golden retriever

When you’re alone at your house I’ll ring the doorbell. When you answer it there will be nobody there but there will be a dog in a basket. Feed the dog.

When you are on break you will go to the store and at the store you will run into your friend Charlie. Charlie hasn’t seen you for ages and he wants to catch up and you don’t have any plans for lunch yet so you let him take you to Judy’s in Westport. Outside of Judy’s is a Labrador tied to a tree. You have snacks in your purse, bitch. Feed the dog.

When Simon stops calling and the beer runs out, you have to go to the store. You get in your car in your underwear and the leather sticks to your ass. At the store you run into Charlie and he can tell you’re drunk. He tells you he hasn’t seen you in ages and takes you back to his parent’s house. He fucks you on the couch because you aren’t important to him. When it’s over you have to leave and he’s handing you your dress that you got with your sister in White Plains crumpled in a ball in his hands, he’s just finished cleaning himself up with it. Outside his house you kick over his mailbox and relieve yourself in the passenger seat of his mother’s unlocked Mercedes. You walk across the street, Charlie’s neighbor has a terrier. Feed the dog.

When your best friend dies you will go to his funeral. You will wear a black t-shirt and dark sunglasses, you will cry and you will cry. You will go with Simon, Simon will wear a suit that is not his best suit because you’re not important to him. Your parents would not come to the funeral with you and Simon is driving back to Fairfield so you will walk through town alone after the procession. You will want to believe in the beauty of it all but there’s something profoundly empty about it instead, you wanted to kick the big box over but you knew it was empty, the box was empty, you never feed your dog, bitch, you always fucking forget or go to the movies or something or you come home late but your dog’s been eating grass for two hours bitch, your dog was hungry and your dog needed food. Feed the fucking dog, you stupid, stupid bitch. Feed the dog.

When you’re lost and poor in Spain painting children during the day and sobbing into your scarves at night and Simon and Charlie have been married for two years, a dog will follow you home. The dog will be a small and weak and pathetic dog, the dog’s ribs are exposed, the dog is weak, it’s a weak dog. You will let it sleep in your bed. It will grow stronger. It will become your new best friend. It will eat kibble and catch frisbees and bark at strangers. You will bring it to a park and it will play with the other dogs. You take it down a wooded path in the park without a leash on, your dog is excited, it is smelling each and every new thing. You will walk and as you walk coming from the other direction you will see a woman with a big dog on a leash. Her dog is very big and when it sees your dog it will run. The woman walking the big dog will not be noticing and the leash will slip from her fingers. The other dog is a pitbull and it is very fast and it runs after your dog and away from you, away from you and the other woman, there’s nothing either of you can do. Watching it is like watching a movie where the ending is your dead dog. The pitbull will be proud. It will wear blood on its lips. It will drool on your open toes. It has a big ugly drooly nose, sniff sniff, it can smell your fucking treats. Go ahead. Feed the dog.

Later in your mid-sixties you are robbing prostitutes on the streets of Caracas with a .44 in your pocket. You’ve been killing the whores in cold blood for almost thirteen months and still the police have no leads. You are white, you are wrinkled. You are a pear with all the life sucked out of it. You are a something with all the life sucked out of it. You turn the corners of your mouths to smile and what more could somebody expect from somebody as old, miserable, and pathetic as you are. You’ve never been married. Every time you’ve had sex you’ve failed to reach or even imagine orgasm. Your partner comes easily and ties his shoes and eats his breakfast like nothing ever happened. You’re killing a lot of people and you’ll always get away with it as long as it doesn’t make you happy, as long as you don’t go doing something stupid and enjoying it. She’s on her knees and her name is Vanity. There’s a .44 barrel between her teeth. Feed the dog.

You will find yourself in a moment of peace and clarity on 40 mg of Valium and two tabs of LSD, space will cease to be and it will be only you and the dog. The dog is still and silent in unending whiteness, you call to it and it comes. You scratch behind its ears and you rub its belly. You find its fur to be layered with broken glass. When you open your eyes your head is in a microwave and you’ve murdered two or three first-name-basis sorts of people with a baseball bat covered in nails. You don’t remember feeding the dog, but you did, you fed it until it was a fat fucking dog. Your fat dog loves you you fat bitch, you fat fuck. YOU FAT FUCK It’s not like it’s not going to get hungry again later. Fuck. Feed the dog.

You’re getting fucked. It’s good but you’re distracted. His dog is watching. You have to get out of there. You walk down the street completely naked, fluid dripping from your body, the sun is so hot, the road looks like burnt toast, in front of you the air waves and it gets harder and harder. When you turn the corner there’s a Wendy’s and an Old Navy and people are staring. You throw yourself through a pane of glass but it’s an elevator shaft and you fall two stories. You hit the top of the elevator, also made out of glass, and fall through it. You think you’re in a million pieces but through the blood in your eyeballs you can see that the far pieces of flesh in the corners of your sight belong to others, you have fallen in people and they shriek while you soak them in beautiful violence. Blood seems to spurt like a fountain out of your index finger, behind you a senior citizen has a Chihuahua in her purse. Feed the dog.