Hal
He was supposed to stitch up a corpse of a relationship. He was meant to be the pet that made us a family, that cemented our plots shut and laid them into the dry earth of adulthood. He was meant to further the domestication, decay process, and sleep paralysis of the rest of our lives together until we ended them with alcohol and ice cream. Unfortunately, Hal helped us break up before that stuff happened. Some relationships are only meant to kill, they can be very loving too, but the intention that forms when your energies meet is to kill, kill the current versions. The real love you have wants it to die. You’re not even meant to pick through the devastation together, you’re meant to pack it up in your separate Honda CR-V’s and sift through it solo in the parking lot of your local Wendy’s. That’s what happened when we got a cat. Hal killed us.
Problems became clear with a furry, alien witness there, balancing the heavy energy with an indifferent gaze. “You guys are both such incredible losers.” Hal would remark while we were fighting over which one of us was more drunk. He helped us move on because he made it known he wasn’t going to be comfortable living with us the way things felt. Thats what I envy about Hal, he only knows how he feels. And he doesn’t feel the pressure to know if the Dodgers won or who Bieber is porking. His lack of interest in any popculture is very appealing and I relate heavily. I love that he loves sleep as well. In addition, we both love to watch hummingbirds and to sensuously lounge on furniture across from each other.
When I am uninspired, I watch him lick his asshole with his leg in the air like a professional dancer and am instantly charged with a million ideas for different cleaning products. At night, I sleep with my hand on his stomach and my head on the wrong side of the bed. He is my lover and healer right now. I will contort my body any way that makes it so I can touch his pink belly. Cats purr at a healing frequency of 26 Hertz which is said to correspond with vibrational therapies that are good for your bones and tissue regeneration. But I’m not just in it for the bone health, I love Hal’s love.
Often, I’ll wake up to him meowing at the wall and whipping his head around like he’s watching a light show no one else can see. I adore that he is into all that paranormal crap, same as me. He has the temper of a grandparent from the silent generation and rips the carpet with his claws when he’s angry and always gives me the cold shoulder if I’ve been away. But the dimensions of his love aren’t repressed under any conditioning, he is pure truth, and will show every color of the emotional rainbow. Some people don’t feel comfortable with this authority cats have over their own moods and well being. They’re often dismissed as “meh” if they don’t shower everyone with affection and submit immediately, but I enjoy the intimacy of their observation. The long game of a cats love always seems to shine a new gradient of subtlety that I didn’t know was possible. Is that cat being a bitch because it hates my ugly shoes? Holy shit, it hates my Birkenstock’s! Threw out the shoes. Now the cat loves me!
Hal knows when a man is about to love bomb my ass and then ghost me. He decides very fast, and is usually correct. He loves women who ignore him and when a girlfriend sleeps over I have caught him multiple times taking big, somehow loud sniffs of their clothes in the middle of the night. That’s the more troubling side of him, that Hollywood doesn’t want you to know about. I plan to blackmail him with this information one day when I am back on my feet.
He prefers drinking water from my glass like a movie star and he shits constantly when we are at the airport like a movie star from the 40s. Have you ever had to walk your covered in shit cat through security? First people respond “Aw, kitty cat! Look at it, Grandma! It’s got funny whiskers! Hehe!” And then they get a better look and its revealed that the cat is drenched in it’s nervous smelly vomit and shit and suddenly, everyone is silent and nauseous and looking at you hoping that a giant net will fall from the ceiling. There is no empathy for a shitty cat, and shitty cats owner. Out of solidarity, I douse myself with all the free poop I can find once at the airport which is easy since no one bothers to flush massive shits at airports, its the only, dependable place people seem to gleefully indulge themselves.
Our relationship will never be tainted by either of us being dicks. We will never resent each other for not communicating correctly or not liking the same movies. We will never outgrow each other or be tempted to betray each other. His sweet, stand off-ish shy bitchy persona will always be my home. He is shaped like an egg and lays like a walrus on the carpet. His fat lil pouch shakes side to side when he runs fast and he adds sound to his yawns like he’s being dramatic about how tired he feels. Our love isn’t meant to kill, its just meant to be true.
The volatility to your writing always makes me slightly uncomfortable, but in a beneficial way. As you blast the cement off your frontal cortex and expose yourself, I as the reader try to put it together and psychoanalyze who Bridey is, and the results are always fascinating. Brilliant.