the fifty pound solution

 

Dogs. All these fucking dogs. They should ban dogs from the beach, always shitting everywhere and no one ever cleaning up the mess. How many times do I have to step in dog-doo before someone does something about it? Harvey Milk, where are you when we need you?

I know what you’ve heard, that dogs’ mouths are cleaner than humans’, but that’s no comfort to me. Dogs carry all kind of germs, including Zoonosis, which can be easily transferred from animals to people.

Zoonosis consists of, among other things, Ebola and influenza. In fact, there are more than a thousand known viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi carried by dogs that can be transferred to and infect humans.

Moreover, studies show that homes with dogs not only contain more bacteria, but certain types of germ species known only to animals. These germs wind up everywhere—on the kitchen counter, the refrigerator, pillow cases, even the toilet seat.

So the next time your dog starts licking your face, just remember where that mouth has been. The fact that dogs like licking their asses is the least of your problems now.

Anyway. There I am minding my own business on the beach when Guess Who walks up and sits down next to me? Fanny, that’s who. Just like that. She was smiling.

“Hello, Arlen,” she said.

I told her I was sorry, that I was wrong, which is what all men say when they reach that point of loneliness, whether they actually mean it or not.

“Well now,” she said, “That’s neither here nor there. The real question is, what are you going to do moving forward?”

Moving forward?

“Yes, Arlen, what are you going to do?”

I told her I had an idea.

“Get a grip,” she said, “I’m not sailing off to some desert island with you.”

Me Tarzan, you Jane. Remember?

“And where are we supposed to live: some palm-leaf hut? I got news for you, Jungle Boy: living on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific ain’t no Swiss Family Robinson. Hell, it isn’t even Gilligan’s Island. More like Hell in the Pacific.”

Hell in the Pacific, the 1968 film starring Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune. Great movie.

“And what are we going to eat? Ever think about that? Catching fish with a spear isn’t easy like in the movies. The only crabs you’re going to get are sand crabs, and drinking coconut milk all day will give you diarrhea.

“What are you going to do when you get scurvy from malnutrition? What if your appendix ruptures? What if you get a bowel obstruction, or a gastrointestinal perforation? What are you going to do then? Ever thought about that?”

I had not. I had only thought about the romantic parts.

“The romantic parts? You think there’s going to be some kind of picturesque waterfall somewhere in the middle of the island like in the movies? How do you think you’re going to smell after a year without a bath, all that salt water drying out your skin, dead skin living off dead skin, skin stratum corneum, until it comes flaking off like huge chunks of dandruff? Eczema, Psoriasis, Rosacea too.

Disgusting.

“Bacteria, lice, fungus. Oh yeah, it’s going to be plenty romantic, all right.”

Enough already.

“It’s not gonna be like some movie, I can promise you that. Besides, I saw that documentary too. You forgot the part where that 18-year-old boy runs the first woman off. And the second girl, she spent the whole time in the fetal position with salmonella poisoning.”

Fanny was right. And the girl had dysentery, too. Besides that, she was no Brooke Shields.

Turns out the poor guy just wanted to lose his virginity. The things a man will do just to get laid. On top of that, years later he discovers he should have had a Man Friday instead of a Girl Wednesday because he was gay all along. Can you imagine that, going to a desert island with a woman just to get laid and finding out instead that you’re gay?

“You know,” said Fanny, “Jim Backus died at St. John’s.”

Jim Backus?

“Thurston Howell.”

Ah, Thurston Howell. I once knew a guy named Thurston Howard. Everyone called him Thirsty, which I never understood because he didn’t drink at all.

Anyway, Fanny was right. Maybe finding a desert island isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For now, maybe we’d just be better off setting up a house of hair in the desert.

“Or maybe we’d be better off if you’d just do something about it.”

Do something about it? What, like therapy? I explained to her that the whole field of psychiatry was nothing but a sham. It was just a con dreamed up by doctors, first to lock up and torture people they didn’t like, then to sell prescription medication. I told her if she didn’t believe me, just watch Stonehearst Asylum and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

“No,” she said, “not like therapy.”

I knew what she meant.

“First this putting your head through a wall,” she said, “then huffing paint thinner, all these half measures added together are never going to fix the problem. You need one, big idea.”

She was right.

“You know what you have to do.”

I did.

“Now,” she said, leaning in, “kiss me, you fool.”

Finally. This time, I would not disappoint.

I leaned in and planted one right on her lips. I kissed her long and I kissed her hard, like Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind. Finally!

We must have kissed for what seemed like forever, our tongues wrapping around one another’s, up and down and all over. All of a sudden, she stuck her tongue down my throat. Then, she started licking my face. Licking my face?

I pulled away and that’s when I realized: Fanny wasn’t a lovely lady; she was a golden retriever. A fucking golden retriever. One big, final solution. She was right.

I found myself wandering the streets again that night and on the TV in that same coffee-shop window I saw something that would change my life forever. Just when I had given up all hope, TV was there to save me. Again.

My big idea? I call it, ‘The Fifty Pound Solution.’