"I Got Bit by a Seeing-eye Dog"

ON FRIDAY SOME kid just wandered around testily, yelling "Don't before me, my leg hurts." He got bit, you see, on the subway, by a seeing-eye dog. So Saturday night this Salem-smoking refugee from West Virginia comes in and says, "That line's been rollin' and tumblin' around my head all day. We gotta write a song about gittin' bit by a seeing-eye dog." His almost-heaven West Virginia accent laid me in the aisles, where I rolled over Tim Carlson, self-described "gangly, goofy, blushing, cowlicky, smartass, shynose, sloppy lunch eater" who kneed me in the funny bone, and from then on it was bubbly giggles, side-eyed glances, uproar.

Tim was inspired. First, he wrote down all the letters of the alphabet so we could check rhymes: aime, bime, cime, dime, eime, fime,... Then he wrote down all the names and things we could think of relating to blindness: Moshe Dayan, Mo Udall, cornea-retina-pupil, eyeball-to-eyeball, I ball and you ball and you can't even see...

Then pardon-me-whilst-Ah-whup-this-out Tim clickety-clacked the first two lines. In the ol' kontry tradition.

I wuz sitting in the corner of a sleazy cafe, Contemplating hari-kari and auto-da-fe.

By the time our laughter turned to tears, we were committed. It was 8:30 and there were gaggles of parties and we knew that this song, howsomever it turned out, would just have to be sung to the gathered rabble who would be the only ones to appreciate it (I mean, when you're sober and shaking from the vibes of that fifth-of-a-century mile-stone roaring up over the hill and down towards you in a Big Mack diesel dribbling lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and ashes from a three-foot seegar all over the steaming tar pavement and dwarf pine trees, about to blow you off the road and ream out your Youthwagon--that's no time for a country song--that's the time for whipping a Ueey and glueing the gas pedal to the floor board and beating ol' Mack to 21 and beyond...) We had to get into the story, real quick-like. So,

Blinkin through a smoky haze and what did I see Dawg dragging a woman, all a comin at me!

Right there on that last line we decided what the story line was going to be--love at first sight. And it was time for the Bite.

The Dawg was droolin I didn't catch his drift He chomped on my ass N gave me a lift.

I sat on my fanny to stanch the flow Dog was snarlin' so I backed off slow Right into the arms of a slinky Arab-esque She planted a wet one on me you wouldn't see in burlesque.

Then we read what we had, chucklin and chortlin, real self-satisfied. But that last line had to be rushed through, rhythm avoided, kinkier overtones slithered by--just like Jimmy Carter whips through his "Hi I'm the Nuclear Peanut!" to avoid giving rise to the opaque amoebas crawling around in the basement of his soul. In a sort of funeral home official's Gee-I'm-sorry-but-what-range-casket-do-y'all-want voice, Tim said, "Just wait til we get some music--a little pedal steel is all that line needs." I said, "Music, Right." The refugee said, "Yeah."

Well, the loving couple were together; we just had to get back into the story line and pound in the song's general lack of vision; and it was my turn to tinkle the keys.

She was lassoed to the dawg by a seeing-eye harness

And her love was a burnin like a Bessemer furnace.

The dawg picked me cause she couldn't see.

It was blind date, buddy, from A to Z.

(See how the alphabet came in handy?) The refugee, Joe, "a girl would giggle and I'd turn red, a boy would laugh and I'd bust his head; the worst-thing-my-daddy-ever-did-was-name-me-Joe" Dalton piped up:

Her name was Retina, and I knew when I seen her

I wouldn't need much of a shove.

I knew I was mad to, but my heart said I had to Become her pupil in love.

Now that's country.

We were stuck. There was lots of Coke-buying, cigarett-bumming and flooding the bathroom in this interlude. We weren't even drunk, and we had to explain howthehell Retina the Arab ever acquired her blind-faith blind-drunk opthomalogic condition anyway. Tim came up with a suicide pact right out of the grand old Haemon/Electra Hamlet/Ophelia blues tradition and all we needed was an introduction.

The dawg dragged us home, and she told me her story.

I listened real eager, but it was too gory.

A suicide pact with her loved she signed:

She hit and he missed and she cried herself blind.

It was 10:30 already and the parties were in second gear going into the first hairpin turn, yelping at the little mechanical rabbit and jostling for position. It was time to move to a new location, close the shop out, hold a 50 per cent sale. The only pun we could dredge up concerned the cataracts of the Nile, but all the Egyptian suntanned silt fucked up our upstairs wiring...rinse it out, waterfalls, going over the edge of the abyss...

Last time I heard ol' Retina's call

My love rushed out like a waterfall.

She left a shroud on my soul, like a dirty cataract.

Cause she walked out and she never looked back.

It was time for the Jim McKay 11 o'clock roundup--corral the heifers, clam, the dogies, make one last summary plea'to the jury, drive our moral home so the Baptist preachers down in Dry Prong. Louisiana don't immolate the album when we get it released.

Beware of blind love--it's the very worst kind--It starts with a chomp on the ol' behind From the droolin and snarlin and nasty pink jaws Of an Arabian refugee's seeing-eye dawg.

Aaah. Finis. Apres moi le deluge. It was off to the Hong Kong. "Bourbon, please. No water--never drink water, fish fuck in it." Cozied up to the bar we started our recitation. The guys with the mai tais over in the corner started throwing ice. So it was out on the street again, and off to the parties, on our way to Nashville. See you at the Coop, when we get to sign the album covers.