Dogs Fucking

The dogs are fucking in the sun. The dogs, back to back, fucking – in the sun. It’s sunny, and on the grass, away from us, there are dogs, a small group of them, one lying in the grass, one sniffing along the edge of the rocks – and there are two who are fucking. Fucking, the dogs in the sun, tongues out, panting, not ardent, not distracted, fucking just as they would do anything else, sniffing, playing – it’s all the same. Fucking, playing, sniffing: all part of the whole, part of a dog’s life.

Who owns them, these dogs? Whose property are they, these sandy coloured dogs you find from one end of the country to another? Why aren’t they neutered? Why can’t someone disperse them, or lock them up in pounds? For they are everywhere, these dogs, fucking contentedly. Resting in the grass, playing in the dust, sniffing along the pavements and then fucking, wherever it strikes them to fuck. In the sun, generally. In the sun, before everyone – fucking. Dogs! Fucking! It’s a long, hot day, and what else is there to do? A dog must fuck; it’s part of what it means to be a dog – to fuck. To play, to rest and then – to fuck.

In the dust, on the grass, along the pavements they go, packs of sandy-coloured, medium-sized dogs, inoffensive, really, keeping to themselves, pausing only now and again to fuck. Pausing, in the heat of the sun, in the long afternoon, for a fuck. Sometimes you’ll see the bitches with their teats hanging down. More dogs – always more to come. More dogs, and if there are dogs, aren’t there rats? Dogs – but where are the rats? Because dogs and rats go together. Where there is a dog there is a rat, and where dogs fuck, somewhere, not far away, rats are fucking.

Dogs – plenty of them, and rats – plenty of them, enough to crawl over the pavements and the dust and the grass. Enough to crawl everywhere, until the surface of the world is a million-footed rat-body. The dogs are the amiable counterpart to the rats. But if there are dogs, there are rats, that is the law. Wild dogs – and they are wild, for who owns them? Who lays claim for them? Who is responsible for them? therefore wild rats, one and the same. Dogs, check – and rats, check. I haven’t seen any, but they come with the dogs. The dogs chase the rats and the rats stay underground, but they are there, nonetheless.

And what about the cockroaches? Where there are rats, there must be cockroaches. For any one rat, a dozen cockroaches – two dozen. Do cockroaches fuck? It is hard to imagine them fucking, one hard-carapaced cockroach atop the other. One cockroach doing it to the other. But if rats do it, cockroaches must do it. First the dogs, then the rats – then the cockroaches. Everything is at it, all of nature is at it, in the grass, in the dust, along the pavements and beneath them in the sewers and the pipes, it’s all happening. Everything is fucking. There will be more and more of them, the dogs, the rats, the cockroaches. They’re on the increase.

Why doesn’t someone do something about it? Why isn’t something about them, the dogs. The rats are underground, but the dogs – above ground, unashamed. But if they did something about them, then the rats would come overground, that’s the truth. To lock up the dogs would be to encourage the rats. Rats, fucking in the sun – it’s unbearable. Rats, everywhere, brushing your ankles as they swarmed – terrible. And what if you got rid of the dogs and the rats – that’s the worst. Dogs, rats gone, then the cockroaches would be everywhere, crawling over your face as you slept, falling into your mouth. Cockroaches under your blankets and in your fridge. Better rats. And better still the dogs, who fuck in the sun.