It Moves Fast

So you work a job. It pays well. Hooray! But can it support a college fund? I don't even know what that entails. In fact, do people set up college funds anymore? Maybe the whole world went to shit one day while I was taking a nap. How would I know? After all, I sleep pretty well and maybe I hit the snooze button by accident.

Max, one of my best friends, approached me on the couch last night holding his favorite blue toy in his mouth. Like any great friend, he dumped his slobbery, smelly mess right on my lap. Wagged his tail. I don't think Max expects much of me. I have to put out his food and make sure he gets outside every couple hours to take a leak. But then, Max really expects everything from me, doesn't he? Cause it's not the tangible, easy-to-pour answers that come in a bag. He wants me to be with him. To be with him. Fully present. Fully human. How did it get so hard to do that?

When I was little, before iPhones and Facebook and bills and a College degree, I woke up, wagged my own damn tail and chased after the only thing I wanted more than food and sleep: women. Andrea and Caitlin and Leslie and even Vivienne with the high-pitched voice. I was on a mission all the time for love and attention. Maybe now that I've got all the love I could ever want (read: the woman my dreams could not come close to conjuring), I have nothing to chase?

Like I said, my job pays all my bills and the debt. And like Garrison Keillor said, "Being comfortable makes you stupid."

My band is pretty good. Is it my band?

I don't want to feel better. I don't want to feel numb. I want to know what these feelings are. Name them like Bastian did in the Neverending Story.

Be a doctor, be a teacher, be a musician, be a father, be a mechanic. Be me. Wow. That's so annoyingly trite. But to press on just for shits and giggles, I'm sitting here on a couch next to the world's greatest dog, a phonecall away from the world's greatest girlfriend, a few emails away from the world's greatest bestfriends and I don't know who I am, what I want and how I went from knowing everything to knowing nothing.

I think I'll ask Max. I have a feeling he knows more than he's letting on. Stinky-breath mother fucker with his goddamn floppy ears flopping everywhere. And he's got crazy eyes! They don't go in the same direction for christsake! He's probably a spy. Hahahahahahaha.

If life were easy, it wouldn't be any fun.

If I were a wolf

Fun.

Fuuuuhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnn.

It would be fun.

Not fun like chasing girls or eating ice cream or chewing bubblegum outside of the library. Fun like slowly breaking every window in a house. Fun like watching someone on a cell phone walk gently into a glass door, crushing bones in her nose squeezing blood all over her shirt.

Fun like fighting.

Take your double-shot peppermint skim mocha whip and shove it right up your ass. I wouldn't get so angry about these things. To eat Arctic hare or not to eat Arctic hare, what's to be mad about?

Yippity yappity bitch-face dog, you weigh six pounds! Why are you so loud? And what are you so up-in-arms about anyway? Perhaps you're upset because the human holding onto your leash can lift you off the ground with one arm and does so quite frequently. That would piss me off too. Fortunately for me, most people don't come near me. I weigh ninety pounds and my eyes are white as a wraith. Although I'm quite calm, they see only the madness.

My friend Bill Stratton is part wolf. About a quarter, I think. One quarter bear, one quarter wolf, one quarter Native American and just a touch of Scottish. His reach makes him a dangerous boxer. He snores louder than a subway car. His eyes can

see.

right?

through you.

My eyes are yellow in the middle, as if there's a dying star being eclipsed by the black expanding cornea moon. The color darts out and dodges light in streaks and straws. It leaks onto the blue-green foundation behind it so on any given day they might be blue, green or something in the middle. But they're never white. They never peer out of snow drifts like sniper rifle tips, watching, waiting.

sure, i'll wag my tail and lick your hand. (Don't fuck with me.) yes. yesss. pet me. (I'll fucking kill you.) oh, is that food in your hand? sure, i would love some. (I will fucking tear out yourfuckingeyesandpissinyoureyesocketswhilegnawingyourkidneys.)

I'm not mad. I'm not. You think I'm mad

Because I walk to you and smell you and I know that when you take a piss, it leaks out for an hour afterwards.

Because when I look at you and you look at me, I'm seeing you and you're watching me.

Because when we go to the park and all the Golden Retrievers and Beagles and Shih-tzus run around licking their asses, I lay down waiting. Running on concrete isn't running, not like running across a thousand miles of snow and ice part of a team, part of a pack, part of a family.

Because if it came down to me or you, brother, it'd be you.