And the Dog Barks On and ON... Some More...

By E. P. Lee

... that contemporary dystopian “Leaving Las Vegas” meets “Madagascar” American life threw out, and all needed help. Inane or not, that modern American Soap Opera kept on rolling apace, and, like that treadmill of before, you can forget about moving forward most of the time. You have to run “fast” just to stay in one place.

So Eric’s just trying to keep up, or perhaps to simply stay upright. And of course to remain relevant.

RELEVANT.

Not to mention looking after a dog...

This is the ongoing story of a modern American life starting over, a 21st Century Adult Fairy Tale marching forward as "the Dog Barks On and ON... Some More..."

Ándale.

Ándale...

• Language: English
• Publisher: E. P. Lee
• Release date: Aug 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463328699

E. P. Lee

After a lifetime spent in his native New York Eric Paul Lee now resides in beautiful, tropical, Miami, Florida. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Coney Island, Eric often wandered the Boardwalk in his childhood. Eric frequently wasted his allowance at the now demolished Steeplechase Park and the other dated, dowdy and declining amusements that defined Coney Island... and much of traditional society... back then. The traditional was still IN back then. And the traditional like Coney Island had seen its glory days, its heyday, long passed. But the new hadn’t arrived yet. Just the old was fading... And so the forms still had to be obeyed. And with that Eric’s parent’s obeyed those forms and Eric was dispatched to college in Upstate NY to return to Brooklyn some four years later. Upon graduation from college Eric bounced from job to job until the Graphic Arts caught his creative eye and a new career began. With his first graphics production position under his belt Eric moved in to Manhattan some two years later never to live in Brooklyn again. Success built on success as corporate stints in California brought about even greater successes leading to Eric’s eventual New York City return and the opening of his own Graphics Agency in Manhattan. That enterprise ran successfully for over twenty years. Now out of industry entirely, Eric is happy to enjoy the perpetual Florida sun and write.

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Copyright © 2013 Eric Paul Lee.

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All characters, situations, names, places and locations are the product of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any and all resemblance to actual people living or dead, events, businesses, locations, or places is completely coincidental.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Table of Contents

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1

OK… here we are…

Here…

Here…

OK… Here…

Here…

Here, and Lynn just left… Here…

And Here is fine, perfect, pleasant, safe, all enveloping, comfortable, pretty, elegant, accessible, landscaped, lit up at night, all sparkly stainless steel, marble, Bisazza glass tiles, and beautifully reupholstered furniture, and antiques; almost grandiose…

El magnifique…

Hate it…

I’m grossly dissatisfied and lonely.

LONELY…

Ever since my last lover died in a tragic work-related accident five and a half years ago I haven’t been able to find my Mojo. And where I currently physically reside Mojo-less ain’t cutting it for me… Yeah… my Mojo disappeared when my last lover died five and a half years ago after falling off a ladder, down two stories, and landing head first on a cement driveway.

CRACK!

Yea… el Mojo gonno right at that momento…

Gonno…

And my lover, Mitch, became a hero on the second day after the accident when his brain flatlined and they harvested his otherwise healthy organs, and transplanted them into the various waiting hordes.

Yup… so I know where Mitch is… parts of Mitch anyway… and the rest of him is in a decorative urn on a mantle in his Mother’s house…

Yup, Mitch became a known hero that day he died… and I lost my Mojo…

And that sucker my Mojo… some six years hence, is still nowhere to be found…

Nowhere…

2

No Mojo… and no dog… as seven weeks after Mitch did the dying thing my best four-legged canine friend (and perhaps my best friend period) did the dying thing too.

But that friend, Ziggy (Sigmund was his full name, think Sigmund Freud), was over fourteen years old then and I had kept him alive from the age of eight weeks until that fateful dying day, by sheer force of will, and constant, constant, constant attention, and devotion. But no amount of devotion, or constant and willful attention, could keep Ziggy alive this time. I tried, and tried, and tried, and cried, and cried, and cried… and it was all to no avail, his time had come…

My little man had been so sick for all of his life, for all of his fourteen years… allergies, and ailments, and injuries… And I just stayed at it, and with it, and at it, and at it, for years and years and years… but seven weeks after Mitch died Ziggy was gone.

Gone…

And I thought my life was over then…

OVER…

Just 18 months before, Mitch had brought me back to life: physically, emotionally, and sexually… On the second morning I was home from the hospital after an almost eight-week siege involving catastrophic brain surgery, I died twice on the operating table (and I wasn’t supposed to walk or talk ever again…) 24-year old straight Mitch let himself into the house with his key, came up the stairs and into my bedroom, took his clothes off, got into bed next to me, and slowly brought me back in to life…

I was waif thin, weak and pretty immobile back then… I had been in a coma for four and a half weeks and was still kind of out of it mentally besides being skinny and stationary… I had no sexual thoughts of my own…

But I did OK… all of the right parts did their thing.

And we did OK, more or less, for the next year of my recovery… And then for the next six months of that recovery, not so OK… And then Mitch fell off that ladder… And right then, two days after the moment of that fall, my Mojo was lost… and soon Ziggy took ill and did the dying thing next…

AND I THOUGHT MY LIFE WAS OVER…

OVER!

3

A week after Ziggy’s death, on the Internet, I found an eight-week-old puppy at a Breeder in Knoxville, Tenn.

A week after that my ex-lover, Gal, flew to Knoxville from Miami and returned the next day with the little French Bulldog fawn-colored puppy I’d found, now named Freud, in Ziggy’s old pet carry on…

And soon there were howls in the house…

Howls…

And my life started again…

And now we’re Here…

HERE…

We were There…

There~ where Mitch came to me in bed…

There~ where Ziggy lived with me.

There…

Everything happened There…

Everything…

And I had my Mojo There.

And the barking started There too…

But we’re not There anymore… not me, not Mitch, not, Ziggy, not Gal, not Freud, and not my Mojo…

Freud and I are Here… and Gal visits still…

But there ain’t no signs of my Mojo anywhere in sight.

No Mojo…

4

I’ve been engaged in a Mojo search for some time now… I’ve left no stone unturned… or Internet dating site un-joined for that matter…

Yup… like a wayward vessel on a challenging sea:

All Ports In A Storm!

And I’ve docked more than a few times… most times I’ve docked mentally though, rather than physically, many more times mentally than physically actually. And there are multiple reasons for that mental docking rather than physical docking shit… REASONS: fantasy reasons, emotional reasons, financial reasons… lack of desire, overbearing need…

REASONS…

I don’t just place the putz when it stands now…

Up and IN ain’t the only raison d’être for me anymore…

Indeed…

And I’m actually dating a woman too…

A woman…

Hmmmmm…

A woman…

And I dock there often… a lot even… at least I did.

Often…

But that’s on hiatus at the moment…

TBD I suppose…

But so is everything else, TBD, on hiatus…

Hiatus…

Hiatus and only hiatus I hope… And not lost like my Mojo.

Lost…

But this involvement with the woman, Lynn, hasn’t engaged a Mojo yet… Lynn has engaged my dick… I mean the putz stet and gets stuck, and often…

But a Mojo ain’t involved.

A Mojo hasn’t been involved since the last time Mitch and I had sex some three weeks or so before he died…

And my Mojo hasn’t been sighted once since he died.

Not once…

But sex with Lynn is nice, fun even… I get off, she gets off, all is situation normal, warm, satisfying, peaceful… graceful even, accepted…

NORMAL…

But I want my Mojo back…

5

All of the main characters in my life, human and physical, are still around…

The big two family members, Gal, Freud, the big three non-human characters… 1: my physical condition, 2: Here the house and 3: my ever present fantasies and desires (Lynn, those dating sites). All of that stuff circles round and round, and round, along with a stew of other elements changing daily: some additional people, family members too, almost… Seth, Ami, their big behemoth canine American Bulldog daughter, Freud’s BGFF Sandy, Duplicate Bridge, current events, news of the day, and then some past emotional, or other physical/financial detritus, drifting in and out of my muddle as the days pass by…

And there are always people from the deep past flitting about and continuing on like Leslie and her family of son Craig, daughter Christina, husband Carolyn, and transgendered girlfriend companion Agatha. And all of them come with a sprinkling of multiple job and societal confusions thrown in… a saga by itself all of that.

A saga…

I could write a book just on that stuff alone…

All alone…

Leslie and I go way back, way, way back…

WAY!

Leslie…

And there are others: an ex-girlfriend, Margarita, who resides far away in the boonies of a north eastern state, her personal trials and tribulations here, her family and their tribulations, there… Shirley with her recent loss of my dear old friend Ben; Don and Dale, all of them from East Hampton, NY… And of course there’s all of the casual people I know and my constant and ongoing efforts to find an emotional and satisfying place for myself daily (like at Duplicate Bridge and those dating sites) with a brain that wants to think it’s fine, and a body that can’t act, and deliver, on those fine thoughts.

Because my brain ain’t fine… fucked up is more like it…

FUCKED UP…

Houston… we have a problem here.

That problem again…

And I am forever trying to solve that problem…

That problem…

Intellectually I am fine… I’m sharp as a tack, fast, quick, incisive, focused, almost brilliant sometimes… right on always… I’m all of that.

ALWAYS!

Until I have to get up from wherever I’m seated and I have to move. Then all bets are off:

1: Can I get up?

2: Can I walk to where I want to go and not fall?

3: Once arrived can I place myself safely and securely?

You see, 300 muscles are involved in the simple act of standing and walking…

And the NAZI DOCTOR NEUROSURGEON GOD who performed the gratuitous surgery on my way too large to be removed brain tumors almost eight years ago, that surgery where I died twice on the operating table, that NAZI DOCTOR who didn’t think I would walk or talk again AND SAID SO immediately after surgery… Well… that greedy, controlling hypocrite of a medical practitioner who got $282,000 for making me a cripple, cut the nerves that connect the vestibular which coordinates all of the information the eyes see with the receptor centers in the brain that tell those 300 muscles how to act.

And so my neural information connecting pathways are cut…

My healthy eyes see all… and my cut nerves transmit what they can…

And my brain overloads…

Sensory overload…

And I faint…

I faint from sensory overload…

OVERLOAD…

Me simply moving from place to place, or things moving towards me, and I faint… Things coming at me, seated or standing, and I faint… I faint from people walking toward me in a crowd on a street, from people walking towards me at a mall, in a store, a restaurant, or a theater, a club, a bar, a gallery… anywhere.

Anywhere…

And I’m vertically challenged too… too many items in a straight line and I can’t process the breaks, the distinctions, it all blurs… And I black out…

Down!

Damn, there was this one time in Bed, Bath and Beyond…

This one time…

DAMN!

Four years ago that experience… four years ago, and I haven’t been back… No… I haven’t been back. I buy all of that stuff Online now. And I have it shipped in… thank you Amazon Prime.

Thank you…

And type on a printed page, in a newspaper, a magazine, a book… or on a legal form, an application… NAH! I can’t read any of those… I can’t discern the type… the individual letters, they blur, and again, standing or sitting, I can faint.

FAINT!

Out…

Down!

Seated or standing… so I can’t read much…

And TV… nope.

A movie… nope…

Live theater, well sometimes that, sometimes. People on stage move slowly usually, and I can kind of follow that movement, concerts too, some classical dance: ballet is notoriously slow you know… but go get someone to go with you to that shit…

And I can’t go alone… I need someone next to me in a crowd, in a theater…

So I’m trapped…

Trapped in my own kind of brilliant, always racing, mind.

Trapped in my perfect, pleasant, safe, all enveloping, comfortable, pretty, elegant, accessible, landscaped, lit up at night, almost grandiose, and all sparkly stainless steel, marble, Bisazza glass tiles, and beautifully reupholstered furniture and antiques, home…

Trapped…

A prisoner…

Trapped.

And without my Mojo…

6

Nobody looking at me knows I’m incapacitated… I kind of look better now, healthier even, than I ever have before in my maturity.

Funny that, funny… as I’ve never been more ill… And today I look like the picture of great health.

Great health…

Back before, in my late 30’s and early 40’s, I was so fat I became diabetic… and not just diabetic, critically diabetic… and my doctor was convinced I had heart disease and was a stroke time-bomb set to explode at any moment. This one time he said to me:

"Mr. Lee, it wouldn’t surprise me to be called to the NYU Emergency room to find you dying on a gurney from either a heart attack, stroke, or diabetic coma…

I suggest you change your life and NOW!"

So that night I went out to dinner with Gal and my Father (my Mother had just died, part of the reason for all of the extra weight I suppose), and had a bacon cheeseburger, with mayo and fried onions, fries, two vodka martinis and a fudge brownie Sunday for dessert.

I started a diet the next morning.

I weighed 237Lbs at that doctor visit. Four months later I weighed 197Lbs and all of my numbers were near normal. I wasn’t anywhere near anything, I was simply medicated to perfection, but was now stable, and no longer a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. And I stayed at it from that point forward… Until I got sick that is and went into the hospital for headaches where I lost another 44 pounds and left the hospital at 153Lbs soaking wet.

I was a walking skeleton then… and scary looking…

Emaciated…

Scary…

A walking skeleton…

Over the years since my surgery, during this recovery, slowly the weight has crept back… I’m 185Lbs now give or take a bowel movement, but since I started an exercise regimen some five months ago on a resistance machine I’ve owned for 25 years, I’ve tightened that weight up so that my broad 42 shoulders and proportional 33 waist are not preceded by a basketball-shaped gut.

And I don’t need a manssiere… my tits don’t fall and they can’t hold up a pencil… so manssiere less, I can venture forth in public in a Guinea T, or a black Calvin Klein athletic fit T shirt and be presentable.

So I do… black Calvin Klein T’s, and black Diesel jeans, with shiny black (when I remember to polish them) ankle height, Too Boots, boots on my feet, and a black leather belt.

That’s all I wear.

Daily…

And I have all of this expensive stuff too… $250.00 T shirts by Brioni, Zegna, Armani… but they’re all in color and now I only wear black…

On weekends, to go out for dinner or whatever, fancy, I have a lot of black silk shirts with collars… I wear them then, with a Patek Phillipe solid-gold bracelet watch.

And that’s it…

I suppose it’s my style now…

And Lynn is pleased… she wears a lot of color, and I never clash with her. And Mitch never cared… And Gal, well let’s not go there, let’s just not go there, not now, and not before…

Let’s just not go there…

Gal is the only person who refuses to acknowledge the change in how I look… the only person who refuses to say:

You lose weight? (and no, I gained weight, as muscle weighs more than fat…)

Or even:

You look well…

So let’s not go there…

But the point is… for an invalid, for a completely DISABLED human being who wasn’t supposed to ever walk or talk again I look pretty good to other people… and I look pretty good to me in the mirror.

And there’s the rub…

I’m not…

7

I can’t do much in general… and I can’t do anything that shakes my head and jostles the fluids there, or jostles my brain itself, or move in any way that upsets my equilibrium, ever…

EVER…

I have to keep my head level and steady, always.

Always…

If I bend down too far, turn my head left or right too fast (like when checking traffic to cross an intersection, or sneeze hard and wrench my head and neck forward and back…) I see stars then… and sometimes nothing but darkness… I lose my place in time and space too… I suppose it’s a mini blackout.

A mini blackout…

So I have to be extra careful… if something falls to the floor I have to go down to one knee and hope that I can see the object straight ahead, and then pick it up. I have to do that pick-up action without lowering my head…

Or… do nothing at all; sometimes I just leave it there.

At home, that’s no biggie… Divinity or Patricia, my mother/daughter duo of domestic bliss, will pick it up and put it away when they come twice a week, or they’ll vacuum, or clean it up… And at Bridge, someone else can pick it up… I’m not proud anymore… I ain’t gonna sweat the small stuff, and I ain’t gonna fall over, or faint.

I ain’t, I ain’t, I ain’t…

I AIN’T!

But I don’t go too many other places by myself… I can’t do that…

And with the exercise I have to be trebly careful when I change positions on the machine between exercises, or when I adjust the machine for different exercises. The machine track has fallen from my grasp many times, and I’VE fallen many times too… And there’s a big danger in that. I’m all alone here as I do this stuff… all alone except for Freud, and he can neither help me get up from the floor, or call for help on the phone in an emergency…

So CAREFUL, I have to be extra careful…

And I’m not as young as when that same machine built those 42" shoulders from the kick sand in his face pussy I was at 25 years of age into these manly broad shoulders I have today.

No… I can’t do anything near any of that stuff… but I do enough I suppose as my belly is almost completely flat now, and my calves and thighs are tight from the 100 squats I can do each day, and my arms have gained a little muscle that shows in the black, athletic fit, Calvin Klein T shirts I wear, from the pulls and curls I can accomplish.

And I started with the exercise machine not to look better, not for any of that personal vanity shit at all… I started to exercise to regain some function. Recently, with that massive series of bad attacks I’ve had one after the other, I’d lost so much function and so much ability, that I was more trapped than ever…

AND I HAD TO GET SOME OF IT BACK!

I had become so weak.

So weak…

So I started slowly with the machine…

And I’m stronger now… I’m not so weak anymore. And I’m not losing any more function.

I haven’t gained that much function back… but I’m not losing any more… I’M NOT LOSING ANY MORE… not losing… and that was the point. And even the little I’ve gotten back helps.

Looking better is an unheralded benefit…

Unheralded, but a huge benefit, like The Donald, Donald Trump always says…

Huge!

And to this date I have not one wrinkle on my face… not across my brow, not around my eyes, not around my lips… a slightly sagging neck, yes… but even there it’s not bad, I’m nowhere near a "turkey neck". My neck sags just enough to say this guy’s on the other side of 40. I look a good 10, or 12, years younger than I am.

Like I said before, a huge benefit …

HUGE!

huge…

It might even help me get my Mojo back…

8

It’s Passover…

Passover, one of the three times a year I like using all of the house, having a lot of divergent and discordant guests over (how Jewish family culture can you get… (or Italian/Irish Catholic for that matter, Protestants are so tame…)) … and have a huge dinner feast.

Huge… (The Donald again…)

HUGE!

Passover, Jewish New Year, and Thanksgiving… those are the three times I want to, I must, have a houseful of people in to celebrate … three family dinner feasts, two Jewish cultural tradition, family type, gathering feasts (there was no religion in my house, just Jewish family culture, my Great Grandmother Baba only spoke Yiddish, and Russian, until her death; she lived in America over 55 years and she only spoke Yiddish or Russian… she must have been part Cuban as she never went near English… NEVER). And the third Holiday, the penultimate secular American family gathering, feast, tradition: Thanksgiving.

Those were the only three times in any year that my Mother would have her parents, or anyone else in the family, over to her house.

The ONLY times…

So, that became my thing… for years I did those three holidays each and every year. But unlike my Mother I like to entertain at home so I would do a dinner party for 8, or 10, or 12 people every month or so in addition to those three big Holiday feasts for 16, 20, or 30.

Entertaining is/was my thing.

My thing…

And I do know how to cook… and well.

And I know wine…

And I know how to set a table…

And I have fine china, and fine crystal, and solid sterling silver flatware, with fish forks, and butter knives, and fine, antique lace table linen…

Antique lace…

But I can’t do that now… The china, the crystal, the sterling silver flatware, and the antique lace table linen mostly reside unused in beautiful antique armoires and hallway closets; while for everyday dining I use a cork placemat, white clay crockery, stainless steel flatware, and paper napkins, as I dine on whatever delicacy I’ve prepped in the microwave… As I dine standing up over the kitchen counter, or seated, tensely, and disinterestedly, at the breakfast room dining table.

True… at that breakfast room dining table I sit under a 225-year-old French crystal chandelier…

True that…

True…

But… not the small dinner parties for 8, and not the big feasts for 30, can I make anymore.

Nada…

There’s no way…

And here it is Passover…

And Gal is in Tel Aviv.

9

Here it is Passover and Gal is in Israel.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that, Gal and I had originally scheduled a Passover weekend gathering/dinner feast here, as is our regular. And all was based upon Gal’s existing travel schedule. Gal had planned a trip in either June, or July, as an early celebration of his twin fraternal daughters August birthday, and a second trip in mid/late October for his year and a half plus older son’s actual birthday.

Those were the deets, and those deets controlled our plans.

And invitations were made, and invitations were accepted, and plans were set, and…

And Gal’s mother decided it was the 10th anniversary of the Papa’s passing, and so the entire clan should rendezvous in Tel Aviv for a memorial candle lighting ceremony (Yahrzeit), and then again for the four ceremonial Passover dinners held at different family homes… no one person should be overburdened.

And Gal just had to go…

Gal just had to be there…

So the fraternal twin girl’s early birthday celebrations would be celebrated even earlier than scheduled, and celebratory and Memorial candles would be lit more than once.

And after much thought, and some tentative planning to see if I could throw a small dinner for only ten, one table’s worth of guests… And my favorite restaurant was going to cook a Passover themed meal for me, and Divinity and Patricia were going to set the house, and table, up the day before, serve the day of, and clean up and put away after… EXPENSIVE! And I had it all arranged… But finally I decided that it was all too much for me and I cancelled everything.

And so I would be alone for the Passover Holiday and Gal would be in Israel…

And 12 days before departure Gal had a stroke…

A STROKE…

A mild stroke as it turned out, but a stroke…

And he told me nothing… nothing… The Key West Hospital some 188 miles south of here deemed his condition so serious that they ambulanced him north to a better equipped facility, Kendall General, some 12, or 15, or 18 miles south of here, Miami Shores… And even though he spent five days in that hospital some 12, or 15, or 18 miles south of me in Kendall, he told me nothing…

Nothing!

And when I didn’t hear from him for over a week (not that unusual a circumstance that, not unusual at all…), and Freud had just done something super cute with a toy Gal had given him not so long ago… so I snapped a cell phone pic and sent it to Gal, and then either I called him to find out:

Waddup?

Or he called me just then as he got the picture… and no matter, either way I got something like this in the opening conversation…

"Oh sorry, I had a stroke last week, I just got home from the hospital… they put a monitor under my right tit… I was in the hospital five days… I was going to call