The Stompy and Barky Show

It’s about time I’ve introduced Stompy and Barky, my neighbors, don’t you think? After all, they are so much a part of my life….

Barky’s a one-eyed dog, a black chow-mix kept absurdly short-haired over the body but not the head. He wasn’t always one-eyed but he seems to have adapted to it. I think he should wear a patch since we don’t have enough pirate dogs. He’s not a bad pup, but… you’ve noticed, I’m sure, how some people start looking like their pets, or vice versa? Well, here in NYC the pets get as neurotic as their people. It’s an awful load to bear, after all, being the life companion of a hominid when you’re not a hominid.

Stompy, now: there are some issues to drive a dog over the edge. He’s a drag-queen/bowler/wrestler, or so I’m wildly-guessing, based on the noise he makes after midnight. Naturally, he’s also insomniac. Like so many tragic white boys, he thinks he’s a rock and roll star, with his own electric ghee-tar. By my age, which is his age, it's an affectation, but it is downright asshole-y to play it plugged-in a domestic setting. He’s been talked to about that, of course, by several of us here, but why should that talking-to have been necessary to begin with?

For some reason (I don’t want to speculate psychologically), he also can’t close a door without slamming it. The most mysterious thing: what is it that's dropped/slammed to the floor every night? First there’s the iron-heeled pacing, the eponymous clacking back and forth, back and forth, then the crash, the boom, the bam! Like having the Three Stooges upstairs, waltzing.