Versus the Dog

I turn 30 in a week. Out at a bar recently an acquaintance asked me if I could believe it. She said, "Doesn't it feel like we're still 25?" In my head I thought, "What's the difference?" But I played along because I was in a casual mood, the mood to talk about dogs and ham and the word "horny" as a jokey synonym for "thirsty" or "excited." My acquaintance claimed to be horny for real estate. I, myself, have never been horny for real estate. I don't need to be happy or sad. High or low. Most times you see me, I'm content. That's all. Simple. But it's also everything. If I'm horny, I'm horny for comfort.

Ha ha.

The truth is I can believe it. I've said before how I wanted to be an adult even as a child. If you were a lumberjack, and I was a tree, you could have cut me down any time in the last decade and counted more rings than should have been there. I have the bark is what I'm saying. Is what I'm thinking. Is what I believe about myself even if it isn't really true. Enough school teachers called me an old soul in elementary school, and I bought it. Even this past weekend, in the one place that might have the power to reduce me to childhood by overwhelming me, my best writer friend told me what I've always told myself: I was born old.

Well. There's me. There's my friend. And then there's the actual truth. I'm a man, and I'm a child. The bark grew over time, and it still grows. It wasn't always there like I wish it was. Nothing arrives fully formed. I can believe I'm almost 30 because I can trace the line of it, and I can examine the dots on that line, the years and the events and the love and the work. At a writing conference this past weekend I wore the same backpack I wore in middle school. The threads have loosened so the bag is transparent in places. I have stitched and restitched the seams many times. It's too small for an adult, and yet...

What else is too small for me?

Maybe I've grown out of this dream I've had once a year every year for so long. The dream where I'm walking down the street and a wild dog attacks me and I kill it to stop it. The jaws are strong, but somehow I'm stronger. The dog bites me, and I pull apart the machine of its mouth. I overcome the teeth. My hands bleed but don't hurt. I have not had this dream this year, but there is now an actual wild dog haunting my neighborhood. Blackened fur wets its belly. The rest of the dog is as gold as dry dirt. It's running to something or away from something. I've seen it once out the kitchen window while cooking. I thought it was a fox, but then I looked closer and saw it was my nightmare. Other people have posted pictures of the dog to our neighborhood's Facebook watch group. I haven't encountered the dog in the street. Give it time. Maybe when I'm 30. Which is next week. Maybe next week. Or maybe never. Worry over something enough and it takes a form. I'm not worried.

My new book, The Three Woes, has been announced by Spork Press. I worried over it, and here it is, about to exist. I'll tell you about it later, OK?

Look out.