Letter

Last Sunday, before Monday’s lockdown, was a busy one at the bar. I was surprised, figuring people would prefer to stay away and not tempt fate. Instead, it was a sort of End of the World Party vibe. Everyone recognized that it would be a while till we could meet this way again and made the most of it.

John came in with a woman I didn’t know. He’s a bartender and musician. He always seemed resigned and apathetic, but not this night. He was positively giddy. I saw the guy smile more times within a couple hours than the previous twenty-plus years. He’d found love and was looking forward to hunkering down for some serious alone time. “I can’t imagine a better way for the world to end,” he said.

Monday, I took a bike ride downtown. I bought a ticket for The Hunt and watched it in an empty theater. I asked the concessions girl if they’d be open Tuesday and she seemed confident they would be. I thanked her for being there. The Hunt was good choice for a last movie to see in public (all theaters were ordered shuttered Tuesday.) It’s about another version of an apocalyptic future, but close enough to our current situation not to feel outlandish. It’s not a great movie and has a simplistic kumbaya-type message, which feels like a cop-out, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. The empty auditorium certainly added to the experience.

I noticed online that Marc Fischer had started a new project called Quaranzine—a two page zine printed on his Risograph, dedicated to art made during the virus lockdown—and sent him an old thing about working for Lifeline in Boston twenty-five years ago. He printed it the next day. I think he’s up to eight or nine issues now. Check back at Public Collectors for new ones. I was happy to’ve been part of it. 

I spent most of the week packing for a move scheduled for early May. I enjoyed the trips to the trash with bags of things I no longer want to keep. Otherwise, the week wasn’t especially unusual. I spend most of my time alone, so if this situation goes on for months it will likely impact me less than many others. I have a show scheduled for August which will be a goodbye to this apartment, in which I’ve lived the past five-plus years. I made an ink painting of the shelf in my bathroom and will continue making pictures here until I leave. It will soon look very different with no books on the shelves or art on the walls.

One thing I did miss was Mute Duo’s record-release. I wrote about working on the art and design of the album a couple months ago here. Now you can get your very own copy. This was one of the better design jobs I’ve ever gotten.

On Wednesday it occurred to me to check on people I knew, so I sent a “How you holding up?” text message to most of my address book. I got about eighty responses back and it took me an hour and a half to get back to everyone. Using T-9 with no ability to cut-and-paste meant I had to retype more or less the same message almost a hundred times. It was absurd but heartening to be inundated that way. If nothing else, virus life has vastly improved my acquaintances’ phone etiquette. 

On Thursday, after finishing an illustration of Babi Yar for a forthcoming essay by an ex-Marine living in Kiev, I ran out of a couple gouache colors. Thankfully, Artist & Craftsman in the West Loop was still open. So I took a bus and train there. I was the only passenger on the bus for three or four stops.

After picking up my paints I wandered back toward Roosevelt to catch the train back home. I successfully fought off the urge to go into Five Guys for a cheeseburger; they were still doing carry-outs. I went into Trader Joe’s instead. Unlike Cermak—the grocery store by my house—Trader Joe’s was picked half clean. There was a more panicked air here. I was taking it all in when I saw Mark. I knew he worked at a Trader Joe’s but didn’t know it was this one. He squinted my way before recognizing me. Mark was one of the people I’d texted Wednesday. We spent a few minutes shooting the shit. He told me he’s working long hours and not getting to play music with others much. He also said the CTA felt cleaner and safer than he ever remembered it. I was glad to see him, though I hope next time he’s back playing his guitar.

Friday evening I spent over an hour having a rambling Skype conversation with Jesse for his new podcast. I’d hoped we could do the talk in person, but Jesse preferred to do it remotely. I disabled the Skype camera because video calls always make me thing of kidnapping or beheading clips—a glitchy, echoey image of a head or torso looking trapped in a room somewhere. Jesse’s still figuring out the technology, but I was happy to be his first English language guest. It’ll go smoother next time.

Sunday, I biked to Pilsen and took a walk with Wendy. I hadn’t been to her new apartment, so she gave me a quick tour. Her nephew, Avi, had made a friend across the street. She’d given him a walkie-talkie and they spend hours on it. I saw the little girl waving from a window as they talked. Wendy’s daughter, Sophie, was behind a closed door, working on her art. Chuck was in the kitchen working a jigsaw puzzle. Everyone here coping their own way.

We walked to the grocery store because Wendy needed chorizo to make soup. Then the Jumping Bean for a to-go coffee. We agreed how absurd the toilet paper hoarding seemed. How many asses to these people each have to wipe? Also about enjoying the slowness and quiet of this situation. Perhaps people will come back from quarantine with a greater capacity to deal with silence, solitude, and scarcity. Maybe we’ll finally start lowering our standard of living in this country to one that’s more in line with reality and reason, rather than the pie-in-the-sky fantasies encouraged by the stock market, etc.

I’ve always hated the term viral as used to describe something popular on the internet. Something people actually aspire to. Maybe a real virus will make people reconsider how the word is used. It’s been encouraging to see that even our great Marshal Cheeto is unable to lie or bully the facts of the situation away. That it took a plague for that happen shows how far in the hole we’ve fallen. I’ll be curious to see what is left when/if we crawl out of it.

—As proof that there are people who can see into the future, here’s a Joseph Brodsky poem from 1970 I stumbled on this week called “Don’t Leave The Room” (in Russian, then in English. There’s a lot lost in translation, unfortunately)

Don’t leave the room, don’t make the mistake and run. If you smoke Shipkas, why do you need Suns? Things are silly out there, especially the happy clucks. Just go to the john, and come right back.

Oh, don’t leave the room, don’t ring for a car. Because space consists of a corridor And ends with a counter. And should a floozy slip in, Flashing her teeth, make her scram without stripping.

Don’t leave the room, feign that you’ve caught a chill. What could be more fun than four walls and a chair? Why leave this place only to come back late in The evening same as you were, moreover, mutilated?

Oh, don’t leave the room. Dance the bossa nova In shoes but no socks, a coat over your naked bod. The hallway reeks of ski wax and cabbage. You wrote a lot of letters: one more would be too much.

Don’t leave the room. Oh, just let the room imagine What you look like. And generally, incognito Ergo sum, as form was told in anger by substance. Don’t leave the room! Methinks out there it ain’t France.

Don’t be a fool! Don’t be like the others. Don’t leave the room! I.e., let the furniture have its druthers, Blend in with the wallpaper. Lock up and let the armoire Keep chronos, cosmos, eros, race, and virus from getting in the door.

 —Guilherme Coutinho is my big musical discovery the past few weeks. I’ve listened to this, this, and this more than anything else pre-virus and intra-virus. What are you listening to?

I pay the guy no mind the first couple times he comes up. Young man, kind of conceited-sounding, typical. He sits toward the back of the bar with a couple acting like they are on a date. But as the night wears on, he becomes a problem. He begins to linger at the bar, chatting up whoever is nearest. He acts in a way that forces us to watch him. But he isn’t the only distraction this night.

My coworker, Emma, always has stories about people who come in. She knows everyone. Who’s with who; who they used to be with; which one is stepping out on their significant other; which ones are trying some sort of open arrangement. It makes the shifts better hearing her stories. I rarely can reciprocate. But tonight’s an exception. H. comes in with her boyfriend and takes a booth as usual. She doesn’t acknowledge my presence. That’s been her way the last few years, but it wasn’t always.

Five years ago, when I moved to Bridgeport, H. and I had a brief fling. She was an arts journalism grad student and interviewed me for a class. That’s how it started. She was half my age, it was as clichéd as all get out. The troubles began when I told my ex about it. She worked where H. went to school. It never crossed my mind it would be a problem. It was a big problem. My ex took my being with H. as a personal affront, like I was doing it to hurt her. The truth was much worse: I didn’t think of her at all when I went home with H.

I broke it off after a month because H. wanted a boyfriend and I wasn’t boyfriend material. It was just nice to be wanted for a change. She didn’t take the breakup well. She started taking Tinder dates to the bar on nights I worked and making a show of making out with them. It was a different guy every time. I was amused and wondered how much of it was for my benefit. If any of it was, H. didn’t know me very well. We live in the same neighborhood so we’d run into each other occasionally. It was usually cordial but awkward. Then, a year or two ago, she started showing up with the same guy: a dorky mustachioed fellow, much younger than the ones she used to go with. He looked to be her age. I was happy she found someone.

I tell Emma all this as we watch H.’s boyfriend tuck his napkin like a bib into his shirt collar like a senior citizen before wolfing down a basket of tater tots. Meanwhile, our problem customer is firing questions at a woman sitting by herself and obviously not looking for company. She politely answers him when he asks what she does for a living (cosmetics rep) and even asks what he does (used to sell suits, now works some office job.) But she barely makes eye contact, doesn’t swivel her barstool his way, and keeps scrolling her cellphone. He talks and talks, forgetting the round of drinks he ordered and was supposed to bring back to his table. The couple back there is practically making babies now, so I don’t entirely blame him for staying away.

He wobbles his way to the bathroom and the girl he’d been talking to immediately bolts out the door. Then he’s back with his friends, with his shirt off. I ask Eber to tell him to put it back on. Apparently he is showing off a new tattoo. Eber reminds him our bar is not clothing-optional.

Next time he comes up for a round he’s having some trouble focusing. I pour the two beers, then instantly regret it. He takes a sip, then spends fifteen to twenty minutes close-talking a guy at the bar with the same persistence he did with the girl. His target humors him the best he can, though he’s obviously uncomfortable. Then the guy wanders away, forgetting his beers. I empty them in the sink.

He’s back half an hour later to order more, but I tell him he’s had enough. He’s confused, but stumbles away without a fight. He sits back down and watches his friends make out. Then returns to ask for beer again, forgetting he’s been cut off. It’s last call now and I make the first of three trips back to where he’s sitting to ask him and his friends to go home. On one of my visits, after I thank them for coming in, he shoots back, “Thanks for what?” I hesitate a second but walk away. When they finally leave, the whole area where they’d been is covered in shredded coasters, M & M’s lodged in the seat cushions, as if they were squirrels or birds scattering materials around a nest.

On my bike ride home after closing the bar, I see him sitting on the sidewalk by an underpass. His phone is by his side, lit up, blaring music. His head lolls back and forth. I almost stop to see if he’s okay, but keep pedaling.

Marie texted Monday that she needed help. She was getting ready to rent out her second apartment upstairs and needed to get rid of a couch. I told her to give me a couple hours. Mondays are usually a late start because I bartend Sunday nights. It was a warm day, so I took the bike out and rode to get some breakfast in McKinley Park.

A few minutes after Marie, Brant texted that I could move into the ground floor of his worker’s cottage a few blocks away from my current place. The prospect of this move has been hanging over me since last July, when I went to see the place on the most humid day of that summer. It was cool down there even with no A/C on, it was a nice open-floor space, and it wasn’t on the third floor, so schlepping a couple dozen boxes books would be a lot less painful. I was sold. But then nothing happened. I’d bug Brant every few weeks but he and his wife were planning major repairs and didn’t want me settled in only to have life disrupted by the clatter of a rebuild. I’ve been off lease at my place for over four years, so there was no great urgency, but as the months passed it started to gnaw at me. So I gave Brant and Rozzie a deadline and within a week they gave me a move-in date. It was like a great weight vanishing. What felt like a holding pattern now had a definite direction. I’ll be in my new place in May. This is what I was thinking about as I pedaled west.

At 31st and Western I caught the bike lane west and stayed on as it bent past the jail and the criminal courts building, then into Douglas Park, further west until I hit Independence Boulevard. I took that north until it turned back into Hamlin and stopped across from Garfield Park at Marie’s. She’d asked me to help design and print some for-rent flyers a few weeks back,sending me some photos I assumed were stock footage. But when I asked if she wanted them replaced, she laughed and said they were pictures of the actual apartment. Now I can confirm she was telling the truth: the place looks more or less like her photos.

We unscrewed the legs from the sofa and pushed it to the back door. I angled it onto its side, then, with some effort, squeezed it out onto the landing. While Marie carried the cushions down to the dumpster, I maneuvered the sofa down the first flight of stairs, then stood it up and pivoted it to point it down the next flight. On the second floor landing I was huffing and puffing. This was too much work for a thing going in the trash, so I asked Marie to make sure the coast was clear down below and tipped the thing over the railing. It landed with a dull thud, seemingly intact. It was the first piece of large furniture I’ve ever thrown off a balcony. It was a load off, not unlike having a move-in date after nearly a year of waiting.

We dragged it out the back gate and positioned it on the edge of the vacant lot that borders the alley behind Marie’s building. It’s strange to see a piece of indoor furniture outdoors like this. Out of context. But in my mind I could see people sitting on the sofa out here, making this lot, where a house once stood, back into a living room. We went back upstairs and I changed a lightbulb in the rental unit that Marie couldn’t reach. We struggled with a curtain which had wobbly screw, to no avail. Then, a woman arrived to look at the place. I went down to Marie’s place to hang out with the dogs while she showed the apartment. She told me she had a good feeling about the woman when she came down a few minutes later.

I won’t have any furniture to throw out my third floor windows, but will have lots of artwork I’d rather not bring to the new place. So if you ever wanted one of my pictures, this is the time. No reasonable offer will be refused. Hell, most unreasonable offers won’t be refused either.

Drop me a line.

—I illustrated an essay about intimacy problems and Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as one about as one about LA and early 20th century composer George Antheil.