The Dog Man of Paris

By Jordan Elgrably

I will tell you about the Dog Man.

A married woman with whom I was having an affair— a dangerous one I might add (her husband liked both knives and guns, and he very much loved his wife)—was coming back from work one afternoon—on her way to see me—when she suddenly shrieked and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk: some ghost-like attack had just sent a sharp thrust of pain through her buttocks.

She whipped around to see what had happened and found a young man bounding up from his hands and knees; he’d been crouched low to the ground and sunk his teeth into her lightly-clothed flesh. This was in broad daylight on the Avenue Montaigne, around four o’clock in the month of May. Her buttocks flexed with the aftershock of the bite as she watched this young maniac lope off down the block and around the corner of the Rue St. Honoré. Massaging herself where she could feel the imprint of a human mouth on her backside, her own mouth fell open again, soundlessly this time.

Her attacker vanished.

“But what did he look like?” I prodded, stunned that this had actually happened to someone I knew, and moreover to the woman whose derrière was among the finest I’d ever chanced to fondle in Paris. The Dog Man had already attacked five other women in just this way, and I’d read a lurid psychological portrait of him in Le Figaro only a few days before.

Sam, short for Samira, glared at me as she sipped the glass of wine I’d given her. She disliked my incredulous curiosity.

“He looked like you,” she said, still angry and frustrated at her obvious helplessness.

“Like me?” I echoed stupidly, not knowing whether to be pleased or insulted.

“He was in his twenties. He had on blue jeans and a blue-jean shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his biceps, and a pair of those red ankletop Converse, just like the ones you play basketball with. He had lots of dark curly hair, like yours, like a big poodle. And there was a strange light in his eyes—”

“Really?” I said.

Sam set her wine down and scrutinized me for a moment.

“He was doing exactly what you would do if you had the cheek—”

I laughed, “—The cheek!”

“Wouldn’t you love to bite beautiful women on the street, admit you would!”

“I’ve never bitten you that way, why should you suspect me of—”

Sam shouted, “Nobody takes this seriously except the victims!”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “you got such a close look at him?”

“Yes!” she huffed. “Because after he bit me he ran past and laughed in my face and looked as though he wanted to kiss me.”

“Well, that would’ve been too much,” I said, and regretted the remark as soon it came out of my mouth. Suddenly I wanted to kiss her. I leaned over, it was a soft and dreamy kiss and made me anxious to get her upstairs and into my bed. After a moment she pushed me away and recovered her wine.

“Maybe I should go to a doctor,” Sam said. “What if he has rabies?”

“What if you show me that bite?” I said.

“You’re not listening to me!”

“We’re not talking about a four-legged beast. Why don’t you file a complaint at the commissariat, give them a description.”

“They know what the Dog Man looks like, they don’t need me.”

Sam was in no mood for sex after the incident because, she explained, the canine maniac had made her feel like a piece of meat. Just the fact that he resembled me, her illicit boyfriend, was enough to shut down her desire that afternoon.

I began to follow the affair very closely now, feeling certain they would catch this ridiculous soul. I had to admit, though, even if he was totally mad I admired the guy’s nerve. In truth I had seen many women's backsides I would have liked to lunge at and sink my teeth into—perhaps not to bite with such ferocious determination, as though in revenge for some terrible slight in the past, but to softly masticate. This caused me to remember an incident that occurred when I was a boy growing up in Echo Park. Next to our house on Ummatti Street, three large dogs roamed inside the neighbor's fenced yard. They would often bark at us kids as we left for school. I enjoyed taunting them, getting up close and doing a little jig, at which the mastiff, shepherd and Afghan would furiously nip at the fence, anxious to get at me. Sometimes my mother would yell out the kitchen window: "Leave those poor animals alone and get the hell out of here!"

Well, one day after school had let out, I was standing in front of our house, looking out over the valley of Echo Park, having my usual thoughts of travel and adventure, daydreaming as I stared at the horizon and the distant Pacific Ocean, when I heard something scurrying in the street behind me. I turned and saw that the neighbor's Afghan had somehow gotten loose, and he was headed straight toward me. Paralyzed with fear, I hugged the sign post I happened to be leaning against, and stared right into the dog's eyes. He stopped running as soon as I caught sight of him, slowed to a dainty trot, came right up to me, looked into my face, and then, without so much as a bark or a growl, he sunk his teeth into my rear end. I wanted to scream, but I didn't dare; I thought if I kept quiet he'd be satisfied with that and go away. And he did. But I swear, after the Afghan bit me, he looked right into my eyes, as if to say: "Gotcha."

I guess that was one smart animal, because he didn't bite me hard enough to really wound me, but to send a warning: stop taunting me kiddo, or you're a goner. I really learned my lesson too; after that day I never did bother the neighbors' dogs, and it seemed to me they didn't bark nearly as often nor as loudly as before.



For months the Dog Man continued his diurnal attacks on unsuspecting women across Paris. On several occasions the police gave chase, but he always proved too fast for them, and once one of his pursuers, running after the laughing maniac through the Tuileries, broke a leg while bounding over a park bench. Sam never did see a doctor for the bite, but she told her husband about it, and in a jealous rage he tossed a hunting rifle into the trunk of his Peugeot and started cruising the streets, day after day, hoping for a chance to catch the Dog Man himself. But he had no luck with that, and while he was out looking for his wife's attacker, I was comfortably shagging her in my flat, only a few blocks away from where they lived.

Finally, to everyone's astonishment, the Dog Man turned himself in. Last week he walked into the commissariat in his neighborhood, in Montmartre, and confessed remorse to his canine crimes.

The police couldn't believe their good fortune, and a date for summary judgment has already been set. Stories in the papers are speculating wildly on the Dog Man's state of mind: Is he or he is not suffering from some mental disease? Is he a victim of child abuse? Or was he perhaps raised by wolves, wild dogs, and if this is the case, why wouldn't he have eaten his prey whole, rather than settle for a little piece of ass? Dozens of reporters have thus-far been able to dig up only the most cursory background on this disturbed young man: they know he grew up in the Ardennes, was unemployed, and had no fixed residence, but no one's really discovered what set him off in the first place, nor has he given a coherent rationalization for his rabid attacks.

The Dog Man's motives remain very much a mystery, and while all of Paris awaits the trial and a thorough explanation for these bizarre crimes, I continue having my way with Sam, her unsuspecting husband an angry cuckold who says that if they ever do let the Dog Man go free, he'll shoot to kill.

Back to Top