Letter to Chico - Out magazine, June 2006

Hi, Chico. Maybe this magazine is on the floor next to your owner’s soft, white, almost inescapable bed, and you will waddle up and read it.

It’s Mike. The beardy guy with the brown curly hair? I slept over at your owner’s place last fall a few times? I even set out your food for you in the morning once or twice…remember? I do. But maybe a lot of guests pass through there.

You have to remember because apparently you loved me. One night, we were watching Bergman’s “Persona” on your owner’s bed, and you came up and crawled right into my lap.

“Aw Chico loves you,” your owner said, “He never does that with anyone.”

Correct me if I am wrong, Chico, but I always thought that when a guy said his pet loved you more than any other recent guest, he was talking about himself. I thought it was a thinly veiled way in our guarded gay New York scene for him to say that he wants something deeper -- the natural world’s endorsement.

Maybe I am learning that it isn’t that simple. Maybe it was just you who liked me. Or, even worse, maybe when I left each morning, you and your owner would roll your eyes and laugh – “Ha! This is so much fun making him think this is going somewhere!”

Well you guys really got me. Like you, your owner seemed to want me around. He introduced me to his best girlfriend, he showed me his artwork, he played Cat Power while you curled into me approvingly.
I thought your owner and I had easy chemistry, too. I loved his smell. We slept so well together, like our bodies were ergonomically designed to fit.

Then, like some drastic temperature change, he stopped calling. Like a fool I tried him every way possible: cell, email, text message, Google. If I could have sent something through Netflix I would have. No response. Nothing.

What happened Chico? Were you some sort of test that I didn’t pass? Let me tell you Chico, not everyone would have been so patient and nice to you. You are fat, Chico. You shed hair like you are going through chemo, you snore in these obese wheezes, and your litter box smells like a high-risk toxic dump. If you are a metaphor for your owner’s deeper emotional inner self, I accepted it all– I can promise you not everyone would.

Fuck you Chico. You aren’t the first pet I have had to kiss up to, proving I can fit into some guy’s ecosystem. There is always some goddamn disgusting, diseased, psychotic pet in some dude’s house, and us single guys always have to pretend to be so interested: “Aw and poor Bandit has an ear infection?” “Is Sophia happy with her new habitat?” “How long has Bruno been drooling puss?”

And why did your owner think that I didn’t mind when you were in the room while we had sex, anyway?

I would be mid-coitus with your owner, coming up for air, and there you would be, Chico, staring at me. Then, when I was about to come, you somehow got involved. I can’t believe I had a threeway with a cat.

Well obviously at this point your owner has moved on, and I guess I should too. After being so patient with you, petting you, and having sex with your fat ugly ass (oh my God), at least now I can just come out and say it.

Chico, I never liked you.