Men Are Dogs (Part Three)
Had a breakthrough session with Sam yesterday. He is back in Brooklyn and had to return my call after I let the smartphone ring a few times. Turns out he was at his boyfriend's and had a lot on his plate in terms of him waking and answering the doorbell and just general distress around working all week from home.
That being said, he let me be client first and I continued a line of inquiry I have been pursuing since the beginning of the pandemic: relationships and isolation.
In essence it is my belief that I have been weathering the pandemic pretty well. And, that's the problem. I can spend an entire day reading, painting, writing, cleaning my fish tank and day trading and be perfectly ready for bed at the end of the day. I am not lonely. But, I feel like I should be.
When I approach it as a client, it turns out that I decided pretty early on in life that I would grow up to be be scholarly and surrounded by sentimental things and solitary. In sum, I would be Geppeto from Pinnochio. That old man seemed so kindly and happy. And "serenely independent". Companionship didn't matter to him because he supplied his own: toys made of wood that he created himself and specifically, little boys. Certainly, I think the urge to create art - portraits - springs from the same desire to surround myself with kind, gentle, docile, nonjudmental, never changing, never aging progeny.
It also explains my early fascination with dogs. Dogs are just another type of boy. Even female dogs present themseves as male to the uninitiated. "Lassie", after all, was the story of a female dog, but for all intents and purposes, she is treated the same way as any male dog would be, expected to perform the same tasks (rescuing children from wells, fighting off attackers, etc.) and for all her screen and television iterations was portrayed by a male dog.*
Dogs are wonderful. They're brave, intelligent, docile, nonjudgmental and present something that dolls and puppets don't: warm-blooded, furry bodies. What else is there in life?
*It's amazing the amount of pansexual material I was fed as a young person. In the unequalled Broadway production of Peter Pan starring Mary Martin, it would be years before I could sort out the eponymous character's gender.
That being said, he let me be client first and I continued a line of inquiry I have been pursuing since the beginning of the pandemic: relationships and isolation.
In essence it is my belief that I have been weathering the pandemic pretty well. And, that's the problem. I can spend an entire day reading, painting, writing, cleaning my fish tank and day trading and be perfectly ready for bed at the end of the day. I am not lonely. But, I feel like I should be.
When I approach it as a client, it turns out that I decided pretty early on in life that I would grow up to be be scholarly and surrounded by sentimental things and solitary. In sum, I would be Geppeto from Pinnochio. That old man seemed so kindly and happy. And "serenely independent". Companionship didn't matter to him because he supplied his own: toys made of wood that he created himself and specifically, little boys. Certainly, I think the urge to create art - portraits - springs from the same desire to surround myself with kind, gentle, docile, nonjudmental, never changing, never aging progeny.
It also explains my early fascination with dogs. Dogs are just another type of boy. Even female dogs present themseves as male to the uninitiated. "Lassie", after all, was the story of a female dog, but for all intents and purposes, she is treated the same way as any male dog would be, expected to perform the same tasks (rescuing children from wells, fighting off attackers, etc.) and for all her screen and television iterations was portrayed by a male dog.*
Dogs are wonderful. They're brave, intelligent, docile, nonjudgmental and present something that dolls and puppets don't: warm-blooded, furry bodies. What else is there in life?
*It's amazing the amount of pansexual material I was fed as a young person. In the unequalled Broadway production of Peter Pan starring Mary Martin, it would be years before I could sort out the eponymous character's gender.