Love and Literature

Well that’s it. There is officially no hope for me now. I have no choice but to relegate myself to the fact that I shall share the same dwelling with my mother - mate less- for the rest of my natural life.

After the inevitable failure of my last relationship, I decided that the next male I snare would need to have more than a modicum of intelligence before he gets the privilege of being referred to as my larger half; I fancied myself somewhat of a sapiosexual. Then I discovered that all the intelligent men I would more likely prefer, read and analyze Dostoyevsky, Hemingway and Naipaul. Hey I like to discuss a good book too, but as opposed to having an indepth discourse on man’s struggle with both his internal and external environments, I’m more of a ‘hmmm…interesting…’ kind of girl.

And too besides, I prefer low-brow fiction anyway. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass remain two of my all time favourites and I wouldn’t part with my copy of The Wind in the Willows for a pound of the purest gold. Make it ten pounds and we could talk - but I digress.

Every week, the Express Woman’s Magazine runs a twenty question interview with some local ‘celebrity’. Being the stalker that I am, I pay particular attention to the answers given by the studly males and I am always perturbed and disappointed when the response to “The best book you have ever read?” turns out to be The Bible. Huh? Hey it’s nice to know men have a sense of spirituality, but unless he’s open-minded (and personal experience proves to me that whoever considers a religious tome a good read, is anything but), conversations would soon get boring. I mean, there are only so many times one can hear about begetting after begetting after begetting before going insane.

Seriously though, I can’t remember the last time I met a man who infused the butterflies in my belly with such excitement as to remind me that they yet live. Ok, so actually I can, but it’s been a while. It would seem that finding one who is mature enough to not take himself too seriously, yet doesn’t make behaving like a jackass a routine thing, is about as easy as locating a sack of flour and a bag of rice these days.

I wonder if I’ll get laid at all this year.

Calling the guy who did this

an asshole would be an insult to that most reviled of orifices:

As was reported in the Sunday Guardian [28.4.2008], some fucked up piece of shit threw lye on two rottweilers kept by a 74 year old man as pets and protection. The eight year old dog may die from her burns and the six year old was partially blinded. It would seem that the perpetrator (allegedly a neighbour) has a bit of a history of pelting the dogs with stones.

You don’t need to be an animal rights activist, nor even have pets to be appalled at the heinousness of this crime. And yes cruelty to animals is a crime. I never fail to be astonished at the number of Trinidadians who don’t know that.

I have dogs. I’ve always had dogs. I may not have known all I know now about their care – but I have never intentionally mistreated an animal. At a point in time, we had to move to an apartment. My mother called the T.T.S.P.C.A for the dog we had and her two or three remaining pups. I was young, I knew I could do nothing, yet up to this day I am still haunted by the thought that Sparky and her children more than likely were put down; Trinidad isn’t noted for pet adoptions. I know she probably thought she was doing the right thing, but honestly I still hold that against my mother. So I refuse to even try to understand why someone would deliberately hurt and animal. I know about the cycle of abuse and how it can manifest itself in children and as a result the adults they become, but I am also absolutely convinced that some people just like to cause pain to other creatures. I think this guy is one of them.

At the risk of sounding like an antisocial deviant, I am more disturbed by seeing homeless animals than homeless people. People can manage. They can ask for food and shelter, be understood and assisted. And how many people do you know have been abandoned because they no longer ‘serve their purpose’?

I have never beaten my pets. They were housebroken and well trained without me once having to lift a hand, shoe or broomstick at them. I actually got into a fight with a cousin once because she hit one of my dogs - she can definitely say she knows what the brush part of a broom tastes like now.

And you can be sure as hell that if anyone were to throw lye on my fuzzies, s/he would get that back and more.