wishy-waggy

Chapter 01: i
Chapter 02: ii

the dog came to me as he always does and he put his nose up against me as he always does and he pressed his jowl to my leg.

the dog was searching. i said "i know baby" and scratched his head. as i always do

he was looking for my companionship, i think i can say. but he also licked my face when i was crying, and i cannot say that i have ever unabashedly believed in the intelligence of a dog like that, who isn't the faithful, ragged companion of a scrawny boy fighting to make it to a year in his days where he's better than his father was, and he has enough bacon to share with the shaggy mouth and his mother too. who drools and dreams and whines at little dogs from the turret of his bay window

this prince of a good boy cannot know that i have pain. surely. there isn't enough of it to be detected. i smile not to fool but because it isn't worth dragging the mud of a rotten mood through the world, when no one cares. we're all rotten. we all smile. we all care.

he licked my face in greeting, the first time. it was as if he was reuniting with an old friend. i made several wrong turns and i wore a big sweater and i shuddered from the gazes of the people who were still so graciously and querulously waiting on my incompetence, and the dog said, i know. but life is wonderful, because you came here to see me. everything out there is so scary, but we here, you and me and those people too, we're friends.

everything is so scary. the world is happening all the time. it's not only orphans and babies who think so.

a weak sentiment. i wish i could find a deeper one. but i told the dog, i know, and what did i know? only that he was drooling on my leg. only that it was the same as it had always been, and always would be. to sag hopelessly into the arms of my people, and only know for that time alone that everything would be alright.

it must just be because i was never raised around dogs, but i never really thought they could know things like that. that they could lick your face when you're crying, or even just to say hello - this isn't Old Yeller, now, is it? or Lassie, or even Annie, or whichever. i read them, plenty. i don't think i really believed that dogs could get especially excited to see anyone they didn't live with (other dogs excepted, of course) or deem favorites out of visitors even the most irregularly frequent. i thought, you know, loyalty. deservingness, et cetera. who has the food, who's your life contract with, so to speak? who do you owe, who do you owe that bond to? which is a horrible way to think about dogs, and it's not that i didn't always think they were wonderful creatures. it's not that dogs haven't always liked me, maybe in particular! and some cats have done it, too. but dogs like everyone who's nice enough, right? they want to be petted the same way of anyone who'll do it, without asking questions. that's the social contract, generically. it's not worth their effort to really differentiate between tired human and sad human and defensive human and scared human, if that's not *their* human. maybe all humans are their humans. maybe they're allowed to pick a couple bonus.

it must just be because i was never raised around humans, but i never-- well, you read it. read it again.