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Sometimes the people say that in Chicago it stays dark for months in the
winter. They complain that the cold comes creeping in from the West, a herd of
insubordinate weather fronts that bring along with the snow, eternal dark. When I
was young once, downstate and locked up in the County clink, a man told me
that January was the best time for mugging. Then it’s one knee in the dark and a
twist of the knife for quick money. But when it came to the Irish, it was a different
story. The luck of the Irish wasn’t some goddamn pot of gold, it was that they
could take a pipe over the head, a blade in the stomach, and keep fighting.
Don't mug the Irish the old one said through rotten teeth, eyes content with doing
the long stay.
It wasn’t the same now though. I was older and more content with conning
easy marks, chumps with low self esteem and fat wallets that could be coaxed
out of fifty by promising you’d pay back a hundred. I’d go after what I could, the
down and out gals, the brokenhearted, the dames willing to let themselves be
hustled for a little attention. Then there were the punks who thought they knew
everything, just dropped out of the crib, too wise too soon. They were college
brats and artsy kooks that were getting an education outside of the classroom,
but were still paying for the privilege. I’d find them in all the regular, ragged
places, the daytime beerhouses, coping with their problems in the wrong
atmosphere. Where everyone claimed to know the answer, while still drowning
in their own bottomless glasses.
Bored and broke, I found myself beating it to a Midway airport area hotel
and bar. A friend of mine claimed you could get good action there, that the
people were depressed and loaded. You’d have a drink bought for you in just
under a minute. They were businessmen, killing off the sting of bad mistakes
made on business trips, cleansing their throats and lips from things that only
liquor could cure. The kind of place you could maybe get in with a woman trying
to turn her life around, and maybe yours at the same time. End up a millionaire.
It was worth a shot when all you got is nothing.
Stepping inside of the place I could tell that it wasn’t tough, it was fatalistic.
The hotel was a run down joint, the great hope of an investor before the drunks
and luckless pooled around it like varicose veins consuming an ankle. The bar
was down a few stairs and looked up through glass covered in an inch of scum
at the crotches of men and women swimming above. These see through
swimming holes were all the craze in the 1970’s, dreamt up by pool-side
perverts who couldn’t afford coolers big enough to store their alcohol habits in.
Taking a seat at the bar, I watched a drop of chlorinated water slip from a seam
above onto a rusted pipe, scouting a way down for it’s other companions.
In the far left corner alone and rummaging through discount mart sales
papers was a bedraggled woman. Her hair was kinky and flaring from a long
bout with the booze. An old man was at the end of the bar, smoking a cigarette
with one good hand and nursing a raw, red one close to his chest. A dozen or
so empty glasses sat before him, acting like dizzied victims, hollow and too
confused about where to go next. Closest to me, and two shredded polyester
stools over, was a businessman with a belly bloated from too many social events
that turned into beer drunks. His lips were crusted and pasty with mayonnaise
from a half devoured, fully tainted house sandwich. His narrowed, straining eyes
took quick, anxious surveys of me, the new arrival. With only enough money to
buy one drink, I made it a good one, the bartender only farting in response to my
order of a whiskey and water.
Taking a long, nerve settling sip, I turned to the businessman, “Hey would
you mind not looking at me while I drink this? It wouldn’t trouble you would it?”
Clumsily he tried to cover for himself, his whole body erupting in a massive
shudder before declaring, “I’m sorry man. I’ve just had a tough day. A tough
day. I’ll buy you a drink. I didn’t mean to make things uncomfortable.”
“Comfort in a bar? The only thing easing my mind in here is that alcohol kills
germs, we’re drinking from their glass bottom pool,” I rose an eyebrow, “I’ll take
a whiskey and water.”
“Yeah, yeah, right,” the guy smirked, “But hey we get to look at the women up
there swimming. Not too bad of a deal, maybe a beautiful looking gal with her
bathing suit will come down.”
“Yeah,” I agreed sarcastically, “I’ve gotten a few to drink with me by pounding
on the ceiling.”
“Really,” he asked, dense from a lifetime of sneaking cooking sherry and
rubbing alcohol to hide his problem.
“Yeah, of course really.”
I put down the first whiskey and water as the second arrived. Through the
open door a draft blew in, reeking of the acrid, pent up chlorination from an
indoor pool without sunlight. A couple of dedicated businessmen lingered in the
hallway, talking loudly about having missed the plane and doing another night on
the town. The one I could see was huge, muscular, veins swelling on his throat
from one too many stressed sales pitches gone bad, one too many last minute
hamburgers from greasy spoons taken down in empty motel rooms. He was the
kind that got on the sauce and beat his wife to a mess every night. She took it
because he was gone to Toledo, St. Louis, Fort Wayne, other dumps, three
days a week. Those were the days she could be out and in the taverns, doing all
the things he said she was. A happy, functioning marriage.
The sucker next to me sniffed and snorted, began weeping into a half empty
glass of boxed wine, letting out the odd wail to catch my eye. When I looked he
used the opportunity to spit out his problems. “What am I going to do? What am
I going to do,” he repeated like a record stuck on a bad groove, one you didn’t
want to hear four or five times, but did.
“What’s your problem buddy,” I offered to console his bellyaching
halfheartedly.
Willing to part with the pain, he opened up, “I ain’t been home in weeks. My
wife doesn’t know where I am. I met this girl here, Tara, at a business
conference. She was gorgeous man, wow, legs and all. We was meant to be
together, but I woke up one day and she was gone. Now I’m broken, lost. I loved
her.”
“Just go back to your wife man, there’ll always be another woman, another
bar with a see through ceiling. Buck up and go back to the homestead.”
“I’ll buy you a drink,” the man was getting sloppy, flinging his wallet on the
bar, leaving it for the vultures as soon as he went off the deep end. I’d be the
first in line. “That’s it man, you don’t understand. She told me, Tara said that
there’s only one love. That’s it. And after that it’s not the same. There’s only
one person for you. If they pass, then so does your chance to be loved.”
“Maybe so,” I flowed with philosophy, “but the world isn’t so bad without love.
A woman’s got to make her way too, don’t get in a rut over it, she’s probably got
better things to do and without you. A girl can’t be expected to wait for some
showboating businessman to leave his wife, take care of them, can she? Love
is a temper.”
“Maybe you’re right. I’ve got to figure out my life. Get it together. Get on the
right track.” Then as an afterthought he curiously questioned, “What do you
mean about it being a temper?”
“All I’m saying is that love is a fire that can grow out of control and burn you if
you don’t manage it carefully. Like if you get really hot over something, start
pushing some guy around, there are consequences to pay. Same with love.
And those fleeting moments between sobriety and drunkenness aren’t worth
wasting on planning the future. Not for me at least.”
“Are you a psychologist,” he muttered, slumping in the stool.
“I used to be, but found hanging around neighborhood pubs to be much
more profitable. Now I do freelance work.”
The suit went on about Tara, buying us rounds for another hour. I was mildly
polite, listening to his clumsy life one stumble at a time. When he finally
slouched far enough to put his head down on the damp, cracked wood of the
bar, I made my move. His wallet was lying next to him and I reached over,
pocketing it with one practiced motion. There probably wasn’t much left in it
after all the drinks, but maybe I could pawn a credit card off, sell his
identification.
Standing, up the steps, down the hallway, I was out into the cold night air.
The black. The bloated leather in my pants pocket felt good, it would be worth
the walk home. I found myself handing some belated advice to the love struck
clod. Buddy, there will always be friends in all the worst places. There will
always be glass bottom pools and glass bottoms to face at the end of the day.
winter. They complain that the cold comes creeping in from the West, a herd of
insubordinate weather fronts that bring along with the snow, eternal dark. When I
was young once, downstate and locked up in the County clink, a man told me
that January was the best time for mugging. Then it’s one knee in the dark and a
twist of the knife for quick money. But when it came to the Irish, it was a different
story. The luck of the Irish wasn’t some goddamn pot of gold, it was that they
could take a pipe over the head, a blade in the stomach, and keep fighting.
Don't mug the Irish the old one said through rotten teeth, eyes content with doing
the long stay.
It wasn’t the same now though. I was older and more content with conning
easy marks, chumps with low self esteem and fat wallets that could be coaxed
out of fifty by promising you’d pay back a hundred. I’d go after what I could, the
down and out gals, the brokenhearted, the dames willing to let themselves be
hustled for a little attention. Then there were the punks who thought they knew
everything, just dropped out of the crib, too wise too soon. They were college
brats and artsy kooks that were getting an education outside of the classroom,
but were still paying for the privilege. I’d find them in all the regular, ragged
places, the daytime beerhouses, coping with their problems in the wrong
atmosphere. Where everyone claimed to know the answer, while still drowning
in their own bottomless glasses.
Bored and broke, I found myself beating it to a Midway airport area hotel
and bar. A friend of mine claimed you could get good action there, that the
people were depressed and loaded. You’d have a drink bought for you in just
under a minute. They were businessmen, killing off the sting of bad mistakes
made on business trips, cleansing their throats and lips from things that only
liquor could cure. The kind of place you could maybe get in with a woman trying
to turn her life around, and maybe yours at the same time. End up a millionaire.
It was worth a shot when all you got is nothing.
Stepping inside of the place I could tell that it wasn’t tough, it was fatalistic.
The hotel was a run down joint, the great hope of an investor before the drunks
and luckless pooled around it like varicose veins consuming an ankle. The bar
was down a few stairs and looked up through glass covered in an inch of scum
at the crotches of men and women swimming above. These see through
swimming holes were all the craze in the 1970’s, dreamt up by pool-side
perverts who couldn’t afford coolers big enough to store their alcohol habits in.
Taking a seat at the bar, I watched a drop of chlorinated water slip from a seam
above onto a rusted pipe, scouting a way down for it’s other companions.
In the far left corner alone and rummaging through discount mart sales
papers was a bedraggled woman. Her hair was kinky and flaring from a long
bout with the booze. An old man was at the end of the bar, smoking a cigarette
with one good hand and nursing a raw, red one close to his chest. A dozen or
so empty glasses sat before him, acting like dizzied victims, hollow and too
confused about where to go next. Closest to me, and two shredded polyester
stools over, was a businessman with a belly bloated from too many social events
that turned into beer drunks. His lips were crusted and pasty with mayonnaise
from a half devoured, fully tainted house sandwich. His narrowed, straining eyes
took quick, anxious surveys of me, the new arrival. With only enough money to
buy one drink, I made it a good one, the bartender only farting in response to my
order of a whiskey and water.
Taking a long, nerve settling sip, I turned to the businessman, “Hey would
you mind not looking at me while I drink this? It wouldn’t trouble you would it?”
Clumsily he tried to cover for himself, his whole body erupting in a massive
shudder before declaring, “I’m sorry man. I’ve just had a tough day. A tough
day. I’ll buy you a drink. I didn’t mean to make things uncomfortable.”
“Comfort in a bar? The only thing easing my mind in here is that alcohol kills
germs, we’re drinking from their glass bottom pool,” I rose an eyebrow, “I’ll take
a whiskey and water.”
“Yeah, yeah, right,” the guy smirked, “But hey we get to look at the women up
there swimming. Not too bad of a deal, maybe a beautiful looking gal with her
bathing suit will come down.”
“Yeah,” I agreed sarcastically, “I’ve gotten a few to drink with me by pounding
on the ceiling.”
“Really,” he asked, dense from a lifetime of sneaking cooking sherry and
rubbing alcohol to hide his problem.
“Yeah, of course really.”
I put down the first whiskey and water as the second arrived. Through the
open door a draft blew in, reeking of the acrid, pent up chlorination from an
indoor pool without sunlight. A couple of dedicated businessmen lingered in the
hallway, talking loudly about having missed the plane and doing another night on
the town. The one I could see was huge, muscular, veins swelling on his throat
from one too many stressed sales pitches gone bad, one too many last minute
hamburgers from greasy spoons taken down in empty motel rooms. He was the
kind that got on the sauce and beat his wife to a mess every night. She took it
because he was gone to Toledo, St. Louis, Fort Wayne, other dumps, three
days a week. Those were the days she could be out and in the taverns, doing all
the things he said she was. A happy, functioning marriage.
The sucker next to me sniffed and snorted, began weeping into a half empty
glass of boxed wine, letting out the odd wail to catch my eye. When I looked he
used the opportunity to spit out his problems. “What am I going to do? What am
I going to do,” he repeated like a record stuck on a bad groove, one you didn’t
want to hear four or five times, but did.
“What’s your problem buddy,” I offered to console his bellyaching
halfheartedly.
Willing to part with the pain, he opened up, “I ain’t been home in weeks. My
wife doesn’t know where I am. I met this girl here, Tara, at a business
conference. She was gorgeous man, wow, legs and all. We was meant to be
together, but I woke up one day and she was gone. Now I’m broken, lost. I loved
her.”
“Just go back to your wife man, there’ll always be another woman, another
bar with a see through ceiling. Buck up and go back to the homestead.”
“I’ll buy you a drink,” the man was getting sloppy, flinging his wallet on the
bar, leaving it for the vultures as soon as he went off the deep end. I’d be the
first in line. “That’s it man, you don’t understand. She told me, Tara said that
there’s only one love. That’s it. And after that it’s not the same. There’s only
one person for you. If they pass, then so does your chance to be loved.”
“Maybe so,” I flowed with philosophy, “but the world isn’t so bad without love.
A woman’s got to make her way too, don’t get in a rut over it, she’s probably got
better things to do and without you. A girl can’t be expected to wait for some
showboating businessman to leave his wife, take care of them, can she? Love
is a temper.”
“Maybe you’re right. I’ve got to figure out my life. Get it together. Get on the
right track.” Then as an afterthought he curiously questioned, “What do you
mean about it being a temper?”
“All I’m saying is that love is a fire that can grow out of control and burn you if
you don’t manage it carefully. Like if you get really hot over something, start
pushing some guy around, there are consequences to pay. Same with love.
And those fleeting moments between sobriety and drunkenness aren’t worth
wasting on planning the future. Not for me at least.”
“Are you a psychologist,” he muttered, slumping in the stool.
“I used to be, but found hanging around neighborhood pubs to be much
more profitable. Now I do freelance work.”
The suit went on about Tara, buying us rounds for another hour. I was mildly
polite, listening to his clumsy life one stumble at a time. When he finally
slouched far enough to put his head down on the damp, cracked wood of the
bar, I made my move. His wallet was lying next to him and I reached over,
pocketing it with one practiced motion. There probably wasn’t much left in it
after all the drinks, but maybe I could pawn a credit card off, sell his
identification.
Standing, up the steps, down the hallway, I was out into the cold night air.
The black. The bloated leather in my pants pocket felt good, it would be worth
the walk home. I found myself handing some belated advice to the love struck
clod. Buddy, there will always be friends in all the worst places. There will
always be glass bottom pools and glass bottoms to face at the end of the day.
contact the eds at:
editors@thetruthmagazine.com
editors@thetruthmagazine.com
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