Friendship Ought to Sail Both Ways

"Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives."

Sue Murphy

Back when I was in the first or second form in high school, I used to go cycling about the neighborhood with this buddy of mine. To protect his identity, let us just call him Dick, okay?

One day, as we were riding past this friend's house, we met our friend's elder brother (we'll call this bloke Jet) who was standing near a big-ass monsoon drain. You know what monsoon drains are, right? They are these huge, concrete trenches about 4 or 5 feet deep and just as many feet across, dug to make sure that housing estates don't get flooded during the rainy seasons. I used to drop leaves into them when I was littler, and then pretend that they are little boats navigating through dangerous white (black) waters, narrowly avoiding perilous rocks (garbage) on its journey to the open ocean (longkangs with bigger asses).

Jet told us that there's a little puppy which somehow fell into that big-ass monsoon drain I told you about earlier, so Dick and I alighted from our bikes and peered over the edge. It was true - there was a little puppy shivering in grey-black ditch water which reached up to its little knees. It was dirty, confused, scared out of its little puppy brain and was whimpering pathetically for its mom or therapist. I stood there motionless for a bit, and wondered what could be done about it, when Dick did something wholly unexpected and perhaps, not quite out of character after all.

He picked up a pebble, and threw it at the puppy - hitting it squarely on the head. With a frightened yelp, the wretched thing ran downstream away from where we stood.

"Why the fuck did you do that for?!" I asked.

"I wasn't aiming for its head..." mumbled Dick.

I said a few more stuff which I don't recall now, but I don't doubt that they involved a lot of expletives. Then, before the pup can scamper further to deeper ass shit water, I ran and overtook it and climbed down into the drain to block its way. Then slowly (while squatting in the stinky ditchwater) , I tried to coax the puppy to come to me. Not to brag (at least, not much) but I have this knack with animals since I was very young - the secret is patience and silence, and oodles and oodles of each. I even managed to befriend stray cats before without even resorting to bribing them with nosh, and that's saying something.

There was this magnificently massive Rottweiler which belonged to Kell Ly, an old friend of mine, which spent all its time in a cage. Kell Ly warned me that it was a bad-tempered and vicious creature - isolated to condition it into a guard-beast - and told me not to get too close. Even though it was barking at me (y'know, in that muscle-headed, slobbery "duh uh" way Rottweilers do), I approached the big fella and offered my fingers for it to smell. And it licked them, its stubby tail thing a-wagging. Elaine can vouch for this tale's veracity - I think she was present. Then there was the other time when some neighborhood boys dared me to climb into this house when the owners were out, and spend 5 minutes with the notoriously unfriendly mongrel which guarded the grounds. I did, and the other boys were freaking baffled why the dog would not attack me - it even played with me. They didn't know that it was chained in the backyards most of the time near an anthill, and large black ants with evil looking pincers took bites at it whenever they have a particularly bad day. They (the neighborhood boys, not the ants) didn't know that I was the one who regularly came by to spray the ants' nest with Shelltox (they haven't change the name to something shitty like Shieldtox yet, then) and to keep it company.

Stupid things to do, all of them. It's just that I always know if a dog means me harm or not.

Oh dear, it appears that I have digressed.

Well, the puppy eventually approached me and I hefted it aboveground and placed it by the drain's edge. As I was pulling myself up, the infernal thing licked my face and basically rubbed its cumulated, smelly, drippy drain gunk all over me. Ick. I looked like the Thing from the Swamp's leprous cousin. My shirt, pants, feet and arms were filthy - not "Damn, I smell" after a long, hard day sort of filthy but more like "Fuck, what are these life-forms growing on me?!" filthy.

My reward? This bounding, excited little soggy furball which was trying its hardest to smear more crap on me - and it'll probably leap stupidly back into the monsoon drain as soon as my back is turned. I don't remember if Dick waited for me, or he had already cycled off by the time I returned to my bike. Jet said something to me though, but I can't recall whether it was something nice or something more along the lines of "Dude, you're batshit crazy." I suspect the latter.

And I went home to shower. My grandmother asked about the clothes.

I said, "Puppy. Drain."

She didn't ask further. She knew me that way.

Anyway, on a different note and at a time closer to present,

This is Socks,

This must the the third or fourth time I've posted this picture here in my blog.

She always pull this pose whenever I walk nearby her, and it all started when I first moved into Acharya Compound and gave her tummy rubs with the sole of my shoe. No, I did not rub anywhere else. If you got any bestiality jokes, say it out now - get it out of your system. Jeez.

One month ago, after dinner, Phoebe and I loitered at this construction site because I wanted to take a few pictures. Suddenly, this juvenile stray which I did not recognise popped out of nowhere, ran to my feet and immediately got on its back,

"Poppet, this will never work between you and me."

I thought it was cute. And I thought it was bloody strange too. I did not know this dog and I certainly hadn't a fucking clue what made it suddenly come yipping to me for a tummy rub.

Two construction workers spotted Phoebs and I playing with the dog, and they approached us, each carrying a puppy in their arms for us to pet too. I wished I had the wit to snap a photo then. It was a pure Kodak moment. One of these days, I'm going to write a list of describing each picture I didn't manage to take. Gosh, I feel pissed just thinking about it.

A few days later, something even stranger and more disturbing happened,

"WTF are you trying to tell me?"

I have never seen this particular cur in Acharya Compound before. I have never befriended it. It just flipped onto its back when I walked near it.

I have seen many bloggers describe pictures with the words "There's just so many things wrong with this - I don't know where to begin to describe it." Usually, there aren't more than three - or even two - things wrong with those photographs. I can spot at least 7 wrong things in this, starting with "What the fuck are those lumps midway along its dick?"

I am in dire need of a long, long holiday.



A dog lover (in a totally wholesome way, I swear),
k0k s3n w4i