Essays by DAR

Meditations on a Dog Bite

(First published in GQ)

My lawyers have instructed me not to say, "I was bitten by a dog." They much prefer, "I was attacked by a rottweiler." Pithier, they feel, more slam dunk. But if they're adamant on that point, they're even stricter about what else they don't want me to say: "And I'm a better man for it."

They feel, not unreasonably, that such a declaration ruins my case. They would rather I talk about how getting mauled by a 140 pound beast during a summer evening's jog was no picnic, about what a drag it was spending a night in the E.R. being given intravenous antibiotics, about how dismaying it is for me to keep seeing the scars on both my biceps. They want me to recount how six months ago I didn't know what rottweilers were, and how they now dominate my dreams, hulking brown-black mini-bears, like dobermans with heft. They like me to point out that on a recent safari in Zimbabwe, I didn't mind lions sniffing at my tent at night; it was rottweilers growling behind a chain link fence in airport security that got me sweating.

And no question about it. I can talk about these things, for they are true: It was terrifying; I was traumatized; dog attacks are without a doubt grisly events. But as usual the lawyers are missing the point. For getting bit was also distinctly empowering--a middle-aged milestone.

For starters, I was amazed at how different this attack was from the one I suffered when I was a boy. In the midst of this one, I had enough wits about me to think, "This is a dog attack and that's all it is." When I was twelve, and roughly the same size as my assailant, dog was all I could think: dog fur in my eyes, dog roar in my ears, dog teeth in my calves. I was toppled, engulfed, inundated by dogness.

This attack couldn't have been more different. This one left room for awareness of road, lawn furniture, sunset-dappled cloud behind a particularly majestic pine tree. This one was, oh hell, don't let my new Reeboks get slimed. As I felt the layers of my skin crack and give way to his fangs, there was much more to the moment than the mere insult of muscle yielding to canine dentition. There were clear slow-motion questions: "Hmm, has he had a rabies shot?" "Are the owners covered?" Even the philo-karmic question: "Isn't it better that I take this hit than a child or a 120 pound woman?"

And it got better from there. I mean, forget Jack Nicholson in Wolf. Since the attack I star in my own private movie called Rott, wherein I find myself taking on the attributes of a rottweiler. Suddenly, as I flash back to the way his jaw locked, I find I am more doggedly determined with the phone company when they charge me for a 900 call I know I didn't make. Suddenly, as I flash to his bulk, I rationalize that I am putting on "girth" as opposed to "fat" when I reach for a second helping of frozen yogurt. Plainly, the rottweiler has become what the Jungians would call my power animal. And what's interesting to me is how my power animal is different from what it would have been in my earlier days. In my teens and twenties I saw myself as a fox or a rooster. Now in my middle-aged tenacity, in my hound-like hereness, I feel like a rott. Despite being the one bitten and not the biter, I feel like those primitive men who ate the hearts of their foes to absorb their souls. Ich bin ein rottweiler.

In the afterglow of the attack, I recognize that I am braver now than I was in my 20's and 30's. Partly, I admit, this is because now that I'm in my mid-forties, I have less to live for. The number of women I've loved and sons I've reared and books I've published are not enough, in any category, but are at least sufficient to make me feel, if my head was in the jaws of a wild animal and I was being shaken till my neck broke, that I wouldn't be obliged to yelp: "Wait, I haven't yet begun to live!"

But also my greater bravery is due to the confidence that comes with seniority. When you've dived with sharks, hopped freight with outlaws, and dated a girlfriend like my last, it takes more to rattle you. You're more likely to look at a set of snarling teeth up close and say, "Knock it off, nitwit. I've been here longer than you."

It all comes down, I suppose, to grit. One has more of it at 45 than when one's a pup. But it's also a different kind of bravery - less the kind that desires to bring a ballpark to its feet and more the kind that wants to nurture things along. More and more I eschew the violence we were taught to think was virile, to find that hysterical now, as I admire the more manly quality of forebearance. As a consequence, I find I can afford to be kind to my second wife in ways I couldn't with my first. I can be gentle with flowers; sometimes I don't even want to tread on grass lest I bruise the protoplasm that lived here long before me and will live here long after. And if a dragonfly lands on my wrist while I'm weeding, I'm happy to let him stay and share. As the rottweiler may have noticed, I'm not so territorial about my body. There's more than enough room for all of us.

So yes, I have been attacked by a rottweiler. But, with all due respect to the legal profession, I endorse the experience wholeheartedly. I now know that, as we grow older, our masculinity can sweeten as it deepens. Were it not for the rottweiler, I might never have had a clue.