All right, so here is my latest Diary Friday, for those of you who have been asking me (and you know who you are!) I came across this entry this morning, and first of all: it made me LAUGH. I had forgotten most of it … although, oddly, a bunch of it ended up in a short story I recently wrote, almost word-for-word. So obviously I hadn’t forgotten it at all.
It is from a very crazy and fun time in my life: the summer after I had first moved to Chicago, I was single for the first time in 3 and a half years, and I basically was wreaking havoc up and down the lake shores. I met a guy that summer who is still a great friend today. I will call him “Max” in this entry. We began “hanging out” that summer. Everything was brand new, very exciting, and he was completely WACKED.
But what I found interesting about this entry is that: all of the elements which contributed to he and I lasting BEYOND just a summer fling are evident in this absolutely insane (and mildly mortifying – to me, anyway) entry. Everything I liked about him I wrote about here.
He is one of my favorite people on the face of this earth. Very glad we are still friends. And the tale of this crazy night in Chicago, to my taste, explains why.
July
It was 11 at night. I put on some music. I sat in my brand-new kitchen chair. Put the lights on low. I was kind of – sleepy. And – I felt kind of fragile actually. Breakable. I was ready to doze off –
Then the phone rang. (Here comes the Wrench) I really was half-asleep in my chair, because it rang 4 times and my machine picked up before I figured out what was going on. And I really hate to sound like a broken record – but – it was M. and I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT.
This has totally been my “bimbo book”. A bimbo from beginning to end. I truly thought and believed that I would never hear from him again. And that would have been okay – I was completely unprepared for this Wrench. I was awake in a second.
He was obviously calling from a bar: loud screams and music in the background. Of course, I leapt like a cheetah to pick up the phone. (I am an absolute BIMBO)
So all he got out before I picked up was: “Uh – Sheila – this is Max…”
“M.?”
He is a crazy man. He is a lunatic.
Turns out, he was at Lottie’s, assuming that Tuesday nights were open mike nights. Now, I do not know where this crazy boy got it into his head that Lottie’s has an open mike on Tuesday. He has mentioned it a couple times, and I always say, “M. – Lottie’s doesn’t have an open-mike night.”
“It doesn’t?”
And I explain it all to him again. But he doesn’t retain it. We have had the same conversation about 4 times now.
I told this to Jackie and she said, “Why does he keep doing that?” And then we laughed hysterically at M., fixated on there being, of all things, an open-mike night at Lottie’s on Tuesday nights.
So he called me from the pay phone at Lottie’s, bellowing at me over the din: “Hey – where are you guys? Isn’t there an open mike on Tuesday nights? I was just in the neighborhood-”
(He lives in Oak Park. He doesn’t even live in Chicago. How could he just have been in the neighborhood? I told Jackie that he had said this, and she said, “Was he joking or was he seriously saying ‘I was in the neighborhood’?” I said, “Jackie, he was serious.” And we laughed at the poor boy again.)
He kept talking, “So I went downstairs, and I was the only one there…”
I spoke very patiently. “M.. There is not and there never has been an open mike at Lottie’s. On Tuesday or any other night.”
We argued over this detail for some time. He insisted that I told him I sang at Lottie’s on Tuesdays. I could not have told him this, because it is not true.
He challenged me with the gig Jackie and I had there on July 4th: “July 4th was a Tuesday.”
I said, “No, it was a Saturday.”
Then we argued about that. He insisted that July 4th was a Tuesday. It was ridiculous, I was looking right at my calendar, right at the July 4th falling on a Saturday and he still argued with me.
I said, “So what’s up? What are you gonna do?”
He said, “Well – I’m all about gettin’ together with you tonight.”
“Well all right, honey.” I said.
He just is not a small-talk beat-around-the-bush kind of guy.
I said, “Well, you want to meet at a drinking establishment in my neighborhood?”
“Yeah, okay-”
I couldn’t think of one. And he said, “What’s that pool bar one block south of Belmont?”
I could only think of The Lakeview, a place that looks so dangerous and threatening that Jackie and I have said to each other, “You could not pay me enough $ to go in there alone.” The place gives me the creeps. I said, apprehensively, “The Lakeview?”
“Yeah. The Lakeview.”
I can’t believe my own life. I am involved with a guy who invites me to THE LAKEVIEW at 11 pm.
I said, “That place looks horrible.” I described to M. the maniac lurching out and barfing right in front of me, one morning at 11 am. Charming. “I swore I’d never go in there after seeing that.”
He said, laughing, “Well, now you have to go.”
The Lakeview has become a kind of symbol to me and Jackie. We compare the scariness-level of bars by comparing it to The Lakeview.
“I was in a scary bar last night.”
“As scary as The Lakeview?”
“Oh, definitely not-”
“Oh. Okay.”
But I feel safe with M.. Believe it or not, I do. So I said, “Yeah. Let’s meet at The Lakeview.”
So we hung up. I was amazed that 10 minutes before I was asleep, having NO CLUE that in an hour I would be swilling beer with a wild man in the scariest bar in town. But nothing about him, in general, is threatening or weird to me. I showered, got dressed. I kept bursting into laughter at the thought that I was going to meet him at THE LAKEVIEW at midnight.
So I set out for The Lakeview, 2 blocks away. I actually kind of felt like I was going into cardiac arrest. I murmured to myself, and to M., “Please be there, M., please be there – I don’t want to walk in there alone-”
To sit alone at The Lakeview was something not to be contemplated. I could not do it. M. has no clue what that feels like, for me. Walking through a world, where, suddenly, you are not welcome. Or – you are threatened, you are scared, you are prey. The doorway to The Lakeview looks like the entrance to hell.
I breathed a prayer “M., please be here…” and I entered, scanning the bar, desperately avoiding eye contact, looking, looking, looking. I felt the eyes on me. Do men understand how threatening it can be to JUST be looked at? A look can be a threat. Do they get that? Well, of course some men do.
I was getting comments from every side. “Oooh, baby…” “Hey, redhead, over here-” Thank God I spotted M. instantly. Playing pool in the back. I only had a second of being lost and scared in the doorway. So there he was. Everything changed. I walked through the gawking crowd, and I was okay. M. was here. Wearing his bandana around his head. I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but I did walk towards him as though I were tiptoeing through a minefield, keeping my eyes riveted on the safety over there, with him.
It appeared to me that M. had formed intense life-long bonds with his fellow pool players. They were all on a first-name basis. Acting as though they knew everything about each other. M. reminds me so much of the fictional Claude Collier, in Lives of the Saints. The desperately honest but constantly joking messed-up sweetheart.
It turns out that M.N., the guy he played with, was a friend from 2nd City days. So there was a reason for the familiarity. It took M. two hours to introduce us. Finally, M.N. and I took care of it. M. noticed us talking and came over, saying hurriedly, “Oh, I’m sorry. M.N., this is Sheila. Sheila – M.N..”
M.N. gave him this look like, “Save it”, and I said, “We just took care of things, M..”
M. said, “I’m all about bein’ rude tonight.” He was on an “I’m all about” kick. He prefaced many sentences throughout the evening with “I’m all about”. He’d go to set up a pool shot and he’d knock some girl with his cue by accident. He would profusely (and sincerely) apologize and then say, “I’m all about poking you with my cue.”
“I’m all about bumping into you.”
“I’m all about bein’ loud and obnoxious tonight.”
I don’t need this thing with M. to be anything other than what it is. I have this odd feeling of unconditional contentment with him – it’s pretty hard to come by.
When he first saw me he said, with that surprising shyness, “Hello.”
I said, “Hello.”
It was like we had just been introduced. We didn’t quite know what to say to one another.
We then proceeded to go on a bacchanalian binge.
He played pool. I sat back and watched. Like a bimbo. He had on this big floppy sweatshirt, a black bandana, sneakers, cigarette dangling from his lips, serious eyes, leaning over the pool table, inspecting the lay-out, thinking over what to do.
He had a couple of phrases that he was into the whole night. One was the “I’m all about” phrase. Then there was: if he made a brilliant shot (and he is a brilliant pool player), he would start raving like a maniac: “Oh, I’m a pretty man. I’m a very very pretty man. I’m the prettiest man. I am a PRETTY PRETTY MAN.” (On and on and on.) Then, if he’d fuck up a shot, he would launch into the darker side of things, “Oh, I’m an ugly man. I’m an ugly ugly man. I have a lumpy head. I have bad complexion. I am the ugliest man.”
He was playing against a bunch of strangers, many of whom did not speak English, and they were looking at him like he was an alien from another planet.
I don’t think the Lakeview is often populated by people like M.
M. said later, “I probably would have gotten my ass kicked if I’d been there alone.”
But he’s such an amazing pool player that people started gathering on the sidelines, drinking beer, silent, watching.
But also: he’s this big guy, this big jocky-looking guy, yelling about how he is an ugly man, or a pretty man. At The Lakeview, no precedent has been set for how to deal with such behavior.
But THE phrase of the evening was “That’s GOOD GUMBO.”
Everything became “good gumbo.” It applied to everything.
He’d make a good shot. “That’s GOOD GUMBO.”
He’d take a sip of beer. “Now that is some GOOD GUMBO.”
He’d kiss me and then say, “Yum. GOOD GUMBO.”
It was a broken record. At around 2:30, T said, in this dry dry calm voice, “Did you hear that word earlier today or something?”
M. said, “I just love the word. Mm-MM. That is GOOD GUMBO.”
I said, “I suppose it can mean anything you want it to mean.”
M. said, “Exactly. It can mean a good beer.”
“Or a good woman.” I chimed in, with gusto. (Or gumbo, I suppose you could say as well.)
“That’s right, it can mean a good woman, too.” M. said, kissing me on the forehead.
It is complete anarchy hanging out with this man. I like it. I am flourishing where there is little or no structure. M. is anarchy personified.
So what with the gumbo, the “ugly/pretty” controversy, the “I’m all about” statements, and the pool-playing, there wasn’t much personal information exchanged between us. Which is fine with me. I feel no need to kind of wrestle this M. thing into some definable phenomenon. That would wreck it. At least now it would.
I can see how this whole anarchic thing would make some people crazy. It’s too much of a free-fall. I mean, I’ve been there. You want to define things, you want to know where things are going. But with M., I know what this is. IT IS WHAT IT IS. I was perfectly happy perched on my stool, laughing at him, talking about gumbo until the sun rose in the East.
In a bizarre way, I find it restful. Or, not so bizarre. It is extremely restful.
He’s inclusive with me. He is never ever hostile or distant. It is not in his nature to be either of those things. So I am free to just sit back and enjoy myself. I never worry what he thinks of me. There are no hidden messages, no games. And – like I said before – he never seems to be over-compensating (screams about “good gumbo” notwithstanding), or peacocking, or macho. He’s not trying to prove a damn thing. He is the opposite of “cool”.
I really don’t know him at all.
All I know is is that the – 4 (or however many times it has been) times M. and I have gotten together – I do not CARE that we don’t have conventional conversations where biographical information is exchanged. I don’t CARE. We are connected. Somehow. The magic of human relationships. It just happens. There’s a connection. And there is a comfort in our being together.
He’d wait for a pool table to open up, and he’d come over to stand with me, he’d squeeze onto my stool with me, half-standing, half-sitting. He sweats a lot. I’d wipe the sweat off his forehead. I don’t know how much tenderness he has in his life. He would just – kind of stand there – taking my touch. He was a non-stop stream of banter the entire time.
He and M.N. were both waiting for a table, talking about auditions, and how fucked up things can be. There was an understated affection in their conversation. They seemed to be very much in agreement on the essentials. There was respect between them as well. No jostling for power, or the upper-hand. These two were really talking and really listening. I liked watching them. I liked watching M’s’ serious face, listening to M.N. talk. Nodding, interjecting, disagreeing, agreeing, asking questions. I liked it. His face reveals who he is to me. His face reveals his inner life. All the nuances of it show up on his features and in his eyes. Especially his eyes.
Had some of those heart-leaping-out-of-my-chest-towards-him moments.
Oh, and this was interesting, too:
The two of us were hanging out off to the side. He was screaming about “GUMBO” every other second. Then he said spontaneously, in a “normal” conversational tone – (God, I find him poignant. All of his changes and mood swings, and when he giggles, and when he was concentrating at the pool table – all of this I find to be so poignant. Sweet and sad. It touches me.) Anyway: he started to say, with this very open-faced expression: “Oh, I had the most humiliating experience today–” Then he stopped himself, looking at me in this very strange way. Kind of – contemplative, I guess. Pensive. He was weighing me in the balance. Testing me. I felt like he was really taking me in. It was only for a second. Then he said, blowing himself off, “Oh, you don’t want to hear about it.”
Now: this was not bullshit. I have never seen him be passive-aggressive. This was sincere. He was really not gonna tell me the story. It wasn’t a ploy, or one of those annoying lead-ins.
What it seemed to me was: He, in typical sky-diver fashion, plunged in to tell me this story, and then immediately got shy. I make him shy. We haven’t learned that much about each other. And: I saw him hold back, like: Am I ready to start telling her stories about my day? Does she want to hear about all that stuff? So he got shy, and pulled back. And of course, I found his shyness to be incredibly poignant. I find the whole damn THING to be unbeLIEVably poignant.
(He rambles about “gumbo”, I ramble about “poignancy”.)
But anyway, I wanted to hear his humiliating story. I said, “Well, you have to tell it to me now.”
So he told me this HYSTERICAL story about an audition he had had for a commercial. Months ago, for about 10 seconds during an improv show, M. became Mick Jagger. Then, yesterday, a team member called M. to tell him the agency was looking for Mick Jagger imitators. M. could barely remember the 10-second imitation he had done, but he said, “What the fuck” and called his agent. They said, Yeah, come on down.
So M. decided ahead of time: “I am going to make this the most humiliating and degrading audition of all time so that I can get it out of the way and never have to be so humiliated again.” So he dressed up like Jagger: big shirt, Union Jack T-shirt underneath, SPANDEX pants (Oh my God, I want a photograph), tall boots, and went to the audition.
The panel of people made him dance and strut around in front of the camera, and he had to say this one line over and over and over again, as they did a close-up of his mouth, and he was doing this Jagger-like mouth thing, but on the 4th or 5th time he had to say the line, he started laughing, and then he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t get the words out at all. Then they made him dance, and he described dancing around for them, and suddenly, he said that he “felt like this hollow shell.” He felt horrible. Like a prostitute. And he wanted to stop and just END it all, but then this fat casting director kept screaming at him: “KEEP DANCING.” And he felt deep deep deep humiliation, and self-loathing, but he kept dancing – After all, he had come to be humiliated.
(I am laughing out loud as I write this. “KEEP DANCING” Ha ha)
And then – this fat woman screamed at him: “WE NEED A BUTT SHOT.”
So M. turned around, lifted up his shirt, bent over, and wiggled his Spandex-clad ass at the camera. He imitated himself doing this, for me, the slow turn, with this wince on his face, this kind of frozen pained expression. I laughed until I was in tears. I made him do it 10 times.
“We need a butt shot” was the nadir, for him.
He said, “I felt like Coco in Fame.” That analogy made me ROAR.
He said that as he wiggled his butt for the panel, he thought to himself: “I have no soul. I have lost my soul. I HAVE NO SOUL.”
I was snorting with laughter. Coco in Fame.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy of total humiliation.
He left the audition, only to find that he had left his car keys in the room. So he had to go BACK IN. One of the panel said, “Did you leave something behind?”
And M. said, point-blank to the entire group, “My integrity and my soul.”
I was literally crying. My favorite part was the LOOK on his face when he turned around to give them a “butt shot”. Classic. Also: his agony over having no soul and becoming a “hollow shell”. Coco in Fame.
I would guess he didn’t get the job. But he didn’t go to get the job. He went to relish in his humiliation.
M.N. and I started talking. He asked me how I met M.. He said to me, “M. is a very good improviser.”
“I know he is.”
M. grilled me later: “You and M.N. were talking about me. I heard my name. What did you say?”
“Nothing. Just that you were a fabulous improviser.”
“Fabulous? M.N. said fabulous?”
“No, I did.”
Oh, and here’s something amusing:
M. was playing pool. He has this total bad-boy look. The bandana, the cigarette, the paleness of him. And this cute black guy comes right over to me, and murmurs to me, very close to my ear:
“You cute. Who you with?”
I said, “The boy in the bandana.”
He turned around to check M. out. His comment: “Lucky him.”
I think I might have laughed. Then the guy informed M.N. right in front of me (it was for my benefit) that his girlfriend had broken up with him, he hadn’t had sex in a week, and was dying from how deprived he felt. I felt uncomfortable for probably HALF a second, which was enough for M.N. to pick up on the entire situation, and so M.N. said, in his dry dry deadpan, “I’ll give you a buck. Go buy a magazine and leave this girl alone.”
I told M. about it later. Word for word. “Lucky him.”
He said, “Where is the guy? Which one?” I pointed to him. M. kept murmuring to himself, proudly, as he set up his pool shots, “‘Lucky him – lucky him’.” Then he would burst out like a bellowing maniac, “I AM lucky! Look at my woman over there!” Pointing at me. “Isn’t she some good gumbo?” For God’s sake.
Then, late in the night, our evening was winding down, (the place was PACKED), M. came over to me and hugged me, randomly, for the longest and strangest time. We aren’t big huggers yet. We just kind of stand around side by side, making each other laugh. But this hug was different, out of nowhere. It was quiet. It was poignant. Have I mentioned that everything about him is poignant?
He stepped back. And his face had this wonderful expression on it, compounded of what seemed like 100 different things.
First of all, he has this recklessly open face anyway. But the look: it was intrigued. It was tender. There was a fondness in his face. A sudden fondness for me, specifically. And all of this was mixed in with a very puzzled expression. His eyes had this mix of curiosity and confusion. He obviously wanted to say something, but he didn’t know how to say it, or something, so I just waited.
He said, openly, but still – shy: “I like being with you.” He squinted at me, literally trying to see behind my eyes, it felt like. “I’m beginning to see what you’re about – I think I can see a little bit of what you’re about – I’m not sure, but I think I can. And I like what I see. I like what you’re about. A lot of people – well, people have problems for all kinds of different reasons, but …” and then, in this tone of wonder, perplexity, confusion, “You don’t seem to have a problem with me.”
As though he couldn’t understand himself how easy it is with me, why I don’t give him grief, or whatever.
I said, “You suit me just fine.”
He kept looking at me, perplexed. Completely perplexed that he suits me just fine.
So I can picture now exactly where he is coming from. A girl gets a crush on him. For obvious reasons. The man is hot, the man can play pool, the man is funny, the man wears a bandana around his head. So obviously the girl wants to have conversations, she wants him to behave like a normal boyfriend, she wants him to angst out about her, be possessive, ask her questions about herself – all that stuff, all that stuff from the civilized dating world. Where men ask the girls leading questions about their lives, where men say stuff like, “So tell me about what you were like in high school”, and then listen to the answers. M. is not that man. M. will never be that man.
In that split-second at The Lakeview, when he looked down at me and said “You don’t seem to have a problem with me” – it was the first time he seemed to want to get a line on me. It was the first time it seemed that he was trying to figure out who, exactly, was this girl in front of him. And that’s fine, for me right now, that he doesn’t ask me questions about myself. It is just fine.
But if a girl goes into a thing with M., expecting that he will do that, that he will ask her about herself, and be normal, then she will be bound to “have problems” with him. He will drive her crazy. She will not understand why being called “good gumbo” is a compliment. She will not pick up on his weird random mating signals, because they are bizarre and unconventional. She will always feel unsatisfied, and a step behind. She will realize that she can’t “have” him. There is so much of him that she can’t “have”, and that will drive her crazy. So she will start pushing him, and clinging to him. Making demands, trying to get him to be personal, vulnerable, open up, share his feelings. And I can feel already that he will have none of that. It is not an aloofness with him, or that intentional ‘tude that some guys wrap around themselves like impenetrable cloaks. M. couldn’t be aloof if he tried. (“WE NEED A BUTT SHOT”) Or maybe M. can be aloof, I just haven’t seen it, because I don’t push, and I don’t cling.
He is probably very blunt with women. He probably doesn’t ever play games. I can see him saying point-blank to some poor girl, “No. Okay? No.” She will want him to pay attention to her, but there he goes, doing dinosaur imitations, making up rap songs, and yelling about “Gumbo”. He doesn’t sit down with her and ask her questions and study her and nod with understanding. M. is a different animal.
And like I said before, and what I said to him: What he IS suits me fine. He gives me what I want and I would change nothing.
When he turns into a stegosaurus or a T-rex right in front of me, I know what it means. He must make me laugh. That is his goal. Must. Make. Sheila. Laugh.
So anyway. I would change nothing. I like how he raves about gumbo. I like how he wrestles with me. I like how he laughs, how he staggers about holding a pool cue. I like his sudden flashes of openness. His sincerity.
With other guys, I have been that un-satisfied un-easy girl, scrounging around for scraps, trying to figure out how they feel about me, always wanting more – Whatever they gave me was NEVER enough. I never felt secure. I never felt like I “had” them. It was never restful, or comfortable. I was a couple of steps behind. It’s a horrible feeling. That’s how women lose themselves.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is is that I have no problems with M. and I don’t think I ever will. Because I see with such clear eyes what he is and what it is.
What a shame it would be if I started pushing for some idea, calling him all the time, trying to push him into definitions, labels. It would ruin it.
There is an uncannily right mixture between us. And it works on the simplest level. There is no friction. NONE. It’s also like we’re little comrades, a feeling of being conspirators – conspirators in anarchy.
Finally, we left the Pit of Hell otherwise known as The Lakeview. M. had yelled at me for walking the measly 2 blocks there – “That is dangerous, Sheila. You should have called a cab.” So he was gonna give me a ride. We emerged onto deserted Broadway at 3 am. We lurched across the street. He put his hand on my lower back as we crossed, and he said gallantly, “Here. Let me help you across the boulevard.”
He’s such a jag-off. I laughed at his tone, which made him start giggling. He had said a couple of times over the evening, “I am parked very illegally.”
He led me to the lot where he had parked. I asked him to do his “butt shot” imitation again. We were falling all about, laughing, staggering, loud, M. was screaming into the night: “GOD! I have NO SOUL!” And I also kept laughing about “the boulevard.”
We came to the lot, and his car had SO been towed. He had parked behind a dumpster, so we couldn’t tell right away. As we circled around it, M. started murmuring to himself, “Please let me car still be there, let it be there.”
And it just was not there.
We stood slackly in the spot where he had parked.
What does one say?
M. seemed totally defeated by the whole experience. He had a hard time accepting reality. “I wasn’t in anyone’s way! It’s the middle of the night! I’m behind a dumpster! No one’s parking on this side of the lot anyway!” On and on and on –
We were stuck.
“I spent all my money today.” He said flatly.
He was very vulnerable suddenly. So we talked for a while about how horrible it was that he had been towed. We just talked about the emotional implications of the event, because he seemed unable to come up with solutions. So we stood in the vacant lot, discussing emotions. At 3 am.
Then I said, “Well, listen, we can go back to my place, I’ll get my cash card, take out money to get your car back, and you can pay me back later.”
He looked at me. He was paralyzed, stuck. At a loss. He said, “Where’s the nearest cash station?” as though that were a pertinent or relevant question at all. What does that have to do with anything?
I said, “I have no idea. But we’ll figure it out, I suppose. I do have money to lend you right now.”
But, apparently, it was still too soon for M. to take some action. So we talked some more about how horrible it was that his car had been towed. We talked some more about his emotions. He talked about how he was going to find out who towed his car. “He’s gonna have some problems. I’ll see that he has problems.”
We stood in the lot, brooding. I nodded along with him. Sympathy? Condolences? Who knows. I broke the silence again. “Okay. So what do you want to do.”
M’s eyes were so – he was very bummed out. He held his hands out kind of helplessly, a half-shrug. “Well – I have to get my car back.”
“Okay, then. So that’s what we’re going to do right now then.”
If I hadn’t said that, in such a firm butch way, I got very butch with him all of a sudden, M. would have stood in the vacant space where his car once was parked, raving about how horrible it was that his car had been towed, and making vague threats about giving the tower “problems”, until the cows came hom. So we walked to my place to get my cash card. I had to slow myself down, so M. could keep up with me. Isn’t it funny? This big tall guy. But I am a little speed-demon.
He had grown very morose. And very ominous. Later, when we talked about it, he said, “For 2 hours, I acted like I was a member of some kind of towed-car Mafia. Prophesying doom for the tow-trucks of the world.”
Finally, he tried to shake off the gloom. “Okay. I’m not gonna talk about it anymore.”
Thank CHRIST, I thought.
He forced himself to not say, “He’s gonna have some problems” one more time. He forced himself to not say, “How could they have towed my car?” one more time.
I took him to my room. Sammy the cat cowered in fear at this big lumbering strange man. I got my money, and out we went again. We had to catch a cab uptown to the tow-place, and it was past 3 in the morning. We walked down to Sheridan. M. cannot walk fast. I raced out into the street, and, like an absolute warrior, grabbed a cab for us.
M. had become quiet, silent, passive. He totally let me boss him around. I gave the dude the address. It was way north in a godforsaken neighborhood. We sat there in the back seat. I was staring out the windows, M. staring ahead, filled with thoughts of the tragedy that had befallen him so unfairly. The whole situation was a total drag for HIM, obviously, but I was having a great time. An absolutely tremendous time.
I remember when I first saw him perform. I remember being struck by his obvious genius. His very very obvious talent and charisma. Jackie had told me about him, before we went: “There’s this one guy who is SO great, Sheila-” And now here I was, in the back of a cab at 3 am with him.
We were completely silent during the ride north, after 3 hours of constant nonsense-chatter. M. reached out and took my hand. We are not huggers. We are DEFINITELY not hand-holders. I looked over at him. He said, looking right at me, “Thanks.” He looked sad and vulnerable. (I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh. M: your CAR got towed. Your DOG didn’t die! But since I treated it seriously, and didn’t laugh in his face, I think he trusted me. Or grew to trust me more. Whatever.)
Why do I find him poignant? It makes no sense. It is totally irrational. But it is true. Like the ending of What’s Up Doc: “Listen, kiddo, ya’ can’t fight a tidal wave.”
I nodded over at him. Signifying, “No problem.”
He’s become more of a person to me now, after this night. He really wasn’t before. He was more of a burning icon in the Chicago sky. And now he’s real to me. The same is true for him, with me, as well.
We got to the lot. I took one look at where we were being dropped off, and thought, “My life is in danger. This is a HORRIBLE neighborhood and my LIFE is in danger right now.”
We meandered over to the office. I was glued to M’s side, holding his hand, clutching his arm, trying to meld myself into him. There were all kinds of black cavernous alleys, inky shadows containing possible dead decaying people. There were no lights, no people, no sounds.
We came to the bleak flourescent-lit hole-in-the-wall office. We were separated from the guy by a thick window. He was very fat, he had a tiny black and white TV on. Me, M., and this man were the only people awake in the city of Chicago. Or it felt that way.
I felt like we were in Taxi Driver. The people who only come out at night, who work graveyard shifts, who have surreal lives in the underbelly of the city, and see all kinds of bizarre things. The people this man must see! And in WE come: me in my black, with the plunging neckline, my red lips, my big red curls, and M. in his bandana, and his youthful beautiful face, with the eyes full of light. What a weird job this dude has.
M. started questioning the guy. M. was still in Mafia-mode, apparently, trying to find out who was responsible for towing his car. I kept interjecting him, like a peace-making wife, suddenly. “It’s okay – he knows he was parked illegally-” I’d try to slide that in there, but M. kept going on his Mafia-track. He told the guy that he wasn’t blocking anyone, that the tow truck would have had to follow him into the lot to tow his car when the receipt said it was towed, and on and on and on …
I kept throwing in my two cents, which both men ignored. “No, it’s okay – we’ll just pay and go – how much is it now?”
The guy behind the glass was unimpressed with M., and unimpressed with me. He said, “I don’t know what to tell you, buddy. You were parked in a Permit Parking Only lot. And that’s illegal.”
M. tried to ask one more pointed question, make one more point, and the guy behind the glass finally said, “The driver’s registration number is on your receipt.”
M. then completely transformed, became happy again. “Oh, it is? Okay! Thanks then!” 15-minute altercation over.
I paid the money to get, as M. put it, his “car out of hock.”
We went back out into the lot, a pitch-black place. Full of quiet waiting depressed cars. A car jail. I felt like a spotlight was following me and M. around.
We got into M’s car, and off we went. We rolled down the windows. We careened through the empty streets of Chicago, with the lights going red-green-yellow for no cars. Or, at least, no cars but ours. We plunged south towards my friendlier neighborhood, with the car filled with wind. We didn’t talk to each other. I let my hand fall out the window, feeling the air on my arm. I sat there, with my hair blowing back, and I felt – AWAKE. Despite the hour. Completely and utterly wide awake. I felt like I could keep going, as we were, forever.
We share space, but we don’t speak.
The whole night was a great adventure. I was afraid of him driving home at that hour, but he said he was fine. He whirls through my existence, knocks over my chess pieces, and whirls on out. I love that. I need that. He makes me laugh. He is spontaneous. He is a big, happy, troubled, crazy, gorgeous jock from Oak Park who compares himself to Coco in Fame. Gotta love it!
I loved the unexpectedness of the night. The spontaneity, the way it took me to places I’d never dream of going (I couldn’t wait to tell Jackie I had actually hung out at The Lakeview and WASN’T attacked or mugged), how it got me out of my apartment. I didn’t feel fragile, or breakable, or lonely anymore. I felt wide awake, and ready for whatever would come next.
Zooming through the empty streets of Chicago, with M.
