← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
Too Hot For Radio: Pam Houston "Jackson Is Only One of My Dogs"
00:33:48
Bonnie Milligan reads author Pam Houston's short story about the blurred lines between a boyfriend and a dog.
Loading summary
Transcript34 lines
- [00:00]
Pam Houston
For 140 years, MultiCare has been in Washington prioritizing long term solutions, partnering with local communities and expanding access to care. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@mycare.org My dog Max loves chewing on my favorite pair of shoes almost as much as he loves his Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula Dry Dog Food. Seriously, he never leaves a crumb. And I love it too. Because it's made with high quality protein, antioxidant packed fruits and nutrient rich veggies. Blue Buffalo foods are made with the superior ingredients your dog needs to thrive. Can your dog food say that? Visit feedbluefood.com to learn more.
- [00:46]
Aparna Nancharla
Welcome to my Hot Heads Friends, friends of friends, friends I haven't met yet, and most importantly, any talking animals pretending they're not listening to ensure their owners suspect nothing. Aparna It's Aparna Nancharla with you once again with an episode of Too Hot for Radio, the show where month after month we answer the question that nobody asked what if some super hot fanfiction won a National Book Award? That's right, the short stories performed on this podcast are smart, literary, and often naughty. You decide which parts of the story are which in this love, sex, the great outdoors, and oh so much more. It's a story in which our narrator has 99 problems, and the vast majority of them are in fact, boyfriend related. The remaining problems relate to her dog, Jackson. And Jackson is a male dog, so a bitch is still not in fact, one of those problems. This story is by Pam Houston. Houston is a novelist, memorist and short story writer whose titles include Cowboys Are My Weakness, Waltzing the Cat, and her latest autobiographical volume, without exception. If you've not read her stories, she's got a very recognizable authorial voice. This story has some slightly surreal imagery and a playful syntax, and there are a lot of blurred lines between the boyfriend and the dog. Which brings me to my next point, my warning about the things that may have kept this story from airing on the radio. Warning. Sexy talk. And also dogs doing weird stuff. Sexy talk I'm not too concerned about with you hotheads. I bet even if the story had universal trigger words like moist and throbbing, you'd be unfazed. That's not the problem. It's the dogs. People. The dogs. People love their dogs and they get weirded out if even fictional dogs get injured or sad or weird. And this fictional dog is real weird. Like kiss your mother on the teeth weird. Like doing a line dance to ABBA weird. So I'm just saying there's sexy talk, there are weird dogs, and I trust you can handle both. Reading the story is Bonnie Milligan. She's an actor who appeared on Broadway in Head Over Heels and recently wowed audiences as Aunt Deborah in Kimberly Akimbo, a performance which earned her a Tony Award. She's also appeared in series including and Just like that, as well as Search Party. After the reading, Stay with us as one of our producers. Matthew Love will be speaking with author Pam Houston about Cowboys Weaknesses and the.
- [03:43]
Matthew Love
Weaknesses of Cowboys, a KFC Tale in the Pursuit of Flavor if the Colonel could read all your Internet comments over the last few years, he'd say, people sure love my sweet smoky KFC Original Honey Barbecue and it's time we bring it back so they can put that bold tangy sauce on their favorite orders. He'd also say, thanks for calling my chicken Goaded bussin and Low key fire bro. The Colonel lived so we could chicken back because you begged for it. KFC Original Honey Barbecue.
- [04:12]
Pam Houston
Prices and participation may vary while supplies.
- [04:14]
Last Try Angel Soft for your tushy. It's made by Angels Soft and Strong. Budget friendly. The choice is simple. Pick up a pack today. Angel Soft Soft and strong. Simple.
- [04:31]
Aparna Nancharla
Now Bonnie Milligan performs Jackson Is Only One of My Dogs by Pam Hous.
- [04:41]
Pam Houston
Jackson is only one of my dogs. I have a dog named Jackson who between the ages of 4 and 5 in people years became suicidal in a period of less than 12 months. Jackson jumped out of the back of a speeding pickup truck, ate a 14 pound bag of non organic garden fertilizer and and threw himself between the jaws of 150 pound Russian wolfhound. Similarly, when I turned 28 years old I started to date a man whose favorite song was Desperado. He was an outdoorsman in his heart, but for a living he rebuilt old homes with a passion that was uncanny and never wasted on me. He had skin stretched so tight across his muscles I sometimes thought his legs would pop. He was smart and selfish and lied by omission. I was addicted to him like cough syrup and I didn't respect his mind. My friend Deborah said he's not an altogether bad person. He just has no imagination. And of course that has made him a little mean. For two whole years I danced around my lover like a top, like wheat grass, like light. I stripped the linoleum off all of his hardwood floors. I learned to snowshoe and fly fish and box. He would finger the rose colored trout that I caught. He would run his hands along the wood's fine grain. He would look through me at a window that needed painting and through it to a meadow, a mountain. Some sport he hadn't yet tried. I told Deborah about the passion, the hours in bed, the best I actually said this sex that I had ever had. And as I said the words, I believed them to be true. I didn't tell her about the time he got out of bed during foreplay and I found him 20 minutes later, naked and caulking the bathtub. I didn't tell her that in all the times he's been inside me, he's never once met my eyes. Jackson is only one of my dogs. The other dog, the good dog, whose name is Haley, passed through her early adulthood without any discernible personality changes. Haley is matronly and brindle colored with a rear end that is slightly out of alignment. Jackson is shaggy and blonde, all ears and feathers, while Jackson is clearly a human being trapped in in a dog's body. One day he lost his senses and buried a bone in the yard, and I was no more embarrassed for him than he was for himself. Hailey knows what she is and is proud of it. What she likes to do, more than anything is to get her belly wet and then lie around in the dirt. Jackson is athletic, graceful, obnoxious and filled with conceit, while Haley is slow, a little fat and gentle to her bones. Jackson also has a truck neurosis. His whole life is centered around making sure that the truck I drive doesn't leave without him. When he's in the house, he keeps one eye on it in the driveway. When we're on the road, I never have to tell him to stay. It's where he likes to eat and drink, where he wants to spend his afternoons. It's the only place he'll let himself stay. Sleep soundly. Sometimes when we're backpacking and 30 miles from anywhere, I'll say, go get in the truck, Jackson, just to play with his mind. By the time I turned 28 years old, I'd broken five major bones in my body. The only appendage that is still straight is my right arm. People say, are your bones particularly brittle? They say, did you drink enough milk as a child? But it's my lifestyle, the sports I push myself into whitewater rafting and stadium show jumping and backcountry skiing, the kinds of good times broken bones are bound for. Deborah says it's because of my lover. But I was like this before he came along, and I know it's something more basic than love. The only list that's longer than the things I've done is the list of things I've yet to do.
- [09:10]
Aparna Nancharla
Do.
- [09:10]
Pam Houston
Kayak, hang, glide, parachute. I think I want to learn how to fly, deborah says. Isn't it time for you to think about having a baby? I am a dog mother, I say, and I can still live my life. Yeah, deborah says, whatever that is. I have always had a better relationship with Jackson than with Haley. Part of it, I guess, is that you always love the problem child a little more. And part of it is the squeaky wheel thing. Haley is simply a low maintenance dog. Jackson, on the other hand, is a charm machine. He's cost me over $2,000 in vet bills. I don't even keep track of the money that goes to the dog catcher and who gets all the treats. Just ask Kaylee. About once a month I have to go and bail Jackson out at the pound. I walk into the dark, urine splattered corridor to find him resting comfortably, paws crossed. He's bullshitting with the malamute next to him. What are you in for this time? Dogs at large or something worth talking about? He raises one furry eyebrow in my direction. Oh, hi, mom, he says.
- [10:25]
What kept you?
- [10:27]
Only once in Haley's seven year life has the dog catcher picked her up for loitering at the the end of my driveway and taken her to jail. I was in the bathtub when it happened and she must have thought he was coming to visit us or she wouldn't have wiggled up to him, wouldn't have put that one fateful paw into the street. I was at the pound in minutes and when I looked through the little glass window and I saw her, she saw me. She made a noise like naked women burning in the fires of hell when my horse's hooves met and shattered the bones in my left foot forearm, I didn't see them coming. He was on the lunge line. We just changed leads and I was walking back to the center of the circle he would make around me. And then I was lying on the ground, my hand flopped over backwards, still connected to me by muscle and flesh and yet separate somehow. Not only the fractures of the 18 or 19 bone chips the doctors had to remove, but another separation, a detachment made necessary by pain. It was something not wholly mine anymore, like a child, like a lover. It was and was not my arm. When the paramedics came and tried to pull my jacket off over my head, I asked them to please use the scissors. My jacket, my sweatshirt, my flannel shirt fell around me in strips if they're in enough pain, the nurse with the scissors said said, they'll even let us cut their hair. After the operation, after the implanting of the two steel plates, the 14 screws and the piece of cadaver from the bone bank, my lover, the one whose favorite song was Desperado, dedicated himself to me like a husband, like a mother, like a best friend. He cooked and cleaned and read to me and washed my hair in the bathtub. And he said, I wish it could always be this way. Of course he does. Deborah said, you're helpless and he's in control. It didn't last. My arm improved, as it was bound to. I said, is there anything I could do, outside of shattering bones that would make you want to treat me like this again? A few months later, Jackson got arrested outside a shopping mall on an attacking dog charge. I was inside trying on a dress for somebody else's wedding when I heard the barking. By the time I got there, this was the scene. A screaming 8 year old, his outraged father, a security guard with a bully club, and Jackson in the pickup, wagging his tail and barking like a madman. The outraged father said, your dog bit my son. The security guard said, ma', am, you're lucky I didn't have a pistol or your dog will be lying in a pool of blood. I put Jackson on his leash and he sat like a statue at my feet. The cops came. One of them was a flirt. Nobody could find a mark on that little boy's hand, on either of his hands. And the little boy had forgotten which hand Jackson bit. I showed them my rabies papers. The animal control officer said, this does. Dog would have to be impounded for 10 days. I said, even if he didn't bite anybody. He said, rabies is a very tricky disease. He said, It's $10 a day plus court costs, plus fines at least 150 for attacking dog. The little boy was in the cop car making the lights go round. A lady in a blue suit stopped to talk to Jackson. She surveyed the scene. Jackson looked at her as though he was Clark Gable. She leaned into the window of the cop car and said, this little boy, what goes around comes around. And one day a great big German shepherd is going to bite off your hand. I told you Jackson has that effect on people. The animal control officer led the lady in the blue suit away. He took Jackson's leash and asked him to jump into the big box on the back of his truck. Jackson took one look over his shoulder at me and jumped. Anything, Mom. Anything for a Ride. For the first time, I noticed Haley curled quietly and almost asleep on top of the spare tire in the back of my truck. Frankly, I said to Jackson, this is getting a little old. My friend Deborah has a theory that women are the real male chauvinists. You won't believe it, she says. You should read more fairy tales. The man goes out and performs a heroic and spectacular deed, and the whole time the woman is at home waiting for him to return to kiss and awaken her, waiting for her life to begin. It's not the way I would say it, but I can't say she's entirely wrong. In spite of that, I find a new lover. He is kinder, I'm guessing, than God. He's the type of man who knows that women have a secret, and even though he understands that, he can't know what it is, he's smart enough to want to live in its light. To the best of my knowledge, he's never heard of the eagles. We plant a garden together way too early in the season, not because we're ignorant about the weather, but because our need for a symbol outweighs our fear for the plants. On nights that threaten to freeze, we make paper hats for the tomatoes and peppers in our garden. It looks like a bunch of British Navy men buried to their eyes. I want to tell Deborah that he speaks only French when we make love, even though it's not true. Okay, because it's not true. Deborah says you need this right now. But this affair is not what she thinks. Good sex with a nice man. It is a whole universe in there, and I want to tell her I'm revising my list. Skydiving and hang gliding are gone. Babies, therefore, are higher. Everything about sex, even the simplicity of an orgasm, seems to be more complicated by all the gazing into each other's eyes. High density is a phrase I can't shake from my mind afterwards, before sleep, with his body curled around mine, the only image I can hold onto is this. Once, when Jackson and I were hiking, we found a cow at least 20 days dead and bloated. Jackson tore its swollen belly open with his toenails and crawled inside its rib cage and wouldn't come out all afternoon. All that night and part of the next day hits me in the morning as I'm taking the hats off the tomatoes. This is a kind of flying.
- [17:54]
Matthew Love
Hello, Pam. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for being here. So we've just heard the story. Jackson is only one of my dogs, which is a fan favorite. When you go back and you revisit it now, what strikes you most about it?
- [18:16]
Pam Houston
Well, the thing I remember about it is the argument I had with the great Carol Haucksmith, my editor, about whether that. Whether the collection Cowboys are My weakness could bear two second person short stories. That was back when Lori Moore had sort of brought second person to our attention as a strategy. And I was so in love with Lori Moore. And I wrote how to Talk to a Hunter after Lori Moore, and that story was in that same collection. And then Jackson was only one of my dogs wanted to be in second person. And so there was a. A massive fight over that. So that's the first thing, the very first thing that comes to mind, you know, as you bring it up now, literally 30 years later. I think that I am currently working on a collection of animal essays. That's my next book that's going to be published. And I was thinking to myself something like, I have been trying to get at this, you know, to get at the essentialness of animals and pets, but all animals in our lives, all of my writing life. And I have finally, I finally think that's okay, you know, like, I finally think it's okay to write deeply into this connection with animals because animals see us unmasked, you know, like language, much as we love it as writers, is such a mask, you know, it's the way we protect ourselves from everything, you know, and animals see us and love us without the mask of language in between us. And to me, that sort of love, like everyone wants to be loved that way. And in that story I was trying to get at sort of the two kinds of love, you know, the Jackson version of love and the Haley version of love. And they, they were representing different sorts of men I was choosing at the time, et cetera, et cetera, you know, so that's what that story was about. But thinking on it now, all these years later, I think, you know, I was. I always understood that relationship as so essential to my own personhood and my own well being that animals have always showed me who I am and who I should strive to be.
- [21:11]
Aparna Nancharla
Yeah.
- [21:12]
Matthew Love
Oh gosh. And see, and that's what that's really is, was one of my questions is I wanted ask you about one thing struck me when you were, when you were saying that. You said you feel like you're able to be in that place now, to be able to have that conversation now. What do you think is different about the conversation that you're having in these essays versus then like if something kept you from having that conversation, what was the thing that kept you?
- [21:38]
Pam Houston
I think it was easy for me to write about my animals. And, you know, I had. Was fresh out of grad school and thought that anything easy was suspect. You know, I think we're sort of taught in grad school that if we're not bleeding, you know, we're doing it wrong. And for me, that came so naturally and simply to write deeply into my connection with animals and also, frankly, deeply into them. You know, like, I could. I could give an animal thoughts or dialogue or motivations often more easily than I could human characters because I understood them better than I understood human characters. And I always thought of it as cheating somehow. You know, I always thought like, well, I do this so naturally. And the writers I admired at the time. I want to say the name Amy Hempel because she did that so well. You know, both Lori Moore and Amy Helpel are sort of my immediate elders, and her book in the Gates of the Animal Kingdom was so influential to me, and she so effortlessly went into animals and our connection to animals, and I thought, okay, well, this is done. Somebody can do this. But in my grad program and in my immediate surroundings, it was like you were deficient somehow. You know, it's like when people don't understand, when you grieve a dog that. The way you grieve a person. But of course you grieve a dog because a dog loved you without your mask in this simple, complete and total way. You know, I hope that everybody gets loved in their lives as much as my dogs have loved me, you know, because it's been. It's been mind and soul expanding to be loved like that and to be loved separate from my fluency with language. It's the closest we ever get to being loved just for being. Just for existing.
- [23:41]
Matthew Love
I think part of the fun for me of reading the story is, like, how carefully articulated the animal, as you mentioned, like, how much more carefully articulated the animals are than the. You know, in particular, the men, but the. The human characters in general. But I have to ask, like, was there a special dog on which Jackson was modeled or. Or informed by?
- [24:04]
Pam Houston
Yes, his name was Jax. I mean, you know, if cowboys are my weakness. The volume were published today. We would call it Autofiction. Almost everything that happens in that book, Tip to Tail, is, you know, really happened to me, you know, with, of course, a couple notable changes or, you know, combat combining characters or whatever. But no, Jackson was Jackson. Jackson was an Airedale sheepdog, mutt, and really my first dog and the first Love of my life, you know, and he had a lot of opinions. And then Haley was more of a lab who came from the Durango pound and you know, was an easy keeper.
- [24:51]
Matthew Love
As they say, where the story lands, you know, it's. I think there's many ways in my mind go like, Jackson could fight a bear and that would be way of going out. But instead Jackson chooses to imprison himself in this cow carcass and this dead thing and refuses to come out. And the narrator sees this like kind of ironically as an escape, like, oh, it's like flying. And so I'm wondering like, like, should we as readers, is there a moment in which we should have hope that our narrator will ever choose that risk of intimacy over like kind of self harm or self imprisonment in some way?
- [25:30]
Pam Houston
I don't want to answer it simply or like a smart aleck. I think this story is very much about that narrator who was certainly me imagining a future where she wouldn't crawl into the cow carcass. Yes, I do think that's very much what that story is about. Even though could I have articulated that? Could my 30 year old self, my 28 year old self have articulated that to me or a therapist? I doubt it at the time, but yes. I mean many of those stories, you know, it's funny because that book, Cowboys are my Weakness, you know, God love it. It gave me my entire career and I am so grateful. And to this day people come up to me and they say, well, I loved Deep Creek, but you know, Cowboys is my favorite. And I think, well, thank you very much. I don't remember having written it, you know, but. And yet, you know, I love that young woman who was fighting for her life, you know, and finding ways to survive in animal metaphors and wilderness metaphors. And so for sure she knew that one day I was going to choose against the cow carcass and I just had to live that long.
- [26:51]
Matthew Love
Well, and on that note, to take a half a step back, if the, if it is, you know, truly close to auto fiction and cowboys were the weakness at the time, if you were to write another, you know, collection of relationship stories, what would be the weakness? Is there a weakness where cowboys were.
- [27:10]
Pam Houston
I wouldn't call it a weakness. Now that's the gift of age. I would find another word. And of course, cowboys, you know, were not cowboys in the cowboy sense. They were outdoorsmen who couldn't commit. Basically, that's what cowboys means in that sentence. But you know, I said something to my friend just this morning, my Very, very good husband. My finally a good husband husband and my sort of chosen mom are going to be on a plane together that's leaving from Newark. And my friend said, oh, my God, like, what if they both crash because it's Newark? And I thought about it for a second and I said, well, that would be terrible, but I would get 100 dogs. And that's like. That strikes me as the answer to your question. Like this commitment to animals, which, you know, is in my life, because I'm finishing a book right now. And this idea that I finally feel absolutely free to unapologetically write about animals and not as much humans, although of course, the humans are. Throughout that book, the new book, it's that I might just become that crazy old lady, you know, who has 100 dogs and maybe 35 horses, you know, like, I could do that. I could go that direction. And that's the only weakness, you know, or obsession or deep love and passion that, that I. That I have replaced cowboys with.
- [28:53]
Matthew Love
I love it. And you know, Newark aside, disaster pending aside, like a hundred dogs, I'm already in for that collection. I am in. I am on board the collection, not playing into it, but I wanted to ask you, before we got on, you mentioned that you are about to teach a class about the best short stories of all time. You know, that is our wheelhouse sounded very exciting. Will you tell us a little bit about what that class is?
- [29:24]
Pam Houston
Yes. My friend TJ Zark has launched a kind of a creative space support for creatives called Pie for Breakfast. And the idea being that you do your artistic life first, like you eat the pie first, and you don't wait till everything else is over until you do that. And she asked me, what class have you never gotten to teach that you would love to teach that you could teach through my platform? And I said, well, you know, my first and last love is the short story. Always has been, always will be. I will always think of myself as a short story writer, even though I've written many other forms. I will always think that short stories are the purest form of literary art. And so I'm going to teach this short story class where we're going to read. It was only going to be one, and then I couldn't limit it to 12, but we're going to read 24 stories over the course of a year, and they are just, in my opinion, the best short stories. And. And every one of them is a story that makes me so ecstatic, I can hardly talk about it. So that'll be fun for me to find ways to talk about it. And then there's also going to be a writing component for those who want it, who want to, in the course of that deep study of, you know, these great short stories, write their own great short story. And we'll have like a little workshop component. Halfway through the year, we'll workshops some stories and then at the end of the year, we'll workshop the second draft of these stories. So the idea being that you would walk away with a much improved knowledge of contemporary short fiction and a great short story of your own, if you want both of those. But we welcome readers as well who just want to immerse in the form.
- [31:20]
Matthew Love
Gosh, wow, I'm ready for it. I'm in. Can you just dish a little bit and tell us like one or two of the stories that you have chosen and why. Why you chose them?
- [31:32]
Pam Houston
The first story I wrote down is a story by Charles Baxter called Loyalty. It's from his collection. There's something I want you to do. And it's a perfect story. And then, you know, obvious. Sonny's Blues, you know, is another one that's just, I think, one of the greatest stories of all time. There's a few of those. A lot of them are very particular to me. So one of the stories that completely changed my life was a Russell Banks story called Sarah, A Type of Love Story, which is sort of a famous unreliable narrator story and uses first person, second person and third person to great effect. That was a story that kind of made me as a writer. There's a story by a former student of mine. It's called Playing metal gear solid 5 colon, the Phantom Pain. You know that story?
- [32:37]
Matthew Love
Yes, we read that story on selected shorts. We read it recently. And just an incredible story.
- [32:43]
Pam Houston
Jamil Koch, he's. He's a former student. And, you know, the fact that I fell completely in love with a story that is about a video game, which of course it's, as you know, it's about way more than a video game. But I don't even understand what the title means. Like, I am so not in that world. The title was completely mysterious to me. And then reading it and then wanting to just immediately go back to the first page and read it again was, you know, especially revealing of its greatness. That I could not. Yeah, I couldn't get enough of a story that is essentially about a video game.
- [33:23]
Matthew Love
Just because our. Our time is fairly limited. I do want to ask, like, how if can people get involved with this class on their own like and what is the way in which they would do that if they want, if they wanted to.
- [33:36]
Pam Houston
You can sign up through something called the Pie for Breakfast Club. That's all you know, run together pie for breakfast club.com and if you go there, you'll see the organization and then if you just scroll down a little it says classes. And this is her first class. She's just started this thing and this is her first class. So it'll be easy to find on that website.
- [34:01]
Matthew Love
That sounds lovely. I think, I think it's right up our listeners alley. Pam, thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for talking about this story. Or looking forward to 100 Dogs, the new collection and the animal essays at the same time.
- [34:17]
Pam Houston
Sounds good.
- [34:21]
Aparna Nancharla
Wow. Bow wow. We've done it. And I knew you could hot heads. You're like the U.S. postal Service. No, no, not antiquated. And always trying to get me to use coupons for some reason. I mean the other stuff. Neither rain nor, nor sleet nor a weird dog chilling in a cow carcass will keep you from your appointed rounds. So as always, thank you for that. Our show is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Mary Shimkin. Our podcast producer and editor is Colleen Pelissier. This episode was recorded at Symphony Space in New York City by Miles B. Smith. Matthew Love is our consulting producer. Our theme song is by Poddington Bear. I'm Aparna Nancarla. Thanks for joining us. For selected shorts, Too Hot for Radio.
- [35:19]
Matthew Love
It's Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Lifelock is here with tips to help protect your identity. Use strong passwords, set up multi factor authentication and report phishing scams. And for comprehensive identity protection, Lifelock is your best choice. Lifelock alerts you to suspicious uses of your personal information and also fixes identity theft. Guaranteed or your money back. Stay smart, stay safe and stay protected with a 30 day free trial at LifeLock.com Special offer terms apply.