Many have wondered how the band Coldplay came to name one of their hit singles “The Scientist”.  It turns out the song gained it’s moniker due to Chris Martin’s groundbreaking discovery that pure estrogen could be turned into lyrics.

In a remote part of southwestern New Mexico, the famed outlaw “Salsa” Sam Lawless is sitting around a campfire with the men he has chosen to form his new posse.  His old one was wiped out in a deadly shootout with the Pinkerton Detective Agency of Chicago during an attempted bank robbery.  It is a solemn moment as he inducts them in one of the wild west’s most sacred rituals.

“Alright, men…  After a lot of a deliberation, I have chosen each of you to be a part of my new posse.  Now, I’m going to officially welcome you by giving you your outlaw nickname.  As you all know this is probably the most defining moment in your career as an outlaw.   This is the name history will remember you by…  the name that will appear on wanted posters throughout the country…  the name that one day will be etched on your tombstone.  Ok, you there…  you come from the brushy regions in southern Oklahoma…  I’m going to call you “Brushy” Bill Roper.  And you over there, you made your name hunting buffalo on the great plains…  I’m going to call you “Buffalo” Bob McRee.  And you…  you’re probably the deadliest man in the gang now…  you’re known for your custom pistol with the hammer filed down extra short so that you can cock and shoot faster than any man alive…  I’m going to call you “Short-Cock” Steve.  Alright, now you over there…  (Sounds as “Short-Cock” Steve tentatively interrupts) Huh?  No, no, no…  we can’t call you “Fast-Cock” Steve, my friend…  all guns cock fast.  No, no…  what makes you so unique is that you filed that bastard down short.  “Short-Cock” Steve it is.  And now you over there…  I’ve gotta confess the only reason you’re here is that we needed one more man.  You’re cowardly…  effeminate…  and you’re about the least physically intimidating man I know…  but we gotta give you a nickname so we’ll call you “Deadly” Dan Nash, “the Fastest Gun in all the West”.  (Sounds) Hey…  hey…  where are you going, “Short-Cock” Steve…   “Short-Cock”…  come back!

Piet Dogfael was born in the smallish river valley of New Hobbes. His mother, regardless of what his father had told him so many times, was not a whore. She was a seamstress, an adept seamstress, who perished when Piet was fourteen years old. Natalie Dogfael was tending to a dress of a cobblers wife. This particular cobbler, Jonathan Temper, was working in his back room when Natalie approached him, informing him that she had finished his wife’s dress. When she entered, the smash of the cobbler’s hammer popped the heel of a leather boot he was attending to, sending a shoe tack through the smokey air, piercing Natalies right eye ball. Distraught, struck with a hot pain in her eye cavity, she stumbled backwards and tripped over Jonathan Temper’s unfinished shoe pile and fell with gravity onto the cobbler’s wooden anvil. Natalie Dogfael cracked her skull and bled to death on the cobbler’s stone floor.

Piet’s father, whose name was never uttered from his son’s lips, suspected infidelities and presumed for no reason, that his wife was relating with the cobbler. He was certain that his wife did not in fact fall to her death, but rather that she was murdered by Jonathan Temper. As odd as the circumstances surrounding Natalie’s death were, no one suspected foul play other than one man, Piet Dogfael’s father. Unwavering as his stubborness was, Piet’s father took a walk to the cobbler’s home and with no hesitation or pulling from his conscience, killed Jonathan Temper with the man’s own cobbling hammer. Piet’s father was arrested and executed as was the procedure and at fourteen years of age, Piet was left an orphan.

Piet was now growing into middle age and had moved into 1017 Truet Street so he could be in closer proximity to his new place of employment: Truet Hills Cemetery. Piet had made a name for himself as an undertaker; he was trustworthy, punctual and of pleasant temperment. He had tried his hand at many trades. In seven years, Piet had attempted and failed  as a butcher, a salesman, street sweeper, and somewhat ironically, as a cobbler. But it was as a hand to the dead that Piet found his stroke and had loved this profession as he had the good Book. Piet’s life was not one of a wandering existence and he bickered with no one but himself.

Piet had met and fallen quite in love with a young women by the name of Lu and they had come to be engaged. Piet could not come to think of anyone or anything that he had ever loved more than he loved Lu, even his job, which he had loved with a particular queerness that no one truly understood but Piet. Piet and Lu had spent twenty one months in love and as lovers and it was fourteen days until the two were to be wed. Lu Ellen Struts died suddenly with no foresight into her illness. It so happens that Lu suffered from an ailment of the humours and neither her nor Piet could had ever known that it would ultimately kill her.

The graceful head in charge of Piet had pardoned the man from having to bury his own fiance but Piet declined this pardon and insisted on performing the task himself. Piet could not imagine any other set of hands placed on his beloved Lu, no, it had to be him. Something else about this opportunity pulled at him about the ribs, as if something was digging through him, like he did everyday through the earth beneath his boots, but unlike him, who dug only to get to the sixth foot, this undescribable something dug through his body to get at his heart. But what this thing, whatever it was, did not know, was that the treasure it sought had become untraceable as it would soon lay in the ground next to his beautiful, his lasting, his irreplaceable Lu.

Piet buried his fiance that evening at midnight and he could only tell her he loved her as he crawled six feet low into the plot he had just dug with such care, flipped her gently from his shoulder and laid her softly into the pine that rested snugly in the hole. Piet fit her well in her new terrestial home and kissed her blue lips, wept for only a minute, and nailed the top down over her…but then he paused and all together ceased his hammering and reversed his actions, removing the seven nails he had already driven into the pine and turned the top on its side and slid in next to the woman he loved so much and slept next to her for one more night, six feet beneath the top soil in the open coffin under the midnight’s humid canvas until the sun crept up over the flatline, awakening Piet with a jolt and for a moment he had forgotten where he was as he nudged Lu to wake her from the deep sleep he had thought she had been overwrought with. But, to Piet’s familiar and stifling dissapointment, Lu would not wake from her sleep that morning, nor any morning there after.

Thirteen days later, after the family had mourned, Piet crept into the Truet Hills Cemetery at three in the morning on a Sunday and resurrected his would-be wife from the ground and carried her through the field of headstones and while holding her as dear as he could grasp, Piet ran into Man Risk, an officer whose sole purpose it was to apprehend the stealers of the dead. Piet was apprehended and held in jail. The next morning all charges were dropped by Piet’s handler, Thomas Howard. Thomas Howard however, could not let Piet keep the profession that he cared for so dearly and Piet was told to leave the grounds. In twenty four hours, Piet lost the only two things he had ever loved more than his mother: his beloved Lu and his beloved cemetery - and this, this is how Piet Dogfael fell into the lap of stealing the dead.

Seated uncomfortably, but as comfortable as is possible in this cold leather drivers seat, where no amount of body heat can warm it, he shifts his lower back, hoping to position his ass in a place that doesn’t eventually send pain from the lowest point of his spine to his scapulas and eventually - as has happened every night for the last four nights - deep into his neck. Sleeping in his car, even after only two weeks, has become tiresome and irritating - so much so that he cannot imagine what it must feel like to be always without home, as his condition was only temporary, he hoped. Having awareness of his present situation, he thinks of what feels like an endless stint in hobo-hood and becomes absolutely overwrought with a fury so intense that he is unable to enjoy the heat this thermal emotion has ignited in his numb body. His rage remains but is now accompanied by a distilled disapointment that he feels within himself. Here he sits - cold and without home, but not perishing due to the insulation, however thin it may be , of the steel frame and aluminum doors of the truck. How weak he feels, how utterly cowardly he thinks he is. Pity creeps in; survivng, perhaps even thriving in the cold rag doll he has become… yes, be sad he says outloud. Pretend you are weaker than you actually are. He agrees with himself that he does, in fact, lack the strength to realize that he will be o.k., someday. You will be just fine… No, you won’t.

As his ability to stay awake is retarded do to his discomfort coupled with the dropping temperature, his brain fires; an activity ignited by either the 19 degree temperature or the battling manic emotions fighting for their rightful place as the king of the mountain. Whatever the explanation, his synapses fire and he remembers something spoken to him in German, but only in English does it spill out gently from the far reaches of his brain, down the back of his throat, sprawling out, reaching outwards for his tongue; straining to release itself phonetically. His mouth opens but there is no sound. Instead, he must read his lips in the rear-view mirror: True greatness only comes with self-mastery.

He reads his lips again; blinks, seeing the words for a second time, reflected in the black drapery of his eyelids. He blinks once more, then closes his eyes for good. He would not achieve true greatness this night.

Review of the production of “Boredom Visits the Artist” by H. “Henrik” Stencil (Oct 3rd 2008, Chicago’s Cul-de-Sac Theatre)

Now, it is not my “job” per se to review theatre performances (at least not in the strict sense of the word which could be used more accurately to describe me as “a kiosk vendor”) but I feel compelled to weigh in on the recent performance of H. “Henrik” Stencil’s latest effort. Stencil’s name is, of course, familiar to all. To some it is even known in whole and for it’s connection to him and his works, while to many others it is familiar in a more piecemeal and tenuous fashion owing to their recognition of each individual letter of which it is comprised.

Stencil’s first play, “Apropos to Nothing”, was reminiscent of (and compared favorably to) Aristophanes’ ancient comedy “The Clouds”, in which the Greek playwright had skewered Socrates and other alleged Sophists as being out of touch with reality. In point of fact, the entirety of the premises and all of the jokes in the modern work were the same as those in the latter to the point that numerous pages bore the trademark signs of a photocopy, but it was generally agreed amongst critics that the passing of roughly two thousand and forty additional years lent “Apropos” a certain, if vague, originality. It was an enormous success and a star was born overnight.

However, after eight months the initial theatre mania the work had inspired died down in New York, Los Angeles, and then, lastly, rural outposts across the Midwest and Montana. Stencil had not followed up on this initial success well. At all. After eight years of complete writer’s block he suddenly struck upon the cynical notion of making his creative inertia the subject of a play by merely publishing his notebook of sentence fragments and doodlings, assigning each at random to one of 116 “main characters”. The result, “Boredom Visits the Artist”, which I had the ill fortune to attend here in Chicago at the historic Cul-de-Sac Theatre, did not go over well despite the intense and expensive efforts of a Madison Avenue marketing firm to frame it as somehow on the cutting edge of the avant-garde.

In the end its run lasted less than one full evening as two of the leading actors forgot altogether what they were doing on stage during a particularly ponderous dialogue, put their coats on, and left. The confusion, unfortunately, had arisen due to a dramatic pause. A very dramatic pause. Seven minutes. Unfortunately even this did not spare the audience as it was so in keeping with the utter randomness of what we had seen so far that it was assumed that it was part of the show and thus we stayed torturously put in our seats for the remaining scheduled three hours. For the last full hour there were no actors left at all, but the we remained put, mistaking the theatre’s cleaning crew for the third act. A brief altercation between the head janitor and his assistant did give rise to a few minor guffaws and all generally agreed that the old man’s last 15 minutes alone on stage with his mop were rife with sexual tension. The end of those three hours were rewarded with the standing ovation that is now seemingly mandatory at all modern cultural events, but it was markedly without enthusiasm and lasted less than 20 minutes.

INTRODUCTION

It is late at night in a shivery cold when this tale begins. September contributes with its bruising late evening winds and inexplicable dampness. It’s the end of the month, close to the first day of October, but Piet Dogfael had been sipping wet hens for a little over three hours at his favorite tavern, “The Pounce House” and could not think of, nor care to remember the very date as he paced in front of the rock laden courtyard; making sure to follow the shadows, using them to conceal his presence as he waited for his dear cousin and business partner who was more than a tad late. The sun had not yet set when Piet Dogfael arrived at the rusty arch of the St. Gloucester grave yard but by this time the sun had long ago fallen behind the Northern Hills and Piet had grown impatient with his cousin’s truancy. More than anything at this moment, Piet wishes to smoke the tobacco from the leather pouch that rests at his hip but resists the urge as he does not want to reveal his presence in any way and the smell of the Cavendish would certainly do just that. Piet cannot go the task alone and he cannot just up and leave, after all, there were ninety schillings waiting for him at the abode of the meditician who had hired he and his cousin, who was now even more truant then when this story began.

“Curse you, Humfrids!” Piet scream whispers as his visible breathe escapes his mouth and carries the malediction through the chilling autumn air.

“PIET!” A hushed yell reaches Piet’s ear.

“Humfrids… Humfrids, I am over here, cousin.” Piet’s cousin, Humfrids Bowler had finally arrived. He was seventy-three minutes late.

Piet decided not to give Humfrids a tongue lashing, enough time had already been wasted and the later it became the closer Man Risk came to entrap them in their criminality.

Piet informs Humfrids that it is already one and a half past midnight and that they must hurry. Humfrids agrees, apologizes again and they head to their hiding spot. Twenty-four hours earlier, the two of them met about a quarter kilometers from where they were standing and buried their items: two shovels, a large burlap sack, salt, protective dried figs and flower petals they had purchased from a witch and a loaf of bread in case their job took longer than they had figured earlier that day over sweet breads and lagers. The two young men had a difficult task ahead of them. It had rained and sleeted all day long before their present arrival, the sleet and the temperature from the four days earlier had made for stiff ground - if it had been six weeks previous, they’re task would have been much easier, but, because of the conditions just mentioned it would be a task not simply performed. Piet and Humfrids dig out their tools and duck under the archway on the East end of the grave yard. Their strongbox lay in the back grounds. The cemetery was very old and the dead ivory grew long and unkempt like the grey beard on the face of a centurion who was no longer able to groom himself. In the older cemeteries the newly deceased were placed in the ground nearest to the back. It was here that Charles Trumpet had been buried eight hours earlier.

The two men remove their shovels swiftly and begin to dig; they were both very apt at this task and moved around the plot effortlessly, almost gracefully. Their arms were long and they were both in true health minus the drinking and their frequent tobacco usage. Humfrids reaches the pine box first with his shovel, Mr. Trumpet had only been buried three feet down – it seemed the digger must have been alone that day, no one to watch him finish the required three feet that were not dug. The cousins could open a grave, remove a body and restore the soil between patrols of the night watch. The restoration of the plot was essential so relatives of the subject could mourn by the grave the following day, unaware that their loved one was gracing some anatomy slab in Abernathy. Piet places his hand on his cousins shoulder, “Humfrids, remember not to bend at your waist when you’re pulling up Mr. Trumpet. You must hoist with your knees, we missed three jobs from your back strain last time.” Humfrids stares back, “You, don’t lift with your back, pitchant.” Piet whispers to Humfrids that “pitchant” is not an actual slur and reminded him of how stupid he thought he was.

Charles Trumpet had retained his color and the make-up was not too excessive. He had a sly smile on his face that ignited a spark in Piet’s thought, the smile proposed that perhaps death was an occassion worth smiling for. Charles Trumpet was an alchemist and a well-liked one, so much so that if his body was to be discovered missing it was certain that more than one person would be upset. “Time, Humfrids.” Humfrids removes his pocket watch from his breast coat, clicks it open, “We have eight minutes less or more.” Piet and Humfrids pick up Mr. Trumpet and hoist him out of the pine box that had become his ephemeral resting vessel and up, out of the plot. They placed him gently outside, bringing him back out of the ground as they returned him to the human side of the earth, all the while making sure not to bruise the man’s person. The soil is put back and they carry the burlap bag out through the back of the cemetery they had been in so many times before, twenty yards from where they entered, making certain not to go out the front as to avoid the night watch. With almost three whole minutes to spare, they re-buried their tools and carried the body of Mr. Charles Trumpet to a house in Edinburgh.

You took us into your hipster confidence with a gleam in your eye and a shake of your dreads. All we needed was Internet, but for forty dollars, a one-time fee, you would hook up the cable. It was a special offer, because you could tell already that you liked us.

We contemplated misdemeanor theft and you begged permission to use our bathroom. Highly irregular, admittedly, but your sense of urgency to get us our Internet service kept you from stopping. Of course, we allowed you, our new friend, Zach the cable installer.

We agreed that cable would be too much of a distraction and the Internet was all we needed from you. Then we waited to break the news for much longer than we expected as you double flushed and came out of the bathroom without washing your hands.

We got off the London train in a quaint little market area with cobblestone streets and iron lampposts. Shop keepers were rolling up the garage style doors that kept their store fronts safe from what may lurk in the night, to reveal windows full of freshly baked breads and hanging clusters of cured meats. A florist was setting buckets of brightly colored daisies and tulips on the sidewalk under her shop window and a grocer rolled out carts heaped with fresh fruits and veggies.

We kept walking past the shops and followed the cobblestone road as it veered to the left. There was a tall hedge on our right and more shops to our left.

“I think it should be right past these bushes,” Charles said.

As soon as he finished his sentence we came upon a large courtyard with cobblestone trails weaving around green grassy patches spotted with budding trees. All of the trails lead to a small cathedral, it’s towering spire and intricate stonework was like something out of a fairytale. There was a small, gray haired man in glasses with darkly stained fingers closest to us. He was setting up an easel and laying out charcoal sketches of the cathedral on a blanket in front of him. There seemed to be a vendor with a wheeled cart to match every shop down the road. Men and women were pushing around loads of flowers, fruit, and even baguettes with a variety of sandwich makings on them. I saw a mime dressed in a black leotard with a wool skullcap and white face. He was moving at normal human pace, unstacking several wooden crates he had with him.

I looked at Charles. He had on jeans that were torn at the knee, a Blind Melon t-shirt under his grey zip-up hoodie and a baseball cap on backwards. Then I looked down at myself, bell-bottom jeans, pastel tie-dyed tank-top dress with a blue sweater and paisley scarf that hung down past my knees. Even though we looked exactly like we did an hour earlier I felt like a Cinderella-esque tornado of glitter and magic had overtaken both of us and transformed us into the people who stood there taking in this new and magical place.

There was a longhaired man with a guitar strumming near the cathedral, but neither of us could hear him from our distance. We picked a grassy area within a stones throw of the sketch artist. Charles laid his guitar case parallel with the sidewalk, took his guitar out of it and left it sitting there open. I unwrapped my Guild from its flannel shirts and touched my face to ensure that I was still myself.

“Do you really think anyone will give us money for this?” I asked.
Charles shrugged. “I don’t really care if they do or not, but it makes us look more legit.”
He sat down cross-legged and began to strum his guitar.
“So what do you know?” He said.
“Umm…well, I don’t really play with other people.”
“Yeah, so you’ve said. Just play something you like to play.”
“Why do I have to start?”
“Okay. You’re right. I’ll start. All Along the Watch Tower, you take the Hendricks’s solo. Go.”
“Fine. I’ll go.” I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath.

I started strumming Sweet Jane, the Cowboy Junkies version, not the Velvet Underground version. I was about half way through when Charles said, “Aren’t you going to sing?”

I stopped playing.
“No one said anything about singing.”

Charles gave me a look of exasperation. The old artist across the way chuckled.
“You better stop whining. You’re miles from anyone you know. You’ve come this far, so why don’t you just give in already and be the person you obviously want to be or you would be hanging with the Queen Mother right now instead of sitting here with me.”

I hated him for being right. He was very apparently in his element. My face burned with embarrassed excitement. I started strumming again and let a weak little tune come out of my mouth. My voice cracked and strained through the first two versus. When I noticed Charles wasn’t laughing and the artist was paying more attention to his canvas than me, I gained a little courage and sang out the last verse. As my fingers stumbled over the chords I inserted little swear words into the lyrics. When I finished Charles smiled.

“Again,”
“But I…”

Charles raised his eyebrow and I started the song over. My playing improved as I warmed up and Charles started adding harmonizing chords. I moved into Wish You Were Here and even stopped singing in the middle of the verses and strummed a little softer for Charles to riff a short solo. He glanced up at me when he was finished and I moved into the last verse. He started singing and our voices meshed well together. They weren’t stellar, but we could carry a tune and neither of us out sang the other.

We were almost at the end of the song when I noticed a flash out of the corner of my eye. It was a coin hitting Charles’ guitar case. I looked up and the courtyard was filled with people, tourists I imagined to be German with their tall backpacks and shorts with hiking boots, families with kids in strollers and groups of teenagers walked along the paths. A balloon vendor with enough colorful helium balloons to carry a small child away had popped up, along with a man pushing an ice cream cart, and a gypsy looking woman draped in scarves sat in front of a cardboard box with a stack of tarot cards in front of her.

Charles and I smiled at each other and began to play some more. We stayed in that spot for much of the day. His repertoire was more vast than mine, so I let him play many of the songs solo, singing if I knew the words. At around 3:00 I remembered that we hadn’t eaten anything all day and I instantly became weak with hunger.

Charles stretched and began to count our money. Twenty-one pounds, all in change.
“That’s fantastic,” I said. I put my guitar back in its case.
“Not bad.” Charles nodded and gave me a full-toothed smile, they were straight and white.

We started up the path to the shops. Charles stopped in front of our friend the sketch artist. He pointed at a charcoal drawing of the cathedral rising out of the tops of the trees in the courtyard and asked how much.

“Three pounds mate.”

Charles shoved his hand into his pocket, weighted with change and counted out four pounds. The artist slipped the drawing into a plastic baggie, handed it to Charles and nodded in thanks.

“So how about that little deli with the wrought iron tables and chairs for some sandwiches?” I asked as we moved past the hedgerow.
“Umm…here. Do you want this?” Charles held the drawing he just bought out to me. “To like, commemorate the occasion. Or whatever.”
“Are you sure you don’t want it? It’s pretty cool.”
“No. Yeah. I got it for you.”
“Oh wow. Thanks, Chuck. That’s really sweet.”

After my three-year-old orange tabby dragged himself into my lap and collapsed with a painful sigh, I wrapped him in a blanket to protect him from the freezing Chicago night and jumped in the first cab I could find.

Muffled cries came from inside the blanket. The cabbie eyed me through the rearview mirror.
“Is your baby crying?”

I hadn’t thought of it, but Tres was a rather large cat, about 17 pounds and swathed in a blanket, I’m sure it did look like I was carrying a baby.

“Oh, it’s not my baby. It’s my cat.”

The cab driver looked alarmed. “Oh! No animals in my cab without cage!” He started to brake and swerve towards the curb.
“Please, sir, don’t kick us out. He’s sick. He’ll die if you don’t get us to the emergency vet.”

The panic must have been apparent in my voice or he noticed the tears that were filling my eyes because he pulled back into traffic.
“Thank you.”
“What’s his illness?”
“I don’t know. He can’t, um…go to the bathroom and he’s breathing really heavily.”
“Good thing he can’t use bathroom. He won’t go in my cab,” he chuckled. I gave him an unappreciative smirk in the rearview mirror.

The cab pulled into a parking lot. There was no sign on the outside of the building but through the windows I could see the white walls and florescent lighting of a clinic. I paid the driver and walked towards the front door. There were a large bundle of blankets and tarps next to a torn up wheelie-suitcase about three feet from the entrance. One dirty shoe peeked out from under the fortress. I tried not to wake the bum as I pulled on the door handle. The door didn’t budge. I pulled again. Nothing. I tried to make eye contact with the woman standing behind the counter in the clinic, but she didn’t look up from her paper work.

I looked behind me, but my taxi had already left. On the corner, two men were leaning in the passenger side window of a car that had pulled up. The driver leaned over and handed one of them something. I quickly turned away and tugged on the door handle again. Then I noticed a glowing button. I pressed it. The woman from behind the counter looked up at me.

My typical winter garb was a seventies, brown wool-lined corduroy jacket, a grey wool snowcap and matching grey fingerless gloves. The woman behind the counter looked up and then, immediately back down at her paper work, apparently mistaking me for a bum.

The homeless guy stirred under his pile of blankets. I pounded on the door and began to plead with the woman, although I sure she couldn’t hear me. I felt the thugs on the corner looming closer like zombies.

I held up my baby in a blanket but the person at the front desk still glared at me as if I were trying to scam my way in to steal horse tranquilizers or something else with some street value. I pressed the button again, a quick triplicate of buzzes. The woman behind the desk was staring at me. There had been no noise from inside the blanket for a good 10 minutes, but as my frustration grew, so did my grip on my little bundle, producing a pathetic groan that reminded me of the reason I was standing, freezing, in the ghetto in the middle of the night in the first place.

Finally the door latch clicked and I rushed in the door to get my cat some help, only to be halted with a pile of paperwork.

“Please sign in here and fill these out,” the small woman behind the desk said to me pointing to an empty sign in sheet on the counter and handing me a clip board full of papers. She had a scar on left side of her face that stretched all the way from her chin to her ear.
“Can I fill this out while you are examining him?”
“No ma’am. Please fill out the symptoms page first.”
“Well, I can tell you that he’s been breathing really harsh and…”
“Just put it on the paper please,” she gestured with a stumpy little finger.

I unwrapped Tres and laid him on the plastic chair next to mine so I could fill out the paperwork.
“Do you have insurance for Tress?”
“It’s Tres, like and an ice cube tray.” I began to reach for my wallet and then realized that nowhere in my PPO rules and regulations had they mentioned I could add my pets as a dependant. I looked at the woman behind the counter in confusion.
“You don’t have pet insurance?”
“Umm…no.”

Tres decided he’d had enough of the bureaucracy and in one heave that made all of the fur on his body gather forward in rolls around his neck, he projectile vomited all over me and the paperwork. I looked from the green goo up to the grimacing Scar-face behind the desk with a pitiful plea for help. At that point a young woman, with a pierced nose and purple hair, came out of the back room with a clipboard.

“Tress Jones?” she asked cheerily and scanned the room.
I was the only person at the emergency vet at 10:00 on a Saturday night, and Tres the only patient. I looked around at the empty chairs in bewilderment. Tres’s obvious cry for help had sucked the last bit of energy from him and he lay limp with his two front paws hanging off the end of the chair, his chin resting in between them. The girl sized up our situation and seemed to grasp the gravity of it better than Scar-face.

“Oh my. Linda, please get another set of forms and some paper towels for mommy here.”
She scooped up Tres and started to speak in a baby voice, “I will take baby Tress, here and see what’s the matter with him.”
“It’s Tres. Like a tray of food. It’s French.”
She stopped and stared at me for a moment with an it’s-just-a-cat face. “Oh. Okay, mommy.” Then she carried Tres through swinging double doors.

Hours later I awoke to the perky young neo-punk vet nudging me on the shoulder.
“Mommy? Mommy, you dozed off.”
I opened my eyes and expected to see the vet holding my Tres, but she held nothing, but the clipboard.
“Where’s Tres?”
“Well it’s good that you brought baby in tonight,” the tone of her voice slowly changed from baby talk to doctor talk. “And that’s because his bladder was forming crystals that were clogging his urethra, which kept the urine from being expelled. This was causing all of the toxins to back up into his blood stream and he was very close to being poisoned to death.”
“Oh my god. Well, where is he? Did you fix him?”
“This is a severe case and I’d like to perform a common procedure on him, called a perineal urethrostomy.”

She pulled out what appeared to be the textbook for sixth grade veterinarians. It was filled with very large text and colorful pictures. She opened it to a pre-marked page.
“Basically, what we do is amputate the penis.”
She made a slicing motion with her fingernail across the illustration of the halved cat’s penis.
“Then, we enlarge the first portion of the internal urethra to make a female size opening. That way there is a bigger hole for the crystal’s to be excreted through.”

I stared at her for a few moments.
“So, you’re giving my cat a sex change? I’m going to have a transsexual cat?”
She smiled, it seemed in relief that I understood her, “Essentially, yes.”
“Well, I mean, will it effect him, you know, mentally or socially?” I nervously giggled at my own question.
“No, no, Ms. Jones. I assure you that Tres won’t know the difference.”