Right off the top, I'll make quite clear that I'm not a dog person. I'm a cat person. You don't have to walk them and they can be on their own for a weekend without chewing up the new sofa. But my wife thought we needed a dog—because we lived in a "ripe for ripping the rich folk off" golf club community, she said. But I know it was really because Libby next door got an Irish Setter, so naturally we had to have a Wolfhound.
Well, Wolfhounds are high maintenance, and I made quite clear to my wife from the get go that this was her dog. In retaliation, she decided that the dog would substitute for me everywhere except in her vagina. She still made quite clear that my cock was top dog in that kennel.
And when Angie gets involved in a project, she goes the whole distance.
This is just a preamble to bringing the dog groomer on the scene. Which is what Angie did two sessions into taking Grrr (her name for the dog, not mine) to an expensive dog obedience and grooming "college." After listening to all of the introductions on how to acclimate our high-strung purebred to his home environment (presumably so he doesn't start gifting us with pungent symbols of dissatisfaction and disdain on the floor of the front foyer), Angie decided that our home had to be evaluated as to its suitability to Grrr's needs and for advice on how to bring our 4,000-square foot, $2 million hovel up to dog code. So, she paid the extra fee for the dog groomer to make a home visit and inspection.
On the appointed day, I retired to poolside in disgust, separating myself entirely from anything to do with Grrr—or my wife concerning her current project. I heard them in the house and I hit the pool and did enough laps that I thought I'd toned up so well on the spot that I'd just slide out of my Speedo. Then I pulled myself across the pool tiles and collapsed on the lounger and promptly went to sleep.
I woke to voices under the patio table umbrella nearby. Angie and the dog groomer had come out to the pool area to discuss the grim details of our home's deficiencies as a dog safe haven.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that he was staring at me—talking to Angie, but having as much attention as he could muster plastered to me as I lay there in my skimpy Speedo. I knew that look. He was interested.
I slipped my dark sunglasses on and gave him a look back. Very presentable he was. Not a pretty boy or a muscle stud by any means. But very presentable. And he had a shy look about him, which probably went over as well with the dog owners as it did with the pooches. He wasn't a limp wrister either, despite anything I would have assumed or because I had caught him checking my assets out, which, if I don't mind saying, were a whole bank vault full.
I watched him as he talked to Angie and I liked his look and his manner. I could see how he'd be good at handling dogs. He showed every evidence of being good at handling people too. And the longer I watched him the more I became interested in being handled by him and handling him in turn.
Who knows who we are attracted to, what alignment of the stars and circumstance makes us want someone. I don't know and I don't care. I just know that, from that brief look at Cliff Marsden, the dog groomer, I wanted him.
And I soon could see that he felt the same way about me. He took a sudden interest in Grrr that went way beyond even Angie's interest and almost bordered on the unhealthy, I thought.
For three weeks Cliff found every form of excuse he could to drop by the house to give us this or that little thing that Grrr needed before their next grooming session or to consult with Angie on Grrr's progress (which was almost nonexistent as far as I could determine). And each time, as I saw him walking up the driveway, I found an excuse to be minimally dressed and just walking through the house wherever they were consulting. I made more trips to the front foyer in those weeks than I ever had before—and not just to clean of the inevitable present from Grrr that I usually found there. Angie, I'm sure, thought Cliff was interested in her, and she was mildly flattered. But I knew those looks he had given me. I knew when a man was interested in me.
This couldn't go on forever I thought, and Cliff was certainly playing out as the shy kind. There was nothing shy about me, though. So, I took the dog by the collar, so to speak, and made the first move myself. I set up an end-of-the-day appointment for a grooming of Grrr with Cliff. He was grooming the dogs at his home, in a downstairs room that obviously served as mud room, winter storage of the outside furniture, and laundry room—in addition to his dog work room. It was white tiled, floor, wall, and ceiling, and it looked somewhat like an operating room, with a sloping floor and drain in the center and everything. I'm sure it was ideal for whatever he had to do with the dogs, none of which I really had any interest in hearing about. I was a cat person.
"Oh, hi, Mr. Blade," he said when I arrived. "I'm surprised you came instead of Mrs. Blade. And where's Grrr?"
I just bet he was surprised to see me instead of Angie, I thought. He probably had been able to tell right off the bat, as I stretched out in feline fashion on my pool lounger that first day, that I was a cat person.
"I made the appointment, Cliff," I said as I moved into the room, making him retreat before me toward the alcove with the washer and dryer. "And Grrr won't be joining us either," I said.
"I don't understand. What . . .?"
