CNL: Stories
reprinted from the Compost NewsLetter
Winter 1993-94:
We Make Great Pets
by Gradiva Scapular
Hey. Let's talk about YOUR MESSY PET. I'm sure we've all had one, or been one. As in: BOOZE. JUICE!! INTOXICANTS!!! Ya know, the Night of Pan, God-Dog it! Just gettin ALL funked up y'all... the Animal Mask, hooked into the face...
Americans may truly be the lab rats of the Elder Gods, especially in the alcoholic arena. Yet, despite the damage these blundering, shambling animals cause, we PERSIST.
Maybe we're not just lab rats, but unruly, lovable PETS... a little fond indulgence from unnameable THINGS out there (in there?) allowing us to live to barf another day.
I've lived with nonhuman "pets" before, but only another human can (regularly) push the limits of your sanity past the edge, completely wreck the joint, and then plaintively quaver "Do you like me?" the next morning. Ya gotta love em. No, I'm not not talking about small children, or Irish Setters: I mean your Good Thang. Of course, you always hear stories that TOP your pet's and extend your forgiveness...
After all, "my husband Fang" (as the great Phyllis Diller called hers) never did drink a bottle of DISH SOAP (thinking it was Jack Daniels) &throw up in the kitchen sink. (I guess this guy also apparently used to brush his teeth with Comet, thinking it'd make his teeth whiter; they turned a wonderfully transparent GRAY.)
I've been a "pet", in the way a woman can still be a pet sometimes. Knocking other women off barstools; mutely accepting jewelry, dicks up the ass, champagne,crayon drawings, guilt-racked tales of Vietnam, the camera's eye. Smiling and thinking: I will leave soon. Sitting locked in a car in Georgia (eighteen, terrified), ostentatiously picking my nails with a blade while he goes to score... But, at last, I am loved; now I LOVE. I've found my bright-eyed beast.
But my dear friend is, indeed, a plaything of the merciless Ones at times. I've come home to find him dancing maniacally to moronic house music, wrapped in nothing but a torn Pink Floyd poster taped to his sweet ass with silver duct tape. The Star of Chaos is stuck to his forehead; his grin beatific and Stimpy-like...
On calmer nights he may take a bath with all his clothes on (soggy cigarettes and pieces of paper emerging from pockets). Or listen to Madonna's "Deeper &Deeper" 900 times at earsplitting volume. Or simply bring a large chunk of pavement home and drop it on the floor like a prize. My good doggie.
Then there are those nights in the grip of alien claws, an emotional abyss I can't locate. "Even a man who is pure of heart, and says his prayers by night..." BELIEVE IT. Werewolves exist.
It's all in innocence at first, a magazine pic of Isabella Rossellini spiked on his dick (like a memo on a holder). He's joyfully slurring along with Sammy Davis Jr.'s ludicrous version of the "Shaft Theme". At some point, the religious impulse strikes, and the broken plaster statue of St. Lazarus is reverently brought up from the orixa altar in the basement (our Cuban landlord's)...UH-OH. "...a shot for my friend Laz, here! 'Laz is the man...can-you-dig-it!' " Well, shut your mouth. But it's too late.
And the room CHANGES; the Lord of Flies, Babaluaye', comes roaring in to the call of his child's goofy song. The booze-fired brain infected with an ancient gibbering paranoia...wind of pestilence... So "Fang" valiantly attempts to handle it with his own spontaneous ritual, but ends up getting a caulk-like mix of ink, blood, and Liquid Paper all over his hands, feet, hair, and the carpet...And the Father of Plagues sends icy paralytic driveling awe "he's so OLD..."
At which point I give up &barricade myself in the bedroom. When I wake up, there's a huge swastika scrawled on our wall, and his red eyes imploring: "Do you like me?"
You bet I do, baby. It's not ONLY our fault, anyway. As I dip the roller in the paint, he sleeps, finally, like a child. We're just pets: kick us and we yelp; love us and we give it all, even unto the last drop. It's the darndest thing, but there it is.
[Gradiva Scapular came up in & rules Chicago; she lives with a werewolf & he is SO FINE. The Sammy verson of "Shaft Theme" can be found on Rhino Records' "Golden Throats: Part Two" compilation.]