Mallory's Camera

Valentine’s Day is actually an ancient Roman fertility festival called Lupercal that the greeting card industry jacked up on steroids & mass-marketed.

I bought my vibrator a card, chocolates, & flowers.

I also slept the whole night through, which is practically unheard of. And whaddiya know—the sun is out today! That sepulchral Snowglobe of Doom hunkering down on us lo this week past is lifted! So I am feeling pretty chipper today. Though shortly I must go out & sprinkle salt on the vast sea of ice engulfing the driveway.

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Ellen had to put her dog down yesterday.

I offered to go with her to the vet, but Ellen is even more of a No Whinging Allowed! type than I am, so of course, she wouldn’t hear of it.

So instead, I told Ellen all about Milo, the most wonderful dog ever…



Milo was originally RTT’s dog. But, of course, RTT was the most horrible teenage boy ever & completely neglected him, so I ended up as Milo's caretaker.

In Monterey, we lived five blocks away from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and I took Milo down there two or three times a day where he ran & frolicked & had a particular obsession with large pieces of driftwood—bigger than he was!—which he would mouth merrily & try to drag home.

Milo journeyed with us all around the country when we traveled with the circus. And when we ended up in Ithaca & Ben walked out on me, Milo was the most faithful of companions.

Ben abandoned me with all the animals—two dogs, two cats, and a disabled box turtle. I was so destitute, having lost my business, my house, all my possessions, & all my savings, I could barely feed myself & RTT during the half-the-time I played custodial parent, let alone the pets. There was simply nothing I could do for money in Ithaca.

I knew the moment I left Ithaca, I would be able to find work again—except I couldn’t leave Ithaca because I didn’t trust Ben not to let RTT drop out of school. I had to get RTT through high school.

I’d found a house in a village called Freeville, 10 miles outside of Ithaca. The Cement Bungalo! Freeville was the Meth Capital of Tompkins County, but it was situated in a landscape of almost unearthly beauty, and so, my chief recreation—since I couldn’t afford anything else—became hiking miles & miles & miles every day.

I liked following the creeks to spy on the beavers. I became utterly obsessed with beaver civilization. Beaver lodges! Beaver dams!

Milo accompanied me, ever faithfully at my side. And the Meezer, my all but feral cat, would stalk us, trailing unfaithfully at a distance of 10 yards or so.



One thing about the companion animals in my life: They tend to die at moments just before my life is about to make an enormous change.

Thus, Edward Hopper and Dennis Hopper, my two angora bunnies, leapt so high they broke their spines in 1993, just a few days before I was to drive up to Clarion in Seattle.

Clarion in Seattle is where I met Ben.

Being me, I had some notion that I would cancel Clarion, hire a carpenter to make little bunny wheelchairs, & devote the rest of my life to caring for my little lagamorphian paraplegics.

But I got talked out of it.

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I left Ithaca in 2012, less than a week after RTT finally graduated from high school.

All sorts of other things were happening, too.

Like Ben collapsed into an encephalitic coma, which turned out to be related to a virulent case of heretofore undiagnosed Hep C.

For a couple of days, it looked like Ben was going to die right then & there, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do because RTT was not starting at Syracuse University until the fall. Was I gonna have to drag RTT down to the NYC metro for three months? What a nightmare that would be! Because one thing I was absolutely determined was happening: I was gonna get the hell out of Dodge.

But Ben recovered (after a fashion), so phew! Crisis averted.

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RTT found a home for Nimoy, the disabled box turtle.

I was going to take the two cats—Rutger & the Meezer—with me. But I knew I would never find a place to live with two cats and a dog.

So, I’d tried to get Ben to take Milo. And first, Ben said he would, but then in typical Ben fashion, he weaseled out of it. And I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I couldn’t abandon Milo! But neither could I stay in Ithaca.

But then, Milo was diagnosed with cancer.

I had no money to buy him chemotherapy, and anyway, it was unlikely the chemotherapy would have worked. The cancer was very aggressive.

So, the very last thing I did in Ithaca the morning I left was to have Milo put to sleep.
I had to do it alone. RTT & I, at that point, were barely speaking: I guess he blamed me for his father abandoning me. Ben was the parent who never said, No; I was the parent who attempted—unsuccessfully—to impose some kind of order & discipline on his life. Naturally, RTT always preferred Ben.

Milo lay in my arms as the vet injected the euthanasia, and I stroked him & told him all about Doggie Heaven, which is an enormous beach filled with big sticks to drag, and other dogs to scamper & play with, and the beautiful crystal-clear ocean to swim in.

Milo’s eyes were closed.

But just before he died, he opened his eyes, looked deep into my soul, so lovingly & compassionately that I could feel him blessing me.

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The NDE description of heaven is a long white tunnel, filled with light, that you kinda wiggle through like a kid in one of those McDonald’s play areas.

When you make it through to the other side, all your dead family are supposed to be waiting with a big picnic lunch.

My family hated me. None of them are gonna be there on the other side of the white light with a basket lined in red and white checked cloth filled with celestial deviled eggs!

But Milo will be there. And the irascible Meezer. And pawky Rutger. And Dennis Hopper & Edward Hopper.

And together, we will all go to visit the beavers—-who in Heaven live in golden dams and speak English in the most mellifluous voices that resonate like the finest W.H. Auden poetry.