[Note: He may be happy leaving you with the impression he was so cold-hearted but I’m not. I know he writes a better story than this. Stuff he left out: any reason he might have married me. Why this is bad: because it makes me not care about this narrator who is wasting my time talking about this brainless passionless toothless ex-wife, or (care) about Dogeater, which is a shame because it’s such a great title.]
Flash forward to the following summer, his hotshot crew drove by our honeymoon place on their way to a fire in Oak Creek. Riding in while the townspeople fled. “Damn hot day for a fire,” is all he is thinking and for rhythm says again, “Damn hot day for a fire.”
In Oak Creek on our honeymoon we were mutually bummed the picnic basket we got from one of my friends contained non-alcoholic wine. We both needed a drink.
He starts by saying how my mom wasn’t at the wedding. (She was.) His daughter wasn’t, or his nephew who was bringing her, because his car broke down just outside of Phoenix. His brother lives in Colorodo. But his sister was there. She just happened to be in Sedona attending one of the local New Age metaphysical conferences. We planned the whole thing in four days.
Still crossing the rice paddy (it’s not as easy as it looked from his 10th-floor apartment & there are other wild dogs now taking notice of the first), he thinks about: 1. How to get the dog home invisibly. He spies an alley and a peach orchard that might come in handy for subterfuge. Because if people see him with the dog, they’ll assume he’s going to cook it up with some kimchi and rice, and he doesn’t want them thinking that, even if it isn’t true and they wouldn’t think twice if it was. And 2: His marriage with his second wife.
Barb and Me at Opal, 52nd & 2nd, New York
We have a frenetic information exchange, a slight molecular rearrange. We’re both a little twisty and strange.
Something on Facebook has made her upset. She gestures and speaks like a fire with Tourettes’.
And a little more about me: (again, paraphrasing)
I’m one of those unfathomable women in his stories now. Part Mary, Queen of Scots (doomed, and not worth listening to), part Salome (stone-cold terrifying and dragging our platters with us wherever we go, dripping with blood).
OK OK! I’m getting away with myself.
I don’t call him a bum. I try to just say what went down. As honestly–as factually–as possible. No editorializing. I almost never succeed.
My husband, according to him, via Dogeater, paraphrased by me: The usual stuff. Brilliant but misunderstood, existentialist and tragically flawed. Untouchable like Hemingway, Thomas Pynchon or Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. Taker of chances, thinker of thoughts, lover of women, saver of dogs. And P.S.: He’s sure I now describe him as a bum.
Congratulations and best wishes to Andy & Drew on their wedding day! These are good friends/neighbors and 38th Street is abuzz with anticipation for the event of the year. Drew is a wedding/event planner himself so we are all in high expectation mode to be aesthetically and culinarily (not to mention romantically) impressed! I’m really glad to be a part of it. P.S. That’s Wesley with them. They have a dog named Baxter now too but I don’t have a picture of him. Thanks Barbara Roether for use of your photo for reference!
Underdrawing and reference picture for new Venice painting, 24 x 48 inches, black marker on black paint on canvas. I thought I was going to have no end of trouble with those balconies on the upper right but they don’t look half bad in this picture. Go me!
I don’t remember where it was in Venice but you can see it’s a narrower canal, residential, no gondolas. The gondolas are all fine but they’re about the tourists. I liked seeing the real boats the people who live there use every day. This is the first painting from Venice.
I did this drawing of Jarrod for him to use as his profile picture. It sort of looks like him.
Speaking of irony. The 2 major & recurring themes of our rending asunder:
1. “Explain why you’re leaving again?”
& 2. “Please don’t write about me.”
“I promise.”
He says he hopes the story isn’t hard for me and he’s not bitter. “What do I have to be bitter about,” he says. I was the bad one.” He means that ironically.
Dogeater Panel 5
The wife.
“The wife had a goob job.” (This part is true.)
“I came home from construction jobs, ditch-digging, snow-shoveling, dead tired, half frost bit. She couldn’t stand the sight of me.” (And part of this is true.)
(And this is the part he left out): The wife came home from her job as, let’s say, a librarian. And she has more librarian work to do that night that she brought with her, let’s say about 4 hours’ worth. He yawns, stretches, says: “What’s for dinner?”
Barb and I Toast the First Day of Fall
Post-it drawing inspired by Cat Rocketship, www.pleaseobey.com, last fall while I was trying to get this blog up. Unfortunately her site crashed awhile back and she’s back now but the post-it comics, sadly, are not. But check out her paintings and “weekly collections,” images she finds on the net for inspiration. Was going to promise no more post-it drawings so as not to too blatantly steal someone else’s thang, but I might not be able to help it. Those post-its are just so handy. Already did this other one of Barb:
Barb Kicks Ass
(From her self-portrait.)
Dogeater Panel 4
4) W. H. Auden’s poem describing it. “The dogs go on with their doggy life.” 5) Charles Mingus blasting on his stereo back at the apartment, loud enough to teach the neighbor’s TV a lesson in manners or taste. Or at least the person reading the story. 6) Some other shit. 7) Me. “The wife.”
Dogeater Panel 3
He walks across a rice paddy to rescue a dog trapped in wire. It’s Sunday morning. He’s drunk and afraid of dogs. While walking he talks about 1) Mongolia, where he developed his fear of dogs. [roving packs of wild dogs.] 2) Borneo, where they kick dogs. [kick.] 3) Breugel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus [cliffs, harbor town, guy ploughing, ship, sheep and a dog, Icarus’s legs, part of a wing.]
Dogeater Panel 2
My ex-husband sent me a story called Dogeater. It’s about him, of course. He’s living in Korea, where he actually lives. He rescues a dog.
Dogeater Panel 1
Dogeater: The real story of my Divorce in Gold Leaf and Bas Relief
Dogeater, 36 x 28, acrylic, marker, & collage on panel
No dogs will be harmed in the making of this graphic novel on panel. One bit of door will be soundly abused, and a quantity of acrylic media wasted, according to some. And I’m breaking a promise. I’ll get to that soon–like panel 5.
