When Two Dogs Go to War
I renewed my lease. I’m not happy about it but they put me in an uncomfortable spot with deadlines and such, and my neighbourhood is too convenient for me to give up without a fight. No comparable buildings in the area, I looked. Signing the paper, I envisioned the gentle click of handcuffs around my wrists. These handcuffs would bind me to the Provigo grocery store, the gym, the market, Videoland, the dépanneur, the Guy-Concordia Metro station, the Cock and Bull pub, and an iron ball of a rent figure. The rental agency is raising the rent without raising the quality, a practice engaged in with a smiling face by unscrupulous mountebanks whose souls have long been razed clean, and justified with hollow pleas of penury and woe. All landlords who raise the rent only because they are allowed to deserve lead poisoning, severe Acts of God, VD, or a combination. My mind is made up on this matter.
So in making peace with my lackluster accomodations, I’ve tried to grow into my situation, and the first step is to get to know the neighbours. Behind my apartment there is a small grassy terrace with a few bare trees, surrounded by a knee-high iron fence. On the other side of that terrace are townhouses made of red brick with giant cement front steps jutting out from the front. The terrace is festooned with piles of shit, as people allow their dogs free roam inside the pen instead of walking them around the block.
I see two dogs in particular, a couple of spotted, puggish things named Rocco and Naya, who belong to my closest townhouse neighbour. The neighbour is a young man aged roughly twenty-two, skin white as the inside of an oyster’s shell. Though he is very much not one, this young man seems to be under the delusion that he is in fact an inner-city black male, in voice and in disposition.
When Rocco and Naya run around in the pen, he does not so much monitor the dogs as stalk them, yelling at them if they don’t shit fast enough, or if they get too playful. Cries of “Rocco!” pierce the night sky as often as car horns. His bothersome temper is matched only by his effusive personality which, when prodded along by complaining neighbours frequently leads him to periods of, shall we say, verbal ebullience.
Neighbours complain that he is too noisy; his response is to challenge them to a fight, or stages a screaming match for the whole neighbourhood’s enjoyment. After dark he can be seen careening madly around the street in the process of managing three or four confrontations he’s got going at once, like a restaurant chef keeping all his saucepans moving during the dinner rush. Shouting a little here, a little there, “You’re a tough guy? You’re a tough guy? Come here and show me how tough you are!”, the bill of his baseball cap licking the air with every head fake. Many of his tiffs seem to be fights with his friends who live down the street. After they yell and threaten each other, perhaps enacting a Roman rite of gladitorial combat, they can be seen chatting on his front steps. He radiates conflict. His very breath is loaded with pheromones designed for maximum irritation and exasperation, and his front porch a place of great reconciliation and retreat. He screams madly for no reason at all. He is not so much high on life as drunk on it.
The gangsta’s partner in crime is a girlfriend, who I have determined to be named “Jen”, a shrill harpy who sits on the side of the fence and chews Red Man tobacco (or gum, I’m not sure). She is the house disciplinarian for Naya and Rocco, exhorting them to curb their unhealthy doggy behaviours at the highest volumes. She respects the dogs so much that she has begun to talk to them like people, namely small children.
“Naya, if you don’t stop that right now, you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble! Naya! Get over here now!”
“Rocco, go to the bathroom! Go!”
Instinctually we expect dogs to behave like people. I’ve been there. Our family dog, Jake, was a poorly behaved monster in his youth—a combination of hyperactivity, blazing footspeed, and lazy parenting. I miss chasing him around the dining room table when he’d get a hold of a valuable object, like a plush toy or an errant piece of steak. We had no patience with him early on which caused us to stray from the program of monosyllabic commands we had been told worked best for obedience. Dogs are easily confused, and dog owners are too quick to project their emotions onto them, leading to outbursts that would be appropriate for people, not animals.
“Naya, you need to drop that right NOW!”
They are a merry couple. In fact, their joviality often extends into the wee hours of the morning, against the open windows behind which are people trying to get a goddamned night’s sleep. Windows and dark bedrooms make a dull audience, so from time to time while Jen leans against the fence chewing her own sick, or whatever, the gangsta general puts on a talent show for the ‘hood, which is my favourite part because he has a unique talent. His talent, his gift, is that which we call the rap music. While the dogs run around—not making this up—he hosts his own private, exclusive, and staggeringly white street freestyling show.
Now, I am no enemy to the rap music. Quite the opposite. But it is crucial to make a distinction, not only between the rapper and his music, but the rapper and his mode of delivery. At 3 AM, the aspiring MC Gusto might think to know his audience, because while he faces the street flailing his hands in cadence with the ill verses he’s dropping one time for your mind, his audience is awake in beds telling him over and over into the pillow to shut the fuck up. The throes of his personal Eight Mile are done at the expense of my forty winks.
At least I don’t have to pay for entertainment anymore. If anyone wants to stop by, we could videotape him and sell bootlegs. But these are my neighbours, and this is my ‘hood for the next year-plus, and you should all come and visit sometime. Bring beer, Red Man, pillows, earplugs, and your rabidest, rabidest dogs.
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(3 comments)
We should do a trade-off; I’ll kill your neighbours if you kill mine.
Godonlyknows, I’d be happier without them.
Ouch. I’ll take barking dogs and barking dog owners over neighbourly onanism any day.
[...] In light of recent events pertaining to the neighbourhood dog-owning gangsta menace I spoke about in the entry Two Dogs Go To War, it is time for an update on this most pugnacious of neighbours. [...]