madgrad2

I had a dog once, had him for 19 years. He was a pound mutt, my mom and dad bought him one day before the litter he was in was supposed to be put down. The dog was there throughout almost all of my life, and he was a damn good dog. Ugly as sin, a bark that made my hair stand on end, but he was my dog. No one can fuck with a man's dog, it's one of those rules of being a guy like having a favorite T-shirt. He had a long and full life, but towards the end, a myriad of health problems began to creep up. Incontinence, hip problems, jaw problems, tumors. It came to a point where we had a choice to make: Be greedy and keep the dog alive for a few more months while living in torment, or let me die with some dignity and have him put down. We actually flip flopped on the issue for a few months, then one morning we finally had to choose to have him put down. Driving to the vet neither my mother and I said a thing, the worst part was it was a good day for my dog, he seemed happy in the car, tail wagging, yapping, etc. The room they put him down in seemed so small, this little steel table that he was sitting so patiently on, looking back and forth between me and my mother. The process was quick and painless, three injections back to back and within a minute he was dead. I swear the room shrank again, and I just stood there looking down at him and it finally struck me how small he really was. When I was younger, he seemd huge to me. When you're 2 anything that weighs 30lbs looks big. And throughout my life I carried that impression with me even though I now dwarfed the dog. So looking down at him on that table he was so small, and curled up, all I could do was sit there with my hand on his side, my hand looked so big compared to him. It was as though years of illusions and views from my childhood were crumbling as I stood looking down at my dog. I just remember thinking the most retarded thing ever "He was supposed to live as long as I did". I know that's not possible, I know the whole 7 of their years to one of ours, but he was supposed to last. Some things you just think for whatever stupid reason are supposed to last.


Last night my girlfriend got back in from California after being gone a month. I have no idea how a re-union is supposed to go after a month apart, but I have a feeling the way it went down wasn't it. I have some half assed old fashioned romantic streak in me that alters my view on life from time to time, so I was expecting some variation of the running towards each other in slow motion while a fucking orchestra plays in the background. Yeah. I've gotten more emotional hugs from my male friends. The evening together was one of the more awkward periods in life, it was like we each expected someone else to show up and instead we had each other. We went back to her place and then went to bed. Prior to this when we went to sleep we did the whole spooning/cuddling/falling asleep in each other arms thing every night. She turned over away from me and basically put a wall of blankets between us that the landing forces during D-Day would have a hard time breaching. I laid there for about 30 minutes until this raw urge hit me to put on my pants and just get out of the house and run, just flee. I've had to run from cops once before, and even when I had a large angry man with a gun chasing me, the urge for flight was far more casual. But instead I just stayed there, looking at the wall in the dark, thinking of Joy Division lyrics that seemed appropriate:
Why is the bedroom so cold
Turned away on your side?
Is my timing that flawed,
our respect run so dry?
In the morning we got up and I saw reproach, sadness and resignation in her eyes, and now I know how my dog felt when the first needle went in. It wasn't too hard to figure out, she feel in love with California, and I represent Baltimore to her and everything she wants to leave behind. I wanted to apologize to her for things I had no control over: I'm sorry I'm not San Diego, I'm sorry I'm not bright and sunny and the ocean, I'm sorry I'm not a soccer player that you love so dearly, I'm sorry I'm not an athlete,I'm sorry I'm not an older man, I'm sorry I'm not an eccentric artist,I'm sorry I'm not everything you want and I can't give. She mumbled some line about just feeling weird towards me since she was away for so long and that it would take a while to get used to me again, then I walked out.

Now comes the waiting game. Which one of us will have the balls to end it first? By the end of the day I'll probably convince myself that all I was seeing in her eyes was a reflection of my own inadequacies, guilt, fear, sins, paranoia, whatever and that everything is ok. And she'll be able to smile and string me along because I've told her far too much of the truth about myself, my fears about rejection. Desperation,fear,sadness and need are tangible scents, no matter what anyone tells you. It's a sharp scent you get, registering deep in your nose and a taste on the back of your tongue, deep down you recognize the smell on others on a primal level before your concious mind pieces if together from the facts. It's cigarettes and coffee, sweat, cold metal, old playing cards, the undertone of every bouqet of flowers that shouts "I'm pretty but you can watch me die if you stay long enough"I fucking reek of it right now. But I won't be able to put the relationship down, the feeling of guilt like I've done something wrong is always so strong even when I'm in the right. I want absolution the minute I pull the trigger, and I won't get it, so I stick around in purgatory waiting for the end.

It's already cold outside. It will be a long winter.