Tommy and Jerry

I’m in a new relationship. It’s with a mouse. It’s been going on for a couple of months and it’s getting pretty intimate. I have decided it is just one mouse, for it is easier to bestow on one mouse the qualities needed for a meaningful connection. Six mice are just vermin. One mouse is a cunning adversary. I am literally Tom and he is not literally Jerry.

I come downstairs this morning to discover yet another desecrated nectarine, and say, "You little motherfucker! Why you got to nibble my shit? And you don't even appreciate how good my Tenerelli Farms nectarines are. I should just get Ralph’s for you." I say this with a mixture of disgust, anger, and respect. I say it to one mouse, anthropomorphizing them, giving them the qualities of a naughty boy. Dennis the Menace playing a prank on mean old Mr. Wilson.

I've actually begun studying the damaged fruit and have made some discoveries about Jerry's eating habits. He always starts at the top, takes several small bites, and then gets disinterested. He may even have an eating disorder, and could be the first case of mousorexia on record. This morning, he dragged a Jimmy Nardello pepper off the prep table and onto the floor, but did not eat it. Nor did he go after the half-cut orange that was laying there. Perhaps he had a tummy ache. Maybe I should leave a tiny chip of Alka-Seltzer for him tonight?

I know it's gross to have a mouse all over your kitchen counters, but is it really? He's not a rat. A rat is something else. A rat is a plague-carrying enemy of the people and repugnant on a cellular level. Rats are the stuff of nightmares; they live not just in the real sewer, but the sewer of the psyche. We don’t say “that no good mouse bastard." You don't "mouse someone out" to the cops, nor is James Cagney famous for saying "you no-good dirty mouse." (Cagney never actually said "you no-good dirty rat" in any of his movies). If it was a rat, I'd have no trouble bringing in the vermin gestapo and wiping them out. In fact, I once had to kill a large trapped, but not dead rat. I put him in a white plastic bag (trap and all), marched outside and repeatedly slammed him against the curb with everything I had. It was deeply disturbing and strangely thrilling, and I caught a tiny glimpse of the atrocities human beings are capable of once they turn that switch.

My ex-wife lives a few blocks away and she has a raccoon problem. It's actually more of a raccoon circus, and her security cameras catch what can only be described as raccoon acrobatics, sometimes five or more, moon-bathing, working on their tumbling routines, and making her backyard home. She sent me a video the other day of a teenage raccoon in her birdbath at dusk. Dusk! He was washing his hands so much I thought he had OCD. He was cute, and very human, and most of all he was in the birdbath and not the house, so there was still that border between civilized and wild. Jerry is literally in my kitchen and the question I have to ask myself is, can I live with it? Can I get into a whole Tommy-lama, all sentient beings have a right to exist love-zone, and see Jerry, not quite as a pet, but as a fellow traveler?

I think it will all come to a head after I’m done with my remodel. When I have the lap pool and landscaping, and the kitchen is all sweet with the sink by the window, and the big wall of glass that looks out on all that green and blue. There won't be holes in the ceiling anymore, or paint peeling off the crooked, sloping floor. The rest of the house will still be funky craftsman but the kitchen is going to be halfway to Architectural Digest and I will have everything to my taste and sensibility; my home, a manifestation of who I am, what I love, and my long, hard-fought battle to adulthood.  I don’t want no mouse screwing all that up. I don’t want his little sharp teeth gnawing a hole in my fully realized life.

But that’s when I’ll need Jerry most. To remind me to stay humble. To remind me I was born white in America and have had, if not every advantage, almost every advantage and instead of being proud, I should be thankful, if not slightly embarrassed by my good fortune. To remind me that there may be a lot with more but there are so many more with less, and though I would never dare to say my life is better than anyone’s, I know it is easier in many ways. I’m going to need Jerry, because I might walk downstairs one morning and think, look at me and the world I’ve created for myself. Me, who was done and down for the count. Tell me I am not the master of my universe, the king returned from exile, the captain of my ship! And just as the helium of self-reverie sends me through the ceiling, I will look over at the bowl on the counter to see that Jerry has gnawed my tomato, and put a big black wabi-sabi scuff mark on the pristine white canvas of my life— And I will take a nice deep breath and try to remember that I am not the whole story, just a small part of it, and that I’m man enough to share with mice.