Here Comes Stupid
We were out of sorts last week, our routine shot. The Palisades wildfires were raging, our power was still out—seven days and counting—I tweaked my back lifting our generator, and my wife was in Knoxville for work. I was a mess. But Sister Lightning Jenkins, one of our cats (the notorious slayer of bats) was even more of a mess. When my wife is home, Lightning sleeps on her chest or near the small of her back. My wife is her woobie, her pacifier, her flesh-and-blood dose of Pepto-Bismol.
Not only was her emotional support human in another state, her litter box was on the fritz—we have one of those fancy litter robots, which isn’t all that fancy when the power is out. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when Lightning had an accident. I smelled it immediately because whatever comes out of the ass end of a cat is Chernobyl-level terror. Whoever invented cat litter should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
I followed the noxious scent into our bedroom. Lightning had blasted ass underneath my wife’s desk. Gross but not a big deal. We have hardwood, and it cleans up pretty easily. I was so stressed that I didn’t stop to wonder why the toxic mess was smeared across the floor, along the power strip, and up the floorboard. Stay calm, I told myself, it’ll clean up easily.
You know what doesn’t clean up easily? Captain Banjo Butterbuns, our basset hound. He charged into the room, and I heard my wife’s voice in my head—”Here comes stupid.” This is the energy that Banjo brings, and my wife has taken to prefacing his entry into any room with the Here-comes-stupid proclamation.
His ears were wet, which is typical. They usually teabag his water bowl when he drinks—it’s the curse of being a basset hound. But why was his face wet? And his neck? And his paws and chest? Suddenly, the reality of the situation caught up with my stressed-out inability to reason.
Banjo had treated himself to a smorgasbord of feline poop soup.
Worse than that, he dragged his ears through it and ran all over the house, up and down the stairs, through the living room and kitchen, his dangly ears and sausage-knocking skin mopping our house with liquid evil. I can’t say how close I was to a heart attack, but it was the closest I’d ever been. Several dark thoughts entered my brain as I took measure of this tragedy: Is there something in this room I could use to kill myself? Is there something in this room I could use to kill Banjo? If I opened the front gate and let Banjo out, would our local mountain lion take care of business?
The sound of retching interrupted my dark thoughts. It was Sam, my son. His stomach is weaker than Lightning’s. He nearly puked at the smell, but thought better of it when he saw the look on my face. The look that says, If I have to clean up a shit-soaked basset hound and a batch of tossed cookies, blood will spill and bones will break. To Sam’s credit, he pulled it together.
Banjo cocked his head as if he suddenly understood the shitty situation at hand. He started to make a run for it, but I got a hand on his studded leather collar, which was also soiled.
“Gahhhhhh!” I screamed. I wouldn’t be surprised if firefighters in the Palisades heard my exasperated cries.
“What can I do?” Sam asked.
“Paper towels, Febreze, go!” He went.
We’ve been working on this, getting him to be somebody others can count on in an emergency. This was definitely an emergency, and my boy stepped up.
He returned with what I’d asked for, and I immediately realized that what I’d asked for was wildly inadequate. I should have asked for rubber gloves, a hazmat suit, a time machine, and probably a priest. Next step: teach him to step up and make better decisions than the moron in charge.
“Ah, fuck the Febreze. I’m taking this dumb bastard to the shower. Get me as many beach towels as you can find, and then start cleaning and sanitizing everything. You hear me? Everything!”
So I picked up Banjo—all 85 pounds of him—and shlepped him into the shower, no easy feat with the tweaked back. We have the kind of shower with a door that swings open. I managed to hold Banjo against my torso with one arm and throw open the door with the other. This took much of the strength, most of the balance, and all of the patience that I possess.
Once in the shower, he sort of slopped down the side of my body like a big wad of dough, all the way to the floor of the shower. I tried not to think about the wetness that was sliding down my body in addition to the dog. And just as I put that thought out of my mind, the son of a bitch shook. A combination of basset hound drool and cat diarrhea sprayed my legs.
I screamed again. “Gaaaaah!” Banjo cocked his head, completely bewildered by my frustration. “Norm,” he seemed to be saying, “Smile, buddy. This is the greatest day of our lives!”
“Oh, yeah, mother fucker? This day is about to get a lot worse for you.” I actually said these words. Out loud. To a dumb dog. As if he’d understand my ire.
I turned on the water, and the reality of bath time hit Banjo. His tail went between his legs and he resisted eye contact. As I waited for the water to warm up, the reality of the power outage and our electric water heater hit me. January nights are cold, even in California, so the water had a quality like hell frozen over.
I stepped into the frigid shower. When there’s cat diarrhea on your body, this is not a choice. I screamed again—”Ahhhh!—and my body convulsed, which did little for my tweaked back.
I popped open my son’s Dove Body Wash and squirted it all over Banjo. I squeezed that bottle like I was milking a cow. Then I lathered him up and let the body wash work. While he shivered and reflected upon his naughty boy choices, I lathered myself up and rinsed off. Then I tried to rinse Banjo, which presented a dilemma. He’s about fifteen inches off the ground when he’s standing, even though he’s about three feet long. Our shower head is fixed to the wall, about six-and-a-half feet up, and the Arctic water was doing a poor job rinsing the lather from Banjo, especially because he was doing his best to juke it.
I wasn’t about to spend more time than necessary in those polar conditions, so I decided to bring Banjo to the water. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to pick up a soapy, 85-pound basset hound? And not just any basset hound—his breeder, who had been in the basset hound racket for decades—told us that Banjo had more skin than any puppy she’d ever seen, “enough skin to make two puppies.”
So when you pick him up, there’s nothing solid about him. Everything wiggles and rolls and shifts. Banjo has that same quality a fish has—every time you take hold of him, he just slips right out of your hands.
Imagine a gigantic uncircumcised penis that’s furry, slippery, shivering and squirming. Now imagine that you have a tweaked back and you’re being pelted with a steady stream of frosty water. And finally, imagine you’ve been without power or a wife or any sense of safety from wildfires for several days, so the stress is a little intense. No exaggeration—holding him up to that water might be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.
But we got through it. I dried him off with some beach towels and left him in the shower while Sam and I cleaned the house. It took a couple hours, but we turned Chernobyl back into Home Sweet Home. I opened the door and let him out of the shower, and this traumatic incident was already a faded memory for him. He curled up on the chair and went to sleep.
I’ve told this story a number of times now, and every time the image pops into my mind of Banjo barreling into the room, covered in liquified cat shit, tail-a-waggin,’ nothing but positive energy and the unshakable assumption that whoever he sees is even happier to see him. This is how he lives his life—in a perpetual state of joyful delusion. Here comes stupid. God, how I admire him.
If you enjoyed this, consider reading some of my other stories:
Like this one about a gang fight and a clogged toilet.
Or this one about my father-in-law and the time he committed a Mexican felony.
Or this one about my appreciation for bad words.
Perfectly wonderful! Just what I needed on this evening before the Darkness! Thank you!
I'm so sorry I was out of town...but this is comedy gold. Laughed out loud the entire time!