The Old House by the Highway, pt. 4

We were greeted heartily by the crowd of regulars we'd met the last time we'd been at the Almanac. We had a nice meal – I got a steak that beat anything I'd had in the city, and Monica had a salad the size of her torso – and a few drinks, and slowly felt ourselves unwinding. It was a load off to be away from the house, the smell, the creepy feeling the goat had left, and it was amazing to realize just how anxious we had been as the anxiety slipped away into the evening. Midway through our meal, I saw Justin, the son of our house's previous owner, walk in. We'd met with him a few times over the course of the buying process; he'd helped the realtor do the walk-through of the house and had negotiated a lot of the terms with us. I made a mental note to talk to him about the smell in the basement when we finished eating, to see if he'd heard anything about it in the past and had any hints. I thought of asking if he'd heard of anyone nearby missing a goat, but thought better of it. If I had been imagining it, everyone up at the bar would either think I was crazy or drunk.

When we'd finished and paid for our meal, Monica went to the bathroom and I headed up to the bar. I clapped my hand on Justin's back and said hi. He looked excited to see me, maybe a little sloshed. I hadn't been watching him, but he must have been sucking his lagers down pretty fast while we'd been eating.

“Hey, Ed!” he grabbed my hand and shook it energetically with both of his calloused hands. “Good to see you! How's Dad's old place treating you two? Is Monica here?”

“Yeah, she's in the bathroom. The house is great – as beautiful as ever.”

“Fantastic,” he said, slapping me heartily on the back. “Hey, let me get you a beer! What are you drinking tonight? And your lady, let me get her one, too.”

After the appropriate hemming and hawing over who should pay for whose drinks, Monica returned from the bathroom and we settled down next to Justin for a few rounds. He told us about his job and family. He seemed like a really decent sort of person, a “gentleman farmer,” I guess. He owned a plumbing company that had taken off in recent years, so he'd started raising some crops on the land he'd bought with the revenue from our house sale. He seemed happy.

I finally decided it was time to bring up my gripes, and to see if I could press him for more information on the house. If there was anything to the weird problems we’d been having, I thought he might be drunk enough to reveal it without thinking I was out of my mind. “Hey, Justin,” I asked as the bartender set another round before us. “I have to ask you something. You ever hear your dad tell of a nasty smell coming up from the basement of that old place? We love the house, but there's something foul down there that just makes it reek when the weather's warm.”

He paused, looking into his cup for a little while. Maybe a little longer than he should have. But he was pretty far gone. “Well, Ed,” he looked up at me. His eyes were wide. He looked like a cornered animal. “That's a... that's a real old foundation you've got under that house, you know. You knew that when you moved in. Lots of weird old smells in a dirt floor basement like that, in any house. Especially—“ he burped quietly “—especially near the river like that.”

“Oh, yeah, we know. It’s just pretty foul down there sometimes. We’re going to get a floor put in down there, but in the meantime, it'd be great if we had some advice on how to keep the smell down. Any tips?”

“Sure, sure,” he smiled broadly, relief evident on his face as if he’d dodged a very touchy subject. “Well, you know, that old place is bound to have its issues, you know. There could be a plumbing problem, of course, but honestly I don't think much of the piping runs down there. It's mostly outside into the septic...” He took a swig. “It might be more just the age of the place and the dank air, down there, you know. And yeah, the guy who built it was a butcher, you know. All those creepy meat-hooks in the basement. There are bound to be some unpleasant things hanging around after all that, even if it's just a bit of a stink...”

His eyes opened a bit wider as he said it and he turned back to his beer, very much in the manner of someone who had said too much. “I'd be happy to send some guys over there to look at the plumbing if you want,” he mumbled into his beer, then back at me with a wide, open smile. “Free of charge!”

“Oh, Justin, you don't have to do that,” Monica joined in. “We just thought it'd be worth asking about. If your dad had every mentioned the smell or what he did to keep it down, you know. We'll figure it out.” She laid a hand on my leg. When I looked at her, she gave me a piercing stare. She was suspicious of him, I could tell. Something about his behavior was more erratic than the beers he was downing could explain. I nodded.

“It sure is an old place,” I turned to back to Justin. “I love being somewhere with so much history. You don't get much of that in the city where everything's built over so fast.”

He nodded enthusiastically, happy about the change of subject. “Sure does have some history,” he said. “Hell, my dad used to tell me all kinds of stories about that place. Never sure I believed them, though. He was an eccentric guy, and I never spent a whole lot of time in there, what with all the animals.”

I felt Monica's grip on my leg tighten. “Animals?” I said as lightly as I could, my heartbeat picking up. “He had a lot of pets, huh?”

“Sure did,” Justin replied, shaking his head a little. “He was like Noah over there. I always had real bad allergies as a kid, so we never had pets even though Dad was a real animal lover. So when we were all grown up and he bought that place, he just went crazy. He had every kind of animal you can imagine at one time or another. Hell, I think he had a fox or something once. No idea where he got it.”

“A fox! What a thing to have for a pet!” I laughed, feeling Monica’s hand squeeze on my leg again. We were on to something here. “Did he keep it in the house?”

“Well, yes, and no,” he answered. “Most of the critters he had over there came and went as they liked. He had a big fence around the place so they didn't run off, but the door to the house itself was usually open so the animals could come and go as they pleased. He was like Dr. Doolittle over there.” He drank the rest of his beer in several gulps. I ordered him another.

“What a hoot,” I smiled at him. “I'm glad you rehabbed the place before we moved in! I love animals and all, but not in the house!”

He laughed as his next beer was set before him. “I hear you! I mean, if I didn't have allergies I'd be fine with having a dog or a cat inside, you know? But I could never have lived like that, will all kinds of animals in my house.” His face fell a bit, as his memories seemed to take on a more somber note. “Yeah, it was a real zoo. And I hate to say it – I mean I don’t want to be disrespectful to his memory – but by the time Dad passed on, he'd gotten a little strange with the animals. Had them everywhere, only one room of the house to himself and that was his bedroom. People round here...” he looked up and down the bar, then dropped his voice so the other patrons wouldn’t hear him. “They used to call him the ‘Old Goat Man.’”

I clamped my jaw shut to avoid looking too excited. “Really? ‘Goat Man,’ huh?” I goaded him on.

Justin nodded. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “He had so many of them. We tried to convince him to get rid of some of them, but he loved them like they were his own children. Like most people would love a cat or a dog. After a while, well, the damn goats nearly took the place over... Dad wasn't really all there at that point.”

I saw Monica straighten up on the other side of me, her eyes wide. Justin took a long drink, looking forlorn. Trying to salvage the conversation, I smiled again and held my glass up in a toast. “Hey, man,” I said, “at least he did things his own way. Not many people can say that, right?”

Justin looked up at me blearily and clinked his glass to mine, a smile spreading over his face. “You know, Ed, you're right. He did things his way. Here's to The Old Goat Man.”

“Cheers!” Monica and I shared a meaningful glance over our mugs as we toasted the Old Goat Man.

* * *

Monica and I drove home in silence, our thoughts obviously following the same trail as we wound our way back to the house over the country roads. None of the information we were mulling over had explained or helped our situation, and yet there it was, ringing in our ears. “The Old Goat Man. He had so many of them.” My brain was screaming at me that somewhere in Justin’s drunken intimations was an explanation. Maybe one of the goats had stayed in the woods nearby and come to visit its old home, that something logical had to come of this. But logic seemed to fail me every time I thought I’d explained it. My intuition was pushing away all my trains of thought, trying to force something else through: an explanation that wasn't even an explanation. Just a weird idea. Just nonsense. But it wouldn't go away.

When we pulled up to the house, Monica turned to me. “Ed,” she said seriously, “let's pretend, for now, that that conversation with Justin didn't happen. I just want to sleep and not think about it.” Her eyes were a mirror of my thoughts: confused and serious and tired.

I agreed. We went inside and, while Monica got ready for bed, I made myself a little snack of chips and salsa in the kitchen. “The damn goats nearly took the place over...” The words echoed in my head, and I shook it, refusing to let my thoughts continue down the path they were on. Instead I moseyed over to the basement door to let some of the reeking air from the basement out overnight. The door swung open, squeaking just a little. The smell hit me harder than I'd ever experienced it, sending me reeling away, gagging. My hyperactive brain tried to label it – decay, or droppings, or ... death. I shook my head again and forced the thoughts away once again, heading back to the kitchen.

No longer hungry with that smell following me into the room, I stared at my salsa, feeling nauseous. The house was almost silent, except for Monica's small noises from upstairs, but there was a murmur from the basement. I almost sensed it rather than actually hearing it – quiet movement, as if many feet were moving around on the dirt floor, shuffling. I couldn't be sure if I was really hearing anything or just letting my imagination run away with – No. No, that wasn't my imagination. That was a sound. Maybe the fetid air escaping upward. Or maybe…

Bullshit. I was making myself crazy over the drunken ramblings of a plumber whose dad had gone crazy and goat-happy. Mere coincidence, and I damn well knew it, even though my stomach was flopping around like a fish out of water with apprehension. I’d have to show my stomach who was boss and go down there, take a look around. Show it, and my growing fear, that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on here. Teach the hair on my neck to lie back down.

I took a deep breath and walked to the open doorway, holding my breath against the stench from below. I flicked the light switch on the wall. Nothing happened. The old bulb hanging from the ceiling down there must have blown out. Perfect timing. I took a deep breath through my mouth to avoid smelling the air, and took a few steps down before stopping to let my eyes adjust.

There were faint stirring sounds coming from below as before. Probably rats or bugs, I told myself. I peered downward, my hand tight on the railing and my every hair standing on end. My stomach flipped particularly violently and, then – there it was. That same goat. Standing a few steps below me. Chewing on the same piece of flesh and staring at me.

The Old HOuse by the Highway, pt. 3

I tip-toed in and approached Monica tenderly. “Babe,” I said softly, shaking her, “wake up, I need your help.”

She bolted up, eyes wide. She hadn't fallen back asleep, it seemed. “What happened?” she whispered frantically. “Are you ok? Where's the gun?”

I realized she was shaking, her eyes huge and her hands gripping the sheets white-knuckled. I put a hand on her shoulder. “Everything's fine,” I smiled. “There wasn't anybody out there. ...Kind of.”

“Kind of? What do you mean kind of?” She dropped the sheet to her lap.

“Well, there was something there, but it wasn't an intruder.” I felt ludicrous saying this. “It was... It was a goat.”

Her shoulders, which had been up at her ears in anxiety, dropped, and her frightened look was replaced by one of annoyance. “A what?”

I shrugged. “I don't know how it got in here, honey, but there's a goat in our spare room. You heard him clopping up the stairs. Not a burglar.”

She just looked at me for a while, probably trying to determine if I was lying. I just shrugged again. Finally she looked away. “Stupid farm country. I should've known this would happen eventually. Move to the country, get broken into by a barnyard animal. Ridiculous.” She shook her head and laid back down.

I touched her shoulder again. “No, honey, don't go back to sleep. He's still in there and we've got to figure out how to get him down the stairs.”

She rolled over to look at me with contempt. “I don't know how to do that,” she said.

“I know, but neither do I. He's pretty big. This is going to take two of us.”

She made a disgusted noise and threw back the covers. “Oh, for Christ sake. Fine, show me the goddamn goat.”

We headed across the landing together, with me silently praying that the animal had put down the bloody flesh.

I stopped at the doorway and looked back at her, motioning to keep quiet. “My plan is to stay quiet so he doesn't take off running,” I whispered. “Then we'll have to grab him, maybe by the horns, and pull him to the stairs. And we'll just go from there. I'll go around this pile of boxes to the right, you go left. We'll come at him both ways.”

She nodded wearily.

We slipped into the room and separated. I got that same apprehensive feeling I'd had the first time. The hair prickled on the back of my neck and my forearms as I moved slowly around the room, listening for any sounds from the animal, but all I heard were Monica's feet shuffling around the stacked boxes from the other side. I heard no clopping, no snuffling, no chewing. He must be holding still, waiting for us somewhere in the dark. Suddenly I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye and jumped around a corner to find myself facing Monica again. I whirled back around, thinking maybe I had overlooked him, but I knew that if neither of us had seen him in our circuits of the room, he must not be there. He was too big to miss. Maybe he had left while I was getting Monica, although I hadn't heard his hoofs clattering down the hallway to the spare bedroom.

“He must have gone somewhere I else,” I said, shrugging. Monica's face was pale, her eyes wide. She must have shared my unexplainable unease. Even if the intruder was an animal, I supposed, it was still unsettling to know it had gotten into your house while you were asleep. Especially if the intruder was a carnivorous, blood-covered quadruped.

“Let's check the other rooms,” I instructed, trying to ignore the flipping of my stomach. “You take our bedroom, although I doubt he could have gotten in there without us noticing. I'll take the other spare room. Shout if you find him, and close the door till I get there.” She nodded slowly, the ridiculousness of the situation weighing on her, and we went to check our respective rooms. I shut the door to the store room firmly to be sure the goat wouldn't re-enter.

I went to the other bedroom, which we'd fitted up with a bed and dressers for guests. Tiptoeing in, fully expecting to find the bastard chewing on our 300-count sheets, I scanned the dark room for signs of the beast. It was difficult to see in the shadows, but I didn't sense any movement except my own breathing and pounding heart. I felt my hair begin to stand up again, though, and my stomach somersault in the now-familiar apprehension of the animal's presence. I switched on the light and squinted, and simultaneously felt the goat brush by my leg on its way out the door. I spun around and leaned into the darkened hallway, my eyes scrambling to adjust, but saw nothing except moonlight streaming in from the window on the landing and the open bedroom door. Had it just been an air-pressure change, or my own hyped-up senses fooling me? I looked back into the spare room. Nothing. My blood was rushing in my ears, but still I was sure I'd have heard the clopping of its hooves on the hardwood floors if it had been there.

Shakily, I closed the door and made my way to the master bedroom, where I found Monica looking confused, as well. “It's not in here,” she said from the edge of the bed where she sat. “It's weird, though. I'm like... terrified right now. I feel like I just got in line for a rollercoaster or something. I’m kind of freaked out.”

I sat down beside her and put an arm around her. “Me too,” I admitted. “It's weird to think that an animal could just wander in. I guess we'll have to be more careful from now on.” She leaned on me and I felt her heartbeat racing, her chest heaving, like my own. I patted her on the shoulder. “Well, it's got to be here somewhere and we've got to get it out before it breaks something, or eats something. I hear goats will eat anything-” I got a snapshot vision of that piece of flesh dripping blood and clotted fur onto the floorboards. I shook my head again to get the vision out, my breath catching as I did so. I set my shoulders and stood up, helping Monica to her feet. “It must have gone downstairs.”

We searched every room in the house, twice. Even the basement, which had started to reek of whatever-it-was again, musty and unexplainable and disgusting. We turned on all the lights and looked in every corner, went back upstairs to double check, and shone a flashlight around the attic. But the animal was nowhere to be found. My heart was in my throat the entire time, the memory of the bloodied chunk of meat and those unsettling yellow eyes on mine keeping my adrenaline pumping. Even more unsettling than the animal's conspicuous absence was the fact that both our front door and the side door were closed and locked. The doorknobs themselves were locked and the deadbolts drawn. Even if the goat had had opposable thumbs, he couldn't have gotten into the house. Unless we had been so drunk that we had let a blood-smeared quadruped into our house when we walked in – which we had definitely not been – there was no way to explain its presence.

Maybe I had still been asleep when I'd seen it – maybe I had had a waking dream. But I couldn't forget the distinct feeling I'd had of its presence, the hairs on my neck prickling, the flips of my stomach. I knew the difference between dreams and reality. That thing had been real. I couldn't explain it. But I told Monica it must have been a dream, that I must have thought I saw something that wasn't there. I'm not sure she believed me, but the alternative explanations for what had happened were so bizarre that we both allowed ourselves to believe it, at least enough to go back to sleep.

* * *

The next few weeks passed quickly. I was busy at work and had been spending long hours at the office. Monica, upset by the goat incident, had been spending a lot of time out of the house as well, running errands and gardening during the day. Her unease in the house was compounded by the smell from the basement, which seemed to be getting worse every day. It was midsummer, and the days were hot and humid, so smells were magnified. Especially so close to the river where the ground was damp and the air more humid than elsewhere, it made sense, but understanding why it smelled so bad didn't make being in the house any more pleasant. We called a local flooring company about pouring cement down there, but we had a month-long wait until they could come out to the house.

One day I came home late from work to find Monica sitting on the porch with a stricken look on her face. She was dirty as if she’d been in the garden, her gloves beside her on the floorboards as she wrung her hands. She looked like she had been crying. I settled beside her on the porch without saying a word, and she clung to me, shaking, then burst into tears.

“Monica, Monica, hey, what happened?” I stroked her hair as she heaved giant sobs into my shoulder.

“The.... the goat -” she gasped. I felt a chill go through me. Not this again. “It – it got back in... into the house! It's in there! I – I saw it!” A giant sob wracked her shoulders. “And... I tried to get it out. I tr-tried to get in, b-b-but it locked the door! It l-locked the damn dd-oor and...” Another sob. “I've b-been out here f-for hours! And... and I'm scared!”

“Woah, woah, woah,” I patted her back and held her to me. “What do you mean, you saw it? Where did you see it? How did it lock you out?”

She sobbed a few more times. I knew she was probably getting tears and snot all over my work shirt. “I heard a n-noise, like... like a noise a goat would make, you know?” She seemed to be collecting herself. “A-and I was in the garden. And I looked at the house and I saw it. A-at the window in the spare bedroom, just looking right back at me!” She sniffled and sat up, wiping at her face with the back of her hands. She squared with me and continued, the sobbing subsiding. “So I ran to the door and it was locked. And my keys are inside! So I've just been sitting here and waiting. And I haven't seen it again, or heard anything from inside. But... but I saw it up there. I know it's in there, probably eating things, and breaking things, and... and I don't know why, but it's just like last time, I'm scared of it. How did it get in there?”

She leaned against me, done crying, but still drawing in giant breaths. I rubbed my hand along her arm. “I'm sure there's some explanation, babe,” I said, knowing in my head that I couldn't think of a single one. “Don't worry, I have my keys, and we'll go in and look around.”

She looked up at me, tears welling back up in her eyes. “B-but what if... what if it's like last time and we can't find it? I'm just... I don't know what to think... I don't think I can take that again.”

I nodded. “I don't know what will happen, but I bet we'll find him in there somewhere. A big goat like that can't disappear twice, right?”

She nodded, but the look in her eyes must have mirrored my own. We were both nervous. We took a few deep breaths, then I unlocked the door and we entered quietly, locking the door behind us to block the animal's escape route. We separated like we had before, our hearts both beating fast and our senses running on high. I have to admit, I was on edge. The animal's presence was so unexplained and unsettling. I’m the kind of person who likes knowing how and why things happen, especially in my own house, and yet this goat thing was totally beyond me. It was possible that I had been half-asleep when I thought I saw it the first time, and that maybe my story had upset Monica so badly that she'd locked herself out and imagined she had seen it, too. But something rang false with that explanation, and that same something made the idea of it seeing it again unsettling.

We searched the entire house, and to neither of our surprise, we found nothing. No traces of an animal having been there, and certainly no goat. Nothing was out of place or chewed up or broken. In fact, nothing even hinted that a large hoofed animal might have passed through. Monica and I finally reconvened in the kitchen, where I cracked open two beers to help us calm our nerves.

She looked at me earnestly from across the kitchen table while I took a long gulp. “Ed, I don't like this,” she said. “Something's not right here.”

I stopped myself from nodding. “Well, let's face it,” I replied. “We've both had a bad scare. What happened that night was bizarre, and we've both been on edge because of the basement smelling. Our eyes and our brains must be playing tricks on us. There's no reason to be so upset. I'm sure things like this happen all the time.”

She shook her head. “I know what I saw, Ed. There was a goat upstairs.”

I sipped my beer. “Well, I thought I knew what I saw, too. But it just can't be what actually happened. It's impossible for an animal that size to be prowling our house without us finding it, or at least some evidence of it, Monica.”

She crossed her arms and stared at me.

“Well,” I pushed on, “think of it this way. We've just made a giant transition in our life together, you know? We're both a little scared of being out in the country for the first time. And I mean, if you put it all together, the night I thought I saw it, we'd just come back from the bar, where the locals were telling us about all the farms in the area. I mean, it's perfectly logical that our nerves were more on edge than we realized and we just kind of freaked out together. And I know you were upset by it... maybe we're just feeding off each other's fears. Maybe we need to just calm down a little.”

She was shaking her head between sips of beer. I stumbled on: “Who knows, maybe this smell from the basement is some sort of gas that’s interfering with our brains somehow. Radon, or whatever it’s called. We’ll get it checked out. I bet that once this flooring gets put in and we're more settled, this will all go away, and we'll laugh at ourselves for it.” Even as I heard myself talking, I didn't quite believe it.

Monica was quiet for a minute, thoughtfully peeling the label off her beer bottle. “Ok,” she finally said, leveling a piercing look at me. “Here’s a question: What did the goat you saw look like?”

The image of the beast, grizzly scrap dangling from its maw, its face and body streaked in blood, popped into my head so clearly I almost choked on my mouthful. But I pretended to have to think about it for Monica's benefit. “Wow, it's getting kind of fuzzy now, like a dream or something...” I sipped my beer and peeked at Monica. She did not look convinced. “Well,” I said, wiping my mouth, “I guess it was pretty big, at least up to my waist. And it had horns... not big curly ones or anything, but pretty serious horns. And floppy ears. And it was black and white, not spotted, but blotchy, almost like a cow. You know, just a normal goat.”

Monica waited while I avoided her eye, her stance assuring me that she was about to say something I found unpleasant. When I was finally looking her in the eye, she said slowly and distinctly: “That's exactly what I saw. It was the same goat.”

I shrugged, “Well that makes sense, I mean if we're both unsettled by all this, of course you'd imagine seeing what I saw, right?”

She picked up her beer. “But Ed, you never told me what you saw. We didn’t talk about what it looked like.” She threw back her head and took a few big swallows.

I wanted to argue, but I knew she was right. I'd never described the animal to her. She'd never asked. We stood in silence for a few minutes, nursing our beers. I didn't know what to say, and she knew that she'd made her point.

Finally I put my empty bottle down. “Hey, why don't we go to the Almanac and have dinner and a few drinks? Just get out of here and relax, and see some of our new bar buddies. I bet it'll get our minds off the goat, and that's exactly what we need.”

She looked as if she wanted to argue, but there really was no point. We weren’t going to get anywhere by debating who saw what. So she agreed and headed upstairs to take a shower while I tried to figure out what could be happening with the mystery goat. By the time she was ready to go 45 minutes later, I had still not come up with an answer.

(PS - Post-Christmas musings.)

I know I was a crazy mess of nerves before Christmas, and to some degree I probably still am. See, I love buying things for people. I LOVE it. I am the kind of person that will spend hours in a flea market, pawing through every bit of rubble to find the PERFECT gift for each person. Throughout the year I make notes to myself when I discover something that someone would like, but that I have no excuse to give to them until the holidays. So I wait and I wait and I wait all year until the season is upon us, and then I go absolutely wild in an orgy of spending that leaves me bankrupt for months, for which I reproach myself until June, at which point I start looking for gifts again.

So, I can understand people who go a little crazy from holiday stress. I understand it. This year I was so out of control with stress that I literally got sick as soon as I was done opening my gifts. My body said, "Oh my god we MADE IT! Time to crash!" and I spent the rest of the day bitching and griping and laying on the couch. It was kind of nice.

But be all that as it may, some people's Navidad Nervous Breakdowns were far too publicly on display this morning when I got my grumpy ass out of bed to come the most pointless day of receptionist work at an art gallery - EVER. (But that's a whole different set of gripes...)

First thing that happened when I left the house was that I noticed the overwhelming amount of animal feces on the sidewalks. Normally there's a bit here and there, but most owners are respectful enough to pick up after their pets. Apparently not on Christmas. Too important to get back to the eggnog.

So I stepped carefully through poos of all sizes toward the train. As I came around the corner by the Duane Read drug store, I saw an elderly woman who had her hand on the door as if she were about to go in. At the last minute she turned around and looked right at me. I smiled, and when she realized she had my attention, she flicked her head toward 3rd Avenue with the cars going by on it, and said, "My GOD, are they turning it into a HIGHWAY?" I looked at the road. 3rd Avenue is pretty big - two lanes each way with a left-hand turning lane at the big intersections, and there were some cars moving around, but... It's 3rd Avenue. In the Bronx. There are stoplights EVERYWHERE. I looked back at her and said, "What?" Her eyes were huge. "It looks like they're going to turn it into a HIGHWAY!" she said, staring at me as if I would know. I guess I WAS walking down the street. And I WAS in a coat. So OF COURSE I'm now the local traffic maven. WTF? I just told her I didn't know, and kept walking.

When I got to the train station I walked toward my usual waiting spot right between the two benches, but then turned immediately and walked back toward the center station, because there was a man sitting on one of the benches who was being straight up, balls to the wall, batshit crazy. Luckily for me, my train came pretty quickly, so I wasn't around for the full showcase, but during the minute or so I was there, I saw him gesticulating wildly and screaming, throwing his hands in the air and laughing maniacally, and making some sort of noise that could have been an owl hoot or a song. Not sure. Wow.

So when the train came I stepped in and found myself face to face with an older white man whose eyes were almost popping out of his skull because he was staring at me so intensely. I sat far away from him.

Once off the train, I made it to work with minimal crazy, if you don't count listening to a native New York African American lady cop trying to give directions to completely non-English speaking Eastern European tourists. I thought I'd had my share of insanity for the day.

Wrong! Aside from the fact that there are eleven of us here the day after Christmas, making us the ONLY gallery IN NEW YORK that is open today (I guess there are some poor desperate souls out there who might go into gallery shock and decide that they NEED ART NOW and it doesn't matter who it's by or what it's of or where they get it, THEY MUST HAVE IT, and if this happens then we will the only ones here to supply it to them, in which case this is a great idea), there was more crazy in the wings. A man came in at around eleven, said hello, and then walked back into the gallery. He looked at the art (I'm assuming, anyway) quietly for about ten minutes and then suddenly burst into hysterical, uncontrollable, very loud laughter. It was so over the top that at first I couldn't tell if he was laughing or hysterically crying, but either way I just kept thinking, "Oh my god, don't let him come here and talk to me because I do NOT want to deal with this. And please, please don't let him be pooping in the corner!" Eventually he walkd out, still chuckling to himself. He was not on a cell phone. There is no comic art up in the gallery. I have no idea what was going on in his head.

So, as of this moment, I have 2 hours left till closing, at which point I am going to get on a train at Penn Station. Which, as many of you may know, is in fact where the crazy people in New York go to hang out. So. I'm hoping to make it to Pennsylvania to give out my hand-selected, awesome Christmas presents without first getting mauled by a lady who thinks she's a cheetah, or cornered by an overly hyper out of work mall Santa Claus. Wish me luck.

The Old House by the Highway, pt. 2

A few weeks later I came home early from work to find Monica in the garden. She'd been working at it steadily, turning up the dirt in patches and planting a little at a time. First carrots, then cabbage and onions, then some string beans and squash. Being so close to the river, she told me, the soil was exceptionally rich. Dark and soft and full of moisture, as if it had been fertilized for years. Monica was bound to have a full harvest this fall, and she could hardly be more excited. She'd always wanted a garden in lieu of the pets we could never keep because of my allergies. She needed something to care for, something to divert her maternal instincts for the time being. We'd started trying for a baby almost the moment we bought the house, but had had no luck yet.

I loved coming home and seeing her out there - no floppy hat, but sometimes a bandana or baseball cap. She’d be all dirty and sweaty and beaming with pride in her work. So satisfied and confident. The woman I’d married years ago, sweated away the hot city nights with in our cramped apartment, dreaming of one day when we’d have space and grass and a garden. Here she was, on her knees in the middle of our success, and I thought then that I hadn’t loved her this much since the moment we said our vowels. But the wait had been worth it. She was beautiful. She was on her knees facing away from me, with her trowel in her left hand, sitting still as if examining something or deep in thought.

She didn’t move beyond cocking her head from one side to the other as I walked up the hill toward her, and she started violently when I tapped her on the shoulder. She turned her face up at me, a puzzled expression revealed in the late afternoon light. “Look what I found,” she said thoughtfully, stretching her hand up to me and dropping something hard into it.

It was small, hard and smooth, not as heavy as a rock, but harder than wood, covered with dirt. It was small enough to fit in my hand easily, rounded but with a split down the center, with one side flat and the other rounding off irregularly in a protrusion of a slightly different, harder material. “What is it?” I asked. “A root or something? Like a tuber?”

She shook her head, looking as confused as I felt. “I don’t know. I dug it up trying to plant pumpkins. It wasn’t too far down, but it doesn’t look like any plant I know of. Look at that stuff on the top,” she pointed to the pock-marked, harder material above the split section. “It looks like… well, like bone. I think it’s a part of an animal!”

I stopped turning it in my hand, looking more closely. “But what part? I mean, what bone looks like this?” I pointed at the split section, knocking my fingernails against it gently.

She shook her head. “No idea. Let’s take it inside.”

I didn’t really want to bring a random animal part in the house, but my curiosity was piqued, so we brought it in and did an extensive internet search on animal bones. It took us some time, since we ended up at a lot of university websites with unintelligible biology jargon, but we eventually identified it as part of a hoof belonging to a cloven-hoofed animal of medium stature. Probably a sheep or a goat. Monica was a little unsettled by it at first, but we both realized that the basic structure of the house was over a hundred years old, and the people who’d lived here back then were sure to have some animals. Hell, a butcher had built the place. Finding bones made sense, even if it was a little creepy.

Having gotten past my initial hesitation, I convinced her that we should keep it on the mantel in the living room as a reminder of our house’s past. We washed it a few times and when it dried out, it was actually kind of beautiful.

* * *
The next weekend Monica and I made our first outing to the local bar, "The Almanac." We hadn't had a chance yet to meet many of our neighbors and didn't know what to expect, so we were a little nervous that we’d find ourselves surrounded by rednecks. But most of the people there were friendly while they weren’t exactly rednecks, they were certainly the salt of the earth. It was refreshing to meet people who could give Monica gardening hints, and provide home improvement advice for me; in the city we'd have been met with confused looks and suggestions of who was the best person to hire. And they knew how to be hospitable, and how to drink.

We ended up being there much longer than expected, listening to stories about the area and how it had been changing over recent years. There were still farms around, they said, but not like there used to be. Most of the old farmers had passed away or been shut down by the bigger operations. Most of the area was now suburbanites and gentlemen farmers who liked dealing with crops or animals, but who made there real money elsewhere. We were a little to drunk to feel guilty about our gentleman-farmerly ways at that point, and when we finally got home late we passed out sprawled across our new bed.

I woke up sometime in the night to feel Monica smacking me in the back. Groggy and still inebriated, I grunted a few times and swatted her hand away, but she was persistent. Eventually the fog in my head cleared enough to hear her. She was whispering urgently, almost hissing: "Ed, Ed, wake up! There is someone in the house! There is someone in the house, wake up! Oh Jesus!"

My heart stopped. Those are words I hadn’t wanted to hear. I sat up slowly and put finger to my lips to quiet her. But I heard nothing. Monica was sitting up straight, the covers pulled up high, her eyes so wide they reflected the moonlight off the river. "I don't hear anything," I mouthed.

She shook her head. "I heard something downstairs. Someone walking. I swear I heard it. Go check!"

I started to argue with her, my head spinning a little with fumes form the booze, but just then there was a creak from the staircase, and a loud thud. I sobered up. Monica seemed to get smaller beneath the blanket, her eyes opening wider as she nodded frantically at me. The thudding continued, certainly but unsteadily making its way up the stairs. It sounded like at least two people in heavy boots. As I slipped out of bed and moved toward the sound, I vaguely wondered why burglars wouldn't take pains to stay quieter as they approached the bedroom in a sleeping house. They were being ridiculously loud. Then I realized that maybe they didn't intend to sneak through the house and rob us. Maybe they meant to hurt us, even kill us.

My heart stopped when this thought occurred to me, and I forced myself to keep moving toward my dresser. I opened the top drawer and withdrew my handgun from beneath the socks. I heard Monica draw a quick breath behind me, but I was focused on the noise outside. The slow, faltering clatter of feet on the stairs. The growing certainty that those footsteps were aimed toward my wife with ill intentions. I tried to block out the mental images that sprang up of Monica, bloodied and broken... I cocked the gun.

Monica had argued against me buying it, but ownership of our new house had sparked a protective instinct in me. I was glad now that I had the cool metal in my hand, the surprising weight of the weapon reassuring in the dark night. I glided silently across the bedroom floor to stand behind the door, every sense piqued. The intruders were near the top of the staircase now, their loud, clumsy footsteps obviously intent on reaching the landing just outside my door. I tensed, waiting for the perfect moment to spring, one hand resting lightly on the doorknob, the gun heavy in the other, every muscle tensed and every hair on end. I could hear Monica trying to breathe quietly but trembling on the bed behind me.

The footsteps reached the landing and stopped. Letting my mind go blank for a split second, I exploded through the door, yelling something out of a police drama. I don’t know what I said exactly, but I found myself on the landing, gun straight out in front of me in both hands and aimed at where I expected the chest of the intruder to be. It took a few seconds for the adrenaline to clear enough for me to notice that there was no chest in front of the gun. No person in front of the gun at all. My over-stimulated brain stopped working for a moment, confused.

I lowered the gun and looked down. It was a goat. A big, stupid-looking, black and white goat with small horns and big floppy ears. It looked at me for a moment, uninterestedly chewing on something. I stared back at it, stunned. The adrenaline was still buzzing in my ears, but my embarrassment at having gotten so worked up over the animal buzzed louder. I shook my head at it. The goat made a small bleating noise and shook its head, too, then clopped away from me and into the spare bedroom we’d been using for still-packed boxes. I gaped after it. A goat. No way.

I scratched my head, the alcohol swimming back into focus as my brain tried to wrap itself around what had just happened. My brain, detached, informed me that the four hooves on the stairs explained why I’d thought it was two loud, evil-intentioned men. I found myself nodding in assent. But wait. Hold on. How in God’s name had that thing gotten in? I tried to remember if I had locked the door – hell, if I had even closed the door – when we’d come home. I had been drunk, but definitely not drunk enough to have forgotten something as simple as that. I didn’t have a clear memory of it, but there was a possibility I’d left it unlocked. Maybe it just hadn’t been closed the whole way and the goat had head-butted its way in. I’d heard goats did the head-butting thing.

Just then I heard a clatter from the spare room, as the goat sounded like it ran into something large and wooden. I realized I’d better get it out before it started head-butting our possessions; never mind how it got in. I tiptoed over to the door and peeked into the room. No sign of the animal, but the room itself was eerie in the moonlight, stacks of boxes piled higher than my head and vaguely shaped furniture covered in sheets. No sign of the goat. I felt a cold shudder pass through my body as I realized I was apprehensive about facing the goat. Its mysterious presence in the house made it seem almost as formidable an enemy as the human intruder I’d expected. And anyway, I knew nothing about goats or their habits. The thing could rush at me, horns lowered, and gouge me to death, or somehow get into the master bedroom and do the same thing to Monica. I heard a soft sound from the corner, maybe its furry side rubbing up against a box. The sound sent chills through me.

I crept into the room, senses running high as the leftover adrenaline from earlier kicked into action. I set the gun down on a box nearby as quietly as possible and stood perfectly still. From across the room I could hear an almost steady succession of noises from the animal, the clatter of its hooves on the wood floor as it moved about, a constant chewing noise as it chomped on something (probably our dish towels, the bastard!), a subdued snuffling. I came around an old wardrobe we’d been pondering selling and saw its tail disappear behind a stack of boxes just ahead. I tiptoed forward, ready to spring, and crouched down to prepare myself. When I peered around the boxes I found myself face to face with the beast – it had turned around and, rather than sneaking up behind it, I was now starting into its strange eyes, both of us frozen in surprise. I’d never looked at a goat’s eyes before; they were yellow and vacant, with large, square pupils that contracted into rectangles as it stepped toward me, snuffling at my shorts around a large chunk of something in its mouth. As it got closer I remembered my intention and hunkered down to lunge at it, coming almost even with its mouth, and suddenly stifled a yelp as I leaped backward.

It was chewing on a piece of flesh! It wasn’t meat, exactly – it didn’t look like muscle, but it was certainly part of an animal. It was blloody and dripping, bits of hair falling in clotted chunks as the goat gnawed it lazily. The animal’s jaw was covered in blood, its bizarre rectangular eyes focusing on me as I found myself backing slowly away, horrified.

I turned the corner away from the goat and ran for the door, which I slammed shut behind me. I stood still, re-evaluating the situation at hand. How was I going to grab the goat without getting myself all bloody? For that matter, how was I going to get it down the stairs? I hadn’t even thought about it before, but the thing was pretty large, its head above my waist by a good six inches, and it would probably flail and bleat and kick and head-butt if I tried to pick it up. And, even if it didn’t put up a fight, the simple mechanics of getting a hundred-pound, hoofed animal down a flight of slippery wooden stairs in my socks was daunting. I had to rethink my strategy.

And, shit, I mean, a carnivorous goat? I’d always heard that goats would eat anything, but I had thought their diet was restricted to bizarre household objects and plants, and anyway, where had it gotten a bloody piece of hairy meat? Had it run down a neighbor’s dog? Grabbed a bite of roadkill from the highway? Wherever it had come from, I wasn’t sure I wanted to mess with this bloodthirsty animal just now, particularly after the nonchalant way it had stared at me, unflinching, gnawing on some other furry animal’s hide!

Several moments of unproductive thought later, I shook my head and turned toward the bedroom. I’d have to get Monica to help; there was no way around it. I’d just have to hope she didn’t freak out about the blood.

The Old House by the Highway, pt. 1

Ok, all, holiday stress has gotten to me so badly that I can't write anything for a while. So I'm editing what I've already written and we're starting another Story Serial Series! Enjoy!

-----


The Old House by the Highway, pt. 1



The old house by the highway was perfect when we found it – at the right price and in the right place, exactly what we’d hoped for. The previous owner, and old man whose son told us had kept mostly to himself, had died a few years before. His family had refurbished, repainted, and re-everything-elsed it, and we had jumped on the chance to buy it. The house itself was beautiful, and it was close enough to the city that I could make the commute in 45 minutes or less. But it was still far enough out that we could have our own piece of the earth and quiet nights. Sure, it was a little close to the highway, but after having lived in a shoebox-sized studio for five years on the second story of a building on Main Street, the sound of cars driving by would be comparatively peaceful. Besides, the highway was only a forty-something foot strip of macadam between the house and the West River, which reflected glorious sunsets every evening into our living room, where the light bounced across the brand new hardwood floors and lit up Monica’s eyes. It was perfect.

Three bedrooms would give us plenty of space for guests and maybe even a family. A giant living room with big new windows looked out over the river and joined onto a kitchen big enough for Monica to stretch her cooking muscles. Two bathrooms, one upstairs and one down, and even a small study where I could set up a home office. The basement was a little bizarre, with its dirt floor and noisy old furnace, meat hooks hanging from the beams (we’d been told the original builder was a butcher) and a musty, unfamiliar odor. It might have just been the old dirt, that smell, but neither of us were used to old houses. Monica didn’t like it one bit, so we resolved to use the basement mainly for storage until we had the means to put a new floor down and buy a new furnace.

There was a large back yard set into the hill behind the house, where Monica could set up pa garden for tomatoes and strawberries and whatever else she wanted. We discovered after a few days that if we positioned ourselves just above the house on the hill, we could put the roof between us and the highway, and see only the roof and the river beyond. The small plot of woods behind the house was dense enough to be shady in the summer, but small enough that Monica wouldn’t have nightmares about strange forest beasts attacking her in her garden while I was at work. She was a city girl, born and bred in the urban landscape, not used to bugs or animals, and I wanted her to feel safe from the unknown terrors of Nature.

We moved in hardly a week after we’d bought the place in late April, excited after our years scrimping and saving. We started ordering furniture like mad – a giant L shaped couch with a chaise, a rocking chair, a giant roll-top desk, bookshelves, end tables, coffee tables, a bigger bed, a giant stereo system and entertainment center. We bought pots and pans, new cutlery, china, and crystal. We shopped for art and plants, candle votives, wreaths, holiday decorations. We were swimming in delight. My perfect vision of our new life was of me coming home from a day at the office, amidst the hustle of the big city and the hectic scramble of business dealings, the sunset lighting up the windows of my new home, and finding Monica in the garden with a big floppy straw hat and her work gloves, maybe a round belly, and a basket full of tomatoes for our supper. It seemed as if it would all come true, and soon.


* * *

Things began to settle down after the first two weeks – we had most of the furniture set up and a large part of the decorating finished. We’d settled in for a quiet night of TV when I noticed Monica doing that “I’m trying to be subtle but I’m really freaked out by something” motion: stiff neck, head cocked to one side but twitching occasionally, nostrils flared. Usually this is in response to something I’ve done, so I ignored it for a while, but at every commercial break I noticed her doing it again, so finally I asked what was wrong.

She looked at me, aghast that I didn’t already know. “Can’t you smell that?” Her nostrils flared up again, her eyes wide. I’d been smelling the same air as her all night, but I hadn’t noticed anything, so I just shook my head. She rolled here eyes at me. “It’s like the same smell from in the basement, but… worse. Stronger. I can smell it from here.”

I took a deep breath, sampling the air for anything abnormal. The smell was there, faintly, but stronger than usual underneath the soft cinnamon scent of Monica’s candle burning in the kitchen. “Hm. Yeah, I do smell it. Well, it’s been kind of damp weather lately, I’m sure that’s bringing the smell out.”

Monica chewed on her lip, crossing her arms. “Will you go check it out?” she asked eventually. “Just to be sure there’s not something wrong down there?”

I glanced at the TV. The commercial break was nearing an end. “What could be wrong?” I asked. “It’s just a smell.”

”Oh come on, Ed, just to be sure. I mean, it could be flooding or maybe the furnace is acting up. If there’s a problem down there...”

“Fine,” I said, throwing another glance at the TV and mentally giving myself the next 30 second commercial slot to get to the basement and back.

Monica had been right, the smell was worse than usual. On a typical day you couldn’t smell anything unless you were actually in the basement, but now, the closer I got to the top of the stairs, the stronger I could smell it. It was an unclean smell, like an animal on a hot day, mixed with something more unpleasant, nauseating, almost… sinister. Maybe it’s just hindsight that makes the smell scary, but even then I felt a little flip in my stomach as it grew stronger. Something unsettling in that stink.

Pressed for time as I was, I nonetheless hesitated at the door to the basement stairs. If there were something wrong with the furnace, that would be a lot of money spent on fixing it, and if it were flooding… I hated to even think about the possibility. Living across from the river, I imagined that flooding was a very serious possibility, and I made a mental note to start researching flood insurance.
The smell hit me when I opened the door like a damp rag, reeking of something unnamable. It came at me so strong that I reeled backward, gagging. There was a sound in the depths of the basement, quiet and hardly noticeable, sensed more than heard, a rustling like someone passing by me, then silence. I struggled forward against the stench and flicked on the light to the basement, straining my eyes down the stairs to see...
Nothing. Just the bare dirt floor, dry as ever. I descended a few steps, hesitantly at first, then faster as more of the basement came into sight. Nothing on the floor, not even a puddle or a damp spot. Certainly nothing moving; the noise I heard must have been the musty basement air moving as the draft of fresher air hit it. And now, as I sniffed, there was hardly even a smell. Just that same old musty basement odor with a little bit of nasty mixed in. It must have just been collecting down there, like in a room where the gas has been left on, and now it had aired out. We'd kept the door shut almost since the day we moved in and I supposed we'd just have to leave it open at night while we slept from now on, and get a decent floor put down in there.
I bounded back upstairs just in time for the commercial break to end, and told Monica my findings. She just nodded and didn't even look away from the screen.

Just a link for now, because I have no words.

But I'm sure I'll have words tomorrow. This is just despicable:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1099447/Saudi-court-tells-girl-aged-EIGHT-divorce-husband-50-years-senior.html

Saudi court tells girl aged EIGHT she cannot divorce husband who is 50 years her senior

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 9:49 AM on 22nd December 2008

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 135 miles north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

Lawyer Abdullar Jtili said:"The judge has dismissed the plea, filed by the mother, because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty."

"She doesn't know yet that she has been married," Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.

Relatives who did not wish to be named said that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother.

They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18.

The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of £5,000, as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.

The father was in court and he remained adamant in favour of the marriage, they added.
Mr Jtili said he was going to appeal the verdict at the court of cassation, the supreme court in the ultra-conservative kingdom which applies Islamic Sharia law in its courts.

Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the
Arabian Peninsula, including in Saudi Arabia where the strict conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common.

In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28.

Carried away (I'm so punny!)

Let’s put aside our holiday stress for a moment and think about an oft-overlooked holiday tradition in many major cities, and especially here in New York: carriage horses. The ones in Central Park are a year-round tourist attraction, but at the holidays they’re done up in their drivers’ finest, with garlands and tinsel strewn about on the carriages they pull families of tourists around in. I’ve been hearing rumblings lately about these horses, comments from New Yorkers packed onto the crowded sidewalks with tourists on Central Park South: “Those poor horses. Out in the cold like this!” and: “It’s cruel what they do to those animals!” And so on.

I don’t claim to be some kind of expert on animal psychology, nor do I know much about the living conditions of these animals when they’re not in the park pulling carriages, but I do know a decent bit about horses and what they like. Actually, I love horses. I’m one of those annoying semi-priveleged girls that got to take riding lessons when she was younger and now gets all giggly and big-eyed every time she sees one. I think they’re fantastic.

But that does not mean that I have any illusions, like many others do, about horses. They are not some sort of sparkly fairy creature that will die in captivity. They are not magical unicorns. If you’ve spent any time around them, you know what I mean, and if you don’t, please, please, just listen. This may be tough on anyone who grew up reading Black Beauty or playing with My Little Ponies or even who saw Seabiscuit, but it’s true.

Horses are big, strong, smelly animals. They poop a lot, and they roll around in it, and in dirt, and they stink. They have big brown eyes and long eyelashes, but they are also very willing to bite and kick if they’re in a bad mood. They are beautiful and graceful, but they are also gigantic animals that can weight over a ton. They have been bred for thousands of years to be big and strong enough to carry people and things on their backs, or to pull them behind them. Pulling carriages is literally what most of the horses in Central Park were born to do. In fact, most draft horses can pull up to six times their own body weight easily; it hardly bears mentioning that the carriages in question, even laden with whole tourist families, don’t weigh nearly six times a 1600 lb horse.

PETA (http://www.peta.org/MC/factsheet_display.asp?ID=135), that ever-screeching bastion of wisdom about the animal kingdom, is running a campaign right now against the “abuse” of the carriage horses, maintaining that the animals live miserable lives in terrible conditions and should be taken off the streets. While I appreciate their compassion, I want to point out to each and every one of them that it’s extremely misguided. These horses were born and bred to work, and while I’m sure there are parts of their lives that are less than ideal, that is true of every living thing. While it would be great if all horses could run free in meadows full of daisies, there just aren’t that many meadow-filled daisies these days, and very few people who can afford to support horses who don’t work for a living.

PETA insists that carriage horses will “inevitably” have hoof problems leading to lameness after walking on pavement. While it’s true that they are not meant – biologically – to be treading on paved streets most of their lives, these horses are cared for by professional ferriers who outfit them with specialized shoes to protect their feet as much as possible. PETA also argues that the horses suffer from breathing car exhaust, which I can’t deny, but I beg PETA to remember that so do all of us humans, and we’re doing all right. They maintain that the stalls the horses sleep in are “restricting” and small, but I feel compelled to inquire whether any PETA member has ever been in any other horse barn. Certainly some racehorses live in giant stalls like kings, but the majority of the world’s horses spend their indoor hours in small stalls where they can turn around and take a few steps, but not much more. “And,” PETA members cry, “the horse stalls are dirty! The animals are stepping in their own feces! It’s despicable!” To which I answer, once again: Horses are animals. They poop freely whenever and wherever they want to, including in their bedding. If you are in a horse stall, no matter how big or small or dingy or clean, there is at least a 50% chance that there will be manure in it, and the horse will not be offended in the slightest. It’s a horse.

And therein lies my entire argument. “It’s a horse.” I love horses, as I’ve said before, and of course I want them to have happy and enriching lives, but pretending that they are immaculate, highly intelligent, pseudo-human creatures that somehow need to roam free in fields of grain helps no one. In fact, it just feeds further into the already existing metropolitan ignorance about animals, which in turn leads truly cruel behavior toward our four-legged friends. For instance, I’m sure I’m not the only who has seen Manhattanites pushing dogs around in strollers rather than letting them walk. Taking a dog for a walk does not mean pushing it, people. It means letting the dog walk, because it’s a dog and it needs exercise to be happy and healthy. And even many of the dogs I see walking are wearing fur coats and booties! I’ve read articles on people who spend tens of thousands of dollars getting their cats spray-painted (http://www.whypaintcats.com/). There are rumors that this is a hoax, but the idea has been planted and I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts happening in reality. We’ve all heard stories or known someone who knew someone who had a pet pig that they kept inside in a diaper and fed beer. Or seen specials on people who keep chickens in thousand-dollar houses and take them swimming. The list of atrocious behavior toward animals goes on and on, mostly because people refuse to see animals for what they are: animals, that do not want to be treated like people.

From all I have seen personally, the carriage horses in Central Park want to be treated like horses, and they are treated fairly well as such. They are taken back to the stables to rest when the weather is too extremely hot or cold, are fed several times a day, and are rested for long periods of time. They get adequate exercise, are madly adored by children on the street who feed them treats, and have the company of other horses most of the time. I have never once seen a driver use his whip to urge a horse on, mostly because the horses have walked the route a thousand times and know exactly what they’re doing. Most of them are well-tempered horses who are used to the sights and sounds of the city, although there have been a few incidents of horses spooking at car horns and such and hurting themselves; one did, in fact, die this way a few years ago. And there have also been cases of horses being dehydrated during the hot summer months, but measures have been taken since then to provide them with better access to water.

If we allow PETA to brainwash us into thinking that because what carriage horses do looks less than appealing to us as people it must be wrong, we will only be adding to a culture of ignorance about our fellow creatures. Just because we don’t want to pull carriages and eat oats out of a bucket does not mean that it’s not a perfectly suitable thing for a horse to do. I’m sure there are aspects of their lives that could use improving, and I hope very much that, if nothing else, PETA’s public outcry will push the carriage horse industry to improve all conditions for the horses as much as they can. But shutting them down because we think we know what’s best isn’t going to help anything; it will only put a lot of good horses out of a job and probably out of a good home.

The (Not) Comsuming Culture

Working at an office populated mostly by attractive young women (our boss is an old French guy who gets what he wants) is strange in many ways, as I'm sure you can imagine. I'm simultaenously blessed and cursed to be seated in an area that is completely cut off from most of the activity in the gallery, so whatever strange female issues may be going on in the offices is mostly unknown to me. I am alienated very physically from any camaraderie that might occur, but I'm also ignorant about any catfights, back-biting, etc. It's kind of nice.

But there's one thing that I have definitely picked up on from my year and some change here. The women all seem to be putting on a show about what and how much and how often they eat. It's fascinating! I'm sure it's possible that some, maybe even most, of them really do eat salads with no cheese or meat every day, or refrain from all sugar, but I just don't think it's very likely. Yet, while at the gallery, they consume fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and unsweetened beverages, almost to a woman. There are a few of us here (not necessarily me - I'm a sucker for peer pressure, it seems) that allow ourselves to occasionally be seen with a cookie, or a big fat juicy something delicious, but most of us stick to the "we are so perfect we never eat french fries" song and dance. It's bizarre.

Actually, no, it's not bizarre. Because try as we might to be one big happy estrogen-producing family, women are catty bitches, and we will go to ridiculous lengths to look better than one another, for stupid, stupid reasons (mostly men's attention, but that's another blog entry). Especially here, where most of the women involved are thin and beautiful and young, there is a strong urge to try to be the thinnest, most beautiful, youngest, etc. And apparently that means rabbit food. Because God forbid we allow ourselves to enjoy food, or independence from super-model skinny expectations, or sex, or anything visceral. We're women. In order to be respected we have to look like the cover of Vogue and experience as little emotion and pleasure as possible. Ice Queens, all of us. It's ridiculous.

Now, don't think I'm immune. As I said before, I'm a peer pressure floozy. I rarely eat big juicy anythings at work, mostly because I don't want anyone to see me. I'll admit it. But then again, I'm the receptionist and if clients come in and see me taking dripping bites out of Big Macs all the time, well, I might lose my job. (Which in itself is pretty stupid and reinforces the idea that we have to behave in a certain way to be successful, but that's another blog entry entirely.) Also, I have to stick to things that are easy to eat behind the desk, so that if the phone rings I won't drop my sandwich or difficult-to-approach falafel wrap, or whatever. So for practicality's sake I tend to stick to soups, salads, and other small dishes I can hold , whether I recognize my reasoning as faulty or not, I fall right into the "I can consume fewer calories than you in public!" war that seems to be going on in the office psyche.

Sure, I'm certain that there are lots of ladies here who really just enjoy being healthy, but you can't convince me that they don't all go home and chow down on greasy Chinese food and cookies. I sure do.

Really cute moment.

Yesterday as I was trying to keep myself awake after a night of fitful sleep, and putting an old friend on a plane in the wee hours, an elderly lady came into the gallery. She was very nice and asked to see a catalogue of Michele Oka Doner's work, which she had never heard of before she saw a picture on my desk.

She took the catalogue aside and looked at it for a while, then up at me and said, "This is the most exciting thing I've seen in a long time!"

She was very earnest about it. Not being annoying or asking dumb questions or demanding information out of me. Just really, really excited and nice. She got herself into kind of a tizzy, then took a press release and set off into the bowels of the gallery to look around. "I'm supposed to be on my way to a hospital," she told me. "But this comes first. Art is far more vital to life."

What an entrancing lady! I hope she comes back. If we had more people come into the gallery who were as excited and in love with ART itself, I might really enjoy my job. As it is most of our visitors are just gawkers who seem not to feel anything when they look at the work, or stuck-up art snobs who only want to know about technique, or rich people dripping with money and privelege (although I've seen fewer of them over the past few months).

It's sad to see people's reactions - or lack thereof - to art sometimes. Granted, the gallery IS a commercial venture, and if you aren't planning to purchase anything here (ie, if you don't have a few hundred grand at least to throw around) then we can't do much for you on a practical level. But the art is here to be bought and sold only on a very superficial level. Art, as Oscar Wilde put it more eloquently, is "quite useless, practically speaking." But art is really HERE to be experienced. To be entered into with the naivety of a child, with the innocence of... well, an innocent. It is here to awe you and take you someplace where you don't think about money and commerce anymore. And of course not all of it will. There this hideous Jesus Rafael Soto piece in the vitrine right in front of me that makes me puzzled and mildly unhappy to look at, for instance. But why come to an art gallery with an agenda? Why badger the receptionist for information she doesn't have, or look dour, or drag your kid around by its hand? I much prefer, and better understand, people who come in wide-eyed and stand for hours and stare.

"The farewell kiss"

So an Iraqi journalist hurled a really vicious insult, and his shoes, at President Bush over the weekend at a press conference. Muntader al-Zaidi, a television journalist for Al-Baghdadia, apparently used his turn to ask a question instead as a chance to hurl his shoes at Bush's head and yell, "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" He was immediately tackled by police officers, beaten badly, and taken into custody, where he remains. You can watch the whole throw-down here on YouTube, from several different vantage points.

One of the directors of the gallery, who's sitting at the desk next to me, is watching the video on repeat and laughing hysterically to himself. And I can definitely agree that the physical situation is pretty funny; as one of the comments at the YouTube site declares: "Looks like President Bush was good at dodgeball." (It's true. Dubya is apparently sporting some mad ninja skills! Who knew?) And the pissed look on his face right afterward is serious YouTube gold.

But it's much more than that, too. In the Arab world, as the New York Times points out, the act of touching someone with a shoe is a grave insult because it symbolizes that person being lower than the dirt that touched your shoe. Calling someone a dog is similarly heinous, because Arabs consider dogs particularly dirty and unworthy animals. For his audacity, Al-Zaidi remains in custody and will probably face up to seven years in prison for aggression against a visiting head of state. He has become an overnight hero in Iraq and abroad. He's been awarded for his bravery by a Libyan group. People of all types, from all over Iraq, have taken to the streets in support of his courage, throwing their own shoes at American convoys and burning American flags.

One more reminder that the Iraqis hate us. And they are being joined by an ever-larger inernational community of people who love to watch President Bush being cut down in public as our figurehead. And what's more, most of us here in America love watching him dodge shoes, or trying to talk his way out of interview questions, stumbling over every syllable, or pretending to have some sort of relevence in the government at this point. He's hilarious. Watching him fail is funny. Especially now, when we have something better, someONE better, to look forward to.

But I'm feeling very conflicted about it. It's strange. I've hated this guy since day numero uno. He's in so deep with oil companies he's practically oozing slime, he stole an election (or two), he can't speak to save his life or he would have become a televangelist, and he's been at the head of one of the most blatanly corrupt and shamelessly money-grubbing, war-mongering administrations in history. I fully expect that the crimes of him and his cronies will come to light and go down in history as far dirtier than Nixon and his goons could have ever hoped to be. I get enraged when I think of the way Bush has abused his power and that of our country to protect and industry that doesn't deserve protection. I... well I downright hate the guy. He's a dick.

But there's still a measure of discomfort bubbling in my stomach as I watch him dodge those shoes on YouTube. Even as I see the gleam of pissed-off entitlement creep into his eyes, I think, "Hey, that's MY guy! Leave him alone!" I think what it boils down to is that I'm already embarassed by him on a much larger scale - he's made a mockery of what the idea of America is supposed to stand for. Watching him grovel for public sympathy in the news recently, trying to seem like a nice guy for the cameras, admitting in an interview that he was underprepared for the war, it gives me the squirmies. As if suddenly we're supposed to forget all the bullshit he's put the world through for the past eight years and feel bad for the guy. It sickens me. He's the President of the United States of America. Even if I enjoy a good chuckle over his grammar faux pas doesn't mean I want to see the leader of the free world - MY free world, for better or worse - being not only ridiculed but insulted in such a way that he must literally cower.

I cannot really reconcile myself with the idea that the President, still in power even if only in name, must bear this ridicule. It bodes ill for our country in a much more upsetting way, I think, than the oft-repeated headlines about American flag burnings and anti-American demonstrations across the world. On the one hand, I appreciate more pointed attacks being aimed at Bush himself, as he represents a type of American that is on its way out of power - general anti-American protests label all of us as that same type. But on the other hand, he is still arguably the most powerful man on earth, and he is MY most poewrful man on earth, even though I never would have voted for him.

I don't feel bad for the guy. But I do think he deserves more dignity than he has been getting or even demanding lately, and I hate to think of what this means for the Presidency in general. It bothers me in much the same way that watching the video footage of a sad and grey-bearded Saddam Hussein being poked and prodded by a doctor after his capture bothered me. He might have been a dick, but he was still a human being - a powerful human being who used to command the respect of the world - and worthy of decency. In much the same spirit, then, I say: "Let Bush go out with dignity." If he wants to recant later in life, write a book about how he wasn't ready for war, make public appearances where he invites shoes to be thrown, whatever - let him. But for now, he is still the President. He may be our worst President. But he is President, nonetheless. Let him pass into history on his own terms, and let us judge him on those terms later, but for goodness' sake, let him have what he's left for himself of his own dignity.