Monday, January 05, 2004
you pick it up.
it is possible that i am a whiner, but today each train i was on encountered some sort of difficulty--a switch was broken, the 7 couldn't get into manhattan; the N inexplicably went express to brooklyn one stop north of my destination; the N on the way back had "door trouble;" and the 7 was just so crowded no one could get in or out. also, a young man crammed next to me started yelling, "uuunnh! ooooo! aaaahhh! uuuuuuuuuuhhhhh . . . oh, yes . . . oh yes! i will fuck you! i WILL fuck you! i will fuck your body! i will fuck you all over your soul! i will fuck on your personality! i will fuck your posture! don't think i won't!"
i felt trapped, and claustrophobic, and the day was not my favorite. i was half an hour late to the first dog--i'm a dog walker, by the way. i love dogs, so i thought this would be . . . nice, but really i keep feeling like i'm waiting tables except instead of humans they're dogs and i have to pick up their poop. the first dog is a puppy, which is very cool, except the dog weighs all of one and half pounds and pretty much sits like a lump when i come in. i coo. i toss balls. i tell him he's charming. he looks at me, wheezes, and lays down. he is the size of a stick of butter.
after that, the guy whose business it is walked me through a couple other dogs' routines. it was so much hurrying, through so much of unfamiliar soho and tribeca and noho and probably some other ho, too . . . i don't know. it was raining. i was straining. i missed my date with the monkey.
he did, however, spend the last half our of his break reassuring me, watching me eat a cheese sandwhich, and telling me about having made a good call about putting an audition before his day job. which made me cry, partly because i was feeling like a cry and partly because i don't have a day job, much less a perfect one that will allow me to audition any time the way his seems to, and even if i did i couldn't go to the auditions he goes to anyway because i'm not on the inside, of unions, of companies, of community, of anything. i feel like i'm spinning my wheels, i'm not getting what i came here for, and in the meantime, i'm walking other, richer people's dogs through the rain in neighborhoods i don't know and don't like, and picking up poop like it's something i'm shopping for.
i felt trapped, and claustrophobic, and the day was not my favorite. i was half an hour late to the first dog--i'm a dog walker, by the way. i love dogs, so i thought this would be . . . nice, but really i keep feeling like i'm waiting tables except instead of humans they're dogs and i have to pick up their poop. the first dog is a puppy, which is very cool, except the dog weighs all of one and half pounds and pretty much sits like a lump when i come in. i coo. i toss balls. i tell him he's charming. he looks at me, wheezes, and lays down. he is the size of a stick of butter.
after that, the guy whose business it is walked me through a couple other dogs' routines. it was so much hurrying, through so much of unfamiliar soho and tribeca and noho and probably some other ho, too . . . i don't know. it was raining. i was straining. i missed my date with the monkey.
he did, however, spend the last half our of his break reassuring me, watching me eat a cheese sandwhich, and telling me about having made a good call about putting an audition before his day job. which made me cry, partly because i was feeling like a cry and partly because i don't have a day job, much less a perfect one that will allow me to audition any time the way his seems to, and even if i did i couldn't go to the auditions he goes to anyway because i'm not on the inside, of unions, of companies, of community, of anything. i feel like i'm spinning my wheels, i'm not getting what i came here for, and in the meantime, i'm walking other, richer people's dogs through the rain in neighborhoods i don't know and don't like, and picking up poop like it's something i'm shopping for.
