Category Archives: New York Stories

Whose Dog Life Is It Anyway?

death and dying, New York Stories, Politics and Culture

Following my mother’s stroke, she sometimes knew she was in a hospital in Albany.  Other times she thought she was in a library in Queens.  However, when asked by the Bollywood-handsome resident whether or not she wanted the feeding tube, she replied quite coherently, “Not if it’s not going to make me better.”

She had a DNR, and her wishes were clear. Medication that might prevent more clotting in her brain would probably cause her heart to go, and the meds for her heart would have brought more clots to her brain (as would doing nothing).  But even putting in the tube and waiting for nature to take its course, would have been prolonging her agony.  As my sister said, “If she can’t eat ice-cream, what’s the point?”

With dogs it’s different.

Meet Maizie, a Jack Russell-mix-rescue.  My better half took her in in 1999 when she was probably somewhere between two and four years old.  Do the math.  He was going to give her to a friend as a companion for her other dog, but when the two dogs met, Maizie attacked, and the friend got a nasty-Maizie bite while trying to break it up.  After that, my future husband knew he had something “special” on his hands.  When we began dating, and I brought up his possibly moving in, I had the feeling he was waiting for Maizie to die first, but oddly enough, she liked me, and there wasn’t a problem until that unfortunate incident in the elevator about which we never speak.

Maizie never had a 100% accident-in-the house-free record, but I was able to “un-paper train” her.  She got the idea that the apartment was not for peeing and was pretty good about it.  Then in July,  that changed. Suddenly, there were puddles of clear looking pee all over the apartment. She was waking up unconcerned in her own urine, and drinking water by the bucketful.

So off to the vet, who had long suspected Cushings, quite common in older dogs and treatable. We were warned about the expense involved. Medication requires expensive monitoring and over-medication could cause the dog to slip into Addison’s disease and die.  If the cortisol levels don’t go down enough, however, the symptoms will persist.  So there’s a protocol that you have to commit to.

Some people choose not to treat older dogs, not only because of the monitoring, but because lowering the cortisol may bring out other conditions like arthritis which high cortisol actually alleviates.

We discussed our options, including putting her down.  How long did she really have?  The end was inevitable.  Why wait till she was suffering?  Why put her through all the vet visits?  But were we being selfish?  Reacting only to the cost of treatment and not really thinking about her best interest?  We couldn’t live with the pee.  Or could we?  My husband probably could.  He was at work all day, while I mostly work from home.  Why do I hate her?  It’s not like I’m a neat freak.  Why draw the line at dog pee?  Was he thinking I was being mean, wanting to kill his dog?  She was his dog, before she was ours. Had I ever even liked Maizie?  Hadn’t I just married him for the health insurance to begin with?  Did we really even know each other? Could this marriage be saved?

Besides us, what about her? What the hell is the best interest of an animal?  Does a dog contemplate her mortality?   Would she be terrified of being put down because she knows what it is? Or would she be terrified because she’d read our anxiety and guilt, and because she knows that no good ever came from a vet visit?

We chose to treat.   We didn’t really want to take that anniversary trip to Italy anyway.  About three weeks in, her symptoms had mostly abated, but then she crashed. She could hardly move, wasn’t eating, had no sparkle in her eyes. We were ready to put her down, but the vet convinced us this was nothing more than a bump in the road, a medication management issue.  With a little “pred” and  a lower dose of the Cushings drug, she could go on for years.

Why was I suddenly remembering the last year of my 1973 Dodge Dart, and why was the vet suddenly reminding me of my old mechanic?

The clincher was Maizie herself.  She  rallied as soon as we got to the vets, a situation that probably caused her diminished cortisol to rise, and she really did seem to be saying, “Please don’t kill me.”

The second time she crashed, she was on the lower dose.  She stopped eating.  We couldn’t even give her the prednisone. By the time we brought her in, she needed  IV fluids and critical care.  Her electrolytes were messed up.  After her first night, the vet asked us to visit to see if we could coax her to eat.  We both left work, but we couldn’t get the normally voracious Maizie to try more than a few bites.  She still had to stay over till the next evening, but finally her appetite returned and her electrolytes were good.

A few thousand dollars since her diagnosis and she’s home, tapering off the pred.  They don’t want to withdraw it too quickly, lest she go into shock.   She’s back to peeing clear streams and drinking constantly.  Today, there was a minor victory when she finally figured out what the wee-wee pads were for. but it was probably just coincidence as she ignored them later.

Where do we go from here?  Possibly she’ll be ok once we taper her, at least for while.  The meds may have had the effect of screwing enough with the endocrine system to lower her cortisol for a while. However, given how rapidly her thirst and appetite have returned, we suspect that even without the pred she’ll continue to urinate in the house. I’m not talking about the occasional age-related accident by the way.  I’m talking about walking her every two hours and still seeing about eight indoor accidents a day.  I’m talking about the feeling of dread I now experience whenever I hear her lap up water. I’m talking about comically slipping on wet floors when we get up in the middle of the night.  I’m talking about … an unsustainable situation.

Excuse me, but there she goes again.

The vet says if the symptoms remain once she’s off the pred, we could try an even smaller dose of the meds.  The real experts, other dog owners who I’ve met on the forums, report that with this particular pill there’s no rhyme or reason. Sometimes big dogs do well on very little and tiny ones need a lot, and a more experienced vet might have started her on a really low dose, and worked up, which could have saved us thousands and not brought her to the brink of oblivion.  I’m terrified of seeing her crash again, but beyond that, we’re going broke.  The test they “need” before they can restart her will run upwards of $400 dollars. Then it’ll be around $100  for the new meds at the lower dose.  After that, in  another two weeks they’ll need  to recheck her levels.  The meds we have in the house are useless because they are capsules and not easy or safe to split.  We can’t even try going rogue and splitting them because without a very expensive scale that measures milligrams we can’t measure the dose, and even if we could we’d need another refill if it worked.

My husband suggested, “You work in Washington Heights, surely you know someone with a pharmacy scale and a soft-spot for dogs.”  He is considering bluntness telling the vet,  “We don’t need more tests. Just give us the script or the dog dies.”

In the end, she dies anyway.

Hindsight is perfect.  Surely, if we knew all this, we would have put her down weeks ago, maybe.

Update:  Just adding a quick link to this video about our relationship with our animal companions via  the late, great George Carlin.  “Same shit, different species.”

Better Than Sex — What Weiner Really Got Out of It

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times, , , , ,

Many people are mystified that a smart man like Anthony Weiner, who did his job well, and seemed to have everything, could blow it so spectacularly.  But what he did had nothing to do with intelligence, or even with lust in its usual form. (One-handed surfing could have satisfied that need easily.)

The New York Times reports that Weiner knew he was being followed on Twitter by right-wingers suspicious of his activities and eager to catch him in the act.  There’s evidence that the Congressman was playing a game of cat and mouse with them, and in an interview he had three weeks ago, Weiner spoke about the risks of social media.   Even after numerous political “sex” scandals, including the recent resignation of Congressman Christopher Lee, who was also caught sending a shirtless photo, Weiner did not curtail his activities.

People who think that this was “about” sex, another example of monogamy’s being outmoded, have it wrong.

Bill Clinton’s getting a blowjob in the White House was about sex.  The most powerful man in the world was at heart an awkward adolescent who still could not believe that some pretty (albeit zaftig) young woman really, really, wanted him, and he was going to get some!  Right there in the Oval Office!  Like something JFK would have done!  He hadn’t asked for it.  He knew it was wrong, but when confronted with this gift, despite the risks, he couldn’t say no.

In Weiner’s case, there was no oral sex.  He’s a newlywed who was likely still getting laid at home, by a beautiful woman.  According to one of his virtual companions, there was some “sex chat” on the telephone.  Hardly close to the real thing.

Sex like drugs is a rush.  But where was the sex in this scandal?  And if not sex, what was he doing it for?  He’s not excusing his behavior by claiming to have been drunk or high.  He seems as bewildered as anyone.

The answer to the question “why” is simple. Danger was the drug of choice.  Weiner wasn’t pursuing women online in order to get off despite the risk. He was getting off because of the risk.  Risking it was the rush.  Gambling is a recognized addiction.   It might have started off with just joking around and flirting, but at some point knowing “they” were watching, waiting for him to slip up, made the stakes higher, and the game a whole lot more interesting.  You could lose everything with one click, but he kept on winning.

As he became even more known for his passionate political style and biting sound bites, there was more to lose and it was irresistible.   Marriage and the very real possibility of achieving his goal of becoming the Mayor of New York City, added to the thrill of possibly destroying it all every single time his thumbs got itchy and he’d grab his phone.

But he was playing too well.  His opponents couldn’t catch him.  He was too smart for an army of them.  And that must have felt like cheating death itself.

This was even better than sex with a goddess who happened to be the love of his life.   Here he was risking even that, risking his very existence, yet surviving and triumphing, again, and again and again.

Finally, like any gambler losing his streak, like any junkie who winds up on a slab, he screwed up.   It didn’t take one of his “conquests” setting him up.  His own thumb betrayed him as he publicly tweated the infamous underwear shot. Was it on purpose?  Maybe, in the same sense that someone hovering by a cliff long enough, will eventually slip.  Why they were hovering in the first place is the question.

And then he tried one last bluff — telling the press, he was hacked.  But it was over.  His heart wasn’t in it.   He knew he was done.  No finger wagging with a definitive, “I did not have sexts with that woman.”  Just a bewildered man, who knew enough not to ask his wife to accompany him when he stepped out to meet the press.

Some people worry about his mental state.  They’re right to do so.  Donald Manes was once upon the time Queens Borough President. He was accused of corruption and killed himself while under indictment.  Manes may have been bi-polar.  Bi-polar people are most at risk of suicide after a manic episode when they come back down to earth and see the consequences of their actions.  Weiner isn’t bi-polar.  He’s never been accused of the type of graft that Manes was indicted for. But like Manes, he is now, as a result of his actions facing a different future than the one he was looking at yesterday.  Weiner is a successful man, and successful people often aren’t very skilled at failure.  It hits them hard.

This isn’t about whether or not he should step down.  I leave that to the chattering classes and people at the water-cooler or the dinner table.  I would suggest that those who are his friends, however betrayed and angry they might feel, show him a little compassion, and those of us watching on the sidelines still snickering, we might find better uses for our time.

Bookstores are Dying: Does It Matter?

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, writing/blogging/publishing related,

Yes, bookstores are disappearing.  But I am shocked to find myself asking, “Does it matter?”

You had to feel just a touch of schadenfreude when the Barnes &Noble branches started to close.  Barnes & Noble in my youth was a store on lower Fifth Avenue.  It billed itself even then as the world’s largest bookstore.  Back before the days of superstores, it was so big that it was divided into a conventional bookstore on one side of the street, and a used book/textbook center on the other.   Then they went national and became the very model of a modern corporate-small-store-eating chain, the basis with Borders for Fox Books the shop that ate Meg Ryan’s Shop Around the Corner in the romanticized Upper West Side of You’ve Got Mail.

As the independents disappeared, Barnes & Noble, at least in New York, became a place that tried to promote authors and work with the locals. Readings and signings happened often.  The Barnes & Noble on 67th and Broadway was not only near Lincoln Center, but a couple of movie theaters as well, including my favorite, the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, known for showing off-beat independents and foreign films.  Barnes & Noble was a great place to go after you got your tickets and still had half an hour or so to kill.  But it is no more.

Last Sunday, I went to the movies.  This in itself is an increasingly rare occurance in the age of Netflix and instant downloads. Why would anyone leave their home and sit on chairs that might be bedbug infested next to strangers who probably have the flu and forgot to turn off their cellphones?

I made the mistake of not getting tickets online for the extra $2, The film was sold out so I had an hour and half before the next showing. With no Barnes & Noble available, I walked five blocks over to the Time Warner Center, the most mall-like structure in the City, only to find that while the Border’s was still there, it shut its doors at nine pm on Sunday nights.  That might work in Santa Fe — but in the Big Apple it just seemed weird, but then again so is the whole mall-in-Manhattan-thing and most New Yorkers probably don’t even know there is a bookstore on the second floor at Time Warner.  The Time Warner Mall, by the way, is best known for the statue of a very fat man with a small penis.  Japanese tourists in particular seem to find this hysterically funny and are constantly posing for pictures in front of it.

Yesterday, I ventured out of my neighborhood again, and found myself in the East Village with a little time to kill, so I stopped into the St. Mark’s Bookshop which hasn’t actually been on St. Mark’s Place in years, since the rents drove it out.  There on the display shelf in front was Meowmorphosis (I refuse to provide a link; you’ll have to find this one for yourself). This is a book whose conceit is that  Gregor Samsa awakes one day to find he’s been transformed into an adorable kitten.  This was a “collaboration” between a long-dead Kafka (Zombie-Kafka?)  and a pseudonymous fantasy writer working under the umbrella of the same clever lads who brought us the Jane Austen Zombie books.  Kafka, who of course, wanted all his manuscript burned,  seemed to intuit the holocaust.  I wonder if he saw this coming as well.

Given that this non-chainstore in what was not that long ago the city’s pre-eminent hipster stronghold is now reduced to selling cutsey over edgy, is there really any hope for bookstores at all or even a reason for their continued existence?

Just to clarify, I love books.  I don’t want to read all my books in tablet form.  I realize that booksellers are up against it.  Even the new and well-managed, Book Culture uptown where I live has taken to selling things that aren’t books — soaps, refrigerator magnets, fair-trade handicrafts like woven African baskets and scarves.  And if it keeps the place open, I’m not against it, but this doesn’t bode well.

Perhaps its personal bitterness showing through.  After setting up my own micro-press to print my opus, I found that most local bookstores weren’t willing to shelve it, even if purchased through Ingrams, or at deeper discount (with returns) through me or even given to them on consignment.  It didn’t move them if I offered to pack the place with friends for a reading.    They too are believers in the publishing system that is destroying them, and don’t want anything that bears the taint of self-publishing which they still mistake for vanity press.  So despite being a reader, and consumer of books, I feel as a writer, betrayed by the shopkeepers who don’t wish to be bothered by me and treat me like a pariah.  It’s like defending the homeless person who curses you out when you don’t place money in his cup.

I am for lack of alternatives, a Kindle writer.  My novel is available online worldwide in paperback and every e-book form.  My sales are modest and my name is mentioned on blogs that few have heard of, but at least I’m not paying tens of thousands each month for retail space used mostly by people in need of a public bathroom or with a few minutes to kill before their table is ready.   I don’t think I’ll be happy or sad when the last bookstore is gone.  It’ll  be more like hearing about a now dissolute old crush who wasn’t that into me to begin with and has now gained weight and is facing legal problems.

To Serve Writers

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, writing/blogging/publishing related, , , , ,

I was over snooping around some aspiring writers’ site and it hit me.  People pay big bucks to get opinions on their work.  Back in my Authonomy days, I heard of writers spending hundreds of dollars for “critiques” by professional editing services.  One author published her critique, which basically advised her to dumb it down and sex it up.

Meantime, other writers at that site (owned an operated by Harper Collins UK, a Rupert Murdoch joint), spend an incredible amount of time trying to make it to the “Editor’s Desk” to get some junior editor’s review.  They don’t have to pay anything to get those reviews, but it means clawing your way to the top of a virtual slush pile by reading and often praising other people’s work.  If you calculate labor, it would be cheaper to just pay a freelance editor — though getting the opinion of an “authentic” but anonymous industry “insider” has a definite appeal.  Often what the editor has to say is not so different from what the more honest readers have been pointing out all along.  In some cases, it’s just plan wrong.  (HC panned and turned down at least one romance/mystery that’s been a bestseller in UK’s Kindle store for months and garnered much critical praise.)

Other aspirants pay hundreds for reviews by Kirkus Indies (formerly, Kirkus Discovery).  For $425, or $575 if you want shorter than a 7-9 week turnaround, someone whose name and qualifications you’ll never know will write an “official” review of your tome.  This isn’t exactly like hiring Michoko Kakutani to do the job.  But then again, why would you want to?  The idea behind Kirkus is that if it’s a good review. you can use it as part of your publicity if you self-publish.  People might mistake it for a “genuine” Kirkus review which will boost your sales because they have so much integrity.  They are now apparently working with Amazon’s Create Space to sell this awesome service.  If  the review stinks, you don’t have to publish it, and could theoretically use the critique to make changes or just take up origami or something.

Of course there are other options — creative writing workshops abound and are even available online if you live out in the boonies.  Most community colleges offer classes at reasonable rates.  Things being what they are, these classes may be taught by  “real” published authors.  This would be the best way to go if you’ve never taken a class or haven’t written in a long time, though not all published writers are decent teachers, and your classmates may or may not offer useful feedback.

Some people wind up throwing money away, falling for some slick ad, and going to an “editor” with nefarious credentials.  This might cost thousands.  And despite the “self-publishing revolution”, there are still all sorts making money off the desperate through “author services,” and “subsidized publishing.  Fake agents lurk all over the Internet and publishers who promise that you’ll “never” pay a dime will still somehow extract a few thousand before they’re done.  Best to check out all offers first!

So here’s my pitch.  I have one of those useless MFA’s degrees.  I was “real” published long ago, once.  I’ve taught writing.  I even  had a story edited for publication by an infamous and controversial professional editor.  (His method was basically to  cut the vital organs out of any story that came his way.)  I’m now a member of a collective of “independently published” rogue writers; some of whom are extremely talented (though I make no claims for myself).

I could use some money and I’ll undercut Kirkus and other services.  So how’s this:  I have no publishing connections and don’t work in the industry.  I can’t get my own work agented.   I can critique your work and give you an honest opinion on  plot, pacing, dialogue, writing mechanics and all that jazz.  You couldn’t pay me enough to actually proofread or edit it, but I can offer some tips and tell you whether or not you’re anywhere near ready to even go to an editor.  I can also tell you whether or not I found it compelling.  Believe it or not, the MOST likely reason an agent is going to reject your work, is simply because he or she found it boring.

I won’t promise you that if you do everything I say, you’ll get a contract.  The sad news is, you probably won’t get your novel published (by someone who isn’t you) unless you know someone or made sure to include vampires, zombies or  some kind of Jane Austen parody involving paranormal romance, or unless you’re a celebrity.  If you’re a celebrity, I’ll tell you the truth, which is more than you’re getting from your sycophantic assistant, but I’ll charge you double because you’re worth it, and you wouldn’t believe me if you thought I was cut-rate.

I can tell you if what you wrote is amazing, ordinary or embarrassing.  I could be wrong.  Most likely I am.   It’s entirely possible that you are a genius, and I just didn’t understand your work.  But then again, who am I anyway?  If I don’t like what I tell you,  you can always tell people that I’m a fraud and an idiot.

So let’s say $200 for a five-page crit of up to 300 double-spaced manuscript pages, and  $50 for each additional 100 pages (pro-rated).  Payable through Paypal with a 2-week turnaround.  (Add 20%  for rush jobs.)  Just respond with a comment if you’re interested.  I’ll be waiting to take your money.