The Dog House

            A teeny tiny Chihuahua is tip toeing gently in my direction on the wood chipped ground. This little princess chooses every delicate step like she's negotiating an explosive mine field, every single step a calculated choice. Dog parks are so interesting to me because of the matching of the dogs and their owners. Some dogs are the size of those thumb sucker diamond rings we all wore and sucked on as a kid. They sit incognito like peas in a pod in their mommy's fanny pack just hanging out like a little baby kangaroo. Other dogs are so gigantically mammoth, like the Old English Mastiffs, that I have to wonder how big can their owner's apartment possibly be? I mean how is that working out for you in the square footage department sir? Who could afford an apartment that could suffice for the shear size of this medium sized pony? For instance, the hugely obese woman sitting on the park bench across from me is accompanied by the tiniest of miniature Chihuahuas I'm guessing on earth. This little squirt is quite literally able to hide deeply inside her mama's 32oz. McDonald's sweet tea cup.....now on sale for $1! I'm a very Southern boy I should know. I was raised drinking tea so sweet we were all on a diabetes watch 24/7. "Ola" she says waving frantically like we've known each other for years or perhaps she was even expecting me. She's all smiles and giggles like a happy Buddha with her little short haired lucky charm clad in pink. It was a match of extreme contrast but totally, almost ridiculously perfect!

             Dog owners go one of two ways in my book. Type one: The person that not only walks down the street talking to their dog (of which I'm completely guilty of myself-being busted at 31 years old in public using words like Potty!) This person is actually hearing nonexistent responses from a dog who's inner monologue would really be "Urine!.....old....Bird!.....more pee....hey a stick....YUCK.....was that a Squirrel?!" I swear dogs get their bearings from the scents they engage. "Just checkin' the time miss Harley?" I say, probably aloud, as she leans in for a fresh whiff of a glistening, newly soaked plant stem dripping from a previously uncurbed dog. There she is, the little dog that kisses me on the face, totally enchanted by this shiny sopping New York piss plant. Sometimes Harls will pee a little dollop and then drag her tail through it like a painter dipping a brush. It makes me gag and thank god for sanitizing pet wipes! In the first category of interrupted, strangely social introverts is almost always a single unmarried woman living in Harlem alone with her killer protector, usually a Rottweiler or f*n Pit bull! These dogs walk like Roman centuries down Riverside drive escorting their Hamilton Heights queen at arms length. Great ladies, live the law suit dream with those walking snorting death machines. Just make sure you have that beast under control when me and my nosey little Cavalier King Charles try to pass! I turn into an angry Spanish girl whenever my baby is threatened. These dogs are usually way out of the control of these good Samaritans who have opened up their homes and hearts with the best intentions of giving these damaged animals a second chance. This unkempt Jane Eyre is a classic single lady being walked herself by her disastrous Pit bull rescue....foaming at the mouth and looking at my poster puppy prancing straight ahead like it's a juicy little piece of Sashimi! Hold please. We are holding the curtain for Cesar Milan to come rollerblading to the rescue to guide this growling nightmare past my sixteen hundred dollar designer "puppy mill rescue." That's my new phrase...puppy mill rescue. It saves me so much grief and sounds much more heroic than telling people that I bought Harley from a cunty, high end pocket puppy boutique in Chicago! It's a rationalization that is sending me straight to h. e. double hockey sticks. It's my stonewall defence to all those judging me for Not rescuing a dog from a shelter. That was my original plan but traveling for work brought me out of town right up to the front door of this heavenly little store. This heaven was busted mere weeks after I bought her for selling very very weak and sick, poorly bred miniature specialty dogs with all kinds of problems. The person that bred my little girl probably had one goal in mind...to get these regularly 25lb. Cavaliers down to "pocket" size. The cuter the sicker it seems. Of course the genetic defects and unhealthy shortcomings would eventually surface with such a high turnover of Maltipoos and Yorkipoos and Everthingpoos and other such crushable munchkin dogs.

           I saw her as I peeked in the front window for the first time. She was poised in the top right kennel that didn't look at all like a dog crate, but rather resembled a Bvlgari jewelry case. The store was clean and white and could've easily been mistaken for an upscale ladies boutique on Columbus ave. Her head was cocked curiously to the side not seeing me and not knowing that I was the one and how she was about to change my life! My casting notice would read: "Seeking a life partner for approximately 15 years....Callbacks in the weeks to follow." So I dumped a huge pool of Purell into my palm and disinfected up to the shoulder and my little dancer was taken out of her red and white display case. Her audition was amazing, bouncing and running around an invisible obsticle course like a crazy little monkey making a break for the nearest tree!  Awww....she's soooo cute!" says some girl moving in for a closer look at the dream puppy I already had dibs on. Step back Missy she's mine....I think. Two hours later I got out of the luscious fire engine red love seat (shaped like an oversized pair of lips) and walked away crippled with indecision. I thought about all the complications a dog would bring to my life as a performer with all the traveling involved, the apartment I share with cat-owning room mates, and all the unknown details that would follow my blind plunge into love. I'd be back because that little King Charles Spaniel had melted me completely and consumed my thoughts for the next couple of days. Two visits (or callbacks as I like to call them) later, and two payments of $800 dollars on my Visa, my little unnamed puppy was in a sassy, yet discretely masculine, dog bag off into the unknown together starting a new chapter in both of our lives!

               I was getting too much shit from people I met on the street asking me where I got her and why she was so small for her breed.  I'd lie right to their faces. Some people question her cuteness and can't imagine how a dog could possibly evolve into such an unusually sweet face. People always think their puppy is the cutest but I actually know this to be true! These probing questions and suspicious looks make me feel like I'm in an interrogation room in the climax of an underscored Law and Order. This particular New Yorker is talking and talking on and on, jabbering on in what seems like the beginnings of some kind of psychotic damn slowly cracking and spouting little leaks, about to break open from the pressure of waaaaaay too many years in the city. 212 turrets? Or just another classic case of what I call the Manhattan Snap! These touched neighbors we all know and don't love are the ones you hurry your dog around the corner of your building and let's say (hypothetically) duck into the closest doorway or alley, or pretend to talk on your cell phone so you won't get stuck talking about her dog's latest surgery to implant a glass eye into her one eyed Wimereiner! Or worst of all, truly my most feared topic with a stranger, the frequency and consistency of their dog's bowel movements!!! Kill me Harley! Kill me now because that woman is rounding the bend and you know ol' homeschool hasn't said a word to an actual human in days...maybe even weeks! You can see the nice, sincerely well intentioned inner blurb of dialogue building and bubbling behind her desperate eyes and gardening visor. She is literally a waste of time with legs. The only people that can get away with talking about excrement are brand new mothers and dog people. And not even then in my opinion. The mismatched dog walking couture that you can almost bet looks like a jumble of Hawaiian print meets I haven't been touched in years. This owner looks like they got dressed in the dark or perhaps is blind. Not that I'm runway worthy taking ol' Harls out first thing in the morning, throwing on my closest pair of shorts and a tank top, pockets stuffed with little expensive blue bags with coffee in hand. In truth, my fashion crimes result in a look that consistently reads tired athletic....gay guy gym attire....unemployed....acting like it's the crack of dawn at twelve thirty in the afternoon....lives in Harlem and has no boyfriend to impress! Would this clothing line be called Disaster of Upper Hamilton Heights? The logo would be DUHH!I might care more about being cute for my busted morning walks if I lived in Hell's Kitchen....otherwise known as the dance belt!
         Type Two: This would be the type I hopefully fall into, since I created the basis for the two categories. *A person that doesn't live exclusively for their animal but includes them in every way in an active shared life.
*Someone who nurtures quality relationships with human beings while having the constant presence of your best friend.
*Someone who doesn't withdraw into themselves and get trapped in the antisocial animal kingdom that is now your apartment! It's a slippery slope to the dark side of owning an animal.
           I never realized how social walking a gorgeous puppy down the street would make me. My dog attracts the attention of them all...from gross homeless dudes to Williamsburg chicks with huge stretched earlobes. My girl melts the most unsuspecting of Wall Street hard ass stock brokers into smoochy woochy baby babble. The truth comes out when cute comes walking by that's for sure. But mostly Harley attracts the attention of rich looking 5th Avenue ladies, middle aged cougars, and fashionistas who come running out of fancy stores or carelessly cross the street in stilettos just to ask me every dog question in the book...and if there is a web site!? These women seem desperately in need of a real and uncomplicated friend. Then there's the younger professional girls in Manhattan running around with demanding hours at a job or internship, working their manicures down to the quick with never enough time to dedicate to the perfect little Elizabeth Taylor. Nothing compares to opening your front door or dog crate at the end of the day. It's like unwrapping a little furry Christmas present overjoyed with sloppy licks and excitement. After all, it's that eternal and quiet lack of judgment that animals bring to an isolated New York existence.

          Room mates or not we are people alone in littlish apartment boxes stacked on top of hundreds, thousands of other boxes full of people with different lives. Trains rattling underneath packed full of more people squished together. A little piece of me dies every time I jump off either the 2 or 3 express train at 96th st. to catch the uptown local home. Ten express trains to one fucking local number 1!? This station dumps hundreds of sweaty New Yorkers out onto a platform so crowded that it feels like the volume of bodies getting off the express train might actually push the people waiting right onto the local tracks! We are ants in cement tunnels singing the siren song of curse words and heads shaking in unison at disappointment in the MTA. It is estimated that if you were to cut New York City like a cake and slice one city block all the way from the east river to the Hudson that there are approximately 10,000 people per slice! Every day we are spinning in swarms of strangers in a city that churns nails and dynamite into butter and Broadway shows. The city can and does get to the best of us. I guarantee that somewhere deep in the subway tunnels is a yoga instructor who is running late for a class and is just as pissed off at the world as any of us on a shitty day. Everything pulses at a dizzying pace where, if your not careful, you can end up talking to yourself like the very woman you're afraid of getting stuck next to on the train! I don't want to be a boy in a bubble. I don't want to become someone that never engages people's eyes anymore and always expects the absolute worst from others. I catch myself saying sorry to people that bump into me! I'm a thirty one year old man saying sorry to someone that runs me over from behind. I guess I'm just generally sorry. Walking through Times Square with a forgiving and loving heart is the greatest challenge I know of.
          I have hundreds of friends on Facebook but how many of them do I actually ever see? Getting a group together here in the city can be such an ordeal with all the schedules involved that it never happens enough. I feel like I've won the lottery when I actually get all the VIPs in one place for a dinner uptown at my house. When the New York cyclone of phone calls and texts finally settle you're left with a honey glazed ham, a few cancellations, and a rain check or twenty! I get it. I do it all the time. I'm well versed in the role of flaky New Yorker. I should win an Oscar for my role in the movie called Perpetually Late (one man's struggle to have a social life living uptown!) At the end of our dinner parties Harley happily helps me clean up by keeping me company in the kitchen and scouring the floor for any and all bits of food that may or may not have been "accidentally" dropped. My dog is the center of my calm, my sincerest joy, and my access to the curious side of life. Now I have a lot to learn about being a pack leader because little dogs can get away with murder because they are so damned cute. Not this time. Her only requirement is to be absolutely perfect!  Is that too much to ask? Don't worry, we don't have another JonBenet on our hands.  My Animal Planet show would be called "The Dog Screamer" instead of Cesar's Dog Wheeeeeeeesperer.
          Socially, walking Harley forces me into talks with people I would normally walk right past without a single thought. All of a sudden you're talking to a man who has two shockingly connected eyebrows......now one.....wearing Crocks and a shroud of loneliness. What seels the bond between the woman I see almost every day with her three yappy disgusting Schnauzers? These three angry, dander-ridden Charlie's angels come screaming down the street like howling terrorists all tied to one knotted up triple leash. Are they her white noise filter? Do they drown out the city for her? My dog fills the in between spaces and enriches the grey. She gets me outside and keeps me from growing roots to the couch in my unemployed state. She's my own personal reality show preventer, keeping me from being sucked into pointless TV shows full of talent-free people getting famous by making fools of themselves. "God I hate these mean housewives" I say sitting frozen on the couch unable to free myself from the trashy trance of these menopausal back stabbing cunts. A scratch on the foot from Harls translates to "The sun is shinning daddy....let's go get crazy with the Frisbee!!!" Beyond my own experience, it's proven that an animal connection lowers the blood pressure and actually promotes health.

            The dark cloud that formed over me when I turned 30 was slowly dissipated by the love I found in this dreamy red and white Blenheim. What I call my quarterly life crisis propelled me to buy a motorcycle and look for a furry friend online.  When I came across her profile picture it was all over.  There was no denying what must be done. These are two telltale signs of a middle aged gay breakdown! I was rebelling against the demons that sit on every chorus boy's shoulder about to cross the finish line of his third decade. I found that putting a cap on your twenties is not an easy thing to do as I tried to imagine stepping into a future with no new revelations or grasp of what's to come next. It feels like a blind folded approach into a hazy fog of what the fuck!?! I've been here for the last twelve crazy years. That's an accomplishment in itself. So what's to inspire the next ten I wonder? I can't keep moving forward making the same mistakes and running in the same circles. When will my chaotic urban hamster wheel break or rust to a complete stop? And where has all that once untamable momentum gone? I have doubts about my theatre career, financial stability, and love and the possibility of finding it here in an age of Grinder profiles and face pics. There is literally a sex GPS that can determine how many feet you are from your nearest interested booty call and their exact location! Danger my friends.....it's either the beginning or the end of romance as we know it. It's like standing in front of fifteen shelves of toothpaste in the Duane Reade with hundreds of choices before you. Being a person at times crippled with indecision, I can't decide if I should go whiter.....brighter.....or with the foaming bubbles for those hard to reach places? So many choices and so much pressure to find everything in one man.....in one tube of toothpaste! The statistics of finding a soul mate are daunting for any single someone looking for companionship beyond a puppy.  With personal profiles unfolding like cyber biblical scrolls slapping you hard across the face, it's a wonder I can even get out of bed in the morning.  Maybe it's time to delete my account and go back to the basics? Maybe I should start sending smoke signals and tying messages to pigeons? It looks like it's going to be a slow sexy summer after all with a pimped out doggie bike basket, a sensible Kong Frisbee, and me and my Harley girl.