STANDING ROOM ONLY

Saturday, September 6, 2003

L.A. HIGH

At the Dog Park, they have taken our Knoll.

When I began going with Polly, the Dog Parkers would sit on the bench and I chose to sit on the grassy Knoll where I could watch the dogs run around while keeping my Smoker’s Distance. My friend M. would join me and we’d talk to the other Dog People across the lawn. Now, annoyingly, everyone is sitting on the Knoll. I’ll arrive and claim my spot on the sloping grass and soon there will be more people around me than on the bench.

One advantage of sitting on the ground is it allows me direct access to the dogs. They will run to me and lick my face and rub against me and the smallest will jump up and climb over me as if I were a Mountain. Even dogs I do not know will run to me for protection against another dog who insists on playing. I am Tag Base, a blockade, an arbor in which they can hide. Perhaps because of my size, dogs are humbled in my presence and cease their futile pretensions at Alpha Dogness.

Polly’s admirers are many and come in all shapes and sexes. She has a small Italian Greyhound who will follow her endlessly until she crawls in my lap for asylum while he sits next to us patiently waiting for her attention. Like me, she will play but only at her discretion. The Dogs create their own society, an expedited version of humanity. People make take days and weeks expressing their needs and finding their niche. Dogs process and assign Power Plays and status on the spot. The key words are Immediate Gratification. A smell, a gopher, a treat, water. Manners, as delay tactics and veneer for testiness, are nonexistent.

So while the Dogs carouse back and forth, the humans slowly migrate to the Knoll. I’ll stretch out, the smoke from my cigarette curling from my hands like ancient incense. Several dogs will amble over to sit next to me, The Mountain. Occasionally one will curl up in my arms and nap. People begin sitting on the grass, talking amongst themselves and gossiping about other Dog Parkers who are irritating. The disdain for the Subject grows until we are all nodding in agreement over how rude and inconsiderate the person acts.

“Let’s kill him”, I finally say.

For a moment everyone is silent as if debating in their heads whether I’m serious or not. M. will then snicker, I’ll take another drag of my Dunhill and while Polly watches the Dogs run around, a minute Chihuahua will crawl up my hip to sniff the air at such a great height.

2:43:29 PM

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