The Dude

My sister owned a single morbidly obese female guinea pig (which I mentioned some years ago). It remained that way until one of the neighbors (who also happened to own a bunch of guinea pigs and had a guinea pig population boom problem) saw our single morbidly obese female guinea pig and kindly offered to donate one more. And because we’ve always been kind to neighbors with a guinea pig population boom problem we said, Sure, okay, that’s fine, what’s another useless mouth to feed, eh?

Now we have two small mammals, both fat females, who prowl the small yard in front of our house like two fur balls gnawing at whatever wooden thing there was. They live in this neat little cage whose door was always kept open so they can go in and out of it as they please. The cage also has a little handle, which might come in handy just in case a nuclear war breaks out and there arises a sudden need to quickly transport the guinea pigs to a safe, bomb-proof place.

All was well. The two matrons of our yard lived a nice, well-fed, protected straight-out-of-Disney existence. They sometimes threw sarcastic remarks our way whenever we tried to feed them my smelly fingernail clippings. But overall, life was good. At least, until the puppy came.

Well, the puppy, let’s call him Dude for convenience, was a little mischievous fellow whose sole purpose in life was to be an ultra-efficient poop-and-piss processor – place anything in its mouth and the puppy, a marvel of nature, quickly turned it into either (a) poop that stank; (b) pee that stained. Based on this alone, we suspected the puppy was probably a Filipino politician in his past life.

Suffice it to say that Dude, we had decided, needed a little strategic housebreaking. And this being the modern day of the internet, we used, in the wise words of George Bush himself, “The Google.”

However, as it turned out, trying to find accurate information on what we really wanted to accomplish was no easy feat. The following were the exact search words we used – all in the order of increasing desperation.

“How to housebreak a dog.”

“How to patiently train a dog to shit in designated places.”

“How to FORCE the dog to shit in designated places.”

“How to strike fear in the heart of dog, so he shits ONLY in designated places.”

“How to COMPLETELY STOP dog from shitting.”

“How to turn goddamn dog into fine paste using only household utensils.”

“How to instantly vaporize goddamn dog using laser built from readily available computer components.”

I don’t have to tell you that for some reason, nothing worked. So at this point, to protect our house from further poop-trefaction, it had become a cardinal rule to closely watch the puppy for the tell-tale signs of it answering the call of nature. If and when one of us humans witnesses any of the said tell-tale signs, it was our responsibility to swiftly rise to the occasion, leap into action, and whisk the Dude to a more poop-receptive place -- hopefully right in the nick of time.

One morning, as I worked furiously on my PC chasing a deadline, Dude came out of nowhere walking with that strange gait -- and the thought flashed in my head: the puppy...oh, shit! My knee-jerk reaction was to dash for it. However, somehow I tripped on something, and I fell down in dramatic slo-mo like some doomed redwood tree, my left knee hitting the concrete floor hard. I swear I heard a bone crack.

The dog came galloping up to my face and nervously stuck out his tongue, panting like crazy.

Dude: Now, I'm gonna tell all my friends what an idiot you are!

Me: Dude, you have no friends.

Dude: Well, let's see about that when I grow up and finally become a hot bitch!

Me: Dude, you're a male dog.

Dude: Nevertheless!!!

Of course, this meaningful exchange didn't actually take place. What really happened was that the dog yawped and barked and heartlessly tried to eat my hair as I lay there writhing in mind-numbing pain.

My left knee would swell and bruise and blacken and I would spend the next few days glaring at the dog. Meanwhile, there was work and more work and there was less and less time to leap into poop-related action.

Later on, Dude found a new way to amuse himself: by sexually harassing the two female, morbidly obese guinea pigs in our front yard.

Somehow, it was a tragedy waiting to happen. The universe actually aligned itself for this unspeakable development to find fruition.

First, there was my sister’s stuffed toy, which looked like a little monkey with the same body size as Dude, but for some reason Dude thought it was another dog he could actually have sex with.

Second was that the “poop-receptive place” I mentioned several paragraphs ago was actually the front yard, and the front yard, as everyone at this point realizes, was where the two fat furry garden matrons ruled and rooted.

And so Dude meets the two guinea pigs, resembling the stuffed toy he had been humping, and all hell breaks loose. Sometimes, deep in the night, you could hear the guinea pigs screaming the hopeless, painful screams of the royally fucked. We humans tried to prevent it whenever we could, but whenever we let the Dude out to answer the call of nature, he would chase the screaming guinea pigs as soon as the last piece of turd squeezed out of his asshole. And to add insult to injury, the puppy began to really, really fancy the guinea pigs’ own droppings. Look what we have here: Dude trying to rape the guinea pigs and literally eat their shit, too. Ain’t he a sweetheart!

I haven’t written a single piece of fiction in the past several months, and I feel guilty about breaking the dry spell by writing about the Dude. My left knee is still swollen. And as I write this, the Dude has just begun trying to eat my brother’s shoe. The house smells of shit. I turn on the TV, and the news also stinks of crap.

Maybe later, I’d go out and visit the two “rape victims” in the front yard, see if they still have the same old, fiery sarcasm in them. Meanwhile, the Dude walks with that strange “I’m gonna poop” gait again, but I’m wiser this time. I’m not going to fall for that, you bastard. I now know when to recognize genuine, true-to-the-core poop. But…

Oh, shit. You win.