by Carolyn Alfvin
Excerpted from "Two is the New Three"
The first time I saw him
Roger
Outgoing, outdoorsman
Roger
Lifted his leg
And peed on mine.
I wrote this poem, Urinary Stream of Consciousness, one evening while walking through the park. Just an hour earlier, Jingles and I had gathered with other dogs and their owners to mix and mingle in the park’s doggy zone. It was there that we met Roger, a chocolate lab, and his handsome owner, named...hmmm. I was working up to flirting with the owner when Roger indeed had urinated on my leg.
The poem was a way to laugh off my puzzlement. But after I wrote it down and read it over...and over... that night, I recalled that Roger’s wedding-ring free owner had never so much as asked me my name. And then I began to wonder, and analyze.
Twelve words: childishly simple on the outside. But are they really the Cliffs Notes to my attachment issues with men? Do they hold the answer to the question: “Why am I not in a healthy relationship?”
Alone, in my flannel pajamas, I read the poem again.
The first time I saw him
Roger
Outgoing, outdoorsman
Roger
Lifted his leg
And peed on mine.
Without warning, the themes of my romantic life sprang out. It was all here, in these 12 words.
Fantasy fulfillment: Curious how I attributed only positive traits to Roger, whom I had known for a mere ten minutes upon writing this poem. Outgoing? Outdoorsman? Based on what? Watching him sprint from one dog butt to the next, thrusting nose under tail in a doggy handshake? It was as if I wanted Roger to possess these traits, and so had filtered his personality through a sieve.
Guilt: Did I look like a fire hydrant? Was I to blame for my own wet leg? Did I brush against something tree-smelling? Was I standing too still? But why was I blaming myself? Repetition compulsion. That’s why. I was transferring my past onto my present in an attempt to restore, then correct, an earlier state of being. Only a week later did I consider that Roger’s misguided urinary output was not my fault. Even if I had worn tree-colored pants, glued leaves to myself, and stuck a squirrel in my hair, Roger was still accountable for his self-centered actions.
Victimization: Why me? Why, out of all the people in the park, did Roger pick my leg when I did nothing to deserve it? Psychologists refer to the Victim-Persecutor-Rescuer Triangle, and how certain individuals perpetually and subconsciously vacillate between these three archetypes. Was I locked into this triangle? Was that why I was not dating/engaged/married to Mr. Emotionally Healthy? Was I instead doomed to be a victim, a seeker of revenge, or a co-dependant to the Rogers of the world, spending my days mutually enmeshed in dysfunction? When would I learn that the Rogers must save themselves? (As must I.)
Matches made to fail: Here, Roger lifts his limb to my limb, voiding his accumulated acidic waste. This act represented a failed relationship between a woman and a dog. But did it also symbolize the ultimate downfall of all relationships? When two gathered, would one always be pissed upon? If so, will the pisser be as blissfully freed by his oblivion, as was Roger? And will the pissed upon suffer humiliation and confusion as intensely as I? I know just one thing to be irrefutably true: Roger’s bladder will fill again.
Am I fucked up?: When I composed this poem -- with as much effort as it takes to breathe -- I used the name Roger, for that’s the dog’s name. Yet the first time I spoke it aloud, I unwittingly substituted Jack for Roger. Why? This was my subconscious’ way of telling the conscious me that despite my quest to understand my poem, my deepest attachments and myself I don’t know jack.
In the final analysis, Stream of Consciousness defied definitive analysis. And yet, the very process of analysis left me with a deeper understanding of myself, serving as a thread into the heart of the complex fabric of my attachment issues with men.
And so the question is raised for us all: Do we utter such threads every day? Are they enmeshed in how we ask for more coffee? Our divorces? Paper or plastic? Are they always present -- coded desires, cloaked motivations, layered longings, unfinished business -- embedded in word and deed like the strands of DNA in every nucleus? I think perhaps they are -- if we know how to look for them. Perhaps all it takes is a little analysis.

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