The Howling Class

It is Wednesday night after another day working from home in sweatpants, and Lizzie McKean, thick with misery and loss, sips a gin and tonic in The Wax House, as her friend Carl fishes in his shoulder bag. Happy hour.

Slipping a glittery silver envelope across the booth table, Carl continues, ‘I got you a little something to cheer you up’

A close basketball game rages on a tv behind Lizzie’s head.

‘Honestly, there’s no need’ she says squeezing her eyes together in mock embarrassment and holding the envelope to her chest. ‘I know I’ve been pretty lame about this…’

Carl’s eyes widen. ’I know, I know, you’re ok, strong, you go girl, blah blah blah, but open it! Check it out!’

Inside the unsealed envelope is a sheet of A4 paper, Day-Glo yellow like a nineties flyer for a car wash, which Lizzie unfolds expecting the usual pampering spa treatment that they tended to surprise each other with after firings and break ups.

She reads out loud. 'This is a gift voucher for a… howling class?!'

Carl laughs and claps his hands while Lizzie continues… 'Please visit this website to book and join us, various venues across NYC… um Carl, what the hell is a howling class?'

'I saw it on instagram and it sounded totally amazing. It’s apparently really healing and spiritual. They get a group of you and teach you all to find your inner animal voice. I read some more about it and some people were saying it was like the new transcendental meditation, I thought it might be a funny experience to write about, at least? Maybe you could pitch something again?’

Lizzie shakes her head… 'I don’t know…this seems like the kind of thing you would do.’

She had spent hours that morning avoiding thoughts of her former boyfriend, but each time a useful distraction wore off, she’d remember the the last year which made her want to curl into a ball like an armadillo, and roll back down into the shit of it all.

The apartment had been hers, her security painstakingly paid for by a decade of otherwise unfulfilling work.

He had moved in after seven or eight months of their first meeting, which neither of them could actually remember, and wasted no time putting his own spin on the place, the framed poster of John Lennon, the tv the size of an upturned pool table, and a pool table.

He’d once, not long after a tantrum on his thirty second birthday, described himself as an ‘alpha’, which apparently meant being strong willed, domineering, moody and condescending when it was just the two of them, but passive and feeble in the company of everyone else. On another occasion, in the middle of a meltdown about not wanting to go to Lizzie’s parents for a weekend, he’d confessed he was bullied at school, which now, looking back, made Lizzie want to find those bullies on Facebook and send them a strongly worded letter of complaint on leaving a job half done.

On the day he left, he’d actually apologised, for getting together with her before he had finished his genetic hunter gatherer phase, therapy speak for the fact that he was probably sleeping with lots of other women. His parting words, which he genuinely must have written down in advance and rehearsed, were 'Thank you, for this learning experience.'

And now, she looked into the mirror, and realised she had learned something. She’d learned to watch her mouth, cry on her own, and never be the drunkest one in the room.

'It’s been four months Lizzie, that’s a month for every year you were together, so now you can safely go out and do new interesting things and, come to that, new interesting people… can’t you?' says Carl.

Lizzie hurts so much, but knows it’s not just the man situation that’s making her like this, he just happened to be in the way. Like when you cut your finger at home, not on the big sharp kitchen knife you’d always been a bit wary of, but on the jagged edge of a cardboard box you were trying to tear it up for the recycling; you’re furious with yourself, it seems stupid and unnecessary, but it’s bleeding.

'Really no, Carl, I’m just not… It’s a bigger thing. I dunno.'

'So go to this howling class or whatever! If there are guys there you can ignore them! And you’ll get a new skill!' Carl backs off, sighs and rests his argument with the half smile of the concerned. 'Well… you just need to find your own way back to happiness I suppose. In the meantime, another one of those?'

Lizzie traps a sob in her temples and nods, silently lifting her empty glass.

And later, in sweatpants and with a talk show fizzing away in the background of her lamp-lit lounge, she googles the website written on the flyer, and finds it’s just a simple online form, no fancy logos or anything, where you request a date from a dropdown menu, give them your name and details, and press the little grey sausage shaped ‘submit’ button at the foot of the page. A sip of wine later she’s filled it in and after a few minutes she gets an email. 'Dear Lizzie, Thank you! You have booked a space at Zuth’s Howling Circle Wednesday 19th February at 9.30pm, please wear your most comfortable clothing and bring two bottles of still water. You will find us at…'

Nothing had ever felt natural to Lizzie… she had struggled with everything her peers had taken for granted. Cooking for example, or even just preparing herself a simple meal, was more often than not a complete disaster. Sports and physical exercise were so alien to her stiff and nonnegotiable body that she wouldn’t consider ever joining a gym or doing group sports for fear of melting into a puddle of embarrassment. And her bat-weak eyesight meant she had to wear thick spectacles, contact lenses weren't an option, which rendered any sort of spontaneous outdoor activity impractical. A walk in the rain, or a dip in a moonlit lake were never going to be practical.

So she had decided that she was more of a creative, a thinker, a talker. But she could never quite get that to work out either. She had tried to express herself in ways that would be universal, so other people could recognise in her what they also did in themselves, and that she would somehow turn this into a job… all this had amounted to though was a job coming up with social media posts for business accounts, like today when she’d been putting funny captions over pictures of caged and bandaged dogs and cats on behalf of one of New Yorks largest veterinarian hospitals. Stuff that should be easy and natural, but the clients are so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they’d rather pay someone else to sound easy and natural.

As a stepping stone to some actual journalism, or storytelling, this was a sleeping turtle. She had used that exact stupid line to describe her job to her ex boyfriend, but it had been completely misunderstood, so maybe her communication skills were lacking as much as her physical and practical ones. She had also said she had tried to follow her dream and ended up sleeping.

The Bushwick Textile Workers Recreational Hall foyer is empty when Lizzie walks in, and she’s faced with a noticeboard full of posters for parent and baby classes, AA, religious courses and various other summer school type undertakings, but she can’t see anything relating to howling, although there is one other person standing in the fluorescent tube-light with her, a man about her age, or not much older than 35 anyway. He has beautiful coffee brown eyes, is wrapped in a green ex army coat, and he breaks the silence with 'Excuse me, are you here for...?'

‘Howling.’ blurts Lizzie.

The man smiles, slow and shy like the start of a bass guitar solo. ‘Zuth’s Howling Class. Me too. It’s a first, I’m not sure if I want to go in...'

'Me either,' Lizzie trills, 'I got it as a gift from my friend, and I was totally ungrateful and dismissive, so I guilt-booked it.'

'Yes! My brother bought it for me as a joke... he used to call me Wolfie when I was a kid.' He raises, and points to his thicker-than-average eyebrows.

Lizzie gives a ‘there’s nothing wrong with those eyebrows’ kind of snorting noise.

He smiles 'So yeah, he keeps asking if I’ve been yet. I had to show up sometime.' He holds out his hand, in a fresh and neat fingerless glove. 'Jayden, by the way.'

'Lizzie.' she says, offering her pearl pink mitten.

They search around the building for anything relating to the name Zuth, or indicating where to gather, but find nothing at all, not even any other prospective participants. The place seems completely deserted, although the front door is unlocked so someone must be here somewhere.

Eventually Jayden takes out his phone, checks the clock and says, 'Ok I’m going to give up. Did you eat? I missed dinner, and since we’ve got the next hour free…?'

'I ate,' says Lizzie.

Then thinking of the next time she sees Carl and faced with no new howling friends and having nothing to report, she says 'I mean, I could drink something.'

They go to a micro brewery kind of place, not too busy, about a quarter of a mile down the road, in an old converted factory, with stand up comedy classics projected up onto the brick walls.

'So what’s the point of them showing Delirious with the sound off?' says Lizzie, 'That’s just a moving picture of Eddie Murphy standing around grinning for an hour and a half.'

’You kind of know what jokes he’s saying anyway from his face… this is the ice cream bit.’ Jayden is unfolding a menu on the bar, 'You wanna try some desserts?’

Lizzie says, ‘Sure, get an extra spoon why not.’

Belgian waffles and a couple of drinks later, Lizzie lets the scoop of vanilla melt slowly over the hot waffle, watching the softening cream run into the holes, whilst listening to Jayden’s rich and lilting podcast-worthy voice, and letting the gin warm the space beneath her ribs.

Time runs away unchallenged, the words flow, and Lizzie, for the first time in months, feels the gentle glow of possibility.

'So,' she eventually says, as it gets to exactly that point in the conversation, 'You’re a nice guy, pretty good looking. Mind if I ask what happened?'

Jayden smiles and looks into his glass for the right words. 'Ok, I’m going to tell you this and I’ll be upbeat and making light of it so it doesn’t make me look damaged or bitter, and you’ll think I’m joking but…'

'Just go ahead,' says Lizzie, bold on her third drink, and starting to suspect this fellow isn’t as single as she is.

'Ok, well. I was married.'

Was. This sounded like a good start.

'No kids, my wife was an actress, well, she still is. I won’t tell you who she is… it’ll totally ruin the tv show for you, it’s supposed to be a comedy. My parents retired and on pretty much the day after my Dad signed the papers selling his business, him and Mom got killed in a car accident. It was a massive thing… couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat.'

'Jesus…I’m sorry.'

Jayden smiles the required smile, 'Thanks, anyway… It really got to my wife and she tells me she’s realised how short and fragile life is, how you’ve got to live and feel passion for each minute of each day…. Then she leaves me.’

Lizzie giggles at his delivery. 'I’m not laughing, it’s just the way you say it… that’s good comic timing.'

Jayden bats away the awkwardness. 'Anyway, 3 years later here I am, single I guess. I still don’t really know what single means. Does it mean you’re totally available, standing on your own two feet, not worried about getting hurt or trusting anyone? I definitely don’t feel happy, I definitely don’t feel free…. And I guess those are prerequisites?'

A hearty swig from her glass and this one is now empty too. 'Fuck it.' She says. 'Your wife sounds like a piece of work. First impressions, you’re a great guy.’

‘Well, I don’t know…’ he looks up at the back of the bar, where all the liquor bottles are stacked up and reflecting the lights, a sparkling ice sculpture, ‘There’s a thing I do, I feel like I work and build things up for people to just take away. You know, I encouraged my wife to shoot for the moon, to get the confidence to try more things, and then she takes all that confidence and shits on me with it.’

Jayden raises his glass and downs the last of his drink. ‘I know I should stand up for myself a little more.’

There’s a pause and Lizzie shuffles in her seat. ‘So what do you do? Like for a job.’

‘Stand-up.’ says Jayden, ‘I’m a stand-up comedian.’

‘Is that a joke?’

’No.’

Any romantic ambience has cooled with exposure to reality, like someone has left a door open on their cosy spot.

Jayden looks around the room, and then brings his attention back to Lizzie. ’So you? How do you end up out on your own on a Wednesday night trying to find a howling class that doesn’t exist?'

Lizzie thinks, fair’s fair, she’d better cough up her story too. ’Shitty boyfriend finally left me four months ago, I don’t really care anymore though. My Dad’s dead, cancer, my Mom’s still alive but she’s a mess, I’m weighing up how long I can live in this city before I’ve got to move back home nearer her. I’m 34, that’ll be me for a while.’

A group of student types at a table nearby cheer like someone’s just won a game. Five of them, girls and boys, radiating pheromones and unclaimed futures.

‘But fuck,' she continues, 'Other people huh? All you see around you are tribes of people who belong together, hardly even having to speak, they just know. I’ve got friends who just seem so... so full, unselfishly looking after their kids and having this special language with their partners, when sometimes I can’t even get a sentence together to explain to Dominos what I want on my pizza…. I just get in to my bed and cry for no reason. Like the silence is just waiting for me to fill it up with my stupid little voice. And I’ve been on a couple of different prescriptions for this that and the other, Zoloft, Citalopram. It all kind of works, and that’s the problem, everything just kind of works, just kind of keeps going, but never actually does anything. I just can’t seem to communicate and anytime I get given a tiny crack of light, like’ she gestures around her, ‘this, I burst straight in, knock the whole wall down… I just can’t get it right. Like, do people want to know how you feel, or not?'

Lizzie sighs deeply.

Jayden puts his hand up at the bartender. 'Another one to cheer us up?' he says, 'Let’s talk about something else.'

But it’s there all the way through the next and last drink.

Afterward, walking home through the misty streets, Jayden seeing Lizzie to the subway, there is a bittersweet aftertaste to the evening.

Jayden says, with a lump in his throat, 'I feel like it would be great to do this again if you want to?'

For a reason she can’t explain, tears well up in Lizzie’s eyes and hot anger races up through her body, not directed at Jayden, but at the dark cloud she’s summoned over them both. She shouldn’t have asked anything about his life, or told him about hers, they could have just had a few more drinks and gone back to one apartment or another, asked questions in the morning.

'Sure,' she says, smoothing over a break in her voice, 'That would be really…’ Nice? Normal? Tragic? ‘That would be good.’

‘Cool’

There’s a quiet street, a short cut, that runs diagonally from the bar to the subway, and tonight it’s looking especially dark and depressing, an abandoned factory on one side and a car lot on the other, but of course, they walk down it, and if you could see them from above they’d look like the doomed couple lost in the city, walking down Crime Alley trying to keep their heads up.

Jayden goes to say more but something keeps him silent, some kind of trapped panic that’s going to overwhelm him, an emotional outburst.

One of the street lights is flickering above a doorway as they approach, and of course, something steps out that looks like a 6 foot bundle of discarded overcoats with two dirty sneakers poking out of the bottom, a hood up, with something like black bandages wrapped around it’s face.

A strong smell of petroleum and rotten human. 'Could you guys help me out with a couple of bucks?’ comes a deep croak, the creatures form unrecognisable, close-up news footage of a seabird covered in an oil slick, washed up on a beach.

'Sorry man,' begins Jayden, but before Lizzie can even process the scene, the heap of overcoats has lunged forward and Jayden is on the floor holding his face, a cut across his cheek, the un-glinting, dirty knife then held out, hovering between the three of them.

'Ok, gimme all of it, both of you hurry up or you fucking die.’

The burst of adrenalin when someone tries to rob you on the street gives you a fifty-fifty shot. It can be like when someone pitches a ball at you, it either sails past before you know what happened, or you recognise the spin, feel like you’ve got all the time in the world, and take a swing.

Lizzie takes a few steps back, looks directly at the figure, the figure that’s sucking in all light and stopping time, holds back her head and opens her mouth.

The howl that comes from her is the most noise her body has ever made. It ricochets off the empty factory windows and rattles upwards into the Brooklyn sky, and when it fades, she does it again, louder, more arresting, more astonishing.

The decision has been made by the powers of night that this bundle of rags cannot be a thief, or a predator. It is a confused animal that has drifted out of its habitat. It steps back once, then again.

Lizzie howls once more, it pierces the air like a hand drill. All of nature has come to their rescue, as Jayden jumps to his feet, hand holding his bloody cheek, and straightens himself up.

A sound from deep in his throat, and he is howling too, the white moon shining on his brown and blood red skin, then together they are baying at their adversary.

Together they rain noise down, bloody and murderous, ready to tear flesh, and the look Lizzie shoots Jayden says, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s roll this guy, rip off an arm each and start beating his own face with it, spill him out all over the sidewalk, like roadkill. Let’s dance for joy in his wet entrails and make sure every robber, every rapist, all the pimps, the crooked traders, the exes, the dealers, the dognappers, the perverts, the vandals, every sick soul in the city, let’s make sure they all see that no one fucks with us.’

All of this comes out as an even more potent howl, with a slight smirk creeping in at the corners of Lizzie’s mouth as she lets a rushing red waterfall crash over her.

'Fucking crazy crackhead assholes,' the hoodlum shouts, as it stumbles and disappears back into the dark, a fumbled cannonball dropped overboard into the sea.

The street is empty, but Lizzie and Jayden carry on howling into the night sky for a few extra seconds, a victory cry, until finally peace returns.

Jayden rubs his throat, looking fairly impressed with the two of them. ‘Coffee, then?’