FireVaney

Don’t be surprised if the first of your five senses to go, as you age, is your sense of smell. By that point you probably won’t give a shit anyway. In fact, you’ll probably be in denial—of your age, your hair loss, your failing memory, never mind your fading sense of smell.  Take Grandpop, for example. He’s in the habit of changing his socks, his pants, his underwear just once a week, on Fridays. Possibly, it’s what he’s done since the Great Depression. Pop bathes no more than once a week—on Thursdays. His baths are brief. He’s not a big fan of soap and water. But then, past a certain age, dry skin becomes more the norm than the exception.  On Fridays, I pick his lady friend up and chauffeur the two of them to an early dinner at the local deli and then to temple for Shabbat service. On Mondays, I return Pop’s lady friend to her “cell,” as she calls it. Before I moved in, she’d journey from Senior Heights all the way to Pop’s house on a public bus.  [Maybe public buses are...

Fifteen minutes early turns out to be forty-five minutes early, and then, ultimately, turns out to be seven days early. It’s a clean, cozy Lincoln Park bar. “D. Byrd’s Nest,” it’s called. To mix and pour tonight, we’ve got a bartender and bartendress in their mid-twenties. The website promised “Comedy at Eight!” Ah, but lest one forgets—as I had—Chicago comedy crowds aren’t known for being punctual. And it’s Monday night. So the girl-half of a girl-guy act promises me there’ll be comedy at eight-thirty. She’s very pleased to see me—a true patron—someone who isn’t there to perform. Only I’d rather not wait around in a bar, alone, and not drink (I’ve a low tolerance—for alcohol…and pretty much everything else), so I stroll the neighborhood until its fifteen after eight. Then I head back to the Nest. I grab a stool along the bar and order a Guinness. I flip through a week-old Red-Eye . Reading in this place is a challenge, even when it’s a short  attention span newspaper. Apparently,...

Monday nights I chauffeur Pop to and from his Adult Education class at the temple. The class is a survey of all things Jewish. Pop's missed two of the last three classes due to the coughing fits his doctors can't figure out; but this past Monday, coughing be damned, Pop went to class.  Pop isn't sick, not chest-cold or stomach-flu sick, not anything contagious sick, he's got some kind of chronic nasal-dripping problem. It gets a little worse every year, but the hacking that results usually wanes by the time he dresses and plods down the stairs for breakfast. * Starting three weeks ago, though, it hasn't let up much at all—not unless he's chewing gum or lying down. Even if he yaps too much, he’ll start coughing. Mention the Sox, or the Bears, or the market, or old clients, or God, and, believe you me, he’ll have plenty to yap about. † He'll rant all the way through "Wheel of Fortune," coughing after every third word.  So this past Monday night, wh...

For me, today was Precedents Day. I looked into becoming a firefighter. I shopped for and purchased a Holy Bible. I shopped for and purchased a bra at Victoria’s Secret. The bra is a wonder bra and it is leopard patterned. I can’t believe I actually bought a bra. * I can’t believe I actually bought a Bible . † Also, Thad gave me a haircut today. He’s a medical student, not a barber. ‡ My hair might be the shortest it’s ever been. Another precedent: I dropped my underwear in the toilet—my red underwear. § I’ll bet you don’t own any colored underwear. I’ll bet you own more briefs than boxers.  My grandfather calls me up in the middle of the night because he can’t figure out how to turn off his new TV. ** (It’s his first TV with a remote control.)  Somewhere, I heard, or maybe read, that Americans eat enough ice cream every year to fill the Grand Canyon. No doubt I eat enough to fill a small ravine.  1 August 1997  * [03/12/23: For the life of me, I cannot recall w...

Pissing off the fourth floor balcony. That image left my head upon waking this morning. I couldn’t tell you why. Logic never figures into my dreams. Or when it does, it means I’ve gone lucid, and the dream shortly thereafter escapes me. But in the shower, “Pissing Off The Fourth Floor Balcony” seemed a worthy title for a stage play. I want my sort of theatre—my “brand” of theater—to shock. At least, I do right now. And you’ve got to be tasteless if you want to shock these days. Howard Stern shows us the way…  *  A spider’s spun another web between the ironwork that holds up the balcony’s railing. The gusty winds and torrential rains must’ve blown away the web it spun yesterday. Wont the sun show once over Stratford? Christ, writing about dreary weather is itself dreary.  *  Dust Blood —that’s the new title… of something.  *  You don’t see a lot of older couples loving each other. At least, I don’t. And by “loving,” I mean hugging and caressing in public, as...

We were flying to Canada. Pop was on the aisle. I sat in the middle. A young woman had the window seat. We didn’t know her. She was Israeli. Her English wasn’t perfect; my Hebrew was non-existent. We still managed to hold a decent conversation, she and I. She had an odd name—well, it was odd to me. It meant “tongue,” in Hebrew, I think. That’s what she told me, anyway. Why had her parents named her after an organ of the mouth? She was a babbling baby, or so she was told. Two younger girls from her group, perhaps sisters or cousins, were seated across the aisle, across from Pop. They spoke very little English. Aside from “Coke,” all they could say, apparently, was “You like her?” And, “You love her?” After repeating these question several times I confirmed that, yeah, sure why not? I liked this “Tongue.” She was polite and, seemingly, not nearly as chatty as she was as an infant. Surely she’d have more to say if I understood Hebrew. It’s a fair bet that I did most of the babbling. I wa...

Leo took a break from his grandpop’s delirium. Let Betty, the old man’s “lady friend,” play the nurse for the afternoon. Leo, he’d been up every other hour during the night during the past five nights. He’d spent a lot of that time listening to the old man recount and relive any number of hallucinatory and out-of-body experiences.  Leo found himself repeatedly lifting a pile of “branches” that had landed on the old man’s chest. How they all at once crashed through several stories of hospital without anybody taking notice remains a mystery. But once that was done, grandpop would appoint, or re-appoint, Leo to some Board of Trustees involved with endless hostile takeover bids from invisible corporate raiders.  One of the nurses calls it “sundowning.” But Leo’s grandpop doesn’t have dementia. His delirium doesn’t get worse when the sun sets. It gets worse the longer he stays cooped up in a hospital room. Leo thinks it’s more like an acute case of cabin fever. The cure has always ...

[Take heed: This post is not for the faint of heart.]  Pop’s mechanic’s porter shakes my hand every time we meet. He drives me back to Pop’s house, then picks me up when the Caddy’s been tuned-up, patched up, or whatever. I ride shotgun and we chitchat. This porter tells me he’s seen fifteen dead bodies. No, not all at once, but that’s quite a few stiffs for a dude who’s still in his twenties. I’m at least a decade older and I’ve only seen one. And, no, this guy isn’t a war vet. His folks don’t run a funeral parlor, either.  This porter, he’s all muscular bulk. His black hair is crew-cut short. His arms are tan and hairless. Besides being the porter, he’ll change oil and wash the cars. He’s not interested in being a mechanic, though. He’s only doing this to make ends meet. He’s got a wife and kids in a suburb north of here. He grew up in Chicago, but he doesn’t want to raise a family there.  Where the Russian mafia haunts and where the Polish mafia haunts, that’s where t...

“I had a thing for a stoner girl,” I tell Ernie. “That’s why I tried pot for the first time.” Short and blonde, she was my first college crush. One party, as the pipe was passed around, she kept telling my blushing face, “Stop staring at me!” Sorry, but an eyeful of Tatiana always did more for me than pot ever did. Smoking pot was always some kind of excuse. Ok, sure, it made me feel warm and fuzzy, but never enough to justify the migraine that came later.  And, yeah, sorry, I’ve always been something of a starer.  All that, I tell Ernie in the here and now, as he’s packing weed into his glass pipe. This is in Ernie’s west suburban condo, before we leave for the concert. He’s packing this pipe after rolling three massive… joints, reefers, spliffs? I dunno, don’t ask me. I’m not the expert. When I look at them, I think three wrapped-up Tootsie Rolls on steroids. See, my drug of choice, it’s sugar.  Oh, and, Ernie? Not his real name.  While he’s packing and rolling, I’...

It’s jam trafficked all the way into the city.  Pretty much, Ernie’s spent all of this month, all of last month, and half of the month before that gearing up for this concert. He’s been cranking Megadeth’s entire catalogue through his car’s speakers—even all their stuff he doesn’t dig.  He tried to get us dates, too. But the concert sold out before that possibility presented itself. Plan B? Lure a couple of metal-headed babes (already inside the Riv) with pot-baited hooks.  If I’m saying anything, it’s all stupid. (I don’t necessarily mean right-at-this- very -moment. I mean right-at-this-moment in Ernie’s car on the way to the Riv.) And after a while of non-stop Ernie, I realize, and then proclaim, “Pot shuts me up.”  Ernie is definitely not defensive driving into the city. Clearly, he’s missed his calling as a getaway driver. As he casually guns and weaves toward our destination, he volunteers to fill-in movie plot holes. Exempli gratia, with Back To The Future, h...

Parked, Ernie tucks three over-stuffed joints down his sock, into his shoe. He didn’t tell me the joints were in a plastic baggie, so I had to cope with the ostensibly presumed inevitability of smoking a reefer laced both with sock stink (assuming his socks stank), and maybe a few stray feet hairs (assuming his feet were at least half as hairy as mine). Well, this was, at least for me, supposed to be a night of living dangerously. So bring on the sock stink, the feet hairs! There are way worse things you can press your lips to, right? It’s not like I’m gonna pull a drag off some wild baboon’s ass, am I?  Ernie slams back a beer. Outside, after locking the car doors, he chugs down another one. He leaves the can on the curb. My full bladder saves me from following his lead. Besides, I’m not a chugger. I’m a nurser. My stomach sends back anything it’s forced to accept in haste.  Through darkish, residential Uptown, I’m wincing and walking funny. It’s like God’s giving me a wed...

Lemme backup a half two dozen steps…  They’ll stop you for a pat-down in the front entrance vestibule. When you look deeper inside the Riv, you’ll think some fool and his cousin started repainting all the walls at once—and gave up halfway through. Like maybe the fool painter and his cousin both suffered from serious attention deficits. But maybe that’s why they came so cheap. In sooth, I can’t really speak for the fool’s cousin. Lots of folks follow orders without question. Not just the fools. (Or so I’d like to believe.) But maybe all of this patchiness is just the middle of remodeling. One can only hope.  Either it’s all David-Fincher-esque or Terry-Gilliam-esque. I can’t decide. (I’m referring to the general decrepitude.) Whichever, I’m pulled between digging it and grieving it.  Chicago was, once upon a time, the palace theater capital of the country. Your great-grandparents might’ve shared their first smooch in the upper balcony of one of these once opulent venues. M...

Down here, in the men’s room, amongst all the other pissing peckers, there’s a jolly fat guy standing before a urinal. He’s shirtless; his shirt’s slung over his shoulder. Why? I don’t ask. Every other guy parked in front of a urinal is taking aim with one hand, sipping plastic cupped beer with the other. Of all the public pissing situations I’ve found myself in, this one gets the medal for Most Jovial. Call it a Friday Night Frat House Kinda Vibe. And what’s this ephemeral fraternity’s mantra? “Yeah, Megadeth!” One shouts it, everyone around repeat-shouts it. You’ve never seen so many smiles in a men’s room full of heterosexuals.  I shake out my own warclub, pull up the maroon boxer briefs, button the blue button flies, buckle the brown belt, pass the doorless shit-stalls, and round the corner toward the sinks. There’s this tall, buzz-cut headed guy. He’s got a white plug in one ear, Secret Service style. It’s attached to a coiling wire running down the side of his neck and disap...

So, my hands are washed. At least, they are, in a physical sense.  Pushing through the crush of metalheads, I pray that some brilliant way out of this clusterfuck will present itself. Up in the lobby, nobody is Ernie and nobody else is Officer Undercover Buzzcut.  Here I am, part of me soaking-in the Riv, soaking-in this swarm of humanity here to blow out their eardrums, and, most of me, praying for a call from Ernie. Though, if he’s only allowed one phone call, it shouldn’t be to me—especially if he’s going to jail. My phone’s in my hand on vibrator mode just in case. No way could I hear its ring over the din of geared-up metalheads.  The Riv’s main lobby and mezzanine foyer, both of them, their speluncar. Above the bit-too-snug basement-level restrooms (a curiosity, unless bladders and bowels were bigger or more durable a century ago, or folks were generally smaller), the Riv’s just one yawning cavernous chamber feeding into another. Everything about the walls and ceili...

I keep calling Ernie and Ernie keeps calling me and we keep losing each other until I find several display bars of strength, downstairs, at the base of the steps that wind up from the Riv’s foyer.  Ernie tells me he got busted and now he’s waiting for what’s next. His deflated voice says, “Go enjoy the concert.” But I’m staying put by these lobby doors, waiting for what’s next. I tell him, call me when he knows.  Two minutes later, Verizon shudders in my palm. Ernie tells me, “Enjoy Megadeth.” Because, they let him go.  “Your punishment is,” Officer Buzzcut told him, “you don’t get to see Megadeth.”  Whatever Ernie’s gonna do with the rest of the night, he doesn’t know.  “Go,” Ernie repeats, “enjoy Megadeth.”  This much is clear: the right guy is on the wrong side—the outside—of the Riv.  More than I’m here for music, I’m here for architecture.  It’s Ernie who’s spent the last month psyching himself up for this concert.  His voice through my ...

Understatement: Ernie is bummed.  “Megadeth, Maaan…” or,  “We missed Megadeth…” or,  “I can’t believe we missed Megadeth, man…”  The rest of this night,  when his mouth’s not full of diner food,  beer,  or pot smoke,  this is how Ernie compares to a broken record.  And I broken record right back at him,  “At least you’re not in jail…” or,  “Dude, you’re not in jail…” or,  “You could be in jail right now, dude…”  Or, “You got more pot?”  Because this was my night to indulge. Going back to the western ‘burbs, yes, there’s more pot. Only, out there, there’s nothing to do; no one we know. Staying here, he’s still got stuff in the car, but not much. Staying here, it’s the city— everything’s goin’ on. The trouble’s finding it. Which is easier for some than for others.  Things, they don’t happen to me.  They happen around me.  I live life after-the-fact.  Whatever that means.  We end up at Diner D...

Hours later we’re back at Diner Deluxe for more. Ernie says, before it was this place, it was another place. But that’s most of Chicago—nearly everything’s something that used to be something else. Take a boat ride down the river that winds through downtown, and the tour guides will draw your attention to all these architectural ghosts.  For Ernie’s second Diner Deluxe dinner, he orders an egg skillet with pancakes. That, he washes down with an Oreo cookie milkshake. Ernie says it’s good—no, actually, it’s a great shake. And this, Ernie says, is because it’s an end-of-shift-made shake. We’re our waiter’s last table. I don’t remember if he was male or female or both or neither. The first one, from earlier, was definitely female. Understand, between our first and second Diner Deluxe visits, Ernie and I got business-serious busy with the baking of our brains.  For my second Diner Deluxe dinner: mozzarella sticks. These are three times bigger than my best-ever erection. And when e...

I…  myself,  hand deliver,  to you,  where you,  “work,”  red roses.  I do so every day of the  “work” week.  Friday nights, I… present to you, a new, sparkling diamond ring, or, if not that, a pair of new sparkling diamond earrings. Or, if not that, a new sparkling diamond bracelet. Always Friday nights: a new sparkling diamond something .  Saturday nights, I… present to you, a new, radiant golden necklace, or, if not that, a new, radiant golden watch, or, if not that, a new, radiant golden brooch. Always Saturday nights, a new radiant golden something .  In my Hummer limousine, colored Day-Glo fuchsia, with the open-air hot tub, and always, with your preferred chauffeur, Jacobs Jacobsonzweigsberg (preferred because he has only one arm, is blind in one eye, lazy with the other; but more so because he’s an unabashed cracker of dirty jokes, a connoisseur of rare tuning fork timepieces, and an inveterate BASE jumper); yes, I escort yo...

Those of us seated at the far end of the table spend most of Jacques’s birthday dinner discussing what makes for real art, why I’m too old to drop acid, who the Bong Boy * is, and when at least three of us are going to try hallucinogenic mushrooms. We reach no solid conclusions, we set no firm plans.  And it looks like I’ve made a mistake with the Super Blowing Ball Series II UFO. As Jacques unwraps the gift, Mr. Wench proclaims, “Uncle Fun strikes again, huh?” I thought Jacques would dig it. It’s a rare, or seemingly rare, or at least somewhat unique, sci-fi-esque toy. I figured he’s had his fill of Star Wars stuff. But he seems a bit uncertain as to what to make of the gift. Ah, well.  Ry makes a cameo. He’d made himself scarce after he broke off a wedding engagement, twice , with one of our number. I hadn’t known that he worked at this particular tapas bar. (Whose idea was it to come here, anyway?) For obvious reasons, he would not wait on us. He said doing so might resul...

The conditioner of air – a small, albeit noisy window unit – makes him sleepy. That is, it does, whilst in operation. This is a good thing. That is, it is, until he has to wake up. The conditioner of air, whilst in operation, always makes him wake up groggy. But at night, if he’s restless, all he has to do is blast it, and he’ll fall asleep. Every time, this’ll work, like a dream, this’ll work, no matter how stressed out he is; no matter how much he can’t prevent himself from dwelling. He spends most of his waking hours dwelling, which is to say, in a way, that he spends most of his waking hours dreaming. And perhaps this is why he never seems to dream when he sleeps. At least, he can never, or almost never, recall the dreams he’s dreamt overnight. He’s just jotted the following observation down on his notepad: “I have tremendous difficulty living in the present tense.” He Recalls Yoda’s wise words to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back : “All his life he looked away… to the future, to the...