Jenny Nimon
Alpha Male
(Content warning: abuse, harassment)
I met Ross at a quiz night that my friend Lucy dragged me along to because the team needed someone who could answer the science questions. I was studying animal behaviour and, even though I told her that I’m no good at quizzes, she said it was close enough. I recognised Ross from somewhere and spent the first two rounds trying to work it out instead of actually listening to the questions. I had to ask people to repeat them back to me several times. It wasn’t until my phone went off in my pocket that it clicked. A few weeks ago I’d come across his Tinder profile, which claimed he was a feminist because he liked women. He only spoke directly to the men at the table.
There was a question about which animal an apimaniac would obsess over. They all turned to me. I shrugged. An ape? It was not the right answer. He had the pen and ignored my input anyway, writing down ‘bird’ because he knew that ‘api-’ was its Latin root. That was also wrong. The Latin root for bird is ‘avi-’, as in ‘avian’, ‘aviary’, ‘aviation’. We finished third-to-last.
Despite never actually introducing himself, he sent me a message request on Facebook that night: an uninventive ‘hey’. Three little letters, unpunctuated and all in lowercase. A scroll through his profile revealed a photo of him with the head of a stag in his lap, blood down the front of his shirt. He looked feral.
But in another chat tab, a friend I had feelings for was telling me about his girlfriend. I replied to Ross instead. The conversation was bland, but I liked the attention and went along with it. After a few days of messaging, he asked me to send him a shirtless picture to keep him interested, to prove I was sincere. He said he wouldn’t trust me if I didn’t.
*
There is a wolf in my bedroom. He bunts at the mattress in the night, bites into my sleep. Some nights I’ll stir to the feeling of a wet nose against my cheek, but when I reach out to touch him my hands find nothing. He lives in the wardrobe, I think, but I don’t know for sure because he has never let me see him. There is a nest of coats that have fallen from their hangers, and every few days they shift. I find his hoardings under sleeves: bits of chicken bone, flatmates’ socks, the missing tie from my dressing gown. I’ve tried to coax him out with dog biscuits, but it doesn’t work. My clothes are threaded through with fur, and I wear them anyway. I’ve started sneezing and think I might be allergic. In the winter my room turns heavy with damp, and soon everything starts to smell of wet dog – the sheets I sleep in, the shirts I wear. The other night, I could have sworn I felt teeth against my thigh. There are small cuts and bruises that I can’t explain.
Wolves are often misunderstood; that’s what I remind myself. In reality, they rarely pose a threat to humans because they are afraid of them. Mostly they will choose to observe rather than engage. But I don’t like being watched, so I keep baiting him. I try leftovers, raw meat, chew toys; I play baby deer noises off YouTube. Eventually he comes out to meet me.
*
I had mentioned that I liked Italian food, so for my birthday Ross took me to a subpar Italian place. They had good garlic bread, but of course, Italians don’t really eat garlic bread. They also served spaghetti Bolognese, but any Italian knows that ragù is heavy and needs a wide pasta. Spaghetti is not a wide pasta. It was rubbery and over-oiled, so the sauce slid straight back onto the plate and splattered my clothes. I shouldn’t have worn white.
He spent most of the time running his finger over the candle wick, through the flame. It was a show of impulsivity, a way of presenting himself, all intentional. He made puppy eyes at me, told me he loved me. Not because he meant it, but because that’s what you say at your girlfriend’s birthday dinner. He pulled out a glittery pharmacy necklace that was not at all my taste and nudged it across the table. He had this look on his face, like when a pet drags a dead thing to the door, and you’re revolted and have to use tongs or a plastic bag to pick it up, but they are proud of their gift, so, somehow, you find yourself saying that at least the thought is there. I told him I loved it, patted him on the hand. He made a point of letting me know he spent a lot of money on it.
When he reached his capacity for romance he wet his napkin in his glass of water, dangled it over the flame and started telling me about a party he was going to that weekend. He explained that it was for Jess’ birthday; I already knew that because I had also been invited. He told me his plans to buy cheap cider, to wear a polo shirt, to maybe even borrow my concealer if the pimple on his chin didn’t clear up by then.
‘I might come along to this one, actually,’ I said, attempting to twirl spaghetti onto my fork and failing because they didn’t have enough bend in them and would immediately roll out of shape. I pulled a knife from the caddy in the middle of the table and reluctantly began cutting the pasta into smaller bites.
‘You don’t want to do that,’ he said over a mouthful, waving his fork. ‘You’re the girl I go out to nice dinners with. You’re not the girl who comes out drinking with me.’
*
We are taught that wolves are more dangerous than dogs and should not be domesticated. They might look tameable and soft, but it is all smoke and mirrors. Attempting to habituate a wolf only shows them that you are not a threat. It makes them bold, dominant, aggressive. If you feed a wolf, it will begin to associate you with food. You will become the meal. You should not approach wolves, their dens, their meeting sites, their fresh kills. You should not entice them.
But this wolf of mine has taken over my bedroom. The carpet in all corners of my room is wet with urine from where he has marked out the edges of his territory. In the night I sneak to the bathroom and steal towels and toilet paper to soak up the mess. I stagger my visits so my flatmates don’t notice everything disappearing at once. I raid the recycling skip at the university. I have never been dumpster diving before, and I am on edge about it, trying not to be seen. It makes me feel dirty, dirtier than it actually is – and afterwards I sit on the floor of the shower under the hot stream for near an hour – but I find cardboard, newspapers, prospectuses, discarded theses. They make up the new floor of my room. He soils it all within days, so it has to be changed again and again. It is unending, and I am exhausted. I open the window to try and air the room because I can’t open the door in case he escapes to another part of the house.
He has claimed me as part of his pack, and he growls if I try to leave. It is his space and he makes the rules now. I have even stopped eating meals with my flatmates. Instead I wait until they have all left the lounge and my food has gone cold. I bring it back and sit on the floor in the muck and share it with my wolf. He eats off my plate, licks meat juices straight from my fingers. He likes the nacho mix, so I eat the soggy chips.
You’re not supposed to feed wolves. I know this. Doing so diminishes their innate fear of humans and increases the likelihood of future attacks. But he is a master of guilt. He acts like a puppy and cries for food. He cries to be let into the bed. I give in.
*
At 3am Ross knocked on my window. He’d been out with my flatmate – had stopped by after dinner to drop off his bags before disappearing again. He had made a routine of it. He rarely came to see me anymore, and instead just used my bedroom as a place to crash, without asking, because he lived a little out of town. He liked to joke that what was mine was his, and what was his was also his.
I rolled out of bed, grabbed my dressing gown from the floor and let him in. His sweat smelled of sugar and alcohol. His skin was sticky with it. It reminded me of year-old cough syrup, a sickly and fermented kind of sweet. He took his time in the bathroom, and I got back into bed, almost fell back asleep. When he came back to the room he bumped into every wall, turned on the light, not realising that the switch was by the door and he’d have to turn it back off again before getting into bed anyway. I squinted against the sudden brightness.
He pulled back the covers, pulling them right off me, letting in the cold. He stared at my body and made a sound that disclosed both disgust and irritation, a kind of growl. I felt exposed. There for the purpose of review. An average work of art. ‘What are those?’ he said, pointing to my regular cotton underwear. They were white with a lace trim. Not ugly, not period underwear, but not ‘lingerie’ either. Not sexy.
He didn’t wait for an answer – just grumbled and got into bed, pulled the covers his way, rolled them around himself and fell straight to sleep. I had to get up to turn off the light.
*
Wolves like order. Hierarchy. Contrary to popular belief, battles for the alpha position are uncommon. Instead, wolves take the coward’s approach and leave to find new territories and new mates so they can simply decide they are in charge. It is an imagined dominance. But they will expect that it is respected and will not take no for an answer.
I come home tired from a bad day – rain without a jacket, a bus that never showed, passive-aggressive tutors – and get straight into bed without taking my makeup off, without having dinner. The wolf jumps up onto the blanket and starts licking my face. He paws at my arm. Begs for attention, for affection. I am exhausted and just want to sleep. I do not want to share the bed tonight, so I roll over and hope that he will lose interest. I pretend to have fallen asleep already; I choose a new rhythm for my breath. But when he doesn’t get a response, he starts barking at me. Small at first, a whimper, a whine, then gradually louder and more aggressive until his voice fills the room and it’s not believable that I am sleeping through it. He pulls at my clothes with his teeth. He won’t leave me alone and I can feel that dry sting in my throat like I’m about to cry, so I sit up and start speaking to him in single syllables, pointing at the floor. Off. Down. Sit. He doesn’t like that. I can hear it, how quickly his barks turn hostile.
I have read that signs of aggression include raised hackles, growling, barking, howling, a high tail, straight ears, bared teeth. He is doing at least half of these. I am too tired to work out how to defuse his mood, but I can see what’s coming a few seconds before it does. He springs for my arm, still pointed to the floor. His teeth sink straight through skin, and he pulls at my wrist like it’s a chew toy, a rope meant for tugging. The pain makes me squeak back to him. My mouth tastes of metal, preemptively, intuitively.
With my free hand, I find my mug by the bed and swing it against his muzzle. It is still half-full of cold tea, and it splashes over him and up the wall. He yelps and releases my arm, falls backwards to the floor. The sheets are wet, and the handle has broken off my mug. My favourite mug. The one covered in little blue daisies.
I am shaking. I am shaking and I am bleeding. I am bleeding, but he is crying and the crying is worse. I look around the room for a towel, but they are all on the floor and soaked in his urine, so I pull the loose top sheet from the bed and wrap it around the bite to stem the bleeding. He has retreated to the corner of the room and is whimpering.
I go over to him and say sorry. Plead for him to come back to bed. It’s all my fault, I tell him. He accepts, lets me comfort him, hops up to the bed and curls into the crescent moon of me. He looks soft and gentle, vulnerable, his little breaths steaming against my torn arm. He looks very small. Innocent, even. And yet, he terrifies me.
I am still tired, but I do not sleep.
*
I learned that he could cry on command. He would squish his face up, all over-pink and wrinkled, maybe throw a pillow across the room for dramatic effect. A few times, he struck the wall. Sometimes it was difficult to feign sympathy because I’d get caught on the ugliness of it first, would feel embarrassed on his behalf. It was hard to take him seriously, but somehow I would always end up feeling like the villain and it didn’t matter whether it was because he had positioned himself as the victim or because I felt guilty that my first response was to laugh at his crying face.
On this particular occasion he had left his Facebook account logged in on my computer. He had done it many times before. It was getting tedious. We’d had this conversation so often that I was no longer upset by it, just bored.
I turned my laptop to face him, scrolled through the messages. His excuse this time was that, of course, his account had been hacked. It was hard to piece his defence together between howls. Someone had framed him. They had guessed his password, or found it still logged in on some other computer like he’d left it on mine. They had staged the whole Messenger conversation, knowing I would see it, intending me to see it, because they had it in for him. Or, actually, probably, because they were jealous and attracted to him and wanted to have sex with him so badly that they would sabotage our relationship to get him in bed, of course. That was what he settled on after I pointed out that, no, it couldn’t have been photoshopped this time, because I wasn’t looking through screenshots I’d been sent but, rather, his inbox.
But, each time this happened, he’d accuse me of trusting a stranger over him. He would start crying louder and tell me I had betrayed him. Would fall against my chest, ball up my shirt in his fist, dampen the fabric with his wet cheeks. He would punch the mattress next to my thigh. And I would pat him on the head or on the back, with the distinct feeling that I was stroking some wild animal that might snap at my hand at any minute.
Afterwards, he would keep asking me for sex until I gave in. It would make him feel better, give him proof that we had made up, put him at ease.
*
Every dog owner laments when their pup rolls in something and comes home stinking. What many don’t realise is that it’s a form of communication, a way of bringing messages back to the pack. Wolves roll in dead things, not because they like the smell, but because they don’t have the strength to drag back an entire carcass on their own. When the rest of the pack smells food on the returnee, they all go and investigate together.
So when he comes home having rolled in someone else’s perfume, I have to take it personally. It’s not an accident this time; he hasn’t been caught out. He means for me to notice. It’s a fruity smell, one that he knows I would never wear. Citrus even – a smell that makes me gag. It’s a dig. I don’t bring it up. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
Instead, I go to the vet to purchase an oversized dog crate. It’s too big to be out on display and also too big for the counter, so the salesperson has to awkwardly kick it all the way across the floor from out the back. She has to bend herself over the front of the counter so the scanner can reach the barcode. She struggles a bit before it finally bleeps.
She asks what kind of dog I have to need a crate that big. I make a joke that I don’t have a dog and am actually trying to catch a human.
When Friday comes, I rent a van with room in the back for the crate and tell him we’re going on a holiday, a camping trip, a nice romantic weekend. He’s never liked surprises – he doesn’t like when other people make decisions for him. But I know how to talk him around. I fill the crate with blankets and pillows and toys and treats, tell him it’s a kink. BDSM or something. He likes that. Predictable. Before we even get on the road he makes it clear that he wants to go at it like it’s mating season.
‘Go on then,’ I say while holding the door to the crate open, in what is more of a challenge than an offer. He looks a little nervous about it, but when I pull off my shirt and make for the clasp of my bra, he submits and gets inside. He is panting for it, but I do not follow him in. Instead I shut the crate door and put my shirt back on. At first he thinks it’s just a joke.
The drive is long, and he spends the time barking at me from the back, throwing himself against the side of the crate to try and tip it over. He calls me a bitch. I probably am. I turn the radio up and count the streetlights on the motorway.
By the time I pull up at the reserve it’s almost morning. The air outside is fresh, and I feel lighter. I leave the engine running and the driver’s side door open because I know I won’t be long. I have a syringe full of animal tranquiliser, which I have taken from my lab at the university.
When I get in the back he is already pressed up against the mesh of the crate, snarling and growling and trying to bite me, so it is easy to get to him. I jab him in the softness of his cheek. He crumples.
Without all the barking and thrashing about, he almost looks too small for the crate. He’s not, of course; it’s actually quite a manoeuvre to get the crate out because he has made it so much heavier, and I don’t have a lot of upper body strength. But I manage it by using a plank of wood from the back of the van as a ramp. When I unlatch his door, I half-expect him to wake and attack me. I find myself pausing by the open door, almost waiting for him to do it. But he doesn’t, and I get back in the van and leave him behind.
*
Standing on hind legs, wolves can reach six feet tall – approximately the same height as an adult man. Sometimes I imagine them walking down the street in duffle coats and brogues. Or maybe sneakers and those Thrasher hoodies with the flames on the letters. The man at the coffee shop with his head behind a newspaper barks at a political feature then shreds the pages with his teeth. He spits at a barista who definitely didn’t write the article. A pack of law students howl at me from their car window, tongues lolling. A man at the bus stop stares, then growls when I don’t say hello. There are forums on the internet where people post photos of pawprints with measurements in the captions, asking whether they are from a wolf or a dog. They haven’t considered that it might be something worse.
Jenny Nimon is a Wellington-based writer and editor. Her writing has been featured in Starling, and she is the editor of A Vase and a Vast Sea, a collection of New Zealand writing connected to Whitireia’s Creative Writing Programme published by Escalator Press in October 2020. In 2022, she will be doing her MA in Creative Writing (fiction) at the IIML.