I encountered her in the kibbles aisle of the pet store. I don't think she noticed me, but I couldn't keep my eyes off her as she knelt on the floor perusing the heaps of forty-pound sacks, reading the labels, weighing all the factors that in the long run don't matter, as long as little Fifi eats the shit. The dog doesn't care if it takes like real chicken, or has extra vitamins in it, if it's organic or prepared by certified French chefs or is easy to digest. My dog Lingham will eat deer shit, dead possums, weeds, paper. I look for dog food that won't poison him, and is cheap. But this woman in her faded, snug jeans and close-fitting tank top was crouched in the aisle reading every line of fine print.
She did not seem aware of me, and the fact that I was staring into her cleavage simply wasn't an issue for her. She wanted her spoiled little Poofty to be happy, wanted to find something subtly delicious and medically nutritional for little La-La. She wanted to find something her beloved Boopsie would love, and some man leaning over her leering meant nothing. We did not speak, she did not glance up and our eyes never met.
I threw a bag of cheap shit over my shoulder, paid up and headed out for a cup of coffee and maybe find something new to read at Ollie's Books, a half mile from the pet store. I was sitting in the window people-watching with a muffin and cup of espresso, flipping through the pages of a possible purchase, minding my own business, and wouldn't you know, my lucky day, she appeared again. I watched her strolling to the door, and without turning around I followed the sound of her progress as she walked in behind me and ordered something at the cafe counter. I tracked the sound of her gathering her cup and a cookie, heard her footsteps approaching, and was delighted when she sat down two stools away from me. She did not look at me or seem to know I was there. I consider coincidences like these to be hints from the cosmos, not to be ignored. Fate obviously had something in mind here, and my job was to find out what it was.
What do you say to a chick like that? These days, I know, I am demographically presumed to be self-centered, privileged, biased, sexist, a toxic predator and so on. These preconceptions make it harder for a bozo like me to meet interesting women, of course, and I'm sorry but I'm just not always smart enough to figure out what to do.
"Hey, didn't I just see you over at Petco?" I said, taking the Gordian-knot approach to the navigation of the sociopolitical labyrinth.
Her irises were black as night, black as ink, with no contrast to indicate the pupil and no way to judge just how deep the deep end of her pool was. Her lips remained impassive, neither a smile nor any negative expression. Her head turned slowly, deliberately, toward me. "You were there?" she said.
"Yeah, I was buying some kibbles for my guy Lingham," I said. "He's a mutt with an appetite."
"I see," she said. "Yeah, it's hard to pick out something good. My Cootchy is very picky and hard to shop for."
"What breed is she? I assume a she."
She said some French-sounding thing I had never heard of, and I nodded appreciatively.
"She's a sweety," the woman said, "But very hard to please."
"I see, hard to please your Cootchy," I said.
"She needs a lot of special attention."
"My name is Doc, by the way," I said, probably proving myself to be a sexual predator and danger to society. She did not seem offended, yet.
"I'm Alexandria," she said. "Or Alex." She paused. "Or Al, whatever."
"Al," I repeated. "I kind of like that for you. It's incongruent in an interesting way."
"Incongruent?" This appeared to be someone who knew the meaning of the word, but did not know why a man's name would be incongruent for a woman.
"Yes," I said. "You don't look like an Al. Which makes it a good name."
"What name do you think I look like?"
"Hmm," I looked her over, head to toe. "I'd say, maybe, Blake."
She sputtered up a sip of coffee. "Blake? You think I look like a Blake?"
"Yeah, or Chuck. That would be better. Chuck."
"Do you think I look like a man or something?"
"No, not really," I said.
I was satisfied with how this was going. There was no way she could get up and walk away now.
"Well I'm not Blake or fucking Chuck," she said with a kind of smirk.
"Would there be something wrong with that?" I asked her. "What if you did look a little like a man, is that so bad?"
"Nobody has ever said I look like a man. Ever."
"Has anyone ever really looked at you?" Remember, I had nothing to lose here. I was just keeping myself entertained while I had a cup of coffee, doing errands, capitalizing on chance.
"Of course they've looked at me," she said.
"Well your hair is shorter than mine," I offered.
"What does that matter?" she began. My hair is pretty long.
"It doesn't matter at all," I said. "Really all that matters is keeping your Cootchy happy."
I could see her thoughts colliding painfully. "That's right," she said. "Cootchy doesn't care how long my hair is. Or short."
"Or what you're wearing," I added with no pause after her statement.
"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" she demanded. "Do you think I'm dressed like a man, too?"
I looked her over again. "Here's what I think. I think you're the kind who likes to tell men what to do."
"I don't tell anybody what to do," she countered.
"But you'd like to."
She stopped herself from responding.
"To be fair, I'll ask you, what do I look like?" I asked. "Do I look like a man?"
"Of course," she said.
"I wonder what assumptions you make about me, based on that," I said.
"I don't make any assumptions," she insisted.
"Uh huh. Do you let strangers pet your Cootchy?" I asked her.
"Sometimes," she said. "Depends on whether she trusts them or not."
"Wouldn't it be interesting if our pets could give us commands, instead of the other way around?"
"Why?"
"Well you tell me, what would Cootchy say to a stranger who wanted to pet her?"
"She would tell him he had to pet her the right way. She hates it when people pet her wrong."
"Does your Cootchy like to lick people?"
"Sometimes."
"Wouldn't it be weird if people licked their pets?" I said, tossing her a curveball. "Like, just imagine that I was licking your Cootchy right now."
That actually got a smile out of her. "You're pretty weird, Doc. But yeah, I bet my Cootchy would like to be licked by a human. She'd think it was funny, I'll bet. Or she'd bite you, one or the other."
"I wonder how your Cootchy and my Lingham would get along."
"She's very particular about other dogs," Al said.
"Lingham, not so much. He loves everybody." My muffin was gone, and my coffee. I said, "I have an idea. It's a beautiful day out, how about you go get your Cootchy and I'll get my Lingham, and we can meet up at Morning Dew Park, where they have the dog park, and see if they can become friends?"
"Cootchy doesn't like to be around a bunch of other dogs."
"Well then we can put them on leashes and go for a walk in the park, just the two of them."
"I guess," she said. "I need to feed her and do some stuff."
"How about in two hours?" I said. "Three o'clock, we can meet at the Morning Dew parking lot."
"I guess we can do that," Al or Alexandria or Chuck said. I was feeling rather jocular and also optimistic.
I fed Lingham, too, then let him out to the back yard to shit. I hate to have to clean up after him, for instance when people see him do it. I personally think it's fine to leave it on the ground, if it's not where somebody's going to step. Like my back yard, which I usually only go into to mow now and then. Just let it decay, it's better than putting it in a plastic bag to let it rot and stink forever. The rain'll get it, or bugs. I miked myself a burrito and wolfed it down.
... Cootchy was just as spoiled and useless as you could imagine. She was some kind of fluffy thing with an expensive-looking haircut that made her ears look like golfballs and also the end of her tail. She was afraid of Lingham, who didn't care, but Cootchy for some reason came after me, jumping up on me and trying to lick my face. I pretended to lick her but she didn't actually think it was funny, though Alex got the joke. At least Cootchy didn't try to bite me.
Alex had lightened up a bit, or maybe she just felt more cheerful with her dog around. There was a crowd at the dog park so it was fine that we decided to go walking. I felt that Alex was suspicious of my motives, which were, I assure you, of the finest sort. Basically I wanted to fuck her, that's a good motive, isn't it?
Alexandria was the direct type. After some introductory conversational tests were passed, she said, "I have just about given up on dating."
Good piece of knowledge to have, I thought, and good interpersonal strategy. Shutting me down from the start. I said, "I'm not real big on the whole idea of 'dating,' either. I like it better like this, we hang out, and if something happens it happens. Hanging out is good, doing stuff together is good, sex is good, if that's the kind of relationship it is. Dating, what's that? I spend money so you will feel obligated to me?"
Turned out she couldn't walk a dog and talk at the same time. She stopped. "You're getting ahead of things there," she said. Then she started walking again, with Cootchy tugging at the leash, pulling her forward. "But since you mentioned it, to clear the air about that, it's actually sex that I am about to give up on."
"Is there a reason for that?" I asked.
"It's a little strange to talk about with somebody I don't really know," she said. "But for, I guess, the last year or two, sex is just doing nothing for me."
"And you've tried sex with women, I assume?"
Couldn't walk again. "That's a little personal, isn't it?"
"Actually, no, it's not very personal. I don't give a fuck if you have sex with women or not, I'm not judging you, I'm just rationally wondering if you are missing out because the guys you're seeing don't know what to do. And sometimes a woman knows."
Cootchy started yipping, so we resumed walking. "Yeah, okay," Al said. "Yes I have been with women and yeah, you're right. They know what to do. But it turns out I am not really a lesbian, or even strongly bisexual. I don't want a girlfriend, it just doesn't fit for me."
"Gotcha," I said. "Do you know what you want in bed?"
