This small light the moon bestows

Do you remember my new dog (Lewis)? Why not? Here’s a picture to remind you - and please, just look at how he loves me:

Well, he’s dead. He got hit by a car towards the end of last summer and was utterly, utterly mangled. How on earth is that fair? Oh violence, leave these shores. I made the rookie mistake of trusting a fellow human being and.....well, it doesn’t really matter.

Anyway, dead dogs are unbelievably heavy and that’s just a fact. If you try carrying one for over a mile you’re going to need to take a breather - which raises some rather awkward Dead Dog Etiquette problems. Is it okay to rest a dead dog on top of a wall, for example? Are we allowed to sling these broken and bloodied creatures over our shoulders to lessen the burden or would this seem callous and undignified? It’s like trying to make out with a swastika. Who knew?

You’ll be familiar with those pictures of heroic-looking firefighters carrying babies from fires, all manly and rugged and inappropriately arousing as they cradle the micro-human in their arms? Well, I’m pretty sure I would have looked like that carrying Lewis home, to be fair. One of the disadvantages of living in the middle of nowhere, however, is that there were no passing women - or men, we’re all about equal opportunities here - to gasp at my tragically male steadfastness.

Sir, this passing stranger may very well have said, you seem so noble and manly, both protective and agonised at one and the same time; strong and yet tenderly caring. I wonder if I might fellate you?

To be honest, love/mate, I’ve got a grave to dig and a lacerating grief to attend and I’ve already.....

Shhh. I’m fantastic at this, it’ll be sublime.

Ach. Jesus. Go on, then. But hurry up about it, okay? The things I put up with.....

So there was none of that, unfortunately, and this sort of stuff only happens in cities, anyway, where a surplus of thighs and necks and hectoring magazines tend to drive the inhabitants towards a panic of unearthly sex manoeuvres, according to a recent survey in my head.

Talking of which, the last time I was anywhere near a city (Brighton, end of April, family convention) a very drunk person, wearing a very drunk person’s kind of dress, perhaps mistaking me for a member of the wedding party she was involved with, stuck a fake pink flower on my jacket, uninvited, before kissing me on my disappearing shoulder – I instinctively recoiled from this kiss (it’s always going to happen) and can only speculate where she might have been aiming.

This earned me a rebuke from Charlotte and two of my sisters who declared that this stranger was “only being friendly” and that my action was needlessly (if unintentionally) cruel. No, I insisted, this stranger was being overly friendly and had no business whatsoever trying to inflict her kissy bonhomie upon someone she didn’t know.

Big mistake, that last part, and I knew it immediately.

Charlotte: Sooo, you’re saying it would have been okay and that you wouldn’t have minded if this had been someone you knew?

Me: Correct. That’s precisely what I’m saying.

Charlotte: He’s lying.

Sister: Are you, Jamie?

Me: Very much so, yes.

[Explanation of a capitulation]

Did you ever stop to wonder about those men who invest such emotion in their animals and yet seem discomfitted by any passing intimacy with strangers? I wonder about that a lot. There’s something not quite right there, yes? And it speaks, perhaps, of an emotional retardation. In attempting to consider why the death of Lewis (a dog I had only known and loved for less than a year) frequently struck deeper than the death of my grandfather (a man I revered), I have no sensible response. It’s fucking abject. But there we are.

If I told you how yet another dog appeared on my doorstep, brutalised and dying – necessitating an immediate visit to the vet - you simply wouldn’t believe me (and I wouldn't blame you). But he came from exactly the same source as Lewis – read this if you want to know how that came about – and I feel I would actually be repeating myself if I tried to say any more.

All attempts at remaining aloof were obliterated upon seeing the extent of his injuries. You’d have been the same. And so here we go again, another new soulmate, and this time I've called him Harris:



Bonus picture from Brighton: Perfectly Formed Sex Blogger Trapped in Conversation Trauma Hell Fiasco

Admin