The Puppy Abuser and the Flash of Anger

The teacher at one of the Buddhist centers I belong to devotes most of his dharma talks to the subject of anger. He’s always quoting Shantideva, an 8th Century Indian Buddhist teacher who always cautioned against bad tempers. His favorite Shantideva quote comes from the tenth chapter of Shantideva’s poem A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:

Good works gathered in a thousand ages,
Such as deeds of generosity,
Or offerings to the blissful ones (buddhas) –
A single flash of anger shatters them all.

That’s one radical statement! Thousands of ages of good deeds shattered by a single flash of anger?

Yet experiences like the one I had yesterday lead me to believe it’s true.

Julius and I had decided to take Eastern Car Service to Soho instead of the F train. Even if we had taken the subway, though, the universe might have still set up a trial like the one I had when we were a mile or so away from the Brooklyn Bridge.

We were stuck in a traffic jam on Broadway coming up on Houston, where our driver would be turning left. Right up ahead of our car, a blonde woman in white shorts and a spanking white t-shirt had been riding her ten-speed bicycle up against the curb. She had a white Labrador puppy on a leash too. On a jam-packed sidewalk, where pedestrians could barely move, a puppy who could barely keep from tripping over its own paws was being dragged by the neck by a woman riding a ten-speed down a street where cars were barely moving.

By the time our car inched up to her back tire, the woman had stopped her bike. She was yelling at the dog for not keeping up. Julius didn’t notice. He was on the phone, talking to the gardener about planting bleeding hearts on the geraniums on our deck. His eyes were turned east toward Bowery. Mine were right on the woman, whose foot was on the curb on the west side of the street, jerking the puppy’s leash. The puppy was whimpering and its eyes were plaintive and she was yanking him up by the neck and suspending him in the air, over and over, for not following her every order. The puppy wasn’t even old enough to walk through an open space without wobbling and she was expecting it to bound alongside her bike through inner-city gridlock? And now she’s almost lynching it to show who’s boss?

At first, I was so shocked, I couldn’t speak. I watched for a minute, thinking that maybe she was just yanking the leash. But, no, again and again and again, she would pull the puppy up by its neck, off its paws as it cried. Other people watched too, dumbstruck and horrified by the spectacle.

I couldn’t take it anymore. As our car pulled nearer to her, I screamed, “Hey! What the FUCK are you doing to that dog?”

She turned to me and said with the haughtiest possible tone, “Oh, fuck you, asshole!”

I lost it. I fucking lost it. Julius hadn’t seen the incident I had witnessed. He had no idea why I was suddenly slamming my body up against the car door and screaming out the window, “You fucking BITCH!” She was screaming back at me, still yanking the puppy but at least by now she was too preoccupied with me to make it airborne. My blood shot to the boiling point as I thought not only had she done this to a poor, defenseless creature, but she was acting like she had every right to do it. So I screamed it, I screamed it, I screamed, “You fucking…” (Julius is sitting here right now as I type this. He’s begging me not to post the actual word I used on her. But it’s the worst word in the book, way worse that the adjective that preceded it. And I screamed it. I screamed it at her at least three times.)

Julius had no idea what was going on. “Kyle!” he gasped, “Calm down! Calm down!” Our car was turning left on Houston. Spit was foaming at the corners of my mouth and I was grinding my teeth, darting my eyes at the never-wrong woman, who was now walking her bike across the street through the crush of New York pedestrians, dragging her puppy and screaming obscenities back at me. I kept screaming, “Fuck you, BITCH!” “Kyle!,” Julius kept saying, “Calm down! Calm down!”

It was all I could do to keep from jumping out of the car, though. I kept thinking about Marquez and Giuseppe and how I would feel if someone treated them like that. (True, Marquez and Giuseppe are cats, not dogs, but let’s face it, cats and dogs tend to be much better people than people!) Plus, at least by the looks of it, this woman didn’t have the excuse of being from some third-world country where they don’t have the same consciousness around the ethical treatment of animals. While I don’t know for sure what her station in life is, her bike, her jewelry, her tony sneakers, her hairstyle bore all the marks of a privileged professional. By now, she was challenging me to say everything I was saying to her face, and I would have liked nothing better but Julius kept pleading with me to stay in the car. Even though I was going crazy, I had enough foresight to know that if I left the car, the confrontation could erupt into violence and jail, so I kept my seat.

As the car pulled away, I howled, “You fucking bitch! It’s illegal to abuse animals! You should be LOCKED UP!” Julius had long since abandoned his phone call and devoted all his energy to holding me back, imploring me to calm down. The car drove up a couple blocks. The woman was long gone up Broadway. I sat in the car and breathed and tried centering myself. It was hard as hell.

On the sidewalk, Julius told me I had to control myself. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He’d seen me meditate and chant in the morning. Before we left the house, he saw me reading books on metta meditation. He saw me brushing the cats’ teeth, telling them (as if they could speak English!) all about how gingivitis can spread if I don’t do this for them and giving them lots of pets and kisses to make up for it. And now I was a raving lunatic, who wanted nothing better than to see this woman suffer exactly what she’d made that poor little dog suffer.  (And she walked so proud afterwards!)  “You can’t act like this!” he told me.

I kept flashing back to a book I read a few summers ago called The Sociopath Next Door. The author presented a case study of a sociopath who adopted a puppy whom she thought was cute, but when it became too much bother, she neglected it and not long after, had it put to sleep. Afterwards, she ran to her friends crying for sympathy. I felt like I was face to face with that woman on Broadway and my fury was slow to abate.

We went to Dos Caminos and ordered guacamole and a couple Dos Equis. On the outside, I was doing everything to keep it together. On the inside, I could feel my demons rioting. Julius asked what had come over me. I explained what I’d seen happen to the puppy. Once he saw that my fire had cooled sufficiently, he said he could see why it had upset me so much. He said he could see that my intentions were good and one good thing was that my raging at the woman drew her attention away from the dog she was hurting, at least for the moment.

Still, I had horrible pangs of conscience over all the horrible things I’d said. It wasn’t skillful. And, as I told Julius, I was fearing the karma that would come back to bite my ass. Naturally, I texted Mike Levine and confessed everything with special mention of karma since he’s also a practitioner. He said he understood but said somewhat jokingly, “But at the same time, it’s probably not how the Buddha would have reacted.”

With 20-20 hindsight, I see I could have gotten out of the car and stood between the woman and the dog. I could have simply asked what the puppy did to deserve that treatment. She could have screamed at me and said, “Fuck you, asshole,” as loud as she wanted, but as long as I didn’t react, the karma would have been on her head, not mine. She could have slapped my face. It would have been her karma and I would have been well within my rights to call the cops, who probably wouldn’t have come just on account of her roughing up a dog.

But I didn’t do it that way. Now it’s my karma. I feel like shit.

I’ve since calmed down and meditated many times. Now I see a skillful way to redress this error. I’m filling out an application to volunteer at the ASPCA. Up to now, Julius and I have just been donating money. Now it’s time to help the dogs and cats hands-on too.

Saturday Night’s Dinner Party: Guests and Conversations

Julius and Kyle @ Millennium Park, Chicago - June 2008

I just noticed I haven’t posted a pic of Julius yet. So, there’s Julius (left, in t-shirt) and there’s me (right, in red long-sleeved shirt). We went to Chicago last month for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. We stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel on Delaware from Friday, June 6 to Sunday, June 8.

On Saturday, June 7, we met my friend Dubi Kaufmann for fajitas at a place called Zapitista at 1307 S. Wabash near his apartment in the South Loop. Then, he took us for our first-ever visit to Millennium Park, which was built about a year after I left Chicago. The world-famous Bean sculpture was pretty magnificent, if expensive. The gardens were ravishing – and I’m no gardener like Julius. He wanted Dubi to take our picture by the lilacs. It’s a good shot – and a lot of the buildings in the background weren’t there when I was still a Chicagoan.

Third Street, Brooklyn

But, fast forward to July 19, 2008 on Third Street in Brooklyn. Julius was recently in Madrid, where he met some Spanish TV personality, who is friends with his friend Jose Maria. Anyway, this Spanish celebrity had been appointed the Spanish Ambassador to the United Nations or something, and he was going to be in New York with his partner to accept the title. As a favor to Jose Maria, Julius planned a lavish dinner party for Saturday at our house in this guy’s honor – but, when Julius called the new Spanish ambassador on Thursday to give him our address, he casually mentioned to Julius that they couldn’t make the party! Guess they found something better to do or something.

Luckily, the remaining company more than made up for their absence. Julius’ friend Rolando Niella, a writer and new media specialist from Paraguay, was there. He brought two friends, Caesar and Teresa, both news journalists from Paraguay, and their 16-year-old son, Camillo, who drank Coke while all of us mature adults slurred our words over the five or six courses of wine that were served. This teenager is writing an historical novel about one of the chief personages in 19th Century Paraguayan politics! He told me the hardest thing about writing his novel is sticking to historical fact when he’d rather let his version of the story run its course. Did I mention this kid is 16? Hearing him lament his limitations as a writer, I thought, “I need a drink!”

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Across from him sat Alejandro Varderi, another writer I’d never met before, who is writing a historical novel about his homeland, Venezuela. Varderi is a Professor of Modern Languages at CUNY and the author of several books of literary, art and film criticism, including one on Almodovar called, Un Canibal en Madrid. His new book is a novel about a century of life in a Venezuelan family. Lest this sound too much like One Hundred Years of Solitude, bear in mind that Julius and lots of other Caribbeans and South Americans I’ve known read One Hundred Years of Solitude and said, “That’s my family!” Seems to me everyone in those parts has that same kind of story. Marquez just got to the international presses with it first.

Blurry pic of Marquez

(I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez so much, I even named my Tuxedo cat after him. Above is a blurry picture of Marquez, who was better behaved than he’s ever been during a dinner party, although he did start putting his paws on the table legs once he saw the caterers come in with plates of cod. (And, in this picture, which Mike Levine took while I was out of town, Marquez was standing on a table where he knew he shouldn’t have been standing. Still, I’d never give him up for the world.))

Naturally, my best friend Mike Levine was also there, along with a stunning woman named Nishanti, who has this bad-ass Dharma wheel tattooed on her right arm. Damn, I wish I’d thought of that.

Anna Maria Carasso, a friend and colleague of Julius’ at Citigroup, pulled no punches in handing out laughs at the table – though a lot of them were in Spanish and I can only hope she wasn’t busting on the Old Spice I decided to wear at the last minute.

Morgan Library

My friend Nadine Slowik came with her husband Brian. She just got a new job as Director of Membership at the Morgan Library & Museum! They had this kick-ass Dylan show a couple years ago. She’ll be in a good place.

Manhattan Skyline

When dinner was over, we went out on to the deck to bask in the glow of the Manhattan skyline, drink cognac and smoke cigars in front of Camillo, the minor, who continued sipping Coke. It was there that grown men slow-danced together right before his very own impressionable eyes. Then, gay and straight alike, busted into some hardcore salsa and flamenco moves.

We played:

Buena Vista Social Club

Music from the Buena Vista Social Club, which sent Camillo’s folks into raptures that I would have killed to have seen my folks in at his age.

I then crooned track after track from the glorious Nina Simone. I underscored for everyone how the lyrics to the last part of “Mississippi Goddamn” still apply today, especially in the midst the Iraq War. A moment of silence followed as I turned my air mic over to Nina, who howled out the words better than I ever could. (I won’t reiterate them here. They might scare away my blog audience. Look ’em up on your own!)

New York in the Seventies

Earlier that day, Julius and I were listening to NPR and the radio announcer talked about New York in the Late Seventies. The city had just come out of bankruptcy. There were muggers on every corner and half block. Open sex in subway cars. People pushing drugs on card tables they set up in front of their homes. Bath houses were in full-swing (as was AIDS soon after). Since then, crime has dropped 400%. Almost all of the porn shops in Times Square – which was just about all Times Square had at the time – have been swept away. New York has lost its Seventies Edge. But, then again, it is safer and it’s still mind-boggling.

Nadine and Brian are both from Detroit, which, in its epic poverty and disinvestment, is a throwback to Manhattan’s disco days. Nadine talked about how, in the mid-to-late Seventies, she and her sister used to go to these gay discos in metro Detroit. There was this one chick there who used to be out on the floor wearing leg-warmers and doing all these ballet moves, the exact opposite of what everyone else was doing. Nadine used to look at her, shrug her shoulders and go back to doing the Hustle. Years later, Nadine read a Detroit Free Press article where this young woman was remembered. She was none other than Madonna Ciccone, only a few years before she’d show up on the streets of New York with no contacts, just $35 and the dream of being a famous dancer.

Madonna at Dunkin' Donuts (Upper Lefthand Corner)

This led to a discussion about a recent L Magazine article on how Madonna worked at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Times Square, shortly before she joined the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. Brian said, “She worked there for a day.” I wasn’t sure if that was true. He said that, by her own admission, she had a string of jobs that she’d get fired from after just one day of work, mostly for talking back to customers. Apropos of the Dunkin’ Donuts regime, Brian said, “I don’t think she could conform to the costume they made her wear.”

This led to a discussion of how easy it is to lose a job in New York, even when you’re not mouthing off to customers or bosses. Even when you’re not doing one damn thing wrong. We’ve both known (and been) wonderfully competent New Yorkers, who have an iron work ethic, show up early, work late and always do their best. But so many New York employers fire people almost for sport. It’s true. It’s not at all unusual to meet highly successful people in this city who have been fired from way more jobs than they care to admit. I don’t know of any other city where this happens so routinely.

It’s hard to keep your chin up through it all. You might even start viewing yourself as Henry Chinaski from Charles Bukowski’s Factotum, a writer who can never manage to hold down a job and succumbs to the bottle on skid row. But that’s yet another reason why it’s so important not to view oneself through the world’s eyes.

And Brian’s right. Madonna couldn’t conform to that Dunkin’ Donuts costume. And she was willing to starve and strive harder than anyone to banish all such uniforms from her closets for life. (She probably has other kinds of uniforms in those closets, but I’m sure she has a good time in them.)

Tao Te Ching

See, but Madonna’s life history contradicts a lot of the ideas in Tao Te Ching, a book of wisdom that I adore but that I question as an American, raised in a nation of Darwinian success stories. For example, the Tao Te Ching states:

Therefore, the sage puts his own person last, and yet is found in the foremost place; he treats his person as if it were foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved.

and:

All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.

That sounds great. But, after Julius and I heard that NPR broadcast about New York in the Seventies, we were in a cab and I was meditating on the power-mongers in New York when, all of a sudden, “Lucky Star” came on the cab radio. (I’ve never been a fan of Madonna’s music, but I’ve always admired her moxie.) I turned to Julius and said, “It seems to me that Madonna could never have gotten anywhere if she hadn’t been such a career egomaniac.”

He agreed, “The only way most people achieve at that level is to be extremely self-focused.” But ancient Asian traditions keep saying that such power has a tendency to evaporate just when one needs it most. Yet Madonna has sustained hers.

Still, according to Lao Tsu, those who practice a less egotistical way of life remain “preserved.” But have you seen Madonna lately? She’s 50 and she looks a lot more preserved than most 30-year-olds I know. Asian philosophy also extols the practice of wei wu wei, which means “do all without doing,” or, doing everything in a calm, natural, inspired manner in order to arrive at success. But wasn’t Madonna’s style to kick down all the doors until she hit the right ones?

I’m not one of those chic cynics who advocates selfishness. I’m just trying to see how ancient Asian edicts jibe with who I see sitting on top these days.

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

Then Brian and I discussed certain types of bosses that many people encounter again and again in New York. (Note: there are good bosses in New York too. Brian has one now. We weren’t talking about the nice ones that night, though.) I am the foremost advocate for life sentences for abusive bosses. How do these people manage to retain positions that nicer and more effective people lose? Why don’t they ever have their comeuppance? Is there any such thing as karma? Even as a Buddhist, I sometimes have my doubts. I have seen murderous professionals sit pretty all the way to retirement, laughing over the trail of career-corpses they’ve left in their wake. And now the American public is glorifying Anne Slowey from Elle magazine for her ruthlessness on the reality show Stylista.

In her terrifying study of everyday psychopathology, The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout gives several examples of bosses who deliberately set their employees up for failure just to secure their own perch and have some fun on a boring day. She says that one out of every 25 people in America is born without a conscience.

I’m still trying to square Stout’s convincing argument with my Buddhist practice. Does everyone have Buddha nature, as the Buddha pronounced? Do even sociopaths have Buddha nature? Wouldn’t that be the same as saying they have a conscience and inherent goodness?

Yet, even in the face of all this adversity, in New York or elsewhere, we must remember a little story about Winston Churchill. He was the keynote speaker at a commencement ceremony at a prestigious boys school in England. Everyone was expecting him to give one of his legendary speeches. Instead, he marched up to the podium and said, “Never give up. Never, never, never give up!” Then he sat back down. Thus concluded his speech.

And thus concluded the evening – at about 3:30 in the morning. Throw 12 or more people together on Third Street, you’ll always find something to write about. But this blog is a mere sketch. I’m sure I’ll be processing the bounty of that evening for years to come.