The Dog is Heaving

The Dog is Heaving

The dog is heaving and your husband wants to have sex. You have both spent the day teasing, insinuating, and layering the hours with glances and groundwork for what might come to be. But now the dog is heaving, wreaking havoc upon your intent.

It is close to nine pm. You are sitting on the living room floor beside your dog. Your husband has recused himself from responsibility and has assumed his position at the far end of the dining room table. He opens his laptop and waits.  Distressed, your dog groans as her belly heaves and contracts. She makes sharp inhalations, and like milky worms, ropes of saliva dangle from her jowls. You have tried to woo her onto the cool tile floor, but of course she prefers your new rug. This has always been the way; all your pets have done their worst on your rugs. You abandon yourself to this given, and gently stroke your dog’s sleek pelt, black flecked with gray. You wonder if her time has come. You hear your husband absentmindedly clear his throat. He will stay at his post till you release him.

Tears slide down your cheeks. You whisper soft, soothing words to your four-legged beloved. You tell her you are not ready, and that this is not her time. Not yet. You ask your husband to bring you paper towels. He does so without hesitation. In truth, he holds no particular love for this dog, but her suffering is your suffering becomes his suffering. With the towel you wipe your eyes and the dog’s muzzle.

The dog is heaving and your husband wants to have sex. Your kids are grown and gone. You are well into your 50’s, your husband well into his 60’s. Physical intimacy is less frequent than it was at the start of your romance. Yet these long years together have taught you both that intimacy can take many forms: holding hands for no reason, an unexpected kiss on the neck, pillow talk before sleep. Nevertheless, the tenderness expressed when your bodies join, that intimacy has a seamless depth. So when a moment is ripe, like this one was, it is difficult to deny. But the dog is heaving and the promise of sex is slipping away.

Your tears are for your dog. Your tears are for the timing. Your tears are for your trouble compartmentalizing. You know that when an apt opportunity presents itself your husband can transfer his concerns to a box, and shove them into the bedroom closet. But you have a harder time with that. You may be able to get your worries into a box, but they have a tendency to overflow. And if you see what is spilling out, you will be doomed to go to the box and abandon your husband. You have had to learn how to keep all eyes shut.

The dog is heaving and your husband wants to have sex. You don't want the dog to die. Not tonight. Why do your dogs wait till evening to manifest their misfortunes? Years ago your other dog, beloved first dog, became disoriented just after dinner, and was gone before dawn. You held her all night long. You are not ready to hold this dog all night long. You were planning on holding your husband all night long.

At last the dog’s heaving slows and calms. She rises, laps up some water, and begs for a treat. Relieved you offer her a bit of a biscuit, and she inhales it. Your husband is watching. He too is waiting for his treat. You however, are not quite ready to meet his desire. You are still shaken so you give yourself a bit more time to recover by suggesting a soak in the hot tub. The dog can lie on the deck while the two of you gaze up at the stars. And there are stars. The cloudy sky has cleared revealing a twinkling brilliance; Orion's belt, Ursa Minor, Cassiopeia. Even Jupiter’s glow is pulsing through the red oaks and birches. The world is quiet and dark. The dog is calm. The heat of the tub unhinges your joints. You relax, and begin to believe that the night might happen after all—and it does.

Down vs. Up

Down vs. Up  

My husband and I have an undeclared war going on in our home. I like the seat down, he likes the seat up. At night we compromise, and the seat is left up. As I am currently enjoying the fun of menopause, I have developed a sweat-lodge-like propensity for perspiring. As a result, I have no excess bodily fluid in need of release during the evening. On the other hand, my husband being a man of distinguished years, is flooded by urges which catapult him out of bed multiple times during the night. And so, out of respect for his nocturnal trials we compromise, and the nighttime seat is left in the upright position.

However, I believe more female friendly rules should apply during daytime hours. How many times have I glanced out our kitchen window only to catch my husband enjoying a man’s prerogative to water the flowers? Then again, how many times have I come home ready to burst, madly dashing into the house, only to find the seat up? And not only do I then have to dodge the dogs whose acrobatics express their certainty that they haven’t seen me in months, but I also have to get my

pants down and the seat lowered before it’s too late. Clearly there exists an inequity in our partnership’s rules of engagement.

During a recent checkup with my gynecologist, I found myself casually inquiring what to do about those instances when little spritzes spurt forth upon coughing, sneezing, laughing, or simply reaching for my J. Jill catalog. Suddenly her hand, up to her elbow it felt like, was groping around and inspecting my dead-beat bladder. "Actually, things feel pretty well intact up here. I don't think you’ll be in need of any medical intervention at this time." Medical intervention? What does one do to medically intervene? Squirt glue up there? Build some kind of scaffold to keep things from falling out?

And so, as a result of not doing the Kegel exercises I’ve been told to do for decades, having a pelvic floor that resides somewhere in my basement, and having a husband who leaves the seat up, I have become not only a fan, but an avid consumer of what advertisements politely refer to as discreet bladder protection. And it is true, one can be discreet while wearing these safeguards, but I have found that shopping for them requires tremendous forethought to preserve privacy. Consequently, to keep my dignity intact, I have developed an array of

covert strategies with which to undetectably procure these products while shopping at my local grocery store.

To launch my operation I gather a few bulky items in my shopping cart, usually bags of kale, bunches of bananas, and a ripe pineapple or two. I then sneak off to the aisle marked “BabyLand.” For what I find to be a disturbingly circular reason, adult bladder protection products and Huggies are housed in the same aisle—the implication being how our lack-of-control-beginnings revisit us during our out-of-control-ends. Nonetheless, once in this lane I evaluate who else might be shopping there. Usually it’s just some mommies loading their carts with cases of diapers, and this level of self-disclosure I can handle. But sometimes the stray daddy is in the aisle looking lost and hopeless. No doubt he has been sent on an errand by his partner and knows that failure is not an option. If one of these hapless men is in the aisle, I make a bee-line for the bread aisle and wait for him to vacate the vicinity. When the coast is clear, I redeploy to “BabyLand” and stealthily stash my loot under the fold-out seat of my cart, and further bury them beneath multiple boxes of prunes.

Once I’ve secured my assets, I rapidly exit the aisle and look for more items to pile atop them—high fiber foods, headache remedies, hair

coloring products, Weight Watchers cupcakes (a crime against humanity) - all these items are far easier to have visible when unexpectedly bumping into old crushes in the soup aisle, than are those packages of protection outing my decrepity.

But, when it comes time to check out, there is no way to hide those neon bundles. Their presence on the achingly slow conveyer belt alerts anyone who's looking that someone you know, and hopefully they're thinking it must be your elderly mother, can't help but uncontrollably “spritz” in their pants. If and when I graduate to the full on diaper kind of protection, you can bet I'll be wearing sunglasses and a wide brimmed hat to the grocery store.

That’s why, returning to my original dilemma, I don’t want to have to rely on discreet protection. I don’t want to have my lady parts messed with. All I do want is for the toilet seat to be left down during daytime hours. So please boys, give us girls a break: leave those seats down!