Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (14 page)

Without collecting my thoughts or gathering any composure, I called Mohammed while simultaneously spitting up.

“Please come over here,” I cried, and gave him the address.

Twenty minutes later he was knocking on the front door, which, of course, made both dogs jump up and down like a couple of lunatics. I opened the door feeling incredibly sorry for myself and, once again, burst into tears.

“These dogs are gonna drive me to drink!”

“What happened to your knees?” he asked, noticing I had a piece of bathroom tissue covering each knee, both soaked in B-positive blood.

“Daisy escaped and I had to run down the hill in my shoes, and it wasn’t pretty.”

He was very sweet with me, giving me a hug and then taking the dogs into the living room and letting them jump all over him in an effort to allow me some time to comport myself. I went in the bathroom and cleaned myself off, and when I came out, Mohammed was outside throwing the tennis ball with the dogs. He came inside with them when he saw me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I can’t understand why I am always falling all over the place,” I said, sitting down on the sofa. “You’d the think the advantage of having eight years of tap on my side would help me with some of the coordination challenges I seem to regularly find myself up against.”

“I take it you’re feeling better. Do you think you might cry again?”

“Yes,” I said, as the dogs ran over to me, jumping up and down. The big one was at least cute, and as annoying as she was, you couldn’t get mad at a golden retriever. The little Peekapoo, on the other hand, wasn’t attractive on any level, and that, combined with his high-pitched squeal, made me want to throw him against a wall.

“I feel bad about the feelings I’m having toward this little shit dog,” I told Mohammed while simultaneously rubbing Pepper’s head. “I don’t want to hurt him, but I really feel like if I have to stay here for three days, I’m going to kill one of them or myself.”

“Well, you should definitely not kill one of the dogs,” he said. “You could go to prison.”

“Thanks.”

“That dog is really stupid. I don’t understand people’s obsession with little dogs,” he said. “I’ll stay here with you.”

“Thank you,” I told him, flattered he would be willing to support me in that way. “Is there any chance you would sleep here by yourself?” I asked him.

“No.”

What I did remember from last time is that Pepper spent the majority of the night crying in his cage like a little bitch, but I wasn’t about to give Mohammed the heads-up on that one.

“They have the DVD box set of all four seasons of
Sex and the City
,” I said. “Wanna watch?”

“No.”

“What about all five seasons of
Saved by the Bell
?”

“Fine.”

We walked into their media room and closed the door, leaving the dogs in the hall to fend for themselves. It was time for a break. As we were watching one of the episodes I turned to Mohammed. “Who would you rather have sex with, Screech or Star Jones?”

“Star Jones now, or before her gastric bypass?”

“Before.”

“Who’s giving and who’s taking?” he asked.

“Screech is giving, and you’d have to go down on Star Jones for one hour…after she went jogging.”

“I choose both,” he said.

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

“Wanna have sex in their bed?” he asked.

“Well, yeah, but it’s gonna have to be a quickie,” I told him. “I need to run some errands.”

We walked out of the media room, and of course the moment the dogs heard the door open they were running down the hallway from the living room, drooling all over the place. We went into the bedroom, and I put Pepper in his crate. “Are the sheets clean?” Mohammed asked.

“Yes.”

“Then why are they covered in dog hair?” he asked, throwing the comforter on the floor.

“Gross. I really think dogs are unsanitary,” I said. “I think it’s actually only the comforter. The sheets should be clean.”

“They are,” he agreed, inspecting them. “What do you think is worse? Allowing them to sleep in the bed with you, or putting them in a cage?”

“Allowing them to sleep in the bed with you. By the way, Daisy sleeps in the bed.” Pepper started yapping again and I walked over and let him out of his cage. We jumped into bed and started fooling around. Within seconds, both dogs were on the bed with us.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said.

“Go get them out of the room and close the door,” he suggested.

“Just forget it,” I said, losing interest and getting dressed. “I have to go pick up my dry cleaning anyway. Just take your nap, and we’ll go out to dinner. We’d have better luck having sex in your car.”

“I’m open to that.”

I grabbed my keys and headed to the door as the dogs engaged in the same tug-of-war routine that happened when anyone entered or left the house. Once inside my car, I looked down at my black pants that I had changed into after my downhill slalom only to discover I was completely covered in Daisy’s hair. I was starting to feel like a real asshole.

An hour later I came back to the house and walked inside. Surprisingly, Daisy was the only one who accosted me upon opening the front door. I walked into the bedroom and found Mohammed lying in bed, still with his clothes off, watching
Dr. Phil
with Pepper cuddled up next to him.

“This dog can’t get enough of me,” he said, laughing.

“Why are you letting her in the bed? Those sheets are clean; they’re gonna get all smelly.”

“It’s a he, and apparently he’s gay,” Mohammed declared, still laughing.

“Oh, really?” I asked him. “When did you start speaking Peekapoo?”

“Right after he licked my huge penis.”

“I really hope you’re kidding,” I said, hanging my dry cleaning in the closet.

“No, actually.”

I turned around and walked back into the room. “You let Pepper lick your penis?”

“He just did it. I didn’t whip it out. I was lying here watching Dr. Phil, who, by the way, has some anger management issues. Doesn’t his wife Robin look like she’s been hypnotized? I feel like he goes home and beats her. The guy’s an egomaniac, and he’s not doing a very job of covering it up by pretending to be interested in other people’s problems.”

“Can we get back to you and Pepper, please?”

“I was lying here and
he
jumped up and came right for me. I picked him up and threw him on the floor, but he came back again, and, to be honest, it didn’t feel so bad.”

There was a long silence while I stared at Mohammed, who for some reason thought this was hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing. I didn’t find it amusing…. Maybe a little, but I wasn’t about to let him know that until I found out exactly how far they had gone.

“Are you telling me that you hooked up with a Peekapoo?”

“I wouldn’t call it hooking up, but yes, I would say there was a line that was crossed, and I blame Pepper.”

“Mohammed, that is disgusting and foul. Did you climax?”

“No!” he said. Now he was laughing so hard he was crying. All the while, Pepper was nuzzling up against his neck in a postcoital embrace.

“If a grown man is going to hook up with a dog, you’d think he’d at least pick a respectable-size one,” I said, looking at Daisy, who was lying on the floor hiding her head shamefully. “And can you please get him away from your neck? That is really creeping me out.”

“I didn’t initiate it, Pepper did. And besides, it was for two seconds. It’s not like he gave me a blow job.”

“Well, it sounds like a blow job to me,” I told him.

“Well, maybe it ‘sounds like a blow job’ to you, because that’s what you think one is.”

“Oh, that is low. That is really low.”

“I’m kidding!” he yelled.

“No, you’re not. You’re not kidding. You’re not the first person to mention my lack of enthusiasm for blow jobbing, and I’ll be perfectly honest with you, maybe it’s not my specialty, but making me feel bad about it sure isn’t going to help me blow job better.”

“I wouldn’t actually call what you do a blow job, Chelsea. It’s more of a kiss job.”

“Oh, that’s just great. What kind of person lets a dog lick his penis? That’s bestiality.”

“No, Chelsea, bestiality is having sex with an animal.” Then Pepper jumped up and ran down to his groin, obviously wanting more. This sent Mohammed into a huge eruption of hysterics.

“You have some serious problems and you should really think about talking to someone. Possibly a vet. And I’m not talking about the ones from Vietnam,” I told him.

“It’s not like I was walking around swinging my dick in the air, taunting him. It was an accident!”

“How someone lets a dog lick his penis
accidentally
is about as believable as me
accidentally
joining a flag-football team.”

“I would believe that. I think you’ve proven once again today that your hand-eye coordination is tantamount only to Oksana Baiul and Tiger Woods.”

“This isn’t funny. I leave for an hour and you hook up with a dog? You obviously can’t be trusted,” I declared, shrugging my shoulders.

“Well, at least I stopped him when he went around to lick my ass.”

“Okay,” I said as I walked over, picked Pepper up, and tossed him in his cage. “How many times did he lick it?”

“Three or four.”

“Your ass or your penis?”

“My penis three or four; my ass, I stopped him before a full lick. I thought that was going too far.”

“And did you do anything to Pepper?”

“Chelsea, please.”

“Chelsea, please? Please what? I think these are reasonable questions to ask someone who’s been intimate with a canine.”

“No! I did NOT DO ANYTHING TO PEPPER…” Then, after a significant pause…“A little smack on the ass.”

“That’s lovely.” For dramatic effect, I crossed my arms and moved my head in a circular motion like a seagull. “How do you feel about yourself?”

“I feel great,” he said, changing the channel. “The problem is, Pepper liked it a lot, and he obviously has feelings for me. It’s not going to be easy to wean him.” Now Pepper was whining in his crate, staring at Mohammed, beckoning for him to come to his rescue. “It’s okay, little buddy, we’ll let you out again, once Chelsea calms herself down,” Mohammed told him in some sort of gross Persian baby talk.

“Please stop talking to the dog like that.”

“Does it make you jealous?” he asked.

“No, it makes me nauseous.”

My cell phone rang and I walked over to my purse to get it, all the while keeping my eyes on Mohammed and Pepper. The big dog was holding her head in both of her paws, still not ready to face the situation.

“Yello?” I answered as I picked up the phone.

“I am a real loser,” was the first thing Ivory said.

“Why?” I asked, unmoved, as this was not an uncommon way for her to begin a conversation.

“I just woke up alone in my bed with my pants around my ankles, my vibrator in between my legs, and my glasses on.”

“You just woke up?” I asked, looking at the clock. “It’s five o’clock!”

“That’s not really the point.”

“Well, don’t feel too bad about yourself,” I said, returning to the death stare I was giving Mohammed. “Mohammed hooked up with a dog.”

“Chelsea!” he hissed as he tossed a pillow at me.

“What kind of dog?” Ivory asked.

“A Peekapoo.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah.”

“Chelsea, shut up, do not tell your friends that!” he said as he got of bed and started to run after me.

“That’s right,” I told her, scurrying out of the bedroom. “And he liked it!”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Mohammed’s penis swinging in the wind while he was chasing me down the hall, making that the second time in my life since I was seven that I had been chased by a penis.

“That’s pretty disgusting. I’m feeling a little better about myself now,” was the last thing she said before he grabbed the phone out of my hand, hung it up, and then tackled me to the floor. By this time Daisy had come out of her comatose state and was coming to my aid.

“You better watch your ass,” I yelled at him in between breaths. “Here comes another dog!”

Once we both caught our breaths, he urged me not to divulge this information to any of my other friends.

“You made your bed, now you have to get blown by a dog in it,” I told him. “I just don’t understand why you would do something like that.”

“I thought it was funny, and you do too.”

“You’re mistaken.” There was something very unsettling about what had taken place. Even more unsettling than walking in on my father’s forty-five-year-old black housekeeper cleaning his kitchen in her underwear, with my mother obliviously knitting on a sofa in the living room and my father watching the cleaning lady through binoculars from another sofa twenty feet away.

“Oh, please, I had a cousin whose wife let her dog go down on her,” Mohammed informed me.

“What? What are you talking about?! This isn’t something that happens on a regular basis, Mohammed! Not in the United States, anyway. I mean, things like this happen, but mostly with horses, and mostly in the south. And by the way,” I added, “people go to prison for it. I understand there was no penetration, and maybe this is big in the Middle East, but I would really appreciate it if you took a shower and got dressed. Somehow, I’ve developed an appetite.”

Ivory called me back an hour later and said she was invited to a party in Malibu. “Bring the doggies; it’s outside, and I’d love to see them.” The fact that she had any interest in seeing dogs she had never met made me realize she was really desperate for company.

Later that afternoon Mohammed and I grabbed the dogs, put them in his SUV, and drove out to Malibu. The house was big and beautiful, like most houses in Malibu, and belonged to some actor who I’d never heard of before. I spent most of the time inside, talking to Ivory and Lydia, and then I decided I should go find Mohammed.

I found him lying on a chaise lounge by the pool, with Pepper in his arms and Daisy nowhere in sight. “What are you doing?” Judging from his closed eyes and the smile on his face, I had woken him from a wet dream. “Where’s Daisy?”