REX IN THE CITY, Part IV: Becoming Dog People"

In which Ed and I start to become bonified dog people

A quick note for the new subscribers (feel free to skip past this if you’re not new):

For those of you who are new to my work, my column “Rex in the City” appeared in the late great Bark magazine in the early aughts, from around 2000 - 2004 or thereabouts. In the very beginning I was writing under my married name, Lee Forgotson (I never changed my name legally when I was married, but chose this “pseudonym” to appease my then-husband).  After I left my husband in 2002, I reverted back to publishing under my own name, Lee Harrington--not to be confused with the author Lee Harrington who writes about S&M. And, to further confound the name issue, I actually had about three different pen names at Bark—including E.M Harrington—because so few of us wrote so many pieces for the magazine. But that’s another long story. (As is the story about how I am now constantly being algorithmed into another Lee Harrington’s identity). But I digress…

My “Rex and the City” columns were so fun to write, and the series eventually earned me the title of “Best Humor Writer” from the Dog Writers Association of America.  (A sweet and true honor). Eventually I was approached by an agent and a publisher to turn the columns into a book--the memoir REX AND THE CITY which was published by Random House in 2006.

I keep restating this, but the “Rex” of my columns [and subsequent book] was actually my dog Wallace. I called him Rex in the Bark to protect his identity (seriously!) and also because my then-editor liked the pun of SEX AND THE CITY, which was popular at that time. So in a way, I became a victim of my own pun. To this day, people still ask me about my dog Rex and I have to explain that his name was Wallace, and it just feels so illogical when I try to explain. That’s because it IS illogical. Also, the man I refer to as “Ted” in the series was actually named “Ed.” So I like to clarify this from the get-go. Note to all future memoirists—it’s much less confusing to just use the real names :)

Wallace in all his gorgeousness

So, on to this week’s piece, which originally appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of Bark magazine (pasted as PDFs below).

Part IV is basically a continuation of Part III (which I posted last week). At the point in time in which this piece was published (2001), my word count for each Rex installment started to get shorter, which meant that we got into the habit of cutting my longer pieces in half. (I guess that is the whole point of serials!) Parts III and IV are a clear example of that. This one picks up right where the former left off, and they “read” better if read together (in my humble opinion).

Anyway, as the subtitle implies, this installment is about how Ed and I—once it became 100% clear that we were going to keep this troubled rescue dog— started to become dog people. It’s also about how we became New York City dog people. New York is just as much a character in this series as we and the dog were. NYC is just like that…it inserts itself as a prominent entity in any relationship. [And, as readers will later see, the Entity New York eventually sucked out our souls and destroyed our relationship. But that’s a long way down the road.]

Back in 1997—the time at which this story took place—we still had a lot of glory and wonder to experience in our neighborhood and in ourselves and our family unit. As Wallace became better adjusted, we started to meet the other dogs in the neighborhood, as well as the other dog people. We became part of something larger—the dog-loving cult. We also got to know the people in our building better, including our hot hipster super, on whom I had a huge crush. I might as well finally reveal that the super I am referring to in this installment is none other than Sander Hicks, the author and progressive mover-and-shaker who went on to found Soft Skull Press and Vox Pop, Inc. Who would have thought? Who would of thought that so many of us scrabbling for survival in that cramped, derilict building in a neglected neighborhood would end up as published authors and media influencers and television producers? But I suppose, at some level, we did know back then what we would become, because we intended it to be that way. New York is full of people like this—people who are determined with, um, self-determination. We were on a trajectory. That’s what NYC is all about. And my own trajectory suddenly involved dogs. Enjoy the momentum :)

REX IN THE CITY, PART IV: Becoming Dog People

“As the weeks passed, Rex was becoming more and more dog-like….And while Rex was becoming a dog, we were becoming dog people.”

“We found, in our neighborhood, an entire support group of young and old people who had gone through what we were going through. And most of them were visibly insane.”

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