Instead, I live in a small adobe house right smack-dab in the center of a middle-class neighborhood. The neighbors to my left are a husband and wife, and they’re seventy-year-old nudist racists who like to have swinger parties in the hot tub of their backyard. They’ve invited me over for a couple of the parties, but I’ve seen the type of people that show up. When that much of your body has fallen because of gravity and you’re still wearing clothes, I can only imagine what your balls will look like hanging down by your ankles. I politely decline each invitation. Each time there is a party, though, I sit at my front door with a spray bottle filled with water, ready to spritz any randy old people who want to have a bone sesh in my driveway. So far it hasn’t happened, but I did wake up one morning, went outside to get the mail, and found an empty travel-size lube packet near my mailbox. I went back inside, got gloves and bleach, and scrubbed down the mailbox, trying hard not to gag at the images in my head of two old people wearing chaps boning against it.
After that guy told me I had a ghost who perioded (that’s a word I just made up; doesn’t it sound gross?) all over my house, I thought it best that I get a pet to protect me and keep me company since I decided to swear off men for at least seventeen years. I briefly considered getting a cat, but then decided against it because I didn’t want to be one of those people. You know what I mean. My grandmother, Gigi (Mom’s mom), was one of them. She’d make tuna fish and then sit in her old chair, which smelled like Bengay and broken dreams, and chew it, then open her mouth and let her cat eat it right then and there. She said it was because Mrs. Tingles was too old to chew her own food and she wanted to give her a treat. I told her I was the only person in the world who had a grandmother who made out with her cat and smelled like fish while doing so. My grandmother wondered aloud if that made her a lesbian.
When she died, I was kind of sad. The cat, not my grandmother. Gigi is still alive. She has a homophobic parrot now. His name is Johnny Depp. When I went over to her house to meet him for the first time, the first thing Johnny Depp did was squawk at me, “Pray the gay away!” while my grandma giggled from behind his cage. Gigi swears up and down he was like that when she got him, and I almost believe her, because she doesn’t have a hateful bone in her body. She likes everyone, for the most part. But it’s kind of hard to go to see her now, since Johnny Depp screams, “Here comes the rump ranger!” every time I walk into her house.
So instead of getting a cat to make out with or a parrot that is one step away from committing hate crimes, I went to get a dog. I told myself when I went to the shelter that I was going to get a big dog because big dogs make you manlier. No teacup Chihuahuas for this homo, no, sir! I stomped into the ASPCA and told them in my deepest voice that I was there to adopt a German shepherd! No, a Rottweiler! No, a pit bull! I told the lady I would take the manliest pit bull they had and that I would name him Snarl or Stab or Meat Eater and I’d get him a collar with spikes on it.
The lady at the front desk asked me calmly if I was part of a dog-fighting ring. I felt properly rebuked and apologized, telling her no, I just needed a dog to live with me and my menstrual ghost. She must have thought the phrase menstrual ghost was somehow referring to me because she asked if I was pre-op or post-op transgender. I almost reached over and plucked the two gross black hairs growing out of her chin. But she looked so pleased with herself that she was showing the world how open-minded she was that I couldn’t bear to rip out those gnarly hairs or break her heart, so I told her I was post-op and that my name used to be Chaz Bono and that I missed my menstrual cycle more than I thought I would. She reached over and rubbed my arm soothingly and told me she’d help me find an “animal companion” to help me forget all about the vaginal bleeding. “After all,” she said, laughing, “we women have to stick together, even if one of us has an artificially constructed penis now. Girl power!”
A golden retriever named Duke caught my eye almost right away. His coat was so bright and pretty under the lights, and he sat there and preened when I smiled. He chuffed a bit, obviously playing up his part. He knew he looked good and he knew I knew it. I almost said he was the one, but then I heard a squeaking noise coming from the next cage. Duke turned his head to the right and growled and then looked back at me with soulful eyes. The squeak came again and Duke all but snarled.
I was curious so looked into the next cage. Inside was a mutt of some kind, pretty small and scrawny-looking. He was almost all black except for random white spots of hair on his back and face. His front right leg was white, like he was wearing only one sock. But then I saw he didn’t have back legs and that the squeaking sound I’d heard were the wheels of a little contraption that hooked to the back of his body and allowed him to move. When he saw me looking in at him, he started wiggling his butt back and forth, causing the wheels to tilt every which way and clack on the cement floor. It was only then I saw he didn’t have a tail, either.