Walking the Dog

Appropos of nothing, here's another reason to look forward to getting married: never having to hear another lame joke along the lines of "Hey, Cousins, you got cousins? Are your cousins Cousins? Hyuk, hyuk!"

I'm sure Bauhaus holds some fresh new hell, but I don't yet know what that is, other than a constant tendency to mispronounce it and always being asked if Bela Lugosi's dead. But that last one's at least obscure enough to be pretty uncommon.

Anyway.

I'm still too shy to join the workshop group at The Desk Drawer, but I've been perusing the writing exercises and spent all morning coming up with this. Here's the prompt:

For this exercise, take an ordinary event and write it two ways. Make one way a vile, revolting experience, and the other a very pleasant experience. Choose from the ones below or pick your own action.

Lovers’ first kiss
First taste of some kind of food
Putting fuel in your vehicle
Making a sandwich
Receiving a present

Word limit: 1200, 600 each way

Here's my take:


Walking the Dog


The pup picked his way over the grass, stumbling here, sniffing there, taking it all in. He was too new to scamper with confidence, too curious to let a single blade of grass go by uninspected.

Charlie sighed, checked his watch, and chose patience. Nothing else he could do, really; Sara was already attached. And dammit, so was he.

The puppy tripped over a stray twig, rolled, bounded to his feet and came up barking. Charlie found himself grinning. He wasn’t made of stone; he could only resist that level of cuteness for so long. Sara had given him a week before he melted under the pup’s—Gizmo, he corrected himself. Might as well use his name—under Gizmo’s charms. It had only taken three days, truth be told, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Sara.

He glanced respectfully away as Gizmo finally did his business. Gazing down the street, Charlie appreciated the softness of the early sun as it lit up the neighbors’ lawns, enjoyed the breeze that cooled his face and made the summer morning bearable. Soon he’d climb into his car and spend an hour negotiating traffic; then the next eight cooped up in a stale office. But for now it was just him, the dog and the smell of cut grass. He could get used to this new morning routine.

Not that he’d tell Sara.

Thinking back to the fight they’d had when she brought Gizmo home, he felt a little abashed. He’d had plenty reason to be irritated: she hadn’t discussed it with him. She’d picked out a _toy_ breed, for crying out loud. A frou-frou, yappy, high maintenance thing. If she’d brought home a _real_ dog, a lab or a German shepherd or something _useful_, he might not have been so annoyed. But the real reason for his reaction was the real reason she’d decided to get a puppy in the first place: to convince him to want a baby.

Charlie didn’t tolerate small children well, but babies terrified him. He’d made that clear to Sara when they started dating, and plenty of times since. At first she’d agreed. But ever since she became an aunt last year she’d been gradually changing her mind. Now she was trying to change his. “Let’s try this,” she’d said, shoving a wiggly Gizmo into his arms. “They say having a dog can be a lot like having a toddler.”

“Yeah?” said Charlie. “Show me a dog that’s ever had a thirty-minute screaming fit in the middle of Wal-Mart. Besides, dogs don’t wear diapers.”

“You still have to clean up after them.”

“I’d rather scoop up poop in a baggie than wipe it off a kid’s ass any day.”

He considered that sentiment as he looked down at Gizmo, who sat proudly beside his stool and barked up at Charlie. “Yeah, yeah. Good boy,” he said, laughing in spite of himself. He pulled a bag out of his pocket and did his duty as a dog-walker. Then he scooped up the teensy pup, scratching him behind the ears. His reward was an excited face washing. “All right!” he said, holding Gizmo out at arm’s length. “Cool it.” The puppy wagged his tale. Charlie considered him, trying to imagine a tiny human being looking at him with that kind of adoration. His heart warmed a little. He coughed, tucked Gizmo in the crook of his arm, and headed back to the house.

“Might have to start calling you ‘Successful Ploy’,” he said as he went. “But let’s not tell your mom that yet.”

***

The dog took his own sweet time, as usual. Sara gave the leash a small tug. “Do your thing already, Giz.” With her free hand she swatted at a mosquito, then lifted her hair off the back of her neck to give it some air. Then let it go again to swat another mosquito.

They’d had Gizmo for a few weeks now. He hadn’t gotten much bigger, nor would he. Sara marveled at how such a tiny thing could produce so much crap in the course of a single day. She followed the housetraining books to a tee, rushing him outside every time he started to go on the carpet, but he still wasn’t getting it. She wasn’t getting any more patient, or any less sick and tired of cleaning up after him. Catching him right as he started, she always expected to bring him outside and get it over with, but somehow he always needed several minutes to work up to going again.

She rubbed her tired feet. Her long day had gotten longer when she’d arrived home to discover tiny teeth marks all over her favorite pair of Kenneth Coles and a dump on her bedroom floor. In the bathroom, she’d found Gizmo surrounded by shredded toilet paper about to hike his leg on the bath mat. So she’d snatched him up and brought him outside, scolding him along the way.

Now he only wanted to eat grass. She only wanted to sit down.

Fed up, Sara started to reel the puppy in. He started to heave, and before she knew it he emptied his stomach onto the lawn.

She considered leaving it and hoping for rain. Then she considered hosing it off. Finally she sighed and squatted to pick up what she could of the mess with her baggie. The sight and smell of the vomit was enough to activate her gag reflex. The texture through the bag was even worse. She shuddered. As she rose and tied off the bag, she realized that Gizmo was leaving another pile nearby.

Sara stared at the fresh dog doo, wondering whether to use the bag in her hand or go get another one. She thought of the other pile still waiting to be cleaned up in her bedroom. Suddenly she pictured herself cleaning up various forms of shit and vomit every day for the rest of her life—or at least for the rest of her youth—and wanted nothing more than to run inside, curl into a ball, and cry.

She loved her dog. But deep down she knew she wouldn’t put up much of a fight if Charlie wanted to give him away. She also knew at that moment that she wasn’t cut out to do this on a larger scale.

Sara realized she was holding her breath. She let it out, then straightened up and smiled. For the first time since she’d met Charlie, she felt grateful that he didn’t want kids. She crouched again to scratch the puppy’s chest, feeling a million pounds lighter. “Good boy,” she said. “I think you just saved my marriage.”