An acquaintance of mine, two months ago, lost her fiancé in a car crash. Her friend recommended she see a certain medium. My acquaintance sought their services, and for $180 USD she was apparently imparted advice and lectures from her fiancé.
She told me that this was a great comfort. To have something to aim for, to have some kind of future to occupy herself with. She recommended that I see the same medium and gave me their details.
You may know that the first sentence rhymes with my June. I won’t see this medium, or any other. I’ve had enough dreams of the dead to know what conversations the boy and his man would like to have with me. And I can’t bring myself to believe that I can hear whispers from the dirt 2500 kilometres away. Besides, I would ask the medium the worst questions: “How deep is your glenoid fossa? I was right wasn’t I—your SCM is missing the mastoid insertion? Now, tell me about your femur—”
But it got me to think. I still don’t particularly care for my own personal future, and what I went through over the past six months has given me even less reason to care. I’ve kept myself going, solely, on the fear-driven urge to become strong enough to paper over my feebleness. I live less like a man and more like a scared dog trying to pass itself off as a man. My friends would be very upset. They’d want me to live as a man. …I think, if they could, they’d drag me kicking and screaming into manhood.
And realising that, I’ve just saved myself $180 USD.
So I’ve adopted a name to encourage myself to be the man that I had looked forward to being.
And if must be a dog, then I will be a rough collie, and I will bark ambivalently at people who have the same hair, and pee on trees. Bark bark. Nice to meet you.