The Fear Beneath the Shine

Mr. Watson’s Sidewalk Diaries #9 — Bottles, Fillers, and Other Defenses Against Mortality

Traveling the world with a dog requires equal measures of devotion, paperwork, and controlled breathing.

Vaccinations, pet passports, certified health certificates, weight control, and pet carriers that fit the airline’s requirements and the check-in staff’s morning mood. We know the drill, but I always hope for a pet-friendly counter clerk. Mr. Watson remains stoic as usual. He’d be gold if ever Star Alliance planned to launch a Miles and Bones loyalty card.

A dog-loving woman checked us in at Brussels. Half the passengers on the A380 bent themselves towards lumbar injury to meet his short-legged gaze and coo at him in Munich. The boarding attendant didn’t.

“There is no dog registered under your name, sir.”

Emphasis on every consonant but the last. My boarding card reads PETC in bold caps. My credit card is 150 euros lighter. Mr. Watson stirs in his carrier. I had signed a pet-liability waiver covering the journey from Brussels to Los Angeles.

But no dog on this flight. No room for doubt, appeal, or the evidence stirring at my feet.

Wir schaffen das.

And we did. The captain intervened, and Mr Watson slept all the way to Los Angeles beneath the seat, somewhere between my feet and the life jacket. He emerged from his carrier grumbling, unimpressed. America: land of neutered crossbreeds, may-I-pet-your-dog courtesy, canine peptide treatments, and service dogs for needs one had never bothered to name.

Except journaling, perhaps. Sidewalk Diaries, here we come. _H.

Saint Roch preserve me—he’s the patron saint of dogs and plague victims. In Los Angeles this is pretty much the same thing. I’m glad not to be human! At least not an American one.

I could consider a life upright in the 8th arrondissement, or in Milan’s Quadrilatero, lowered gently into the fine leather upholstery of an automobile whose tan happens to flatter my spots, and whose engine produces just the right vibration to send me to sleep. But after a few mornings on the sidewalks of Los Angeles, I feel no envy whatsoever. Four legs suddenly seem morally superior.

I am by no means a hero. A Jack Russell has his weaknesses, most of them loud. Only yesterday, the tiniest Yorkshire terrier in aviation goggles frightened the shit out of me. But fear, in my case, is honest: bark, never bite. I do not attach my anxiety to a fluorescent bottle and call it wellbeing.

Even at 64 degrees on a Sunday morning, Venice moves as if the aqueduct had failed. Not a single passerby on Abbott Kinney seemed able to leave the house without some form of portable cistern: plastic cylinders in colors no civilized animal would choose, paper cups from coffee shops designed less for drinking than for being seen, stainless steel flasks clipped to bodies dressed as if they had fled their homes in an emergency.

And Abbott Kinney is not exactly the Atacama Desert, is it? There is a bar or coffee shop every three houses, on both sides of the street. Why carry fluids through civilization unless you suspect it to collapse before lunch? I’d better stick close to R and H in this town.

There is another unease in LA, less portable than the water bottle but written on the faces. Here, time is treated like a badly behaved dog: it is kept off the designer furniture. Time must be delayed, frozen, filled, tightened, or resurfaced. Anything but allowed.

I have recently turned seven, which places me well into my canine midlife, yet I feel no crisis whatsoever. My tennis balls may relax; I no longer feel compelled to strip them bald. After a few stick runs in our garden in Topanga, I take a brief cool-down dip on the top step of the pool and retire. Rising from between H’s knees in the morning takes me thirty minutes, not seconds. There are even a few grey hairs around my snout. I carry them with pride.

Not so the humans.

I was on R’s lap in the SUV, my head resting on the windowsill, when a Mercedes-Benz SL from the late seventies pulled up in the lane beside us: European car elegance punished with oversized American bumpers, like dentures fitted by a trembling dentist. H’s father, I believe, once had one in pale blue with a dark blue top. I’m referring to the car, not the dentures. I should have liked to sit in it, ears flapping in the wind.

The man behind the wheel looked as if he might have been a studio musician for Janis Joplin. He turned and looked straight at me. There was a smile in his eyes, but nowhere else. His face remained perfectly still, not a wrinkle to be seen beneath the grey hair hanging limp to his shoulders.

I can tell the neighbors’ chihuahuas apart from a mile away. I am even buddies — by which I mean I support their existence — with Taxi and Ernest, two dachshunds belonging to friends of R and H. They could not be more different: philosophy meets opportunism, flowing curls against wiry scruff.

Here, however, distinction among humans has gone the way of wrinkles. At times, the women seem to have been molded by the same clinic, salon, and dentist: Texan blowout, pearly teeth, lips puffed into permanent encouragement, and skin stretched taut over cheekbones no ancestor ever provided. A whole boulevard of Kristi Noem look-alikes. Had poor Cricket stared down the barrel of the shotgun in California, he might not even have known who pulled the trigger.

God bless, but I’m staying out of South Dakota.

Topanga will do for me. I can keep an eye on the gophers turning the lawn into Emmental, stare in utter disbelief at overripe hippies who continue to live off the land but accept payment for their produce on Venmo, and protect R and H from the man who comes on Wednesdays to pour a smelly liquid into my pool.

And then there is my pack to coach at home. H’s buns have begun to look like brioche left out on the kitchen sink for too long. His lats are still acceptable, though. I keep him swimming. There’s even a suspicion of abs.

He is aging. So am I. He doesn’t need a butt job.

Maybe a decent daily dose of squats.

THE ÆSTHETIC NOMADS BLUE BOOK: WHERE TO SHINE IN L.A.

NICK FOUQUET
Abbot Kinney doesn’t end at Venice Boulevard. You’ll find this master hatmaker where the spandex leggings give way to Levi’s and Birkenstocks to Lucchese boots. Nick’s handmade hats are country rock and Hollywood glam, couture on horseback. Don’t set fire to your stable with the mandatory match stuck inside the hat band.

https://www.nickfouquet.com/

WILLIAM LEAF AUTOMOTIVE
Prefer your Bronco on rubber rather than horseshoes? These guys turn a wreck into a showpiece of petrol Americana. Just a few doors down from Nick Fouquet’s, this is the place to pick up your LA muscle car, cruise along Melrose, and have coffee at Aimé Leon Dore.

MALIBU SURFRIDER BEACH
California vibe just north of the Malibu Pier. Beautiful people of every age, connoisseur surfboards, expert riders, and cool dogs too. Work on your tan and watch the fittest folk in textbook Endless Summer nostalgia.

BUCK MASON
Retail you actually want to hang out in. An old-school Venice Beach bungalow where fashion meets visual journals, art and photography books, and counterculture literature among found objects and ceramics. Fast Times serves the perfect cappuccino to sip while you are browsing.

https://www.buckmason.com

THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
It’s less conspicuous than the Broad, but its collection is equally important. Pollock, De Kooning, Rothko, Rauschenberg, Kara Walker, Stirling Ruby, and almost every other renowned artist are shown with their best works. If LACMA is about size, MOCA is about finesse.

https://www.moca.org/

BRENTWOOD COUNTRY MART
Overpriced? Sure. So are the department stores and mega-malls. But where else do you find a shoe repair shop that has been going for 80 years alongside Goop, a post office, and the best rotisserie chicken in LA? Order from the counter and join the stylish crowd for lunch under a parasol. If you are looking for small-town atmosphere inside a metropolis, this is the place.

https://www.brentwoodcountrymart.com