My beautiful boy having fun. You may notice he only had three legs, the victim of a hit and run before I adopted him. This painting was in a show in NYC run by some young Koreans to support saving dogs from meat trade. They were so lovely to us artists and even gave us each a book of the art in show.

Oil on canvas. Photo in book of artwork. I need to find the book to credit the lovely photo on right taken by photographer who did series of dogs young and then as seniors.

Oil on paper

Oil on canvas from online photo. Gift

Oil on canvas. From online photograph just for practice

John must be feeling rather in his element at the moment as the owners of The Woodstock Museum came over to talk with him and record their conversation. It’s been three hours since they arrived and their Prius is still parked in his driveway. That’s a lot of talking, even for John. Even with his vast catalogue of impressive stories, he must be running out of by now. I fear he may now be at the meat discussion phase as he has probably worked up an appetite with all that mandibular activity. I can imagine this poor couple wondering how to extricate themselves from a situation in which John is endlessly discussing stuffed pork roasts and Adam’s chicken sausage. Of course, I have no proof they are truly the owners of The Woodstock Museum. They could be part of the cannibalistic cabal that is running the country. If I were to walk over there right now, John’s head may very well be baking in an oven. That would be terrible. I don’t know how to use the cappuccino machine. I hope these people at least had the decency to pull his arm out of its socket before butchering him.

As a note of explanation, if you don’t know him, John has several ailments he claims would be remedied by having his arm pulled out of its socket. He has consulted doctors and, I believe, chiropractors, none of whom will do this for him. I often offer to tie a boulder to his arm and throw it off the porch but he refuses to let me help him in this manner.

So this horrible thing happened the other night. You know how you are watching Seinfeld or old Law and Orders or something good and, just as your xanax vodka cocktail kicks in, something awful comes on? And the remote control is like a whole foot away on the coffee table and there is no way you can reach it? That’s how I ended up seeing The Help, one of the worst movies ever created. Like, Get Out is supposed to make white liberals squeamish but nothing in that movie could compare to the horror of The Help. I was never so embarrassed to be a white liberal in my life. I wanted to rip up my college entrance essay and pretty much every Sociology paper, too. Anyway, that was last year but it happened again. This time, I was totally minding my own business, doing some Ken Ken and watching the Ass Man episode of Seinfeld when it happened. Just as my eyes started to roll around and I felt the left side of my face spank the glossy page of the NY Times Magazine, a movie called, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days came on. If you have ever seen it, you can imagine the horror. There I was trapped watching Kate Hudson playing some plucky writer for some stupid womens’ magazine and Matthew Mcconaughy playing some douchebag. I’m sure it was a big reach for him. Anyway, She’s trying to do all the wrong things women do while dating a douchebag that gets them dumped and he is trying to do all the right things a guy can do and you really just hope a sharknado will come tearing their bodies apart and splattering their remains all over Manhattan. I kind of doubt it but maybe that is, in fact, how it ended because, although I wasn’t smart enough to leave the remote control within reach, I did have the bottle of xanax right in front of me on the crossword puzzle next to the Ken Ken. I managed to get one out with my right hand which, luckily, wasn’t stuck under my hip like the other one. I stuck it in my mouth but had no liquid to swallow it with so I just sucked it like a lozenge. It was bitter as hell but I just swallowed the bitterness. Anything to get away from Kate Hudson secretly and enthusiastically catching the game with the kitchen crew while Matthew Mcdouchahay tried to be Prince Charming. Finally, I drifted off. These people have plenty of money. Why do they need to make us suffer?

Anastasia just passed and nobody knows why yet. I had just been chatting with her. It was like we saw each other just last week, though , in fact, the last time I saw her was in San Francisco 29 years ago. She was leaving on the back of some guy’s motorcycle.
I had been meaning to tell her that all the joking about L being gay and in love with F was actually true. I was going to dm her after wishing her a happy birthday. I had just decided which photo to post on her page for the occasion when I read she was gone.
I met her 30 years ago when she was dating my friend and roommate and she discovered a hidden stone staircase leading to our apartment on Barracks street in the quarter which she told us she had dreamt about. She was charming and beautiful and somewhat crazy, I thought.
A year later, when I was tending bar at The Abbey, I started dating a handsome but boring guy named F with magnificent hair who I was surprised to learn was already dating another bartender at the Abbey. We both dropped him and I began seeing his less attractive but much more interesting roommate, L. Shortly after, Anastasia began dating F. L was obsessed with the whereabouts of his roommate and Anastasia and F both complained it was hard to be alone together. I also thought it was odd that L seemed uninterested in spending time with me without F. People at the Abbey joked about L being in love with F. They called him “Latent”. Nobody took it seriously. L couldn’t be gay. He wore flannel shirts and had bad skin and messy hair. Finally, I broke up with L and moved to San Francisco and Anastasia broke up with F and followed me out there.
Over 20 years later, the bartender who had been dating F when I went out with him told me L had finally come out and was living with his Native American lover on a reservation. She had dated him after me which seemed appropriate. Anastasia would have appreciated that piece of gossip. No word on what happened to F or his beautiful hair.

This morning I woke up wrapped in a sheet like a mummy. Nothing odd about that but my bedclothes, a t shirt and boxers, were in a pile next to me and they were wet. I turned on the light and little bits of what looked like jello glistened in a pool of a phlegm like substance. Next to that was some crumpled Mylar. It was as if some sorority birthday girl had broken into my room and vomited a night’s worth of Jell-O shots onto my clothes. However, on examination, the Mylar was not a balloon but an emptied gel pack and I was able quite quickly to deduce what had happened.
Last night was very hot and being down to one poorly working air conditioner that I left in the living room for Dan because he is ill, I must have gotten up and gone to the freezer in the middle of the night in search of a frozen turkey with which to sleep. I’m basically vegan but once had a frozen turkey stored in my freezer but I don’t want to talk about that. Anyway, finding no frozen turkey, I grabbed the next best thing, a frozen gel pack. Unfortunately, it somehow sustained a hole and, upon thawing some time later, evacuated its contents all over my body. I was able to rouse myself enough to remove my bedclothes. It’s a shame I finally buried the juvenile raccoon I had in the freezer for so long.

As Sidonia pointed out, I have now reached an age where I can no longer discern the difference between 30 something year old men and teenagers. Not by sight anyway. Perhaps by behavior.
Today on my run, I slipped on some moss, skinning my knee. This happens frequently but this time, I attracted the attention of a red headed boy with alabaster skin who ran to my aid, asking if I were hurt. I assume he is a teenager because I often see him, from the vantage point of my dilapidated porch, visiting my neighbor’s son who I know is a teenager. He looked concerned, no doubt fearing I had broken my hip, and offered to help me up, asking if I lived far. I hypothesize that, for him, I evoked a grandmotherly presence, someone who thought he was the smartest and handsomest boy in the whole world, who baked his favorite cookies and who happily sacrificed her Judge Judy Meet And Great ticket money to send him to Coachella.
Several years ago, back when I could still differentiate between children and those approaching middle age, I tripped on a root and fell, breaking my front teeth. I walked back home, holding my mouth, blood and saliva pouring from my hands down my arms to my elbows. I passed several 30 something year old men on their phones and not a one seemed to notice. To them I was invisible, just a barren spinster whose desiccated ovaries have ceased to produce and whose breasts hang on each side of her sternum like spent wine bladders. If one of them actually were to see me at all, he would be reminded of his mother who, when last seen at Easter dinner, mentioned to his date, his first failed attempt at the Bar exam, how, before this, she had given up a trip to Paris to pay for his LSAT tutor and how, as a teenager, he had cystic acne.