FireVaney

Mine eyes scrutinize the packaged, pre-washed greens; mine fingers leaf through the spinach packs, seeking out a Use By or Best By date that’ll satisfy my strict standard of fresh.  And this woman,  a fellow shopper  (although not a fellow fellow),  likely ten years my senior,  double-takes me.  “Nick?” she says.  Now,  what should’ve come out?  “Yes! How are you?”  Instead, my mouth goes,  “Huh?”  (As in, “You talkin’ to me ?”)  She says,  “Are you…  Is your name:  Nick?”  And my stupid mouth it  does it again with,  “No.”  But it’s a “No”  with a smile.  Not embarrassed,  at least not overtly,  she says,  “You look like my son’s teacher.”  My stupid head nods;  my stupider mouth spits out,  “Oh.”  She’s a suburban,  middle-aged  soccer-mom kind of beauty. *   No,  she wouldn’t meet central casting’s criteria,  but ...

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...

Alright, yes!  I am a glass of orange juice.  Rather, the orange juice itself.  The glass is merely for containment.  Though perhaps it’s something of a fashion statement.  But yes,  that’s right,  one hundred percent,  fresh-squeezed,  pure Florida orange juice.  Absolutely,  positively,  not  from a concentrate.  Even so,  please,  I beg you,  refrain from consuming me.  Yes, your eyes indeed deceive you. These appendages, the clothing, the face? Simply a disguise. You haven’t a clue as to what it’s like: Every morning—people staring at me—a thirsty gleam in their eyes; and then, every evening, terrified to go to bed; fearing that ever-recurring nightmare where huge unwashed hands grab at me and spill me all over the kitchen floor—so that a big dog named Butch can lick me up. I was perfectly happy housed in a peel.  It’s dangerous propaganda, I tell you, all this talk about the benefits ...

This is fine. This is good. This is the way it’s going to be. This is not a curse but a blessing. This is not a prison but a sanctuary. This is peaceful. Green. The skies are blue. Frequently, you only hear the birds, or the crickets. There are, however, intruders: unwanted noise from lawnmowers, leaf blowers, home-improvers, and home builders. And then, of course, you’ve also got the commuter trains. None of this is new. This has been the way of things for decades. And this will continue to be the way of things for decades to come. And I shall now attempt to dispense with the word: “this.” That is, at least, for the remainder of  _ _ _ _  page. Now, then, where would you like to go to school? Do you want to go somewhere far away? Or would you prefer to be close to family and friends? What do you fear? If you were to go far away, would you fear the possibility of not making any new friends? Would you fear being taken advantage of? Would you fear the possibility of getting lost...

“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...