I WAS NEVER BIG ON ROOMMATES, especially the kind who’d refuse to lie to my parents about my whereabouts. So for the majority of my twenties, it was just my poodle, Mr. Teets, and I. Then I ran out of money.
When my second cousin Herschel brought up the idea of us living together, I laughed. Hershel was an Orthodox Jew with zero hot friends and way too many Phish CDs. The idea of us cohabitating sounded duller than a Sophia Coppola film. Apart from the fact that we both went to UCLA, Hershel and I had ABSOLUTELY nothing in common. Herschel graduated and got into the world of investment banking while I graduated and spent the majority of my days convincing foreigners on Craigslist that I was an ESL teacher. They’d come to my house, I’d request twenty bucks, then spend an hour making them read scenes I needed to prepare for that week’s auditions.
But it occurred to me that there could an upside to his proposition. I was an overeducated, unemployed actress, and the only man in my life was neutered. Herschel had a stable job, no sex life to throw in my face, and zero interest in stealing my clothes.
Gradually, he got used to my speaking to Teets in German and I got used to hiding bacon in my bedroom. We were like the odd couple. He was the left-brained mathematical genius who taught me how to tip at restaurants, and I was the right-brained artist who exposed him to his first painting of a girl being unintentionally fucked in the ass.
Teets came to know him as “der Juden” and I called him “The Best Roommate Ever.” Then, in early spring, an incident occurred that changed our living dynamic forever.
My sister Pam and I took Teets to The Grove, an outdoor mall on the east side of L.A. Teets trotted along beside us as we browsed from shop to shop.
Weighing in at a whopping nine pounds, eleven ounces, Teets looked like a fuzzy Fraggle with the face of Richard Dreyfuss circa What About Bob. In other words, he was a KID MAGNET. My sister was blathering on about why are Asian girls so skinny when out of nowhere a little girl jumped out and started strangling Teets.
“Mommy, look at the puppy!” she said.
Teets looked up at me for help while I answered the typical series of questions and pried the little girl’s arms off his torso. “He’s two. Yup, a poodle. I know, he has human eyes, right?” I said.
The next question came as a shock to me, my sister and every other mall patron.“What’s coming out of his bum?” The little girl asked.
I looked down at Teets as a fucking shit-strangled CONDOM made its way out his little asshole.
“The fuck!” My sister screamed.
The mother ushered her daughter away and I tried to pull Teets off the condom he’d just passed. The problem was that it was stuck to his curly-Q ass hair. My sister started hyperventilating. I picked Teets up and rushed him to the nearest trashcan, where I proceeded to shake him vigorously, hoping the condom would drop. It didn’t. I made a mental note to remember this if I was ever cast as a baby-shaking au-pair.
“Just so you know, everyone at this mall thinks you are the biggest whore right now,” my sister said.
“I’m not even having sex! Just hand me a receipt or something I can use to pull the rest of it out of him.”
My sister rummaged through her purse and pulled out a tampon.
“Really? This is the best you can do.”
“You’re lucky I’m still standing here being seen with you,” she said.
I folded the tampon into makeshift tongs and gingerly extracted the rest of the digested rubber from my dog’s butt.
Teets looked up at me guiltily. He knew that I knew that he knew better than to eat semen, especially when that semen didn’t belong to anyone I was fucking. Plus, I was worried. Was my dog a drug mule? Did he have Aids? Why didn’t I have a boyfriend?
Before any of these questions could get answered, Teets was shitting again! Another condom plopped on the ground.
Mortified, my sister announced loudly that it was just ringworm. Gripping the latex turd, she made a beeline for her car.
I looked down at Teets as a fucking shit-strangled CONDOM made its way out his little asshole.
We drove Teets to the vet where he was X-Rayed and a final condom was discovered in his intestines. The doctor gave him some laxatives and told me to call if I didn’t see rubber number three in Teets’ number two later that evening.
The dog and I returned to our apartment to find Hershel standing in my bedroom holding one of my bathing suits.
“Oh, I was just returning this. Becca needed something to wear in the hot tub.”
“Becca?”
“The girl I’ve been seeing. Wanna meet her?”
Hershel escorted me into his room where I saw a Playboyesque model on all fours in his bathroom.
“Someone got into your trash, Hersh,” she said without looking up.
I knew what had happened and I didn’t like it. Hershel was having sex. While his super fun, ‘always mistaken for a Shiksa’ second cousin and her cum dumpster hound were celibate!
“Teets has been eating all your discarded condoms, so maybe try not leaving them in the trash,” I said as politely as possible.
Watching Teets hatch Hershel’s final sperm catcher that night, I thought about how Hershel was an amazing guy with a million things going for him if you didn’t know he liked Phish. There was no reason he shouldn’t be sexually active. Had anything happened to threaten Teets’ physical wellbeing I would have of course murdered him with my bare hands. But Teets was fine, with perhaps even stronger nails and better skin than before.
I fucked my stepbrother a week later.
Jenny Mollen Biggs is an actress and writer living in Los Angeles with two poodle angel muffins and an asshole miniature pinscher. She also has a husband. Keep up with her at IMDB or on Twitter @jennyandteets.
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