STRAYS

This piece is meant to follow a previous essay called "Foxy's Firehouse" and is the second in an ongoing series about my childhood in Las Vegas. If you haven't read "Foxy's" yet, go do it now!

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I didn’t experience Buffalo enough to measure it against Las Vegas in terms of infrastructure and “ease of use;” but, compared to where I live now, the Vegas I grew up in was a relatively easy place to navigate once I got used to it. This may surprise people who think The Hangover says all there is to say about experiencing Sin City. Sure, there’s a level of chaos hidden beneath the neon, but everything that happens and stays in Vegas finds a place on a well-ordered, albeit very congested grid. When I moved to Boston just prior to the proliferation of GPS, I would MapQuest directions too and from any destination because the first and only time I assumed from was too in reverse I found myself stuck behind a minivan on Malcolm X Boulevard. The tearful white lady behind the wheel of the van pleaded with a police officer for directions to someplace less colorful (though, now that I think of it, she may have been unnerved by the strange white guy in the blue VW Golf behind her). 

That wasn’t the first time I got lost in a new city. Shortly after we arrived in Vegas, I stepped out of our apartment complex for my first solo run to the 7-11 up the street, a trip I’d made a few times before with my older brothers and sisters. Everything went as planned until I returned, Slurpee in hand, to my apartment, flung open the door, and found a family of complete strangers sitting in the living room watching TV. 

My complex was made up of a series of indistinguishable buildings that guarded both sides of the street. This was typical of the stark sameness the city carried as you moved away from the Strip, with neighborhoods varying only slightly from one another as they blended into a beige blur of tract homes and apartments with stucco facades and tiled roofs. It was the epitome of suburban sameness – splashed with neon and rimmed by mountains. Dazzled by the familiar, I turned into the courtyard for Building 4 when I should’ve been looking for Building 5, or something like that – I can’t remember the exact numbers – and found myself in an apartment that was and was not mine. I dropped my Slurpee, took a deep breath, and pushed out my shock in confused, convulsive sobs.

Apartments on Silver Dollar Avenue today, via Google Maps.

The people whose afternoon I disrupted were patient and understanding. They calmed me down, and guided me to my version of their apartment I. Maybe they were used to strange children from other buildings opening their door at all hours of the day. I can imagine the woman who helped me home slowly getting up, sighing, and saying to the air, “Another one? Really?”

These people helped me navigate my new space – physically and emotionally. They made it so I learned from an experience that could’ve left me afraid to leave the confines of my courtyard by balancing my fear with their guidance and grace. Thereafter, I would make that 7-11 run often, paying careful attention to which “mine” was where. Despite their kindness, this family would not become my first true friends in Vegas. That honor fell to a dog I named Sammy.

I can’t say I had a particular affinity for animals before I met this dog, though pets have always been a part of my life. When I was born, my family had a German Shepherd I don’t remember named Spuddy. Dennis had guinea pigs, and Linda had her cat, and we had another cat named Spooky who ran away during the fire but returned to us every winter. Then there was the first Sam – who I should probably refer to as “Sam 1.0,” or “Sam Senior” to distinguish him from the line of other Sams, Sammies, and Samanthas who would, like Banquo’s children, reach into my future. 

Sam was a dalmatian who didn’t make the trip west with us. He was an athlete, with a bad reputation in the neighborhood. Once some kids decided to throw rocks at him, so he jumped the fence and chased them down the street. Another time, when we were eating dinner, Sam was under the table begging for food. As the smallest pack member, I must’ve seemed like an easy target. Sam nibbled on my pants leg with a bit too much jaw pressure and pinched skin, so I slid down and bit his tail. Sam yelped and snapped, but gently. Later, I would imagine him living the life of a firehouse dog, riding shotgun towards burning houses.

I don’t remember having pets our first year or so in Vegas. We might have been allowed a cat in the apartments we lived in, but dogs of any size were most likely off limits. By the time I reached second grade, Mom had found us a house on Drake Circle with a fenced-in yard and no animal restrictions – at least not ones we followed. It was there that a new dog came into our lives – Tara. Tara was a beautiful shepherd from the Catholic group home my sister Linda had been sent to. The nuns brought in abused animals, hoping that the girls and the dogs might rehabilitate one another. Tara "graduated" with Linda, but Linda didn't stay with us very long, so Tara became Missy's dog. There was at least one cat in the house also, maybe two, I can’t remember for sure.

I do recall that the neighbor across the street, who I’ll call Mark, had an Australian Shepherd that was highly trained and very friendly. Mark would let me play with the dog, whose name is lost to me, though I know it was a beautiful merle with one gray and one brown eye. One summer night, my brother and I had been playing hide and seek with other kids in the neighborhood, and I planted myself in the bushes in Mark’s backyard. I had a clear view through his sliding glass door into his living room, where I saw his topless girlfriend feeding him grapes as if Mark were a Roman emperor. I was too young to really understand that I was witnessing foreplay, but definitely old enough to know that the rest of the kids I was playing with had to see it if I was to be believed. My cover was quickly blown as I tried to call my friends’ attention, drawing a, “Who’s out there!?” from a startled Mark. I wasn’t caught outright, but I didn’t see much of Mark’s pup anymore.

While I’ve had access to all of the animals I’ve shared roofs with (though Dennis was a bit protective of those guinea pigs), Sammy 2.0 was the first pet that was “mine.” He came to me when I was about eight, literally stepping away from a feral pack that had been raiding neighborhood garbage cans. One morning I watched from the kitchen window as a dog who – if I had to guess was a shepherd-labrador mix – picked through our garbage on the grassy verge that separated our driveway from our neighbors’. I grabbed a cupful of Tara’s food, and made my way outside. The dog was cautious, but curious, eyeing me – and that kibble – from a distance with his head and tail down and ears forward. So I placed the food in a heap on the ground, stepped back a few feet, and sat down on the dewy grass to see what he would do. Maybe ten minutes later, Sammy was laying next to me, tongue lolling and eyes squinting with satisfaction as I scratched his ears. For a short time – probably about a year – he and I were “ours.” 

An AI generated image of what Sammy sorta looked like.

That house on Drake Circle was our third stop around the southwest corner of the Vegas Valley. Pop was still a ghost whose presence I longed for, and my siblings were in and out of the picture, coming and going so often that I can’t remember who lived where, with who, or when. Linda was back east, as was Dennis, though he would return towards the tail end of our time at the house. Was Missy with us the whole time on Drake? I’m not sure. She did briefly have a job at an ice cream parlor around the corner, and would give us free samples. I know Mike was away in Synanon when we first arrived. He would return, making his bed with military precision until he understood no one was going to beat and berate him if he didn’t. 

While his presence would be my bridge to the neighborhood and the kids who lived in it, I mostly lived in my head until then. I continued to spend my school days isolated and daydreaming about my father, while I tried not to draw attention to the 2-inch lift on my right shoe. My time out of school was spent as batboy at Mom’s softball games, or drawing in front of the TV. On the weekends, I caught up on all the work I should have been doing in class. Sammy’s arrival wove a thread of normalcy into the fabric of my time on Drake Circle. He gave me an anchor I desperately craved. Ours was a story so common it’s become too typically American: “A Boy and His Dog,” one that always ends in tears.

I have no clue how old Sammy was, but his energy lifted mine. There was a pile of scrap lumber in our backyard that I used to make a grubby agility course (though I was probably thinking “lion tamer” as opposed to “dog handler”). Sammy took to it immediately, jumping over the nail-filled obstacles, following my hand signals and vocal commands after just a few awkward two-legged demonstrations on my part. He would see us to the bus stop each day, and be waiting there when we got home. Still an outside dog prone to roaming the neighborhood, Sammy was never more than a shout away, and always came running when his name was called. He was an invaluable member of our lizard hunting expeditions; his keen eye following whiptails and horned-toads from bush to bush, striking a pointer’s pose until we either caught our quarry or flushed it out. He was a gift – one Mom let me keep without me asking – even though it meant having another mouth to feed, another “kid” to look after. There were times when I ate syrup sandwiches because that’s all we had, and moments when much needed new clothes only came because a generous customer left Mom a huge tip. But Mom never said “no” to animals, or books.

With Mike’s return and Sammy’s presence, my disposition started to align more closely with the bright desert sky I lived under, and I was happy in Vegas for the first time. I started making friends in the neighborhood (human ones). I found The Force, as reflected by the doodled X-Wings and Tie Fighters that battled on the margins of the school work I was now doing. We added three part-coyote puppies we found feral in the desert to our pack, along with a few cats. I became open to the possibility that life in Las Vegas might be okay. We explored the vastness of the desert, swam in other people’s pools to beat the heat, and generally used the neighborhood as our playground the way kids did before their parents’ fears and video games kept them indoors. This hint of “normalcy” was reinforced by a man Mom started seeing off and on. His name was Jon, and while he would become a constant for the next 10 years – helping to keep us housed, clothed, and fed – he was physically and emotionally abusive. 

Mike immediately saw Jon for who he was: a petulant child play-acting as a man. Early in their relationship, Mom took us to Jon’s apartment for a getting to know you pool party. I was ever-eager to please, and desperate for a father figure. Having learned early on that smiling in the face of my disability was endearing to others, I took this tack with Jon, but Mike was not interested in ingratiating himself to this tall, skinny man with big teeth and a thinning perm. He left Jon’s, and walked the three miles or so back to Drake Circle on his own – something Mom and Jon didn’t seem too concerned about.

The house on Drake Circle today. Again, via Google Maps.

Jon immediately began influencing my mother even as they initially kept their residences separate, forcing her to trim our menagerie of pets. One day, we came home from school and the puppies were gone, as were the cats – but Sammy and Tara remained. While Mom  – at Jon’s urging – would refuse Dennis a place to live when he returned to Las Vegas, when it came to giving Sammy and Tara a home, she would not budge. Then the rent went up, or our lease wasn’t renewed, and we had to move yet again. I’m not sure what the state of Mom’s relationship with Jon was just then, but we did not go with him, and the dogs could not come to our new apartment with us.

Instead, Sammy and Tara would be taken in by a friend of Mom’s who had a big place – “a farm,” Mom said – on the valley’s edge with lots of room for two dogs. He pulled up in a brown truck with a cap over the bed. Tara had to be carried in. She immediately took a position at the back of the bed and laid down. Sammy, on my command, jumped onto the tailgate; and, when it was closed, began pacing and panting. He knew something was up, and this was confirmed when I reached over the gate, pulled him close and started to sob. I can still feel his fur on my wet cheek; feel the weight of him on my shoulder, his head curling around my neck as we leaned into one another. After Mom, who was also crying, gently pulled me away with promises of future visits that never happened, the man got into his truck, started the engine, and began to drive. Sammy continued to pace, lurching now and again to keep his balance as the truck picked up speed; his mouth shaping soundless, confused whimpers. His eyes were locked on mine, even as he shakily paced and cried until the man turned the corner at the end of Drake Circle and the truck disappeared.

Despite my memory blending and blurring exactly as Quiroga says it should under the weight of such an emotional moment – for instance, I can’t remember Mike and Missy being there when the dogs left though they surely were – I can place Sammy’s departure between April and early summer in 1979. I know I was out of school when we moved into our new apartment (where we would mar glass with those molten marshmallows), and it had to be after the release of “Sad Eyes” by Robert John which hit the charts that spring. The exploits of Emperor Mark notwithstanding, I didn’t understand that this song was so adult in nature. Written as a “goodbye” from a cheater to his soon-to-be ex-lover, to my naive ears “Sad Eyes” perfectly captured the imperfect circumstances of Sammy’s departure (which, I guess could be considered the end of an affair): 

          Sad eyes, turn the other way
          I don't want to see you cry
          Sad eyes, you knew there'd come a day
          When we would have to say "goodbye"

In The Forgetting Machine, Quiroga describes how the narrator of Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time vividly and involuntarily recalls a childhood memory when he bites into a tea-soaked madeleine. In the decades after that truck drove Sammy away, “Sad Eyes” was my Proustian Madeleine. If the song’s opening bars were piped into a store I was shopping in, sadness would seed in my chest, and my eyes would bloom with tears. I’d quickly move towards the exit to avoid making my garden of grief public. 

In my young head and heart, the weight of Sammy’s loss rivaled my father’s, becoming another wound that would never completely scab and scar. Both were part of what I thought was a pattern — one where any happiness I experienced was destined to end in heartbreak. To me, “Sad Eyes” was one of many indicators that doom was inevitable. Normal, constructive exchanges with my first wife could quickly send me into a defensive fit – me seeing her, but hearing Jon’s condescending tone – despite that not being her intent. Any “nice” thing I came by would draw waves of panic and shame if anything happened that made it less than pristine, or rage if I wasn’t the one responsible for the damage. It was clear to me that the arc of my life swung towards loneliness because so much of my childhood had been marked by that feeling.

All my accumulated unprocessed pain was riding shotgun when, nearly thirty years later, I took those wrong turns into Dorchester, under circumstances that mirrored my childhood move to Vegas. My first marriage was over, and I had returned to the east coast to be nearer to my daughter after spending 10 months depressed and hiding in Vegas, sleeping on my mother’s couch and teaching middle school reading (poorly). Only now I was driving the car, facing decisions my parents faced in 1976 when it was obvious their marriage was over: where would I live? Who would I love? What sort of space would I build for my child? My mother looked for the answers to these questions outside of herself, and I had repeated that pattern with similar results. This had to stop. If I was going to be the kind of parent I needed but never had, I had to become my own dad, friend, wife. My own Sammy. I just wasn’t sure how to do that.

I was dealing with another bout with major depression, eating ramen and watching stolen cable in my overpriced basement apartment just north of Boston. Some days, it was all I could do to get off of my red futon and into work. I had taken a job as a humanities teacher at a brand new charter school, and we weren’t ready for or equipped to handle the issues our students brought to the building each day – which, for some of them, included their own kids as we had a daycare on site. I barely lasted the year, fixing boilers and breaking up fights, doing anything but teaching. But during that time my colleagues grew into supportive friends. I would see my daughter often, visiting her in Plattsburgh or having her join me in Boston, basking in the sunshine of her presence and the transcendence that comes with being her dad. These things, along with antidepressants and therapy – helped me push the pain and depression under, where it lived with a dull, vibrating ache. I began learning that loneliness and being alone don’t always mean the same.

Then one day, a beautiful woman with ocean blue eyes brought me a handful of food as I was digging through her garbage. 

Not really. We connected on a dating site. I had committed to the 30-day free trial because I couldn’t afford anything beyond that, and she had accidentally changed her settings beyond her preferred 15-miles radius. She clicked on my profile, we exchanged notes and numbers, then met for coffee (which then turned to dinner), and quickly fell in love. Eventually, Cecily gave me a home in her heart and under her roof. In my first marriage, I largely lived through my wife; defining who I was via her interests and worldview (though she never expected this of me) because I was just 19 when we married and I was my mother’s son. 

My Match.com profile pic...

...and Cecily's.

I live with Cecily, not through her. We keep separate bank accounts, but share trips to Europe and runs to the dump. She pretends to be scandalized by the audacity of me farting in her presence even though Borat was the first movie we saw together. Both of us laughed until our faces hurt (and she had already seen it!). We’ve supported one another through loss, encouraged each other through change, and celebrated the magic and milestones we’ve reached during our 17 years together. She’s accepted my baggage, loved my daughter, and we’ve built a life where we’ve grown as people and partners who shelter and support each other. While I know I’m strong enough to face the world without her, I hope I never have to.

I had arrived in Boston determined to grow into a stronger, happier person; and, for the most part, I’ve done that. I started therapy when my first wife and I separated, which made sense given the gravity of the situation, and have continued on an “as needed” basis after I moved to the Commonwealth. I’ve read a lot of self-help books, and have accepted that antidepressants will be part of my long-term mental health regimine. Despite the fire and smoke of my past, I am an intelligent, well-functioning adult capable of managing life and rising to the occasion. Productively working full-time while taking classes to earn an additional teaching credential (and earning all A’s while doing so) – easy! Leaving the continent – and often my comfort zone – to experience the world is something I’ve grown to love and crave. When Cecily’s mother struggled with cancer and died, I was reliable and steady. 

Yet depression, anxiety, and fear still find me in surprisingly discouraging ways. Echoes of past traumas are unexpectedly triggered and that triggering brings irrational feelings of anger, loneliness, sadness, and doom back even though I know those emotions don’t reflect the truth of the moment, or my ability to handle whatever it is I’m facing. When the timing belt went in my car, I was so filled with anxiety I could barely move or breathe. Starting the new job closer to home that I was imminently qualified for and that gave me a better work-life balance  — that kept me up at night and sent me back to therapy. A trip to Italy saw my breath taken as we turned a corner in Florence and caught sight of Brunelleschi’s dome, but I lost half a day in Rome filled with shame because I scratched my new Apple Watch. I’ve faced losing two dogs – one to old age and another to a shockingly unexpected illness – with sadness, but also with gratitude and grace. Yet “Sad Eyes” could turn me into a puddle.

My first view of Il Duomo in Florence. It was staggering in the best way.

Depression is a natural extension of loss. I can understand why I was floored by divorce (my parents’ and my own), and losing Sammy. However, I couldn’t reconcile the daily duplicitousness of my mental health – good when it mattered, mush when it shouldn’t have. When my niggling nerves and unpredictable panic attacks sent me back to therapy on the heels of the pandemic — even as my life was relatively untouched by COVID and its consequences — I was determined to figure out why I could not stop sweating the small stuff; why I could never step away from the edge of the river of doubt that kept running through my undergrowth no matter how good my life looked on paper. Previous therapists had resisted my desire to delve into my past as a way to counteract its impact on my present. Best to focus on the now, they would argue, and look for ways to manage your stress and anxiety. My questions about why a leaky faucet would lead to debilitating panic while a seriously ill relative would be faced with aplomb were met with shrugs. I couldn’t accept that my panic wasn’t fixable, especially given my growth in so many other areas. My new therapist agreed. 

Jessica was willing to journey into my past with me – to revisit what I could remember so that I might rationalize and release my swerving thoughts instead of hotly reacting to them. She became a sounding board who validated the idea that understanding the weight of my past — as opposed to ignoring it — could be transformative for me. She reinforced some things that I already knew: that it did me no good to minimize and dismiss my traumas simply because they were in the past, and that I had accomplished a whole helluva lot throughout my life in spite of them. By working with Jessica, all of my previous attempts at finding surer footing against worry began to synthesize in ways they hadn’t before. She helped me process Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Lindsay Gibson, which lifted the lid off of my self-doubt, and explained why I carried such reactivity. Another amazing thing Jessica did was recognize that a different therapy — one she wasn’t able to provide — might serve me well: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR for short.

On the surface, EMDR struck me as something gimmicky that could not and should not work. As I understood it, I would spend some time thinking about something bad that happened to me while a therapist waved their hand in front of my eyes, and my brain would magically realign and heal itself. But Jessica said she had had clients who had gotten over traumas that had haunted them all of their lives — all within the course of a few sessions. I decided to give it a try.

A few weeks later, I met Cara, the therapist who would be working with me via this new approach. Our first session was informational – she explained how EMDR worked, and did some history taking. I learned how our physiological toolkit includes mechanisms for processing our positive and negative experiences, and how sometimes those processes get overwhelmed; clogged by traumas that essentially get stuck and therefore go unprocessed. I talked about the work I had been doing with Jessica, and why we felt EMDR might be a good next step for me, considering my frustratingly visceral reaction to thoughts and feelings that seemed insignificant on the surface. When it came time to explore a potential jumping off point for our first EMDR session, I knew right where I wanted to go.

I was sitting before my laptop at my messy dining room table when Cara, who was meeting with me via Zoom, asked me to hold my memory of Sammy’s departure in my head, and started our first set. She was using a wooden screen as a backdrop, her torso in the left of my monitor as my eyes, with my head still, followed her hand back and forth on the right of my screen. After 30 seconds or so, Cara paused and asked me what thoughts and feelings came up. Then she’d have me hold on to a particular thought or feeling, and we’d go again. When it was all over, my mind had played back my life with Sammy in reverse. My memories moved from the truck, to chasing lizards in the desert, to seeing him at the bus stop, to scratching his head on that very first day. In these flashbacks, I was always in the frame with Sammy — smiling, directing, playing, confident. Over the course of a few sets, spanning maybe fifteen minutes, my feelings about my time with Sammy shifted from devastation and loss to happiness and joy.  

I was shocked at how good I felt at the end of the session. I was light, giddy, even. Thinking of Sammy filled me with laughter and triumph, and I kept repeating, “I can’t believe this!” and, “This is incredible!” to Cara again and again. I kept bringing Sammy to mind, replaying my memories of him, waiting for them to turn sour and they did not. The real test came later that evening, when I opened up Apple Music, searched up “Robert John,” and double-clicked on “Sad Eyes.” As those first few bars hit my ears I smiled and began to laugh as happy tears ran down my cheeks.

In her book, Getting Past Your Past, Francine Shapiro, an early pioneer of EMDR, talks about why people need more than just time to heal their hurts. The brain, like the body, is equipped with tools for healing, but just as our cuts heal better when they are covered, kept clean, and treated with care, our brain’s information processing system requires optimal conditions to minimize scarring — conditions that were decidedly lacking when Sammy followed my father out of my life. As I moved forward, what Sammy gave me was paved over by the pain of losing him, because I never got the chance to process that loss. It was something bad that happened that I was simply expected to move on from. The sum of our time together was him leaving in that truck, and sad “Sad Eyes” was the soundtrack.

By tapping into the same mechanisms our brains use to process information and emotions during REM sleep, EMDR helped me reframe that devastating childhood trauma. Now when I think of the bent-eared stray who came to stay when I was eight – I no longer have to fight back tears when I remember his inquisitive eyes asking “are you coming too?” as he paced in the back of that truck. EMDR helped me literally remember how amazing my life was during the brief time Sammy was in it. He was my best friend. He always listened, had time for me. He was my confidant, my playmate, my hunting dog who pointed the way towards lizards with his keen eye and sharp nose. In return, Sammy asked for nothing but my time, some ear scratches and belly rubs, and kibble. After I lost him, the loneliness and sadness returned, but for a while, I was that boy – the one Sammy chose over his pack.

Today there’s another song that reminds me of Sammy – “Bros” by Wolf Alice. Like “Sad Eyes,” it’s not a perfect representation of me and Sammy, but it’s close. Lead singer Ellie Roswell wrote the song as a tribute to a childhood friend, and calls it “an ode to childhood imagination and friendship and all the charm that comes with that." One thing I like about this song, is how the opening verse not only takes me to the past, but brings Sammy to the present:

          Shake your hair, have some fun
          Forget our mothers and past lovers, forget everyone
          Oh, I'm so lucky, you are my best friend
          Oh, there's no one, there's no one who knows me like you do

I know it was the promise of a regular meal that lured Sammy, and all dogs down through the ages, into domesticity. But the emotional need to believe that there’s more to it than that is just as real for me now as it was when I was eight – and that’s the truth I claim. Sammy stayed because of me, not because of the food I gave him. I am still that boy, and Sammy is still with me, even now. He never left.

Today, I'm doing my best to make the most of my unreliable internal Global Positioning System, just like you. Each moment we pass through, half-lost or moving confidently forward, is like one of those squishy stress balls filled with swirling, multi-colored liquid. If we assigned one color “good” and another “bad,” we’d see that both are always present to some degree, depending on the circumstances and the pressure. Memories are like that: cloudy, iridescent, beautiful. So is life.