Hard-to-Reach Places

When I move into Sheena’s place, her dog begins peeing in my gymbag. Little, marking squirts, that I don’t notice until the bag starts to smell sour in the back of my car.

I ask Timmy-O at the Jade Palace what he thinks I should do.

He thinks for a moment, pours me a new beer as I wait for my order, then he says, “A shitting dog has two tails.”

The dog’s name is Biko, a black lab, a hunter whose natural instincts are thwarted almost daily by Sheena, who feeds him table scraps and bathes him too often with her own shampoo.

“I thought he’d be a Frisbee dog,” she says. “But he lost his jump when I got him fixed.”

Biko watches me eat my takeout. Sometimes I let him chew on the chopsticks after I’m done. He is six years old, already has some white whiskers on his snout.

“Fucking dog,” I say. “Quit pissing in my gymbag.”

He cocks his head at me sideways. He doesn’t understand a word I’m saying. He doesn’t even sense my anger. If I had a gun and he stood beside me in the woods as I shot at birds, then he would have some respect for me. He would understand that relationship.

“I live here now,” I say. “Get used to it.”

I start dialing Timmy-O to ask him again what I should do with Biko.

Sheena wakes up on the sofa. “Who’s calling,” she asks?

Timmy-O says, “I forget your cookie?”

“It’s about the dog,” I say. “My gymbag.”

“Hell if I know,” Timmy-O says. “Who is master?”

I watch Sheena asleep on the sofa. When I moved in, she was able to quit her second job. “I’m so happy you’re here,” she says. “All I want to do is sleep.”

The sofa is mine. We moved Sheena’s onto the back screened porch. She also let me keep my Girls Gone Wild DVDs, which have inspired Sheena to flash me and Biko when the mood strikes her. Biko’s confused. He raises his eyebrows like Groucho Marx at the sight of her tits. Maybe he likes what he sees.

The dog follows me to the bathroom.

“Privacy,” I say, closing the door in his face.

But he noses his way in, watching me in the dark as I pee straight into the toilet.

Before I zip up, I waggle my dick in Biko’s direction. “I’m not Sheena,” I say. “I’m not your bitch.”

He barks loud, bares his teeth. I sense that a breakthrough is imminent. I bark back at him, pull my balls out to give him the full show. I understand, and he does too, that this is what he has been waiting for.