Spectro Phobia by: Gio Gonzalez, Silver Gelatin Print, 2019

Sketch with Words

There are many moments, images, scenes, and ideas that I wish I could draw.

Unfortunately, due to my lack of talent in that department, I am forced to write them instead.

In another world, I could have been an artist. I have the mind for it, not to mention that I took overpriced lessons the summer of fourth grade, and for a nine-year-old fresh out of school (and therefore concentration), I wasn’t half bad. All I drew were dogs, though—beagles and terriers shaded in charcoal over the yellowed pages you’d find in a Half-Price Books store; the kind of paper that is so old and beloved, it smells more of life than of death—this despite the writers of their words and the readers of their times having long since departed to their graves.

I’ve been a cat person since infancy, and to tell my unpopular truth, I consider dogs to be overrated. I understand how one would grow attached to them, I just can’t fathom why anyone would subject themselves to that annoying of a responsibility. Then again, I have a similar philosophy concerning children.

It took years for my mother to ingrain in me that I was N-O-T NOT going to get a cat. Nine, to be exact—at which point I’d resolved that if I couldn’t get a cat, then dammit, I would be damned if I didn’t get a dog (I didn’t get a dog).

Both of my parents had dogs, and before my grandfather blasted his brains out with a bullet, he had twelve of them. Twelve. Guess that’s a good enough reason to. (Dark jokes are within my rights, he was my grandfather, not yours.)

Most people can’t believe the whole twelve dogs scenario, and I’d share a similar mindset but for two reasons. The first is experience: waking up when morning looked like night, when owls screeched like crows rumored to be cursed, to take a none-too-peaceful trip to the middle-of-nowhere Mississippi. Arriving where feet would fall on squishy dog shit while all twelve—I repeat, twelve—of the beasts would throw themselves at me in a storm of mangy, fly-ridden fur I’d have no choice but to scratch up my nose inhaling, and big, suffocating bodies—all bad breath and barking—the vicious versions of pouncing cats. These weren’t little dogs, mind you. These were giants. Monsters with violently wagging tails and tongues flopping from fangs.

I got into a routine where, after I’d stepped out from the safety of the car (which would, ironically enough, run over one of my gramp’s dogs one trip or another [guess that’s a good enough reason to—]), I’d gather my almost colonial-looking doll, Lily (she had the brown-knit bonnet and everything), in my fists, and hoist her in a protective shield against me. Clutching onto her dress the way victims of all things—grief, disease, death—grip to the flimsy fabric of their tissues until they tear because they’re so sick, they’re trembling, I’d prevail through what was a war zone in my mind by cringing with my head cast low.

The second reason I firmly believe in insanity is due to the amount of freaking (*fucking) cats I’ve had. That’s right. Living squashed beneath the rule of She Who Descended From Twelve Dogs and an allergic brother, I ended up getting not one, not two, but a shit-load of cats. By the time I reached fifteen, my legacy as the crazy cat lady was known—I’d had over thirty cats. (That doesn’t even cover the fiasco of rabbit raising, but that’s a story for a time that is soon, but isn’t yet [and thank God for that].)

There are plenty of pictures I’d love to draw rather than write because there are only so many words I can give you (“xylophone,” “clandestine,” “incandescence,” “sauerkraut,” “maladroitly,” “scissors”). As I type this, I’m sitting outside in a present that will soon be past. It’s spring again. The crickets are screeching as though someone has strung a rosined bow against a collect symphony of them, my siblings are chattering while I’m flinching nearly every second due to all of the goddamn mosquitoes drifting towards my computer screen (I’m going inside), and a car alarm is going off, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP: just another evening in Houston, much like any other place in the world. Minutes prior to this, among my typing, my cat, Leia—the one who’d started this whole mess of cat inbreeding—nuzzled herself against my leg before suddenly tensing, spine straightening, and bounding for the bushes—oh, no. 

I followed immediately after, settling my laptop down on the chair before doing so, of course—I’d witnessed too many murders at the paws of claws to mistake this instance for coincidence. Clapping wildly, she ignored me until I sprinted inside to retrieve a water bottle, then angled it her way. Her eyes were as jade in the shadows as they were in the sunlight when they levitated towards me, flinching with a disdain meant to plague me with rottenness down to my core—like a raccoon’s egg, coveted with a devotion nearly on par to Gollum’s—or like meat infected by mold. That’s what I get for giving a shit about wildlife.

Then there are memories. Old friends and new, family members here and gone—some remembered by their graves and others remembered for them. Futures that flicker for they may not even be, yet among them, those that feel firm, like they could be.

I wonder if an artist would envy me, she, or he—those who seem to put a pen to paper so effortlessly and weave worlds that can only be transcribed through brushstrokes by their hands. 

I’d say it’s not so simple. I’d say I often doubt myself, and do even now, and I wonder who it would be to empathize with me, smile, agree?

Who would it be?

Would it be you?

Who?

I know. Of course, I do:

The artists, the poets, the musicians, the writers. The weavers, the crafters, the enchanters (and esses). These are the dissatisfied souls.

Yearning, as always, for what others have got.