P.U.

It's 1980-something and I'm a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed teenager. OK, I'm a smart-mouthed pain-in-the-ass but somehow I sweet-talked my parents into leaving me home alone while they went traipsing off to Montana for a couple of weeks in the years before they moved there for goo.

I'm left with the house and our 2 dogs to take care of, was given a whopping $60.00 and instructions to "not touch the alcohol, sweetie". Sweetie was said through slightly clenched teeth due to a previous un-heeded warning I've written about before that involved me being very, very stupid with many, many cups of alcohol and my parents getting very, very mad after my many, many trips to puke in the toilet.

Everything goes just fine the first night, until I decide to finish the book Pet Sematary by Stephen King at 1 a.m. on a dark and scary night and the minute I read the last word the dogs started going batshit crazy barking in the garage over I'm sure a demon who wanted to eat my face. Needless to say the dog's got to sleep inside that night and I watched bad late night TV until I finally fell asleep with a crazy lab and a protective doberman on each side of me.

After I survived the scary night and the demon I decided to invite a couple of girlfriends over to "not touch the alcohol, sweetie" and we're having a good time with our naked pillow-fight, cause you know we really do that. Again, I hear those damn dogs going batshit crazy outside in the backyard and I run to the sliding glass door to holler their noisy asses back inside.

And that's when it hit me.

Like and atom bomb of shit.

Right in the nose.

SKUNK.

Oh shit, oh no, not this. Skunk? Damn those dogs! They had chased that fucking skunk again and got sprayed. Now the whole damn house is gonna smell all damn night!

I go into the garage to reprimand the pooches and that’s when I realize...um...there’s like no oxygen in here. WTF? It had been completely evaporated by the fresh ass blast of the scaredy cat skunk. And in all my life I have never experienced anything like that before. I couldn’t breath.

I immediately started gagging. I looked at my dobie and she was foaming at the mouth and squinting, unable to open her eyes. So of course I did the natural thing and grabbed her, drug her over the hose and tried to rinse out the offending substance. This however is where I met my own fate. I too was now covered in skunk butt juice.

I checked my lab and of course her whole neck was soaked. Yay! Another dose of puke smell all over me! Now I’m screaming for my friends to help me, they’re screaming and holding their noses and the dogs are foaming, spitting, snorting and barking at the screaming girls.

I lock them in the garage (the dogs, not girls), grab some money and hop in my car. My only choice is 7-11 since this was pre all-night grocery stores. I hauled ass through the streets, ran into the store, grabbed all the super size cans of tomato juice and plunked them on the counter.

The clerk starts to sniff the air with a look on his face like he just ate a rancid pickle. “Hey, do you smell something”? I say, “Ah…no, I don’t smell anything”, hoping he's none the wise. I pay for juice and haul ass back home. I dash through the house grabbing both dogs on the way and throw them in the bathroom and start filling the tub when I then had to DRAG both chicken shit scared of a little water dogs into the bath to start “the treatment”.

3 giant cans of cold, nasty tomato juice is not my idea of a day at the spa, btw.

Now I’m covered with skunk, tomato juice and dog hair, the muts are shivering and trying to escape from the tub and this shit it’s NOT taking away the smell one little bit and to top it all off now my white lab is a pretty shade of pink.

My mostly useless friends finally did pitch in to help me clean the dogs and get them dried off and just as we’re finally seeing the humor in this nightmare, laughing about the whole ordeal and wondering when I’m going to stop smelling like a wet dog, an Italian restaurant and ass (it was 3 days btw), our lovely state of California decides it’s time to relieve a little tectonic pressure and we have a fucking earthquake.

More screaming girls, more barking dogs and that’s when we touched the alcohol, sweetie.