused. He was confused because he's full of
shit
.” I gripped the steering wheel to keep my hands from shaking.

“No, he was confused because he kept seeing the word ‘windjammer' along with the letter ‘J.' He also saw last Tuesday and Thursday nights really clearly, like in a vibrating purple color.”

My cough rose up from my chest and clutched my throat. I couldn't breathe. I thought I would pass out.

“You okay? That's a nasty cough.”

“I'm good. I had a couple of tacos while you were with the psychic. I think the meat was tainted. The sauce was a weird color, too—”

“It's not true, is it?”

“No. Of course not. Not at all. Not a word of it.”

Bandini nailed it.

All of it.

I saw my old high school flame Tuesday and Thursday night at the Windjammer Motel in a sleazy room with purple carpeting, purple walls, and a purple bedspread.

Oh, and her name?