The Erotic Life of a Dog by Philip Kobylarz

for Kodiak

Darkness. But not really darkness, because in nearly dawn light, everything can be seen. A shoe under the bed. Goldfish not moving in their bowl and the water is calm. A drowned gnat lies on the surface. Bone near the mattress almost all chewed up. Maybe it'll be a good day. Maybe we'll go somewhere different.

Different places mean different smells.

The cover is moving. So is the bed. They're breathing, but it's not a heavy sleep-breathing. Breathing in each other's face and their eyes are not open. Almost running and yet their feet, bare, sticking out from where the cover won't cover, aren't running. They are barely-moving feet. Tense feet. Even for a moment, curled feet. Maybe this means we'll get up early.

They're acting like they are eating something. There is no scent of food, in a way. Musk coming from the bed, from their mouths, their warm heads of hair; backs, and from inside their bodies. They're not angry, or scared, or in pain, or in danger, even if they seem to be.

If they could stop, or quiet down, to not make me wake up, they would. They can’t though. They're past a point. One of their hands is grabbing at what it can. The hand is violent but not its gesture. The movement suggests it wants help, or more of what it has. It will never have enough; this is well known. It comes with running, play, dinner, being touched, caresses, warm air after rain, or when someone returns.

What they're doing is not for everyone. Sometimes they change and continue. And change and continue. Sometimes the bed makes a movement, or movements that are loud. Sometimes the bed really moves. When they are loud, it doesn't mean anything bad. This has to be learned. It's not easy. It's confusing.

When it's over with, they're happy, tired. They seem to like me more.

Days that we're walking a lot are best. Plants that you can eat, that calm the stomach, grow out of walls. The way to the beach and park is made of many, many smells: others, food, maybe cats hiding, many plants. They grow out of the ground where we walk. When we stop by doors, sometimes they go in. And I wait even though I don't want to wait. It is a garden that no one sees.

Then there are doors. I see them in a room behind the doors because the wall is made of what-looks-like-you-can-go-through, but can't. From underneath the door, foods that I don't normally eat, if any– small pieces of which, spill out. Smells are taste. I know spill because it is what I do each time I drink water, but water is not the only thing I drink, sometimes milk. When they let me.

This food is good and they must wait to get it, and they speak to another who is giving them the food. If they had tails they would wag. They say am good because I did not run away, which they don't even know is a possibility, because there's food in the windows that I can see and I watch and I wait for it. There's always the chance of food falling.

When we walk far, we go to the beach–a place I didn't like at first because it was so big and I was young. To the beach many others go, many others like me even, I meet them there and we run and we greet. Sometimes we pretend we're in love and are just acting like it,–there is not much else to do and that is always fun. We take sticks and we almost eat them because they are like bones with no middles, and we find rocks and chase them when they are rolling when they are thrown, when they are like animals that we would like to kill. It’s fun to pretend to kill.

To catch is fun too. We all like to catch, even bugs. Bugs bother us because they can hurt and go into us and give us sickness, so we kill them. After we greet and greet each other again and run (it is like what birds do) we rest and watch for smells. It's true, and it's hard to explain, but when we're out, and with others like us, we can see and smell and sense what is not really there.

At the beach sometimes I see what's moving under water. We run we play we go into the wind that is part of us now, part of our hair. We are free, with out a rope. We are wild. We want never to go back home.

Until it is time to go home.

Even, at times, when the people aren't looking, we go to the trees.

Once, while waiting in the kitchen for the big yellow bowl, the one that means FOOD, it started to happen. She was there making the food,–however it's made, because I never see the kill, or the cleaning, it just happens. It just appears. And there's blood. Sometimes there's some blood.

She was there making it, like she usually does. He was there too, doing something with a place where water comes. It was something that did not smell real, but perhaps like flowers, and with what the food comes on, with them. There is cold water and there is hot water involved.

And she put her hands in the food and he came over to her. And he put his hands in the food. Then he put his hands on her, putting food on her! And she put her hands again into the food, food being made, food not food yet, and put her hands on him. But then they stopped to take off the hair that they put on them. They threw those them-smelling things into the corner where I usually sit, and they know this, and one of those went on my head, and on my eyes, and I couldn't see.

This was causing me hunger, because it was food, and they were taking the food and putting it low on them, on them where I can reach with only my nose, and putting food there. They were eating the food. Maybe they were eating each other, just playing, but with food. Food on them!

And then they stopped.

Then they gave me food. But my dinner.

I was tired, after.

It’s another morning,–but it's a different one, because I can tell when they're different. Maybe not in a good way–they are putting me in water, warm and with something which smells. It smells like not-flowers. I am not sure if I like this–I am clean enough for myself–nor even like they way my fur feels and is. This is their idea and it pleases them so I go through with it. Afterwards, I'll fall asleep wrapped in clothes that I have learned the word for. It is “towels.”

Even though it’s a special morning they were at it again, I looked through the door they try to make closed by putting a rock near it, on the ground. But I heard and then I saw what they were doing, this time to music that was loud, I could hear them behind it, under the sounds. They do this and it is wild–it is like hitting–and then they yell at me and tell me no when I try to come in the room or when I go to others when we are walking on the streets and always at the beach (there are so many beautiful others). Don't understand. Don't even try.

It makes my legs shake. It makes me restless. It makes me think things. It makes me think of what would happen if I bit them. It makes me think of biting them where I shouldn't bite them: under the mouth. I makes me think that if I bite them under the mouth how it would taste, how it would feel, to feel moving in my mouth. It makes me think of blood and how blood tastes when something is moving in my mouth and I am feeling the blood taste. Blood, muscle. Meat. Veins. Ropes of skin. How I like to tear.

Bones are just as good. From time to time, I get one. For what, I don't know. Maybe so I don't kill. Cats, especially.

They are everywhere here, cats. In trees, or always ending up there, on fences. They rest on cars, they sleep in bushes, they sit on benches as if they were people and they wait until old women feed them. Some in the woods within the city live in trees and they sometimes have only one eye or an ear or even a tail missing. What pain they must go through to live where they do.

They are nobody's cats and they know it.

I chase them for fun. Not really wanting to hurt them, because they have wounds. Licked and healed wounds. I don't want to catch them or eat them or even bite them, I want just to chase. A chase might mean a catch or maybe it won't fight and it will want to be my friend. Friend or foe is the rule. Many people don't seem to understand this.

I can hold my own. Against any other dog or cat. Even horses don't scare me. Except their feet.

Cats aren't a problem. What they do that no one likes is eat all the fallen food on the streets. Nothing left for us, then. And cats, they eat everything: bones, meat, insides, outsides, and they clean the ground with their horrible tongues.

There are really not many problems being me. Storms are not good. When it’s too wet and cold comes wet and makes heavy my fur, and falling water is cleaning everything, and the smells off them and loud noises from above that can't be seen–that is especially not good.

Loud noises mean trouble. They excite me.

For the moment, I am happy. I enjoy wagging my tail and keeping it wagging. I sleep a lot. I find things, mostly rocks, in the ground. That I can find things is good. That the beach always has sand and water is good. That there are sticks and cats and dogs, good. Seasons and wind and sleeping in moonlight. Climbing up the stairs when there is the smell of food. Puddles of water not to wash in.

Spilling my water on anything that smells real. Real with the piss of others.

Piss tells me everything I need to know

Going away and coming is what I don't understand. Sometimes they're gone and sometimes they return. When they go, I don't like it. I must wait. I don't know where they are. I can't watch them.

When they come, I am happy. It's great. It's the first time I see them. We might go out. Maybe we'll eat. It's just wonderful. When they go, where they go I don't know. There are so many different places beyond the door. Beach. Hills. Woods. Other houses. So many places I don't know.

They're at it again. This always happens. Maybe because it’s spring. This time I'll act like I don't care. I'll pretend I'm sleeping. I'll pretend I don't see her going on top of him. I'll pretend I don't see him standing behind her. I'll pretend that they are not in pain, and that they don't need me (they do) and that they are not hungry for each other's flesh (they never break skin) and that it is not hurt they want.

In the way they breathe, there is heat. In the way they move there is danger. They are leaving themselves open to each other, both. Her legs are up in the air, where there is nothing to walk on. He is pushing himself into, where the rest of his body can't go. They are holding onto each other with such strength that red marks are on their bodies. Around handprints, blood is flowing. How blood flows.

Yet another day, and I do think they are forever, days, and I walk from room to room. Always watching them. If they are going to take me somewhere. If we are going to eat, the bigger one is always eating or drinking something. Sometimes he throws a bit to me and I catch it and I taste it and it's gone and I feel good. Looking in the corners where it'is dark I can see small things moving. They are little bad creatures because they try to eat our food even if it is food in the bag I cannot go in, the bag to throw away.

In the afternoon sun, I dream of swimming, or bones, especially the perfumed bones of fish, I dream of food and of being wet, then getting dry, without actually doing it, really best that way. In sleep my legs run and I see lights and it is like being there, being awake, wherever I want to be, but not being there, like when birds leave the beach in a gust of wind and I chase them and I find water and for a minute with them I am swimmmmmmming–

Philip Kobylarz lives in the East Bay of San Francisco. Recent work of his appears or will appear in Tampa Review, Apt, Santa Fe Literary Review, New American Writing, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Salzburg Review and has appeared in Best American PoetryHis book, Rues, has recently been published by Blue Light Press of San Francisco.