Men on Couches

    When your cleaning your boyfriend’s blood off the wall, that’s when you figure…something is wrong here.  Something in the great, vast machine we call life is definitely askew.  Things were not supposed to happen this way. You are 33 years old.  At 11:00 pm, you should be just getting ready to go to sleep, the kids already in bed, your loving husband anxiously awaiting to perform his husbandly duties, not cleaning your boyfriends blood off the wall.  Not blood that you spilt, blood that someone else drew from that high cheekbone you love to kiss; red liquid, now browned from hours being unattended, blood that poured from that wide nose you used to rub your turned up, freckled, Irish nose against and giggle at the absurdity of your affection. 
    As you scrub the splashed brown mess from light switch, you think of his eyes and the last moments you saw them.  The one eye that was not egg-swollen and a sick purplish color, that deep fathomless brown and the long dark lash, matted with tears, that eye looked at you from the back of a police car, loved you and was despairing.  Despairing because you know he feels like he has failed in everything and anger is his only true companion.  It saved him from being continuously beaten by his stepfather.  It saved him when the mother of his child went to prison for molesting their 7-year-old son. Anger is his Super Man.  I guess when you are handed such a sad excuse for heroes, you become your own hero and anger is your super strength, hatred is your x-ray vision because you see everything through that distorted lens.  Yes, there is something definitely wrong here.  Your theory is confirmed when the Red Sox lose the National League Championship to the Tampa Bay Rays… and I’m sure that you are thinking the same thing a million Red Sox fans are thinking when they watch Jed Lowrie hit a line drive, leading to the last two outs in the ninth inning… “This is nuts.”
    Fast-forward three months. Adventures. Always adventures with this one.  It’s like all the great metaphors you’ve ever heard or read got together and threw themselves at you and you stood your ground.  In the past few months you have earned your place among all of the believers in love. You have stood strong in your love for this beautiful, barbaric, reckless, tender man when the rest of your world told you that you were “nuts.”  And maybe you are. He’s been in and out of jail, he’s worked for four different companies, but he has the same job he had six-months ago when you first started “dating”.  But you don’t think that’s the correct word for the instant sex and cohabitation which you have participated in with him.  When people look at you in askance at the short time you’ve been with him and all the shit that’s happened, all you can do is shrug and say you love him.  That sounds like a Twinkie defense in the face of such judgment, but your answer is only so vague because there’s not really words for the feelings he inspires in you.  Pain, joy, rage, sorrow, love, fear, ecstasy, all of them rolled into one big hurricane of emotion and you house it all in your little pink heart.  And you’re supposed to try to put it into short concise phrases to ease the minds of  “concerned friends.”  Forget it. You let them think you’re crazy, it just seems easier that way, besides, they can’t understand unless they’ve been there, unless they’ve walked around a bit in your “crazy” shoes.  Some things simply aren’t worth the battle.  And what is your reward for giving up your reputation as a “sane” person.  You get to hold him while you sleep, you get to hold his hand, make love to him, listen to his thoughts, laugh at his jokes, dry his tears, let him dry yours, have him tell you he loves you and misses you when he’s away, have him hold you and say that everything is alright.  So you’re crazy.  Big deal. 
    But there are things that happen between you. Sometimes you fight with him, and you want to ring his bloody neck, sometimes you just want to throw up your hands and say “fuck you and the stupid, shiny steed you rode in on, I don’t need love or a happy ending, or you.”  But you’d be wrong.  There’s some fundamental part of you that needs him more than you need water, or air, or blood. It is written.  Your soul has been caught.  Entwined in the surrealistic last six moths of my life I feel frightened and it is as if it hasn’t even happened.
         But let’s go back a bit…
    I bathe dogs. I’m 33 years old and at this stage in the game I am so fed up with people and their drama that I choose to work with animals.  There is no emotional trauma involved with my job.  Just think.  The biggest puzzle I solve in a day is wondering how neurotic that spazzy little yorkie’s owners are. Now, those of you unfamiliar with the animal behavior world might struggle to understand why this line of thinking occurs to someone whose job it is to give a dog a bath….let me explain.

    First off…let me inform you that animals are smart in a way people are not. Let’s examine the phenomenon of “Dog Grooming.”  We live in a society where this sort of thing is thought of as normal.  Animals—as we all know—were not created tame.  Animals were wild once.  Yes. It’s true.  I find it hard to imagine myself, but there you are.  Animals were never meant to be domesticated, therefore, when you have made enough money in this world to be able to afford spending 75-100 dollars every two weeks bringing your smelly little yorkie somewhere to have a “spa day,” you cannot expect little “Titan” to enjoy himself—not even remotely.  Dogs do not give a shit about “Spa Day.”  Actually, I take that back.  They often give plenty of shit and Your’s Truly get’s to clean it up. I can’t be mad at the dogs, they just want to be at home chasing the cat, sleeping. Licking their asses…and here we come, big dumb humans: “Come on Titan! Let’s go have a bath!”
Jesus. I’d shit anywhere possible just to get it to stop if I was Titan.  But that’s the good part about my job. It’s the dogs. I feel like they need someone who understands the position they’re in.  That’s my job.  These poor dogs come in and they look at me and say with their eyes: “You understand don’t you?  I’m so scared right now that I am going to shit on this table and you will have to clean it. I’m sorry.”  It is a relationship that is based upon mutual need. We both need each other to understand that people suck.
    Which reminds me of the very last man who stayed on my couch (I haven’t forgotten my purpose). This man’s mother used to try to shoot him up with speed to wake him up in the morning.  He wouldn’t let her. Imagine trying to fend off that ray of sunshine every morning as an 8 year old. That’s how much people suck.  That’s why I like my job, it’s nice to know that someone understands, even if that someone has four feet, a tail and shits on my dry-table.

But I digress.

    I’m 33 years old.  The educated type, slightly overweight, I love my cat and reading. I smoke too much.  But I’m smart. And I love a man whose mother tried to shoot him up with speed to get him up for school.  Already you are drawing conclusions. You have my type and his…now throw it all away.  I’ll tell you the real story. You can decide where the truth is afterwards. This is my side at least.

    He came out of the trailer wearing nothing but a pair of cargo shorts and a completely open Hawaiian shirt. You know the breezy, cottony kind, with waves and surfers and hibiscus flowers.  He was eating a bag of chips. Barefoot.  Behold, women of the 21st Century, your Prince Charming.  Well, I’m not exactly Cinderella but that Bitch has poisoned my mind.  I am yet another Disney casualty, and you thought you were the only one. 

    So I take in the scene…shirt, chips, barefeet…and I think, “What do I do?” Now before you say, “run, of course,” remember you don’t know it all yet.