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giving dogs their bones
Friday, June 18 1999
The development web server at work had been completely screwed up since yesterday evening, the result of some sort of obscure but extremely malevolent IIS bug which prevented the machine doing anything but displaying a "Server Application Error." So at 2:00 PM, despite all the things that needed to be done by Monday, I went home. Despite the pressures on me, I actually can do that sort of thing because I have no set hours except when I'm expected to show up on weekday mornings.
To say I made the most of the afternoon would be to overstate the issue. I took a bath and then did some of the same mindless computer things I would have done had I been at work, but without the subterfuge necessary in a corporate work environment.
In the evening I found myself participating in an impromptu courtyard-community barbecue event featuring a large fraction of my neighbors (though Kim, who was working, didn't come until later and Jenna the German girl showed up later still). I've felt a little weird hanging out with my complex-mates ever since Kim started reporting on how scandalized they are by my occasional writing about them on (horrors!) the internet. But it's important to note, most of those reports come second-hand via Jenna the German girl, and she has a well-established tendency to inflate the polarizing relevance of the events she describes. So, after a few beers I was sufficiently relaxed and having a good time socializing with my neighbors. For whatever reason, most people in the complex never bring up my writing; perhaps they'd rather think I don't know they're reading so I'll continue spilling the beans. And for my part, I certainly don't care if people read my stuff as long as I don't have to deal with their reactions to it.
The only specific feedback I got during the whole evening was a comment by Jason, the single guy across the courtyard with tattoos, a snake, a recently-replaced missing tooth, lots of surf boards, and a predilection for loud rock and roll. His interests and specific brand of non-conformity rather reminds me of some of my erstwhile chums from Redneckistan, so it was natural that I summed-up his personhood with the phrase "redneck surfer." He's a nice guy with a warm, generous heart, but he obviously didn't like that description too much. It wasn't anything to kick my ass over, but, even while making a rather redneck suggestion that we fashion a pot-smoking apparatus from tin foil, he'd feel the need to parenthetically reiterate that he'd grown up in decidedly non-redneck Malibu. (What's more, Kim has socialized with Jason's mother, who is a practitioner of the decidedly non-redneck Wicca ways.)
The featured grub of the barbecue was beef ribs, prepared in some traditional style mostly by Jason. The ribs had been boiled for hours before ever being set on the grill, so they were ready for eating in short order. We all sat around making messes of ourselves like stone age peoples while the two dogs Sophie and Sandy (the frisky young Australian Shepherd living with Nikki and Danny) looked on with undivided attention. When we humans could get no more from the ribs, we gave them to the dogs. In Western culture, there are many references to the love dogs have for bones, and at this barbecue (which was a lot like the dinners our ancestors must have had for generations prior to the fork, tin foil and the microwave), I had my first real opportunity to see why this was the case. Bones for dogs are like Ritalin. You throw a dog a bone and she'll immediately stop getting in trouble and being a pest and become engrossed in a way seemingly impossible in the post-MTV age. The otherwise frisky, meddlesome Sandy plopped down and with singular focus attacked her bone, manipulating it between her paws to get at every sliver of meat. Sophie, normally prone to wandering off and even dashing into the street to meet other dogs, was doing the same. A perfectly manicured Schnauzer gnawing on a bone (like some sort of unkempt Aborigine mongrel) is a rather ironic sight to behold, and I was sure Kim (always concerned about Sophie's delicate digestive system) wouldn't have approved had she been there. After the ribs appeared, the only conflict came after Sandy finished her bone and decided to confiscate Sophie's.
Lisa and Andy, the couple who live next door, had a friend named Tricia visiting, and, judging from her questions, seemed to have heard a lot about "the wacky people next door." After meeting me, she then wanted to meet Kim. Sipping one Rum & Coke after another, she kept asking when Kim was coming and wasn't satisfied with my responses to the effect that I had no idea when Kim was coming.
Eventually Kim arrived, then our friend Steph (who, hilariously, all my journal-reading complex-mates knew even before she was introduced), then Jenna the German girl. Jenna couldn't make sense of Kim's jovial socializing and was overheard to say, "You must be really wasted." But Kim had only just started drinking and wouldn't end up drinking much tonight.
During a pause in the action, Kim and Steph went off somewhere and I did my own antisocial thing. After an hour or so, Kim returned and Tricia, the neighbors' guest, came over to demand that we join our neighbor-contingent on a barhopping mission. By now Kim was sort of ill from some disease going around, and she didn't want to go. I didn't either, but the peer pressure was incredibly strong, so we compromised and went to Jason's apartment for awhile, where did shots of Cuervo tequila. Everybody was being extremely jovial and fun and gradually our moods shifted and we agreed to go, but not before a marijuana break back at our place. Sometime during this marijuana break, Tricia (who is very fun when she's had a lot of Rum and Cokes) said that Kim and I (judging from our body language) seem more like roommates than lovers. This comment had the effect f ruining the evening for Kim; she thought perhaps it was an unbiased revelation of a basic truth about our relationship.
By the time we'd walked with the others down to Newport Avenue, Kim had no interest in hitting any bars, so we turned around and headed back home. "Wuuptshhh!" Tricia said, snapping an imaginary whip in the air as I said goodnight.
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