The Man Who Tames Dogs

‘New York as Vending Machine’ is a theory I’ve been pitching all week. New York as Vending Machine: feel a lack, find it here, leave.

When I moved here I moved for a boy although I tell myself I would have done it anyway. I was freshly gutted by the collapse of my last life and was ready for the next. I arrived with a single suitcase — clothes, books, a framed photo of my mum doing the washing up and (unbeknownst to me) a large chefs knife. The Boy I Didn’t Move Here For snuck it in. I had opted to leave it behind, concerned that my bag would be flagged by airport security, but he kindly went behind my back and surprised me with his secrecy. This would become a theme.

We were happy for a while. We walked hand in hand, we talked cheek to cheek, we made promises we didn’t keep and saw each other for what we wanted each other to be. It was exactly the kind of relationship that suited me — slightly too much, slightly not enough, wholly doomed to end over the phone. When he still loved me he would tell me things that made me want to write him down and I tried to preserve him in that way. And then, when he was gone, I learned things that made me want to attach his head and ankles to one of those medieval torture racks and stretch him until all the lies spilled out of him onto the ground for me to splash around in like a beach day for Knowing the Truth. We are no longer in touch.

Cue twice-daily calls with my dad, drunk running (hard recommend) and a course of therapy. I cried I wrote I blamed and reframed and after a while I recognised myself as the person I had been when I first arrived — broken-hearted and wanting. Though what I was looking for had shifted; a year prior I’d wanted love in a way that made my head spin and I’d nailed that. I’d wanted adventure and the unknown (tick tick) but now, that ‘unknown’ was known. Part of the pain of breakups is that every love makes an unknown known. Every time someone leaves, you’re left with fewer ways to see someone else as brand new.

Soon after having my heart squished I met a man. It was a hot night in August and I was wearing the wrong clothes. A friend had encouraged me to come to a show and I’d conceded. She could tell I wasn’t making good decisions (“but drunk running!” I protested, drunk and running) and nudged me back into a place I’d not yet been alone in; the whole of my New York experience thus far had been an extension of someone else and now it felt like I was floating in the wreckage of a ship I’d run aground in a world I didn’t recognise.

I am a scared person and have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to not be. I was successfully hypnotised out of a crippling fear of the dark, dig my nails into my palms through flights and am working through a phobia of clustered buttons but an aversion to unleashed dogs remains. That night put me side by side with the canine equivalent of leaving the gas on; not a case of if but when. Hackles up, it paced the smoking area like a reminder — I shouldn’t have left the house. I wasn’t ready to be hurt again.

Prepared as I was to fold into a ball of self-pity and roll back to my apartment, I stayed for long enough to watch The Man crouch down beside my fear and hold out his hands. With an ease antithetical to mine, he played with its open jaws like he’d known them all his life. I wanted him to know me. And he would.

Sometimes someone comes along who makes you wonder why you were ever afraid, or at least lifts you high enough off the ground of yourself to give you a choice.

New York is a vending machine and it’s also a mirror. It shows you what you’re showing and that can be exhausting. Love is a relief because it shows you what you couldn’t have seen by yourself. The Boy I Didn’t Move Here For showed me that change is necessary, in the case of coming here and in the case of breaking my heart. The Man Who Tames Dogs showed me that fear can be met with open arms and, if they’re open wide enough, you won’t get bitten.