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Billy Quinn 1954
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Not Flagrant, and beastly dead, Kim (On First Love)
Not Flagrant, and beastly dead, Kim (On First Love)

I don’t think it was actually a Post Office calendar. My sister said she received it free in some newspaper, and she was amazed to find this image of ‘The Heffernans’ there, our neighbours and, much feared, landladies. It must have been some sort of nostalgic calendar about the glories of old Ireland, or the like. This, of course, makes it stranger still. I am sure that the ladies in question had no idea they would end up being ‘posteriteed’ in a Sunday Newspaper, eons after their deaths. Either way they did seem to make some effort in their best frocks and smeared lippy.

The lady on the right had three dogs. I loved one of them, Kim, a German Shepard dog. As far as I was concerned, he was my dog. He used to come through the hedge to play with me, and I facilitated that migration by expanding the hole in the hedge. The hole was noticed and frowned upon, but I played dumb and mum. She still had Mac and Judy, her Scottish terriers, to play with. I don’t think she ever noticed that I had stolen Kim, who may have been a bitch, but at that point I didn’t seem to differentiate. Either way she was my, gender fluid, bitch. This relationship lasted about two or three years. I remember I was devastated when she was hit by a double-decker, the 51, bus to Dublin city centre.

This calamitous loss coincided with the death of Pope John XXIII, that exact same day. It was the third of June in 1963, to be precise. I was 9 years old. It was somehow presumed that my profound keening was on behalf of the pontiff, and this sort of venerated me, momentarily, into the role of a professional Pope Keener. It might even have convinced my mother that I was well and truly on that thorny road to sainthood, or at least might have had 'a calling', that voice you heard in your head that convinced some young men that they wanted to join the priesthood.

I had never had a dog until then, we couldn’t afford one, but I knew that you actually only had to make, or enlarge, a hole in a hedge to get one.

Thankfully, Mac and Judy never took any interest in my hedge-hole. They were too posh for that sort of thing, and I didn't like them at all anyway. There was nothing I didn't love about Kim though. I really didn't care how he/she gender identified either. I vaguely remember that 'she' had female genitals, but I do also remember how she would always drag herself through the hole in the hedge when I called "Here, boy!" I guess they were non-binary.

I think He/She/they was my first love. I doubt that even she/he/they knew he/she/they was an Alsatian. I loved that about him/her/them. They were a happy universal cis-gender dog/person.

As Miss Brickell would have it: "Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box, Religion is the smile on a dog".

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Taken on: December 31, 2004
Sets appears in:   • Nicked Menagerie    • Dear Diary    more » • The Beginning    • The Fungimentals    « less
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Not Flagrant, and beastly dead, Kim (On First Love)

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