BATHING JOE

An Elegy for Bob, 1946 -1994

The Summer of '94 at French Flat, on a scorching afternoon in mid-July, my brother Bob suggested we bathe his dog Joe, a sixteen year old Kelpie. Since Bob held intractably to the notion that bathing dogs more than once a year destroys their essential skin oils, I hustled to gather the leash, towels, and doggie shampoo before he changed his mind.

Joe - 112 in human years - truly needed a bath. He suffered every affliction of elderly canines: deaf as dirt; a few glimmers short of blind; lumpy with warts and subcutaneous cysts; a penis pointing straight down; a scrotum so saggy his testicles banged against his hocks; prone to drool; given to a seemingly constant flatulence that would be banned under the Geneva Accords; and possessed of what the genteel call "doggie odor," which in Joe's unfortunate case ranged between gaggingly rank and living putrefaction. When Joe dozed by the woodheater on a winter's eve, enjoying dinner was difficult - considering one's watering eyes and the instinct to cover the food.

So I had the leash on Joe before Bob, whose right leg had been amputated near the hip years earlier, could get up on his crutches. With Bob herding from behind, I led Joe around back of the cabin, where we'd set up an old bathtub for starlit soaks. We hadn't used the bathtub lately, so I scooped out the accumulated litter of mandrone leaves and pine needles before I lifted in Joe. As I slipped off his collar, Joe grunted and sat down, settling into what we called the ODZ, or Old Dog Zone, where Joe seemed to be watching methane sunsets on Jupiter, r flights of birds invisible to human eyes. I turned on the water, hot and cold mixing in a single hose, while Bob opened the shampoo.

I asked him, "Want me to put in the plug?"
"Jesus, no" Bob said. "Rising water freaks Joe out bad. In fact, better make sure that drain ain't clogged."
"How could it be?" I reminded him. "Remember when you couldn't fin d the rubber plug one night and hammered in that chunk of redwood for a stopper? Knocked out all those little cross-pieces?"
"Aw," Bob dismissed the memory, "they were rusted all to shit anyway. Besides, the tub drains on the ground - not like there's a pipe to clog." He squirted some shampoo on his palm. "You gonna stand there yakking or are we gonna get on it - it's broiling out here."

Joe returned from Jupiter when the stream of water hit him. He bolted for safety but couldn't get traction on the tub's slick bottom. Bob grabbed him around the neck and Joe slid to the front of the tub. He held still, warbling softly as I soaked him down.

"It's okay, Joe, you're okay," Bob comforted his pooch, working the shampoo into a grey lather. Joe struggled again, scrambling to get his back legs under him, then suddenly stopped. His yellowish dingo eyes began to widen.

"Brain-lock," I opined.
Bob ignored me to encourage Joe: "Good dog, good dog. Just keep still and we'll be done in a few minutes. You can't help being old, can you?"

Joe answered with a low, trembling yowl.
"What's he yodelling about?" I wondered aloud.
"Hell if I know." Bob rubbed Joe's neck. "What's the matter buddy?"

I noticed the greyish-yellow scum building in the bathtub and gratuitously advised Bob, "I wouldn't bathe that dog without some industrial strength, eight-ply latex gloves. You wake up tomorrow, you might not have fingernails."

Bob glanced at the rising scum. "That's the problem. Joe's sitting on the drain, got it blocked, and the water's rising - thinks he's gonna drown. Let me scoot him back down, off the drain."

But when Bob tried to slide him toward the middle of the tub, Joe's yowl leaped an octave and he twisted his head free of Bob's grasp. He huddled against the front curve of the tub, a strong shiver passing through him from flank to nose.

I turned off the water. "Now what?"
"Beats me," Bob declared, then cooed at Joe, "What's your problem, buddy? You're not going to drown." Bob slipped his hand underwater and felt beneath Joe. When he withdrew his hand he gave me a funny look.

"You're not going to believe this," he said solemnly, "but Joe's got his nuts caught in the drain."
"Impossible," I assured him. "The drain's too small for his nuts to fit through."
Bob shook his head. "Maybe not if they were soapy and slid through one at a time. Better take a look under there. I'll hold Joe."

The tub was set about eight inches off the ground on a wooden frame, so I had to brace both legs and lift with a shoulder to rock the tub back far enough to see. Sure enough, Joe's testicles were dangling from the drain, side by side in his flaccid, mottled scrotum.

Bob took a break from consoling his dog to ask, "See anything?"
I eased the tub back down. "Yeh, I see your dog's nuts caught in the drain. I trust you appreciate my reluctance to believe it."
"Well, Bob said impatiently, "try to poke them back through. Ol' Joe's about to go into shock."

Joe whimpered piteously in confirmation.
"You're kidding," I said. "Try to poke them back through. Hey bro, he's your dog and those are his nuts - you do it. Poking Joe's stuck nuts is not even on my list of 25,000 things I'd do for fun or money."
"Sweet Jesus," Bob sighed with pained exasperation, "show class or show ass."

I'd forgotten that Bob, with only one leg, probably couldn't leverage the tub, so I graciously offered, "I'll lift the tub; you handle his nuts."

"Ah, come on," Bob objected, "someone has to hold Joe. If he panics, he'll either tear them off or stretch his sack so bad his balls will be bouncing along behind him the rest of his life." He scratched Joe's head, murmuring, "Hang on, old pal, we'll get you loose."
I had an idea. "Maybe we could take a sledgehammer to the tub - sort of break it out around him."

"Right, good thinking," Bob mocked me. "Take a 12-pound sledge to a metal bathtub. We'd have him loose by next month easy." He shook his head. "How would you like you r nuts caught in the drain and some utter dimwit pounding away on the tub with a sledgehammer?"

"All right," I said, "but it'll cost you."
"Why doesn't that surprise us?" Bob asked his dog. Then to me, "What?"
"Dishes for a week plus that little Shimano reel you hardly ever use anyway."
Bob explained to Joe, "You're gonna be here a long time, buddy, because my brother is a no-class, show-ass jerk."

Swabbing sweat off my brow, too hot for prolonged negotiations, I surrendered. "Hand me that damn bottle of shampoo."
I lifted the rub again, sweat-blind in the heat, and awkwardly squirted some shampoo on Joe's scrotum for lubrication. Taking a deep breath, I began working Joe's testicles around in his sack, trying to arrange them vertically for a push upward, all the while providing a running commentary on my feelings for Bob's amusement and to deflect all but essential attention from the task at hand: "Forty-nine years I've been alive. Representing the present culmination of millennia of species evolution. Of exacting natural selection. Years of formal education. Diligent study. Developing skills. The long, excruciating refinement of sensibility. And now I understand my whole life has been a preparation for this moment: trying to get your dog's nuts unstuck from a bathtub drain. And I don't know if that's perfect or both or none of the above."

"Well," Bob offered with a dry sweetness," for sure it's better than something worse." Then, to Joe, "Listen to him snivel."

I saved my breath and, working by touch, manipulated Joe's nuts around till they were stacked, then, using sort of a reverse milking move, squeezed his scrotum from the bottom. The top testicle popped through, then the other. Joe was free. With an agility he hadn't shown in years, he leaped from the tub and started rolling in the dirt, moaning.

Bob smiled. "There you go, buddy! Happy dog!"
When I dropped the tub off my numb shoulder, the dirty water sluiced forward and slopped over the rim, drenching me.
I snivelled some more: "Oh great, I free his worthless old nuts and what do I get - soaked with mutagenic Joe scuzz."
Bob laughed. "Plus you get our eternal gratitude - don't forget that."

I won't.

Jim Dodge

These are taken from Jim Dodge's collection of poems and short prose,
Rain on the River

For those not already familiar with Jim Dodge, his other novels are:

Stone Junction
Fup
Not Fade Away

Eurgh.

just finished "The Extra Man" by Mr Ames... now what next...

Perhaps another Ames-book? Tell me, how was "The Extra Man"? I'm a bit curious myself and I've been thinking about reading it.

it was a really good read, its pretty funny and silly in places, and the characters are pretty eccentric! It must have been good as i feel at a loss having finished it...

i was debating another Ames book but i might save him for later... i was thinking something quite obvious that i havent ready before (something like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - i'm not very well read at all)

It's a good choice. Excellent book. The movie ain't to bad either.

Well Harry Potter 7 was amazing

Deathly Hollows was great, and for any critics out there who can rag on closure for the ten year old in all of us.

I am now reading the corrections by Johnathan Franzen, it's pretty good so far.

"I'm saying the structure of the entire culture is flawed." Chip said, "I'm saying that bureaucracy has aggregated the right to define certain states of mind as 'diseased'. A lack of the desire to spend money becomes a symptom of the disease that requires expensive medication. Which the medication then destroys the libido , in other words destroys the appetite for the one pleasure in life that is free. Which means the person has to spend even more money on compensatory pleasures. The very definition of mental 'health' is the ability to participate in a consumer economy. When you buy into therapy you are buying into buying. And I'm saying that I am personally losing the battle with commercialized, medicalized, totalitarian modernity right this instant." Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections)

After finishing The Corrections, with so many tears in my eyes that I had to bury my head in a pillow, (and when that didn't provide subsequent reliefe) I retreated to a long shower.

I often find myself embarassed while moved emotionally in my parents house, or College dorm for that matter. While I often find great moments in literature capable of moving me to tears, I hold them back afraid some wondering roommate of parent will walk in and assume something is actually wrong with me, and I will have to go through some sad akward exchange. Or be witness by my non literary family as some blubbering wreck.

Anyways after finishing The Corrections I began Wake Up, Sir. As influanced by the board, and The National I find it to be so far so good.

Though I want to have a sneaking suspicion that Jeeves is a figmant of Blair's imagination/alchoolism.

Finished reading Bag of Bones by Stephen King for the second time. Really good book. Say what you will about Stephen King, but he sure knows how to write.

Everything is Illuminated (i think someone mentioned it...) is amazing. Waaay better than the film. The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird are my two favourite books of all time. I reading Life of Pi right now...

And the latest Harry Potter was okay enough.

I remember reading "Catcher in the Rye" when I was in high-school, and I remember I didn't like it very much while reading it. But once I had finished it struck me how great it was.

I finished this great book yesterday. 'One Man's Bible' by Gao Xingjian. It's about a man's life before, during and after the Cultural Revolution in China.

Now I'm gonna jump in to reading Dostojevkijs 'Crime & Punishment'.

I've been reading MAO: The Unknown Story, which is a biography of the Chinese dictator. The Chairman was responsible for the deaths of 70 million Chinese citizens during peacetime in his rule, which basically like the entire UK getting wiped out and then some.

I would recommend Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, about two boys, white and black in 1970's Brooklyn, who are into graffiti and comics. Franzen provides the reader with an epic, " The Corrections" style of writing ; at times the story becomes quite fantastical. I am not a boy but I loved.

"What I Loved" by Siri Hustvedt (Paul Auster's wife) is another totally absorbing novel, set in the N.Y. art world of the 70's and 80's. One really gets attached to the main characters mostly because they are so realistically portrayed. There is sexuality, bereavement and anger , friendship and love.

Also, Patrick Hamilton is an amazing author. Try Hangover Square or A Thousand Streets Under the Sky. Hamilton describes the state of being drunk like no other. Reckless , gin soaked characters , hopelessly romantic has beens train wrecking their way through 1940's London. His books are minor master pieces, I'm telling ya!