Sunday, January 29, 2006

I Want to be OWNED, Again.

No, I am not talking like a slave, but like a puppy, owned. To explain, to me (and that is the only person I am talking about here) the feeling of being in a solid, good relationship with a woman? Well I would describe it, metaphorically, like being a well-loved and cared for puppy.

For example, I will talk about the one great long-term relationship I had. I met her one night at a club, we danced we talked. We had a good time.

That was it.

I call that the,"Just looking," phase.

I met her at the same club a week later. We talked more, we danced more, and things got a little more focused. I will call that the, "How much is that doggie in the window?" phase.

And she took me to her place that night.

After spending most of the next 3 days in bed, or perhaps as is likely, sometime during those 3 days, she got to the next phase:

"I think I will keep him!"

And the relationship was mostly very good after that. I liked being wanted, I liked being wanted to be around. I did not exactly move in with her, totally, but spent more time at her place than my own.Yes, she was a little possessive of me. And to me, that was GOOD!

Problem came a while later, when I stopped feeling like a well cared for puppy, and more like one of the antiques she collected. For yet another metaphor, I stopped feeling like a live puppy and instead felt like a stuffed puppy, sitting on a shelf. In any case, she stopped taking me for my necessary walks and playing with me enough to keep me a contented puppy. With a real puppy, that will lead to messes on the floor, torn furniture, and yelping. With a human puppy, the puppy will run off and play with the first person who wants to play with him, once he feels truly like a neglected puppy.

And I must say, this puppy strayed and played. Turns out (for other reasons) I made the ABSOLUTELY worst choice of a new play-partner (but that is another story.) As much as I was dying to play again, part of what made it easy for me to do that was the sense of being cared for. The sense of being Actively Possessed (as by a mindful pet owner), instead of merely Passively Possessed (as by a collector of dolls and nick-knacks) is what I am talking about. And the second "she" started being a little Actively Possessive of me, and that was GOOD.

Ok, that is enough for the self-directed metaphors; now I will make a broader analogy. Women sometimes call men DOGS, and when they do that, they usually mean it in a bad way when the men in question are (seemingly) behaving like bad dogs. What I am getting at here, is the analogy is not necessarily off the mark, but should be viewed broader, and less as a judgment.

Dogs are living creatures.

Dogs are physical creatures.

Dogs need to play, and be played with, for them to be happy pets.

Neglected dogs are unhappy dogs.



So I am saying, generally, it is an error in judgment for a woman to forget any of the preceding points, long before they are in the position of being shocked, shocked, their pet dog is acting like a bad dog.

If you want a dog that will never need any caring, that will sit in the corner and not make any demands of your time, and attention, or effort,

GET A STUFFED PLUSHY.


They will stay in the corner, and will not need to be reminded to stay in the corner. They will not whine, yelp or otherwise make noise. You can go for days, weeks, months without even paying them any mind at all, and they will still stare out at you, with their glassy dead eyes, and fixed fake fur faces, and not complain at all, Because . . .

they are dead.

They are as dead as something that was never ever alive, as that is the fact of the matter.

Now living creatures can give more, add more, to one's life. However living things (be they canine or human) need caring, and demand responsibility from their owners. I am not straining this analogy so far to suggest that men are not responsible for their own conduct.

Don't get me wrong.

I say again, that is not at all within my range of desired and intended inferences.

But the point I am making is that between sentient living creatures, there has to be give and take, and there must be some sort of agreement to mutuality of responsibilities; not only self-responsibility, but among and between the two sentient, living creatures. And if one of the two is not willing to recognize any responsibility at all for the other, well that one should get a stuffed animal and leave living creatures to others who are conscious of and willing to accept that responsibility.

Hmm . . . as often is the case, I did not end up exactly where I expected to. So let me try to get back to the place I was originally trying to get to.

Now myself ( I say thusly, if only to keep things from getting too complicated), I have not really truly had that feeling of being properly owned for way too damn long. And I have to say I can live without it, but life can be very lifeless, a lot of the time, for a puppy who has no one to play with.

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