THE DOG HUNTERS (completed)

50 - BACK TO DOGS

(Forty-four women and no ass fucking! And no ass-fucking! Why was I so obsessed again with ass-fucking?)

There was a night when our fucking was almost tender, lots ofstroking and kissing and nuzzling. Afterwards, when she curled up and did her thing of staring at at her skylight, freed from the force that otherwise made her so awkward and uncomfortable and frustrated,she said, "Well, I just have to keep reminding myself, everything is rotten. No one believes anything that matters. We're all just waiting to die."

"The Dog Hunters believed," I said. I was pretty drunk that night. I wasn't thinking about anything, and I was surprised when this came out of my mouth.

"What are, Dog Hunters?"

I explained about Tinto and Lulubelle and their mission, and how I felt like they'd beaten the system, at least for a while. I was surprised when she started showing signs of interest. When I was done she looked disgusted.

"And you hung out with these guys?"

"They kinda saved my life, and I didn't have anything better to do."

"They just wander around, watching dogs?"

"Counting them too, and making these spreadsheet kinda things. It got really complicated. I don't claim to be close to an expert about it."

I gave her some of the rules, the mythology. It sounded even more ridiculous coming from me. Tabby now looked horrified, like she had just found an oozing tumor on the side of her jaw.

"They were never anything less than full on, a hundred and fifty percent about the dogs. They believed, and then some."

"So what happened to them?"

I explained, and Tabby made a gruff chuckle.

I said, "They still believed."

"It doesn't mean anything."

"It does."

We were having our first argument, and our first conversation, all at the same time.

Tabby stiffened. "It doesn't mean anything because you're making them up.You made them up so that you could have an example of people who really care about something, even though they're just pretending.Pretending doesn't count. And it's a really terrible, made up example. Don't ever try to be a writer."

This was the sentiment of the ladies responding to my profile on GOOD PIGEON. It didn't bother me, sort of made me more confident in this weird way.

"I could go out and find Lulubelle right now, and that would completelyfuck you up," I told Tabby, feeling pretty good, feeling like at last I had some edge on her.

"You could, but you won't, because if you did, you would have."

"I could do that, even though I'd be testing my fate with Johnny Bobo."

YES, that was the first time I'd ever talked about Johnny Bobo to another human being. I hadn't meant to do it. Once I did it I thought, okay, so keep going. Because we were talking, because I'd brought it up, I told her about the article and the story I'd seen on TV when I was kid, and the panic feeling I'd had every since that it was my fate to walk the earth, to be burned by the sun, and lose my ability to communicate. To become Johnny Bobo.

Saying it all out loud for the first time made the whole thing sound silly. Tabby didn't laugh at me. She said, "You're more fucked up than I thought, and I thought you were really fucked up."

"Lemme ask you something. If I go get Lulubelle, and get him to come over here, and you saw him first hand, would you still call bullshit? Even if someone was there in front of you, and they weren't a fancy person, and they had no reason to lie. You would say they were lying, or they were deluded or something?"

"I'd say they were crazy. Like you."

"But that wouldn't be saying they were wrong. Maybe being crazy is the only time anything is true."

She stared at me and I could tell she was coming up with some kind of whopper to throw back in my face and make me feel small.

So I said, "So -"

And she interrupted me with, "You're nobody. That's why you're here, cause you're nothing. You're the nothing that lives on my couch and steals food off my credit card, and doesn't even know how to fuck me, so I have to explain it to you every night. You're nothing, which is why I haven't called the police and told them you were trying to rape me or steal something, or something."

"I know," I said. I hopped out of bed like you do when you're pretty drunk and everything feels like it's falling into place in a pleasing way. I pulled on my clothes and headed for the door.

"Wait," she called. "I didn't mean that. I fuck it all up. We can just go back to having sex and not talking. It wasn't great, but it was alright."

I spun around and crept back to her doorway. "I just have to know," I said. "...You were in the crazy house. You were in an insane asylum and we met there. Was that true, or was that just all the bullshit you go on about?"

She looked like someone was forcing her to give blood, clamping down on her, sticking the needle in. I wasn't sure how to interpret it.

"You were really freaked out about cheese," I said. "That was true."And then I said, "Have a nice night."