Dog Days

By Robert Levin

I wanted to be invisible. Out of nowhere, with, I swear, nothing in my history to predict it, I'd done something people regard as sick and disgusting and I wanted to disappear.

I should say that at first I wasn't so sure what I'd done was all that awful, and I certainly didn't concur with the character judgment implicit in such a definition. It didn't seem in my case to be fair. I felt this way because I'd always had an exceptionally inquisitive mind, a mind that, forever in search of the deepest truths, often compelled me to challenge things (the assumption that boundary lines in nature are fixed and inviolable for example) that others never questioned. And that was a good thing, right? What's more - and who would argue with this? - when you call your dog "Maureen" you're clearly asking for trouble. And not only that, hadn't Larry Flynt confessed to the SERIAL RAPING OF CHICKENS without suffering one iota of damage to his reputation?

But I stopped protesting pretty quickly. It was impossible for me to deflect for long the look on the face of Maureen's owner (and my now erstwhile girlfriend) when, on the evening in question, she came home unexpectedly early.

Preoccupied, and with the stereo at full volume, I didn't pick up on the fact that Annie was home until she was suddenly big in the room. Maureen, I realized afterwards, was aware of Annie's untimely return before I was. I saw one of her ears rise and I saw what I also understood later to be a look of apprehensiveness on her face as she turned it towards me. But, and probably because her countenance was open to several interpretations at that moment, her heads up went right by me.

In any event, I hadn't seen the expression on Annie's face since my mother caught me barfing into the family "Important Documents" chest when I was five. The horror it conveyed seemed, in its breathtaking proportions, to have issued from the gods themselves. No, try as I might I couldn't deny it. Diddling Maureen had been an egregious crime that was in no way mitigated by the fact that it was unpremeditated and, for me, unprecedented.

And in the following months (and along with a discombobulated Annie's exclamation: "My God, she's just a puppy!" echoing in my head) I was seeing similar expressions everywhere. Were guilt and shame working their poisons on my psyche or was it true that no one was liking me anymore? I mean no one SEEMED to be liking me anymore for shit. Total strangers I passed on the street all but recoiled at the sight of me. And dogs. What was up with dogs? Dogs had always been as indifferent to me as I was to them. But now, straining at their leashes, they growled deep guttural growls when I walked by. Was it possible that dogs - in ways we've yet to appreciate - were able to communicate to one another, and over great distances, the indignities humans perpetrated on them?

In all manner of torment and confusion, I spent my days scouring my brain in a frantic effort to uncover the reason for my…well…BESTIAL behavior.

What had dispatched me to such a forsaken place?

Could the fact that Maureen had been bathed that morning and that her shimmering coat smelled a lot like Rive Gauche - a fragrance widely known to be irresistibly seductive - been at the bottom of it?

Had the philosopher in me simply chosen a less than auspicious moment to take the leap from rumination to hands-on investigation?

Had I been trying to tell Annie something? Our relationship not going so well, had I been saying to her, "See? This is what happens when you deprive a person of sex."

Was it conceivable that - strict dosage instructions included for a reason - the extra teaspoon of Nyquil I'd taken for a vicious post-nasal drip had caused me to lose my species bearings for a minute?

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