From Alpacas to Cats

Mr. Alpaca figurine, you came from Bolivia. A sad sight at best, constructed from the fur of your shaved representation. My cat once found the need to masticate your face, those stiff black pipe-wire legs, and the small scarf of red and green yarn you wore, not so elegantly around the neck. Come to think of it, he most likely made you his bitch, humped you with his impotent kitty-fuck unit, then licked you with his tuna pink tongue.

Mr. look at me, I bear allergies Alpaca came to me from the hands of a friend that I haven't seen since my high-school graduation party. He is off, digging his hands into the bowels of an aircraft on some Navy base in California. But once, when he was young and vacationing in Bolivia, he somehow decided that buying a gift made from dander doused fur was a good idea.

I appreciated it at the time, my allergies weren't so bad in my youth, and I said something like, "thank you, Dustin, but I don't know what an Alpaca is."

I remember parts of the day he gave me that monstrosity. Whiskey, his family's renegade yellow lab had passed away the night before his plane touched down. My Ma, had been over there, getting her ears lowered and died auburn, and the little sister, Nicole cried out, after finding the mutt, sans life, in the split-level home's front foyer. Needless to say, the hair-job was cut short and my Mother came home with her hair half dark purple, the other half speckled brown-gray.

It seems most nice memories always have their anti-memory. The associations we make with events in our past oft times are spotted with bright dots of the darker side of life. At least most of my memories end up that way. I can always find a death, a broken idea, bone, or heart at the center of what little bits of my childhood I can remember.

But, I can remember Mr. Alpaca. It has been only a year since I tossed him out. I was moving out of my house; a shit-stinking, dying ear-infected dog scent stained house. Perhaps the reason this has stuck in my head for so long is that a dog died near, or on the days that I acquired and disposed of Mr. Alpaca. While Whiskey was the first, Bud Ro was last; a curly cue cocker-spaniel, 16 years old; his brain rotted away from a massive inner ear infection. My roommate had just left me; high and dry, in several thousand dollars of debt, and in care of a house that would have at the time been a good candidate for condemnation.

That chapter of life had a going out of business Sale. Almost everything went, including Mr. Alpaca. Funny thing is, while all of these other recollections come to my mind when I think of this wicked little toy, the image of Dr. Faustus playing with, and loving you, pricks me the most.

I miss that cat dearly; he was part of the Sale.

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