Stranger Than Fiction (True Stories)

My Life as a Dog

The faces that make eye contact, they're twisted into sneers. The top lip pulled up to show teeth, the whole face bunched around the nose and eyes. One blond Huck Finn kid walks along after us, slapping our legs and shouting, "I can see your NECK! Hey, asshole! I can see your neck from behind…"

A man turns to a woman and says, "Christ, only in Seattle…"

Another middle-aged man says, loud, "This town has gotten way too liberal…"

A young man with a skateboard under one arm says, "You think you're cute? Well, you're not. You're just stupid. You look fucking stupid…"

This wasn't about looking good.

As a white man, you can live your whole life never not fitting in. You never walk into a jewelry store that sees only your black skin. You never walk into a bar that sees only your boobs. To be Whitie is to be wallpaper. You don't draw attention, good or bad. Still, what would it be like, to live with attention? To just let people stare. To let them fill in the blank, and assume what they will. To let people project some aspect of themselves on you for a whole day.

The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize you only ever lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room, masturbating and making money.

So the idea was, a friend and I would rent costumes. Me, a spotted, smiling Dalmatian. Her, a brown dancing bear. Costumes without gender clues. Just fun-fur suits that hid our hands and feet and big, heavy papier-mâché heads that kept anyone from seeing our faces. This gave people no visual clues, no facial expressions or gestures to decode-just a dog and a bear walking around, shopping, being tourists in downtown Seattle.

Some of this I knew to expect. Every December, the international Cacophony Society hosts a party called "Santa Rampage" where hundreds of people come into a city, all of them dressed as Santa Claus. No one is black or white. No one is young or old. Male or female. Together they become a sea of red velvet and white beards storming the downtown, drinking and singing and driving the police nuts.

At a recent Santa Rampage, police detectives met an arriving planeload of Santa Clauses at the Portland airport, corralling them with guns and hot pepper spray and announcing, "Whatever you're planning, the city of Portland, Oregon, will not look upon it kindly if you burn Santa Claus in effigy…"

Still, five hundred Santas has a power that a lonely bear and dog do not. In the lobby of the Seattle Art Museum they sell us tickets for fourteen bucks. They talk to us about the exhibits, the portraits of George Washington on loan from the nation's capital. They tell us where to find the elevators and give us museum maps, but the moment we push the elevator button-they throw us out. No refund for the tickets. No slack. Just a lot of sad head shaking and a brand-new security policy that bears and dogs may buy tickets but they may not look at the art.

A block away from the museum doors, the guards still follow us, until a new group of guards from the next building has us under surveillance. Another block down Third Avenue, a Seattle Police car cruises up, following us at a creep as we head north to the retail shopping center.

In the Pike Place Market, young men wait for the dog to walk past, then throw punches or karate kicks into the black-spotted fur. Right in the kidneys. Into the back of my elbows or knees, hard. Every time, every kick and fist. Then, these same men, they jump back, rolling their eyes at the ceiling and pretending to whistle as if nothing has happened.

These people behind mirrored sunglasses, dressed alike behind the stiff attitude of hip-hop and skateboards, being young downtown and looking to fit in. Outside the Bon Marché, along Pine Street, young men throw rocks, denting the papier-mâché heads and pounding the fur. Young women run up in groups of four or five, holding digital cameras the size of silver cigarette packs and clutching the dog and bear as photo props. Squeezed in, smiling with their breasts pressing warm and their arms around an animal neck.

The police still trailing us, we run inside the Westlake Center, running past Nine West on the first level of the shopping mall. Running past the Mill Stream store-"Gifts from the Pacific Northwest"-we're running past Talbots and Mont Blanc, past Marquis Leather. People ahead of us pull back, standing tight against Starbucks and LensCrafters, creating a constant vacuum of empty white floor for us to run into. Behind us, walkie-talkies crackle and male voices say, "… suspects are in sight. One appears to be a dancing bear. The second suspect is wearing a large dog head…"

Kids scream. People pour out of the stores for a better look. Clerks come forward to stare, their faces peering from behind sweaters and wristwatches in display windows. It's the same excitement we felt as kids when a dog got into our grade school. We're running past Sam Goody, past the Fossil store, the walkie-talkies right behind us, the voices saying, "… the bear and the dog are westbound, headed down the first-level access way to the Underground Eatery…" We're running past Wild Tiger Pizza and Subway Sandwiches. Past teenage girls sitting on the floor, yakking on the pay phones. "Affirmative," the walkie-talkie voice says. From behind us, it says, "… I'm about to apprehend both alleged animals…"

All this fuss, this chase. Young men stone us. Young women grope us. Middle-aged men look away, shaking their heads and ignoring the dog that waits in line with them at Tully's for a grande latte. A middle-aged Seattle guy, tall with a blond ponytail and his pants rolled to his knee, exposing bare calves, he walks past, saying, "You know, there's a leash law in this town."

An older woman with her beauty parlor hair silver-rinsed and sprayed into a pile, she tugs at one spotted dog arm, tugging the fur and asking, "What are you promoting?" She trails along, still tugging the fur, asking, "Who's paying you to do this?" Asking louder, "Can't you hear me?" Saying, "Answer me." Asking, "Who do you work for?" Saying, "Tell me…" She's clutching us for half a block, until her grip breaks.

Another middle-aged woman, pushing a stroller the size of a grocery cart, packed with disposable diapers, formula, toys and clothes and shopping bags, with one tiny baby lost somewhere in the mix, in the concrete middle of Pike Place Market, this woman shouts, "Everyone get back! Get back! For all we know they could be strapped with bombs inside those costumes…"

Everywhere, there's the brain scramble as security guards create public policy to deal with people dressed as animals.

A friend of mine, Monica, used to work as a clown for hire. While she twisted balloons into animals at corporate parties, men were always offering her money to fuck. Looking back, she says that any woman who'd dress as a fool, who'd refuse to look attractive, she was seen as loose, wanton, and willing to fuck for money. Another friend, Steve, wears a wolf costume to Burning Man each year and fucks his brains out because, he says, people see him as less than human. Something wild.

By now, the backs of my knees hurt from taking kicks. My kidneys ache from getting punched, and my shoulder blades from pitched rocks. My hands are running with sweat. My feet are sore from too much walking on concrete. On Pine Street young women drive past, waving from cars and screaming, "We love you…"

All these people behind their own masks: their sunglasses and cars and fashions and haircuts. Young men drive past, screaming, "Goddamn fucking FAGS…"

By now, I don't give a shit. This dog could walk around this way forever. Walking taller. Blind and deaf to people's shit. I don't need to wave, to pander and pose with kids for pictures. I'm just a dog smoking a cigarette outside Pottery Barn. I lean back, one leg lifted against the facade of Tiffany and Company. I'm just the Dalmatian making a cell-phone call in front of Old Navy. It's the kind of cool, a feeling of being self-contained, that white guys can live a lifetime without.

By now it's sweating hot. It's late afternoon, and FAO Schwarz is almost deserted. Inside the big glass doors, a young guy is dressed as a toy soldier in a red tailcoat with a double row of brass buttons and a towering black helmet. The escalators are empty. The Barbie Shop is empty. The toy soldier plays with a radio-controlled race car, alone and trapped inside on the first sunny day Seattle has seen in months.

The toy soldier looks up from his job, at the dog and bear coming through the door, and he smiles. Ignoring his race car, letting it drive into a wall, the soldier says, "You guys rock!" He says, "You SO totally rule."