Innocuous mishaps...

I was hanging with a friend recently when something went very wrong. We’re not close friends, although we’ve been trying (vainly) to remedy that, but what happened between us highlighted the fact that we may be too different to get along smashingly.

He had invited me to dinner over a late evening call. He’s a great cook, and he’s shown me before his skills in the kitchen over a great tomato, shrimp and basil pasta he made one day. So there was no question that I’d be headed over, it was just a matter of when. I had a few errands to run, so I ran them then headed over. I arrived, parked, and hopped out of my car, already tasting the delicious food he’d prepared; I was starving after having not eaten for hours already. But before I could shut the door of my car all the way I heard the welcoming starting barks from his dog, which was alertly holding sentry at my friend’s open front door. Now, I’ve seen this particular dog several, several times already, at least in the double digits. We’re very familiar with each other, as she’s sat in my lap while I rubbed her behind the ears, she’s sniffed my crotch, and she’s run her nails down my exposed leg before, so we’re definitely not strangers. However, she goes into spasms upon my arrival EVERY TIME, barking and barking and barking as I head up his stairs to his porch, a bark so loud and vicious sounding (even though he swears she’s never harmed a fly) it reverberates throughout his small neighborhood, and once he comes to the door to actually open it, forget about it. She goes absolutely berserk, barking and jumping up and down, and the minute I step inside she’s all over me, and not in a friendly way. I’m not scared or timid of dogs as I had so many growing up that they are like second nature to me. But several times this dog has seemed on the verge of tearing into me, so much so that she froths at the mouth as she jumps up to semi-attack me, her big paws digging into my thighs. She’s not a small dog either.
Finally, and only after a long delay of ferocious barking, my friend gets the dog to settle down, but only after she’s put herself all in my face and after he has warned me to pet her, or do something on my end to try and calm down this deranged animal. And that’s when I kind of take offense. I mean, this happens every single time I come over, without fail, so it seems that knowing this, my friend would take step before my arrival to make sure it doesn’t happen. Steps such as securing the dog in his upstairs bedroom at least until I’ve come inside. That way she can make her way down at her own pace if she feels so threatened by me. Or he can have a snack to give her once I do get there (she loves carrots), rewarding her for barking less. Or he can muzzle her; I don’t care really as long as this scene doesn’t endlessly repeat itself. But he doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal, even as her paws leave their mark on my body. I should just pet her, he insists.

If that event weren’t enough to make a slightly uncomfortable evening, then the next incident surely sealed our fate. After a long while, the dog has calmed down and settled for sniffing wildly around my person; seems she can’t shake the idea that I’m there to do her owner harm and she won’t leave me in peace. But I’m the best at ignoring annoying happenings, so I don’t let the dog bother me once she’s stopped assaulting me. My friend asks if I’m still hungry, to which I reaffirm. Once in the kitchen, though, he looks at me, shakes his head, and then takes his hands and rubs them vigorously through my hair, saying no, no, your hair’s all messed up…he rubs his hands around in it every which way, and then steps back to admire his creation. There, he states proudly, fixed it.

I was totally taken aback. Whoa, I say, trying to move my head from under his destructive fingers. WTF??? What are you doing, I ask him, too late though as he’s done the damage to my creation. What, he asks, very innocently, as he tries to explain that my hair had been stuck to the side of my head, I looked like I had bed head, and he just wanted to fix it for me. Now I’ve been growing my hair for not quite two years in a dreaded way (I promise to have a pic up soon). It’s not too lengthy yet, but just right, being long enough for me to mold it into whatever shapes I can think of. I take my appearance very seriously, even though to outsiders who pay little attention to me or for peeps who don’t know me as well as they think they do, it can seem like I simply wake up and face the world. Rest assured that’s not the case, and for him to not even take that into consideration as he fumbled through my design, which for that day was a Mohawk pushed on its side, was simply unbelievable. To me, it speaks of a much deeper and totally invalid disrespect this ‘friend’ carries for me if he thinks that I would go out without putting my best foot forward (he knew that I had run errands before coming over to his place, I had explained it perfectly), and that I would need him to fix my hair, or any part of my appearance for that matter, for me. I indignantly told him this, and I told him that I felt really disrespected that he didn’t feel the need to tell me he hated my hair before he put his hands in it. And I took my leave.

Now I’m well aware of my instinct to react negatively from my emotions, and perhaps leaving didn’t do anything to alleviate the situation, which was awkward to say the least. But I felt that was the best way to show him how his actions had left me feeling. I do hope this will be a learning experience for the both of us and that it doesn’t mark the end of our already shaky relationship…