The Dog Log

by Richard Lucas

  “Well, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it!” she barked. “The only option is to get rid of my dog, and I’m not going to do that!”

  “I wasn’t saying to get rid of her. You’re not taking me seriously.”

  “When Sophie barks, she thinks she’s protecting me. I’m all alone.”

  Useless. No one’s listening to me. I dumped my trash and came back in.

  October 22, 3:00 PM

  You wouldn’t believe the suggestions I get. My older sister, Ally, sent me a link this morning to an electronic collar that shocks a dog in a “nonharmful way” when it barks, reverse-Pavlovian style. Ninety-five dollars. I printed it out and showed it to Irene by her front door. (She didn’t invite me inside, not that I’d ever want her to.)

  “Get away from me with that medieval torture device,” she said. “I will not hang that dreadful millstone around my Sophie’s neck. Those things should be illegal.”

  Of course, nothing about what I’m going through is dreadful or illegal, right? Sophie’s a twisted masochist who’d only groove on the buzzes anyhow. It does happen, you know. People feed off physical pain as a way to avoid emotional issues, such as our universal loneliness. People even “cut” themselves. I bet it can happen with dogs. Surely Sophie causes herself pain barking hour after hour. I think if it were seasoned with a little shock, it’d only lead to more emotional masturbation. Anyway, all the suggestions involve buying something, and I’m drawing the line: a person should not have to spend money for a problem that’s caused by—and should be solved by—a neighbor. This is a human problem, and Irene needs to solve it. There needs to be better enforcement of kindness and consideration among neighbors. I am going to defeat the curse of proximity.

  October 23, 12:00 PM

  Irene’s door just slammed shut. The guillotine. Sophie started up with her groping, baleful tragedy: Please don’t go! or whatever she’s bitching about in her canine ignorance. You know what, Sophie? Irene left you again. But it’s not forever. Why can’t you get that through your pumpkin-seed brain? What locks you in? If only I could find the key, then I’d be a hero.

  October 24, 11:00 AM

  I’ll tell you what, I’ll try again. I’ll go knock on Irene’s door and try to talk to her. I guarantee she’ll just fight with me. Be right back.

  12:25 PM

  Not home. My knocking made Sophie go nuts, so now I’m paying the price for trying. And my arm is killing me. It feels like I’m being branded in a cattle chute. OK, I’ll leave her a note—another of my many. For the record: “Dear Irene, just wanted to let you know that Sophie barked a great deal today. I’m not feeling well. Is there any way that you can train her to be quiet? Thank you, Richard.” We’ll see if she responds. She won’t.

  5:50 PM

  She got home about an hour ago—no response. Told you. Burns me up. What is a person thinking when they get a note and ignore it? You can’t not read it? Only the darkest of souls.

  1:00 AM

  Not sleeping much anymore. Exhausted. There’s a single wall that connects our apartments. It’s so thin that it doesn’t separate our worlds, it actually blends them. Some days, I feel like a portal opens up and a psychic bridge spans from Sophie to me, spurring me to want to bark as well. I’m becoming a basket case, maybe a wicker basket case just as she is—Sophie, my mysterious and shocking partner in pain. It’s sympathetic vibration. Have you heard of that, Sheriff? If there are, say, two guitars in a room and a note’s plucked on one, that same note will ring out on the other. That’s us. What was hers is now also mine—ours. I wonder if sometimes I’m not more with Sophie than against her?

  October 26, 9:30 PM

  I fantasize about killing Sophie. Big surprise? You carry a gun, Sheriff, don’t tell me you don’t think about your own power over life. I could do it so quickly too, even painlessly—get her neck between my thumb and index finger, strangle her as easily as crushing graham crackers. You know what? I’d love to bark her to death, a half hour screaming at her. What a passionate opera we’d produce together.

  The irony is, I have experience in conflict resolution. I taught for seven years in South L.A. at a high school where they had to employ two armed school police. I was hit in the head with brass knuckles breaking up a fight and I didn’t miss a day. In teacher training, we spent more time hypothesizing solutions to “conflict scenarios” than we did lesson planning Huck Finn or unconvoluting English grammar. You think I don’t have patience? I have years of dealing with untenable scenarios. I’m not going to kill Sophie, for God’s sake. I wonder, though, if I carried a gun . . .

  11:00 PM

  Late. Officially out of bourbon. It helps with the anxiety worms that crawl under my skin, vein to artery to corpuscle. There’s a terrible stinging down my left arm. And like a werewolf, I hear every drip of sound in the crying silence as loud as the smack of a hammer pounding nails into a cross.

  Ally called tonight to tell me about my niece’s violin recital. All I could talk about was Sophie. Then we hung up. I had to call her back to ask again why she’d called. See what this does to me?

  “You’re too stressed. I can tell you’ve been drinking,” she said. “I’m going to send you some jujube seed and plum flower.” Ally’s an herbalist / massage therapist / Eastern Healer / everything’s-sunshine type up near Portland.

  “Does Sophie have karma?” I asked.

  “Geez. You’re obsessed.”

  “Does she?”

  Ally tells me, “First of all, karma says that a person experiences ‘that to which they pay the most attention.’ No one pays more attention to negative stimuli than you, freak.”

  “Before you think that I can just walk away from Sophie, understand that her barking is paying attention to me. It penetrates my attention span.”

  “Because you choose to focus on it—”

  “It dwells in my dwelling, like a spouse—it can’t be ignored.”

  “Unless it’s Mom and Dad.”

  “There’s some karma for ya.”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, karmically, Sophie may be the reincarnation of someone who’d done despicable things—”

  “So, like, Jack the Ripper may now be Sophie the Barker.”

  “Could be.”

  “I want to know—will Sophie someday pay for what she’s doing to me?”

  “That’s awful. Karmic revenge? On an animal? You have to turn off your negative energy,” she said.

  “I’m being fed negative energy every day. You talk as though reincarnation is a reliable system of karmic justice. So, is it or not?”

  “Sophie’s an innocent animal. She has no awareness of her soul.”

  “But she has freedom of the will and, with that, a responsibility to herself and others regarding her choices. She can choose to bark or not.”

  “Dogs don’t choose,” she said.

  “They certainly do. They can love someone, bite someone, kill them, or kiss them. Freedom of the will, Ally.”

  “Well, St. Augustine, now you’re asking what’s been preordained and how much choice any of us really has versus fate.”

  “Yes. Fate—destiny—like in Oedipus Rex—I’m going to gouge out my own eyes because of this tragic fate befallen unto me. Actually, my ears would be better to get rid of—a double Van Gogh.”

  “Sophie is not choosing things, as you drunkenly theorize. She’s a result. You have the opportunity to stop further result in your own life by having a positive attitude and sending positivity out into the universe.”

  At that point, I ended the conversation, because I can’t stand being told to be positive. You try it.

  October 31, 12:25 PM

  Happy Bark-o-ween. There are actually two dogs over at Irene’s—how spooky is that? Along with Sophie, Irene has a second Yorkie named Nelson to uncare for. He can walk. He’s a mute, the best kind of Yorkie. He doubles the amount of feces-stuck scruff that Irene has to not wash. I don’t know if his vocal cords have be
en snipped (which, as much as I hate barking, would be horrible) or if he just chooses not to talk, but his monastic silence is a welcome gift at this point. I wish he could persuade Sophie to take the vows.

  We’re on North Hayworth, between Willoughby and Romaine. Irene and I each rent small, one-bedroom cottages attached by our wall. I think they were originally built for veterans returning from WWII. A hero may have once lived here. We have two neighbors in the back: Casino, a tall, handsome, affable, truth-bending, all-too-charming ladies’ man and DJ—I call him the Black Don Juan (if Don Juan could also spin records and make ladies’ panties drop, including your grandma if she has her dancing shoes on)—and Jazmine, a heavyset Asian girl in her midtwenties with an affinity for tight pink clothing, sparkles on everything, and leaving her Camaro parked in the driveway so that no one can get in or out without asking her. They live in the same type of units as we do. No one above, below, or on three sides, a step away from architectural paradise.

  Ten years ago I jumped on this place, even though Randall, the landlord, was clearly a tight bird. He has deep-set eyes that prowl above an anachronistically thick black-and-white mustache that resembles the brow of a skunk, and he never stops studying you with a derisive suspicion, as if you’re secretly concocting ways to make him spend money. When his poking voice cawed, “You’re credit report is OK. The apartment is yours,” I was ecstatic. This place is small, though. That’s an element of why Roxy and I don’t live together.

  I’m a lucky man, Sheriff. Roxy’s the complete combination of all the great aspects of every woman I’ve ever been attracted to. Really—smart, funny, ambitious, caring, athletic, beautiful—let me put funny in there twice, because, damn, she makes me laugh. I mean it—all the way back to my first crush, Miss Jenkins, my second-grade teacher—Roxy is all of them. When I met her, I had that relaxing sensation of knowing that the search of the heart had ended. We’ve looked at some two-bedroom apartments in the past couple months, but there’s nowhere we can afford right now to live the way we picture. It’s causing a little friction, I suppose. We’ve been together for seven years. We’ll get past this. Roxy has a good job as a high school guidance counselor. We used to work at the same school. That’s where we met when I was teaching. I was a musician, too, writing songs and playing out at night. That’s why I came to L.A. after college in Pittsburgh, originally. I eventually chose to leave teaching to put more time into my music, and I became self-employed. I do graphic design, self-taught: websites, logos, brochures, etc. I could always draw, so it made sense. Business, however, can be unsteady. That makes Roxy uneasy and rental applications tricky. I just need a break, you know? Something good to fall my way. Besides, if I were to move, who’s to say that the new situation would be any better neighbor-wise?

  November

  November 1, 12:25 PM

  Dia de los Muertos. My Dia de los Barking. I don’t know why Randall didn’t manage to evict Irene when she did the doggy door thing. If only . . . Maybe he receives some tax benefit from giving housing to someone on disability? Oh—Irene claims she had a brain tumor once. She does seem to be forever on the verge of tipping over like a toddler wearing her mother’s heels. I have no doubt that, if push came to shove, Randall would either have the dogs taken away or he’d force her to move. I don’t want to be the person who’s responsible for something so devastating.

  I’m a good person, Sheriff. In my father’s last years after his stroke, our cat, Buttons, grew old with him, lounging on his lap, giving him someone to talk to and an exchange of affection that he couldn’t get from any other source. (He wasn’t the sweetest guy.) Certainly I don’t want you guys to storm into Irene’s with a SWAT team and break that up. I just wish you could pressure her a bit in your unique way, back me up, make her get someone to train the dog or something.

  November 2, 11:00 AM

  I can’t take it. I’m walking to the Coffee Commissary on Fairfax to work. What am I paying rent for, by the way, if I’m pushed out just to get caffeine in my blood and earn a living? I have a right to stay within my own walls.

  11:30 AM

  Everything in this place smells like pumpkin and cinnamon swirling in warm bagel pretentiousness like a corporatist happiness cloud to dull the masses. Took forever to get coffee because of the line. How are all these people not at jobs right now? Four dollars a cup? Holy mackerel—every day that’d add up to eighty dollars a month. This is nuts. It’s cold here, and elbow-to-elbow. All the chatter, too. I can’t work this way. Worse, I just got a phone call from a client. When I answered, I guess because of the noise, she said, “Is everything OK, Richard?”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. “No, everything’s fine.”

  And then she gave me the “Are you sure?” question. There’s no recovery from the “Are you sure?” in the business world. “We kind of have an emergency today, but it sounds like you’re busy, so I’ll get someone else.”

  “No, no, no, I’m just at a café, and I—” And she hung up. So, I’m losing money today because I’m not home, and everything’s an emergency.

  12:30 PM

  I don’t know how long they let you sit here. I’m trying to work on a poster for a play, a sadly wasted staging of Sam Shepard’s great True West. It’s a story of sibling rivalry, envy, and power, Sheriff. It’s being produced by two actors, basically like a “showcase” to get agents, the ruin of small theater in this town. These dudes have enough money to rent a theater, hire a publicist, etc., but, of course, “almost no money” for me to create the art, and it’s an emergency. I take every job because I’m bailing my lifeboat, fighting a quixotic battle against debt, taxes, everything. Had a bad run lately. Nothing adds up quicker than minus signs. I’m sort of trying to hide that from Roxy. This sucks. I don’t have any resource books with me, nothing. I’m just sitting here wired on some kind of methampheta-caffeine writing this log, surrounded by unisex-yoga-pantsed narcissists. How can these people preen and whine at the same time? I’m going home.

  2:00 PM

  Holy fuck—someone broke into my place while I was gone. See what I get for leaving? Popped the front window open in broad daylight. And this is a decent neighborhood. Looks like all they got was one of my guitars, which sucks, but it was just a practice jammer collecting dust because I don’t play much anymore. Didn’t seem to have gotten back into the bedroom where the others are stored. Fuck! If they’d gotten my computer I’d be totally fucked. Why isn’t Sophie protecting me, huh?

  7:00 PM

  I called 9-1-1. You guys came and dusted for fingerprints, etc. I wonder if one of them was you? Sophie was barking up a lung.

  “That’s quite a little bear you’ve got next door. Ha,” your deputy laughed. “She must be stressed with all this commotion, poor thing.”

  “Actually, she’s being normal. I’m stressed.”

  “Ha. Can you check on her? Sounds like she’s all alone, poor thing.”

  Again with the poor thing. “She’s actually a pretty rotten dog.”

  “Well, it’s been a rough day around here for everyone, I suppose.” Then he left me to the barking. Oh, he recommended I put bars on the windows. Randall will never go for that.

  8:00 PM

  I talked to Roxy and told her about this totally shitty day. I wanted to go to her place, because I didn’t feel like being alone. But she said her roommate was having a party or something. “Karen’s got friends over in the living room. I really want to try to get some sleep tonight anyhow. My stomach doesn’t feel great.” So I’m home still. Long night.

  November 3, 7:00 PM

  I called Randall today about the bars. “Well, I’m afraid that, if indeed we were to put bars on your windows, which do face the street, it would affect property values for the entire neighborhood,” he trilled.

  What a bastard. I should sue him. “If indeed . . .” He always says that when a money issue comes up. Is it at all ironic to you, Sheriff, that I can’t get bars put onto the windows of my own prison? Were y
ou here?

  I’ve got to ask—who are you? Are you married? Kids? Whose job is it to read citizen-generated journals about domestic disturbances? Someone’s going to read it, right? Is there a legal library or somewhere you can at least get comfortable lighting? Maybe it’s a rookie thing. I’ve heard that all new deputies have to start out with two years at the county jail. I’ve never understood that—putting the least experienced officers right in with criminals—like the guy who has my guitar. Well, everyone in jail isn’t a criminal; it’s mostly pretrial, right? But you assume their guilt. Be honest—these men in county jumpsuits, walking silently, single file, hands in pockets from cell block to cell block. I know. I’ve been to the jail. Wouldn’t that affect you in the worst way?

  Have you been a guard at the jail? Is it possible you’re in a guard booth there right now? Look out at those inmates. I’m one of them when Sophie starts barking—yet I’ve committed no crime. Yet.

  You studied criminal psychology, right? You know, I could morally justify a Raskolnikovian higher purpose in ridding myself of our problem. Raskolnikov is the main character in Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov acts on his theory of different moralities for “ordinary” versus “extraordinary” people, regarding the murder of his landlord. You should read it. It deepens one’s understanding of the effect on your morals when presented with a major dilemma like I’ve been. Reading some of this literature could make you a more thoughtful public servant. In fact, you might set up a little reading club in the department to discuss it. I could give you a whole list of books. For example, take Jean-Paul Sartre, who wrote about the “moral imperative.” When up against an obstacle, he suggests that a person pause and “assume that all mankind will use you as a model and will make the identical choice in the same situation”—that is, pretend everyone in the world were to do what you are thinking of doing. What would the world be like then?