Time Fries! (16 page)
Authors: Fay Jacobs
My house is now a Schnauzer geriatric ward. Like us, my boys are aging fast, but since dog years fly by faster than human ones, our house is in the full throes of canine old age. Paddy is 13 and Moxie is 14. I can hardly believe it. It seems like only yesterday they were teething on the furniture. These days, they're gumming.
Moxie's deaf and Paddy's blind, so between them they're one guard dog. Both boys still eat like animals, can sniff a Thrasher's french fry at 90 yards, and enjoy a moderate amount of exercise. When they wake up and discover strangers in the house they still go into their vicious guard dog routine despite the fact our guests have been in the building for hours.
It's also possible a little doggie dementia is going on, so they just as often bark hysterically in the middle of the night when absolutely nothing is happening. For a while we'd leap up, on full alert, ready to call 911, but now we just humor them, roll over, and try to sleep. Sometimes I think it's merely Paddy hearing Moxie snore. That dog needs a sleep study and a breathing device.
And if a doorbell goes off on television, Paddy jumps straight up into the air, alerting Moxie with his movement and both of them knock themselves senseless with the furniture they're under.
The Golden Years really began when Paddy couldn't walk by the water bowl without filling up or get through the night without emptying out. He's a full-on diabetic now, requiring us to administer two daily insulin injections.
There's a reason I'm a writer and not a health care provider. Squeamish-r-us. Based on our abilities, I'd say that Bonnie is the one who gives the skilled care around here. I'm more like the janitor.
But given our crazy schedules, both doggie parents had to
learn to give the injections. Bonnie was a natural. As for me, I'd close my eyes, steel myself, and stab the dog, who wouldn't even notice. But, I really should get my own eyes checked, because more often than not, when putting the cap back on the needle I stab myself in the thumb and shriek in a decibel level even Moxie can hear.
One day, the phone rang as I prepared to inject the insulin and behind my back the dogs switched food bowls. Believe me, when I gave Moxie the booster shot in the butt he was one surprised little Schnauzer. I panicked, calling the vet, hollering about giving insulin to the wrong patient.
“Don't worry,” said the doctor, “just give Moxie a little sugar.” I gave him a marshmallow Peep and he's been a Peepoholic ever since.
And what do we do with all those used needles? You can't just throw them in the trash. Between trips to the animal hospital to turn them in, we keep them in a big plastic pretzel jar. It looks like a candy dish for the Addams Family.
Setting a dog's insulin level is harder than for a human. And, until we found the right dose, Paddy gave us quite a winter. At its worst, he was up every two hours to pee. For a while, Bonnie and I took turns getting up and neither of us had a decent night's rest. Then we alternated for a whole night, making me a zombie only every other day. And it's a good thing it was a mild winter. We spent most nights in the yard in our pajamas.
Finally, we tried cutting a tail hole in Depends and it worked pretty well. Vanity is me, I cannot go through the Food Lion checkout without saying, “They're for my dog.”
As for Moxie, at first I accused him of being passive aggressive. He wouldn't come when called but would respond instantly if I opened a bag of Utz potato chips. As an aside, Bonnie believes this about me, too, and she may be right. But for Moxie, I learned that voice pitch is the first to go, so I have cut him a break on responding to commands. If I need him in a hurry I'll rip open Doritos. Sometimes he hears me if I talk in
a basso profundo like Tallulah Bankhead.
Also, just like their human counterparts, if the dogs could talk, they'd sit around discussing their ailments. I can just imagine Moxie complaining about his hearing deficit, and saying, “Come again?” when Paddy asks him to be his seeing-eye dog. They are co-dependent in a good way.
It was clear the twilight years were upon us when, last week, a bird flew into our sun room and neither dog noticed it. Up to that point it was Schnauzers 4, birds 0. Likewise, no bunnies were harmed in the making of this spring in Rehoboth.
Here at Schnauzerhaven Assisted Living, of course we offer free transportation within the area to doctors' appointments and the local beauty salon. We provide assistance with bathing and dressing (“Does this collar make me look fat?”), plenty of recreation and exercise. Frankly, it's 24-hour care.
Which all goes to say that I know we are on borrowed time here. I call Paddy my dog with nine lives. I think he's on seven. In the past year he's had several urinary infections, a variety of stomach ailments, and numerous glucose tests. By this time I could have paid for a new Mitsubishi.
And it's a good thing this deadline is just days before publication, âcause between now and then anything can happen. So we're trying to be good sports around here. We lament having two dogs of roughly the same old age, but we try to keep our senses of humor at our canine assisted living facility.
I want to know whether we're eligible for respite care.
I want to do one of those
It Gets Better
ads, telling our gay kids that not only does it get better, it can get freakin' fabulous.
For me, the past two weeks have been a tale of two cities, Rehoboth and New Orleans, awash in gay culture and energized by our community.
We made our annual trip to the Saints & Sinners literary conference in N'awlins and I'm surprised to report that we were slightly more saint than sinner this year, foregoing an excess of bar-hopping for rest and relaxation at the hotel pool.
On the town, we found making friends a snap. We hadn't been in the gayborhood five minutes, with our first Hurricanes placed on the bar before us, when a young man leaned over to me and said, “Drink your juice, Shelby.” This steel magnolia, who uttered this signature line from
Steel Magnolias
, was from Texas and knew that line was universal gay speak. Before long we were buds, with plans to meet up the next night. I love our gay culture!
At dinner time, we found a restaurant without a liquor license which encouraged patrons to bring their own. We used our half hour wait for a table to amble to the gay bar down the block and order cocktails to go. I still smile every time I walk down a New Orleans street carrying a roadie.
“We need plastic cups,” I told the bartender, “We're taking them to dinner at the corner.”
“Take a real glass, honey, have fun and return it later,” came the reply. We took the finery, had the fun and returned the glasses later, along with having a wee nightcap (and this was our year to be less sinnerly!).
But all good things must end, so we arrived at the airport at noon Sunday to find our flight home viciously overbooked. We heeded the call for volunteer bumpees, rewarded by free round trip tickets to anywhere AirTran flies. Woo-Hoo!
The down side was spending the next seven hours trapped in the vicinity of Gate 16. There was nothing to do but eat and drink and listen to funky NOLA jazz on the airport speakers. Not so bad, actually. We spent our incarceration reading a little, but mostly chowing down on alligator sausage, po' boys, and the ubiquitous red beans and rice. Oh yeah, we met some other Friends of Dorothy on the concourse and had some laughs along with our copious Cajun cuisine. By flight time I feared our stomachs exceeded the size limit for carry-ons and we would be consigned to the baggage compartment.
We got home just in time to continue the over-indulgence on Rehoboth's much heralded Memorial Day weekend.
As I sat under an umbrella at the girl's beach, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of lesbians, I couldn't help thinking, probably for the zillionth time in the 18 years I've been enjoying that beach, about my good fortune.
If, when I was going through the teeth gnashing and angst of coming out, some 35 years before, somebody had told me I would someday be on a beach, with a great group of friends, surrounded by this many other lesbians, I would have told them they were effing crazy. But here we were. Not only does it get better, but it gets freakin' fantastic.
And I was thrilled to see the staggering number of young lesbians, poised to carry on Rehoboth's reputation as Gayberry RFD (even though they don't know the reference!) for generations to come.
A second weekend event found us at a block party amid a terrific crowd of folks, gay, straight, young, not-so-young, all enjoying the perfect weather and picnic buffet. One family had a keg in the backyard. Now I missed a lot of keggers back in the day, during my angst-riddled college years. As I pumped the keg's plunger and helped fill many a cup for my friends and myself, I saw the irony. Collecting Social Security and being at a keg party seemed perfectly compatible.
It was at the last event of the weekend where this It Gets Better tale peaked. Bon and I attended a big party at the home
of women we've known casually, but not well. One of the hostesses caught me and Bon on our way out the door and told me the most amazing tale.
Her homophobic dad was forced by circumstances to come to live with her and her partner. It was tense and uncomfortable. But, in a chance encounter, one day, her dad found one of my books on the back of the porcelain horse in the, ahem, library, (which, I have always said is the perfect place for them, short chapters and all) and he began to read. He laughed a little, read a story or two about the consequences of homophobia, and then laughed a little again. After finishing the book, he had some questions, and his attitude about gays began to change for the better. He got better.
Now I don't know if I deserve all the credit the hostess bestowed, because I'm sure these delightful gals, in a loving and committed relationship, showed Dad the best of marriage equality for themselves. But the story made me proud that my long ago choice to write honestly, in the first person, telling about the fun as well as the frustrations of gay life in Rehoboth may have actually done some good. Hearing that I make people laugh is fun. Hearing that I make them understand, is extraordinary.
So if you know any tweens, teens, or young adults grappling with coming out or coming to terms with gender issues, or whatever else they may be grappling with on the continuum of GLBTQ whatever, tell them I said, “It gets better. And after that, it gets even better than better.”