I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship Read Free Page A

that her newborn daughter is okay until she pinches her, and the baby starts howling.
    In essence, that’s how our dysfunction started.
    Gary and I adopted Marge from a city shelter because, as a happy new couple, we wanted a family. Marge was from a litter of fourteen, which was unceremoniously dumped in a large box in an alley. We were fed a bunch of lies about her—told she would grow to be only fifty pounds, whereas she topped out at nearly eighty-five; told she was a prime candidate for potty training since she always peed on the newspaper, though she would battle a leaky bladder for life—but we picked her largely because, out of the hundreds of abandoned dogs at the shelter, she immediately responded to our voices.
    Our falsetto voices, to be accurate.
    Gary and I often create characters—much like Saturday Night Live cast members do—to skewer the world around us. We did so that day at the shelter, after touring the facility with a hard-edged urban professional in a power suit, a redneck couple whose wife was so hungover she kept pulling her Busch beer bandana over her eyes to “squeeze out the damn light,” and a bosomy woman in a glitter tube top with a tattoo across her chest that read, “Big Enuf 4 Ya?” who was in the market for a dog to provide “a little protection.”
    Thus, that day, Gary and I created Ne-ne (the successful, professional city woman), Connie (the hard-luck, hard-partying gal who couldn’t hold a job), and Trixie (the town whore).
    Standing in front of Marge and her brood, it was quite a while before we unconsciously began doing our characters, each of whom was defined by an oddly high-pitched voice and caustic, snarky, biting wit, almost as if Sarah Silverman had just ingested a helium-filled balloon.
    Marge immediately took notice. And so did we.
    â€œMr. Tutwiler,” Gary said to Marge, as if he were Connie, “git’cher hands off the forklift and back on my ass where they belong!”
    â€œTwenty bucks? Twenty bucks!” I screamed à la Trixie, licking cake-batter-flavored gloss off my lips. “That won’t even get you a flash of my teats and a date to Taco Bell!”
    â€œMy God!” Gary screamed, as the tiny puppy scrambled up our chests and into our arms to kiss our faces, while the others hid. “She loves it! She speaks our language!”
    It was a sign, because very few in either of our lives had, really.
    My older brother, Todd, died when I was thirteen, and though he was the exact opposite of me—a true country boy who loved to fish and hunt and work on motorcycles—we had a special relationship, and often communicated via a secret language.
    â€œIf you ever get into trouble and I’m nearby,” Todd would tell me, “yell ‘Suzuki!’ [his favorite motorcycle], and I’ll be right there.”
    And I did. Many times. And he was always there to protect me.
    Gary lost every man he loved, in quick succession, all of whom used their words as weapons to wound Gary’s heart, kill his faith in the power of love, murder his innocence and optimism until he was no longer needed, and he was left abandoned, empty, alone, unable to speak.
    Yes—though Marge was just a puppy who couldn’t even speak—it seemed nearly miraculous for both of us to stumble upon such an obvious, uplifting sign: Marge symbolized our language of love.
    We immediately attempted to crate train Marge as a puppy—as the shelter, vet, and all our friends instructed—but her sad howling from the family room kept us awake for endless nights, until, finally, blessedly, there was silence.
    But we verbal addicts mistook that sign of success as imminent death, much like Shirley MacLaine, and so Gary and I took turns sleeping on a blanketed air mattress outside her crate, to ensure that our puppy was, indeed, alive. We crammed cramped fingers through the openings in the gate so we could feel the