by Jill Soloway
But I couldn’t accept their acceptance of me. I decided that the thing on my face was something important, some vital, smarter part of me, something deep inside me that literally bubbled up and told the world that I wasn’t a sorority girl, even when I didn’t know it myself. The Outsider Disease was stronger than the Cute Me Disease that wanted so badly to fit in, to get in. If left to my own devices, I would have joined Alpha Phi if they would have had me. But there was something else for me. It took awhile for me to learn that yes, I would have sisters, but I would find them standing on the outside.
In retrospect, I wish I would have joined SDT, or helped the skinny girls start AEPhi. I wonder who I would have been if I had. Now being Jewish is at the center of my identity, it informs everything I do. Seriously, I just did a word count and the word “Jew,” “Jewish,” or “Jewess” is in this story 267 times, the book 1,003.
The word “Jewess” describes who I am as much as the word “woman” or “writer.” Jewess is my very own Nigga or Queer, a word invented by others to conjure someone bossy, frizzy, and demanding, but that I have reappropriated as prideful.
She is the part of me that wants to speak and needs to be heard, that floats to me on the wing of a dragonfly from a flower that blooms in the spot where Jennifer Levin was strangled in Central Park, or from a hummingbird who hovers above the place where the body of Chandra, whose name means “moon” in Sanskrit, was found in Rock Creek Park in Washington. It says a sisterly prayer for the life that would have been, or that could have been for Monica, and offers thanks to Marcia Lewis and Dr. Bernard Lewinksy, to Steven and Ellen Levin, for Robert and Susan Levy, and for Dr. Harry and Elaine Soloway, that your daughters’ lives and careers and lost reputations have not been in vain. We are your offerings to the world, a world that has taken your leavened bread and stolen your oil, a world that tried to kill you and your parents and your grandparents; I write and they live and lived so that you might say to the world, take them, and let it be enough.
5
Please Don’t Try to Kill Me After You Read This
The scary thing about writing a book is that it will be there forever. Even if actual paper books go out of fashion, my grandchildren will be able to drop in to their local flyin space-library and auto-import a hologram of this onto their permanent chips. In the old days, you could be assured that your words would at some point be out of print, only found on dusty brown gluey pages at a garage sale. Not anymore. My concern is that, as terrific as all of this stuff seems to me today, it may not be so delightful to others. I see it as insistent and adorable. Some may not. When you write a book, you expose yourself to the reality that there are a lot of freaks out there, and a lot of them could even come after you if they don’t like what you say.
But I’m brave.
I’m going to say it.
On the next page for dramatic effect.
I don’t like dogs.
When we were little we had a cat, Pepper. I woke up from a dream that there was a cat in our yard and that morning, there was a cat in our yard. He decided to stay with us. He was the meanest kitten you ever met, and he grew into the meanest, fattest cat you ever met.
My dad hated Pepper. My sister and I think Pepper died when we were at college, but to this day I suspect my parents put him to sleep. No tears were shed. Pepper was an asshole.
At a few points later in my life, I got cats. None of them created a lasting memory. Nigel Von Sydow and I got a kitten but he made me name him Wombol after some British children’s TV show that meant something to him and nothing to me. Perhaps because I didn’t pick Wombol’s name, I never really bonded to him. We gave him to a friend, who ended up losing him during a move. Tears, potentially, were shed, but they weren’t mine.
But this isn’t about cats. This is about dogs. Used to be, if I was forced to pick—cats or dogs, Pepsi or Coke, Mac or PC, my answers would be at the ready: cat, Coke, PC. But then one day, I was feeling a little loosey goosey, and it slipped out: “I’m just not a dog person.” But you know, I’m going to go even further out on a limb. I’ve already said I don’t like dogs. But watch this. Just watch it.
I hate dogs.
Yup. Go ahead, hate me. That’s fine.
I do. I hate dogs.
Admitting this drives people crazy. People go nuts and then they wish to murder me. To dog owners, dog lovers, even regular people, it’s worse than saying, I like Hitler.
People can’t understand. Why? Why would I, a seemingly kind and decent person in every other respect of my life, a mother of a child even, a bringer of life even, hate dogs?
They smell like ham, for one. They lick everything and make your hands smell (like ham), and then you have to sidle your way over to the sink and wash your hands so the dog owner (whose hands smell like ham) doesn’t notice that you’re trying to wash the breath leavings of their beloved animal off of your hands.
Why do people have them? Why? Sure, on a farm, fine, on twenty acres or on a hunt, terrific. As an alarm system at your compound, fabulous, barking when someone pulls up in the driveway. But in your house? On your couches? In your beds, under the covers with you? Greasy animals, actual animals, with dander and triangular teeth and quills and ham-smell in your bed, where you sleep, in the nude? Or maybe you don’t get to experience one of life’s greatest pleasures, sleeping in the nude, because you have to wear pajamas to protect you from the many claws, the paws?
Paws, paw pads, leathery pads in five parts, black little pad thumbs? Scratchy black paw pads, and that one extra paw thumbnail hoofy thing at the back—why, people? Why is it there? It’s called a dew toe! Why is it called a dew toe? To what end? Jumping, clawing, humping, knocking me down with their paws, attacking me, yes, physically attacking me when I enter a house?
Friends, if you had a brother who was in town visiting from Naples, and every time I came over he lunged at me and tried to knock me over, right down onto the ground, I probably would stop coming over. In fact, even if you said, “Oh, don’t mind my brother, he’s just excited to see you!” I would most likely not come back to your house until you told me your brother had returned to Naples.
Licking, slobbering, chopping, slobberchopping— pink gums, black gums. Which is it, is it pink or is it black? Sometimes it’s both! Rubbery black lips, sometimes bumpy black lips, triangle canine teeth, pointy, pointy teeth, incisors everywhere, why? Scratching your legs, jumping, licking, stealing food at parties, jumping on me, jumping on my child. Why not just NOT HAVE them at all?
Come on, dog people, wouldn’t your life be easier without going downstairs first thing in the morning, when you’d really rather pee but you can’t because your dog’s mooing, but then you get downstairs and find that the big ol’ bowl of meaty, gravery kibble is surrounded by a trail of ants? Both to and fro? And why is there always fur in the water?
And why the barking, constant, constant barking, to wake your neighbors, or me at six in the morning, and again at six-fifteen and six-eighteen and seven and eight and nine? To say nothing of the yapping during my precious, precious nap time, or TV time? And do you know, do you have any idea, that the moment you leave for work, your dog starts barking and doesn’t stop until you return? Did you know this? WELL, NOW YOU DO, DOG PEOPLE! YOUR DOG BARKS WHENEVER YOU AREN’T THERE!
Additionally, I continue, if you are a dog owner and have any kind of gathering, you either have to hide the food or put the food on a special table fifteen feet high and keep telling people not to let the dog near the guacamole or the chocolate. Then a piece of brownie or an errant avocado-smeared Tostito hits the floor and the dog eats it, but no one’s noticed because everyone’s gone outside for a few minutes because the groom’s friend from Ottawa wants to make a toast, and by the time everyone comes back in, the entire table has been cleared and is on the floor and the dog is tasting everything with his mouth that has just been in another dog’s ass.
Then the owner tries to salvage a few pierogi, but we know they have dog ass on t
hem. Then the dog vomits and the owner tries to drug the dog with syrup of Ipecac or Benadryl to make it go lie down in the TV room so a few people can continue to try to have a nice time, even though the pierogi is ruined. And then sometimes, if Aunt Lily’s glasses case gets chewed up with Aunt Lily’s glasses in it, the owner has to offer to put the dog to sleep, just to appease Aunt Lily; and so I ask you, why not just not have them?
The walks, the constant walking, having to leave the house before sunrise and after dinner, during TV prime time, then walk for miles and miles around the neighborhood, forced into conversation with other tedious people who feel they know you just because you both like getting dragged around the block nightly by hounds; the leashing, the tagging, the ordering of the tags from the tacky catalog that also has the monogrammed pillowcases and return address labels with clowns on them, the changing of the tags every time you move, the running away, the returning to the old house, even if it’s a thousand miles away, the losing, the finding, the dragging back home by the scruff of the neck, the ham smell, the ham smell, the ham smell.
Oh, and just so you know, if you’re a guy, there is nothing less sexy than seeing you coming toward me walking down the street swinging a plastic bag full of shit. I know what you’re saying right now if you’re a dog lover, you’re saying you don’t care if I think you’re sexy or not, because if I don’t like dogs I don’t exist. WHATEVER!
I also can’t stand when your dog comes running up to me and tries to fuck me with its nose. It’s as if your pooch wants the world to know I have a stanky-ass pussy. That’s what they’re saying! Not to me, of course, I mean to say that’s what it implies to one, when a dog approaches one’s down-there, as Lisa Latkin used to call it in sixth grade. Me, my down-there smells like peaches and Calvin Klein’s Obsession.
Okay, to be fair, I must admit—there is one thing I like about dogs. This is a fabulous secret and I only hope that by writing this in this here book I’m not ruining it. Dogs are a wide-open window into their owners’ feelings. Dog owners will admit truths and betray themselves, revealing their hearts’ desires over and over again, if you just pay attention to the way they speak to and about their dogs.
The first time I noticed this was when my son and I were visiting my mom in Chicago. She had a golden retriever named Sasha. I knew for sure that Sasha was a great window into my mother’s unconscious when we were all in the living room and my mom looked Sasha in the snout and said, “What’s wrong baby? Too many people in the house? You having a hard time with all the people the people the people all the time? Don’t worry, they’re all going back to LA soon, and you’ll be able to get back to your routines. Yes, yes, that’s a good girl. Yes you do love your routines, you do you do!” It occurred to me that maybe it was my mom who loved her routines (she does, in fact) and that she was just saying it was true of Sasha to feel like they were both members of a routine-loving club, perhaps named The Routine Lovers.
After this, I started noticing that strangely, everyone’s descriptions of their dogs could easily be a description of themselves. Por ejemplo: I once answered an ad in the newspaper for a car for sale. The guy who answered the door was a hippy-dippy dude in tye-dye and overalls with a German shepherd mix panting at his side. He told me not to worry, that his dog was on the “super positive energy tip.” What a coincidence, I thought, that this fellow’s dog doesn’t love routines!
A very insecure, low-self-esteem man I dated—so much so that at bedtime, he would take a shower and then put on deodorant for sleeping—repeated over and over to his dog, “Awwwww, you think nobody loves you. You poor thing, you think nobody nobody loves little old you.” And even just the full-on admission, “Nobody loves you do they? No one at all, widdow one, no one at all loves you.”
A supersexual friend of mine, a wacky chick who even had proudly dabbled in light prostitution at one time in her life, used to lie on the bed with her dog, rub the dog’s tummy, and tell her “Who’s a sexy girl!? You are! You horny, horny girl, you’re such a sexy little slut dog! Aren’t you just a slutty little slut girl?”
I could go on and on. A friend of mine who takes loads of medication for her obsessive-compulsive disorder describes her dog as “a neurotic mess.” Okay, actually I can’t go on and on. That was my last one. I was going to make some up, but I know that you’re thinking about all the dog people in your life and having a laugh right now, so I’ll let you do so.
Are you back? Have you thought about everyone in your life and all the things you now know about them? Good. Because I need you to know something else. While I was writing this, it occurred to me that if people are projecting what they believe about themselves through their opinion of their dogs—and I hate dogs, all dogs—what does that mean for me? Do I hate humanity? Do I hate being human? Do I hate life, in its many forms? Is it women I despise? Jews? MYSELF?????
I didn’t want this to be so. Upon rereading my diatribe, I could see my problem. I was lacking some deep, important ability to connect with my own soul. If it’s true that dogs want nothing more than to please their owners, and that for most people, dogs provide an expression of their owners’ inner worlds, perhaps it was their very reflective-ness that I hated. Perhaps it was seeing myself that I feared.
I decided to keep my eye out for dogs I could actually like. I started talking to dog owners and smiling, averting my eyes from their shit bags. A few people walking past had dogs that I stopped and petted. There’s a chocolate lab named Chico that always stops for a neck scratching, and a little white mutt named Augie that yips in a way that isn’t incredibly annoying.
But everything really changed a few weeks ago when I saw Mika. She was the most stunning, blond, soft, clean, stately, gorgeous Akita. Her owner kept her on a tight leash every day as they passed our house. Sometimes, when I was getting in my car, I’d see her and she’d look at me and I’d look at her. Then, one day, I felt a magical feeling that told me to go outside for a barefoot walk. When I came down my steps, Mika and her owner were there.
“Can I pet her?” I asked.
Her owner brought her over to me, loosening the choke chain by one knuckle’s worth. I crouched down. Mika came right to me, and we put our foreheads together. We rubbed cheeks. We nuzzled. She smelled so good. I didn’t care that her gums were black and rubbery, I wanted to make out with her. I love this dog, I thought. I want this dog. This is my dog. I looked up.
“She’s so beautiful,” I said to her owner. “Where did you get her?”
He told me the story of a man down the street who had died and left Mika to him.
“We’re looking for a dog,” I said, for no good reason. “If you ever need to find another home for her, please let us know.”
“Everyone wants her. Everywhere I go people say they want her,” he said.
“I can see why,” I replied. He yanked on Mika’s chain a little, signaling that it was time for us to let go of one another’s souls. But it was hard to let go. I felt like I’d finally found my dog. I could love this dog. Forever. I looked her in the eyes and whispered, “Mika, such a pretty, pretty girl, and such a good girl. And nobody knows it, do they? But you’re really such a good girl, aren’t you?” I asked.
Mika nodded, and followed her owner away. I walked down the hill, barefoot and magical, and trying my hardest not to think about all the work I would have to do when I got back home from my walk.
6
Found My Way in LA
Los Angeles is Magic. It’s yellow-orange-red and the smog makes everything blurry in a good way. I hate when people come to Los Angeles and just bitch, bitch bitch. I know it’s not New York. I know it’s not Chicago. Yes, some of the people here are fake. Shut up and go home. I love landing here. When I emerge into the sun at LAX after I’ve been away, I hear Joni Mitchell singing her song.
Oh, but California
California I’m coming home
I’m going to see the folks I dig
I’ll even kiss a sunset pig
California I’m coming home
When I visit other cities, I go out of my way to praise them in a fake high voice. “Wow, Chicago is getting so cosmopolitan!” and “Hey! Boston has some great shops!” When people come here, they’re not five minutes on the ride in from the airport before they say flatly from the back of their throat, “I could never live here.”
I really don’t care if you could ever live here. Magic happens here and maybe you just can’t handle the magic. It’s not wiggly Marshall Brodien magic with hats and bunnies, or new age majick with chakras and the moon. This is just Los Angeles and it’s in another color than most cities. You just have to put on your sunglasses so you can see the colors.
Los Angeles is the color of dreams. The city is filled with people dreaming, people who escaped. The special people, the people too beautiful for their towns or too weird for their high schools. Yes, many of them eventually end up dressed up as Superheroes charging a buck a picture on Hollywood Boulevard, but at least they had dreams once.
Most people are stoned, on either weed, Xanax, or yoga. We’re so close to Mexico that people drive slow without knowing it. LA is Spain and Compton and a desert salt flat braided into one thing. It’s a Hummer with blaring Chingy as a little Guatemalan man walks by with his cart, ringing a bell to sell an ear of corn covered in Parkay and paprika. Silver Lake and Echo Park are fuck-yous to what the Lower East Side has turned into. Race down Sunset on a Sunday to Beverly Hills where you can walk through Brighton and Camden and be eye to eye with seventy-year-old women with puppies and tight jeans and white slings on their faces, fresh from Dr. Birnbaum. There are mountains and skid row and Malibu and gay town, Armenians and Thai Town all in one neighborhood and high school gang bangers with magic markers instead of spray paint, I love it here. The only thing you have to get used to, is that it’s… wide, I guess.
