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."