Between Dog and Wolf
In 2021 I wrote an essay for Jane Wilcox’s book Between Dog and Wolf, published by Bad News Books.
Between dog and wolf
Sometimes I think I should just ask you. But then I think ‘What if I don’t like the answer?’ I don’t think I could bear it. You’re not shivering but you have goosebumps, I can see them, and I wonder about offering you my coat but then I would be cold and I wonder what that would accomplish. Perhaps I’ll suggest a shares scheme, where we swap it back and forth between us. You have it for ten minutes, I get it for ten minutes. Then I wonder if you even feel the cold. All this runs through my head but my mouth stays closed. I wonder if you have any idea how much goes through my mind when we’re together, how much I think about you, about both of us, about how we fit with each other and with the world. When I say so little most of the time.
So I keep wondering. I think that for me you will remain a perpetual question. Then I wonder if actually I like not knowing, it feels uneasy, tense. I wonder if I like feeling uncomfortable. I wonder if that’s why I like you.
It’s getting dark, and there you are still leaning against that tree. You seem to be waiting for something but you haven’t told me what. I can’t see the details in your face anymore, as each minute goes past you become more of a mystery, more dangerous. I stay behind you where I can see you. This leaves me vulnerable at my back but I’m not sure where the most danger lies – in front of me or from the unknown dark. Two women, out in a park as night falls, I should probably feel safer with you than alone. But then there’s that thing about you. That thing I don’t want to ask.
Occasionally a car drives past. As they swing around the corner their headlights wash over us. As the dark falls their light penetrates further into the trees. It sweeps over us and the shadows move with it, looming and shrinking. They come from the wrong direction, illuminating the world from below in an unnatural brilliance. Parts that usually hide in shadow are revealed in a flash. That’s how you make me feel. Most people’s eyes slide over me, they see me but they don’t see me. But you look at me differently, perhaps that’s why I keep you in my life. You see past the veneer, you see me. Well I think that’s what you see, I’m kinda too scared to ask you that as well. It’s possible I don’t really want to know what you see. Sometimes your gaze feels as though it will burn a hole right through me.
You push off from the tree and beckon me to follow. We start to move through the trees, strips of light flowing over us. You move with a loping, lupine pace, not a run but a very fast walk and I have to hurry to keep up. Not for the first time I reflect on how you move in an animalistic way, sinuously streaming along the paths. Birds fly up from the trees in alarm as you flow past. In the light you are playful, you turn back to me and smile. But as you slip into shadow the smile disappears and your movement feels more powerful, more threatening. I almost can’t hold the question in anymore, I’ve wanted to know ever since I met you.
Are you dog? Or are you wolf?
Caroline McQuarrie