I know it’s the golden rule of medical ethics—a doctor doesn’t date his patients—but, in all fairness, I wasn’t even a doctor at the time. I was still a veterinary assistant, fresh out of high school, ripe for the picking. And, while he may have been more dog than human, I was pretty sure I’d never find a partner so caring ever again. They called him Buckles. I called him sweetheart. We hit it off from the get-go.

I had had my fair share of romantic stints in high school, but technical college found me in the throws of drunken nights injecting lab rats with honey and writing slapdash e-mails to my alternapunk-turned-horribly-mainstream ex. I had made some great gal pals at tech school, but they were all about chips and salsa and I was a totally tequila girl into IMing Justin to see what new piercing he had recently taken out and from which body part.

WildOne2004: Hi Justin! :-) What up?

SK8hardcore: Just chillin in my basement. The rents are being total losers.

WildOne2004: ROTFL

SK8hardcore: Wrong abbreviation

WildOne2004: Whatevs. So when are u gonna move outa the house?

SK8hardcore: My band’s gonna be touring soon. No official plans yet, but we’re pretty confident.

WildOne2004: LOL, you guys r def Dashboard Confessional or better.

SK8hardcore: Thanks! So I bleached my hair today and bought a new sweater at the MOA.

WildOne2004: Tell me u found it @ Hot Topic.

SK8hardcore: Sorry babe, but you’re so high school! I went to Express for men!

WildOne2004: College guys are way more mature and individual than u.

SK8hardcore: F U! :-[

WildOne2004: U WISH!

I realized that adjusting to life with the new Justin was going to be harder than adjusting to life without any Justin at all. I knew I had to call it quits. While I wasn’t ready to stop e-mailing all together, I did change my screen name to FunShine so that I could at least chat incognito without constantly worrying about my former beau. Everything reminded me of the old him: JNCO jeans, Mozzarella sticks, spiked collars, Avril Lavigne and her BF, sneakers, popcorn, pizza, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond … just the mere presence of television. Life became nearly unbearable. Even though I was trying to purge myself of him, the constant influx of delicate memories made me feel like I was on a Justin binge. But the boy I knew didn’t exist anymore. He sold out along with Structure.

So here’s where Buckles comes in—literally. I’m sitting at my desk at the vet’s office, listening to the deafening cries of a turtle in labor, when in waltzes the very epitome of alterna-dog. He’s bespeckled in piercings, he’s got long hair, he’s wearing a spiked dog collar, a leather jacket and, to top it off, he’s been injured in a skating accident!

“Skaters are people too,” he barks at me. “I was just trying to do an ollie grind combination when the fuzz starts chasing me, yelling about trespassing and locking me up in the pound. Come on, man. So I’m about to make it across the street when I’m hit by a Ford Taurus, man. So corporate. I black out. The cops just leave me there to die. I basically had to drag myself over here. Don’t you hate the government?”

“Yes,” I looked into his deep black eye. “Yes I do.”

Buckles made a speedy recovery due to his tireless effort to abuse as many prescription pain-killers as his afflicted body would let him. Naturally, all the girls at tech school were jealous when they first saw Buckles pick me up after classes. Even though he isn’t a homo sapien, he’s more man than any of them have every seen. And when those jealous bitches tell me he'll be sleeping in the doghouse soon, I tell them that he sleeps there every night. And you know what? So do I.