Two men and a poodle

By ARMISTEAD MAUPIN

Some dogs, I'm told, like to stick around when their owners are making love. They'll sit stone still and watch the proceedings with deadpan intensity, as if collecting evidence for some evil congressional subcommittee. Not Willie. As soon as human passion rears its ugly head -- and he has an uncanny eye for the precise moment -- he flings himself off the bed and skulks away to another room. This is jealousy, I suppose, mingled with mortification, though I'd like to believe there's an element of courtesy involved as well. In any event, he comes rocketing back only seconds after the deed is done, reclaiming his rightful place between us with breathless little yelps of relief and celebration. You'd think we'd just returned from a month in Europe.

Kissing is another matter entirely. If Willie finds us smooching in the kitchen before dinner, he'll proceed to bark indignantly until we've stopped. "Break it up, you jerks," he seems to be saying. "There are three of us here, remember?" I'm sure the late Mrs. Woodhouse would have found something deeply disturbing about this behavior, but Terry and I are rather charmed by it. We've even named it, I'm loathe to admit -- the Kiss Patrol -- and have come to accept these yapping sessions as the poodle's only viable way of asserting his place in the family.

Yes, he's a poodle. We don't broadcast that fact widely, since there are all those lingering stereotypes about homos and their Fifi-dogs. Willie's not a Fifi-dog; he's butch in the way that short men sometimes are, tight as a bedspring and buoyantly scrappy. His color is officially red, the rich brick red of an Irish setter, and since we've never abused him with a topiary haircut, most people see him as a sort of animated Teddy bear, a living Steiff creature. He's quite a manly little dog, really.

Willie and I have been together two years longer than Terry and I have. I bought him 12 years ago from a man who had a serious fixation on Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. Poor Willie -- who's a miniature, not a sturdy standard like Charley -- had spent the first six months of his life touring America in the back of a van, an experience that left him with a lifelong distaste for vehicular travel. His previous owner had called him K-Y, a lame joke I might have retained for the sake of continuity had I not all too vividly pictured myself in Dolores Park yelling out the name of the popular lubricant. So I rechristened him Willie, in part because I Iiked the simplicity of it, in part because the Princess of Wales had recently given birth to a son named William.

The new moniker was fine by him, though of course we never fully obliterated the old one. For a while I would meet strangers on the street, people from Willie's Steinbeckian past, who would recognize that auburn coat and blurt out his maiden name, and he'd be all over them like a cheap suit. Sometimes even today, just for drill, Terry will utter a soft "K-Y" while Willie lies snoozing on the sofa, and Willie will look up and hoist his ears in befuddled recognition, like an old man hearing the nickname his buddies used to call him in the army.

As fate would have it, I met Terry on Willie's third birthday, though I didn't take note of this oddity until a year or so later, when I was studying the dog's family tree. Now October 16 is a big deal at our house, the only high holy day we still observe with any degree of regularity -- our mutual anniversary/birthday. I know this is way too cute for most people to handle, but what the hell. When the universe sends you such a blazingly obvious sign, such a cornball bolt out of the blue, there's not much you can do but acknowledge it.

When Terry moved from Atlanta into my three-room cottage above the Castro, the dog was as thrilled about it as I was. After all, this new guy brought him treats and rubbed the insides of his ears and engaged him in long, intimate conversation. And Willie showed his gratitude by learning a stunning array of new tricks: how to circle the block off the leash, how to sit, how to wait dutifully at the curb until Terry gave the signal to cross the street. It was a new era suddenly, rife with possibilities. A certain easy symmetry had come to our household, and Willie knew it.

We've moved twice since then, first to a walk-up penthouse in the Mission District, where Willie entered middle-age and began to write his memoirs on the upholstery. Then, last year, Terry and I bought a house on the edge of Sutro Forest, thereby adding dirt and shrubbery to Willie's growing roster of urinary pleasures. He's become grumpier with age, I'm afraid. The little Pit Poodle can't walk to the mail-box without attempting, however unsuccessfully, to terrorize the neighbors. At home, though his ursine charm remains intact, he's grown ever more demanding, never satisfied with a two-handed backrub when a four-handed one is possible.

Who knows what's behind all this need? I suspect he never fully recovered from a time in the early '90s when Terry and I spent our winters away from him. On a larky impulse at the end of a long book tour we'd bought a farmhouse on the South Island of New Zealand. Since Willie would never have endured the brutal six-month quarantine required by that country, we decided to leave him home with our friend Steve, who, in spite of serious concerns of his own, had sweetly agreed to house-sit.

Willie adored Steve, and enjoyed his company immensely, but the dog pined for us nightly, Steve said, waiting solemnly at the top of the stairs for our imminent return. We were gone five months the first year, three the second, building our nest on a golden slope above the South Pacific. And though we strung a rope hammock and planted a lemon tree and left saucers of milk for the hedgehogs, the place never seemed completely ours without Willie there. A portrait of our absent companion, sent to us by our artist friend Darryl, became the chief icon of our Kiwi house. In the style of a hokey '50s postcard, its message read: "GREETINGS FROM WILLIE, POODLE OF ENCHANTMENT."

So maybe Willie has a right to be nervous. He knows how much it hurts to be left behind and doesn't plan on letting it happen again. Though we sold the place in New Zealand almost two years ago, Willie still keeps a wary eye on the hall closet, where the dreaded black nylon luggage is stored. And when Terry heads on off on his frequent day-long rounds of shops and doctors and drugstores, and doesn't return by nightfall, the dog will sit anxiously by the door, inventing scenarios.

At times like those, I wish we had a common language. I would tell Willie not to worry, that Terry will be home any minute now, no worse for wear, that the evening will still be ours to share. But I would also have to tell him, as best I could, about the dark constancy that has shaped our lives for the decade the three of us have been together. I would explain why Steve never comes to visit anymore and why, in spite of all the good things we both feel about Terry, we might not always have him with us in the bed.

"Kiss Patrol" is reprinted from Dog People: Writers and Artists on Canine Companionship, recently published by Artisan. © 1995 Armistead Maupin.

http://www.salon.com/12nov1995/feature/armistead.html

"Tales of the City" Peabody Award

The "Tales of the City" miniseries won a Peabody award in 1995. The Award "...recognize(s) distinguished achievement and meritorious public service by TV and radio stations, networks, producing organizations, individuals and the World Wide Web." (http://www.peabody.uga.edu/)

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March 31, 1995

The PBS mini-series "Armistead Maupin's 'Tales of the City' " won a Peabody Award today for its "courageous depiction" of gay life in San Francisco before AIDS.

NBC's "E.R.," "Frasier" and "Mad About You" were also among the 31 winners. NBC was the only network recognized for a prime-time entertainment series.

ABC won for a "Prime Time Live" report about errors at laboratories that test for cervical cancer and for a "20-20" story on a woman's fight to save victims of anorexia.

The six-hour "Tales of the City" depicts the freewheeling sex and drugs of San Francisco in 1976.

The Peabodys, administered by the University of Georgia, honor television excellence.

These are the other winners of the 1994 George Foster Peabody Awards:

"Break the Silence: Kids Against Child Abuse," CBS, New York, and Arnold Shapiro Productions, Santa Monica, Calif.

"CBS Reports: D-Day," CBS News, New York.

"Tobacco Stories," National Public Radio, Washington.

"Wade in the Water: African-American Sacred-Music Traditions," National Public Radio and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington.

"The Battle of the Bulge," WGBH-TV, Boston, and Lennon Documentary Group for "The American Experience."

"F. D. R," WGBH-TV, Boston, and David Grubin Productions for "The American Experience."

"Malcolm X: Make It Plain," WGBH-TV, Boston, Blackside and Roja for "The American Experience."

"Barbra Streisand: The Concert," J.E.G. Productions, presented on Home Box Office.

"MTV Unplugged," MTV Networks, New York.

"Nick News," Nickelodeon and Lucky Duck Productions, New York, a news magazine for children.

"Schizophrenia: Voices of an Illness," Lichtenstein Creative Media, New York.

"The Rise and Fall of Vee-Jay," WRKS-FM, New York, about one of America's most influential black-owned record companies.

"Fascinatin' Rhythm," WXXI-FM, Rochester, a depiction of American culture through popular music.

"Buddy Check 12," WTLV-TV, Jacksonville, Fla., a public-service program.

"Moon Shot," Turner Original Productions-Varied Directions for Turner Entertainment Networks, Atlanta.

"Normandy: The Great Crusade," Discovery Communications, Bethesda, Md.


"Sewer Solvent Scandal," KGAN-TV, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, an investigation of city government fraud.

"D-Day and 50 Years," WVXU-FM, Cincinnati, Ohio.

"China: Beyond the Clouds," WETA, Washington, and Channel 4, London, a River Films Production for National Geographic Television.

"Reflections on Elephants," National Geographic Television, Washington, for the Public Broadcasting Service.

"Just Because: Tales of Violence, Dreams of Peace," KSBW-TV, Salinas, Calif., a program on youth violence.

"Rwanda," KGO-TV, San Francisco, a report on the Rwandan civil war.

"The Atomic Bombshell," KSEE-TV, Fresno, Calif., an investigative report implicating the Air Forces in a nuclear-weapons accident 40 years ago.

"Fat Chance," National Film Board of Canada, presented on TV-Ontario, a program depicting the problems of being overweight.

"Fourways Farm," a Case TV Production for Channel 4, London, a children's program dealing with complex issues of life and death.

"Maupin's 'Tales' Wins a Peabody Award - New York Times." The New York Times. 1995. HighBeam Research. 13 Dec. 2008