A Day
Melanie Locay
I open my eyes. I have been awake for about two minutes. But I’m keeping my eyes tightly shut, hoping my new puppy Cossima, a Min Pin with a penchant for biting on my nose ring, will be convinced there is no waking me. She’ll just have to wait another measly fifteen minutes before going out to pee. Then she jumps on my stomach, pressing on my bladder, suddenly I realize that there is no way I can wait fifteen minutes before going to pee. Cossima wins. I get up. My happy go lucky, yet not very bright, Chihuahua Milo, who had been sleeping by my feet and could have kept on sleeping if it weren’t for this little German princess’s yapping, stretches and yawns. I coo to the little monster “Who is my princess?? and “Why are you so cute Cossy, Cossy, Cossima? But of course I can’t forget Mister Milo, nooo, whose mommies Milo? Who is?? I put the little ones on the floor feel around with my feet for my pink furry slippers and hurry to the potty as I remember my bursting bladder.
I’m sitting on the toilet, staring at my chipping toe nail polish in diva red, when I hear my cell phone ring. I hate the rushed wipe, pants around my ankles sprint out of the bathroom to get the phone, so I don’t. I know I’m getting old by the disinterest I’ve acquired in the phone. After I’ve taken my sweet time in the potty, I get to my cell phone, I see that the missed call is from my ninety year old great uncle, that lives next door, and is my responsibility while my mom is out of town. Immediate guilt washes over me. Oh god he’s fallen and he can’t get up. I start dialing but at the same time I rush over there. I’ve already opened his front door by the second ring. He’s sitting on his couch smoking a cigarette.
“It is 7:30am shouldn’t the dogs have gone out by now? “ He would also like his breakfast. Which he casually hints at by asking. “Won’t there be breakfast today?
I realize at that moment, that when my mom wakes up obscenely early, this is the shit she has to deal with. I decide one day, when I’m at Manolo Blahnik buying financial security level, I shall erect a statue in her honor. Hehe erect. I’m such a twelve-year-old boy sometimes.
By 8:00 am I have taken out all the dogs. The entire clan consists of the aforementioned Milo and Cossima, then there is another Chihuahua by the name of Lisa Marie, a Terrier named Westin (who adores my mom and I’m convinced plots against me while I sleep), and the incredibly lovable and terribly misunderstood Pit bull Miss Hanna. I have fed them, then given them their medicines, fed my uncle and given him his medicines, then double checked that I gave each their designated medicine’s, slightly wishing I had made a mix-up. My bed gladly welcomes me back for a few hours more.
“Well why don’t you get a fucking job and stop seeing that whore. I forgot to shut my bedroom window before falling asleep. The sweet little old lady next door is giving her forty year old ex con son a pep talk about getting his life in order. It is a regular occurrence with the finale being the shattering of something. The Hallmark moment I’m being privy to is suddenly drowned out, when my dogs go into the Monday through Saturday concerto of “I want to eat the goddamn mailman, acted out in acrobatic jumps at the window.
My admirers/owners of my soul sent their usual love notes: Capital One, Providian, Discover etc. The seductress in the small stack of correspondence, the Victoria’s Secret catalog, I’ll put aside so I can slit my wrist later. As I’m turning to close the front door I see it there on the porch, glistening in its plastic wrap. The mailman must have not been able to make it fit in my box. He couldn’t fit his package in my box, oh man hahaha!! Thank god people can’t read my thoughts.
I leap for the package, clutch it against my chest, like that dude in that dork movie talking about his precious. The Abercrombie and Fitch catalog is my porn. It has confirmed all my theories that hot men do play football naked together! The phonebook- sized catalog is art, consisting of naked gorgeous men frolicking, with the clothes hanging on a nearby branch. The second half is overpriced clothes sans the models, sometimes there is the occasional cute shirt.
As I tear into the plastic with my teeth. Germs mean nothing in this moment of high anticipation. I feel like a child whose been told Santa doesn’t exist then kicked in the teeth. The fucking catalog only has clothes in it. Should I call them and tell them there has been a horrible mistake? Should I chase down the mailman, in my pink fuzzy slippers, accusing the middle aged man of stealing my hot naked men? I turn on the TV and as soon as I see his face it all makes sense. This is a puritanical country run by a moron and this mockery of an Abercrombie&Fitch catalog is a clear example of that.
My afternoon is filled with picking up dog toys, cleaning the house, giving my uncle his lunch and afternoon snack, going to the liquor store to get what the Surgeon General protest to, but seem to work as an anti-aging serum for him, Bacardi and cigs. I decide to wear my pink fuzzy slippers to the liquor store. After all, what do I care? The place is a block away, often times half the people in there are wearing curlers or hairnets, no matter their sex. I want to buy a lottery ticket but I feel a bit embarrassed. I heard one of those slick, hip comedians on Vh-1 talking about how only trash buy lottery tickets. Freeze frame, I have a carton of cigarettes in one hand, a gallon of rum in the other and I’m wearing pink fuzzy slippers, at the neighborhood liquor store, where half naked small children with Kool-Aid mustaches run in and out. I buy the lottery ticket.
I get home and my uncle wants back his exact change, all 44 cents of it. I hand it to him give him a kiss on his wrinkled cheek and tell him I love him. I’ve said it everyday sometimes multiple times since I first learned to speak.
I made it into a song when I was little “te quiero, te quiero tanto. I would go with him to work when no one else could watch me. While he scrubbed apartment floors on his hands and knees. I would dance around him and sing my profession of love. Telling him of my future plans of being a cop by day and a rockstar by night. Yea, I went through a dikey phase. He would tell me how I was going to do whatever I wanted to do with an education. He said he was cleaning toilet bowls so I would never have to. He never had kids of his own and paid for me to go to private school.
Now he opens up the carton of cigs, I’ve placed in front of him, like it’s a present. He gives me a smile and asks; “Won’t there be dinner today?
