Positive Reinforcement by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

    Lewin Bormann CC




Positive Reinforcement


     I go to the dog store to buy a service dog.
     “What sort of service dog are you looking for?” the sales clerk asks.
     “A nice one,” I say, trying to make a joke. “With short hair.”
     “No,” he says. “What do you need a service dog for? What, if you don’t mind me asking, is your problem?”
     I tell him about my problem. He looks at me like it’s a good thing he has a chair to sit in. Fuck him. I lean on the counter, my elbows on the glass above the collars and chew toys. Several times I have to nudge him awake. For a moment he looks around as if I’m not right there in front of him. 
     “I turn invisible,” I tell him. 
     He looks at me skeptically, like if you could turn invisible, why aren’t you out there enjoying your life stalking people and shoplifting like all the other invisible people in this world?
     Why is it so hard to say how you feel, say it in a way that the person you’re talking to actually gets it? Supposedly dogs are good for this. I really hope so.
     “Depression,” the sales clerk finally says with a shrug. “Aisle three, not that it’ll help.”
     I turn the corner towards aisle three where I see an ad for organic dog food that reads, “Welcome to the Happiest Place on Earth.” I can hear barking, but I feel the worry start to lurch around inside me, replacing the self-assurance I had talked myself into fifteen minutes earlier, when I was trying to make myself walk in the dog store instead of standing outside staring through the shop window wondering what if, after all this, it doesn’t work? That nothing works?
     My thoughts grind. What if I infect the dogs with whatever I got? What if all those poor dogs I’ve just petted sooner or later wander off unseen and despairing and get hit by a car or something? I look into the eyes of a bichon friese who only wants to lick me and wonder if she can take it.
     Still, just by walking through that door I must have chosen to not live my life in fear. I pick a really yippy mutt, a smallish beagle pit mix or something like that, Pepper, relentlessly cheerful. I sign the papers; I pay the clerk.
     “I’m going to try my best not to ruin you,” I tell Pepper as she sits in her carrier next to me on the train. She looks at me with really soulful eyes that make me feel like I’m going to fail her because that’s what all people do to their dogs. And that’s when I feel the attack come on.
    It always starts with my feet, and the waves overwhelming me. One minute I’m okay, the next I can’t see my legs, my arms, then everything’s erased, it’s that bad. And it’s not simply that other people can’t see me, these attacks are so overwhelming because no one wants to look at me, or hear me, or anything. The carriage rocks back and forth and people bump into me nonstop. How long until they notice I’m not there, that some jerk just abandoned their dog on the train?
     I concentrate as hard as I can and bring myself to a sort of shimmering realness, hardly enough to pick up the crate and turn the gated end towards me. “Pepper?” I ask nervously, afraid not even my service dog would give a shit whether I was there or not. 
    Pepper presses her nose against the grate, and even if it’s just in my head, I feel her tugging at my scent, noticing me, the tiniest molecules shedding off of me, and then the whole crate starts wobbling as Pepper yelps, her tail stump wagging hard, like I was made out of bacon or something else worth getting to know.
     Seeing my fingers on the crate becoming real, I feel myself start to unclench. That bubble of space visible people take for granted puffs back into place. 
     Still terrible, but heading back to Okay. “You’re a good dog, Pepper, yes you are,” I whisper into the crate.

     Life gets better. I take Pepper for walks to neighborhoods I’ve never visited before. I don’t mind that she keeps veering off in all sorts of weird directions, like she’s chasing after cats or squirrels, even when there aren’t any cats or squirrels around. It’s all I can do not to lose hold of the leash she’s such a puller. Lots of people strike up conversations with me. It’s nice. I’d never truly understood before how good it feels to be noticed, to be seen, or apparently how starved I was for it. The attacks diminish, even if the depression lingers.
     One day, on our way to the dog park, Pepper leaps upon something that isn’t there, and she’s yipping and wagging her stump like she’s met her new best friend. Reluctantly, the person, the sales clerk from the dog store, naked except for a pair of Birks, becomes visible.
     “Hey,” he shouts. “Could you restrain your dog?”
     “Dude,” I say, feeling startled to actually meet another person with my condition. “I didn’t know! Are you okay? Do you want my jacket?” 
     Meanwhile Pepper’s still trying to form a friendship. “Just get your fucking dog away from me!” the salesclerk snarls.
     “Wait,” I say. “You actually want to be invisible?”
     “It’s my day off. I’m not hurting anyone being who I actually am,” he says through gritted teeth, like he’s given this exact same explanation before to countless parole officers. 
     I do not understand, but I pull Pepper back and let the guy go back to being invisible. I can’t help myself: I begin wondering if I should visit the dog store again, start a conversation with the salesclerk (I think his nametag said Stephen), see if I can gradually lure him out of himself, patiently, like he was some sort of feral cat that needs a lot of tuna to be convinced it’s better to not shiver in the rainy dark, that there’s an inside, a home.

     At the dog park I let Pepper off leash to party with all the other dogs. I strike up conversations with the other owners, listening for clues: is this person with the black lab someone who was among the formerly invisible, like me or that salesclerk? It’s not like there’s a medic alert bracelet to tip you off.
     I bring up the situation in a roundabout way, just to get other opinions about my rescue fantasy. This one guy missing a few fingers says it’s better to let him be, others ask me who is rescuing who from what? One or two, the sort with dozens of happy dogs, say you need to figure out if you’re a hoarder first before you decide to take in any strays.
     “I don’t think I’m a hoarder,” I say.
   “You can be a hoarder and not even know it,” this woman with six chihuahuas explains. “I used to go out with a guy who kept an immaculate house, totally minimalist and modern, the last person you’d think would be a hoarder. We got into the worst fight when I surprised him with a little Kokopelli figurine I found at a yard sale. He just grabbed it and wrapped it in half a roll of paper towels and then marched it straight to the dumpster, like I had handed him a pile of you know what.”
     One of her chihuahuas looks like its bullying one of the bigger dogs. “Scraps, NO!” she yells, and like magic the dog blends back in with the rest of the dogs.
     “He seemed well adjusted, but what he hoarded was neatness, order, control. And he had arranged his life in such a way that he never had to change. All he had to do was hide who he truly was from the people who might love him.” She measures me up. “Be honest: do you have a hole in your heart that never gets filled no matter what you throw at it?”
      I consider whether I should explain that I have a disability, not a metaphor. “Maybe a little hole,” I shrug. 
     “Me too! How do you think I wound up with six of these beauties?” the woman with the chihuahuas laughs. I ask her how she managed to train them so well. She gives me her card.
     “Sometimes,” she says. “When you’re in need of help, you seek out others who also need help instead of getting that help for yourself.”

     I walk Pepper home carefully, wondering, wondering, wondering, picking apart my feelings of empathy towards Stephen, my desire to try to save him from his misery. Imagine how many fucked up choices a person would have to make in their life to wind up spending their free time wandering around other people’s neighborhoods, naked and invisible. To want to do that. Each decision point, no matter what, would have to have made sense at the time, right? Or maybe the points would be so subtle a person wouldn’t realize they are even making them. I could have made a whole bunch of the same horrible choices myself. I probably have.
     Pepper yanks me towards some bushes, sniffing around signals from previous dogs and then adding her reply. What must she have been like before she was trained? Was she a good dog or a bad one, or maybe just a regular dog with a bunch of bad habits? What would have happened to her if she had never become a service animal? Would she have kept doing bad things until everyone gave up on her? Would people pass her by at the dog store in favor of a dog that seemed so much better behaved? 
     Better trained, I correct myself. If I knew what I was doing, I could do that; I could tip the balance between bad and good behaviors. Dogs must be easier to work with than people: I bet Stephen’s parole officer would tell me the same thing. I decide to call the chihuahua lady (Kathy it says on the card) and ask her about what it takes to become a trainer of service animals.
     I have an attack, a small one, but I focus on how my arm feels with Pepper pulling on it, and the realness flows back up into my body. Maybe that’s a decision point right there, a positive one.


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​Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s prose can be found in X-Ray, The Pinch, Invisible City, Heavy Feather Review and The Offing. His short story "Taylor Swift" won the Barthelme Prize from Gulf Coast, and his story "Goodwill" was picked as one of the Wigleaf Top Fifty Very Short Fictions. A collection of prose poems and microfiction, Animal Children, was published by Nomadic/Black Lawrence Press.