Today we ended Faith’s life. She was, according to the records, 19 years old.
She had cancer and while still able to go up and down the stairs, take short walks, and eat two square meals a day (her favorite 8 minutes of the day), the tumors were at a point of not just being an annoyance. They caused her pain, and it was clear that as they were now spreading quickly, there was more of that in her future. And so we made an appointment and drove her to the Vet in the Palisades. I was able to hold it together through the signing of release forms, and the initial wait in the entry, but when it was time to take her back, Gary and she went together for the last walk down the hall.
They tried to get her lay down on the floor, but she wanted to sit up, so Gary wrapped his arms around her and they administered the drug. He said she peacefully began to breathe more slowly, until she was no longer with him. He said she looked angelic. The doctor left him alone with her and he said he lost it, beginning to cry, his tears spilling down onto the front of his blue t-shirt like drops of heavy rain. When he came out of the building, I was waiting in the car, and while we knew we’d done the right thing, the strong thing, the best thing for her – it was so incredibly hard.
At some point during college, probably while I sat drunk moribund
glued to a booth in a club birthed by a pomade-slick headed
Philadelphian, a forgettable hip-hop jam shivering my sternum, at some
point I realized this is not the best arena to showcase whatever it is
I have to offer women. Now, a couple of years later and back in Los
Angeles, those clubs and plenty of overcrowded, overloud bars in my
rear-view mirror, the thesis hasn’t changed. I have friends1 who,
god-bless them, don’t require that (trivial) intermediary step of
exchanging coherent words in between seeing a girl and kissing her.
Some sort of atavistic ceremony played out to the new Kanye. I don’t
know. Maybe I should let more chest hair peek out of my button-down
shirts. 
An age-old motto employed by wise women everywhere when their
60-something husbands return from the work wars to create projects from
their home office.
She leans in toward me, her elbows on the counter. She is tall, blonde, and very slender. She’s wearing a tight black skirt and a white blouse open one button just past modest. A maid’s apron circles her waist. She begins to speak but I raise my hand and gesture for her to wait. I am listening to the teenage girl with the long legs and short shorts standing to the blonde’s left. She is a regular but, tonight, she wants more than usual.
I have yet to go on a date in New York without breaking into a mental
sweat. When
scouting for potential mates, I have learned pretentious is better than
shallow, irritatingly intelligent better than vapid. But every time I
find myself two blocks away from any appointed date destination, panic
ensues.
