“It is very sweet, though,” Mum added, “the way you care about your puppy. It is like the meme.”
On a global scale, a lot of extremely bad things had happened in the last few years. But on a personal scale, none of them quite beat my mum discovering the internet. “Which meme?”
“You know the meme. Where there is the man and he does not want the dog but then the family, they go against his wishes and get the dog anyway, and this causes a breakdown between the man and his family, which I think is why they are not in the meme. But then, through the pain and loneliness, the man turns to the dog and he finds the solace.”
I was silent for a long moment. “That is the bleakest take on the Dad and Dog meme I have ever heard.”
“It’s a very moving story, Luc, about a man who finds companionship in his lowest moment. Also,” she went on thoughtfully, “it has a deep and tragic irony because the family chooses the dog over the man, and then the man chooses the dog over the family.”
Somehow, like always, Mum had chaos-gremlined her way into being insightful. “Funny you should mention that,” I said. “Because I might be in a photo without Oliver in it.”
Mum nodded understandingly. “None of the photographs have you or Oliver in them. They’re all pictures of the dog.”
“No, I mean, a metaphorical life photograph.”
“Are you seeing things in a funny way again?” asked the woman who’d interpreted the Dad and Dog meme as a searing domestic drama about loss and healing. “I have known Oliver for a long time now, and I do not think he is the kind of man who would make you choose between him and a puppy.”
“And if he is,” added Judy, “you should divorce him. That’s what I did every time.”
I couldn’t tell if Mum and Judy’s inability to stay on topic for sixseconds together made this conversation much easier or completely impossible. “How many times is that?”
“Two or three? Lost count.”
I had follow-up questions. But they were probably best left unanswered. “I don’t think he’s asking me to choose. Not really. If anything, Spud is.”
“Go with the dog,” Judy told me with generational authority. “A dog’ll never let you down.”
“I don’t think Oliver is going to let me down either.”
“That’s what I thought about my fifth husband. Then he went and took up backgammon.”
Definitely best left unanswered. “Everything’s fine,” I denialled. “It’s just Spud gets really sad when we go to bed, and Oliver won’t let him into our room. Which means I have to go downstairs to stop him crying—”
“Why is Oliver crying?” interrupted Mum.
“Thedogis crying.”
She made a Gallic gesture. “That does make more sense.”
“So anyway, I’ve spent the past two nights on my study floor looking after Spud, which means I’m not with Oliver. And that’s sort of the opposite of being in a relationship with someone.”
“Want my advice?” asked Judy, one hundred percent rhetorically. “Ditch the bugger.”
“But I really like Spud,” I protested, squeezing him just a little bit tighter. “This was a big step for me, and I don’t want to unstep it.”
Judy shook her head. “Not Spud. Oliver. A man who won’t let a dog sleep on the bed isn’t a man at all.”
“Okay, but I really,reallylike Oliver. And I don’t think either of us want Spud sleeping on our bed for the rest of his life. We have other things we want to do in bed.”
“Luc,” put in Mum, “if you are talking about sex, you can saysex. It is likegay. It is not a bad word.”
I sighed. “Fine. Oliver and I don’t want Spud sleeping in the bed because that’ll make it harder for us to have gay sex in it. Happy?”
“Oui.”
“Will it?” asked Judy. “Is there a logistical issue I’m not aware of?”
“No,” I replied very, very quickly. “It’s just neither Oliver nor I want to have sex in front of a dog.”
