Letter

In 2019, a literature professor from Tel Aviv emailed to say that she was writing something about me and hoped to visit that summer to meet up.

Now the thing she wrote is an academic survey of Chicago literary history. My friend, Bill, who wrote a chapter about the city’s literary future, gave me a copy. Good thing too, since it’s priced at an astounding $110, guaranteeing it a minuscule readership. The standard explanation for academic presses pricing hardcovers this way is that they are aiming at libraries that expect high-quality copies to stand the test of time. But it seems to me that a book like this could have appeal beyond the halls of academe. There are a lot of Chicago homers out there.

Selfishly, I’ve only read the couple pages about myself so far. It’s flattering stuff. Nice to get some institutional acknowledgment, though I don’t know what it actually means. Does a foreign academic press’s decision to include my work in a survey of Chicago literature give me a place in the official history? Is there even such a thing anymore? A universal standard by which any casual reader acknowledges this or that writer as belonging to the canon. Canons aren’t popular these days anyway.

Whatever the case, it is validating when anyone takes notice of what I do. It makes it feel like it’s not all just pissing into the wind.

My one quibble with the book so far is the cover. Maybe it’s a cultural blindspot rather than a dig at the city, but who the fuck chose to put that horrible building on there? At least the tramp-stamp its namesake marked our city with isn’t visible. A completely generic photo otherwise. You’d think they’d have a couple bucks in the budget set aside to decorate a $110 book properly, rather than just doing a Google Image search and slapping a random result on the front. I wish they’d called me. I would have made them a much more attractive cover.

I don’t expect anyone to shell out $110, but if you’re curious what the professor wrote about me, drop me a line and I’ll send you a pdf scan of the relevant pages. Still working through what I feel about this development. Should I have a pin made——something between a blue ribbon and a hammer-and-sickle, say——so passersby know who they’re sharing air with? More likely, I’ll forget about it entirely in a week or two. Even historical figures have to go on with their lives sooner or later.

It’s good to get back to ripping up old papers. The support for this one is an old manila envelope of my father’s. It’s from his teaching days, but in recent years, it held a working manuscript for Soviet Stamps. I dumped those pages out because I liked the envelope with its notes and numbers. I’ll use the pages later maybe.

I bike to Compound Yellow to listen to Bill and Cooper doing their new thing. The room in which they play——upstairs from a gallery, in a converted out building——feels like a kids’ art classroom. There are blackboards, musical instruments, and bins full of various art & craft materials. Rows of mismatched chairs have been set out in the middle. Cooper turns off most of the lights before they play.

I help carry gear out to the car afterwards, then sit talking to Laura, who runs the place, and a couple of her friends. One of them saw me sketching and guessed who I was. He’d read one of the cab books. I tell them about the bar book and they both buy a copy.

I send Laura a scan of my sketch the next day and ask how far her gallery’s booked in advance. I need to find some place to host a show all these damn collages. Maybe her place is it.

This one started from a colored-pencil phrase I found in another folder. A bunch of prep sketches to illustrate some poems by a former friend back in the early 90s. Nothing came of it, but I kept the drawings.

Evidently, they were fated to be cut up and reused thirty years later.

I fought it for as long as I could. Ever since the bar reopened last summer, it hasn’t felt right. Now I’m leaving and I’m really fucking sad about it.

When I started at the Skylark in 2015, I was starting over. A long-term relationship had ended and I was trying a new neighborhood. I’d sworn I wouldn’t work in a restaurant or bar ever again, but there I was, checking IDs at the door in between chapters of whatever book I was reading. Soon after that, I was behind the bar for the first time in fifteen years. It went on every week for several years until the plague put a stop to it in March, 2020.

My relationship to dayjobs has always been one of weary tolerance. Sooner or later something goes sideways. More often than not, it’s a conflict with a manager/boss type. I don’t do well with authority figures. It’s the reason I drove a cab for twelve years. For 90% of that job, there’s no one to blame or credit but yourself. The Skylark was a good fit because the owners were so hands off. We were expected to be adults and just do our fucking jobs. Historically, the less interference I have, the better job I do. It worked really well until lockdown came.

Like so many others, that solitary year caused me to reflect upon what was and wasn’t necessary in my day-to-day. I became more disciplined, more productive and creative. I discovered——or, more accurately, had reconfirmed——that I needed very little daily interaction to keep above water emotionally. So long as the work was going, I was fine.

Then, last summer, the bar reopened. I told myself I’d see how I felt going back, then decide whether I wanted to keep working there. I’d rearranged my life to the point that this place, which was such a constant, was no longer in the equation. Now I had to pivot backwards.

It felt off from the start. Everyone was trying so hard to pretend it was 2019. Coworkers kept going down. Seizures, accidents, psych ward stays. It just kept piling up. Felt like we were marked. We’d talk about it sometimes. Who would be next to fall?

My regular shift at the bar has been Sunday all these years. It’s an industry night, meaning that workers from other bars and restaurants come in. It’s mostly regulars on my shifts. They’re super generous and have rescued many a slow night. But what they do most of their time with me is bitch about their jobs. They go on and on about their idiot bosses and coworkers, how the places would fall apart if they left, etc.

I don’t want that to be me. I started to dislike coming in so I’m nipping it in the bud. I know the bar will be fine without me and that the only factor I have any control over is myself. So I’m leaving before I start hating it. I don’t want yet another place in the city I don’t feel welcome.

I’ll miss making playlists and changing things up according to the temperature in the room. I’ll miss most of my coworkers. I’ll miss the priceless eavesdropping opportunities from bad dates and ridiculous circular inebriated arguments.

I’ve never missed a job in my life, but I’ll miss this one.

[I reviewed Sam Pink’s Ketchup.]