FireVaney

“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...