Consequences #11 — Anna

Call it karma if you like.
Call it Human­ism.
Call it reli­gion.
Call it Chris­tian­ity, call it Islam, call it any damn reli­gion you like. Call it reli­gion.
Call it try­ing to be a per­son. A good person.

I want, deep down, to be nice to people.
I try, I try my hard­est to be nice to people. Even people I don’t like — call it karma, that’s kind of the point.
That seems to be the point of any reli­gion.
“Be nice to people — be kind.”

And I want to be nice. And I am. I think.
Do to oth­ers etc …
How­ever, some people make it hard.
That tour­ist who walked too slowly and in my way all the way through the town.
That ferry lady who shouted at me today.
That man with the annoy­ing laugh in the pub.
That woman at work who pat­ron­ised me until my lip nearly fell off from biting.

That bloke, sit­ting on the pier, ‘woof’-ing at every woman that passed.

There was a man.
Of sorts.
A sort-of man — you know the type — sit­ting on a bench, in the middle of town, when I was last in a town, watch­ing the world go by, watch­ing the women go by, and bark­ing, like a dog, at any female that caught his eye.

I wouldn’t mind, but he seemed to have stand­ards.
High stand­ards.
And this is a man, sit­ting on a bench, woolly hat down to his ter­rible eye­brows, cider in one hand, cigar­ette burn­ing the other, bark­ing, like a mutt on heat, at women that wandered passed him.

Frankly I don’t think, in such a pos­i­tion, you should have stand­ards. You’re not, actu­ally, if you thought about it hard enough, in a pos­i­tion to do any­thing with these women. They’re unlikely, quite frankly, to jump into bed with you — lured by your manly bark …

I think, in your pos­i­tion, Mr bench/cider/woof-man, you should bark at any­thing going, and take whatever you’re given.

Or at least, if you’re pick­ing and choos­ing, don’t bark at those wil­lowy blondes. Some­thing tells me they might be picky too.

Not that I’m com­plain­ing — and I know what you’re think­ing here — not that I’m com­plain­ing because he didn’t woof at me.
He did.
The fifth time I walked past.

Alright, so his beha­viour was demean­ing, sex­ist, pat­ron­ising, mean­ing­less … I still don’t want to be left out …
If there’s woof­ing to be done, I want to be involved.
(And no, not in the ‘woof­ing’ itself. I may smoke roll-ups and drink cider, I may occa­sion­ally sit on benches — I still don’t count myself as one of this gentleman’s asso­ci­ates. I would like to be ‘woofed’ at, is all I mean …)

If the meas­ure of a woman’s attract­ive­ness is this nutter’s bark then, frankly, I lay myself bare to that affirm­a­tion (I lay myself bare to any affirm­a­tion, that’s just what we do …).

I walked past him three times and was eclipsed by a more attract­ive pavement-mate; the fourth time I was hid­den by a lorry.

But the fifth! Oh, the fifth, unec­lipsed and unhid­den, I strode out and he barked, excitedly. He barked.

Bark at me, damn you! Bark at me!
We all need that little some­thing, every now and again …