FireVaney

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...

She thinks she can get away with murder when the clock strikes three because that’s when she turns invisible for some inexplicable reason. It’s something she’s struggled with all of her life – this odd, God-given talent that only occurs between the hours of three and four o’clock. Yes, that’s twice a day, between three and four AM and three and four PM. Twice a day, for an hour, for the hour specified, she simply vanishes. Up until recently she hasn’t figured out where she goes, either; but she always returns to the exact same spot. At first, when she was but a child, she thought that her brothers were playing some kind of practical joke on her. Somehow, they’d sneak into her bedroom (or wherever she was) and change the clock and her Minnie Mouse watch. Somehow, they’d be able to do this without her knowing it. And she would hit them. She would pop back into reality, hunt them down and beat them. Her brothers began to fear her – particularly, of course, around four AM and four PM. And ...

It isn’t a question  of effort.  It’s a question of  where  and/or  how   the effort  is  applied.  You do too much of the wrong thing and too little of the right thing.  (And by you , I mean me .)  *  I hate it when the love for a song withers.  *  Odd little crumb hole. *  *  “Why not go out? Go to a movie.”  “I hate movies. Movies make real life dull.”  *  Bed bugs  copulate  through traumatic  insemination.  A  female  bed bug does not  have  a  genital opening. †  Now why, on  EARTH,  would  GOD allow  this ,  for example? ‡  *  We were in a dorm cafeteria, eating ice cream for breakfast, when Arron told Dena, “You can tell a lot from the way a girl licks an ice cream cone.” Dena smiled. At the time, she was dating Aaron’s roommate. §  *  I was young, not yet ten, when my father called from Kent...

Middle school. Gym Class. Outside. Field. Football. Picked last. As usual. Snubbed by quarterback. As usual. Playing for losing team. As usual. Gym teacher: Mr. Klip. He stops the game. Pulls a large EGG from his windbreaker’s pocket. Tells the class: “Go long.” We—the class—we’re confused. He Hail Marys the egg. I start running, hesitantly running ( hesitancy runs in the family), not fast enough, not to reach the egg before it hits, before it SPLATS, the ground. (Not that it’s clear that it’s not hard-boiled.) Doesn’t matter. Why? Egg DOES NOT hit the ground. No. Instead: A great brown bird, it BURSTS from egg. Flies past goal posts. Lands on tree branch, a low-hanging tree branch. Everybody: aghast . “Everybody,” but Klip. (“ Aghast ” not at low-hanging tree branch, no. “ Aghast ” at bird burst egg, or egg burst bird, or what have you.) I walk to tree, look up at bird—adult hawk, mayhap. But maybe, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Staring. Klip, he’d given me a leather gauntlet. When? Dun...

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...

No, really, there is a smudge on the inside of my Daewoo’s windshield. It’s an odd sort of smudge. You only see it at night or when the sun is blazing itself directly at it. I’ve tried wiping it away with towels and water, and then with towels and 409, and yet the smudge remains. Where did it come from? I have no recollection of spraying the windshield with any sort of smudge-creating liquid. Could it be the amassed leftovers from my periodic sneezing? If so, wouldn’t that make it organic and hencethus wipe-away-able? Despite my efforts the smudge remains. The smudge remains despite my efforts. Or, perhaps, it recurs. Unless it reoccurs. What I’m saying is that it comes and goes. What if the stuff of my sneezes is inorganic? Or at least not organic. Or semi-organic. Or semi-inorganic. Perhaps I am a Cylon after all. What makes (the “reimagined”) Battlestar Galactica so good, so seemingly REAL is, perhaps, the “fact” that it IS real. Or was real. Or some nearly accurate variation of w...

Wherever I was, it was hilly and rural and green. Maybe it was Scotland. I’ve never been to Scotland, but I’ve seen Highlander and Braveheart more than twice. And I do have Scottish blood, according to my mother. Wherever it was, I’d driven there in a car reminiscent of the “ General Lee ” from the “Dukes of Hazard.” Presumably, the muscle car, true to form, leapt from the continent (presumably the North American one) to the island (presumably the British one), since I don’t believe in airplanes, and since I’ve no recollection of how I found myself behind the wheel of said vehicle. The car belonged to my father. Or that’s what he’d led me to believe. Unless it’s what I’d led myself to believe. I stood (and presumably parked) outside of a massive, red bricked citadel atop a wide, curving ridge. The stronghold’s impossibly tall walls weaved over the length of the ridge like a colossal brick snake. My father rang my cell phone. If I took the call, I didn’t mention the car. Had I “borrowe...

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...