I am talking to my dog White Fang the way old lovers do, with total honestly, as if God is listening in to these matters of the heart, which is where our brutal truths spend the afternoon.
“Why are you always trying to kill stuff?” I ask her. “Other dogs, possums, muskrats, squirrels, coyotes, apparitions, fresh ideas, my attempts to break through your stoic nature.”
As with lovers, White Fang half listens. Yet she listens.
Fang and I have been through some stuff lately. She blew out a back wheel just as I was struggling with some male plumbing issues.
Favorite moment: I’m pulling myself together after a rough post-surgical night, and I hear her tussling outside with a coyote, using the woof-woof-woof that has become our all-hands code.
Now, if I lose this dog, I lose everything. She is my connection to my late son, she is my sidekick, my snooze muse. When I nap, she naps.
So I grab my special coyote bat, the old Easton Z-Core at the front door, and limp into the yard to save her — and the coyote — from any possible harm.
I twirl the bat over my head like a drum major, chasing the confused coyote down the street in the half light of dawn.
Did I mention I am in my underwear?
If you outsiders have ever wondered what life is really like in Los Angeles, I’ve just given you a solid snapshot. We have bears, lions, bobcats and about 100 kinds of gophers. Each day is a standoff between nature and crazed drum majors like me.
And in the evenings, I stand out in the back yard, a tiara of olive trees circling the house, to prevent hawks from swooping in and snatching tiny Stuart Little.
Have you met Stuart Little? He is the third leg of the love triangle I’m currently in with this Suzanne. She and Stuart were already engaged when we met, and now this micro-dog is under my covers.
FYI, I don’t let my own dog in bed. Yet, Stuart seems to have VIP privileges, based solely on his insistence that he found Suzanne first.
It’s not the worst thing. The worst thing, of course, is cancer. The second worst thing is unbridled nuclear war. Stuart Little is, at the most, the third worst thing that could ever happen to a person, yet there I stand in the backyard, in my bare feet and my Clark Griswold pajamas, protecting him from hungry red-tailed hawks.
Some boyfriends would hold Stuart Little over their heads, just to make it convenient for the hawks. Not me, for I’ve grown to actually love Stuart Little. No explanation for this exists. It would be like falling in love with colonoscopies.
Suze is appreciative of this, though she doesn’t quite understand it either. But who understands love? We rarely see it coming. Then we can’t let it go. True love is like the extra five pounds you put on while watching a Chris Farley movie.
As you may know, I have a small and tired heart, misshapen from years of rooting for the wrong teams and voting for the wrong causes.
I believe in happy outcomes, which is also hard on the human heart.
I also believe in all the variants of modern love. I believe the guy should get the girl, the girl should get the girl, the guy should get the guy.
Who’s to say why we care, or whom we should care for?
To dictate human love might be the worst tyranny of all.
Just be glad the human heart endures. It’s the last hope for a struggling culture. Sometimes it feels like the last remnant of God.
I mean, who saw this lacy Suzanne coming along, with a smile like polished pewter? Witty, warm, smart. A phenom. Romantic royalty. A keeper.
The other day, after grabbing coffee, she complained about being chilly, so I pulled my shirt off and gave it to her.
This created quite a stir in the little neighborhood, the shirtless man carrying a strawberry smoothie. As I warned Suze when we started dating: “Look at me, I’m no Hemingway.”
The best part was the passer-by who spotted me literally giving Suze the shirt off my back. He got the biggest laugh out of it, then gladly snapped a keepsake photo for us when we asked.
I think he was relieved to see that love and chivalry aren’t dead. In fact, they’re thriving.
Well, for now anyway.
Need a laugh or a lesson? Please check out my books, “Daditude” or “What the Bears Know,” available online or (preferably) in your favorite bookstore (Pages, Vroman’s, Chevalier’s among my faves).
Warming to know that chivalry, class, love, and wolf wrangling still live
Thank you for this today’s column, which has brightened an otherwise rain-drenched morning. It made me laugh quite a few times. Your description of yourself swinging a baseball bat over your head while chasing a coyote down the street in your underwear is quite a mental image!
I’m glad that you were so galant as to give Suze the shirt off your back. Very chivalrous, indeed –and documented to boot.
I hope that you and White Fang are both mending well from recent surgeries or injuries.
So kind, Kay. Both of us doing much better. Stuff like that sure makes you appreciate the simple things, like health and friendship. Hugs.
When I look at those two precious pup faces, ain’t no mystery to me why they stole your heart. And Suzanne? Yeah. Definitely a keeper and worthy of the shirt off your back and so much more. Both of you have endured so much unimaginable loss. But your big hearts full of love for each other, your families and those pups keep you moving through life with new sources of joy. So happy for you both and grateful you choose to let us in on your happiness.
Lovely and wonderful column, Chris. I laughed out loud and nodded my head: yes, get that baseball bat, get outside in your underwear and rescue Fang — and the coyote, too, probably. Sounds like a regular time in the foothills! Yes, to human love. Yes to taking off your shirt to protect your lady love. Gosh, isn’t life grand?
Heal up, and you all be well and happy.
And, say, you look good shirtless! What a thought. I wish I looked that good at my age!
Rock on, Chris.
Reyn Spooner shirt? I’m impressed!
think about it another way. One day Wolf dog will ned to be with your son more than you……And you will be OK
Taking a picture of you half naked public, on the gol darned internet?!? What bold and brave move HAVEN’T you done yet, scribe extraordinaire?
sometimes I over share
At first I was terrified you’d gone Robert Kennedy Jr. on us. Hugely relieved to understand the reason. One question: was this act of chivalry committed in La Cañada, which still has a certain frontier laissez faire attitude toward partial nudity, or was it on Suzanne’s West Side, where this kind of thing can get you thrown into a cell with Nick Nolte? (Loved the tiara of trees, btw.)
West Side, where anything goes.
What a great read today!! Dizzy for dogs…..love the two beasts!
Lovely Fang — pls. keep her away from Coyotes! Little little also needs to be protected from Owls as well — as they get hungry!!
Thanks for the laughs — keep on keepin’ on Chris!!
Dizzy for dogs. Love that.
Didn’t even consider the owls. Keeping a close eye on little Stuart.
I’ve always had large dogs—Shepard/ Husky derivatives, so the smaller breeds popular now without limit have seemed intimations of canine plurality to me. you can create a new breed, breeding for type, in seven crosses. The many variations of “Doodles” are everywhere, and they’re beautiful, active but even tempered, smart as dogs go, and don’t shed. The AKC used to have 50(?) some recognized breeds; there could be 400 now, for all I know. Stuart Little looks like a spritz who could wrap in a fur muff and qualify on AA flights as a comfort dog. He may be imitation canine but love does not require bona fides, so I understand: they worm their way in to your bed…. Like others do…… you wake up, roll over, and they’re under the covers, looking at you like they belong there forever. like the song says, “When a lover you discover at the gate, my friend, invite her in without a second look”. As in human affairs, gender is yet another matter. If I were Fang, I wouldn’t be jealous though. Type will out. Nice rain, hmmmmmm?
Speaking of rain……
November Storm
The incomparable elixer
Of all things is raining and misting
Down upon us, dissolving the last
Reluctant vestiges of Autumn’s
Sere largess, lubricating the air
With its icy lavage of crystal
Clarity, bathing light in a sheen
Of glossy shimmering cloudy haze
The better to disguise the gray knife
Of Winter waiting to slice the hours
Into shivering bits of minutes
Ticking down the seconds into snow;
This first storm of Autumn is a river
Redolent with the turbulent sting
Of atmospheric chill from the past–
Straight from an old arctic’s sweeping numb
Remembrance–vast eons of water
Frozen and sleeted–in icy snowfall
And briny dissolution unseen
By the mortal eye; ages of blaze
Of arctic sun–time’s dull liquid–rife
With metallic isolate powers
Form a golden autumn dress that shuts
The door on Summer’s torch before you know
What cloth does to sweet bare heated flesh–
Its fluid fabric a liquid mesh
Like a storm covering paradise
With water’s heaven, also its ice;
It seems, like love, that’s also its price…
Giving your shirt to Suzanne was one of the most Celtic things you’ve done and told us about, and one of the nicest.