“This wasn’t a tense situation. I was walking in my front door.”
Martin was rapt. “Tell me what happened. Does the dog have a name?”
Of course the fucking dog has a name, Dan thought. “It’s Ralph,” he said slowly.
“Ralph,” Martin repeated, making it sound like a foreign word. “Is Ralph a male? May I refer to Ralph as ‘he’?”
“Sure.”
Dan rubbed his temples. A nice fat glass of Scotch would drown out how much he detested sitting here with this emotionally repressed insect dissecting his every thought and word, as though using the wrong adjective to describe a reaction or labelling a dog by the incorrect gender might be a crime.
Martin pondered his words as Dan explained how he’d yelled at the dog.
“When you think about what Ralph did now, in this moment, how do you feel?”
“I don’t feel anything now. At the time I was pretty pissed off,” Dan said. “I’m sure he does it on purpose.”
Martin made an elaborate note in his book. He looked up. “Of course you realize a dog isn’t conscious of its actions the same way humans are?”
Dan shrugged. “Actually, I’m convinced he does it to annoy me. It’s a big ‘Fuck You’ when he does it at the front door. When it’s an accident, he tries to hide it in the basement.”
The pencil jogged around the page. Martin looked up. “Do you know that for a fact or do you just imagine you know what the dog’s motivations are?”
“He’s a smart dog and he’s been through obedience training. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Can we talk about how Ralph might feel in these circumstances?”
Martin looked over his shoulder as though conferring with the Mondrian. Maybe it talked to him, Dan thought. Maybe it prompted him on what train of thought to follow.
“How would I know what the dog feels? Do dogs even feel?”
Martin tented his fingers again and leaned back. “Try to imagine what it might be like for Ralph. You said he does it to annoy you. Why do you think that is? Was he feeling neglected? Had he been left alone without access to a place to defecate?”
Dan tried to imagine Martin bending and scooping up Ralph’s big turd with a teaspoon, balancing it as he made his way across the office to a wastebasket.
“My son said that even dogs need love.”
“Good!” Martin said decisively. “And do you agree?”
“He’s probably right.”
“So how did Ralph respond when he perceived himself to be neglected? When you didn’t give him the love and attention he wanted?”
“You just said dogs weren’t conscious in the way humans are. How could he ‘perceive’ anything?”
“Unconscious perception can be even stronger than conscious perception. If you believe the dog was ‘acting out,’ then clearly the dog perceives when it’s been neglected. Do you see?”
In Dan’s mind, he saw Martin’s hand tremble and drop the turd. It landed with a soft thud and rolled across the carpet, leaving a faint brown trail. “This is really stupid.”
Martin untented his fingers. “Is it stupid, Daniel — or do you perceive it to be stupid?”
“Either — both — Martin.”
“And why does stupidity, perceived or otherwise, justify your anger?”
Dan felt his face flush. “Because it just does.”
“Was your father a stupid man?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Can we change the subject?”
Martin stared like a man watching something squirm at the end of a hook. “Don’t you think we should explore what made you so angry about the dog’s disobedience?”
“No. Let’s change the subject.”
Martin made a few more scribbles in his book. “Fine,” he said. “I understand that you don’t feel like being challenged on this issue today.”
Dan’s teeth were clenched, but he kept his voice low. “Look, Martin, you don’t have to tell me that you understand or that you don’t understand. I don’t care. I just don’t want to talk about the fucking dog.”
Martin paused then said, “All right. Can you tell me at least why you don’t want to talk about it?”
Dan looked out the window over the rows of roofs. The clouds folding into one another. The oncoming darkness. “No.”
Martin scribbled another note. “Okay. Let’s talk about something else. Have you felt violently angry at any time in the past week?”
Dan turned his gaze to him. “Other than right now?”
Martin eyed him warily. “Yes. Other than right now.”
Seven
Now Auditioning
Dan felt a profound ambivalence for the gay ghetto at Church and Wellesley. On the one hand, it was where he’d first been accepted when he came to Toronto; for that, he felt a loyalty verging on heartfelt gratitude. Then the other hand rose up and, with it, his disillusionment came into focus: it lacked pride. The kind of pride he felt a gay ghetto ought to have, though maybe the primary word here was “ghetto” and not “gay.” He’d been to other gay neighbourhoods; few of those had impressed him either. They struck him as being caught between lacking self-respect and not trying hard enough. We can do better, he thought.
Maybe it was the city encroaching on the ghetto that stopped it from being more remarkable. You couldn’t make people respect invisible boundaries, lines drawn in sand, but Church Street always felt unnecessarily tawdry and sad, with its dilapidated awnings and faded storefronts, like a dyspeptic drunk. As though it would rather be something else, but couldn’t decide what. Nor could Dan. He’d taken his time coming out, not because he was ashamed of being gay but because he couldn’t identify with so many gay men and women. It baffled him why they accepted second-hand treatment at the hands of others. It was as though they derived their identity from the fact that they’d been denied by the rest of the world.
And so with the ghetto. He’d never choose to live there. It wasn’t the urge to band together that bothered him so much as their willingness to accept this small bit of turf as all they could have. He often felt sold out by his own kind. Coming to Church Street only exacerbated the feeling.
He headed south along the east side of the street, past a roving pack of club kids, tattooed, coiffed, and spouting song lyrics. Cocky with their twenty-something-ness. The darkened glass of Byzantium superimposed Dan’s reflection over a pair of diners, an Asian kid and a white kid sharing a jocular moment with their waiter. The Asian boy speared Dan’s stomach with a fondue prong and leaned in for a bite. Further along, the windows at This Ain’t The Rosedale Library shouted with book titles and magazines he’d never heard of because being hip took too much energy. If he needed to know anything current, Donny or Ked usually filled him in.
The Black Eagle wasn’t known for being a hustler haven. It was primarily a leather bar, a netherworld of S&M accoutrements catering to a clientele that identified with a vaguely threatening, power-oriented sexuality. Skinhead and biker looks were popular. Dan’s ruggedness fit right in. He’d once gone home with a man he’d met on the upstairs patio, only to discover his apartment decorated with Nazi paraphernalia. He hadn’t stayed long enough to find out if it was a joke.
The out-of-work bodybuilder planted outside the front entrance threw Dan a smile. Steroids had given him pectorals a drag queen would envy, while anti-virals had finished off