I love dogs the way I love sailboats; I want other people to own them and take care of them, and just let me play with them from time to time. And so I was petting someone’s standard-size poodle the other day when it struck me; it’s been half a century since I owned a dog, and if I said I didn’t wax just a teeny bit nostalgic, I’d be lying.
Poodie
The dog in question–a toy French poodle who was named, creatively enough, “Poodie”–wasn’t mine in the first place. It had been given to my eldest sister as a gift by a boy in high school whom I remember as a borderline juvenile delinquent; that’s what parents called an adolescent male they didn’t approve of back in the fifties. My dad ordered that the dog be given back, pronto, before our family ended up with a ne’er do well with hair goo and a hot rod in our family pictures, but Poodie squirmed and sniffed and yipped his way into our hearts and sentiment overruled morals, as is frequently the case.
As the youngest of three children I ended up the last kid in the house to feed Poodie and walk him, and it was a damn good thing. I ignored French in high school, happy with a B if I didn’t have to conjugate irregular French verbs with class femme fatale “Lori” in the front row. Lori had, as the saying goes, a balcony you could do Shakespeare from, and applied her eye makeup with a trowel, so she was a distraction whenever Mlle. Clooney asked me “Ou est la bibliotheque?” Last time I checked it was right next to study hall–I’d say to myself. Why does she keep asking?
So when it was time for the last walk of the day, I’d bring my French homework along and Poodie’d give it a once over. I have to say he saved my escargots on more than one occasion. We continued this mano a doggo bonding once I’d gone off to college, by which time Poodie was getting a little long in the canines. By my senior year he was ten in people years, 70 in dog years, about what I am now. It was to be expected that he’d slowed down a bit, and become a bit of a curmudgeon to boot.
“What are you reading this semester?” he asked me the last time I saw him, shortly before he took that dog walk to an undiscovered country from which no poodle returns.
“Stendhal.”
“Le Rouge et le Noir?”
“On the nosy.”
“And are you still . . . cheating?”
“You mean buying a copy in English, and faking that I’m reading it in French?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t consider that cheating. It’s more like . . . a study aid.”
“Vous etes kidding votre self.”
“Maybe, but I’ve got a lot of demands on my time.”
“Drugs, Steve Miller albums and that stupid harmonica that breaks my eardrums.”
“You forgot casual sex with former high school valedictorians.”
“I think you mean infrequent casual sex, don’t you.”
“Hey–I’m not the one humping the living room couch leg.”
“Touche,” he said, as he sniffed a forlorn-looking bush for a scent–however slight–of the aging cocker spaniel bitch who lived at the end of the block.
A car stopped at the light gunned its motor, and a couple of tough guys looked out at the heartwarming scene of a boy and his dog with contempt. “Ooo–somebody’s walking his cute little poodle!” one of them sneered in a mock-feminine voice.
“Baise toi!” Poodie shouted at them (“Fuck you”), but they were already gone. Having pretended that the stop light was a drag strip “Christmas tree,” they “peeled out” in the parlance of my youth, burning rubber and causing mothers within earshot to hide their daughters.
“So how do you like Stendhal?” Poodie asked as he did his business like the crotchety old creature that he was, squatting without much grace since he was showing signs of arthritis.
“He’s a big improvement over the existentialists I had to read freshman year.”
“That doesn’t take much.”
“The American Association of College French Professors must think every incoming class of high school seniors is dying to change into berets and black turtlenecks and get depressed as soon as they hit a college campus.”
“They wouldn’t be wrong, would they,” Poodie said as he turned, finally, and headed back up the hill towards home. “Why is that?”
“It’s the allure of the foreign,” I ventured.
“But all those great 19th century French novelists–they’re just as French.
“Yeah, but they don’t come with a life code, all neatly wrapped up.”
“I remember you were an obnoxious creep the first time you came home from college after reading Sartre your freshman year.”
“He comes in handy when you want to break up with a girl for no good reason.”
“The whole ‘I define myself’ thing.”
“Right.”
“And you defined yourself to be a colossal jerk, if I remember correctly.”
It was my turn to say “Touche.” So I did: “Touche.”
“But you learned something from Stendhal?”
“I did, I did,” I said, looking off into the distance to show how much I’d . . . matured in three years. “He’s very good on the he-she stuff.”
“Do tell.”
“Julian Sorel is an ambitious young man who comes from the provinces to the big city with no money or connections, and wins the heart of a woman he pursues for no reason other than the fact that other men desire her.”
“I thought your freshman English teacher told you not to identify with characters if you want to understand novels.”
“This was French class, that rule doesn’t apply.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No, it’s hard enough just conjugating the irregular verbs.”
Heck, I have enough trouble with English.