Dogs Fucking
At my girlfriend’s dad’s house, I am watching two identical dogs—Labrador Retrievers—fucking in the front yard across the street. My girlfriend’s dad calls that yard the “weeds start-up.” He calls the dogs, these interchangeable yellow Labs, “Jim and Pam.” He calls me “buddy.” He calls my girlfriend “sweetie” or sometimes “daughter.” He calls the limpid bay window through which I am watching “Jim and Pam” fuck “my portal.” He calls his house “Housey.” He calls his wife “Kath” or “Kathy.” Sometimes he calls her “Cathedral,” which she hates. He calls me “youngster.” He calls me “Dinner,” like, “Where’s Dinner?” or even “Hey, Dinner!” because the first time I met him I bought him dinner—at a nice-enough restaurant—and none of my girlfriend’s former boyfriends had ever done that, and he never lets me live it down. Out of love, my girlfriend claims. The two dogs are finished fucking. They kiss each other tenderly, knowingly. They disappear down the side of that house, presumably into its backyard. My girlfriend’s dad calls that backyard “Weeds Corp.” He’s been back there before, helping his neighbors catch a dying bat scrambling for “one last go at it.” He calls their house “The Academy.” No one knows why he calls it this. He won’t say. (Now we all call it “The Academy,” too.)
You Have to Spend Money Every Day
Your best friend posits the existence of a person with shot glasses for pinky fingers, both of them replaced, fleshy opaque cups attached in their stead. They point straight up, drinking from them is awkward, doable but awkward; you twist your wrist in unnaturally to do so, to sip Don Julio that’s cold as a river.
You used to steal shot glasses from gift shops wherever you went. Souvenirs, you told yourself, and so easy to steal.
You quit drinking and grow addicted to the following: spending, saving, watching, weather forecasts, quiet, cockcrows, unsweetened iced tea with a jet of lemon. It’s better this way, you tell yourself every day [you have to or you’ll fold into yourself].
Z.H. Gill lives in LA.
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