at night you can walk in the streets here. it’s a simple pleasure, but almost everyone does it. it’s the kind of convention that one just falls into, a lazy routine that i’m sure will be sadly absent when we move on to other points. in the morning you’re confronted by just enough moving cars that you have to take to the sidewalk. walking home the othe rnight we passed the school and a kitten, covered in it’s own shit (we later found that it had a stomach infection, most likely contracted from licking road kill). it followed us home. we bathed it and flyers were made to find out if it had an owner, but i’ve yet to see anyone make efforts to put it up.
i like the cat. unlike my parents, who, for whatever reason, are genuinely uncomfortable around animals, i get along well with furry things running around my house. but while, i enjoy their company, i can’t say i’ve ever been compelled to take pride in a pet, to say to myself, “yes, i just must be responsible for another living thing.” driving sparky and the as-yet-to-be-named kitten to the veternary clinic yesterday was terrifying. one, because it fealt so domestic, so adult. two, because it was a weird new experience. having never had pets that weren’t basically disposable as a child, i’ve never visited the vet before.
it’s a little disgusting. of course the veternary assistant has to fawn over every pet that comes in. it’s good, probably essential for business. but i just find myself really ambivalent to seeing strangers freak out over how cute, or how big, or how small, their pets are. sparky, rather tactlessly, whispered loudly that “people really do look like their pets”. i tried to loudly assert that “no, no, it’s not true,” but sparky was right. the lanky teenage girl had a chiuaua/terrier mix, the chubby little boy a bulldog puppy, and the large friendly man in a marilyn manson shirt had a large black, initially ferocious, but eventually pleasant monster of a dog.
i’m not very good with pets. i don’t have any kind of paternal instinct. i’m okay at being around and helping people with what they want, but i think a certain part of paternity/maternity involves imposing what the “parent” thinks the child or pet wants or needs on the child/pet. this is often a reflection of what the child/pet wants or needs. and this isn’t always bad in the case of something like affection, but it can be really noxious when it comes to something like personality traits or career aspirations. i want to be around for my friends, but i don’t have it in my to care for another living thing. to be responsible for them. to dictate things for them that they’re unable or unwilling to dictate for themselves.
i realize that i’m bad at having crushes. it’s been more than a month, i’ve realized, since there’s been anyone that i’ve been excited to encounter around town. and just seeing other people who i’d consider to be good at having crushes go from day to day, i don’t know if it’s a lack of interest in myself, or a lack of ability, or a difference in personality, but i just don’t have it in me to have that constant awareness of my attraction to others, and when that awareness comes easy, i don’t have the social skills or the desire to participate in the act of having a crush. it’s like the satisfaction, even in something as simple and nonexistant as an unspoken but implicitly acknowledged mutual attraction, isn’t enough to warrant the awkwardness that i feel in trying to figure those things out. i’ve found the few instances where i’ve detected some kind of interest direct towards to be terrifying just because i’m overwhelmed with trying to handle that responsibly knowing that indulging too much in it would probably just end up with someone’s feelings hurt or being in a relationship that i wasn’t comfortable with. and the thing about this is that it’s not a very big deal. when the akward subject of how many people you’ve kissed in the last year came up last night, i didn’t feel too bad that my number could be represented in a single binary digit, but i guess it would be nice, in those fleeting moments when one does want something more, for things to be a little easier.
