|
|
MY LIFE CHANGED significantly when I moved to New York. I am, of course, using the word change to denote more than one of its meanings.
Some might suggest that a young man from a small-town in Eastern Ontario would naturally experience change when moving to one the most populous cities in the world.
But it’s not just about the city.
It’s about an inner change that I experienced.
And, no, I’m not just talking about the metaphysical change or awakening that takes place when a person exposes one’s self to the larger world and multitude of experiences and viewpoints.
I’m talking about a physical change, a sort of biological change that began in my very bloodstream.
I’m talking about the side-effects of a chance encounter with a wolf and a peculiar man a little more than ten years ago while I was hitchhiking through Upstate New York on my pilgrimage to the Big Apple.
That encounter, my only close-up experience with a wolf, is what led to my lycanthropic affliction.
And, the simultaneous encounter with a traveling salesman named Buddy led to my ability to adapt not just to the city, but to my biologically changed body.
I’d been hiking along the highway about an hour or so south of Buffalo. I had caught a ride after having just crossed over the border at Niagara Falls from a family who had a cottage in the tiny village of Ellicottville, a community on par with the town I had grown up in.
Because it was already earning evening, I considered staying in that small community; but I wasn’t tired and had wanted to see if I could at least get to Humphrey, another town about a three hour walk East.
It was near midnight, and I’d been walking along the highway, not having seen another car for at least half an hour, when it happened.
The wolf leaped from the bushes at the side of the highway just as a car came around the bend, lighting the dark highway up.
As startled as I was from the wolf attack, the wolf itself had been startled by the approaching vehicle.
With a failed attempt to abort the attack in mid-leap, its teeth had barely broken the skin beneath the sleeve of my upraised arm as its paws hit me in the chest. Letting out a high-pitched scream – no, I’m not afraid to admit it – and also, quite terrified, I fell backward onto the blacktop of the highway, the wolf coming down on top of me.
I remember distinctly thinking this is the end.
And, and also absurdly wondering if I had wet my pants.
I actually thought, for an obscure moment, that the bright lights – the headlights of the car –- were the lights one sees at the end of the tunnel when they are on their deathbed.
But those lights, that car, are what saved me.
With the headlights of the car bearing down on us, the wolf quickly bounded off me and across the highway rather than tear out my throat.
I’d later learned that wolves do not kill for sport, but for food or for territory. I must have been an attempt at food that night, because if the goal had been merely to kill me, it would have been over. The goal to consume me wasn’t something the wolf could have done with the car approaching, so it had simply aborted the attack and run.
The driver, of course, hadn’t seen the wolf attack, just that I’d been lying in the highway. He’d picked me up, a salesman eager to have someone to talk to. After hearing me tell him about the wolf attack, he’d made the singular comment, “pretty scary,” and then introduced himself as Buddy.
“I’m Michael,” I said.
“Hop in, Michael,” Buddy said, tossing his briefcase into the back seat to make room for me in the front passenger seat. “Sounds like I came along just in the nick of time for you.”
But as I quickly realized after Buddy started to regale me with tales of his travels, facts about the Empire State and his goals for retirement, I had come along at the perfect time for him, by being a pair of ears he could bend.
Man, the guy loved to talk.
Because we had been heading in the same direction and he was thirsty for company, I’d ended up bunking with him in his hotel room on the couch that folded out into an extra bed. That night I realized I had become Buddy’s conversational prostitute.
And I’d ended up riding with him all the way into New York City.
I’d stayed with him again upon our arrival, engaging in another marathon conversation session in his hotel room. And, by conversation session, what I really mean was a ‘Buddy talking and Michael listening’ session.
Although he was a little peculiar, I couldn’t have helped but like him – not only because he’d accidentally saved my life, but also because of the incredible knowledge he had dispersed, all with the innocence and wondrous thirst of a child.
Fortunately, he also knew the city well, so it was a good introduction to the city for me to spend my first night there with him.
Actually, Buddy and maintained our friendship, and he visits me every time he returns to New York, usually for dinner, some drinks, and long conversations well into the wee hours of the night – the one-sided kind he so loved.
Although Buddy never really asked me much about my personal life, he, of course, remembered how we’d met during the wolf attack, so, he often greeted me with the nickname “Wolfman,” never knowing how close he really was to the truth.
Thursday August 14, 2014