Book Review: C. Mallon, ‘Dogs’

Recently I went on a date with someone who showed me a forearm scar he got from hopping a barbed wire fence when he was in high school, trespassing an abandoned pool. The cops came, and his friends ran, leaving him with a mark of teenage stupidity and freedom for the rest of his life. To put it bluntly, I couldn’t empathize — I was a good kid in high school; too busy or too bored to seek out weed or parties. Later, our underground bar flooded during a particularly brutal thunderstorm — “Are we gonna die?” I asked my date, imagining a wall of water rushing in on us. He said no, obviously not.