eDissonance – “Hunting at the Park” Chapter 1a
“Hey, who are you texting?” As the only other member of the Hungry Huntress Club, I had the right to ask Carlee this question.
“You remember Marco?” Carlee’s blonde hair waves a halo around her Cheshire grin.
“How do you do that?” I’m scowling at her face.
“Do what?”
“Your hair never gets stuck in your teeth.” She closes her phone and ignores me.
“Marco? I remember Marco.” Boy, do I remember. “That Italian hottie you met here at the park, what, a week ago?” My eagerness looks remarkably like drool.
“Italian and Greek,” she smiles. And it was probably more like three days ago.
“Yum. Two of my favorite flavors, now conveniently wrapped in a single package.”
“Heh. You said ‘package.’”
“We’re pigs.”
We walk. She agrees by smiling some more. And not telling me anything.
“What does he want?” I know; I just want her to say it.
“He can’t spell for shit,” Carlee says, gifted at not answering.
“He sure is purty.”
“Mmmm…”
We look out across the grass, tucking a memory of Marco’s shiny Italian eyes into our pockets. Or somewhere. I wonder which parts of him are Greek.
Carlee is my friend. Carlee and I met at the dog park and our friendship was fast and furious. She was fast and I was furious. No, that’s not true. It’s just that I was single and Carlee was beating men off with cell phones. No, I mean FIGHTING them off.
I’m a pig.
We were walking our dogs around the perimeter of the Bark Park. Carlee has two, and I have one. Dog. Although that ratio was pretty much true with everything, especially all things hound-related. It was a cool, early-spring day in Michigan, light jacket weather, which for me meant jeans and an old B.U.M. sweatshirt that I liberated from a thrift shop. Somehow I’d made it to middle age without ever owning an excellent spring jacket. By contrast, Carlee was smoking hot in a hip-length safari coat and a cocky beret. (A beret!) She can actually pull off a beret without looking like a cartoon. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d hate her.
“It sure didn’t take Marco long to start spelling poorly at you.” I fail at keeping the snark out of my voice. “Which dog does he have?”
“You remember, Sonny? That beige cocker spaniel?” She knows that I will know. At the park, we are our dogs.
“Right. Sonny. Named his little rug-dog after a Pacino character. Cute as hell, that dog, but still intact, isn’t he? Coglioni still dangling about?”
“Yeah, humps everything that can’t pesto out of the way.”
“Like owner like dog?”
“You’re a pig.”
“Come on, gimme something.”
“I’ll keep you posted.” She grins under the beret.
We sit on the edge of a picnic table, feet on the bench.
“How about you?” Carlee asks, always kind, and genuinely concerned about the lack of Pacino characters in my phone. “Got anything in the works?”
I attempt a glare, but it devolves into a pout.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,'” she says, patting me on the arm. Patting me. This is pathetic.
“Come on,” I say, getting up from our table. “Let’s walk these bitches around the park.”
I wasn’t exactly jealous of Carlee’s hunting skills, but every time she told me about another good-looking sweet-treat who sniffed up on her hoping for a pat on the head, a part of me twinged. And the part of me that twinged was drying up. It had been a long time since I’d had a date.
Okay, maybe I was a little jealous.
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We walked our girl-dogs leash-free around the bark park. Carlee had two pit bulls and I had my Bowie. Bowie is a husky/border collie mix with one brown eye and one blinding white eye. Not really blind, just striking. All of our dogs were shelter rescues, all of our dogs were girls, and all of our dogs were spayed and therefore unmolested by thoughts of virile Greyhounds – Italian or Greek. Theirs was a pampered existence of doggie ice cream and bottled water. They battled each other like Roman Centurions, but we indulged them like princesses. Carlee and I met at the park to let our girls run free and watch them turn away the insistent (and uncut) males who tried to tap a little of that sass from behind. But our girls weren’t having it.
“Ooh, come here, sweetheart,” an aggressive boxer might call out to my Bowie. “Back that thing up and drink my punch. I’m gonna show you what Mike Tyson WISHES he had.”
And Boxer Boy, impatient and cocky as the business end of his turgid joy rocket dripped Y-chromosome juice on the dirty grass, would paw my Bowie-dog’s shoulder. Once. Then she’d whip her head around and bite his attitude with a “PISS OFF!” And then piss on him, and trash-talk him for the final insult: “Back off, ya pansy fighter-boy or next time it’s my enamel on your nuts. You’ll be eating Rice Krispies through your blow hole after I Snap, Crackle, and Pop off your hush puppies.”
I love my little girl.
Carlee and I walked around the Bark Park watching our girls, and, yes, if not exactly hunting, then at least trolling for appealing possibilities. Carlee, however, didn’t even have to bait her hook. She would strut her bouncy blond hair and her beret (a beret!) barely inside the park and pretty puppy-eyed men would chase her. If they caught her attention, the men would mewl and wag their tails. Then offer to paint her house. I, on the other hand, got nary a runt. Not even a mercy pat for the wingman. But I kept trying. Because, you know, men.
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“Hey, incoming.” Hungry Huntress alert.
I nodded my head toward the bark park gate where a single male was entering with his spotted dog. The man was at least 50 meters away, but he walked upright and had hair, so we were obliged to analyze his potential. It was in the bylaws. We perched on a picnic table to adjudicate.
“Count the rings,” I say, asking Carlee for both an age estimate and a marital status prediction.
“Pretty good posture, but his hair is silver. Got kind of an Anderson Cooper thing going on. I’d say he’s in his mid-40’s and exercises regularly.” Carlee taps the tip of her tennis-ball-tosser on the ground, rhythmic, measuring, listening to the earth like the skilled predator she is.
“Yeah, and he’s got those loose-jointed limbs. Runner, do ya think?” I ask hopefully. We lean forward and focus our sharp binocular vision.
Carlee nods, “Maybe.”
“Flavor?” Carlee has keen ethnic evaluation skills.
“Um, mixed heritage. Northern European. He has likely eaten sauerkraut a time or two.”
“I can do sauerkraut. Married?”
“Well, his clothes match and they’re awfully clean. He’s probably married.”
“Damn.”
The sexy silver-hair loiters around the front gate as his spotted dog runs in circles, pestering him. “Let’s play, let’s play!” the dog says with every vibrating muscle. “What are we waiting for?” The dog’s desires are obvious.
Another male arrives, dark-haired, with a dainty Schnauzer on a leash. Carlee and I both sit up straighter. The new dark-haired visitor greets the silver-haired man with an almost-hug, a kind of chest lean-in. Their dogs sniff each other’s assholes and wag their tails. The dogs have obviously met before, and they run off to play tackle. The dark-hair and the silver-hair walk slowly around the park brushing shoulders and whisper-laughing.
Shit. These two are not in season. More precisely, they are not in our season. Their desires are also obvious. If they could sniff each other’s assholes they would. Carlee and I both lean back, breaking the spell, conceding that the hunt is over as our gay-dar finally kicks in.
“Dammit. He eats sauerkraut and kielbasa.” My hopes go limp as I recognize them as sausage-eaters.
“No fair!” Carlee whacks her ball-whipper on the ground. “I couldn’t tell from here. I couldn’t see their teeth! You know I can always tell from their teeth.”
“Their teeth?”
“I can tell if somebody’s gay just from their teeth.”
“You cannot.”
“I can. Remember all the chatter about Doogie Howser?”
“Did he come out?”
“He will,” she says, banging her ball-thrower on the ground. “His teeth are as queer as his medical degree.”
“I don’t know, Carlee, clearly your gay-tenna needs some long-distance tuning. Besides, what could we possibly measure on men from this far away?” We giggle like school girls. Like school girls who are pigs.
When not actively sifting the litter for potential meal companions, Carlee and I would people-watch at the bark park, because it doesn’t get any better than watching dog owners chase their canine charges around a giant fenced-in dog-toilet, plastic bags on their hands, ready to scoop up Boomer’s droppings before they ripen in the rare Michigan sun.
And this is where I came to find a date.
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eDissonance, Chapter 1a, Hunting at the Park, by Erin Waugh
2 August 2015
