Motel Summer Ch. 03: Two Dogs

"Happiness belongs to the class of things precious and final", Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics

I didn't see the first dog coming because he was invisible.

I did see his owner coming. I was by the motel pool, hiding from the sun under a shade structure, and trying to work out how Aristotle might have influenced Jane Austin. It was dry work for such a hot day. So I was ready for a distraction when she came in through the gate to the pool area. I spied on her as she set up camp on the other lounge chair under the shade structure. She had the accoutrements you'd expect: a big bag of sundries, a bottle of sunscreen, a thick paperback, her room key, and one odd item: a faded old pink dog leash, worn from long use, whose loose end was dragging on the ground.

Although, let's face it: as a red-blooded American male, my spying was not focused on the missing dog. I was more interested in what she looked like.

Initially, I was disappointed. She was maybe a dozen years older than I was, probably in her mid-thirties. Her coarse, straight hair was just beyond shoulder length, dark brown with a single gray streak over her right eye. Her tankini showed off a dancer's physique: tight stomach, muscular biceps. However, for all that she was fit, she wasn't attractive. Her skin was sallow and her complexion was rough. Her face was unremarkable. Plus, apparently she didn't shave anything--she had fine black hair on arms and legs and in her armpits. She had no boobs to speak of nor curves anywhere to excite, while her knees and elbows were large. She was somehow both short and gangly at the same time.

Once she was settled, she glanced over and broke the ice: "That's a heavy topic for a hot day. How are the Nicomachean Ethics treating you?"

"Poorly. My assignment is to link them to Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, so I'm having to bone up on my Aristotle. Where's your dog?"

"I have the perfect dog--you might say his breed is the 'Platonic ideal shepherd'. That is, he is an imaginary dog."

"Imaginary?"

"I'm in town to care for a friend who's, um, ill. One way I help is by walking his imaginary dog. There are many benefits to caring for your friend's imaginary pets. Rover here subsists on a diet of imaginary steak and ice cream; doesn't beg, shed, or pee on the carpets; and never barks at 3 a.m. His tennis ball is never slobbery, and he has low vet bills. Anyway, I'm curious about Jane Austin's link to Aristotle. Tell me more?"

"It says here that Aristotle's core idea was, let's see, um: 'humans must be aware of the ethical choices in a given situation and, based on reason, make choices that would bring about eudaimonia'", I said, stumbling over the Greek, "that is, the highest good."

"Interesting, isn't it?" she said. "Having to make judgements that depend on the situation rather than having the 'bestest good' in a neat little container. I haven't read Pride in a while, but it seems to me that there's plenty in there to work with."

"Yeah. I have in a mind to make a decision matrix with each of the characters in specific situations, but... I'm having some trouble motivating myself to do it."

"And who can blame you? It's too hot to tangle with any matrices. I'm Selena, and you are?"

"Cal. I'm summering in 301 while my landlady fixes up the house. Turns out she owns the motel too."

"Then we're neighbors. I've got the corner unit next to yours. 212. If you want to come over some time, I'll let you pet my dog." We both laughed and I went back to Aristotle. After a while she hot-footed across the scorching cement and took up the breast stroke in the pool. I tried not to stare when she made the hazardous crossing in reverse. She wasn't pretty, but scantily clad goes a long way.

She basked in my surreptitious looks. Her eyes had a wicked intelligence behind them and roved across my own body. She laid down on the lounge chair and started applying a new layer of sunscreen. Then she took up her book.

"I think," she said after a while, "that my dog needs to get in out of the sun. When I've dried off, would you like to visit us in our Make Believe kennel, also known as room 212?"

"I'm tempted," I said. "Do you think that would lead to eudaimonia?"

"You ever watch 'Mister Rogers Neighborhood' when you were a kid?"

"I've heard of it. I think it was before my time."

"That's okay. In the show, Mister Rogers would take you on a trolley to the Land of Make Believe. Wherever I go, I try to keep one room or one place that's an adjunct to my own Land of Make Believe--where the rules don't apply and where the mundane doesn't creep in. You know, politics or bad traffic or asshat bosses. None of that."

"I mentioned before that I'm caring for a friend. He's not going to get better: he's in hospice. It's a difficult thing to do, but I've set out to do it. He could die tomorrow, or it might be months from now. So, while I'm here, my room here is an adjunct to the Land of Make Believe because I need a place where I can let go of all that. You know, the rage and anger and sadness inside me from the experience."

"Turns out, Make Believe is more fun if you share it. You can come show off your erudition. Although, to be honest, I'm making this invitation because I want to do something ill-advised. You know, something to make me jealous of all the hot chicks in your life. I want to make a shiny pebble of memory, perhaps it'll be called 'Cal', inside this kind of shitty interlude in my life. Maybe you can make an indelible memory in a box marked 'Selena' to match it."

"Think you can do that?" she asked.

I thought eudaimonia might indeed involve petting her imaginary dog.

Her room, of course, was just like all the other rooms, except that she'd hung a gauzy purple scarf over the window. It made the room dim and vaguely blueberry colored. Her nightstand was piled with books and a couple of empty bottles of water. Her bed was unmade, with the pillows piled up for her to rest against.

She had a capricious smile as she closed the door behind me. With us secreted away, I took her in my arms and kissed her tentatively. We both took little sips of air, then little hints of kiss. I was warming up to her after all.

"Are you in a relationship?" she asked me.

"No," I replied. "Although...er, I have opportunities, but no commitments."

"Okay," she said. "I just don't want to be a home wrecker. I don't think I can stand the karmic hit. I want to be clear that this is a casual thing. But it also kind of means something while we're doing it."

"Aristotle was just reminding me that 'Men are not justified by calling those actions involuntary, which are done by reasons of Anger or Lust'," I said, and I kissed her. She drew off the tankiki top. I pushed my swimsuit off. Her damp bikini bottoms joined them in a pile on the floor as we staggered around blindly trying to back into the bed.

She was a fabulous kisser. Her lips were expressive and moved just so. Her tongue was sweet and mobile. She kissed and then blew into my ear, feeling the surge of reaction tremor through me in response. I nipped at her throat, feeling her nipples tighten in concert. She had no chest to speak of, but brushing those taut bumps made her sit up straighter and suck her breath with a hiss between her teeth.

She maneuvered her way under me, while I rolled above her, supported by my arms. Her hand brushed and then seized my erection, pumping it gently, taking its measure. She passed the tip up and down her entrance, letting me feel the promise of its embrace. But her hand was positioned to keep me from sliding inside.

"Do you want protection? Or are you relying on my birth control?"

"What do you use?"

"In the land of Make Believe? What would be the most ideal?" She let my tip lodge slightly, then drew me out.

"In terms of effectiveness? Or what?"

"Excitement. Don't you want to lie away tonight wondering if you put a joey in my pouch?"

"I'm tempted to say the rhythm method, but I think the diaphragm has it. You have to put it in. It could be taken out or dislodged. We might forget it in a moment of weakness."

"Mmm. You have this Make Believe thing down, I do believe. Therefore, today we're forgetting to put my diaphragm in. Be careful, Cal, one squirt could make you a daddy." These last words each went with a firm shake of my cock... shakes of warning, but each one aligning me better and better with the slippery slope that ended inside her.

Her inner muscles were pumping the inch or so she'd managed to swallow up, pushing me back towards slipping out before relaxing to invite me deeper. Her heels seemed to be slowly levitating from the bed.

I tried to play at being coy. I pulled out almost completely, but when I made to taunt her with a little poke, I found myself sinking in, sheathed in her velvety warmth. I let her absorb the length of me, flexing my back so the firmness of my gristle pressed upward in her belly. She put one hand around the girth of me, letting her thumb diddle herself while her forefinger was tight around the thick stalk's base.

She was too short to kiss while I was buried to the hilt, so I watched her hazel eyes lose their focus, the march of passion across her features. I focused on that passion, my left thumb brushing her nipple in time with my steady sequence of strokes. Her breath grew ragged as she mewled happily, until, at some point, she required more.

"Fuck me hard, Cal. Fuck me hard and shoot your spunk in me. I need it rough," she panted. "Forget the consequences, babe, I need it. Hard."

I obliged. I let go of trying to be measured and controlled and started to just pound into her, putting all my effort into slamming my cock as far inside as I could go.

"Harder!" Her face wavered between anguish and determination as she threw herself into rutting back at me.

"Harder!" We were steamy and sweaty, slapping skin-to-skin. I sucked at the air as my muscles fueled my grinding assault, the exertion blanking out everything but the desperate desire to mate and the growing certainty of release.

"Cum in me!" she cried as I roared past the point of control and held back and back and back before letting go. I climaxed, burrowing my body as far inside as I could get, my animal frenzy locking every muscle in a pulsing, pumping, pounding peak. Like a bow, I released all the arrows in my quiver. Like a coiled spring, I was released, bounding and rebounding. I felt filled with a profound sense of rightness, bolstered by feeling Selena shuddering beneath me, groaning out her own happy climax. Her hand was still around me, feeling each surge of sticky cream as I glued us together, each pulse expanding a pocket of intense warmth around my hardness until she was overflowing.

And then a few eyeblinks later, the aftermath, lying in one-another's arms, winded, salty sweat clouding my eyes, the heightened thrill of hormonal release slowly dissolving into my blood. I was dimly aware of softening inside her while a tiny voice was whispering about how irresponsible I had been yet again. I barely knew this woman, this older woman who likely lived far away--I had no idea where. I hadn't been attracted to her appearance, but my sperms were certainly being attracted to some deep part of her. Already they were past the doorway of her uterus and were flooding into her fallopian tubes, looking to marry themselves to her in a permanent way.

"That was perfect, Cal. Thank you," she said. Her voice was a bit gravelly. Her eyes were probing, sharp-witted.

I want to say I felt "joined" to Selena, but this was a different level of intimacy in which I felt naked and exposed. That I had given--wanted to give--access to every level of myself as an independent being. And that, in return, she was exposing herself, holding nothing back. She wasn't "mine", but there was, there in that bed, in the Land of Make Believe, a sense that there could be an "us". An "us" that didn't belong to me. That just was.

I didn't leave her bed until dark.

When Monday came, I heard her car start early, as she went off the attend to her friend. Caryn knocked at my door soon after, looking for my weekly sperm donation.

"How was your weekend?" she asked.

"Interesting. I met the gal in 212. She has an imaginary dog. How about your weekend? Did you think of me?"

"Cal, I am trying not to think of you. Otherwise, I might want to get us in trouble. And I thought we didn't want that?" she replied.

"I guess not." I took the condom from her and went into the bathroom to fill it.

Those three weeks were, from late June through the early part of July, were oddly disconnected. Most days Selena and I were both away in the daytime and often she didn't come back until very late, exhausted and sad. But each day started or ended in the Land of Make Believe.

On the Fourth of July, with the city exploding with the sound of fire crackers deep into the night, she came back from the hospice looking completely spent. I just held her, rubbing her back, listening to the cicadas until she fell asleep. Some time in the wee hours of Friday morning she awoke to use the bathroom, only to return to bed a tigress, unsatisfied in her hunt until she had savagely taken me.

Somewhere in there, we talked about my continuing infatuation with Sara.

"You're hooked on Sara because imagination is stronger than experience. Your mind can project perfection onto the relationship that might flow from a one-night stand far easier than onto a girl you've been dating for years. It's all made from the gold and silver of that moment, without ever having to find out the dross of any relationship: if she snores or that her favorite food is something you detest."

"I don't know. I feel just as much anxiety as anything else."

"Anxiety is even better than fantastical mooning. Fear, terror, and night sweats are powerful juju--and damn it's good to feel something. It's far stronger to wonder: did she conceive or didn't she? Is she carrying a child? Maybe that child is your child. Or maybe she miscarried or got an abortion--and now she blames you for that. Maybe her husband welcomed her back, but what if he threw her out on the street and she's shivering in some gutter somewhere? She could be rubbing her burgeoning belly right now, thinking of you. The less you know, the more thrilling the feeling."

"In the morning you'll go back to studying Jane Austin and fixing bikes and worrying about what happens if Sara calls you. And I'll have to go back to not having a dog and sweating away my summer vacation in this motel and having to be there for an ex-boyfriend--whom I have no more romantic feelings for than that lamp over there--but whose family and friends have otherwise abandoned him."

"But right now, we're both here, really really here. And Cal? I really like the you I see." She paused a moment, her head tilted quizzically. "I think you should come with me tomorrow. I want you to meet Mark."

"I... I don't know him. I'd feel like an intruder."

"That's okay, he won't know you either. He might not even know me."

"Do you want to share why you're... you know..." It seemed vaguely intrusive, like I was asking to go through her underwear drawer. She looked pensively around.

"Yes. Yes, I guess I do."

"I met Mark in my junior year of college--he was a year ahead of me. We started hanging out and I guess you could say we became an item. When I finally graduated, I followed him as he went through his graduate studies and did his dissertation for his doctorate. And when he got on faculty here, I tagged along."

"We were together for eight years after college. Ten if you count undergrad. Although, we never lived together. I always had my own place and such. But I was clearly following him."

"When I turned thirty, I kind of got this itch. I wanted to go some places and do some things. He wanted to get married and start a family. It was... another year before I found a job and moved out of state. And I'm very happy with my choices. I don't regret the time I was following Mark, but I moved on. I started following myself, I guess you could say."

"Then, last year, he had a routine physical and--BAM!--stage four cancer. The treatments were debilitating--and didn't work. When he couldn't care for himself, and his friends had abandoned him and his family couldn't be bothered, he had to decide to check into this hospice. He told me it's a place you go to when the body is still going after the living has mostly stopped. And I couldn't bear the thought of him sitting there, alone, in that room, waiting to die. So, as soon as I finished teaching spring semester I came here and I'll be here through the end of it."

"And... that's also the explanation about the dog. There was a real dog, Mark's dog from when we were together, but he was so old. And Mark couldn't care for him. I had to take him to be put down. We pretend he's there, on the other side, as, you know, Mark's 'post-life emotional support animal'."

"I'd like to meet him."

Mark was lying there in bed, apparently asleep. He was gaunt and his skin sagged. His face had been distinguished, but there was a hint of anguish. He had several days growth of salt-and-pepper beard and a bit of saliva dried in the corner of his mouth. He had about an inch of hair on his head and it was matted and stiff, not having been washed recently. There was a faint smell of urine in the room, but otherwise everything was clean and orderly. There were no beeping machines, no air pumps. Just a man in a bed.

When he woke up, he was disoriented. He didn't know where he was. At first he didn't seem to know Selena but then, a little later, he perked up and was there completely.

At some point, Selena went out to get ice coffees and it was just the two of us. I'll never forget our conversation, partly because he was funny, erudite, a thinker. I wished I'd known him before, instead of just as the wreck before me.

One of the first things he told me was "Dying is hard work. You have to do it yourself; nobody seems willing to do any of it for you."

And there was this: "Selena's a hard nut to crack, eh? I've been where you are. I remember... well. She's not attractive in a conventional sense. But she gets under your skin, doesn't she? She's the deepest sea you ever stuck your toe into. I had to laugh. She caught you reading Ethics when you met. She is... such a Platonist, such an idealist. She just hunts perfection. You're a very lucky man. I envy the experiences you'll have--and that I hope you'll give her."

Selena came back then and we took turns reading to him. He wanted to see how Melville escaped the South Seas in Typee. There were other books waiting in the pile. Eventually, he called for more medication and that knocked him out.

We left drained, filled at first with a profound sadness. On the drive back to the motel I looked over at her and her expression was drawn. Her fingers held a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, and I understood her refuge of Make Believe.

"Selena." She glanced over at me. "Thank you. I like Mark and I'm glad you're here." She had a grim little smile in response.

When we got to the motel, she went and got two big cans of cheap beer. We turned the air conditioning up to its roaring maximum and went to sit by the pool.

"Cal, I overheard you with Mark today. I need you to understand that this is a temporary thing. Neither one of us can afford to grow feels here. It would be too easy for me or you to get attached. You and I are going to be friends, I hope forever. And we're lovers in the Land of Make Believe. But I need you to do two things for me to show how you understand."

"Okay. Anything."

"Ooh. Careful, big boy. The first thing is, to show you understand me, I need you to seduce a woman and sleep with her."