Fecal Fridays: Robert the Dog

NB: These are extracts from the messy attempt at a cocaine/sex novel I wrote amid the benders and office work of the other, headier, office workier, end of the decade.

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I’m holding by a length of twine a flea-ridden, semi-rotting, barely-alive dog, I’m slowly bleeding from the crown, I have a black eye, I’m dressed in a ridiculous, quasi-hip-hop style and I’m lost somewhere between the Euston Road and (probably) Camden. […] I’m walking back the way Martin drove us, dragging Robert (the dog) by its lead. I’m worried it’s going to shit and that I’ll feel bad for leaving it on the pavement (I’m not touching excrement), so I’m trying to get it stood in the gutter. […]

‘Is that your dog?’

I look at Robert. He looks at me. […] I nod.

‘It’s disgusting.’ […]

With a loud and deeply disturbing noise, Robert takes a massive shit a foot to my right. […]

The stench is incredible. As is the volume. He’s squatting there on his hind legs, hunched up over a rapidly towering and expanding pile of excrement of a Play-Doh-like consistency. It’s not stopping, and it’s right there, right in the centre of the pavement. When he finally steps away, he’s trailing several large chunks (if they’re solid enough to be referred to as “chunks”) in the hair around his anus, like a sheep. The pile is the size and colour of an average (if they were cone-shaped) carrot cake, and the pungent odour is seeking, scouring, […] expanding in every direction. He has stepped away, ready to move on, and I’m holding the end of his string […] I’m staring at the gloopy effluence, can’t tear my eyes away […]. There are definite flecks of red in it, a few darker strains. The pile’s about a third of the size of the dog’s torso. Where did it come from? How did it get inside him in the first place? How would I, even [if] I had one, get all of it into a plastic bag? It’s right in the middle of a narrow pavement, between a brick wall and the […] traffic of York Way. […] I’m suddenly aware that the longer I stand here doing nothing about it, the more conspicuous I become; the more time I spend deciding what to do, the more time I’ve spent staring at a giant pile of someone else’s shit.

I decide to walk away. Leave it. Abandon it. I’m mature and grown up enough now to know when my problems are best walked away from. And this is a perfect example. Picking it up would have ruined my day. Whereas not picking it up won’t hurt anyone (unless a child falls in it and is blinded [… ).] I’m walking away. I know it’s an obnoxious, selfish thing to do, but it’s what I want to do. And this is, now, what I’m putting first. Who I’m putting first. Fuck the world. Fuck the pavement. Fuck the area north of Kings Cross where I used to live. Fuck it all. Fuck fucking everything except me. [… time passes …]

‘Todd, the dog is dead.’

‘What dog is dead?’

‘Robert, the mongrel. […] he drowned […] He fell in the canal while I was talking to Simon.’ […]

‘Dogs can swim, Martin. Everyone knows that. I bet even fucking red-brick Paul knows that.’ […]

‘Well, there was this massive splash, and me and Simon just spun round, right, on the towpath, and we see him disappearing through – it’s one of those bits of the canal, you know, where it’s got this thick layer of green slime like all across the surface – and we see his tail going through it and then he comes back up and he’s […] spraying this like fucking slime all over the banks, further down than where we are, but all over this group of kids. Simon’s like bent double laughing at this dog, thrashing about in the slime, and I’m laughing too, because it is funny, […] then all of a sudden it like stops […] it must’ve had a heart attack or something and it lies there, on the surface, and that green slime […] creeps back across the surface […] closing up […] around him, and ‘cause he’s dead he’s not floating very much […] and this green gunk just really quickly, like, as we watch, just covers him up, goes over his hair, and it’s like he was never there. Like he’s been taken by the canal […]

‘Fucking great, Martin. […] You owe me a dog.’

Scott Manley Hadley aka Solid Bald aka Hip-Scott is a poet and goodtime boy who blogs at TriumphoftheNow.com. Follow him on Twitter @Scott_Hadley innit.

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