Adventures of McBean and Co.

Walking McBean around the suburban neighborhood. He hustles along in haphazard patterns without a leash, running all over lawns as I contemplate my life. It's kind of a nightly thing. McBean used to be named Cody, but I have changed his name as I sometimes do. McBean cannot talk and so I realize I can pretty much just project onto him whatever, and that happens to include a name change. That’s all animal people are, I realize, people who cannot own up to the fact that human beings have fundamentally let them down in some way. They end up projecting all kinds of things on to their animals, taking them around, substituting them for actual people. It’s completely insane. I would only consider myself a partial dog-person.

And besides, McBean is probably projecting so many needs on to me. "Isn’t that right?" I ask him, walking around the neighborhood, making sure no one’s around to hear me talking to the dog. McBean used to be my uncle’s dog, and when he opted out of being an American in favor of living the superior European life, supping up on fine wines somewhere, my grandmother inherited McBean. She’s pretty much in the habit of being an elderly person, however, not prone to Homeric treks through the neighborhood, and so I took over the daily activity of walks. He relies on me like that. In as much as he can even walk at all. Still, though, there he is everyday, wagging his tail like a motherfucker. It's kind of endearing.


In return for my stoical subservience as dog-walker extrodinaire, McBean pays me back by pissing and shitting on every available surface along our walk while I slowly contract frostbite which will require the amputation of limbs. He’s old, I guess. Forgets that I do not posses a fur coat like he does. What can you do? Just tonight, in fact, he has gone the extra-measure of darting straight for the most manicured lawn in the neighborhood, an all-time favorite trick. He despises these people, maybe, thinks their petty concerns and nice lawn deserves fertilizing. Who could say what McBean is thinking? He is, though, invariably shitting on the nicest lawn in the neighborhood, and of course I do not possess a bag in which to pick up the shit (do not actually go the extra length of bringing the precautionary measures of shit-picking-up-material). The inhabitants of said house have taken notice. Realize there is a renegade dog within the neighborhood, have gone so far as to set up an encampment in the window of their house. Are camped out, in fact, nightly. Lying in wait, in their secret encampment. "Don’t let him go there!" some woman shouts at me out of nowhere. I feel naked out there, on the middle of her lawn, at a time when I thought most people would be inside eating Cheetos, watching T.V. I almost want to duck for cover, crouching down a little as I hear her yell at full volume. McBean and I have been spied. I have no idea of how to respond to this situation, have not been versed in the etiquette of shit-picking-upping. I can see she has left the window encampment in which she is yelling from and is in all probability in the process of coming out to greet me--where she will find no one, however. As I am hauling ass down the road at top-notch, McBean in pursuit a little slower, having just finished his business.