Chicago Prodigal

CHICAGO PRODIGAL

I am returned to Chicago, this City. A place I don’t want to gush about, like the better men and writers before me. I don’t want to sequalize either, sucking on the necks and hearts of the stories and legends of my culture. It is a shallow brew, a thin mixture to sip. We should be creating culture. Not squeezing its remains into a glass held by the shaking hand of man whose only identity is that tremor.


We are our own disease. We have been infested by the bacteria that once only polluted our veins. It is now all we are, how we refer and separate ourselves. It’s all about the support group. The cache of suffering. The celebrity of pain.


This is the land I tread, trod and jog on.

But this is not the city of Chicago.

I don’t know much about her yet. Hell, I just now saw here as a “ her”.

And you may disagree.



I came back to Chicago on Jan 31st. I left when I was a baby, so you can give me some credit for leaving against my will. I found it strange to discover that within a couple years of my birth, all of my family had moved from Chicago. And after about twenty years it is safe to say that any friends or acquaintences would be faded, dead or too different to deal with. As I sit here, I have not a single friend or family in the City of my birth. The hospital I was born in moved. I even looked up my parent’s old address, 922 West Montana. It no longer exists. There’s a newish looking building there now, and it bares the addresses of 920 and 924. 922 is gone.


So, as it is just lying around, I ‘ll go ahead and use it for a title.
Chicago had always been like OZ, I told myself when I was a kid. But I tended to make up most of the stuff I claimed to believe about myself. And no, that is not
healthy. It led to an Identity Crisis, a lot of wasted time and I wound hurting a lot of people who didn’t deserve it and almost destroyed myself.
It is accurate to say that i scaped myself down to one friend away from the grave or to the corner with a cup in my hand.


And look, I’m not going to lie here. I’ll tell the truth as it comes and takes the hits when y’all prove me wrong. All this stuff happened, and I really think this way. I’ll tell you what I think about this City, as I figure it out and try to resurrect my own life with it’s noble pulse.

My lie to myself about Chicago as Oz blistered up in my head when I walked past
the Oz Park tonight. And entire park dedicated to a movie. Not a General ,a
president or a benevolent rich bastard from the past, but a piece of entertainment. I stared at the statues of Dorothy and The Tinman, they were gravely captured, stentorian, jealous of those Generals they weren’t. But the point was valid. What if the park was dedicated to A Midsummer’s Night Dream by Shakespeare? I wouldn’t even have a glimmer of a snotty thought about it. I would be all gushy and how wonderful and how appropriate. But which work has
pleased people more? Has made more happiness?

Then in the middle of the playground I saw some teen boys filming themselves in
various death defying leaps. Jumping, bouncing and throwing themselves about and then rushing around the tiny little screen to see what it looked like. . . .for real.
Right next to them there was a basketball game going on in the dim light. Being from a small town,a big city basketball game has quite the cinematic flavor to it, it’s an icon, a sure sign of CITY. They were playing hard, swearing and boasting like I’ve read about in other guy’s stories about cities. That’s been a lot of my feelings lately. I am constantly turning the corner and seeing something beautiful, like in the movies, like on TV, but different as I am
choosing to be here, to live here. I seek to claim this city as mine, as it was when I came screaming into this world.

I won’t take the right to claim this place as my Hometown for granted. I am a writer, playwright and Improvisor, hence all these weird squiggles you are reading, and I want to show y’all. . .youse guys. . .what I can do. I feel childish, despite my 41 years, and enthusiastic beyond what my salt and pepper hair tells me to feel. And despite the lie my life was, I do like Mike Royko, red hots, having four seasons in a year. Not sure about the Cubs or White Sox issue yet, but the Blackhawks are my new team.


Can’t wait to meet you.

NEXT WEEK: ADVENTURES IN A CHICAGO HOSTEL!

Kids or Poo?

An interesting etiquette question came up during a recent visit to a local coffee shop. In the men’s room there was a urinal and a sit down commode, without a separating wall between them, and the bathroom door was lockable. So, when using the urinal, do you lock the door?


It is conceivable that two men could stand and urinate together without being socially awkward. And it is a coffee shop, so it is polite to make as much room as possible. The bladder you save may be your own!


BUT! If you were defecating, would you want some guy taking a whiz right next to you as you do it? Um, no. That’s not Miss Manners. It’s just weird. You lock the door. So, after contemplation and referencing Miss Manners and the Cokely Stiffly Necking’s Guide to Deportment, I have ruled that in a bathroom with two conveyances unseparated by wall you may lock the door without shame or a black mark on your permanent record of decency and kindness.


And then I shot myself.


Why? Because I spent time that I could of used for pleasure or the killing of pain to think about proper method of the disposing of body wastes. I literally pissed my time away. You know, like watching reality TV.


Americans have set some records in the realm of hypocrisy, but they have totally raised the bar to new heights when it comes to sex and how we treat our sexual organs. Fortunately, this isn’t too new of a problem, as a good friend of mine, Montaigne, talked about a few centuries ago.


Each one avoideth to see a man born, but all run hastily to see him die. To destroy him we seek a spacious field and full light; but to construct him, we hide ourselves in a dark corner and work as close as we may.


Don’t worry if you don’t know Montaigne. He wrote books, not websites, and has never screwed Paris Hilton, so there’s no real reason why any American should know who he was. He’s got a hell of a point though, don’t he? There is a daily fight over how much we should talk about sex, but nobody fights about violence. That stuff is great! Give us more of it! Kids love it! Grandparents love it! The biggest office building in the world is dedicated to the successful and continuous management of it! While at the same time the leading lawyer in the nation is putting clothing on Greek statues.


A little more perspective: a neighbor might think twice about chastising another neighbor for striking their spouse or children, but you wouldn’t hesitate for a second to yell if that neighbor lowered his trousers and took a juicy crap on your lawn in full view of the entire street. Why? Because our feces is more important to us than our loved ones.


And I’m not kidding. Our way of life proves it.


Every major city in America is having problems funding their Child Protective Services, their Police force and all other welfare services, but those sewers are working great! Who gets paid more, plumbers or teachers? What is cared for more, our feces, or the impoverished sick? It is possible that a person can be so disgusting that they will be ignored, but even the smallest piece of crap will receive attention for someone, and eventually it will be put in it’s proper place.


In America, more money is spent on the proper disposal of feces than on the alleviation of suffering. We would much rather spend money on the maintenance of suffering, as long as it smells like roses. And even if every single American out there is okay with that, even if every single American thinks that’s a good thing, even if every American believes with all their heart that there crap doesn’t stink, it isn’t. And the dead laugh at what we cherish, and wait for the inevitable day when we will ourselves die and smell just like the feces we’ve avoided, foolishly, our entire lives.


Don’t forget to flush.