There is nothing I can do, I have tried various methods. The smarter mourning doves recognize that, when I open the window and wave my hand in the air to shoo the pigeons, I am not shooing them away, because they remain on the fire escape and wait to eat. Yet, even after having waited, they might not go to the birdseed — again, a mystifying mix of smart and stupid. Some always do, the ones I think are smart, and then they get it before the pigeons swarm.
The mourning doves have become habituated to being fed at my window, and I have made feeding them a habit. They are dependent upon me, to some extent. I should put seed out every day, because they expect it. If I forget, they boldly approach the window and push their heads through the window gates, when the window is open, or if the window is closed, they stare into the apartment, patiently, or tap their beaks on the glass and look inside. It’s odd, but they know where I live. Sometimes I leave town, and, if I remember that I’m not doing my duty to them, I feel a little guilty. Then I tell myself there is food everywhere on the streets of New York, there’s a park down the block… When I return, I continue the habit.
By now the mourning doves may have learned that I am erratic or inconsistent, and maybe they don’t wholly depend on me, but think of my window as a candy store, where they get treats, not real meals. But I do feel burdened with a responsibility I didn’t predict when hoping to see them again.
Still, there are daily and surprising pleasures. I have seen them have sex. Mourning doves mate for life, I’ve been told, and they’re tender with each other before and after sex. The seduction begins when the female grooms or teases the male — I can tell male from female only then, because side by side the female is much smaller. The female pokes and ruffles the feathers of her mate, and, after a while, they face each other and kiss. They kiss a few times, open beaked, then the male mounts the female, there’s a brief spasm or shudder, and the male alights, he again sits next to the female, they nuzzle and face each other, and then kiss a few more times. This behavior is not an anomaly, all of the mourning doves who have had sex on my fire escape follow the same ritual.
I love animals, I am an animal, I’m a mammal, a human being, I like most people, love many, despise one person, though I don’t want to hate anyone. I am also selfish and want what I want. My greatest and most enduring problems in life are ethical, but living ethically is necessarily a conscious endeavor, the unconscious is not ethical, and questions and riddles about correct behavior are endless in variation, new issues coming along all the time — stalking on the Internet, for example. Not feeding the mourning doves regularly is wrong, but I generally give myself a pass. My not feeding the pigeons because I find them big and ugly is unethical. A self-named animal lover should feed all creatures alike. Worse, I am not a vegetarian. I love animals but discriminate among them and eat some. I eat less meat than I once did. I like steak, but usually resist it — for my health more than for the cow’s; I rarely resist roast chicken. I don’t eat bacon, I eat fish, crustaceans, but I would never eat horse, cat, or dog.
If I were starving, caught in a war, desperate to survive, like the Donner Party who ate their dead colleagues, like most people, ultimately I would succumb, with remorse and disgust.
I hope to do no harm, yet I cause harm, about which I may have no knowledge, which is a dilemma I don’t expect will change or that I can entirely overcome: the predicament between principle and desire. There are things I like to do, and I do them, and, as much as I can, I don’t do what I don’t want to do.
The Unconscious is Also Ridiculous
One, she can jump very high, leap over subway turnstiles, she can rise and fly over stairs or over crowds anywhere. She can fly up flights of stairs, with no effort, and land wherever she wants, gracefully, weightlessly. She can do this whenever she wants. This is her secret gift, but she is cautious and does not use it.
Two, she is an amazing short-distance runner. Her high school gym teacher watches her, during a baseball game, run to first base, clocks her speed, and selects her to compete in the 100-yard dash. She stays for practice every day after class. Her heart beats wildly in her young chest as she plants her shoe at the starting line and the gun goes off. She runs as if the devil is chasing her. Her legs carry her so fast, she’s in the air, galloping. Her high school record is never defeated.
Three, she is a tennis player, a great champion in her prime. At the age of eight, her tennis chops were recognized, and her parents sent her to tennis camp. She had great instructors, who encouraged her, and her parents became her biggest fans and enthusiasts. They did everything they could to let her play tennis. They moved to a warm climate. They found her tutors and the best coaches, former pros. Her main coach thought she could win the U.S. Open, if she kept her head down and fought for it. By thirteen, she was in the juniors, winning trophy after trophy. She liked winning. When she was down two or three games, she came back. When she was down a set, she came back. She had no fear of failure, she took the court confidently. She didn’t worry that her friends would hate her for being better at tennis than they were. She was a competitor.
Her life was as simple as the lines on a tennis court.
The fantasy ends there, always.
Actually, she thinks that life as a pro would become monotonous and grim. That she could not hit the ball and practice her serve hour after hour, day after day. She thinks the women on the tour are tougher than she could ever be, and she doesn’t know what she’d talk about with them, after tennis. She avoids the sun, and believes sun screen is futile when sweating. She’d worry about skin cancer and other injuries. Mostly, she thinks she’d go crazy playing all the time. And, Andre Agassi’s recent confession that he hated playing tennis, that every match was torture for him, has devastated her. She loves, loved, Agassi.
No matter. She maintains the belief that, if her parents had recognized her gift and gotten her a great coach, she could have won the Open, and maybe a Grand Slam. The fantasy returns every year, with the Open, Wimbledon, the French Open, and the Australian. In it, she is twelve, young and lean, her hair is pulled back from her thin, intent face. Her baseball cap shades her nose and cheeks. She is playing against two friends, two guys who can’t return her serve. Her backhand is fierce.
She replays her winning games and the feeling of lifting the trophy above her head to a roaring crowd. She’s crying. She wins and wins. Her life is tennis.
The Substitute
She watched his heart have a small fit under his black T-shirt. Its unsteady rhythm was a bridge between them. Lost in the possibilities he offered her, she studied his thin face, aquiline nose, tobacco-yellow fingers. In the moment, which swallowed her whole, she admired his need to smoke. She wouldn’t always, but not being able to stop meant something, now. Certain damage was sexy, a few sinuous scars. He’d be willing, eager maybe, to exist with her in the margins.
She’d set the terms. Ride, nurse on danger, take acceptable or necessary risks. Maybe there’d be one night at a luscious border, where they’d thrum on thrill, ecstatically unsure, or one long day into one long night, when they’d say everything and nothing and basely have their way with each other. She wasn’t primitive but had an idea of it — to live for and in her senses. She’d tell him this. Then they’d vanish, disappear without regret. She was astonished at how adolescence malingered in every cell of her mature body.