{"id":600,"date":"2004-07-21T08:15:41","date_gmt":"2004-07-21T13:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/2004\/07\/21\/109042288161726751\/"},"modified":"2004-07-21T08:15:41","modified_gmt":"2004-07-21T13:15:41","slug":"109042288161726751","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/2004\/07\/21\/109042288161726751\/","title":{"rendered":"109042288161726751"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>at night you can walk in the streets here.  it&#8217;s a simple pleasure, but almost everyone does it.  it&#8217;s the kind of convention that one just falls into, a lazy routine that i&#8217;m sure will be sadly absent when we move on to other points.  in the morning you&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;ve yet to see anyone make efforts to put it up.  <\/p>\n<p> 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&#8217;t say i&#8217;ve ever been compelled to take pride in a pet, to say to myself, &#8220;yes, i just must be responsible for another living thing.&#8221;  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&#8217;t basically disposable as a child, i&#8217;ve never visited the vet before.  <\/p>\n<p> it&#8217;s a little disgusting.  of course the veternary assistant has to fawn over every pet that comes in.  it&#8217;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 &#8220;people really do look like their pets&#8221;.  i tried to loudly assert that &#8220;no, no, it&#8217;s not true,&#8221; 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.  <\/p>\n<p> i&#8217;m not very good with pets.  i don&#8217;t have any kind of paternal instinct.  i&#8217;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 &#8220;parent&#8221; 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&#8217;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&#8217;t have it in my to care for another living thing.   to be responsible for them.  to dictate things for them that they&#8217;re unable or unwilling to dictate for themselves.  <\/p>\n<p> i realize that i&#8217;m bad at having crushes.  it&#8217;s been more than a month, i&#8217;ve realized, since there&#8217;s been anyone that i&#8217;ve been excited to encounter around town.   and just seeing other people who i&#8217;d consider to be good at having crushes go from day to day, i don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s a lack of interest in myself, or a lack of ability, or a difference in personality, but i just don&#8217;t have it in me to have that constant awareness of my attraction to others,   and when that awareness comes easy, i don&#8217;t have the social skills or the desire to participate in the act of having a crush.  it&#8217;s like the satisfaction, even in something as simple and nonexistant as an unspoken but implicitly acknowledged mutual attraction, isn&#8217;t enough to warrant the awkwardness that i feel in trying to figure those things out.   i&#8217;ve found the few instances where i&#8217;ve detected some kind of interest direct towards to be terrifying just because i&#8217;m overwhelmed with trying to handle that responsibly knowing that indulging too much in it would probably just end up with someone&#8217;s feelings hurt or being in a relationship that i wasn&#8217;t comfortable with.  and the thing about this is that it&#8217;s not a very big deal.  when the akward subject of how many people you&#8217;ve kissed in the last year came up last night, i didn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>at night you can walk in the streets here. it&#8217;s a simple pleasure, but almost everyone does it. it&#8217;s the kind of convention that one just falls into, a lazy routine that i&#8217;m sure will be sadly absent when we move on to other points. in the morning you&#8217;re confronted by just enough moving cars&hellip; 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