A dog named Hades

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to scream in fright–there I was, all 200 pounds and 47 years of me, held firmly at bay by the fierce and unrelenting yapping of a small brown dog that sported a dachshund’s frankfurter body but a chihuahua’s pointy face.

"His name is Hades," said my friend Deling Weller, who was hosting me at her home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as she pulled the little monster away and as I tiptoed into her living room. The dog continued to growl fearsomely, protecting its turf like a lion at some emperor’s gate. I had never met a dog–or a man, or any animal–named Hades (Hey-dees) before, but it seemed entirely appropriate to the beast, if you shut your eyes. That growl came from deep beneath the earth, in smoky caverns and recesses where, presumably, dachshunds mated with chihuahuas, dalmatians with shar-peis, and St. Bernards with poodles, producing astounding abominations, some of which occasionally escaped to the surface through vents in the rock and ended up in benign middle-class Midwestern suburbs like Ann Arbor, ready to pounce on visiting Filipinos–intuitively recognizing them, perhaps, as kindred mongrels.

"He’s a friend, Hades, he’s a friend," Deling tried to convince Hades in her most soothing voice. It’s really Deling who’s everyone’s friend; no Pinoy passes through Ann Arbor without meeting and paying his or her respects to this diminutive but remarkable widow with a gift and a passion for growing fabulous peonies and other showpiece flowers in her yard. This Ilocana once studied and taught political science at Diliman, then married an American doctor; she now teaches Filipino at the University of Michigan, and maintains an active interest in Philippine affairs and concerns. She shares her house with her daughter Anna Marie, three cats, five parakeets, and Hades.

Twenty reiterations of "He’s a friend" and a bucket of dog biscuits later–each tasty morsel thrown his way like a wallet at a traffic cop–Hades calmed down and let me stay, unmolested, in what for the next week would become my chair. "Sit," Hades seemed to be telling me with his black-marble eyes, "sit!" I came, I saw, I sat.

I never got around to asking how and why this dog acquired his unusual name. (I would later hear another Ann Arborite insist on calling him "Heidi," as if to sanitize him–only to add, curiously, that "Heidi doesn’t like gays. He keeps on barking at them, no matter what.") He looked like an overgrown puppy and I was surprised to be told by Deling that he was actually four years old, and had been abused by a previous owner, accounting for his, well, hellish disposition. Hades now perched himself on top of the sofa and splayed his short legs on either side of the cushioned headrest; quiet dogs can be very cute, as I had to admit he was. I took my dinner, and was happily chewing on my beef when I heard the unmistakable exhaust-engine aria of a heavy snorer. I didn’t know–I didn’t think–that Deling had another houseguest. I got up to investigate the source of the racket–and there he was, Hades himself, snoring away like a drunken sailor.

Later that evening, I took the same chair and laid out my working-away-from-home paraphernalia on the table–PowerBook, Palm, cellphone, Snickers bar–muttering the usual incantations to the writing gods ("Lord, give me a column!"). Hardly had I begun when one of the cats–each of them, I must note, at least as big as Hades himself–leapt up to the table and parked himself/herself right next to my open laptop, and laid his/her head on the keyboard. This gray short-hair tabby, I was to learn, was named Avalon and, like most cats–like my faraway Chippy, anyway–craved affection with the same intensity we Timog Ave. barflies hold for, uhm, chicharon bulaklak. I can never resist a cat–nor most slinky creatures, for that matter–that holds up its neck to me for scratching, and I proceeded to give Avalon the strumming of his/her life.

Big mistake. Avalon’s telltale purring awoke Hades, who came bounding across the room in a jealous rage. Up came both paws on my thigh. "Scratch me!" Hades commanded me telepathically. "Scratch my head!" And so I did, and there went the evening–cat in one hand and dog in the other–with the blinking cursor of Microsoft Word in between.

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Another letter writer whom I’ll call Genny wrote me a long while back to say, "I clipped your column about raising the stakes. I really laughed at the part about first stories. It was exactly my story and to think I spent a year just to write and rewrite that story! I just have a gripe. Editors of magazines never acknowledge my manuscripts, whether to reject or to accept [them]. I don’t have enough funds to buy six or seven different magazines a week and I’m embarrassed about browsing the newsstand so often. By the time I receive my check, it’s too late to go to the newsstand. Even worse, I came across one of my stories in a ladies’ magazine but I’ve never received payment from it."

Belated thanks for the message, Genny, and sorry to hear about your experience–in which, I’m sure, you are not alone. Without too many places to send their stories and poems to, and with so many others vying for the same space (yielded grudgingly to literary editors by the advertising people), Filipino writers stand at the mercy of Fortune and, sometimes, the post office.

The policies of each magazine or paper might vary, and some are presumably better about these things than others, but I’d have to agree that we have a long way to go towards establishing and practicing truly professional standards in literary publishing in this country. It’s probably the sheer lack of clerical help in some cases–you can imagine how many submissions literary editors get–but it’s no excuse not to be told, within some reasonable time and especially if you’ve provided the customary self-addressed, stamped envelope or SASE, whether your story’s being accepted or rejected.

Even after acceptance, scheduling the piece for publication could be another matter altogether. Some editors–charmed or taken by something in a story or poem–might accept submissions on well-honed impulse, only to worry about publication dates later. In other words, getting your story accepted today won’t mean you’ll see it in print next week or even next month; you’ll have spent your paycheck on blowouts long before anyone sees the reason for your largesse.

Did you say you weren’t paid by a ladies’ magazine? Guess what: it happened to me, too. You’d think that someone like me (pardon my presumption) would be exempt from all this, but no. In that case, the editor of a glossy magazine called, begged, and pestered me for an article which I neither wanted nor needed to write at that time, but which I produced for him, anyway, more for goodwill than for anything else. The article was submitted and published. Did I hear anything further from our assiduous editor? Not a pipsqueak, not even to say, "Thank you for the piece, your check is ready for pick-up." In cases like this, where the article was heavily solicited, common courtesy should urge the editor to have the check delivered to the writer–as has been my pleasant experience with the best professionals in the business–or at least to advise the writer to have the check picked up. We don’t get paid too much for these things, so these little graces help.

The chances are, your check’s probably in the magazine office, going stale. Nobody mails checks in this country, and magazines don’t have budgets for sending checks around by courier service. Call them up and ask them–it might still be there, ready for framing.

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Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.