The Dog Dad Days of Summer

Abby and Petra. Photos/Courtesy of Zoneil Maharaj.

By Zoneil Maharaj

Every day, just before the sun sets around 7:45 pm, I grab a pair of fur-covered leashes from the kitchen counter. “Alright, girls,” I say, assembling them in formation.

Abby, an elderly, 15-year-old mutt with sleek golden fur and pointy, bat-like ears struggles to find her footing as she gets up. She suffers from bad joints — she’s an octogenarian in dog years, after all. After some wobbling (and worrying on my part), she gets on her feet. Meanwhile, Petra leaps and slobbers with excitement. A large mixed-breed rescue with long, wavy black and brown fur and deep brown eyes, she has the beauty and grace of a stallion. She commands attention with a gallop just like one, too. My girlfriend, Sara, grabs the poop bags and out we go. Her parents join us.

We circle the block. Abby can’t go much further beyond that, so Bill and Lyn take her back home. Sara, Petra, and I leave the circle, off to chase the ducks and coots at the Desert Shores lakes.

This is our nightly routine. It’s a new one.

Petra and Abby aren’t mine. The home we leave and return to — where I’ve lived out of a duffle bag since mid-March — isn’t mine. This neighborhood, its lakes, its feathered wildlife, its friendly faces who wave and say hello as I pass while walking the girls aren’t mine. This relaxing routine; this new, easy life is uncharted territory for me. I almost ran from it.

Like everyone, COVID-19 Stone Cold Stunnered my world. 2020 was going to be the year I got to check off some major adulthood boxes. I was finally, at 36, going to buy a house. I moved to Las Vegas in 2014 but always thought I’d move back to Northern California where my family and friends were, where my comfort was. I’d never considered the desert my home, but Sara had given me good reason to stick around, and with a house, I’d officially plant roots here. On top of that, I quit my job of two years in early March to bet on myself. A workaholic, I’d left one full-time gig in exchange for a part-time salary and a generously compensated freelance contract. That was on top of my growing freelance writing assignments. Sure, I’d be working 50-60 hours a week at minimum, but it’d be more money than I’d ever made before, and working around the clock was no sweat to me. I always put work first, to the detriment of everything else, relationships included. My worth was my work, and I had a lot of it.

In March the coronavirus, bully that it is, gave those plans a wedgie and a swirlie, robbing me of my lunch money. I lost the contract and all of my freelance assignments. My part-time job was now quarter-time, which, after taxes, would barely cover my $600 rent. Unemployment was a bust — I didn’t get through until late July, only to be told I’d have to wait 10 more weeks before an adjudicator called me back to determine if I qualified or not. But work and money became the least of my worries. People were dying by the thousands. No one knew quite what this virus was. There was a lot of misinformation and paranoia. Life outside of my confined quarters was terrifying. Most of the people I loved — my widowed mother, my older brothers and their beautiful families, the aunts and cousins who helped raise me, my childhood friends — were in another state. With so much uncertainty, I worried when or if I’d be able to hug them again. As my mind reeled, I looked over at Sara. I was losing everything. I couldn’t lose her, too.

Before the pandemic, I was renting a room just a few minutes from Sara’s place. Sara slept over almost every night. Even if I came home at midnight, she’d pull up because neither of us seemed to be capable of sleeping comfortably without the other. When the pandemic panic settled in, we’d been dating seriously for a little over a year. Admittedly, I wasn't the best partner at the start, perpetually guarded and uncompromising. It’s, sadly, how I functioned in every relationship. But Sara was patient, thoughtful, and understanding. She’d chiseled away at my barbed exterior with kindness and got to my soft, gooey core. I melted into her.

When we were ordered to shelter in place in mid-March, Sara, naturally, wanted to stay with her parents. They’re both high-risk, Lyn a cancer survivor and Bill a diabetic. She wanted me to go with her. No one knew how long the lockdown would last. Weeks? Months? Years? Everything was happening so fast. Anxiety flooded the levee. This isn’t my city. This isn’t my home. This isn’t my life. I wanted to run to the familiar comfort and love of my family in California, but if I left, it could jeopardize my future with Sara and the possibility of starting a family of our own. If I stayed, I’d be leaning into the love I have here and opening myself up to its possibilities, something I’d never fully done before.

I’d spent years selfishly focused on acquiring a house and a good salary. As a first-generation immigrant, I figured if I achieved that much, then my late father’s sacrifices — leaving his life in Fiji behind for his sons’ futures, his decades of grueling manual labor, the fatal heart attack he suffered in 2014 — wouldn’t be in vain, that I’d be happy. But I could never fully envision what I’d do with it if I got it. Now I know.

Living with Sara’s family wasn’t awkward or weird. It was comfortable, to the point I’d sometimes forget there was a global pandemic where simply breathing shared air could kill us. Bill and Lyn’s home is spacious. There’s a big, grassy backyard with lakes nearby. There’s the girls, who nudge their way under my arms whenever I’m on my laptop so I can give them kisses and scratch their butts. I never had pets growing up. Now here I am in my 30s, a full-blown dog dad who kisses them on the mouth, something I’d always joked was white people behavior, akin to singing songs from Hamilton out loud, which I also now do after Sara forced me to watch it on Disney+ — but only "Dear Theodosia." Between Sara’s breakfasts, Lyn’s dinners — American food, it turns out, ain’t so bad; it just needs a few drops of hot sauce — my Indio-Fijian dishes, and their Blue Apron deliveries, we eat damn good every day. We drink wine and take low-dose edibles every night to help us forget about our doomed existence. (Lyn gets a discount at the dispensary; yes, my girlfriend’s mom is my weed supplier.)

In early May, when the world had a slightly better grasp on the virus and how it worked, we took a nine-hour drive to my hometown of Stockton, California to stay with my mom for a few weeks. We brought some wine with us, popping bottles with my mom and watching Bollywood movies with the subtitles on for Sara. We got to visit my two brothers and their families and even had a sleepover with my nephews and nieces. We got to meet my cousin Latika’s new baby. Sara took my mom to the farmer’s market and had no problem handling my mom’s spicy food. I’d often find them laughing together and talking about marriage — a conversation that might have terrified me six months ago but, now, warmed me. Before we left, my mom gave Sara a traditional Indian outfit and shot me a look that seemed to say, Don’t mess this up.

Since coming back to Las Vegas, we’ve both started working again. My hours and pay are still cut, but Sara’s back to full-time. We’ve started thinking about the future, dreaming of a post-COVID life. We’ve started looking at homes — our home — and even contacted a lender to see what we could afford with our current financial standings. It’s not a lot.

Even though we can’t afford the dream house we want, I know the space doesn’t matter — it’s the love that fills it, and we’ve got plenty to go around. Still, we fantasize. A sparkling pool. A big, open kitchen with stainless steel appliances. A master suite with a giant bathtub. Extra bedrooms for kids and my out-of-state fam and friends to visit. At the very least, a nice backyard for Abby and Petra to play in.

Zoneil Maharaj is a freelance journalist based in Las Vegas. He previously worked as the social media dude for Pop-Up Magazine and The California Sunday Magazine, with his writing appearing in the Las Vegas Weekly, Desert Companion, Anxy Magazine, and The Guardian US, among others.

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Kathleen KuoAugust 3, 2020A2 Comments