October 1, 2015

Gus is on the verge of going Lenny on his latest friend. The friend in question is a soft, white, be-pumpkined Beanie Baby of uncertain origin, tho I'm pretty sure this one came into our house a few years back via the Halloween gathering at Greenfield Village, a prize garnered by one of our then-costumed goblins not yet too old to trick or treat. In any event, as is his wont, Gus has adopted this particular Beanie as his latest friend, a custom in which he takes a physical object — usually, though not always, a Beanie Baby (his attentions straying as far afield as a bar of soap or a loaf of bread) — and keeps it close by, typically carrying it somewhat tenderly from place to place, until his inner Lenny (he of the suppressed murderous tendencies in Of Mice and Men) gradually (or suddenly, as the case may be) yields to his intense desire to tear that thing apart.

I have to say that this most recent friend has lasted longer than most others which is, I suppose, a good thing, if you take as a given that our agenda in allowing him these relationships points toward our desire to civilize him in a way that George was never quite able to do with his traveling companion. There is something irresistibly plangent in the way our kids, in particular, have approached this task, an elongating of the vowels in "friend" as if to somehow draw the "end" out of the word itself. "Now, Gus, you don't want to tear apart your frr-ennnd," goes the refrain, and it's clear that they really hope that this time, unlike all the other times, Gus will not worry the tag on the Beanie in a way that makes him impossible to keep because is there anything worse in the world than surreptitiously giving a once-treasured toy an ignominious burial in the kitchen trash can after the dog has, once again, proven to be just, well, a dog?

I suppose there are worse things, shooting your best friend in the back of the head, as George must do to Lenny, being most notable among them. And it's a beautiful thing that we have plenty of opportunities for Gus to redeem himself that were never quite available to Lenny once he'd broken Curley's wife's neck. Still and all, you have to wonder what it's all about, this persistent placing of trust where clearly it's neither warranted nor needed, at least by the one in whom the trust is being placed. All things considered, I suspect Gus is learning little to nothing through these repeated romanticizations of what I absurdly referred to above as relationships. That is the point, though: I am quite certain that this dance is being done for the benefit of the human partner in the pas de deux, as someone, but emphatically not the canine, proves himself worthy of (his own!) trust.

And so it is that he picks up the Beanie Baby as Gus sleeps on the couch, oblivious to how he has been saved from himself yet again. It's good to be the man in the house, he says, as he helps his dog not to destroy the thing it loves again, even as he sees himself in his mind's eye sparing his dog's feelings, eventually and inevitably, by quietly disposing of the evidence of his misdeeds. Yes, indeed, it's good to be the man.