“I wonder if my mother ever looked down at me suckling and saw in my frail body the makings of a dog, in my exposed ribcages, in my dog eyes, in my continual childhood illnesses—if you look into my eyes you’ll see that my fur is permanently wet. I look at things with dog eyes and like a dog I am found and left and found.”

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nonfiction, aug 24, anniversary issue

We are here this evening standing a couple hundred meters east of TNT maath, contemplating if the footpath is clean enough to sit on. It rained a few hours ago, while I was sitting beside my lover, confused and sad, about fifteen kilometers away from here. There’s mud on the tiles. I think about my beige pants getting dirty, and sit down anyway.

Confused and sad. The city sits beside me.

I thought I burnt through the money that I had (not mine, pocket money. from my father. fake) on the two Lucky blues I smoked and one plastic cupful of rong cha I drank right before this, while I was telling a friend who said he felt like disassembled computer parts that he’ll be fine even though he doesn’t feel like it now, that he will have his shit together soon. What I don’t tell him is that we only learn to fix things on a level when things above that level are in crisis, and that it might be like that for him too, and that’s how it might be for everyone. I find two tens and a fifty in the inner pocket of my suit, and wonder whether this is a test or not, to see if I go home on a rickshaw or on foot. I spend a lot of money these days trying to avoid myself, to avoid walking, thinking, standing naked in front of the city. Don’t walk don’t take any space for yourself stay caught up in things. Oblivion is in other people, movement, work, incessant barking, cigarettes. Shame. It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.

People stare. You’re not supposed to wear a suit and sit on the footpath, especially not after it’s rained. I lock eyes with them, it’s nice, it’s one of the channels the city communicates on. The gaze of the city through the network of the gazes of the people around, footsteps, murmurations of crows, the particular ways that the wires on nearby electric poles loop. The city makes it easy to talk back.

I don’t have classes tomorrow and my father isn’t going to be home tonight, so I can afford to sit here and let the city hold me like a mother for as long as I want. Rare occurrence these days. I think about how whatever you will hold onto like a mother, you will have to leave like a mother. Or it will have to leave you in the same way. I can let the city comfort me now and I won’t feel weird, because through the comfort I can sense every bit of anger and disappointment it feels towards me. My dues are paid. Comfort doesn’t feel much like comfort to me when it’s unconditional. I am a dog. I am a good dog. I am rewarded with love and punished with love (for of course my own good (always for my own good (which is good for me—even if it doesn’t feel like it—in the long run; that’s what you’re supposed to think of, right))), but never loved for the sake of being loved. Sometimes I think about curling up on concrete or the piles of sand beside roads and yawning with my tongue out and falling asleep. Sometimes I think of pissing on things to mark them. Sometimes I think about my sets of teeth and the marks they leave. God, or maybe His management, ran out of human souls up there, did you hear? They mix in bits of animal spirit these days. The city knows this. We’re processed meat. It doesn’t care. I wonder if my mother ever looked down at me suckling and saw in my frail body the makings of a dog, in my exposed ribcages, in my dog eyes, in my continual childhood illnesses—if you look into my eyes you’ll see that my fur is permanently wet. I look at things with dog eyes and like a dog I am found and left and found.

I look at myself and what I had been before I was found.
I look at myself and where and when I am. It is the year of the dog.
I look at where I’m going. Home, tonight, most likely. And in the days that come, I’m not sure. I have a keen sense of smell, I’m sure I can sniff out the paths that take me where I want to go. I speak to the city. Protect me from what I want. I speak to God. Protect me.
I look around.

There’s a vendor next to me selling mangoes. I put my arm across my knees and rest my head on it. The first time I look up, not sure how many minutes later, he looks at me with what I interpret as the kindness of the city in his eyes. The second time I look up, he is gone along with his cart.

I’m still sitting on the sidewalk. I am not sitting here undocumented, that is not a luxury granted to boys like me. To become closer to God one must adopt paraplegic three-dimensional versions of all His beautiful names. Al-Basir: the all seeing. I look at the city through my own eyes and myself through the eyes of the city, thirteen or so different invisible cameras I’ve set up all around pointed at me from various angles. Allah, al-Basir, sets a stage that is permanent and continuous. Allah, al-Fattah, giver of victory, opener of the gates of profit: This is the name I find myself invoking most often these days. With time and conditioning I have learned to love this name perhaps a bit more than the second or third of the asmaullahil husna. Victory and profit. What does it feel like to be a dog? I think of victory and profit. All I have ever wanted to be anyway was sad and powerful. I speak to Allah, al-Hafiz: the protector. Protect me from what I want.

Nothing goes undocumented in God’s world and on God’s stage. So I walk home. The test is, presumably, passed.
Or at least I write this sentence, and then actually walk home around fifteen minutes later. When I get up I check my clothes for mud. There is none. I walk. Long strides. Fade to black. Fade back to scene. Home. I enter and take my shoes off next to my bed (where it remains these days, for some reason. Unhygienic) and stand in front of the mirror.

Decrepitude covered in layers of cloth. Sweat, another rare instance these days, I take the suit off. Silhouette’s alright. I take the shirt off. White tank tucked into the pants as a proxy for the tightness of flesh. I take that off and there it is: bones. Ribs. Yet through all of this, the fungus-infected bones and rotting teeth and fur marred with the dust of time—something. Something like a promise, something beyond the dog. For the first time in a while I look at my body as a precursor. I look at it like I look at words and I forgive it. This isn’t me. This is the embryo. It’s alright for me to be myself solely because I won’t be myself soon enough. I am forgivable because I am a promise. My body is a word. I’m growing out my canines.

I look at myself and an amalgam of car horns and construction noises and ambient chatter and lines from songs I remember tells me my name. I am. I am made of salt and spit, and my skin is impermanent. I am refusal. I refuse to bear your stupid garbage human children in my belly. I am both the dog and what the dog will bring forth. My bellows will blot out the name of the sun and replace it with mine own.

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