Dreamer

The first thing I remember is the smell of his leather jacket. When I was little, just a tiny white ball of fur and puppy breath, he would tuck me into that jacket and I would ride inside as he roared down pavement on his motorbike. Then I sat inside of him as he listened to lectures about statistics and psychology. All the girls in class cooed when I would poke my head out and sneak a kiss on to his cheek. My man, my buddy, my daddy and friend.

it was a hard year for him. His sister, his rock had moved away leaving only me to comfort him. He was lonely and afraid. Homeless for a time, on the dean‘s list and sleeping in his car. Before she left, they both got pit puppies. A brother and sister. She picked out my little black and white brother and called him rockstar. He picked me with my brindle eye patch and white fur. He named me dreamer and I listened to his nightmares every night that first year. Nestled into his chest.

He couldn’t leave me at home.

I screamed when he wasn’t near. He needed me. I knew it in my tiny paws. Not just for food but for comfort. I didn’t leave his side for the first eight months of my life. He took me everywhere until I was too big to fit into his coat, until he found a house for us to stay.

Once he tried leaving me in a crate but I screamed for three hours and his friend kicked us off his couch. “ sorry bro, I can’t get evicted.”

He wasn’t mad. He just had a long sad look on his face. He stuffed me into his jacket, chucked the crate in the dumpster on his way to waterfront park. There he let me go and watched with a simple satisfaction as I transformed the park into a sea of smiles and uncontrollable joy. He said I was his partner in clown, that together we could reach any soul. He spent many hours of his days back then searching for experience, making strangers laugh and cry with stories and songs.

Besides me, his great love, his constant, was his guitar. Strapped on his back, he played songs for anyone brave enough to ask him And when he played they were always moved.

I learned early on that I wanted to go. I never knew where we were headed but i Had to be by his side. From the ocean to the mountains from the street corner to the forest. He took me there. By his side. Many firsts. Just him and I.

His mind raced tumultuously , his heart ached. He helped every soul he could.

we both did.

When he was a distant ship on the horizon, when his eyes glazed over with yesterday and made conversation impossible it was I who would go and comfort his lovers and friends. If he didn’t have any love to give that day he would give me. I would hold his family until he had the courage to do it again.

After he graduated from college we moved a lot. It’s tough to rent houses with a pit bull. I didn’t know why. We hopped from room to room and house to house.

He had lovers but always I had my spot next to him in the bed. Most of his lovers were short lived never lasting longer than a month. Brief smells of lavender and sweat would invade our bed. He would pour himself into each one, giving them the best of him. But when his darkness, his loneliness, his pain from yesterday would pop up, they would disappear and on those nights after the top of the world, after tasting and smelling and holding the soft flesh, he would hold me close, wrap me in his big body and dream.

we dreamed together. I kicking my leg randomly with little grunts and coos escaping my sleeping lips. We snored together. He held me right on those nights. Me and him. He hugged me like I was the last being on earth and I loved it. Nothing like being close to him , almost choking under the pressure of his love. I could take the big breathing. I could handle the suffocation.

for eleven years I was by his side. He left me with a lover to go play in Europe. He left me with his uncle when I was three. He promised to come get me. It was a long year of yearning for me. His uncle loved me but it wasn’t the same. I spent that year looking out the window and waiting off him to come and retrieve me. I was fed well and loved well but the absence of his smell and his touch made me long for him like heroin. I was sad and lonely without him.

One day he appeared. Wishing me away back into his arms, his bed, not him I ran fast.

then he bought a van and with his great live and a little doggy freeing he traveled around america. Stewart was amazing. A Boston terrier with more attitude than any dog I have every known. he bit my fave the first time we met and only matter I plzz as vex him under my paw and wrapped his throat around my jaw did he surrender to my authority.

We we’re good friends. Stewy and I. Together we lived in an old van. We saw all the edges of America and slept with the music man while he played on the corner from Portland to New Orleans .

stew's mama lasted longer than the rest of his lovers. But one night in Chicago they said goodbye to each other and I said goodbye to my Boston friend and he said goodbye to his great love I had never seen him cry longer or harder for a lover. She mattered more than the rest and if showed in his heart. We spent three days hiding in the van with his arms wrapped around me after she flew out of O’Hara. she wdd as the one that got away. When they made love the night before she left him, I knew he would miss her.

but life went on together. People would come and g, but not me. I was by sure side as gangsters eyed his guitar case full of money. he feared no place with me by his side. When they would eyes his money, he would look at me.

I would chose them , bite them, do anything for my man.