The other day I was in my friendly neighborhood acupuncture office. Which is—correct me if I've got this wrong-- technically, a health care office. There were four dogs in the waiting room.
These dogs were not therapy dogs. They weren't service dogs. All the dogs were dressed in clothes of some type, one in a small doggie jean jacket. All the people (mostly lesbians, by stereotype at least) who had brought their dogs were speaking baby talk to them.
The dogs were not engaged in any particular dog-based activity. It wasn't national "take your pet for acupuncture" week. It just so happened that the owners simply brought their dogs with them to their appointments that morning.
No one seemed to find this strange.
It's not that I don't like domestic animals. I lived with not one, but two large cats in a small houseboat for three years. I am familiar with the thrill of late night snuggling and the agony of too late litter box cleaning.
I would venture to say that our lesbian love of animals (no, silly, not that way, despite what the religious right believes) goes beyond the boundaries of the North American lesbian cliché and teeters right on the edge of the "unarguable part of subculture" category.
But like many phenomena in our amazing and quirky subculture-ahem- our love of animals is sometimes taken to an illogical and scary conclusion.
Exhibit A: Just when I thought there could be nothing more absurd than dog reiki, I got a posting for a "brand new open mic!" on a stand-up comedy list I am on. I have not changed a word. The capitalization is theirs as well.
" OUR FIRST EVER POETRY READING FOR DOGS…AND THEIR PEOPLE MY PET NATURALLY, a natural pet food store, apothecary and pet bakery, announces its first OPEN MIC NIGHT for poetic pooches and their people. Bring your dogs, bring their poems, bring your songs, your stories, your odes to pups and yes, cats too. Meet other dogs, dog lovers, and maybe find a lover of your own."
I am almost never accused of being overly attentive to minutiae, but even I find one detail in this announcement rather troubling. Perhaps I skipped class on a very important day in senior English and/or zoology, but I was under the impression that dogs are the more "eating/sleeping/chasing cars/" variety of creatures not the "pick up a pen and describe your innermost feelings in verse" variety of creatures.
I was also under the impression that most people share this belief. Most people, but clearly, as evidenced by this open mic listing, not all.
This open mic then, despite its claim, might be a very poor choice for "finding a lover of your own." Lest you think I have just given the most obvious dating advice in the history of Sapphic-kind, think carefully over the your list of exes. If you've been out more than a week, you've probably had at least one lover, who, might have, in a weak moment, claimed her Yorkie was at least the co-author of a haiku
How did that relationship end? Was it pretty? Yes, that's what I thought.
It's not that these extreme animal lovers are bad people, exactly, they just aren't compatible with, well, other humans.
So how do you spot one of these dyke dolittles before it's too late and you're matching "hers and hers" ferrerts? Some signs:
The habit of incorporating pets into your arguments. "When you don't label the leftovers with the date, you really put Stonewall on edge." Or "Butchie doesn't like it when you come home late from work and don't call."
A desire to have a pet for every year of life., eg she adopts a stray 24th cat when she turns 24. It might seem quirky and generous in the first two or three decades of life, but think about it: do you want to be around on her 82nd birthday?
A predilection for adopting creatures that have special needs. And not "special needs" as in the euphemistic and condescending term for an individual with a disability. Special needs as in, the animals needs her all the time. For example, she finds a Great Dane with so much separation anxiety that he has to accompany her on every trip to the restroom. This kind of thing can get mighty inconvenient—not to mention mighty weird—pretty quickly.
Extreme anthropomorphism, especially in assigning human emotions to your domestic animals. For example, claiming that the cat "looks like he feels guilty." Guilt is a human emotion. You only have to watch the average housecat take over the average lesbian home to see that no feline in the history of evolution has ever felt guilty about anything.
What should you do if—despite your best judgment and best efforts—you end up with someone who relates absurdly better to the pets than to you?
Perhaps there are some things you can try. You might stop shaving to give yourself a furrier, more animal-like appearance. Or do more yoga at the gym so you can bust a move in the bedroom that will look not unlike you are chasing your own tail.
But most importantly cling tight to your own reality. Or one day you may wake up insisting that a llama can write a limerick, and it will be too late for anyone to save you.
