Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(31)

“Can we please get him an entrée?” I asked the flight attendant from the floor, when she headed over to me with three large bottles of water.

When the flight attendant looked at me sideways, I told her I was pregnant. Once I got Chunk nicely settled with his second gallon of water and a bowl, I looked at the map in front of my seat, which told me there were six hours left of our flight to Los Angeles.

When the flight attendant arrived with a Salisbury steak and some other gross side dishes, I took out my tray table to play the part of being the passenger who would be eating it. To cement my credibility, I asked her for a glass of red wine and some bread options. I went through the motions of taking out the silverware and cutting off a piece of the steak on the tray, and once the flight attendant was far enough away, I handed it to Chunk. By the time she returned, the entire tray was facedown on Chunk’s side of the seat, with food splattered everywhere, while I was wrestling him to get the entire slab of uncut meat out of his mouth. She didn’t even bother stopping; she just turned around and took the red wine and bread with her.

    There was water, food, and dog hair everywhere. I fastened Chunk’s leash to his collar and placed the handle grip around my ankle. It was time to get real. I recovered the blankets and reinstalled our fort until I could get the situation under control.

I rang the call button once more and ordered a double espresso.

“Would you like one or two?” she asked, eyeing Chunk.



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A week earlier, Chunk had been too dignified to lie on his back to get his belly rubbed. He would rather be caught shoplifting than lie in such a submissive position. It was too ungentlemanly. Chunk even knew it was wrong to get a hard-on. He turned his back when he had to go number two. He was august. He was esteemed.

And now here we were—on a flight where Chunk had lost his last shred of dignity because his delinquent mother force-fed him a human sleeping pill.

I could see the headlines now: “Chelsea Handler Kills Dog on Flight from Spain.” PETA would have a field day with this.

Once Chunk was hydrated, his breathing slowed and he started to calm down, and then, finally—exhausted from the emotional turmoil—he fell asleep. In between checking his pulse and cleaning up the food and dog hair that was splattered all over our area, I became aware of a soreness on my back and abdomen. When I lifted my shirt, I discovered several rope burns.

    I quickly realized that I had to start planning for the very real possibility that Chunk might shit his pants on this flight. I had my very aromatic grapefruit hand lotion in the toiletry bag inside my purse, so the plan I devised was to scoop up any fecal matter with the Maxi Pad–grade pillowcase, douse it with the hand lotion to cover the smell, and then flush it down the toilet. I had empty water bottles lined up and ready to place over Chunk’s penis in case he decided to pee. I didn’t know the protocol for when your dog shits on a plane. Would we be arrested upon landing? Surely, this can’t be a felony.



* * *



? ? ?

Not only did Chunk not die on the flight, he didn’t urinate or take a shadoobie. He waited the entire haul through customs, where the officer greeted the two of us with a “Welcome home, Chunk” and then asked me for my passport. This kind of shit happened with Chunk all the time. Chunk was a national treasure, and I was his plus-one. He’d get recognized on the streets when my houseman Oscar would take him for his morning walks, and even when he would be catching a breeze in the backseat of my car on our way to work. You’d hear other drivers at stoplights say, “Look, that’s Chunk,” and he’d wag his tail and smile. People would stop us and ask me to take pictures of them with Chunk. He probably went through life assuming getting recognized daily happened to all dogs.

    By the time I got home, I looked like the one who should have been on a leash through customs. I was using my eyeshades as a scrunchie, I was covered in dog hair and food stains, and I was bleeding from one arm. I looked like a streetwalker.

Later, when I told my vet what had happened, he informed me that giving a dog a sleeping aid when they’re in a state of agitation will just prolong that state of agitation. I told my vet that I was in a constant state of agitation, and whenever I took a sleeping pill, it worked. I didn’t mention to the doctor that I had prescribed my own medication for Chunk, or that I had pilfered his on my family vacation.

I avoided eye contact with Chunk for days after we got back from Spain. He knew I was the culprit in this situation, and I had absolutely no defense. For fear of being accused of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, I stopped giving Chunk his CBD oil too. I knew I had overstepped, and it was time to get my dog clean.

“Wouldn’t you just kill to know what Chunk is thinking?” Molly asked me one day over oysters I had shucked earlier that afternoon.

“Not anymore,” I told her. “That’s a slippery slope.”

My brother Glen once told me the reason your firstborn is so special is because they’re the one that makes you a parent. That’s how I felt about Chunk. He made me a mother. A delinquent, useless one—but a mother nonetheless.





The first thing my mother did when she woke up was take a nap. She took on average two naps per day and was in bed for the night no later than nine P.M. Our whole family has the sleep gene, and although I can easily get into bed for the night at 7:30 P.M., I have an aversion to taking unmedicated naps. The last time I fell asleep during the day was after a marijuana facial, when I came home in a stupor and passed out for four hours—at eleven o’clock in the morning. I was high for three days after that and haven’t felt entirely right since.