Dog Shit I Have Known

Let me tell you the dog shit story. Growing up I lived on a tree farm and the only company I had was my family and our animals. A little later when I started first grade, I was approached by this kid named Tony Trabbucho. He told me that he and I were going to be best friends and he laid out an outline of all the wonderful things we were going to do together over the coming years. This dissertation even included our double wedding ceremony when we found the right girls. Just a couple of months into the school year the nuns decided that I was too young for first grade and talked my parents into holding me back a year. When I started up again the next school year, Tony was now a second grader and I was crushed when he told me we could no longer be friends because he was now too sophisticated to hang out with a mere first grader. This was my first experience with "friendship" and it has had a life-long effect on me. I hated that guy for treating me like that. In fact, I STILL have animosity for him.

Now we flash forward to third grade. A new kid came into town named Dan Connelly. We developed a superficial friendship. If we had been older we would probably have been out having beers together. One day at recess Dan stepped in a large pile of dog shit. Immediately all the kids started laughing and teasing him. I didn't really see what the big deal was. As I said, I grew up on a farm and I stepped in one kind of shit or another at least once a week. I came very close to running off with the other kids, but I saw the look on Dan's face and I recognized that he felt the same way I had when Tony had so cavalierly killed our friendship. I was the only child on the playground who stayed by Dan's side, both figuratively and literally. He thanked me profusely and I saw the enormous relief on his face when he realized that at least one person was there for him. It felt good to make such a positive difference in someone's life. I decided at that moment that I would always strive to be the best possible friend to each and every person who came into my life.

Over the next several years I made a lot of friends. Without fail each one told me I was the best friend they ever had. I also discovered girls and sex. By junior high school I was quite popular. I was smart, funny, a great friend, and the cute new guy. You saw my football picture. It was during that time. I honed my friendship skills and could make a friend out of almost anyone. During my seventh grade year I took the biggest bully in the school from hating me and wanting to kill me, to being, naturally, my best friend.

Now high school is where things took a turn. As I told you before, the popular kids who had adored me in junior high now shot their derision at me once I stopped playing football and started hanging out with people they deemed to be unworthy. That's when I met my friend Dan Grafton and Cindy & Mackie. After my experience with these people and Tony, I decided at that time that friendship was mostly a bunch of crap. Dog crap to be precise. I also determined that while I was an excellent friend for people to have, the reciprocation was never there. Not once has anyone been as good a friend to me as I have been to them. Then the worst possible thing started to happen. I allowed myself to become good friends with several women. Always it was the same. Whatever they needed, I was there for them. If they needed a ride, the car keys were already in my hand. If they needed company at their family reunion, I was already wearing the appropriate clothing. Mostly, anytime some awful MAN hurt their feelings, I was there to pick up the pieces. After the crying was over and my shoulders were all wet from them lying their heads upon them, they would run back to whichever scrub had hurt them in the first place.

You see? I have always been the reliable, safe, caring guy. Women like those things but they are not the traits that attract them to me as a lover or any kind of a romantic partner. Its always, without fail, the edgy, somewhat dangerous, aggressive guys who end up taking the girl home after the big dance. And ol' reliable Charles, Chas., Chucky, whomever, is there when it all falls apart. Until the next edgy, dangerous, domineering man shows up in the picture. That is why I can no longer allow myself to be "friend" with a woman. The relationship may not be exclusively romantic, or in certain cases even sexual at all, but it cannot be what is considered a traditional friendship. To me a friendship is where two guys go out and have beers together. Everything else needs to be defined in alternate terms.