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Mandy.

We have an understanding. It’s not my dog, it’s her dog. She brought it home the afternoon after the same morning she said she wouldn’t get a dog because she realized it was a bad idea. So I don’t walk the dog because it’s hers and we agreed. He’s cute but we agreed, I said ‘Don’t’, she said ‘I won’t’ and then she did.

Unless, of course, she’s having a day when the endometriosis, fibromyalgia or type III and the other type I can’t remember of EDS has made her too sick to walk the dog.

So every morning—half the mornings?—when as soon as she realizes I’m awake she asks me to walk the dog, this isn’t just like a cute thing: Oh it’s your turn to walk the dog. I don’t walk dogs. Asking me to walk the dog is saying ‘I’m dying and this part of my life now has to be lived for me by someone else.’

The dog is dying too. The stair steps are the same length he is. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t trust whatever part of his body gets him from one step to the next step. A step for me is, for him, a leap and it’s long.

So this is morning: standing in the palm trees on a sidewalk in Hollywood with a dog no-one without a girlfriend would ever own (let’s be serious: I would not only never own this dog, but a dog and it is disturbing to me that I am talking to you about a dog on the internet—I am with Clayton on this one—“I’ve had a few pets but I prefer to let Penthouse handle their publicity”)—thinking about death.

It is not one of those deaths where you die a body part at a time, it’s parts of her life die one at a time. Can’t work Tuesday, can’t walk Wednesday, can’t read Thursday, can’t watch  TV Friday, can’t eat Saturday.

So yes, I still make art about sex and death. That’s what’s what we do here: sex and death.

I wonder: how fast is she dying? And this is a good cliche: live each day like it was the last.  But the slow death forces you to idle it, in underdrive, sit at the light. Not do whatever.

And here’s the thing: you look around and those idling bad days and look at everyone else’s awesome days—the days they aspire to have. Oh how nice it would be to walk in the park or have a dog in an apartment and draw a picture and watch a show. They have whole days with no death at all in them and are not taking any advantage of it. They want maybe a couch or flatscreen, maybe work a little harder, steal a little more from a neighbor for that—this guy Franklin hit with her car: he has 3 cars and the one she hit has a limited edition bumper.  I won’t say there’s no-one worth sleeping with who’ll be impressed by your fancy car, but the other two are just years of life collecting dust in your garage, and seriously there is no Riviera supermodel alive who is going to get any wetter for you on account of you shelled out for a bumper. You get to drive down the highway and remember it’s there. That’s the fun ceiling on that.

Whoever he is, and whoever is on the other end of the line, on the phone, saying I should not or cannot have or no-one can do this or that other thing today—most of them I bet can’t even point to one single day in their entire life that they used and if you gave one to them they’d sell it—they look all around at everything there is in the world and aspire to quiet days of bullshit. Take it, take mine. I have shit to do.”

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