Drawing, #2 Pencil, 18X24, Stephanie Klein
Same seex marriage is so passé. My sister Lea wants to violate the laws of nature with a shorthaired granola-eating monster. She wants to exchange the big bad vows with my dog Linus. “I have dibs Stephanie. When the laws change, he’s mine.” Lea, above all others, loves to love Linus. If he still had balls, she’d make babies with him. “I’m telling you, Steph, I’m going on eBay and ordering the bowtie and top hat now in preparation. You think I can still wear white?”
Like all couples, they’ve had their share of fights. He has pulled her hair (while successfully attempting to remove the hair band from her bun), undressed her when she wasn’t in the mood (he is all about socks), and he has drawn actual blood. He bit her in the face, broke the skin and chomped right through her nose, piercing straight through her nostril. I assure you, it was not fashionable. I was there when it happened, shaking. She leaned in to kiss him goodbye, while he was on my bed, and food was on my lap. She wasn’t his first victim.
Erin began to call Linus, “Baby Jaws” after he bit her in the backseat of my car, and they weren’t even making out. Abtin and I were in the front seat, driving back from the beach in the Hamptons. Linus, apparently, was irritated and overtired from no day at the beach, eating sand and chasing sticks to the point of exhaustion. Erin leaned in to comfort him, “Hi sweet bear, how are—“ Then Jaws attacked her lip, eating it as if it were rolled luncheon meat. It swelled immediately. Medical supplies were purchased. Abtin irrigated the wound, tilting her head in certain light, checking to see if she’d need stitches. It was a nightmare. Forget sweet Erin, I couldn’t even eat.
If a man leans over my bed to kiss me goodbye, Linus will bite him.
“No, really, he will,” I plead. “I’m telling you; this is his home, and he is protecting me or something.”
“Yeah, let him; I’ll bite him right back,” he’ll say, thinking not a chance he’d bite me. He loves me. Then, blood. Every time. At which point I want to say, “I told you so,” but I’m too shaken by the fact that he struck again, and a man is bleeding in my bedroom from more than the emotional wound I’ve given him.
It is my fault. I treat him too much like a child maybe, not enough like a dog. As much as Lea treats him like a manbaby, I do it too. I know I need to become more Alpha, be his leader. Does this mean always putting him in his crate when a man is around? I doubt that’s an answer. How, though, do I change this behavior, considering Linus seems like a lump of sugar right before he consistently strikes. I need The Dog Whisperer to shout at me because this is no way to live. I live in constant fear whenever any man is around. Then again, I’m going to do that anyway without the added threat of my very own Cujo. I know I have to "be the man" in our relationship, but I don’t know what to do. I’m so accustomed to being the girl. Perhaps I’ll ship him out to Montana to go change the laws of nature with Lea.
