Luke Goebel - Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours

The dogs got up from the circle and followed him out.

In the waves, dogs caught him and grabbed his arms with their teeth. He kept pushing out but the dogs stayed afloat, covering his head and arms, maybe trying to rescue him. The boys heard him groan, and watched him fight, but soon there was nothing but dark waters and a pack of wild dogs floating on the sea.

“Keiko!” Cutlass screamed out. “Come back, now.”

The rest shouted his name, and waited for him to rise from the surface.

Eventually, dogs came back from the sea and lay upon the sand by the fire to dry. No one said a word. The clouds sank before the moon, and the beach grew even darker, except for a small circle of firelight. Then a great wind rose up and stole the ash from off the coals, and they glowed hot in their red and cracking shapes. Each one in the party stared into the fire. And they all saw different things, creatures and animals and skulls, swords and ships, teeth and heads and all the forms that have existed now and always, but mostly in the minds of boys.

YOU'VE HEARDit all, but here comes one more. I'll be the first to admit you've heard all I have to tell you. You are not new to this world. Look, I'll be the first and the second and so forth to give away all hope of telling you what is new about the world you have seen all of, etc., — birds and sky and those big clouds in the southwest and everywhere really that stack up infinitesimally high like a god even after you have seen it all already. It's a miracle. I'll try not and trick you, and this circling is not going on in circles, but my dog's you-know-what is the size of a clementine right now, and she's six months. Pussy. The man I got her from, and his fiancée, they said she was spayed. They had a text sign off message that says Mr. and Mrs. Stewart. So every time I used to get a text from them I was confused as to who they thought I was, and why they would call me Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, and then that, too, I caught onto and nothing is new about that now. I told you about that couple. Well, didn't I? Well, she isn't spayed. That isn't anything new my having been fooled. But her (dog?) vagina is the size of a tangerine. I mean, a small orange. It has popped out and she's such a little thing, a delicate creature, who reminds me so much of my love who has left me — Catherine. This is not new either. You've heard of Catherine by now from me if you have heard anything from me by now. I know there's not anything new about being so in love with a woman and her leaving a man for a Manuel.

I am so much a fool as to have thought, as she met him in Paris, that he was French. Manuelo French. Can you believe that? I thought forever he was French, but then one day she tells me he is Spanish. Manuel Spanish! She had kept that from me, but that isn't new, my being in the black. Now I hate Spanish and French alike. I'd like to give every small boy in Western Europe a black eye. A real popper. You have your life. Come on. You maybe might have had a dog by now. Maybe you've been in love. Hoodwinked. Snookered.

Jewely is my dog.

I'm in a Ramada hotel, where I paid nearly 100 dollars to stay because I didn't want to try and drive home to the ranch where I live an hour drive from Dallas and there's not much to make me want to do much. I just rented the room. So, my puppy, she has her pussy all swollen out like the miniature cuff of a man's dress shirt, and her tail moves from side to side and I look at her and I look away and here's where I'm sure I'll lose some face, and here's where I say the wrong thing, but I keep looking at her like this, in heat, and I can nearly feel how it feels for her and I keep thinking of Catherine. I can't stop thinking about Catherine. They both move somewhat in a graceful way, Jewely being part husky (dingo, really) and in the tradition of the wolf, and Catherine being a wolf of sorts, so sleek, her hair a Colorado storm, and something about how neither of them want to ever be seen going to the bathroom, and how they move so delicately and with such power and grace, and I can find some nishy now and then but I can't lay with a girl or woman afterward. I can't stand to anymore. My heart is elsewhere. (Can you believe this doddering smut? I could have called him! I could have picked up for Oregon and saw him instead of writing these dumb words. Instead of this!) It's something about it. I don't like the fucking after having had real love and the lying afterwards together is nothing awfully romantic. Hairy legs and eyes looking all over. I see Jewely and I told Catherine earlier today on the phone that Jewely is in heat. Catherine is about to menstruate, she told me over the telephone. Jewely is in heat. These are the women in my life. My girls in heat. I won't go into the others that I have tried to date recently. You've been around. I'm in a hotel with striped wallpaper, and a storm is darkening the sky. I was out a moment ago and smoked ciggies and the rain fell on my shoulders. It was the big rain that soaks your shirt with a few drops, and I was out there in the first rain of the Texas summer, smoking under an overhang, and with the door propped to the hallway and then standing in the hallway smoking and blowing the smoke out the door. I saw the reflection of the drops on my shirt.

Inside my room is Jewely. She keeps licking herself and she moves differently now. It is worth the hundred dollars, nearly, to have had that moment in the summer rain.

I am so I don't like to talk to anyone so much anymore. I like the rain like that. I have seen the world. A smell. A feeling of wetness on the shoulders. Catherine is still with Manuel. I can tell you that I will never stop loving her. You've been here in the world, have you not? You've been in a hotel? There's nothing else.

LISTEN, people find a way to get even with a guy. I have the story on this note. I was over at the hardware store talking to Carl Daeson. Carl is a big fat old boy in Texas and he was helping me to find a part to go around the hookups for the washer and dryer in the ranch I rent.

Some people are just big around fat porkers, big guys, I mean, they make you sad to see them — I am saying their faces do. There is so much to them, so much whole life in them, and heart, and it makes you want to put your face into them and it breaks your heart to look at them.

I had to cover up and patch this rat hole a wood rat had made inside the wall at Squeaky's ranch. I rent the ranch from this big gay roper, Squeaky. (Here! I told you I'd get back to Squeaky.) He and I had it all out the other day and now I have to move out and first I have to fix this rat hole that enormous rat made while I was back up where I belong up North, moving — I was moving my dead… what is even the right word for this unspeakable thing I can't get my mind around — I was moving my brother's things out of his house. Up in Oregon. Carl. His name was Carl, is Carl, Carl. He was a big guy, the best guy, all calm peaceful but tough and drinking a certain kind of whiskey, two kinds I know them both, and motorcycles and a laugh like Christmas was today and you were the best thing he'd ever set eyes on. Like you were his brother. Hey, if you can't stomach it, my stories, when the book is over I'll tell you the one I didn't put in the book. Call me. My number is on the flap. On the internet. All over. Here's my name: _______________________. Want me to spell it?

There I was standing with Carl Daeson — my brother's first name — standing there figuring how to fit this plastic frame over the square where the hookups come through the wall to cover up the softball sized hole in the wall which a rat chewed as well as chewed through the plastic framing for the square in the wood paneling where the hookups come through for the washer and dryer.