Naked with a Wolf
Concerning the time a dying artist begged me to bathe a wolf while naked.
When you say you want to go into full-time nonprofit community service, you think this means soup kitchens and speeches and you do not think this means climbing into a bathtub naked with a wolf.
This is not a metaphor.
When I encounter phrases like The Ministry of Justice or The Ministry of Magic or even the word ministration, I think of ministering such as administering a bandage on a wound, administering a catheter into a bladder, administering a diaper onto a butt. Often that includes event planning. Often it includes clerical work — forms, papers. Even more often it includes menial tasks. Cleaning up tangible, physical messes for folks. It ain’t pretty. There’s a lot of dirt, body fluids, stenches and awkwardness in most administering towel and basin. It’s not mostly podcasts and rhetoric. It’s not mostly concerts or short stories. It’s not even mostly persuasion, parties, initiation rites, and sowing rituals.
At its best, it may well be what some call becoming a “spiritual director.”
At its worst, it’s just another seasonal gig.
At its average, I’m suddenly a certified nurse’s assistant again, just without hospital overtime and without a full team behind me.
This kind of ministration — true nonprofit service — is mostly a readiness to point out where providence shows up in the great big mess of our everyday.
Because every day I wake up with my perfect plan of how MY administering nonprofit service will go. And every day providence interrupts me with some inconvenience I must rightly consider if I ever hope to go on the adventure set out for me.
I was playing boardgames with one set of neighbors when one of the kids knocked on the door asking for help with his bike. Finished, I had axel grease all over my hands. It’s hard to roll brand new dungeon crawler dice with axel greased hands, but while washing my hands I got to share with the first set of neighbors about my relationship with the second set of neighbors, the kids. Both sets grew from the encounter.
An inconvenience rightly considered is an adventure.
An adventure wrongly considered is an inconvenience.
— G.K. Chesterton, On Running After One’s Hat
I was planning to call patrons when Tara asked me to help move this air conditioner, which included borrowing a car from another neighbor. I was annoyed. But I ended up talking about my weakness as a New York City driver.
That neighbor not only helped me adjust to NYC driving, he helped me process through a frustration I didn’t have words for regarding out-of-town visitors who don’t understand the culture here and take it out on us or fellow New Yorkers, passive aggressively. He also prodded me on an issue so that I ended up sharing my heart. Then we had a great talk with the air conditioner owner and I got AC goo all over my good pants, cut my thumb four times (like you do whilst gripping aluminum cooling fins far too hard), and came back with two hours left in my day.
Another person was in town and needed help. I cancelled the rest of my appointments and helped them with some survey work and in the process was encouraged more than I have been all year to keep doing what we’re doing, to maintain the vision, to maintain the culture, to finish the task. No calls were made.
Inconvenience, rightly considered.
It’s the smelly hug with the homeless guy.
It’s holding the weeping girl as she cries mascara all over your only whit dress shirt left without stains.
It’s greeting the New Yorker who says, “My hands are dirty.” And reaching out to shake his hand anyways because hey, dude, Jesus touched lepers, man, so dirty hands are small change on, like, the cosmic scale, right? Then realizing he’d wiped his butt with his hands. And it’s… suddenly not so cool. But considering he’d been screaming outside the diner for the better part of an hour with no one to stop and help him, washing my hands was a small price to pay to go on the adventure of staring strangers who’d ignored him in the eye and smile.
“But your hands?” they asked.
“Are washable,” I said and smiled.
Some day’s it’s like that.
On the other hand, some days you climb naked into a bathtub with a full-grown American greywolf.
One of our neighbors here — a young friend and artist — was practically dying.
She was very, very ill and we were very, very worried for her.
We didn’t know how to help her and then Tara suggested I walk her dog. Her “dog” has a foot-long snout and “the better to see you with” eyes and “the better to eat you with” teeth. Her “dog” is an American greywolf from one of the few wolf rescues in the U.S. I honestly don’t think she legally owned this thing. How can you keep a wolf in New York City?
Not a wolf-dog.
A wolf.
As in Little Red Riding Hood and the…
As in The Three Little Pigs and the…
As in Peter and the…
This wolf sometimes poses for high-dollar photo shoots. I won’t post the pictures, but you know the actors who have co-starred with this wolf.
He had to go on long long walks to even get ready to poo. As in thirty blocks. I had to keep him on a six-inch leash because of how strong he is. Often I had to literally belay his leash around my entire body as if he’s a mountain climber and I’m the guy trying to create a counterweight to save him — or more likely some innocent bystander — from certain death.
The walks were going pretty good. He had freaked out a bit, but he was doing okay. Then Tara and I showed up later in the day and he’d crapped and peed all over his cage and flung it all over this really nice Persian rug.
Did I mention that wolves are smarter than dogs?
Because they are. They very much are. They’re like corvid dolphins with jaws the size of… of… Jaws.
This wolf knew exactly what he was doing.
He was mad to be in his crate.
He wanted out, regardless of whether or not mom was sick and dying.
Tara offered to steam the rug and help clean the house while I took him to the doggie car wash. We've found these self-service dog wash places where you can shampoo your dog the same way you shampoo your car. It’s great.
Walked twenty blocks. He went number one and number two. The number two had bones in it.
Large bones.
Why large bones?
Because he eats large, raw bone-in porterhouse steaks. Or maybe college interns, I wasn’t there, you know? Maybe he eats college interns every day. Can you see how this becomes a mind game between you and the wolf?
The first place was open. The wolf knew the place and started yanking me around the store and flailing and digging in his back paws. Turned out their self-serve stopped at 4:30pm. Tried to go uptown, but that one was closed. We walked another twenty blocks west to the place near Washington Square. Also closed at 5:30pm. It’s 7pm. I text the girls:
Every place is closed or they don’t want a wolf.
I didn’t add I do not blame them.
The wolf’s mother texts back:
I guess bathtub it is :o
Now.
I had been texting the girls off and on while trying to walk the wolf. Texting and driving is bad. Texting and trying to maintain your alpha status as leader of a wolf pack is worse. Particularly when you consider how “alpha males” don’t even exist. The last text was the last straw for his boredom and the wolf freaked out.
He jumped up like a kingfisher, he grabbed the leash in his jaws and yanked harder than a marlin. He lept — when fully extended on his hind legs, he’s much taller than me — and scratched me. I’m wearing my nice herringbone jacket. He bites my left bicep and tricep. Not to kill, but the way he’d bite a pack member he intends to challenge. The problem is, the last person he bit that way had twenty two-inch (not twenty-two inch, punctuation maters here) deep puncture wounds all up and down their forearm and hand. That was the previous dog walker. Were there ever an argument for a young artist wearing a tweed blazer non-ironically as I often do THIS HAS GOT TO BE IT. The bruise was green and tennis ball sized the next day and there’s a hole in my jacket, but I was spared death.
I didn’t know what else to do. None of the supposed posturing worked. None of the leash snapping worked. Eat your heart out,
. The more I fought this wolf, the more he fought me. Large crowds on the sidewalk near the Alamo / Astor Place Cube gave us both a wide berth.I became very, very afraid. I knew he could smell my fear.
So I tapped into my flight response, shouted, “COME! LESSGO!” and took off at a dash down the sidewalk. He yanked at me for awhile and then he went into his slow gallop. For the record, I used to be a 100-meter dasher and 300-hurdles sprinter. I used to play wide receiver. I used to be the guy in baseball who’d get on first base every time, but couldn’t hit a home run to save my life. I’m a fast dude when I want to be.
I chased down an express city bus for my buddy’s wallet once. I’m not talking one of those every two streets local lines.
Still.
I was going full speed and the wolf was barely jogging. Wasn’t even winded or at a gallop pace yet.
That was the most terrifying thing: had I desperately wanted to in an emergency, I would never, ever outrun this wolf. Perhaps this is why for bears the Alaskans advised me “if it’s brown, lay down; if it’s black, fight back,” but never “flee, flee in terror.”
We got back to the place and his mom asked me to tie him to the bannister while we clean up. She’s to the point where she’s getting winded from laughing, from walking up a couple of flights of stairs. She went to bed for a bit and I started scrubbing wolf droppings off the massive crate in the bathtub with a pitcher. Tara steam cleaned a 100-square-foot rug and another one that ran the length of the hall. We did dishes and things, scrubbed and scrubbed while mom rested.
After an hour or so, I asked his mom how best to do bathe this wolf at home.
“You’re going to have to get naked with him,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“You’ll need to climb in naked with him,” she said again.
“Okay,” I said. I was not okay. Reminder: you have never seen pictures of me below the face. Nor do you know when this happened, who scheduled it, or if I dictated it from my hospice bed. You have no idea how this ends…
“If you put him into the bathtub and stay clothed, he’ll think you’re doing something to him. If you get in first, he’ll want to join the pack and will just come right in with you.”
“And doing something to him isn’t great?” I asked.
“It ends badly.”
I thought of the last guy with the puncture wounds in his hands. “Naked with the wolf,” I said. “Got it. Any advice? Use the showerhead?”
“At first,” she said. “You’ll have to get him to stand to get his belly. Use the rose shampoo. I figure if we have to do it he might as well come out smelling like roses.”
“I’ll come out smelling like roses, if you say so. Anything else?”
“Make sure the shower door handle is on the side next to the toilet and the showerhead. If it’s on the backside of the tub, he’ll make a mess of things.”
“How so?”
“He’ll climb out.”
I basically wailed my next question, “Of the shower?”
“Yes.”
“Like over the wall?”
“Yes.”
“The entire wall. Of the shower.”
“Yes.”
“So door handle definitely on the toilet side. Definitely.”
“Yes.”
“Oookay. Here we go.”
She waited.
I closed the baby gate. Hilarious, in retrospect: a baby gate holding back a frigging greywolf. Then I went to get the wolf.
He saw me and peed all over the stairs in the hallway. He was trying to prove a point.
I went and got paper towels and started sponging them up, refusing to untie him.
He tried gnawing on me to get me to untie him.
I refused to let him. I dodged it. Eventually I got around him enough to get it all cleaned up.
Then he was turned loose and it was just a tug-of-war between us.
I got him into the bathroom and closed the door. Then I became painfully aware that I was inside a six-foot-by-six-foot cell with a full grown wolf.
THIS IS NOT WHAT I HAD IN MIND WHEN I WENT TO COLLEGE TO BE TRAINED FOR NONPROFIT SERVICE.
Normally this is the part where my own dog (a mere English cocker spaniel) freaks out. The wolf didn’t. He just started being ornery, climbing onto the sink and biting cleaning supplies and tongue scrapers and tubes of toothpaste. I got it all out of him and I tried not to draw his attention to the clothes I was taking off because he really likes ripping fabric. I got down to my skivvies and I prayed the prayer Saint Francis prayed to the fire in the hot iron before they tried to sear off his cataracts:
“Brother Wolf, God made you beautiful and wiley, fast and strong. I pray you be tender with me.”
Then naked, the boy entered the shower and turned on the shower head.
The wolf entered the arena.
I started to sing. I had no idea if it would calm him, but it calmed me. I’ve sung to trees and birds before. Why not a wolf? Then I closed the door slowly behind, his three-foot-long tail slipping inside.
I have seen that exact shot in horror films.
And then, there in the water, whatever was left of boy who had moved to New York City died. Died right there in a neighbor’s shower stall, surrounded by shedding fur. The boy died.
The man was born.
I’ve heard of rites of passage, but this was surreal. I mean, I wouldn’t have considered myself a boy or even necessarily a coward — I was thirty for crying out loud when this happened, I looked like one of those wide-eyed Brooklyn toddlers whose face reads I have seen things — yet there’s something about tearing off all of your armor and then stepping under the waters with the wolf. There’s something about washing him, slowly, of all the crap he’d rubbed all over himself… it was as soothing as the older gentlemen and older ladies I used to clean up in the hospital, but the older folk couldn’t kill me. As soothing as combing the dead lice out of a dear friend’s ruined hair, but if the lice got off, they couldn’t eat me. At least not on greywolf scale, at greywolf pace. So there was this deep respect and honor involved as well, as if I needed to bow as a courtesy before shampooing this Lovecraftian eldritch horror. It took a ton of water. He drank a good deal (which meant that later he’d throw up in his cage twice and we’d need to clean that up too). I got pretty scratched up when I got him to stand and wash his belly and he got some twelve bottles down from the very high ledge with his egregiously, offensively large snout. One of them he got into the standing water, demolished one of the bottle caps. We both smelled like bubblegum then. Frigging bubblegum and some weird crunchy homeopathic shampoo that smelled of some herbal tincture Kvothe may have stolen from Abenthy in The Name of the Wind.
But through changes various, through all vicissitudes, we made our way.
Then we drained it, literally came out smelling like roses (with a bubblegum aftertaste) and I got out and used one towel to distract him while shouting, “TORO! TORO!” and the other to dry him. He shredded the first towel. He took three of my towels and got very, very curious with my pants, but never bit them. I would have to ride the subway home commando, but the wolf was clean. The wolf was clean, holy heaven. And then the wolf was dry.
And this Lancelot was not yet dead.
He peed his cage afterwards. Again. We cleaned it up before he got it all over, I walked him a second time, and then it was okay. We ate dinner and I read a chapter of an early draft of Bell Hammers that made her laugh, though it pained her in her illness. Then she went to bed too after rhubarb pie and kombucha.
Walking back to the subway, Tara and I just started laughing and couldn’t stop.
“Our life is absurd,” I said.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“How’s my hole?” I asked, pointing to the jacket.
She giggled. “Fine. Now you can say you got the jacket off a dead guy and that a wolf tried to eat it.”
She wasn’t wrong. All told, it took seven and a half hours — 5pm to 12:30am. The trains were running local. We got to bed at 2 in the morning.
The boy is dead.
The man is born.
This is amazing. Wow. Thanks for sharing this story.
Holy camoly!