Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

  “We wanted to know if you wanted to dog-sit for Pepper and Daisy,” she said to me over the phone while I was trying to figure out the best way to disguise a huge bruise I had on my upper arm from a Yahtzee tournament I had participated in the night before. I wanted to tell her that I’d rather be forced to watch a Lord of the Rings marathon and then be raped by a hobbit than dog-sit for anyone. But I hadn’t had enough therapy at that point to know about creating boundaries, so instead I said, “Definitely!”

  Lesley and her father/boyfriend live in a big house in Brentwood and are under the impression that anyone who lives in an apartment would jump at the chance to sleep in a real live house. This is not the case, unless of course you were raised in a shelter. Or if the house you’re pet-sitting in has a pool, butler, steam room, and a closet filled with cocaine. I take absolutely no pleasure in staying at other people’s homes. Even when I go to visit a friend in another city, I rarely stay at their place. I prefer hotels and not having to worry about walking around naked or farting, which happens almost every time I get into a cross-legged position. The biggest discomfort of all is sleeping in someone else’s bed, which is not appealing on any level—unless, of course, penetration is involved.

  I went by later that day to pick up the keys from Lesley, giving myself the middle finger the whole way there. Not only was it imperative that I sleep at their house because if Pepper, their newest dog, wasn’t put in a crate at night she’d shit all over the floor, but they also made it a regular habit to cook fresh ground hamburger meat twice a week for Daisy, their golden retriever. One of my responsibilities would include taking a big log of hamburger meat out of the freezer, defrosting it, and then cooking it in a frying pan. Each batch was meant to last for three days, but with me also snacking on it regularly, I ended up having to make three to four batches.

  I had met Lesley a couple of years earlier when I had worked at a restaurant called Chaya Venice. I wasn’t even really good friends with her, but I made the mistake of dog-sitting for another girl at work, and word spread like an AMBER Alert. The most ridiculous thing about it was I had never led anyone to believe I even liked dogs that much. The only animals I had ever been publicly effusive about were apes. Aside from their bright pink assholes that stick out like toilet plungers, I think that as far as personalities go, they really have the most to offer.

  The minute I arrived at Lesley’s house, insanity ensued. Anytime the front door was opened, Lesley had a full-on wrestling match with Daisy, the big dog, while simultaneously shooing away Pepper, the Peekapoo, so that neither would escape. My feeling is, if a dog is that hard up to break free, let it go. It’s like a boyfriend who wants to break up. We all know the old adage, “If you set someone free, and he never comes back, then he was never yours.” I understand the main fear with setting dogs loose is that they could get hit by a car, but so could an ex-boyfriend. That’s just a chance you have to take.

  In between her screaming “Daisy, down!” and “Pepper, no!,” we chitchatted and she reminded me how to use all the TVs and DVD players and told me where the dog park was. I wanted to tell her that I’d sooner buy an RV and drive across the country with Lorenzo Lamas than hang out for the afternoon at a smelly park covered in dog shit.

  Lesley’s lover, Jerry, came out midway through my briefing and reminded me not to leave any small items out, referring to the last time I dog-sat, when Daisy ate my cell phone, contact-lens case, and an entire box of Godiva chocolates I had found in their cupboard. They were nice enough to reimburse me for the phone, but obviously I didn’t tell them about the box of chocolates since I was the one who left them out in the first place. The important lesson I learned from that is that dogs do not necessarily go into cardiac arrest if they have chocolate. They also need to have a history of alcoholism, smoking, and/or a drug dependency.

  Jerry was a really nice guy, but my main problem with him was that he had a double-decker toe. His middle toe laid directly on top of his index toe. If this is the hand you’re dealt in life, then fine, but at least have the courtesy to keep the situation under wraps until all parties have been fully prepped for an unveiling. He constantly walked around in open-toed sandals as if nothing whatsoever was wrong. I find that to be not only arrogant, but Jerry obviously had no concern for other people’s comfort levels or gag reflexes, which is just plain disrespectful.

  The worst part was that while I was trying not to stare at his deformity, the stupid little dog, Pepper, insisted on jumping up and down—ricocheting off my leg, back onto the floor, and up again—and I had to pretend in front of his owners that he was one of the cutest things I’d ever seen.

  The most insulting part of this dog-sitting bonanza is that Lesley insisted on paying me forty dollars a day. I know that’s kind of generous, but at the time, I was a regular on a television show, and although it was on a cable vagina network, I was making plenty of money to live on. I was dog-sitting as a favor, not to rake in an extra one hundred and sixty bucks over a four-day period.

  I left there wondering why I was constantly getting myself into situations that I wanted no part of. I called my boyfriend at the time, Mohammed. That wasn’t his actual name, but he was half Persian, which he failed to inform me of until our third date, and as punishment for trying to cover up his heritage, I thought it best to only refer to him as the most Middle Eastern name I could think of: Mohammed. Being Persian is very similar to the double-decker toe. These are things you need to brace another person for.

  Heavy M and I had been dating for a couple of months and we pretty much spent every night together. We clicked instantly, and I had wondered if maybe he was the perfect match for my personality, but also wrestled with the idea of our children being raised by the Ayatollah. If I had to compare him to well-known celebrities, I’d say he looked like a cross between David Duchovny and Will Smith. He looked a lot like David, but his skin had the tone that some people would refer to as olive. The olives I come in contact with the most are green, so I would more accurately describe his skin tone as a café latte. He was definitely sexy due to having the same laid-back personality as Matthew McConaughey, minus having the inclination to play the bongos while high on the Mary Jane.

  “Yo, yo, yo,” I said as he picked up the phone. “I have some bad news.”

  “What?”

  “I’m dog-sitting for some friends of mine you’ve never met, and probably never will. They have a house in Brentwood and I have to sleep there for the next three nights.”

  “Why are you doing that?” he asked.

  “Because I’m an asshole.”

  “Well, why do you have to sleep there?”

  “Because their little Peekapoo can’t be left alone at night or he cries.”

  “What’s a Peekapoo?” he asked.

  “Like a Chihuahua, but worse.”

  “I hate Chihuahuas.”

  “I know, she caught me off guard when she called, so I’m just fucked. You can sleep here too,” I told him. Mohammed had a beautiful house in the Palisades, so there was definitely no draw for him to be sleeping in a stranger’s house down the road.

  “Great,” he said with the same excitement you’d exude after finding out that Lionel Richie was performing in your hometown. Mohammed was very sarcastic, which is what drew me to him in the first place. He was a real-estate attorney who made his own hours, worked sparsely, and managed to make a fortune, three qualities I am always drawn to in a Persian.

  “Do we have to play with them?” he asked.

  “Well, no, but it’s not like we can hit them,” I told him. “I have to take them for walks and stuff, and make sure they’re fed, but they’re kind of high maintenance, so I totally understand if you don’t want to sleep there.”

  “Uh-huh.” He sighed. “Well, I’m going to a rifle range, wanna come?” he asked.

  “Why are you going to a rifle range?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know, I thought it might be interesting to learn how to use a firearm.
It might be a good idea for you to learn also, just in case I ever decide to backhand you.”

  “That’s an excellent point, but I think I’m going to go home and pack some stuff for the next few days. And then Fantasia is coming over to clean my apartment, and I have to be there so she doesn’t take anything.” A month earlier I had come home after my cleaning lady had been there to find my TiVo missing. After refreshing my español via telefonica with a busboy I had kept in touch with since my waitressing days, I mustered up the courage to confront her.

  She picked up after three rings and I went for it. “Hola, Fantasia, this is Yelsea.”

  “Hola, Yelsea!”

  “Donde esta TiVo?”

  Her response was “Okay, bye,” and then a dial tone. Fantasia had hung up on me.

  The following Monday she brought my TiVo back with major attitude. “Aqui!” she yelled as she slammed it down on the table. I didn’t understand what her problem was, or why I was then stuck watching twenty-five episodes of ¿Donde Esta Selena?

  The next day I drove over to Lesley’s around noon to begin my dog-sitting duties, and the dogs went absolutely nuts the minute I opened the door. You’d think they’d been left alone for an entrire week already.

  “Jesus,” I moaned as both of them jumped up and down, and Pepper barked in his signature high pitch. “Hi, guys.” I feigned enthusiasm as I bent down and pet them both, paranoid that Lesley and Jerry had installed some sort of neighborhood pet-watch video cameras.

  I took the dogs outside to the backyard and found a tennis ball on the lawn. The backyard was enclosed by a wall made out of large stones leading up a steep hill so that the dogs couldn’t escape.

  “All right, guys,” I announced, “let’s play catch.” I threw the ball once and then walked back inside and closed the glass door. I had been there for a total of ten minutes and was already wiped out.

  Just as I was falling into a deep sleep on the sofa, I heard loud barking. After fifteen more minutes of this, I creaked my head up and saw a lawnmower at the top of the hill in their backyard with no one operating it. Daisy was nowhere to be found, and Pepper, of course, was doing her usual musical number, which was about as soothing as an Ozzy Osbourne concert.

  “Fuck!” I groaned, and jumped up to go outside. I could hear Daisy barking but couldn’t see her anywhere.

  “Daisy,” I called as I tried to catapult myself over the rock base leading to the woods.

  “Daisy!” I screamed. “Daisy!”

  I looked over into the neighbor’s yard and saw Daisy at the base of the tree, barking at a gardener who was hanging above her with his wrists and his feet wrapped around a branch, positioned a foot apart. Like a koala bear.

  “Daisy,” I hollered as I ran along the side of the incline over to the tree, through thick branches and dirt, and along a side incline that made for very unlevel footing. Why a grown man would be afraid of a golden retriever made about as much sense as Janet Reno casually dating Kanye West.

  “Lo siento!” I said. “I’m so sorry! Daisy, get over here!” Daisy turned around and saw me, then ran in the direction of the street at a speed upward of the typical ten miles per hour I’ve known most dogs to be capable of.

  The descent down into the street was a steep one since both homes were set high up on a hill. Boarding a sled and heading downhill on solid pavement would have been less frightening than running down a ninety-degree angle in platforms. Not only did I roll my ankle twice, I fell into a double somersault, which, to my complete shock, turned into a round-off leading into a triple back handspring, ending with me at the bottom of the neighbor’s driveway with two bloody knees and a hangnail.

  Daisy was at the bottom of the hill running away from me as I was trying to catch her. After a good minute and a half of running in the same exact circle, I realized we were in a holding pattern. I stopped, and so did she.

  “Let’s go!” I said, and clapped my hands. Then she walked right over to me and sat down. I grabbed her collar and dragged her over to Lesley’s driveway and back up the hill. Luckily, I had left the garage door open, and was able to get in through there.

  After I brought Pepper in from the back, I went into the bathroom to clean myself up and look for some Band-Aids. Of course, the dogs couldn’t be left alone for more than thirty seconds, so instead of using disinfectant or rubbing alchohol, I was treated to the two of them alternately licking the blood off my knees. “Stop it,” I yelled, and then before I knew it, I started crying like a baby.

  Without collecting my thoughts or gathering any composure, I called Mohammed while simultaneously spitting up.

  “Please come over here,” I cried, and gave him the address.

  Twenty minutes later he was knocking on the front door, which, of course, made both dogs jump up and down like a couple of lunatics. I opened the door feeling incredibly sorry for myself and, once again, burst into tears.

  “These dogs are gonna drive me to drink!”

  “What happened to your knees?” he asked, noticing I had a piece of bathroom tissue covering each knee, both soaked in B-positive blood.

  “Daisy escaped and I had to run down the hill in my shoes, and it wasn’t pretty.”

  He was very sweet with me, giving me a hug and then taking the dogs into the living room and letting them jump all over him in an effort to allow me some time to comport myself. I went in the bathroom and cleaned myself off, and when I came out, Mohammed was outside throwing the tennis ball with the dogs. He came inside with them when he saw me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I can’t understand why I am always falling all over the place,” I said, sitting down on the sofa. “You’d the think the advantage of having eight years of tap on my side would help me with some of the coordination challenges I seem to regularly find myself up against.”

  “I take it you’re feeling better. Do you think you might cry again?”

  “Yes,” I said, as the dogs ran over to me, jumping up and down. The big one was at least cute, and as annoying as she was, you couldn’t get mad at a golden retriever. The little Peekapoo, on the other hand, wasn’t attractive on any level, and that, combined with his high-pitched squeal, made me want to throw him against a wall.

  “I feel bad about the feelings I’m having toward this little shit dog,” I told Mohammed while simultaneously rubbing Pepper’s head. “I don’t want to hurt him, but I really feel like if I have to stay here for three days, I’m going to kill one of them or myself.”

  “Well, you should definitely not kill one of the dogs,” he said. “You could go to prison.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That dog is really stupid. I don’t understand people’s obsession with little dogs,” he said. “I’ll stay here with you.”

  “Thank you,” I told him, flattered he would be willing to support me in that way. “Is there any chance you would sleep here by yourself?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  What I did remember from last time is that Pepper spent the majority of the night crying in his cage like a little bitch, but I wasn’t about to give Mohammed the heads-up on that one.

  “They have the DVD box set of all four seasons of Sex and the City,” I said. “Wanna watch?”

  “No.”

  “What about all five seasons of Saved by the Bell?”

  “Fine.”

  We walked into their media room and closed the door, leaving the dogs in the hall to fend for themselves. It was time for a break. As we were watching one of the episodes I turned to Mohammed. “Who would you rather have sex with, Screech or Star Jones?”

  “Star Jones now, or before her gastric bypass?”

  “Before.”

  “Who’s giving and who’s taking?” he asked.

  “Screech is giving, and you’d have to go down on Star Jones for one hour…after she went jogging.”

  “I choose both,” he said.

  “Interesting. Very interesting.”

  “Wann
a have sex in their bed?” he asked.

  “Well, yeah, but it’s gonna have to be a quickie,” I told him. “I need to run some errands.”

  We walked out of the media room, and of course the moment the dogs heard the door open they were running down the hallway from the living room, drooling all over the place. We went into the bedroom, and I put Pepper in his crate. “Are the sheets clean?” Mohammed asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then why are they covered in dog hair?” he asked, throwing the comforter on the floor.

  “Gross. I really think dogs are unsanitary,” I said. “I think it’s actually only the comforter. The sheets should be clean.”

  “They are,” he agreed, inspecting them. “What do you think is worse? Allowing them to sleep in the bed with you, or putting them in a cage?”

  “Allowing them to sleep in the bed with you. By the way, Daisy sleeps in the bed.” Pepper started yapping again and I walked over and let him out of his cage. We jumped into bed and started fooling around. Within seconds, both dogs were on the bed with us.

  “This isn’t going to work,” I said.

  “Go get them out of the room and close the door,” he suggested.

  “Just forget it,” I said, losing interest and getting dressed. “I have to go pick up my dry cleaning anyway. Just take your nap, and we’ll go out to dinner. We’d have better luck having sex in your car.”

  “I’m open to that.”

  I grabbed my keys and headed to the door as the dogs engaged in the same tug-of-war routine that happened when anyone entered or left the house. Once inside my car, I looked down at my black pants that I had changed into after my downhill slalom only to discover I was completely covered in Daisy’s hair. I was starting to feel like a real asshole.

  An hour later I came back to the house and walked inside. Surprisingly, Daisy was the only one who accosted me upon opening the front door. I walked into the bedroom and found Mohammed lying in bed, still with his clothes off, watching Dr. Phil with Pepper cuddled up next to him.

  “This dog can’t get enough of me,” he said, laughing.