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could have been a pug.
    He had a good life.
    That had been the end, but the producer of the show suggested that maybe I could talk about any regrets I had. Or what I’d learned from the experience. I thought, no, that’s not a good story.Let the radio listeners beat their steering wheel and scream at what a horrible person I was. Because I was. I don’t need to be liked. Who cares? In fact, if I go on to explain all that I’ve learned, it will feel like an after-school special or a typical Hollywoodmovie . . . “I guess what I’ve learned is that whales need to live in the ocean and that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on a wedding if you’re in love . . .”
    No, let them feel what they want.
    I’m still traumatized from the moment when Carlos got into the car, basically stood up on two legs, took my hands in his paws, and said in the queen’s English, “You poor Germanic-looking woman. Don’t you see? Dogs don’t care where they are. As long as we are with you, we are content. I trusted you. You abandoned me. Your excuse—‘but I’m adopted, I’m all messed up’—doesn’t move me. It should have opened your heart to my plight. Good day.”
    I’d been his owner. I had taken care of him. Went to obedience class. I slept with him, fed him, walked him, and loved him. I’d put so much effort into playing the “I’m an asshole with a dog who’s causing mayhem!” comedy that I hadn’t let myself feel what was really going on. I was in love with that dog.
    Don’t NPR listeners have the liberal sensitivity to understand that if I describe my love, or get too showy with it, if I bring it out into the open, someone will grab it and run away with it? My love will be exposed, hovering in the air in front of me until it’s karate kicked away. If I love openly and fiercely, I’ll be left looking like an asshole. It’s far better for me to tune out the chatter of my heart because what is real is that I don’t really trust people, or maybe it’s that I love them so much I’m sure that love will destroy me.
    Complaining is easy. Admitting to doing awful things is easy. I like it! I’m the one who didn’t flush the toilet, who stole from people I babysat for, who did coke in the elevator of the Standard! Loving something is awful. Like that scene in
Harold and Maude
where Harold gives Maude a fancy ring, and she takes it and hugs it to her chest lovingly, then leans back and tosses it into the lake. He looks at her with horror—what did she just do? “That way I’llalways know where it is,” she says with a deep, relaxed sigh. That’s how I feel when something I care about, something beautiful, is in front of me that opens my heart. I worry about losing it the entire time I have it. I’d rather throw it away and know that exactly where it landed is where it remains. It won’t go on any journeys with me; it won’t change. It won’t get damaged or sold or lost and it won’t age.
    Those message-board folks should be glad I didn’t throw Carlos in a lake. The joke would have been on them, though: Carlos loved swimming in Lake Washington. He’d leap in and swim and swim and swim. Sometimes, it looked like he was never going to come back. “Will he swim too far and drown?” I asked Mathew in a total panic, watching him swim after a goose that was heading toward the opposite end of the lake by Bill Gates’s mansion. “Well, I don’t think so,” Mathew had said. “Go after him, Mathew! Go get him!” I’d panicked and made Mathew swim out to get him, which he did. As soon as Carlos saw him, he swam toward him and followed him back to shore. From then on, I didn’t take him to the lake because I was too worried he’d swim away and never come back.
    Dear god, listening to this story is going