The Crow and the Fake Wolf
Fiction by Jowita Bydlowska
Before meeting him, I was obsessed with men; but not how you think a person is obsessed. I did not come on to men. I did not follow them in the streets. I did not talk incessantly about men — it is, however, all I wanted to talk about — and I did not show that I was obsessed with men; I was cold and standoffish. I hid and manipulated my predicament to such an extent that I’ve also been accused of being anti-men, of being a man-hater, of being a feminazi.
I was always in trouble because of men, because of my obsession. I couldn’t stay with one man if there was another one who was more beautiful. I didn’t want to be unfaithful, but monogamy didn’t work for me. Monogamy doesn’t work for obsessive types. You cannot be a proper collector if you’re stuck with only one thing you’ve collected. I often felt tense, often when I would realize that there was no way I was ever going to be with all the men I was obsessing over.
I tried not to think about it. I tried to exercise. I tried to go for long walks, long runs, but then I would run or walk into yet more men; there was no escaping them. There was no escaping my wants. My feathers were charged. I was a crow in the middle of an electrical storm, I flew through it, through pain. I wanted pain. I hated myself and I understood acutely what it is like to be an addict. You’re always afraid of running out and the fear makes you dumb and weak, it slows you down, it makes you aware of your own mortality.
How far back? A long time. There was a boy named Christopher and I remember golden hair, brown eyes, a peach-skinned face, a bag of candy, and a big black dog that he ran with.
I was maybe five or six. I picked him out of the gaggle of boys who that day spilled out onto our street to play, and he picked me out of the gaggle of girls; he gave me the bag of candy, we ran with his dog. I don’t know if we did that for one afternoon only or if it was a whole summer, but he was the brightest star of that time. Later, I found out that he died but I could’ve just imagined the whole thing; childhood is a lie.
2.
I liked pretty faces, television faces. This is why I was with the Viking for a few weeks before meeting the Wolf; we settled into a routine of walk-talk-movie-fuck and I was uneasy because I felt myself growing older with him. ‘He is too pretty to let go,’ I thought, but once after a night of listening to the traffic outside my window and inside my head, and my body moving away from his on its own as if burnt, I knew that it was over, that I could not force myself into picking the pretty and safe option ever again. If I was to be an unanchored woman — a freak, a sexy crow — I couldn’t compromise any more.
I could only satisfy my mind and my body and mind with a man that would burn through my brain like a comet, a man who would leave a scar.
3.
You could say I was ready then, when, like in a fairy tale with a moral, I fell in love with a man who was not beautiful, who was animal-like, wait — he was an animal, a scruffy wolf-dog-like thing who one day made the flesh of my chest sear in pain as he opened me with his teeth.
I felt the blood in my throat but it came out of my nose and ears and I wanted to tell him to stop but I couldn’t since I was, after all, gurgling, unable to speak.
What a day that was.
He sucked most of my heart out, and then I handed him the extra set of keys and he looked at me with two solid, dead, amber eyes and neither of us were sure if that was really the beginning or the end. So, just in case, I turned around and walked out of the apartment, fantasizing about all the cigarettes I would now get to smoke and the nervous breakdown I would get to have.
4.
I got what I wanted, didn’t I? I got an open-heart surgery scar, a motherfucker of a scar. And I didn’t need scars, I probably needed healing, a quiet lake somewhere, trees, tinkling, a yoga mat, and some blonde woman with crystals and a long skirt telling me about my feminine power, about my yoni or whatever, hugging me; a hugger, a doula, a yogi, telling me to be in the moment, just be in the moment, I don’t know what moment, but anyway, that wouldn’t have worked, I was too uncontained. I wanted to soar above the roofs, I wanted to pierce clouds, find a new passion for a new body that would drive me to temporary madness and a cock that would hold me in one place at least for a short time.
5.
The Wolf will answer your questions now.
First question, the bird in green. Emerald green, bedazzled tail. The question is: “What is it like to hunt?”
There are a few ways, but I will tell you about how to capture someone without her knowing.
You arrive as a friend, a nice friend, a fat friend, an ugly friend, a friend named Steve, a friend whose cock she can’t possibly imagine. You listen. You are a giant ear. She tells you stories that would make Oprah cry. You listen harder, you are the biggest ear she has ever seen. You make yourself available and you take her out for lunch and movies, always as a friend, you remind her. You offer drives, you offer to help her move. You offer to help her deal with taxes, to help her with her investments.
You compliment her but never in a sleazy way, you compliment her with a hint of hope in your voice. You compliment her in a way that will make her feel a little pity for you. Once there’s pity, she will try to imagine you with a cock. But only out of that pity. That’s okay. This is a slow game, relax, don’t be offended. Never take any offence. Be easy, be light, be fun.
You take pictures of her that you Photoshop into funny memes. You become a jester at her court, you are a joker. And now you are a bear! You are a bear in a suit. You’re a bear on a tricycle and you ride your tricycle around her until she starts to laugh. Once she starts to laugh you’re closer. Pay attention! Once she laughs and laughs, you can relax a little and take off the bear costume. Take it off. You’re not a bear. I’ve seen the Bear and you’re not him.
In any case, you tell her about what assholes your father and older brother were when you were growing up and how they both hit you. See, this is the second part, the part where you’re no longer just a giant ear. This is the part when you become a mouth too. When you become a mouth, she is forced to look at your mouth.
Let’s get ahead of ourselves. I can speed this up. Speed it up. Say a name. A woman’s name. Sarah.
You tell her, “Sarah, she’s an artist. Like you. I wrote a story about her. No, a screen-play. I want to make a movie about her. A documentary. I’m gonna follow her around with my camera. She’s beautiful (make sure you say that, ‘beautiful’) and crazy. I’ve had the dumbest crush on her. A picture? Okay. Here’s a picture. We’re just friends. We’ve only slept together once.’’
Sigh. Laugh. She will laugh with you but it’ll be a little tense, her laughter. She is now thinking about you as someone who sleeps with women. Sarah. She doesn’t want to think about it but she’s thinking about it.
Take this further. Wait for an In. Maybe when she says something about her ex, that’s a good In. Your turn. Tell her a story. Tell her a story about two women you were dating at the same time. One of them left her panties for the other one to find. Pink panties. She stuffed them under the pillow. Paint the picture. Say the word “panties” enough times. Laugh because this is a non-threatening story, yet, of course, it is a very threatening story, it is a story meant to weaken, tenderize. Now is the time to start kissing her left breast, getting her left breast used to your mouth. Your mouthful of dog teeth.
Kiss and lick and get her to tell you about the time a man hurt her — or better, men, plural, who have hurt her. You’re not like them, you show her through those kisses, those licks, the head nods.
When the meat is warm and ready, you pierce it gently with your fangs.
6.
I kissed him after our first date but only out of obligation because I was kissing all the Tinder people, at the end of each date my tongue sticking out of me like I was a parking meter.
I stopped taking antidepressants. I don’t know why. I felt lighter. Maybe it was him, maybe it was the weather.
We walked through a small forest in the local park one afternoon and he told me a story about a man who steals diamonds from the sky. It was a story he’d been writing, he wanted to make it into a film, and the story captivated me, or maybe it was the Wolf’s voice that captivated me, that lulled the fearful, watchful me right into a small burrow hidden in the leaves that were falling all around us. Maybe the lack of antidepressants was making me horny. I felt good and safe, and we walked on, his story settling down in my belly, and the sunlight pierced through the treetops, through my hair till it was on fire. He blew on it gently, softly, the fire settled into mahogany, and he pressed his face against mine and I took out my phone and that was our first picture together and I fell in love.
We had sex a month later in the same forest. It was an unusually warm October day, he didn’t want me to look at him and he covered me with his furry chest and legs, his furry face, and he wouldn’t let go of my eyes so I couldn’t look at his body properly, at this body he was hiding.
I’m ugly, he said.
You’re not — he put his fingers in my mouth.
He grew inside me. He moved slowly, methodically, and he breathed on my neck.
I felt a lot of pleasure, a lot of sweet pressure. Afterwards, I ran my hand down his stomach and he grabbed my wrist and said, Did I tell you you could touch it?
I was now all his, I would have to ask permission, this was a silly game but it was also not a game and I liked to obey. And as we lay wrapped in each other, his legs gripping me tightly, his tail brushed against my back-side, and I finally understood what he was and I no longer cared about any other man ever from that point on.
7.
Next question.
…love?
I think so. I don’t know. Don’t ask me that, especially at this time in the day. I’m hungry. She has beautiful eyes and ass and legs.
She is funny and smart.
She makes art. She bought a garden from the money she made from her art. It’s nice to be with an accomplished person. Especially when she downplays it.
She always seems to be talking about other men. Exes. That bothers me. She says it’s anthropological, just in a way that she considers them as material for stories. Story materials.
Am I a fucking story?
AM I A FUCKING STORY?!
I’m done with these fucking questions.
In any case, in the beginning it was tolerable but now I think that could be a deal-breaker if she won’t lay off those stories. I followed a man on the street once because I thought that was her last ex, the bar owner. Yeah, cool guy. Cool guy with tats, that kind of cool, cool hair, cool jeans. He had the straightest legs. But it’s how you walk on your legs that matters, not how straight they are. He shuffled a little. Maybe he had a small dick. A dick I could easily bite off.
She told me I had a confident walk. I’ve heard that from others. I’ve learned to walk after getting my first award. You’ve to walk well when you get awards, no slouching and shuffling.
My brother-father used to hit me on the side of the head when he’d catch me shuffling. He made fun of my head, too, he called it flat. It is a little flat. I wonder if it was him hitting me so much that made an indent in my skull and flattened it. Ha. He was a piece of shit. I never told him that but now I wish I had and now I can’t because he’s dead. I was relieved when he died. This is not such an unusual thing, it happens all the time. Relief, I mean.
She asks me to tell her more about my childhood the way all women do. Like they want to get to your core, dissect you. And vulnerability equals responsibility. If I tell a woman about my pain, this woman owns me. I don’t want to be owned.
I tell her that my brother-father was the head of the house after my father-father died, and he was a piece of shit but my mother protected me from him. In the end her goodness evened out all that was rotten and wrong.
How was he a piece of shit? Was it just the hitting?
Just.
I’m sorry —
It’s okay, I don’t really want to talk about it. I’m here. I’m fine. I’m happy, I say to her and pull her close and hold her, my nose in her hair. Her shampoo smells of knives and sugar. I want to kill all her ex-boyfriends. I want to kill all the men she looks at and thinks I don’t notice.
I kiss her forehead over and over as if she were a child and she sighs and places her hands on my stomach. I don’t like her hands on my stomach.
I want to kill every man on the planet, I whisper in her hair. Every guy who looks at you and who has ever looked at you.
That sounds psychotic she says and her voice is soft, dreamy. I feel as if I’ve been given permission to commit a million murders.
8.
He does it. He starts killing all the men. We live in a small country and so the number isn’t huge — and the married ones are safe, confined to their coffins, pens set up by the wives — but the ones he kills are the ones I’ve lusted after or have had or he thought I’ve had, which is about fifty per cent of the men that live here.
He kills them at night, he is a wolf after all, but his methods are varied, not just wolf-like. He uses a machete and ropes and once a grenade but that caused a child playing nearby to lose a pinky. He’s got nothing against children. He is mad at himself for a couple of days and makes love to me roughly and quietly, he doesn’t grunt and growl the way I like, he says nothing when he comes, not even swear words or God, oh god, oh god. His lovemaking silence is heavy, his penis is forged steel.
After some time passes, he goes back to the killings, after the grenade, he murders with his paws and teeth. He comes home covered in blood and he laughs and says now he’s just like me, bloody. He asks me to lick him clean but I refuse. Sometimes he takes their clothes, especially the designer ones.
I beg.
Plead.
He shows me pictures on his phone of corpses and once complains about ruining one of his victim’s excellent Armani suit but the man was too quick, he saw the knife too late in the red glint of a swanky bar in Roseville. The suit has a large tear in the side,which I stitch that evening using one of my thick grey hairs for a thread. He doesn’t like me going grey.
I train myself not to look. I read books about stopping obsessions, I go to a “Sex and Love Anonymous” meeting. After some time, I stop noticing the men. I no longer care about their long strides, their long looks, their longing. My longing too, for them, is no longer.
I become affectionate and devoted. I am happy to hold the Wolf’s hand in public, I am happy to be seen with him, I want to show him off too.
He asks me to marry him and I say yes. He blows on my feathers when I say yes and he laughs. So I don’t know if he was joking but I wasn’t joking when I said yes.
He says he loves me. He keeps saying that. I keep saying it back.
But.
But here’s the rub. I can feel him getting irritated. I don’t know how to fix it, how to make it different. Or how to make it how it was.
How was it? I don’t remember, but now it’s only him and I buy a fur coat to pretend I’m a wolf too and he says I look glorious, I need to smoke more.
I smoke more. He is still not satisfied. I’m a crow in a wolf coat.
Some time passes. There are no more men but there’s still something wrong. I come over once and he makes us stay up all night watching movies by David Lynch. He says I should write a screenplay. He pulls out his laptop to teach me, it’s 3:00 a.m., I am so tired, so, so tired.
Are you falling asleep? Am I boring you?
No —
It’s easy. An idiot could learn this stuff.
I love you so much.
(Silence)
But for Christmas he buys me everything I’ve ever wanted: a typewriter, a golden necklace, lenses for my camera, a raincoat custom-made to cover my wings, books.
We go out for Chinese. We look at babies and we look back at each other; we are going to make babies. He tells me he misses licking my pussy but I am always bleeding now because there is something wrong with me, or my body is just getting ready to be eaten. I don’t know. It’s all over his sheets, all over his dick when we have sex.
Oh right, we get a tree at the last minute. He decorates it, we listen to moody, slow techno before we bloody make love.
I look into his eyes that night and I see him leave. He doesn’t say goodbye. Two days later, we are supposed to go on a road trip. We go.
9.
We drive and talk about high school and college. We arrive late on the island, on a ferry and we are given a room in an old hotel that is going to be demolished. It is a little bit like being in The Shining, that empty building in the small village, and in the hotel it smells of sad smokers. We make love. Still blood. We fall asleep.
The next day, we are invited to his friends’ house for dinner and we eat quickly and he says something about how he wants to have a house in the Hollywood hills, a glass house, and a couch, and on it, it would be him and his soulmate. He looks at me when he says “soulmate.”
His friends laugh at his jokes. He tells them I am smart and write stuff and have a garden.
I say, Well I haven’t been to the gar—
She looks like Mary, Mary from New York, doesn’t she? The friends interrupt.
Oh my god, she does. Mary is very beautiful. The Wolf says, You should introduce me. To Mary, I mean. Is she younger?
Nobody laughs. I play-punch him. I want to kill him, skin him of his fur. I love him.
He gets up and says, We need to get back to the city, we can’t stay in that hotel.
Oh. It is his birthday the next day. Yes. So we get up, I feel silly leaving like that, dine and dash, but nobody seems to mind and they all hug us and we hug them, with our scarves flying out the door.
10.
I am unhappy. It’s not her. It’s me.
11.
All the men are gone. He has erased them, killed them, cured me of my obsessions.
I am alone.
I am devoted.
I want to please. And he is harder and harder to please.
He is displeased.
He disappears.
12.
Here we are. I knew sooner or later we would end up here. But I’m ashamed to say, but I’ve always pictured her the way she is right now, like a cliché of a woman in a psychiatric hospital, in a gown and slippers, and with matted hair. She is all bones and dull feathers. Her hair is black but unfortunately some white is showing.
I tell her I sold the garden. She shrugs her shoulders.
I leave the paper bag on a little side table beside her bed. She shares a room with a woman who hasn’t said a word since a traumatic event in her life. Her brother was mauled by a wolf and the woman was the one who found his body. She doesn’t know her room-mate is the cause of her brother’s death.
She calls me later and says the heart bled through the paper bag; they made her clean it up and after she did, asked if she felt better now and she said she didn’t know how she felt, bad or better.
After eight months in the psychiatric ward, I am released. I don’t know what I want but dying seems absurd now. Everything is absurd.
Once out of the hospital, I trim my wings close to the bone.
In the hospital, I wrote a whole book about the Wolf. Work of fiction based on real events. I’ve sent it to my publisher and she replied asking if I would be interested in writing a piece about what it’s like to be ghosted. For Bustle. Or Jezebel. Or Vaginel. Get my name back out there.
14.
One night, I meet a man made out of shimmer and fur, his mouth full of fangs.
I meet this man in a forest where I go to look for the patch of moss where the Wolf and I made love for the first time. I feel that were I to find it, maybe I would be free again. I would be able to have a ceremony: light a candle, have a ritual, have a funeral.
But instead of finding the patch of moss, I find a man with long, flowing silver hair. When I see him I realize for the first time that he is a wolf and that my Wolf was fake, my Wolf was a coyote.
I cannot decide if this man is beautiful or not. I’ve lost that ability, I no longer care. That’s one thing the coyote cured me of, my shallowness, my strange hunger.
The man’s carnation is darker than mine, freckled. I want to touch him.
He points to a scar on my chest. I put my hand against it and feel the small fragment of what was left after the coyote tore it out and it’s fluttering, shyly. It is not perfect because it will never be whole. But now, here, with this man, the real Wolf, I am certain it will grow, it will get stronger, get me stronger.
He says, Dear Crow. I say, Follow me.
I am never that forward but it seems natural to ask him that and he gets up from the log where he’s sitting. He is naked. He is about my height.
I feel embarrassed about being so forward but he smiles and says he would love to follow me and he follows me.
I’ve saved a plate for you with the best bits, I whisper in his ear and he growls, the sound so low it reverberates through me, accumulates in my core, settles, steadies me.
I can feel the prickling sensation of new feathers under my skin. »