Transcript: "Matty the Dog", a Story By Matthew Dicks
This is a transcript of Matthew Dicks's story, Matty the Dog, at a Moth StorySLAM.
This is a transcript of Matthew Dicks's story, Matty the Dog, at a Moth StorySLAM. You can watch Matthew telling the story here:
Matty the Dog, a story by Matthew Dicks
It's the spring of 2003. I'm 32 years old, sitting in my crummy apartment at a crummy kitchen table, pouring water on a bowl of raisin bran because I am too stupid and too sad to go out and get milk. I am living on my own for the first time ever, and I have discovered that when men live on their own, they become savages. There are nights when I just forget to go to sleep. I find myself walking through my apartment in underwear and one sock, and I can't quite figure out how it happened. I haven't changed my sheets in the three months I've been here, and I don't see it ever changing in the foreseeable future.
I hate my apartment. It is small and cruddy. There's an Indian family that lives below me, and they're lovely people, but everything they cook is cooked with curry. Our air conditioner has stacked one on top of the other, so as the curry blows out of one apartment, it comes into mine. I hate curry, so everything I own smells like it—my clothes, my bed, and my dog. Less than a mile away, my wife is in our kitchen, probably the kitchen I spent three days painting last summer. She's sitting at the kitchen table that we bought a week after we bought the house, or she's sitting on the deck enjoying dinner—it's the deck that I put in two years ago, which really means I paid someone to put it in, but then I tell people I did it myself, so you think maybe I was the one who did the work. But I still made it happen.
And I'm not there because we're separated. About a year ago, she told me that she needed space, and I didn't really know what that meant, so I started sitting on the other side of the couch, and that wasn't good enough for her. Six months ago, she told me she was getting bored in the marriage, and I didn't know why because I am NOT boring. I'm slightly pedantic, a little organized, and slightly OCD, but I am NOT boring. I'm a wedding DJ, and my partner Benji and I met a client that we had done a wedding for a year ago. When we came up to them, I said, "How's it going?" and they said, "We bought a dog and named it after you because you're the funniest person we know." Mind you, my DJ's partner's name is Benji. They did not name the dog after him—no, they named it after me. So, I am not boring.
But now we're separated, and I know it's not really separated. It's like when you're a kid and you discover Santa isn’t real, but you pretend for one more year—for the parents' sake or maybe to get a couple of extra presents. That's what we're doing. We're separated, but I know what's coming, and I hate it. My parents got divorced when I was a kid, and it destroyed my childhood. I swore when I was a kid that I was never going to let this happen to me—that I was going to marry the right person and work hard at the marriage, and it would work. But now I am in this cruddy apartment, all by myself, and I see divorce coming. I’ve never been depressed in my life, but for the first time, I can feel the shadows of depression closing in as I see nothing in my future.
I go to Vermont for a weekend to DJ a wedding, and when I come back, there are two moving vans right next to my house. As I get closer, I realize the Indian family is moving out. I see the husband and wife trying to get a couch out. I've got new neighbors, and they're lovely people, but I see the curry is going away, and it's the first good thing I've had in a long time.
Then I see the people moving in. Their truck is right there. As I get close, I realize I know the woman who's standing by that truck. Who is she? And when she sees me coming, she smiles like she knows exactly who I am. I’m thinking, "Crap, who is this woman?" Then I realize who it is. It’s the woman who named her dog after me. I see the dog come out from around the truck as she calls my name. It’s the dog named after me, and it’s going to be living below me. This is amazing.
Then I see her husband coming, and I look at him and think, "Wait, that’s not her husband, but I know that dude." How do I know him? They’re both coming towards me, and they say, "Hi," and I’m trying to figure out who he is. Then I realize who he is. He’s the best man from the wedding. I look for the husband, thinking maybe he's helping out. As she sees me looking around, she says, "Yeah, I can’t believe it."
So we look at each other for a minute without saying anything, and then I say, "I live upstairs. I’m going to live above the dog that’s named after me. If you need any help, call me." Then I go up the stairs to my cruddy apartment and sit down at my cruddy kitchen table. I pour water on the raisin bran and sit there.
I think, "There's a person in the world right now, maybe sitting in his kitchen, who has lost the wife I know he loved, lost his best friend, and lost his dog. And I am sitting in my cruddy kitchen, but I've got my dog. And I'm losing a wife, but if I'm honest with myself, I’m probably losing a wife I didn’t love enough to begin with." So I think about that guy somewhere in the world who has lost so much, and I realize how much I still have and how things might turn out okay after all.
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