Stephen Dixon: Love and Will: Twenty Stories

I address the card to Dana, drop it in the street’s mail container, dogfight, lamppost light, make everything turn out all right.

And then that Will who became Guil who wrote si jamais revient cette femme, Je lui dirais Je suit lui content.

My old man’s snoring, the snow’s now pouring.

Will’s tight, his poems trite, maybe sleep will shorten his halfwit’s height.

To her living room ceiling’s attached a double-sized hammock, first time I met her she wore gobs of blue eye shadow but no other makeup.

Losing sight, nighty-night — oh one other thing she said was will you go fly a kite.

Falling, stalling.

I was crossing Broadway in the eighties when the light turned red and traffic sped past. I waited at the crosswalk on one of those islands in the middle of the avenue when a dog rushed at me from the benches and sunk its teeth into my leg. I tried shaking it off. It growled but wouldn’t let go. I swatted its head with my book and it snapped at my swinging hand and then put its teeth back into my calf. I yelled “Goddamnit, whose dog is this, call it off.”

Three transvestites were sitting on the row of benches with two more normally dressed homosexuals. They were all looking and laughing. I kicked the dog with my other foot and it yelped but ran away this time as I fell to the ground. The five men laughed much harder, seeing me on my behind. I got up. The light turned green. My pants were ripped where the dog had bit me and I felt saliva or blood or both leaking into my socks from the wound. The dog was sitting between two transvestites, licking himself. One of the transvestites tied a tattered cord to the scarf around the dog’s neck and patted its head where I’d hit it. I limped over.

“That your dog?” I said.

“I’m not talking.”

“You just talked, Jersey,” one of the more normally dressed homosexuals said.

“Why you going and tell this nice man what my name is, you pimp and a half?”

“I didn’t tell him. I was only addressing you by what I thought was your name. It isn’t?”

“Why didn’t you call your dog off?” I said to Jersey.

“That’s my business and when I want it to be yours, I’ll tell you.”

“But he bit me.”

“I thought he just psyched you out.”

“He sunk his teeth into my leg twice.”

“Oh yeah? Show me. I got to have proof.”

I pulled up my pants leg to the calf. Blood was dribbling out of both sets of bites.

“Whoo whoo,” one of the other transvestites said. “Show us some more leg, honey. You’re getting me hot.”

“Oh God,” and I let my pants leg down.

“God had nothing to do with it,” he said.

“Who said that before you just said it?” Jersey asked him. “Some famous old movie queen.”

“Beulah.”

“That’s it — the grape. Oh, she was so funny and great.”

“Your dog been vaccinated?” I said to Jersey.

“People are vaccinated. And for smallpox and polio, not animal bites.”

“Then dog shots. Has he had them?”

“Hundreds of times.”

“Where’s his license?”

He looked at his nails, buffed them on his thigh. “I don’t like this color,” he said to the transvestite next to him. “You?”

“How do I know he hasn’t rabies then?” I said.

“How do I know you haven’t rabies?” Jersey said.

“Don’t you think it’s important I know? Be reasonable. If he has rabies, all I have to do is get treated for it.”

“Now listen you. Either give us some more gam or make tracks. You’re becoming a nuisance.”

“He has nice legs though,” the transvestite next to him said.

“Too fat,” the third one said.

“Those are muscles, not fat.”

The other two men were laughing behind a newspaper. Jersey was opening a bottle of nail polish. I said “You’re all nuts and I’m calling a cop,” and crossed the avenue.

“Bye, toots,” a couple of them said. I turned around. The two other transvestites were standing and waving handkerchiefs at me. Jersey was polishing his nails.

A block away I saw two policemen talking to a man. The man was gesturing with his hands in a way I’d never seen before and when I came over, speaking a language I’d never heard.

“Excuse me, officers, but I have to report something.”

“Just a second,” one of them said. “This guy’s trying to tell us something that’s obviously pretty important to him but we can’t make out a word he says. That’s not some Caribbean form of Spanish or South America, is it?”

“Habla Espanol or Portuguese?” I said to the man.

“Caper hyper yoicher,” he said.

“Die Deutsch. Sprechen sie Deutsch or Français?”

“Yoicher caper hyper.”

“We are trying to find out what language you are speaking or you can understand,” the policeman said very slowly to him.

“Hyper yoicher caper,” he seemed to say, “caper yoicher hyper.”

Then he shook his head and rolled up his trouser leg and pulled down his sock and pointed to a set of teeth marks on his ankle and dried blood around it and made barking sounds and imitated an animal or human being baring his teeth and biting down hard with them.

“You’ve been bitten?” the policeman said.

“That’s what happened to me just now,” I said. “By a dog.”

“It did? — Dog? Chien? Cane?” he said to the man. “Mange cane?”

“Yoicher hyper caper yoicher,” the man said. “Yoicher. Yoicher.”

I showed the man my own bite marks and pointed to his ankle and he nodded and smiled and said “Ya ya ya ya.”

“Where?” I pointed to our bites and then to the island a block away and made barking sounds and said “There?”

“Ya ya ya ya. Caper caper hyper yoicher.”

“You’ve both been bitten by dogs then,” the policeman said. “You think the same one?”

“I think we ought to go and find out,” I said.

“What do you say, Kip?” he said to his partner.

“Let’s go over and see,” Kip said.

We all went over to the island. The five men were still sitting there. “Officer,” Jersey said, standing up as we approached them, “I want to make a complaint against this man,” looking at me.

“Just a second,” the policeman said. “These two men have a complaint against you. This your dog?”

“That’s exactly what my complaint’s about. The foreigner I’ve never seen till before. All I know is I’m sitting here when suddenly he’s yelling and babbling at us and then left. But this one,” pointing to me, “tried to accost me last night along the park side of Central Park West. When I refused to go into the park with him or do what he wanted me to right there against the park wall for the whole city to see, he said he’d come back to get his revenge on me. Well he didn’t last night. But ten minutes ago he tried to attack me on this bench. That’s why my dog bit him. Out of protection for me.”

“That true?” Kip said to me.

“It’s so ridiculous I won’t even answer it,” I said.

“See?” Jersey said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m exhausted and going home.” He started to walk away with his dog. Kip stopped him and told him to sit.

“Why? This man only proved who’s right.”

Milos, the foreigner, started to shake his fist at Jersey. Jersey told him to stick it up. He shook both fists at Jersey. Jersey said “Maricon!” and turned around and shook his behind in Milos’s direction. Milos jumped at him and had to be pulled away by the policemen. He shouted at Jersey “Hyper hyper yoicher caper. Caper!”

“What language he speaking?” Jersey said.

“We’re trying to find out,” Kip said. “Any of your friends maybe?”