the picture where lefty is looking through the gate has a funny story behind it. that’s christian and beta’s old deck in topanga. you had to walk up a pretty steep flight of steps and through that gate to get into their house. one day when lefty was very wee (shortly after i had gotten him) he was up behind the gate for some reason and i was down at the bottom of the steps. he got excited to see me and launched himself through the gate posts (we didn’t think he could fit through), tumbling head first down the steps. head over paw over head over paw. thump thump thump thump thump. like a warm red slinky. i’m standing at the bottom of the steps (as ex-howard stern intern steve grillo would say, ‘completely dumbfounded’) watching this sweet little innocent furry thing- who fate had recently put under my care – falling down a flight of stairs. frozen in fear and terror, i was. shitty feeling all around. seemed to go on for about twenty minutes, too. but he was fine … puppies are made of rubber.

aw …

feels like home.

it’s also the first official day of spring break. all my students are “floating kegs” in gulf shores or destin. i’m writing papers in red stick. my goal was to get five new pages done today on my barry bonds paper. i have not met that goal. but it’s still early. but i might go out and watch the big ncaa game at a bar.

lefty just made me angrier than ever. we stepped outside earlier for a piss, and he saw my friend neil down the street. sprinted right for him. then he saw neil’s neighbor’s cat. suddenly he’s under her house. i called to him for five minutes. then comes flying out and heads for neil’s backyard where i again called for him for five minutes as he ran through a forest of bamboo. then he got under neil’s fence and into the guy’s yard behind neil’s place where he trapped the cat under a shed (sound familiar, hooch?). i then ran around the block (having just gotten out of the shower) and climbed into this guy’s backyard (who i don’t know, who could be armed to the teeth) and started calling for lefty under the shed. i then hear him go back under the fence and back into neil’s yard. again, i start running around the block, thinking, “i hope i catch lefty before he gets hit by a car so i can beat him to death with my own hands.” i came around the corner in front of my house to see lefty, in full sprint, chase the cat down the street, then across the street, and then under another neighbor’s house. the nice lady who lives there (whose name i forget) helped me finally trap him. she was out of ammunition, so i had to bring him home for punishing.

i banished him to the bedroom. he just walked out and looked at me, all sad and shit. i yelled, “get back in there!” he turned around and sulked back down the hall looking pathetic.

he probably doesn’t even know why he’s in trouble anymore.

and i don’t care.

***

a few weeks ago, i got it in my head that i’m losing my hair. and part of me doesn’t give a shit. really. what the fuck do i care? but there’s this other part of me that thinks, “well … maybe you should just try to push this thing along for juuuust a little longer.”

so i’m online looking for propecia. that’s the brand name of the drug finasteride, the miracle of modern medicine that grows your hair. i took propecia for awhile in the late ’90s in san francisco. i read about it in the paper and thought, “hey, my dad’s bald, maybe this is the trick to not ending up bald.” so i talked to my dermatologist and he says, “now’s the time.” i bought a three month supply for around $90 … lot of bread for hair, but i had money then, and had absolutely no sense of fiscal responsibility. so i took it. i never really noticed much. it wasn’t like i suddenly looked like sammy hagar (which is what i really wanted). the only person who ever commented on it at all was nader. i specifically remember him calling out to me from behind the bar one night at the five, “dude, that shit’s really working!” which made me wonder what the fuck i looked like to him before the propecia? anyway, after a few $90 refills i said, “to hell with this shit. so what if my hair falls out? fuck it.”

well …

the shit’s gotten a lot cheaper. i got a prescription from the lsu student health center. i faxed it to a company in australia. they sent me 90 5mg tablets of generic finasteride for $75. propecia is usually only prescribed in 1 mg pills. so i just got a pill cutter and quartered the little fuckers. suddenly, it goes from one dollar a day to $75 for 360 days. i’ll give it a year …

earlier tonight, i’m sitting at my dining room table, manipulating this shitty blue pill cutter i got at albertson’s, trying to cut these little blue pills into four equal pieces, thinking, “some day i’ll find true love, some day i’ll do wonderful things, some day i’ll have great kids, some day my dog will listen to me, some day i’ll make it to opening day, some day i’ll go on spring break, some day i’ll die” as i scraped tiny little fragments of magic blue hair pills into a recycled pill bottle.