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Love No Preposition
Do not, I repeat, do not tell Mark's girlfriend up there in the hills above Santa Cruz that I am torturing animals here in New Orleans. She never understood the necessity of my BB gun campaign against wild dogs so let's just assume that she would also totally not dig me torturing chained up animals.
I left my (Mark's) BB gun and my shotgun in Virginia because especially in regards to that shotgun loaded with hollow point slugs I was mentally exhausted from the mindset that would for any reason permit me to use it against another human being. I'm not saying I can't still see the reason why such a thing would be necessary but I just don't want to keep seeing that. I don't want to live with that freak that sets himself up in a vulnerable position and then says to the world of harm-givers--come fuck with me. This is a great place, New Orleans is, to live out that Charles Bronson fantasy but I'm thinking now that if there is a local bullet or two meant for me that I would rather be fantasizing about peace and love when it comes. In which case I only have to drop a preposition, and hope for the best.
Shortly before I left Virginia I was in an antique store outside of Sperryville with Mr. BC's wife and we split up and looked at the tons and tons of stuff we would never buy before rejoining for imminent departure and I was fingering the brown wooden handle of this really beautiful ten dollar machete and Mr. BC's wife suggested I was getting into my New Orleans mood and I said oh no, I have left that behind, and I'm not bringing it back with me when I return here in the spring. That's what I say anyway.
Sometimes he just won't shut up, and I know it's only a cat or a distant barking dog that sets him off, Killer that is. Watchdog hipped up long ago, good Watchdog. If I clank a pot in the kitchen it can set Killer off. I live here dammit, Killer. I live here. This is my home. I am a human being. Please shut up. And then I start yelling at him because he is so relentless in his barking. Twenty, thirty minutes straight he can go on. I have no doubt that some people have better success at pretending they are above evil thoughts but I gave up on that for good after that string of hallucinations I had when I was quitting my twenty-year cigarette habit a few years ago.
I'll put some downers in a piece of meat, here puppy.
No, I'll shoot him dead, dammit, why did I leave that gun behind.
I have to do something. Ignoring a problem is like the cigarette smoldering behind the cushions of your couch. So I go out the back door, which really sets him off, and then I hose the bitch down, using my thumb to make the water shoot farther. Killer shuts up. Success. Charges the fence, barking. Failure. I hose the bitch down again, wishing I could find that jet stream nozzle. Killer retreats, stops barking. Success. This process has to be repeated a few more times before I am convinced that, one: it was a good idea, or, two: I am enjoying it too much. Either way, Killer quit all his barking that night.
Last night, taking a break from the hopefulness of my new reading campaign, I am in the bathroom, dancing (like you don't do anything weird?), and Killer starts up. I go to my desk and slide the Winamp bar to 100 percent and then go back to the bathroom and dance through the entire greatest hits of Sly and the Family Stone, imagining just briefly that Killer is my date. I'm not going to get any more weird than that, today.