From across the room, I saw Stephen holding one pug in each hand.
“Laura, look at these!” He had a healthy-looking black one, replete with two eyes, and a cute beige one, also with two eyes.
“Look at this one!” I turned the gooey pug around to face Stephen.
“JESUS!” Stephen startled at the sight of him. He composed himself and asked, “Are you sure that is a dog?”
“He is more dog than you’ll ever be,” I lashed out. The dog’s mouth foam dripped onto my hand.
“Well at least he’s . . . alive, isn’t he?”
“He’s hanging on! Let’s take him home.”
Stephen’s joy at getting a dog quickly surpassed his disgust at my choice of a gooey, one-eyed pug. We spoke to the employee about taking him home. She frowned. “I don’t think you want that one. He can’t, um . . . he can’t see very well.”
“Yes, we want him,” I interjected before Stephen could express any doubts.
The employee picked up another dog. “Have you seen Kathy? Just take her for a spin. Kathy is just awesome. So smart, SO funny. She LOVES to watch TV. Her fav show is Judge Judy. Just don’t even flip the channel while it’s on or she’ll bite your fucking face off.”
I just wanted the goo dog. Who else was going to rescue the pug facing the wall? We signed the paperwork to take home our new dog. We named him Oliver.
We headed to his foster mom’s house to go pick him up, and Oliver was itching his goo-skin like crazy. His foster mom was so friendly and clearly drunk, so when I asked her why he was itching so much, she said, “Oh, he’s just crazy.”
I looked down at Oliver, who was facing a wall again. “Can he see?”
She took another sip from her “coffee” mug. “Completely. That one eye really does the job. He’s just crazy!”
We brought him home and put him in the living room, but he kept bumping into stuff. I looked at Stephen, worried. “I feel . . . like that eye doesn’t work.”
We took him to the vet to get his eyes checked out and learned that he was 100% blind. Also he’s allergic to everything. Okay, that makes sense! We found out that in his last home, the owners kept him in a dark garage and neglected him. With so much time in the dark, he slowly lost his vision. After he became completely blind, he bumped into a sharp object that pierced his eye. The owners checked on him days later, after it had gotten infected and it was too late to save the eye.
Living with Oliver had really changed my perception of dogs. Now when I see a fully working, two-eyed dog that can do things like find his water bowl and not hit his head on everything, I’m just so impressed. What else can you do, work the front desk at a gym? All of the people who had come in contact with Oliver told us he would never do things like a normal dog. He would never be able to go on walks, or play fetch, or poop in the right spots.
I didn’t want anyone to limit Oliver! This dog was going to learn to play fetch. I threw his favorite toy and he would sniff around the living room trying to find it. A minute passed . . . then five . . . then ten. By then I had forgotten we were playing and turned on the TV. And then . . . squeak squeak! He had found it! When Oliver successfully fetches his toy . . . it’s like he’s won the Olympics. It’s like WE won the Olympics.
One day I was working upstairs and heard Oliver crying from the floor below. I came out to see him trapped on the first step of our staircase. He was too scared to go up, and too scared to jump down. I picked him up and brought him upstairs with me.
The next day I came out to the stairs to see Oliver on the third step, crying.
The next day he was on the FIFTH step before he started crying. Would our fantastic blind dog beat the odds and be able to climb a whole staircase?
The answer is yes. He did it once. And then he might have gotten overwhelmed when I screamed for ten minutes, “WHO’S A GOOD BOY?” After that, he never tried again, but who needs mobility when you can just get airlifted up the stairs by humans?
Oliver is a real rags-to-riches story. He was a rescue, and now he has forty-thousand followers on Instagram telling him what a good boy he is every minute of every day.
I don’t know if he can hear me anymore. We used to clap and then he could find us, but now he doesn’t really respond to sounds.
That’s okay. He still has normal dog experiences like going for walks (we carry him around in a bag because he is too scared to walk) and visiting dog parks (he sits in the center of the field feeling overwhelmed and foaming at the mouth) and playing with Allen and Maggie (Maggie hides from him and Allen boxes him in the face and Oliver gets scared because he can’t see where the blows are coming from).
If I was still drinking and using, I would never have thought to rescue an animal. I never wanted to take care of any being other than myself. It was always me first—I needed to be able to do what I wanted when I wanted to. The biggest part of my sobriety was changing from self-seeking to being of service to others. “Others” includes carrying my very special Oliver to his water bowl as often as he needs. I’ve gotten to experience so much joy living with these animals. They’re my goofy-looking family of misfits, and I wouldn’t change them for the world.
Sometimes I look at them and I feel so lucky. I’m lucky I found Stephen. I’m lucky he spontaneously agreed to cats. I’m lucky Oliver isn’t gooey anymore and I can take good care of him and all his needs. All of these things feel like the gifts of sobriety to me; reminders of why I’m so happy to be who I’ve become.
CHAPTER 11
Walking Through Fear
I’m a completely rational person. Well, okay, I am NOW. But . . . certain things just get to me. Before I started creating my own content, I was a working actor, supporting myself solely by booking jobs. I didn’t give myself a plan B, and that worked. But . . . I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I was auditioning all the time, I’d book a pilot and it wouldn’t get picked up, I’d get a call back and then they’d offer the role to someone else. It was this constant anxiety and stress and lack of control over my career.
When I booked a role, I’d feel this urge for a more interesting character to dig into. I’d been acting so long, every character felt like repetition. I wanted better lines and more complexity, but you know what? Who cares! Give me another airhead model to play because THAT’S APPARENTLY ALL I CAN DO.
See? The grind was getting to me.
I wanted so badly to be on the next Friends, to be the next Lisa Kudrow. I got so angry I wasn’t on a sitcom that I did not want sitcoms on in the house.
Stephen loves sitcoms though. So . . . he had to watch them secretly in the bathroom. My eyes would narrow if I were getting dressed in the bedroom and could hear the faint sounds of . . . “IS THAT A LAUGH TRACK?”
“What? No! It’s just fetish porn!”
I’d burst into the bathroom and snatch the iPad from his hands. “The IT Crowd, Stephen?!”
“I’m so sorry. Chris O’Dowd just gets me.”
I was SO angry I wasn’t on a show like that, that I had to GO FOR A TWENTY-TWO-MINUTE WALK.
After one of these meltdowns, Stephen came home with a camera. He handed it to me. “You have characters. You can write. Create your own stuff. Post videos on YouTube. Think of your own series and shoot it.”