Free I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship by Wade Rouse

Home, Judy
    Alec Mapa
    If you live a good life, you get to come back as a gay couple’s dog.
    Trust me, Mother Teresa is a Shih Tzu living on the Upper East Side wearing a Dolce & Gabbana trench and having her crap picked up by Uncle Steve and Uncle Dave.
    Don’t believe me?
    My husband and I have two dogs, Ozzy and Sweet Pea, both of whom have a holistic dentist who makes quarterly house calls to clean their teeth.
    She’s called “The Tooth Fairy.”
    I shit you not.
    I have the canceled checks to prove it.
    Ozzy and Sweet Pea fulfill my own mortifying need to be shamelessly affectionate in a way I simply can’t be with people.
    I have the restraining orders to prove it.
    My own husband, after one too many kisses, will repel me with a flexed foot. My dogs are the only living creatures on the planet whose need to love and be loved comes as close to being bottomless as my own. At the end of every day, I am greeted at the front door as if I am a long-lost friend who, mistakenly, was believed to have been dead for years. I sometimes want to tell my dogs that I am undeserving of this avalanche of affection, but I can’t bring myself to break the bad news. Besides, I need this illusion of greatness to go on living. Their nightly greeting has made bad auditions, lousy performances, and lonely, loveless days evaporate instantly.
    In return, they get everything : ergonomically designed chew toys, gourmet treats, and a groomer so skilled she makes Vidal Sassoon look like a butcher.
    Ozzy is a cairn terrier. He was an actor who worked on a popular network sitcom. He used to double for his brother. He was identical to him in every way except his metabolism. He got fired for getting fat.
    Los Angeles can be a mean, nasty town.
    An animal trainer on the lot introduced me to Ozzy and said, “This one’s kind of depressed. All his friends at the kennel go to work every day, so he’s all alone, and hasn’t worked in six months. That’s three years to you and me.”
    I immediately felt his pain.
    When Ozzy came to live with us, he was like a Stepford dog.
    Ozzy could perform every standard dog trick from “play dead” to “speak” with just a wave of my hand.
    It was creepy.
    Neither my husband nor I made him do a single thing to amuse us.
    Now he sleeps all day and eats his own poo.
    I recently did the old “rollover” gesture just to see if he remembered, and he responded by audibly farting then leaving the room.
    The most effort that dog will make for the rest of his life will be to move from one comfortable spot to the next.
    Of course, I’m jealous.
    My husband and I were watching The Wizard of Oz one night (because we’re gay) when Toto, cinema’s most recognizable cairn terrier and Dorothy’s iconic dog, made an appearance. We pointed to the screen and said, “Look, Ozzy! It’s you!”
    In our imaginations, we instantly became convinced that Ozzy truly believed he was Toto, that he actually appeared in The Wizard of Oz next to Judy Garland, and, as a result, calls everybody Judy.
    We speak his thoughts aloud constantly.
    He sounds like an adolescent Mr. Magoo: affable and friendly, yet strangely formal.
    We believe his playful woofs and snorts translate into:
    â€œHow was your day, Judy?”
    â€œKnow what I did, Judy?”
    â€œI just ate some poo, Judy.”
    â€œCan you smell it, Judy?”
    â€œYou will when I kiss you, Ju-day !”
    We think this is hilarious.
    On a two-week trip to Berlin one summer, we spent the entire vacation speaking to each other in Ozzy’s voice.
    â€œHey, there’s the Reichstag, Judy.”
    â€œNice bratwurst, Judy.”
    â€œIch bin ein Berliner, Judy.”
    We could actually feel the already reserved German population physically pull away from our presence.
    Our other dog is a dachshund-Chihuahua mix. A “Doxiewawa” or a “Chi-weenie,” if you will.
    We