A Commentary On Wit and Cleverness

A Commentary On Wit and Cleverness

there are times when I desire

to say a clever something

but everything that's clever has already been said

i s'pose i shouldn't sweat it

'cos tomorrow you'll forget it

and anyway a hundred years from now we'll all be dead.

- Wolfman Dave Pereyra

Interesting Characters in Wolfman's Past, #2: Wayne the Angel

So this one time I met an angel. No joke.

---

I was old enough to drink and I was a local boy at the time, so this is like 2004, 2005, maybe 2006, somewhere in there. After Katie, before Tam. Anyway, my friends and me, we’re out for a night on the town and we were gonna go bar-hopping somewhere. This whole thing, the thing with the angel, went down at Fox and Hound, or somewhere close to it. That was one of the destinations in the bar-hop, anyway. We were there to see some band or something, someone that one of the girls knew. I dunno, we’ll just say it happened there because I don’t remember a lot from that night. I wasn’t driving so I was playing pretty fast and loose with the whole sobriety thing.

Whatever, so we’re at the second stop and I’m pretty sure that’s where the band was playing or whoever it was the girls and me were meeting was there. I guess I wasn’t really that interested because I stepped out for a cigarette – and yeah, that’s fucking inconsiderate, I know. But it also fucking sucks being the one smoker in a group full of chicks who don’t smoke.

I wasn’t really doing well for myself at the time, you know? Things were pretty bad. I didn’t really care about hanging out with the people I was hanging out with, that’s how bad.

So anyway, I’m out there, I got a Guinness in one hand and a Chesterfield in the other. Yeah, I had to be a damn beer snob and get my imported shit on tap but I was smoking the cheapest damn cigarettes on the market. And that’s when this guy, probably 45, 50 maybe comes up to me. He’s a big dude, like tall and real soggy around the midsection so he’s pretty big all over. He’s wearing like a blue plaid flannel shirt over this faded green t-shirt – I think it was for the Philadelphia Eagles, which makes sense with that back-easter accent of his, but don’t hold me to that because I’m at least one sheet to the wind at this point. And he’s all stubbly and he’s got messy brown hair that doesn’t all tuck away too neatly under that gray-green ball cap anymore, it falls down over his collar in this weird, not-quite-curly, not-quite-wavy mess. So the dude’s not a model and he’s not an ugly freak or anything. He looked like anybody else in there. He was just a dude with a beer in his hand and he looked right at home.

But to get back to it, there’s me outside, pawing around for a light and I get to work on another coffin nail. That’s when this big dude lumbers up to me and asks for a light, and I give him one because what kind of dick does it make me not to, right? I’m already a big enough dick leaving a bunch of hot chicks inside to go enjoy some respiratory therapy. I light him up and we get on talking. He introduces himself as Wayne, and I give him my name. Soon enough, here we are, just two dudes shooting the shit like we already know each other. Eventually, because I’m this self-absorbed asshole and I can’t stop talking about me me me and how shitty MY life is, we get on talking about what it is to be good, to do good, to live right and be happy, that kind of stuff. Like how I’m evil inside and no matter how hard I try to be good, shit just keeps happening that makes me miserable and makes me want to be a dick.

That’s when he comes right out and says it: “I’m an angel.”

That’s when everything I was thinking about just shot out of my brain like the goddamn 2001 astronauts out the airlock. Who says that? What kind of asshole just says, hey, I’m an agent of fucking God Almighty? I mean, I’m saying all this now, as I write this, but back then? I dunno, maybe it’s just how… matter-of-fact he said it. “I’m an angel.” He’s just some guy, but… he was an angel. It was one of those weird things where somebody says something, and just because they say it, it’s true. I mean, people don’t just say they’re angels unless they are, right? You can’t say that unless it’s true.

It was true. Wayne was an angel.

So of course, I’m an asshole and a skeptic, so I completely miss the point at first and ask him a bunch of stupid questions about how he’s an angel. Like, why are you in human skin, I didn’t know angels smoked and drank, shit like that. But Wayne had answers.

Angels are the agents of God, he says, and people can be agents. Angels are everywhere and sometimes they’re these invisible watchers who screw around with luck so everything works out better for you, and sometimes they’re people – just people given a little extra so they can do some good in the world.

“That’s probably why I got a light off you,” he said, giving it a little thought and almost surprised to hear it come out of his own head. “I guess I knew you needed help.

“I don’t know what I need help with,” I shot back at him. “Everything’s so fucked up I don’t know where to start fixing it.”

“Well, coming out tonight was a good start, right? You came out with your friends.”

“Fuck,” I said, “my friends. How long have we been out here?” I wasn’t looking for an answer and I didn’t make a move to go back inside. But my beer was drained and had probably half a pack of cigarettes left. So it was a while.

“I bet you didn’t want to come out,” Wayne said. “I bet you wanted to tell ‘em to stuff it and stay home and watch TV, right? Or something like that.”

“Yeah,” I surrendered. “Something like that.”

He reached for my lighter again, because we’d gone through so many death sticks that I decided I’d just leave it sitting on the base of the lamppost because we weren’t going anywhere for a while. When he lit up again, it was like in the comics when a little asterisk goes off over someone’s head.

“If you’re an angel, how come you needed a light? Angels are supposed to bring their own, right?”

“You needed something,” Wayne said, without missing a beat as he puffed another Marlboro to life. “And if you need something, you can’t expect it to just walk on up to you. You gotta invite good fortune in.” He had this way of breathing in through his teeth right before he came to a point, and he did it again. “You coulda told me to fuck off. Probably wanted to, too. But you invited me to share your lamppost when all I needed was a light.”

I nodded. You know, like that little nod when you’re hearing someone talk about the weather, like it’s as plain as day what they’re saying and you can’t say it isn’t, because it’s the weather and it’s right over your head. “I guess.” Then I slumped a little, my head getting cloudy again. “I dunno, I mean, I’m hearing what you’re saying, I just don’t know what to do with it, you know?”

“Just use it to do good,” he said, again with that premeditated matter-of-factness of his, like he’d already thought about all his answers a million years ahead of time. “Eventually, as long as you use what you know to do good, you’ll always know you’re right even when things are fucked up. It’s how you keep your head from running away from you.”

“I don’t really know how to be good anymore,” I mumbled. “I mean, I used to be great at it, but it never panned out for me. I’d be good and everyone threw it in my face because for every good thing I did on purpose, I’d fuck up ten things on accident.”

“Comes with the territory, Dave. That’s how to be human.”

“But still, I mean… you’re an angel. You do good things and I bet most of the people you do them for don’t thank you, or they think whatever you told them is like an insult or something. If I’m gonna be good, how do I look out for me at the same time?”

That’s when Wayne the Angel said the words I remember the clearest, through the haze of smoke and booze on the brain:

“It’s not about you.”

---

I hope I was polite to Wayne the Angel when I left, because about there is where my recollection of the rest of the night comes to a halt. It’s probably the booze and I’m really kicking myself for that. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Wayne the Angel, or really recall how I met back up with the chicks I came to Fox and Hound with. I guess they just came out and found me because I’d taken too long to come back and it was time to go now. On the way home I vaguely remember trying to tell them what Wayne said, but I was stuttering and slurring and my thoughts wouldn’t fall in any of the right places so I fucked it up pretty bad.

It was during the Dark Ages of Dave that I met Wayne the Angel. I was still reeling from a fucking traumatic relationship, I was screwing up in school whenever I wasn’t getting kicked out of it, and arguing with my dad a lot and drinking too much when I got half a chance and fucking whatever condescended to let me. I forgot how to do myself favors, but I sure as hell knew how to be selfish anyway.

I’ve mentioned bible characters before. One of the things Jacob did that not everyone talks about is he wrestled with an angel all night and all day to prove his worth. That’s where his story and mine link up. It took me a long time, turning Wayne the Angel’s words over and over in my head, wrestling with them, figuring out where they fit in my selfish, melodramatic little life. I had to remember that I can make people laugh. That I can make people think. That I’m good at keeping secrets and sometimes I’m just smart enough to give advice. Sure, I’m no agent of God Almighty or anything, but I figured out that I DO know how to be good. It took me a long time to take Wayne the Angel’s words to heart, but I repeat them to myself sometimes when I just want to fucking explode at someone… “It’s not about me. It’s about them. Be good.”

And you know what? My life’s better when only a few parts of it are about what I can do for myself – and when I make the rest of the world a stockholder in my happiness. I can do something good and it might go to waste or not be appreciated or whatever, but I get my returns when it counts. When it’s the most needed and the most special. And I can never be sure, but in the times where it matters most I can still sense Wayne the Angel there, breathing in through his teeth and adjusting his ball cap talking in that back-easter accent and nodding and smiling that I-know-something-that-you-don’t smile of his.

Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you think I just met some guy who’s full of shit, or some high-and-mighty asshole who thinks he knows better than me. But on the one hand? Try arguing with the results. With those four little words, “It’s not about you,” I figured out how to be less of an asshole. Whether he was an angel or not, he was good, and helped ME be good.

On the other hand? Say anything about yourself, I mean ANYthing, the crazier the better, beginning with the words, “I am,” and try to convince yourself that you believe it. Nine times out of ten you'll be convincing yourself more than you actually do believe. So come up with something crazy and you just might learn something about yourself... and you might even like what you find out.

Watch, I’ll do the first one for you.

---

I am not an angel, but I am capable of being good.

I’m still working on it.

Interesting Characters in Wolfman's Past, #1: The Old Man

Upon occasion, perhaps when I make a new Facebook friend who then sees my name listed as it is; or when I introduce myself as "Wolfman Dave" as a stage name in a performance setting, or as a pen name when showing off a bit of artwork; or under other circumstances when other friends or acquaintances refer to me as such; I am asked, by the bearers of inquisitive minds, why I refer to myself as "Wolfman", and from whence the moniker comes. More often and more precisely, though, I am asked why I chose to give myself this name.

Gentle reader, labor no longer under the assumption that "Wolfman" is a name of my own creation; it was given to me as a gift -- one which I only began to appreciate and make use of in the past five or six years.

Back in high school, when I was a far more sullen young man, I was a student of the blues. Rekindling in me an interest in the arts which lay largely dormant since childhood, and particularly awakening an interest in performance that was once an absent feature in me, the blues became an important factor in my world. Because, as a teenager, my existence was naturally a tortured and melodramatic one, an art form devoted to not only the voicing of grievances but, indeed, the celebration of misery was wholly too attractive to me, and blues music fit the bill. I dressed in black, at times adopted the moniker of "Sergeant Blues", and frequently employed the timeless couture afforded by leather jackets and imitation Ray-Bans, and went nowhere without a blues harmonica in my pocket, ready at all times to allow metal reeds and minor pentatonic scales speak what mere words could not. (The slang term, "harp", amused me then as it sometimes does now, particularly as it applies to my birth name -- little David play on your harp, hallelu, hallelujah, goes the children's song of praise. At times I would imagine the biblical hero of old, wielding not a stringed instrument but a reeded one, soothing the mind of King Saul with the sweet and bitter stylings of Little Walter and of those who performed under the name of Sonny Boy Williamson -- if they could sooth my own troubled mind, why not that of he who was so plagued by giants and surrounded by enemies?)

It is this last, my insistence upon carrying a harmonica and my use of the instrument even in public and among company, which precipitated the gifting of what I now consider to be a component of my true name. It was one day in the autumn of my high school years that found me in a park -- possessed of many benches but miserly with its meager distribution of shade -- plying the blues harpist's trade.

That is when the Old Man approached me, clad in a brown suit, his kindly old countenance nearly matching its brownness, his thinning hair and patchy beard a shock of nearly perfect white. I scarcely looked up, but detecting an impending moment of hesitation on my part, the Old Man gestured smoothly, lowly uttering, "Nah, go 'head, go 'head, son."

And so I did, eventually bringing my mournful rendition of "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" -- a popular song at the time, due to its prominently featuring in a well-known movie released that same year -- to a close. The Old Man sat with me on the bench at last, keeping an arm's distance as we sat on its opposite edges.

"How long you bin blowin' that thing, son?" he inquired after a moment.

"Today?" I replied.

"Nah, y'all sound like you bin playin' fo' a long time. You good."

"Thanks," I mumbled, with part sheepishness and with part the forced, trite teenage angst, "Maybe a year or two. Ever since I saw The Blues Brothers, I was pretty hooked."

"Know who you sound like?" he initiated, but seeming for a moment to struggle, himself, with the answer to his own question.

"John Popper, hopefully," I posited, knowing full well that my style was as like Mr. Popper's as plaid was to checkers.

"Who? Nah, nah, I mean one o' the old guys. Like Howlin' Woof. Howlin' Woof was one o' the best, man. He invented th' blues harp, man."

Given the snobbish and academic repository of knowledge I had attained up to that point regarding the history of the blues, a repository perfectly inclusive of my extensive knowledge of Howlin' Wolf, I was of course tempted to correct the Old Man on a factual basis, but allowed myself a few moments for the intent of the complement to settle in my mind.

"I guess," came my guttural assent after a moment.

"You good, man, you good like Woof. Gotta get yo'self a name like Woof, you gon' go places."

"Like what?"

"Well, can't call yo'self Howlin' Woof. Howlin' Woof already got his name. You like a little Howlin' Woof." It was then that he stuttered and mumbled for an instant or two, as if deciding what words he liked the sound of; from amongst his ramblings emerged the words, "You like a little man, little man, little lone woof, little woof man."

Contemplating my hands as the Old Man spoke, I observed the fading ink on the fingers of my left hand -- a D on my index finger, an A on the pointer, and so on to render my name, "DAVE", in the style of my heroes, the eponymous protagonists of The Blues Brothers. "Lone Wolf" of course was appealing; the image of a pack animal estranged from his herd was often one I associated with myself, given my frequent bouts of willful isolation, to say nothing of how neatly "LONE WOLF" would fit across the fingers of both hands. But the latter halted these musings; Wolf-Man. Not quite beast and not quite man; a creature to be feared and pitied, never loved. These features similarly appealed to my self-deprecating sensibilities, to say nothing of the elements of danger and mystery which would so attractively complete the lonely tough guy image I worked so desperately to cultivate.

"Wolfman," I considered quietly, in the moment of silence which followed the cessation of the Old Man's audible train of thought.

Soon enough, the thought was dismissed, and the Old Man and I began to speak on other things for a few minutes -- things which now I struggle to remember. They almost certainly had to do with music, and what I as a young harpist would go on to do -- the latter of these topics I must assume we had entreated upon, as it is the way of nearly all conversations between strangers when one is young and the other is old. He asked about the ink on my fingers and I asked about his hat, a well-worn old thing which matched the dusty brown of his suit and handsomely complemented the white of his hair and the darkness of his skin.

I know he addressed the emblazoning of my birth name on my hand, so he knew my name at least in that moment, but I don't recall the Old Man leaving his own. It was only a matter of a few minutes from the time of our meeting that the Old Man stood and tipped his hat, spouting some nicety about the good fortune of making my acquaintance and the regret that he had to be on his way. Despite remembering so little of our very short exchange, I do recall the last words I ever heard the Old Man say:

"Keep playin' the blues, little Woof Man."

And so I did, at least for some amount of time that day. At the time, I gave very little thought to the offering that the Old Man had made me; indeed, many years passed before he returned to my thoughts. They were years unlike those which immediately surrounded my meeting with the Old Man; these were years of true upset. Years of tragedies, of goodbyes, of horrible decisions precipitating horrible consequences, of the shunning of friendships and good company and of the embracing of toxic loves and transient, empty desires.

It was in the thick of these dark times that I found myself repulsed by my old identity. Whoever I was at that moment, I was I -- but David, stupid creature that was, was the fool who'd gotten I into this mess. DAVE, with his name scratched into his knuckles with pen like some poseur wishing for tattoos, was the shortsighted and false-faced creature who had made all the mistakes, and I was left to suffer their aftermath. Sergeant Blues, whoever the blazes he was, was little more than the figment of a wayward imagination, belonging to some younger, less jaded person than I found myself to be. Whoever I was, it was not that boy who looked like me and who had that wretched name. Absent an alternative, I simply assigned myself the designation of "X" -- a name signifying the absence of naming, a place-holder where no substitute was yet acceptable.

Where once the well of my artistic expression ran dry, I found myself once again funneling my dreariness into art; into music and writing and expression. I joined an art community and, wishing to express my name in my user handle, I found myself stuck; I could not by rights use the name that I had forsaken, nor could I assign this important designator the lonely letter X.

It was then that I remembered the day a name was simply given to me, for no reason other than to express myself in song -- "little lone woof, little woof man."

Thus, "Wolfman X".

The arrangement was palatable; my birth identity was as nothing, but a means by which to designate which nothing was the creator of such artistic vomit had suddenly presented itself. "Wolfman" was not a name, it was a title, not unlike "Mister" or "Sir". A Wolfman was a kind of person, and that kind of person was... I.

Time has passed, and I journeyed further along the path of wellness of the soul. I find myself to be a creature less prone to darkness and misery than once I was, far more whole and far more enthusiastic about that which is me, that which is I, that which is David Michael Pereyra. But, whereas I have forgotten much of the time during which I was given the title that the Old Man chose for me, I have not forgotten my days of darkness, nor the time when I was without a name. Contrariwise: I wear those days on my leathery sleeve at some times, at others carrying them in my pocket like so many harmonicas. The time when I lived by a title rather than a name was a time when art and expression were all that I had as a means of remaining in and speaking to the world from which I was only so tenuously a part.

I am a creature in the world now, possessed of identity and purpose, but the creature I was -- the Wolfman -- is still my means of remaining here. And so, now fuller of life and richer in spirit, but still remembering the ways in which pain and misery enable me to be strong, expressive and, eventually, happy -- I am Wolfman Dave.

So much do I owe the Old Man, whom I knew so fleetingly but whose gift was so profoundly powerful. From time to time I still venture to the park, wondering if the tip of a brown hat might reveal a shock of white hair and a kind, thoughtful face, wondering if my playing will go uninterrupted but for the sound of, "Go 'head, go 'head."

The words that I think to myself when someone inquires about my assumed name are the same words I utter in my every fantasy of meeting him again:

"Thank you, Old Man; I'm still playing the blues."