Sometimes we see things with a critical eye—an effect takes place—we see through the wrong end of a telescope and though everything’s small, things are clear. “That’s who you are,” you say. “Yes, that’s who you really are.”
I had one of those revelatory experiences with dog number two. Vidal was under my feet in the Archbold Theater in Syracuse. We were in the front row. The stage was inches away and accordingly we were just five feet from Sam Waterston. Sam was appearing as James Tyrone in “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night” which meant he was playing the role of an unhappy man and as far as I could see he was doing a fine job it it when Vidal let out a groan. It was not a standard harumph—the sound a dog makes when turning itself. It was a note of misery—and loud enough to be heard throughout the theater. I leaned forward and whispered in his ear, stroked his face. Above me Waterston was lamenting Tyrone’s life—a life spent in the service of a single role—the life of a second rate actor. Tyrone was filled with regrets. Vidal groaned louder. It was a crude sound; an athletic noise. I rubbed his face with my foot. People stirred in their seats. I knew Sam Waterston couldn’t see the dog. He was working hard, emoting, as groans were rising around him. I slumped as low as I could manage. From above I heard: “It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!” From below came another dog groan. a noise like a ship coming apart.
From above I heard: ““Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, or whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: ‘It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.”
“Oh God,” said the dog. “Oh God Oh God Oh Lord!” I leaned close to him. Whispered in his ear. I said: “C’mon boy, you can get through this. Its just Eugene O’Neil.” And we did survive though Vidal moaned like O’Neil’s fog horn and I wanted to stand up and shout out: “Its not me, Sam, its this dog! He’s doing some kind of martyr thing!”
As soon as the lights came up I fled with my friends Dave and Adrianne and it was at their home the next morning I learned what ailed Vidal for as we stood in the grassy yard he excreted a long, black gym sock—a whole garment—and I could only surmise what agony he’d endured lying under a theater seat while O’Neil’s sad men talked on and on about their meaningless lives in fog.
And I, a veteran guide dog handler knew I’d a different creature before me. Dog number one would only carry the socks. Vidal was a devouring kind.
Planet of the Blind 