Wild Dogs
March 23, 2011
I love men like I love dogs. I feel this ache for the damaged and dangerous ones, the ones who’ll die because they were made to die, or the ones who’ll do harm without ever meaning to.
There are some stray dogs running wild that you just can’t help. The chaos and euphoria of freedom has made them mad. You hope that the madness is temporary. You hope for them that they’ll slow and breathe and consider and look around, before they wind up losing limbs in traffic. But all they want to do is run and run and run and run, a terrified ecstatic narcisissm driving them on and on across busy streets and through backyards. You bark at them sternly. ‘Hey!’ And they look up at you out of one wild, wide eye, head lowered and hackles raised, and they either bite or bolt. Most often they bolt, lurching after some folly or nirvana, and leave you feeling that familiar ghost of a feeling: helpless, and afraid for them. And you feel a failure, too, because you offered comfort and care (however temporary) and they were having none of it.
