Penultimate Peanut Magazine

            My mother doesn’t understand my writing. She says that there’s an uneven distribution between contemporary chick lit, throbbing members and the like, and the real deal shit I should be writing. Another story about an ex-boyfriend? Heartbreak? Whoop de doo. Get in line.

            “Come on, iha, what you should be writing about is Loki.”

Loki was our dog. Not Thor. Not Hel because Loki was a Good Boy. Loki because he was a trickster, the best darn chocolate lab this side of Center Boulevard. Even if he ate our vacuums from time to time.

            Our dog was the renegade son my parents never had. If he walked on two legs, he would be a black haired Adonis, giving me major Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker carnal tension. Although I could imagine his alternate ego, I only had the real Loki before me to play with. Loki with the sweet face and bottomless belly for bacon strips.

            When he wasn’t stuck in our childhood home in suburban land, I’d steal him away for a week or two to stay with me in the city. We’d stroll around Little Odessa by Brighton Beach. He barked at the little, old ladies in their wraparound scarves, all hunched over from the weight of a difficult life, and I’d tell him to stop barking, to be polite, but I didn’t mind all that much if he barked, and the little, old ladies didn’t seem to care all that much, either.

           We rented cars together. Careless about the extra cleanup fee and his incessant shedding. I’d wear plaid sweaters and strap a plaid vest onto Loki. On a cloudy day, I’d put sunglasses on him when we went apple picking, as if it would disguise that there was a hairy dog ambling along the tree-lined paths.

            Loki sauntered about former spa towns. He gave life to upstate sleepy villages, his woofs echoing in cobblestoned alleys. I pointed at the consignment shops on Main Street and looked through the glass, asked him,

            “Hey Loki, what do you think of that black and white motivational poster? It says ‘enjoy the little things.’”

            To which he would respond, “Bauuuuuu?”

            My parents were amused that I enjoyed taking Loki on these adventures. We had Loki since I was in middle school. Back then he’d be the background plaything in sleepovers with my best friend, Clara Jones with the brown pigtails. He was my guardian trickster in the backyard against foes, namely that Kandice Kitchen, 4th grade floozy.

            She hated me ever since she found out that Dennis Merton kissed me before he ever kissed her in the 3rd grade. He did it on a dare from his group of rambunctious, diminutive friends. Dennis rambled up to me in the cafeteria as I was reading Because of Winn-Dixie by my lonesome and he gave me a peck on the cheek. I just looked at him, unmoved, and continued rifling through the library hardcover copy of Because of Winn-Dixie by my lonesome.

            Clara couldn’t believe how unaffected I seemed by Dennis Merton’s surprise kiss. I didn’t feel like it was a big deal at the time. She was worried about my cold silence over the smooch. She told her mom who told my mom.

            Mom didn’t tell Dad, fearful that he would find out where that Dennis Merton lived on Lilac Lane and sock it to him. I didn’t have an older brother to protect me. I just had myself and Loki. Even if Loki ate our vacuums from time to time, he would never actually bite a human out of spite. He was a Good Boy.

           Mom didn’t even want Loki at first. She hated dogs for two reasons. The first was that she was bitten by a wiener dog when she was a child. The other was because of that shaggy dog story I used to tell when I was a kid.

           I went around telling that story to anyone who would listen. Classmates and next door neighbors. Friends like my best friend, Clara Jones with the brown pigtails, and foes, namely that Kandice Kitchen, 4th grade smoochin’ merry-go-round. The boys called her cruel and inappropriate words which, for the sake of your sensitive constitution, I’d rather not repeat.

           In the shaggy dog story, there is an unreasonably shaggy dog. Said dog enters the equally unreasonable shaggy dog contest. There is one contest in The Town where the Shaggy Dog is crowned the Champion.

           Then there is the county contest followed by the state contest. He goes from state to state, all along the eastern seaboard. He wins each and every one of them. The irritating factor of the story which caused Clara to stop talking to me for a week and drove my mother further into her animosity of dogs is the story’s unrelenting repetitiveness.

           At every contest, and the narrator must ensure that they repeat the same format, there are three judges. The first judge says,

           “Hm, that is a shaggy dog.”

           The second judge says, “Hm, that is a shaggy dog.”

           The third judge says, “Hm, that is a shaggy dog.”

           The three judges at all of the contests come to the same conclusion of award winning shagginess—until the last contest. At the Ultimate Shaggy Dog Competition of Planet Earth, there are three judges. The first judge says,

           “Hm, that is a shaggy dog.”

           The second judge says, “Hm, that is a shaggy dog.”

           The third judge says, “Hm, you know, he’s really not all that shaggy.”

           So the shaggy dog loses the last contest. Story over. At this point, the narrator must remain poised. Take a long sip of water from a tall glass if you must. Composure is key.

           Kandice Kitchen was pleasantly patient from beginning to end. I thought she was going to walk away after the shaggy dog made it to the next continent’s contests, but she saw it through to the finish.

           “God, Sylvia,” she smacked her Chiclet, “I may be the class floozy, but you’re the class moron.”

           I’m still not sure why a 4th grader knew the word “floozy”, but I’m guessing it was her mother. Just like my mother tells me,“ano ba yan?!” and I’m like, “OKAY, MOM.”

           She didn’t care if I was in the 4th grade or if I was already a grown and working woman with student loans looming over my head. For years, I eagerly slurped up dinuguan with rice. The insalubrious Filipino dish with a one-way ticket to hypertension, full of nothing but pork offal and pig’s blood disguised as thick gravy.

           I became a pescatarian after Loki died. I didn’t even want to make a lifestyle change at first. I did it for two reasons. The first was that my gynecologist threatened to stop prescribing me pills if I didn’t get my systolic blood pressure below 140. The other was because of that bird carcass I stepped in.

           I was walking across Vernon Boulevard, wearing a fantastic pair of Dorateymur boots, by the way, and fwoop! I nearly busted my ass on pigeon cadaver. Sticky bile rose in my mouth.

           The bird was no longer a bird. It was a miniature Loki, all shriveled and dismembered. When I sat down for dinner, the plate of leftover pork chops and garlic fried rice before me, I couldn’t touch the chops anymore. I just picked at the rice.

            Now I couldn’t go full-on vegetarian. A girl needed some kind of meat. Fish was the frontrunner. Scaly and slithering critters, mildly fleshy, that I could handle.

            I guess the worst part would be that I wasn’t there when Loki passed. I was watching Black Mirror in my apartment, a fantastic high rise overlooking the East River, by the way, and crrrrng! Mom called me,

            “Loki died in my arms this morning at 8:52 AM.”

            My dad, a lover of all walks of life and avid furry friend collector—interpret that as you wish—had cared for nearly a dozen dogs in his lifetime. He was accustomed to the loss. This was my mother’s first dog, the only furry friend she swore she’d ever love.

            For days after his death, she would text me three times a day. It’d be the same picture. A puke stain on our shaggy carpet, courtesy of Loki, the last vomit before his passing.

            The first time she sent a text, she had asked me in the morning,

            “Doesn’t the stain look like Loki?”

            The stain just looked like a bleached mess in our shaggy carpet, so I told her,

            “Hm, that is a bleached mess.”

            She texted me again at noon, “Come on, look harder. That part is the snout. You can see his ears.”

            “Hm, going to have to call this one a bleached mess. Sorry, Mom.”

            On a Friday night, I was drinking a gin and tonic at a standing bar on Vernon Boulevard. The lifeless fowl’s remains were gradually peeling off the asphalt. I poked at the free bread from the bartender. Mom texted me again and I told her,

            “Hm, you know, it kind of looks like Loki in the carpet.”