WanderingWilbo: On September 13 2012, squadrons of geese flew west over my head at 7:22 AM. On the day of Wolf, your hunt for summer will last eight more days.

I'll admit it. I haven't seen a wolf this summer. I have probably seen a wolf in a zoo, although I don't remember a face to face right now. I am looking at the card of Lakeshore Entertainment, provider of karaoke services to Naughty's Pub and Grill on Sherman. DJ Wolfman Wyck spins records while people sing along to lyrics on a monitor. I have heard a few women who haven't sung in a manner of a howling wolf on DJ Wolfman Wyck's nights. Around Muskegon, I haven't heard the remarkable karaoke shows of the Valley of Los Angeles, along the magical highway of Ventura Boulevard. I turned out for dozens of them in Spring of 2007, where every night on the town becomes an open audition. I guess I'm being a bit of a wolf when I walk up to a woman after she sings and asks, "Are you a Karaoke Queen?" Often that line becomes a non-starter. It's good for a laugh.

One night two summers ago, that line grew four legs. I heard an exceptional performance from a woman who sang in the Ramada lounge in Ludington. She had performed in a few showcases in Nashville, Tennessee. We talked for a long, long time about all the promoters who prey upon young, eager talent, requiring payments to sings at showcases. I let the conversation drop because I was hoping to hit the pool before it closed at Midnight. I had a hot tub in my room that went unused. I found her YouTube channel and I listened to a few of her songs as I laid awake on my king bed, the moonlight of a full moon casting a slice of bright shine across the down comforter. I like those moment when I have gone out and found connection, and I hate remembering being under the covers alone because I asked for a phone number and less than a kiss.

I am thinking about wolf movies, and Dances with Wolves comes to mind. It's hard to drive west to east through Montana and Wyoming in May and not think of Kevin Costner. Stands with a Fist now has a wonderful role on Major Crimes, fisting confessions from those men who are wolves to other men. As Captain Sharon Raydor, Mary McDonnell doesn't look like a woman in her sixties; she had thirty-seven summers showing no place on her body when she performed with Costner in Dances with Wolves. Costner has women as his co-stars that outdo the Bond Girls.

I would be the bodyfather for Abby, played by Olivia Williams in the Postman, any, any day. On my first date with the woman who became my first and only wife and the mother of my first and only child, we watched Bull Durham with Costner and Susan Sarandon. Costner and Sarandon got it on. We didn't. Through out our marriage, we saw every Kevin Costner movie until the month I moved out August of 1997, not of my free will. I was evicted by court order, which often happens in divorce proceedings. First to file is first to access real power. I was reading about Amsterdam when I read a rumor that Costner had an account, billed to his production company, at Yab Yum, the famous brothel that A'dam closed down in a round of conservative clean-up in 2008. I wondered what kind of research could have occupied Costner inside that house along a canal?

The wolf movie that I truly lust after in my imagination, and lust is very lupine, has to be Wolf, written by Jim Harrison and made thrilling by the acting of Jack Nicholson. I imagine what it would be like to have my senses heightened and my vigor repaired by the bite of lycanthropy. I imagine regrowing my thin hair, having a wolf-like mane of it again. Instead, I go to a rheumatologist to make certain my case of rheumatoid arthritis doesn't transform into a case of lupus. I would love to say to one of my co-workers in the morning, "coffee? You weren't drinking any coffee."

One of my former lovers, a brief affair that became a friendship, has confessed she is obsessed with the smell of her Latin lover, who paints and plays drums in several bands. She becomes faint with desire when a Mexican man shops in her store who smells similar to her lover. Maybe she's been nipped by a wolf?

Photography Credit:

Scandinavian grey wulf (Canis lupus) at Skandinavisk Dyrepark, Djursland, Denmark.