Chapter 7: The Tao of Bob Ross

Bubble.

Bubble.

I am a happy little bubble drifting through happy shades of sunshine. A happy little bubble drifting on the breeze. A nice, cool breeze that blows me up into the sky. Into the clear blue sky and then back, slowly, lazily I drift to the ground. And pop. With a sigh.

This is my Tao of Bob Ross.

Dr. Marcy says I need to try relaxation techniques. She told me to breathe slowly.

Inhale, count to five.

Exhale, count to five.

She said I need to imagine the muscles in my shoulders melting into waterfalls. Imagine my feet filled with blinking white Christmas lights. She said I need to close my eyes and imagine warm blue skies. Hot yellow sun. I need to imagine I am a bubble drifting through summer clouds.

Dr. Marcy says I need to take up hobbies. That they will make me feel more fulfilled. She suggested painting.

I have never had any artistic talent. I can’t draw. I can’t even color between the lines very well. When I was little, my mother used to tell people things like, “He can’t draw a straight line with a ruler.”

Of course, my mother insisted that I didn’t have a talent for anything. Sports, math, singing, dancing — she’d tell everyone she knew that I couldn’t do it. I think just so she'd have something to talk about. "Kid can't kick a soccer ball to save his life," she'd tell the ladies at church even though I actually wasn't bad at soccer. But when it came to being artistic, she was right. I never did well in art class … the best thing I ever made was a bust of Edgar Allan Poe that I sculpted out of clay my sophomore year in high school.

My teacher said it was pretty good. I was really glad when it survived the kiln, considering that everyone else’s pots and bowls and statues exploded. Edgar made it through okay. There was one crack down the middle of his forehead, but I put paint over it so you can’t really see it.

The bust won an honorable mention at the city art contest. I still have it sitting on a shelf above my bedroom door.

Since Dr. Marcy said I should take up painting, I went down to Artist Depot and bought a bunch of canvases. I bought the Bob Ross Joy of Painting Master Paint Set, which comes with eight colors plus brushes, a palate knife and a FREE "Getting Started" one-hour DVD. Everything I need to start painting like Bob Ross, it said.

I’d never watched an episode of Bob Ross before. I wasn’t allowed to watch PBS when I was a kid. Parents thought it was too liberal. No Sesame Street. No Reading Rainbow.

No Bob Ross.

So in addition to the Bob Ross Joy of Painting Master Paint Set, I bought the Bob Ross 10-DVD Set. When I got home I popped in a DVD and then I spent the next four hours watching Bob Ross paint happy little trees and happy little clouds.

He’d flick his brush around, making trees, making clouds, talking in this low, cool voice.

“What a pussy,” Humper kept saying.

“Shut up,” I’d say back.

In Bob Ross, I’d found my new prophet.

Chapter 8: Marilyn Monroe's Tits

I’m dressed up like zombie Michael Jackson. The shiny red jumpsuit getup and everything. Tabitha is dressed up like Elvira, even though she doesn’t have the tits or hips for Elvira.

We’re over at Eli’s apartment, drinking before we go to out to the bars, and I think I might already be drunk. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell, but I keep bumping my knees on the coffee table when I get up to grab another beer and I just managed to spill Keystone Light all over Marilyn Monroe’s tits. I think those are pretty good signs that I’m drunk.

“You need any help, baby?” I ask Tabitha. She’s helping wipe beer off Marilyn’s tits. They are nice big tits, and I’m jealous.

Tabitha just rolls her eyes at me and keeps wiping.

“There there,” she says to Marilyn, whose white dress now has a piss-yellow spill down the front. “I’m sure it’ll wash out. Why don’t you go back in the bedroom and take it off, and I’ll throw it in the washer.”

“Okay,” Marilyn says, and she goes ahead and pulls the dress off right there in the kitchen.

X

There are three zombies standing with me in the kitchen, but I’m the only zombie Michael Jackson, so that makes me happy.

One of the zombies, who has a screwdriver in his neck, says, “Where’s your white glove, man?”

“It’s in my pocket. I took it off because it was hot.”

“You should wear the white glove,” says a second zombie, who has an exposed eye socket.

“Michael Jackson doesn’t wear a white glove in the zombie scene of Thriller,” I say.

“You don’t really look like Michael Jackson without the glove,” the first zombie says. “You just look like a dork with a Jheri curl.”

I burp beer and pretend I didn’t hear him.

Fucking zombies.

Chapter 9: Watching Salt and Pepper Get It On

My knees are twitching. My hands are crawling into my sleeves, and now I’m pretty sure I am drunk. My brain is lurching around inside my skull and I can taste foam in my nose. The words to Thriller are looping through my head.

‘Cause this is thriller

thriller night

and no one’s gonna save you

from the beast about to strike!

The kitchen is a tiny apartment kitchen, with just enough room for the sink and the fridge, but there are like fifteen people crammed into it.

Tabitha is leaning against the counter across from me. She is also leaning against Marilyn. Marilyn has put her dress back on, but she pulled the top back down to let Tabitha feel her tits.

“See, they feel completely real,” Marilyn is saying. “You’d never even know if it weren’t for the scars.”

I know I should find this hot, watching my girlfriend rubbing another girl’s fake tits, but I don't. I can't, mostly because everyone in the kitchen is watching her rub the fake tits. The zombies are watching. So is Dracula. Even slutty Little Bo Peep is watching. They're slouching over their beers, not talking, not blinking, letting the scene fill their eyes up.

Michael screeches in my head.

You close your eyes

and hope that this is just imagination.

I close my eyes and the room spins.

I open my eyes; everything’s worse: Elvira fondling Marylyn. Zombies and vampires crowding in. Hot needles threading my stomach. Foamy boogers.

I fall two steps across the kitchen, brace myself for landing. Slam into Tabitha’s shoulder. Nuzzle my nose into her neck.  “Hey baby, who’s your new friend?”

“Fred …”

“You two look nice together. You’re wearing black; she’s wearing white. It’s like watching salt and pepper get it on.”

I kiss and nibble below her ear.

“Fred.”

She wrenches her head away from my teeth.

“Yeah baby?”

“Fred, stop,” she says.

“Why?”

“You’re making me uncomfortable.”

“But I’m your boyfriend.”

“No. You’re not.”

“Since when?”

“Since now. Fred, I hate to break it to you like this … but I think I might be a lesbian.”

Chapter 10: Let's Talk Derby

 "Let’s talk about how Derby died,” Dr. Marcy says.

Oh shit. I haven’t thought up that part, yet – a story about how Derby died – and I’m not sure I have it in me to kill the poor thing.

I love that dog.

Chapter 11: Killing Derby

So how should I go about killing Derby?

I don’t really want to kill him, but I guess by now I’m committed to it.

I’m sitting in my apartment and the sofa’s too bright and the Edvard Munch print on my wall is all blurry because I’m crying. What kind of cruel world is it that forces me to kill my own dog?

I’m sitting on the sofa, and the rabbits are filling my head with their cruel, bright laughter.

Haha, they say.

Do it, Fred. Do it. Kick her head in.

Derby’s a him.

Kick HIS head in, then.

I hate these fucking bunnies. It’s their fault I even have to do this — kill Derby. They’re making me do it, making me murder my favorite pet just to cover their asses. Which is crazy; I’m killing the dog I made up to protect the anonymity of the rabbits living in my head. Tell me that ain’t fucked up.

What’s even more fucked up? I always wanted a dog; I never wanted the rabbits.

Tell me that ain’t irony.

Chapter 12: And that's how Derby Died

I pick up a pen. Crack open a Miller Highlife.  I take a sip, take a swig, then I tip the can up and pour the rest of its contents down my throat. My head fills up with bubbles. Happy, piss-yellow bubbles that fizz through my numb little brain, interceding on behalf of my thoughts.

Thus freed, I begin to write:

One day, I saw Derby pissing on the wall. He was always pissing on the walls. On everything. We’d gotten him neutered and still he pissed on the walls. We spanked him, and still he pissed on the walls. We took him to obedience school. He pissed on the walls.

At least once a day, he’d sniff out a spot, hike up his leg, and let the piss flow. Marking territory or something – some bad habit he picked up during his time on the lam, I suppose. His time in the wild. In the dump.

Anyway, this went on for months. And I’d have to clean it up. Every time.

My mother, she’d see the wet spot on the wall, smell that urine stench wafting off the carpet, and yell. “Freddy, that damned dog did it again.”

So I’d pull out the bucket. The sponge. The rubber gloves. Get to work.

It got so I hated the feel of warm water.

I sent him to obedience school. Twice, actually. Paying with my own money. Birthday money, Christmas money, I’d blow it trying to teach him to just pee outside.

After the second trip to obedience school, he went a week without letting go. Then, one day, I came home from school and there he was in my bedroom with his leg lifted and his ears tucked back, whimpering and shivering above that yellow arc, rolling his eyes back at me because he knew what was coming.

It looked so pathetic, I should have felt sorry for him. But I didn’t. Instead, I started getting angry. All those hours of scrubbing walls, scrubbing carpet ... smelling piss-yellow fumes and dipping my gloved hands into warm bubbles that smelled like piss and Ivory and something infinitely worse ... all the video games and movies and Zingers I could have bought with the checks from Grandma and Aunt Gwen ... all of those things tumbled into a pile in my head and flash-fried my brain. Everything went red, and my foot shot out as Derby was trying to slink away.

I felt my foot connect with the slats of his ribs. He yelped, and somehow, the yelping sounded good. Sounded satisfying. That soft mass of fur and bones and heartbeat felt so good squished around my toes that I shot my foot out again. I kicked him again. I don’t know how many times. I don’t remember. It was a lot of times.

The next thing I knew, I was kneeling in the bathroom, dunking his head in the toilet. Derby was whimpering and cycling his paws on the tile, trying to break free.

I had a bite mark on the back of my hand. A bleeding sponge mass of indented flesh where he’d sunk his teeth in and wouldn’t let go.

That was the only fight he put up.

Poor thing.

I was saying something like:

This is where you pee!

This is where you pee!

This is where you pee!

You stupid thing.

At some point I noticed that he wasn’t struggling anymore. Wasn’t whimpering or cycling his paws. I let him go and he thunked to the tiles. My dog. My poor, sweet Derby. Staring at the bathtub with glazed-donut eyes.

And suddenly all the rage washed out of me. My chest was cold and panic galloped up my spine as I crabwalked away from him. Going: No, Derby, no, Derby, no, no, no, no.

I hid him behind the tool shed and snuck out that night to bury his body in a vacant lot down the street. We used to build forts in that vacant lot when I was little. I never played there again.

And that’s how Derby died.

Chapter 13: Derby Dies — The Redacted Version

Wait ... what was I thinking? I could never show that to Dr. Marcy. What would she think of me? 

Killing my dog? She’ll think I’m a psycho. That I have some serious issues.

I don’t want her to think I'm a psycho. I don't want her to think I have some serious issues. She’d have me institutionalized or something. Put me on tranquilizers. I’d end up like that Big Chief guy in One Flew Over theCuckoo’s Nest.

No, I need something else. Something more reasonable. Something more sane. I scribble out the entire passage. Crumple the paper up. Toss it at the trashcan.

Instead, I write:

One night it was cold and snowing. Derby didn’t get in bed with me like he usually did. I got out of bed and looked all through the house, but I couldn’t find him. I called his name.

Derby!

Derby!

Here boy! 

He didn’t come.

The next morning, Dad decided that Derby must have gotten out. He must have run away.

I never saw him again.