I’ve been talking to this toy poodle for a while. I was never particularly attracted to toy poodles, they look too much like toys to me. I don’t feel their emotions when I encounter them. Maybe it’s the size; they’re just too small for me to imagine what’s on their mind.

He is 23 years old, lives in the suburbs, has light brown curly hair, is good at driving, and has horrible taste in music and underwear.

“It’s been so long since I had such a fun time. I want to see you.”

Of course you do. You don’t know me.

“I don’t think I should see you.”  He mistakes my sentiment for self-hatred.

“Oh, by the way, I don’t care about looks or age,” he adds. Why do they always assume I am worried they won’t accept me?

  I just don’t share much with them. Their values are, most of the time, of no interest to me. Not particularly because I judge them, but because most people are interested in the same things: pleasure, sharing pleasure, being treated as something of value, finding valuable things in the world, feeling superior, having connections with those in power, having money, being beautiful, having sex and feeling pleasure, or having moral superiority over others, being a genius, being treated as a genius. And I am interested in none of the above, or at least that’s how it feels. (Maybe it’s just that I am none of the above, and I do not know how else to be)  

 But in order to stay alive, I need to feel joy and love. I don’t have time, and I do not care to listen to their mediocre stories.

The first layer is always charming. That’s how it is for most people. Let’s wait until he notices how stubborn I am. His words are like soft candy, sweet and easy to chew, but like most young men, he is very narcissistic.He talks about his ex-girlfriend and says things like, “She’s a woman I once loved, so I can’t stop caring for her. I know it’s wrong.” I have no idea what he’s talking about. Give me a break, do you seriously think you loved her?

He goes around having sex with random women, as many men aspire to, just because he can. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. You don’t know what is going to happen in the long run, what effect it will have on you. I guess that’s youth: a bite of chocolate, then another, and another. You don’t know where to stop. As long as the present is pleasurable, it feels fine.

But then, poof, one day your soul is one fat lump of lard. You don’t feel anything anymore. You can’t tell one thing from another, because you treated everything the same. You don’t see the uniqueness of each soul, and you start to believe they are replaceable. But they aren’t. And you weren’t, once. But you have to do the work to stay irreplaceable. If you don’t, one day you just become anything else.

Do you think that’s cruel? I think it’s beautiful. And I’ve seen so many people lose it. Lose the quality that made them who they are. 

After contemplation, I made egg sandwich, and started watching a Japanese movie. It was about a man and a women, going down memory lane while having sex before the marriage of the woman. But the lines, the intercourse, and the narrative, all seem so controlled.  Does this happen ? In reality? I wonder, perhaps people are doing this behind my back. Living life like a badly narrated film, trying to be poetic. If I were to jump into such a film, I would refuse to take off my clothes. Just like I refuse to open my legs in front of a toy poodle who wants anything else. I want to open my legs when I feel like it, like the petals paving a way to another story. And I always have the right to do that behind cameras, where no one is watching .