Like a Dog. Tara Jepsen
sips her scotch and saws off a slice of pork chop. She’s still a pretty big drinker, though not like she used to be. My parents were both big partiers when we were little, having people over most nights of the week and playing their records loudly in the living room. I hated it at the time, but in retrospect it seems cool that they didn’t let kids change their lives too much.
One of their friends, a neighbor, molested my brother for years. Peter started wetting his bed and having nightmares. It went on for two years before the guy’s wife caught him. She kicked him out, and told my parents but it didn’t make anything better. Peter went into counseling at a local church that we didn’t even attend. I never understood how that happened. My dad just started drinking more. He was sullen and spent a lot of time in the garage watching TV, not talking to any of us. My mom pulled back on her drinking and stopped having people over all the time. Peter seemed so sad and alone. I wanted to make him feel better but didn’t know how. He got angry easily and threw fits all the time, and that made me uncomfortable. Hating my wounded brother made me feel like a monster, but I didn’t like how everything would stop the moment he got upset. If we were going out for pizza and he didn’t like his shoes, it would take half an hour of him yelling and crying, and my mom struggling with him while my dad stayed silent until she would finally let him wear his slippers out and we could get pizza, which had lost a lot of its shine by then.
I make myself ask my dad how he’s doing. He answers in his customarily brief manner: “Good.” I feel like I’m part of a procedure. Arrive, greet, sit down, eat one bite at a time. I thought this shit was supposed to be about human connection. I know there are families out there who talk to each other and play board games. I saw Glenn Close on Letterman one time talking about her boyfriend’s family, and how they wore sumo suits and wrestled each other at Thanksgiving. She said they were really fun people. I wanted a playful family of my own.
Peter’s phone rings.
“Pete,” my dad starts.
“One second,” Peter says, holding his finger up and backing up his chair. He disappears into the bathroom.
“So, how’s your job hunt?” My mom asks me.
“I’m doing some babysitting here and there,” I say. “I was thinking I should look into trade school, maybe like plumbing or electrical. Something that pays well, and eventually I can start my own business and make my own schedule.”
“You want to spend your time in other people’s shit?” my dad asks.
“I already do psychically, so why not?”
“Well, you’re being funny, but it’s tough work. You wouldn’t believe how some people live.”
“There’s a chance I would believe it.”
“Can you afford trade school, honey?” my mom asks.
“I don’t know. It’s probably a few thousand dollars or something.”
“I was talking to Sylvia Hernandez last week and she said her daughter Jenny was shocked at the cost of beauty school. It sounded like it was over ten thousand dollars.”
“Gonna be a tough climb for you, Paloma,” my dad says. “You’re aimless, and you have a problem with authority.”
“Thanks for the fucking support, Dad,” I say. I drop my fork on my plate and it clatters loudly.
“Am I wrong?”
“Are you confusing this commentary with parenting?” I shout and push my chair back. Peter comes back in and tries to assess what’s going on.
“Hey, do you mind if we head back to San Francisco kinda soon?”
“Not at all,” I blurt angrily. I look at my mom, who looks down at her lap. My brother walks over to her and gives her a hug from behind, as she sits. He walks over and shakes my dad’s hand. I squeeze my mom’s shoulder, and walk out.
When we’re back on the road, driving through the inky dark, I blink back a few waves of tears. “So who was on the phone?” I ask Peter.
“Oliver. He’s in the Shitty,” he says.
“Good one,” I say. Peter loves calling The City the “Shitty.”
“We’re going to hook up when we get back.”
“Where is he living now?”
“Humboldt County. He’s couch surfing.”
“He still shooting dope?”
My brother doesn’t answer for a while. He stares at the road, and I unreasonably want to scold him severely for making me wait for the answer.
“Probably,” he says finally.
I’m lying in bed back in San Francisco, grumpy as fuck after dealing with my family. My neck hurts and it feels like my left hip is tight. I don’t even know why, though probably from a skateboarding fall. I need to snap out of it, so I try to remember if I’ve ever thought anything was funny. Everything feels so powerfully stupid right now. I know I’ve seen some funny things on TV. I remember watching a Gallagher comedy special over and over when I was a kid. It must have been on HBO or something, and I thought it was the funniest thing of all time. I’ve watched it since, and of course it’s all outrageously sexist, childish humor. But man, the guy was clearly enjoying himself. So what difference did it make to him?
What if I went through life as a truly mediocre stand-up comedian? I start giggling to myself. I mean, what if I had no idea that I was bad at it and found easy satisfaction attending open mics and delivering flat jokes to lukewarm reception? It sounds glorious to have no shame or standards.
I start thinking about what I would do onstage. Maybe I could market myself as a gardener/comedian, the dumbest combo ever. I could wear white Dickies and a white T-shirt with dirt smudges all over them. Maybe some grass stains. A belt full of gardening tools. Maybe a ball cap with the bill pushed up.
“Good evening, I’m Paloma, thanks everybody for coming. I have a question for you. Why is it I can pull weeds out of the ground all day but I can’t weed the jerks out of my life? Maybe I should smoke some grass and figure it out.”
A couple small titters from the crowd.
“I’m just another jerk with a weed whip. I’ll come trim your hedges but if we really get down to business and I mean like fucking, you’ll notice I’m gardener in the streets, hair farmer in the sheets. Full bush on my downstairs! Pubes without borders!”
That one might be hard for people to believe because actually, I am largely hairless. But I think it’s funny.
“I know this isn’t going to be a popular idea but I want to cultivate a secondary full bush out of my butt. I want a giant burst of wiry, filthy hair tufting out of my buns. I then want to trim it into a flat top. Straight buzz cut of the butt. It will look like I have a paintbrush wedged in there or a Dolph Lundgren doll whose feet are wreaking havoc on my tender anal interior.” Because this material directs so much attention to my ass I would have to decide if it’s better to wear flattering white pants or dumpy ones. Does my self-deception also include delusions about my appearance?
“Why is it that so many women who sport a full bush have shaved heads? Isn’t there some kind of policy regarding even distribution of hair?” I wonder if I should find a way to use the word “hirsute” here. It’s such a good word. “I know there is a public idea of Lesbian Hairstyle Choices. Short up on your head, unruly on the V, is clearly a staple of gay lady hair. This is what I have learned from pantsing lesbians. I’d like to see the day that hairstyles are fully disconnected from gender. But more than that, I think I’d just like the idea of a gender binary abolished.” Zing them with an unexpected deep and/or political thought!!
“Why the hell do so many people plant roses? You can get the biggest weirdo, the person who has to research obscure music and thrift bizarre clothes and get novelty coffee mugs, but when you do their garden, they will invariably pick the most generic plants