Missing Link

For a school assignment a few months ago I was told to write a profile on a stranger. I interviewed Nick, a long time skate buddy of my friend Jeff. Multiple times throughout the evening he caught me writing down his conversations in my notebook, and would stop mid sentence to ask me if he "sounded like an idiot." While many of the quotes I got from him were somewhat ludicrous and perfect for poking fun at him, it was a feigned ignorance on his part. Beneath his purposefully "dude-ish" surface he was actually one of the more brilliant people I've had the pleasure of interviewing in my life, along with his quick-witted girlfriend. Thanks Nick and Erin, you guys are amazing.

Missing Link: Girlfriend's, Weiner Dogs, and the Hidden Side of Nicholas Hyde

The door opens and Nick is standing there in gray sweats and a U of O sweatshirt with his hood pulled over his head, black leather slippers, and a can of cheap beer in one hand, but in his other arm he is cradling a little Weiner dog dressed in a faux fur purple zebra striped button coat. Our common thread Jeff—Nick’s skate buddy, my coworker-- gives out introductions, then Nick introduces his small pal: Link. “Girlfriend’s dog?” I ask, eying the blonde girl behind him in the kitchen. “No, he’s mine.”



While the $45 dog coat was indeed purchased by Nick, the apartment belongs to his girlfriend, whom he is “crashing with at the moment. As we sit down on the white leather sofa Nick, who turns 31 in August, explains that he was laid off over a year ago from his job at Dex, the yellow pages directory. “You weren’t laid off, you were fired!” his girlfriend chimes in as Nick is telling me this. Nick concedes, but says he was wrongfully terminated, and apparently a judge agreed, as Dex has now been paying him unemployment benefits for a year. “I’m gonna ride out this unemployment thing as long as I can.”
“You’re going for round three?” His girlfriend, Erin asks. She is immersed in the cooking of something epic in the kitchen, but she still hears everything we are saying. Nick replies, “I told you honey, I’m not gonna get a job ‘cause I’m trying to get this book to sell!”

The book Nick references is an idea he had after he was fired, when he went to Los Angeles to hang out with friends and “skate and shit” while he figured things out. He says one particular night he and his friends D.P. and Wolfie went to a nightclub that cost three hundred bucks just to walk through the door. Once inside, they began drinking heavily, moving from the cheapest beers in the place to eventually at one point, rounds of $80 shots. The idea of a shot of alcohol costing eighty bucks is more than I can comprehend, so I inquire, “What kind of shots were they?” to which he responds: “I dunno, watermelon or somethin’.”

“And it was there at the bar when I was wasted off my ass that this idea for the book came to me,” he says. “I was sitting in the booth, depressed, had just spent like three hundred bucks to get in and another three hundred bucks on booze and I was wondering where my life would go…. And then I thought about how much I missed Link and it came to me: I decided to write a book about Weiner dogs.”

I keep waiting for him to crack a smile but his face is deadpan. I look over at Jeff, who is nodding in a way that seems to acknowledge that what Nick is saying is true.

“So, to be clear, you were fired, went to L.A., spent $600 in one night at a club, belligerently decided to write a book about Weiner dogs, and now plan on never working again in hopes of getting this book published?”
“This sounds like an intervention!” Erin laughs from the kitchen.

“I’m not planning to never work again, I’m just planning to never do jobs I don’t like. In fact, I have an interview lined up this week to host an archaeology show on the History Channel.” Again, his face is dead serious.

This is what Nick does. As soon as you think you have his story figured out, you think you have him pegged as this burned out skater dude, he throws a curveball at you. It turns out Nick graduated from U of O with a degree in archaeology. Apparently his educational background in history (along with booze and a love for Weiner dogs) directly contributed to his idea for his book. He pulls out his laptop and begins showing me the book in question, page by page. The first page has a collage he made himself from magazine clippings depicting baby Weiner dogs crawling out of cracks of a dirt terrain with volcanoes erupting behind them. The page is titled “In The Beginning”.

“So, like, they came out of the cracks of the earth right?”

He flips the pages. A picture of Napoleon with his head cut out is replaced with a Weiner dog head. The page is titled “Napoleon Weinerparte.”
There’s “Medieval Weiner.”
And “Weinerham Lincoln.”
“Weinerado DaVinci.”
“Civil Weiner War.”
“World War Weiner.”

Each page is accompanied by a brief story of the actual person or event in history, just with Weiner dogs replacing the humans. The first sentence of Weiner Armstrong (A Weiner dog in a space suit on the moon) reads, “All of Daschund was transfixed on the final frontier: Space.”

“Nick, this is really smart and funny!” I say, realizing I probably sound a little too surprised by the revelation. “How did you choose these stories, were these your favorite things you learned in your history classes?”
“Nope, I just wrote the whole story board in the bar in one sitting while I was wasted off my ass.”


***


Jeff is standing next to Erin in the kitchen and I can’t help but notice the striking similarities in their attires. Both of them are wearing white pointed-toed shoes, black skinny jeans (his are even a little bit tighter than hers), and gray sweatshirts. The sole difference is Erin’s sweater is adorned with a picture of Mickey Mouse on the front. I make a comment about them being twins, which consequently opens a can of worms.

“Jeff is always dressed like a pussy!” Nick quips. “He’s always matching my girlfriend, I swear to god. I have a photo of them both wearing these Frenchie striped shirts and those pointy shoes. Those shoes man, I swear to god. Jeff even skates in those things!” Apparently Jeff’s wardrobe has always been the subject of much ridicule amongst his baggy-sweatshirted skater friends.

“We need another picture of us together!” Erin says.
“Wait, let me see your sweater first, I wanna copy the Mickey image and tape it on my sweater so we’ll really match!” Erin takes her sweater off and hands it to Jeff.
“Nick bought this sweater for himself,” Erin laughs.
“The tag said large!” Nick protests.
“Yeah, large in kids’ sizes!” she replies, “I knew it wouldn’t fit you I just told you to buy it so I could have it!”
Nick is standing behind Jeff, who is crouched down on his knees on the hardwood floor examining the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. Jeff starts to draw an outline with his black sharpie on the sketchpad then hesitates.
“Dude, Mickey is just a bunch of circles and shit, how can you screw that up?” Nick heckles as he takes another swig off his can of Rainier beer.

Jeff starts sketching out Mickey, whose nose is notably a bit off.
“That looks like the Steamboat Willie early version Mickey, you know, back when he was still racist.”
The scent of tomatoes and basil wafts in from the kitchen. “Honey, is that pasta prima donna almost ready?” Nick shouts to his girlfriend. Erin emerges from the kitchen with two plates in her hands.
“Yes, the primavera is ready,” she says, handing him a plate.
“Why did you use this grated shit? You should have bought the real parmesan!” Nick gripes.
Something about a jobless, unemployed skater dude living off unemployment checks and food stamps, whose vocabulary seems to consist of the words “dude”, “man”, and “shit” complaining about the quality of the parmesan cheese throws me for another loop. Yet, all things considered, he truly seems to be living the high life, or at least a life far more luxurious than my own. He says not paying taxes and having less bills from selling his car and staying at his girlfriend’s house has helped him to save money, and the $200 a month he collects in food stamps is far more than he had set aside for food when he had a job. So, why not, throw that ten-dollar block of cheese in the grocery basket!

“How many meatballs did you get?” He asks Erin indignantly.
“Two.” Erin replies.
“You got two and I only got two? But I’m a man!”
“Yeah, but you’re the same height as me so therefore you only get two meatballs.”
“Ooh, burn!” Jeff chimes from his spot on the floor.
“Pipe down peanut gallery, your Mickey looks like he’s got Down Syndrome.”

The dynamic between Erin and Nick is a sight to behold. They seem to feed off each other, picking on one another constantly, but in an entirely playful way. They seem to keep each other balanced, and you can feel the strength of the love between them. Feeling inspired by their romance, I inquire about their first date.
“Oh, I had to cancel our first date because I sharted.” Erin states casually. And like that, any romantic notions I had are out the window. “Yeah, that Chinese place on NW 21st? Don’t ever eat there!"

***

It’s been approximately thirty minutes since Nick finished eating Erin’s much labored over pasta dinner when he says, “I want Burgerville.” This doesn’t phase Erin, she simply replies, “Yeah, I had Burgerville for lunch yesterday.”
“Me too,” Nick says, “and when I got there a band was playing! In the parking lot! Jesus, could you imagine being in a band that get’s booked at Burgerville?! ‘Dude, where’s the gig tonight?’ ‘BURGERVILLE’. What a bummer!”
“Nick! It was a charity event to raise money for cancer!”
“Oh, shit, I didn’t know that…”

Link waddles into the room and climbs into Nick’s lap. He let’s out a tiny yelp and Nick quickly covers his mouth. “Erin’s not allowed to have dogs in her building.” Nick whispers.
Erin adds, “Yeah, we sneak him in like he’s Ann Frank.”

Link begins sleeping peacefully in Nick’s lap, Jeff has fallen asleep on the floor with a beer in his hand and the Mickey sweater as a pillow, and Erin goes into the bathroom to put on her pajamas, cueing my exit. But before I go, I’m still not sure I have this character quite figured out yet. There’s another level to Nick that I’ve seen hints of throughout the night, things he’s alluded to with historical references, a mature taste palette and sharp quips, but disguises with an overall feigned ignorance.

So I ask Nick about the future.

“Nick, what are your goals in life?”
“Well right now my goal is to find a place to live. I went to look at a place to rent today and it was a Vietnamese couple and they were like, ‘So, you French?’ and I was like, ‘No, I’m from Eugene.’ And they said, ‘Oh, we thought you French ‘cause you so short!’ No way was I renting from those guys!”
“Ok, but I mean, long term goals. What moves you in life? Skating? History? Do you want to be an archaeologist? What do you dream about?”
“Oh, long term? That’s simple. I’m gonna sell this Weiner dog book, own the History Channel, and then I’m gonna buy a fucking yacht!”