Labyrinth of Poodles

Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself.--Jorge Luis Borges


It's the other one, HoseMaster, that everything happens to. I love books, Northern Rhone wines, baseball, the aroma of wet dog in someone else's bottle of wine, the prose of Jerry Lewis, and limp celery. And he, Hosemaster, loves the same, only in a creepy way, a way that demeans while pretending to celebrate, like an award for a cretinous, self-published blog. I wouldn't say that I hate him, that might be hyperbole, but I live so that he can create, so that he can aim his broadsides at the fools who give points, are pointless, point at themselves ad nauseum. And more and more I become him, that loathsome creature. I confess that he has written a funny piece now and then, managed to heap scorn on the right people, people with astonishing amounts of hubris who certainly do not own mirrors or they would notice they all look the same in the mirror's reflection. Is that Laube reflected in that circus mirror, or Parker, though it looks like Tanzer, and might be a Heimoff if only it were much smaller, and I don't mean in height, I mean in significance. They are all one and know it, but must not surrender to the illusion that they are individuals or they might cease to exist. That is, if they exist at all. If being a wine critic can be defined as existence, which most would say it cannot. More and more I am subsumed by HoseMaster and little by little I can no longer be saved by his works. His works are not mine, and not his, but are owned by the Internet, that Truthslayer, and consumed by thankless automatons with only electronic lives. They are nothing without FaceBook. The word is apt. It is not FacesBook. They have but one Face, and it's pretty hopeless and ugly. It's the Face of the Internet, it is God's Face. It is the face of loneliness. For what is real loneliness but to be surrounded by imaginary friends? Friends who all have the same Face. Your Face.


In my dreams now I am him all the time. The separation I feel from him in my waking hours does not exist. I am him in my dreams. I do not exist in my own dreams. In his dreams we are being pursued by poodles. More poodles than one can count. Everywhere we turn there are poodles. They seem threatening, but are not. The poodles are different colors, relentlessly white, chronically black, and all kinds of sizes, though they are mostly toys, and they are all toothless. We run and we run, HoseMaster and I, though it is only him in my dreams and I am forced to will myself into his dream mind, which he forbids, though it is I who is asleep. Wherever we turn there are more and more toothless poodles. The poodles bark as ferociously as they can, which is a kind of chorus of canine yawns, but it is still inexplicably frightening. Even more horrifying is the way they urinate everywhere, marking each other, leaving each other messages that only have meaning for them and no one intelligent or sane. When one poodle disappears, another one takes its place almost immediately. They reproduce without procreation. The poodles are a many-headed Cerberus of inanity. He is surrounded by the comically scary poodles and when he runs, and as I struggle to keep up with him, with myself, HoseMaster is caught in a labyrinth to which there is no end, and in which every turn leads to a post, a post on which each poodle has left a bladder-inspired message. Here is the post about Wine Tasting Wednesday, a frightening puddle of stupidity beneath it. Around the labyrinth's next corner is the Parker post. Or is it the Laube post? Doesn't it seem like the Vaynerchuk post? Does it matter if they are all the same? No. But to imagine it the Vaynerchuk post, does that make it more pleasant to micturate against? But save some, there is another post around the corner. Or are they all just the same post, the same post that every poodle visits and revisits and from which there is no escape? If you read them, they are the same posts excreted by different poodles, who believe they are different, but are, in fact, very much the same.


Most nights the poodles have human faces. The males are all castrated, powerless and toothless. The bitches parade around, tails up, but they are clearly unsatisfied. The human faces when they appear to the HoseMaster are also toothless. Saliva pours from the canineless canines. This passes for thought among the poodles. If they stop barking they vanish. HoseMaster, using me as his vessel, his portal into this dreamworld we all live in, hopelessly tries to get them to be quiet. He looks at their human faces and knows what to do.


HoseMaster and I run into the labyrinth once again, only now the walls of the labyrinth are covered in mirrors. He knows not to look into any mirror. I know never to look into a mirror in his dreams. The mirror will reveal him to himself as another poodle. But the poodles don't know this. The poodles pursue HoseMaster into the mirrored labyrinth. They bark toothlessly at their own reflections. The castrated boys lift their legs and piss on themselves, thinking they are leaving an intelligent message for others to read. The bitches just stare at their reflections and seem confused. Only one poodle, neither dog nor bitch, stares back at each of them. Everywhere they turn it is the same poodle, drooling. The poodles are silenced, and they vanish.


But we always wake up.