Letter

Rebekka asked for a drawing of her childhood home in Hyde Park. We talked about it over dinner. She didn’t want something that looked like a photograph, so we agreed I’d try to draw on site when it gets warmer. But Monday there was a movie I wanted to see at Doc, so I decided to check out the house and brought the camera along.

The freezing rain was just starting to come down when I snapped a few shots of the building from across the street. Then I went up the driveway to the back, to look at the staircases Rebekka mentioned. This was the view she remembered best. It must have meant a lot to her because she’d made a sculptural model of these humble wooden Chicago back stairs. You can see similar ones all over the city. I never asked her why they were so important.

I’m an idiot with a camera, so it took me several tries to actually get a few snaps saved, but I persevered eventually, then walked up 57th Street for some dinner before the movie.

I’ve been going to Medici for as long as I’ve been coming to Hyde Park. It’s one of those college hangout restaurants with graffiti etched into the wood and lots of unrelated tchotchkes and art. The food was never memorable, but this night, for whatever reason, everything was terrible. The girl waiting on me couldn’t have cared less either. It made the whole place turn ugly. I don’t know if I’ll be going back anytime soon.

The movie was from Peru and was called The Milk of Sorrow. It was about a young woman who took drastic measures not to be raped or abused by the men who ran rampant in the country during the conflict between the Shining Path and the government. It evokes the woman’s emotional state so intimately that it was often painful to watch. At the same time, it’s a beautiful, sometimes sprawling portrait of a society I knew little about. It’s the kind of thing which is all-encompassing enough to make me forget everything for awhile.

One of the things I forgot about was the weather. The walk north on Woodlawn to catch the first of two buses home was treacherous. I ended up stomping through the little squares of parkway, because these were covered in snow, rather than the thin sheet of ice coating the sidewalks. Even so, I kept slipping and had to move awkwardly, checking every other step. It looked shimmering and beautiful from the bus window, but I wasn’t looking forward to going back out into it for the short walk up my street.

At home I loaded the photos of the house onto my laptop. I’d try to make a drawing from them the next day.

I worked at it the rest of the week and came up with something acceptable. I’ve been doing it long enough and have enough muscle-memory that I can make a drawing look like something seen with eyes rather than lenses. I’ve gotten in trouble before for putting photography down, but the truth is I just don’t think much about it. I spend most of my time looking around so I don’t need a machine to record the glances for me. In the case of Rebekka’s drawing, I used photos as a shortcut. It was on my mind and I didn’t wanna wait till spring to work on it. But it still sort of felt like cheating.

So much of making art is beyond words or explanation. I don’t know if somebody looking at my drawing could tell it was done with the aid of a couple shitty digital photos, or that I’ve never been in this house, or even when exactly the drawing was done. Does it matter? I knew next to nothing about life in Peru in the 80s but was utterly enthralled and haunted by The Milk of Sorrow. It still comes back to me a week later, which is rare since I see so many movies.

The next day I made sure to wear boots rather than the smooth-soled shoes I had on the night before, but the ice rink of yesterday was replaced by snow. I didn’t have to watch my step and could walk like a normal person again.

I gave up on football a couple years ago. All the CTE stories and Steve Almond’s Against Football were the last nails in the coffin of an interest which was fair-weather at best. I don’t care to admire multi-million dollar commercials or overblown corporate music spectacles either, so Super Bowl Sunday is just a regular work day to me. This year, the wrinkle was I was covering the afternoon shift in addition to my regular hours, so I bartended for ten hours.

The first couple were painfully slow. A few of the regulars—the ones who come every single afternoon—showed, but otherwise it was crickets till about 8:30pm. I was so bored I texted Brian the doorman at ten past the hour, thinking he was late; he wasn’t supposed to be in till 9pm. Then a bunch of people I’d never seen in the bar before piled in. Most were pretty far along already, doubtless turned out of some place which has wall-to-wall flatscreens. They wanted bombs, shots, and to start tabs on their credit cards. 

A lot of pent up testosterone and frustration in the room. After hours of idling they had me running around and it was a challenge to switch gears so fast. I don’t mind when the bar is busy, I can handle it, but this night had a bad vibe, an angry edge to it. Maybe they were all mad Tom Brady won another ring or were just mean drunks, but in any case, serving them brought me no joy.

A guy came up irate that the pint of PBR he’d let sit at his table fifteen minutes before taking a single sip didn’t taste fresh. I offered to replace it but he acted put out, as if I was disrespecting him, told me he’d been coming here ten years, that I couldn’t do him like that. I told him to leave. Brian had to escort him and his embarrassed, apologizing friends out the door. I missed it, but a guy started choking out another guy at one of the tables, so Brian had to bumrush him as well. There are often months when I don’t have to 86 a single drinker.

A couple on an internet date kept trying to monopolize my attention, making me part of their conversation. It started when she asked me whether, as a newly-single woman, she had the right to tell dates that she was up for flirting (which she never defined) but not down to fuck. He got mock-angry that I took her side. Later, she insisted on touching my beard, making him unhappy for real.

Later, a very young, very inebriated and disoriented young man kept asking to use our phone. The trouble was he didn’t know the number he was trying to dial or even how he’d got here. We repeatedly gave him directions to Simone’s on 18th, where he said his brother was, but he kept coming back in and trying to use the phone. The last time he came in he came up to the bar and ordered two Modelos. We don’t serve Modelo. Eber made him give him cash and pushed him into an Uber. After closing time, we went out to the back lot and found the kid’s car, one of the headlights smashed in, all four tires flat. It’s a miracle he didn’t kill anybody. 

Nights like this remind me that I’m dealing a controlled substance. A lot of the people who indulge can’t handle it, especially on “special” occasions like the Super Bowl. The desperate chasing of mirth on holidays is one of most depressing things in the world to me. Watching it play out in front of my face and feeding it by taking money for booze this night was a real bummer.

When I got home, I watched a dumb comedy called Waiting... on Showtime. It was a caricatured Hollywood version of my night. Just the thing to wind down from a shift I’d like to forget.

The weather is what we talk about when we have nothing to say. That said, nobody in Chicago could shut up about the historic/apocalyptic cold snap which hit the city Wednesday. I worked at the bar the evening before and it’s all I heard about. The teachers were happy to get a couple days off—CPS canceled classes Wednesday and Thursday—and most others who came in anticipated staying inside their homes for at least the next day. I was just annoyed.

I love winter and the cold doesn’t bother me. I told anyone who would listen that I planned to do nothing different. I was looking forward to taking a walk to see if Mother Nature could live up to the hype. Most didn’t believe me or thought I was just being contrary. I left the bar around 9pm Tuesday night and caught the bus home like any other night.

I woke up early Wednesday and looked out the window. It looked like a typical winter day. Sunny. I puttered around a bit, then called the coffeeshop to see if they were open. No one picked up. I sighed, then dug out the long-johns I hadn’t worn in years and prepared to head outside.

The first few minutes didn’t feel any different than any cold winter morning. The streets were deserted, aside from the occasional passing vehicle. It was kind of like Christmas. After some time outside, I could feel my nose hairs stiffening with each intake of air. I popped some CDs into the overnight drop at the library (which was supposed to be open but wasn’t), then continued south down Halsted to the Bridgeport Restaurant for some breakfast.

Inside, all anyone could talk about was the weather. I read my book awhile, then texted Jimmy to see if the bar was still standing. He was there but said it wouldn’t open this day, which meant I’d have to make alternate dinner plans. You know it’s serious if the Skylark is closed—that place doesn’t close for anything.

I walked back north hoping to pick up a package at the UPS Store but the doors were locked, so I continued on to CVS for provisions. There I stocked up on snacks and got some weird gluten-free pizza for dinner. Passing back by UPS, I saw the lights on and a clerk inside waving her hands to beckon me in. The package turned out to be the proofs for my book; now I’d have a project to occupy me when I got home.

I flipped through the book-to-be for awhile, made a few corrections, then emailed the printers to see if they had time for a phone call (unless they were taking the day off like most of Illinois.) I guess Michiganders are made of hardier stock, because my phone rang within half an hour. With business concluded and plenty of daylight left, I pulled a chair up to my bedroom window and made a quick gouache of the view. It didn’t look unusually frigid out there, just a sunny, clear day, roofs covered with snow.

Having few prospects for dinner, I got myself invited over Bill and Cheryl’s place. The Bus Tracker assured me that the Halsted buses were coming every seven or eight minutes, but when I got to the stop the wait suddenly jumped to twenty-four minutes. I started walking north. It was cold for sure, but nothing next level or extraordinary. The only annoyances along the way were that my breath moistened the scarf and my iPod conked out about a mile into my walk. I got to Cermak without a single bus or cab going my way. The Cermak bus was allegedly eight minutes away so I walked a couple stops west, then caught it the rest of the way.

At Bill and Cheryl’s I ate spaghetti for the first time in months and drank more than usual. It was a good time. I called a cab to take me home but it never arrived, so Bill generously ordered me a Lyft.

It was a good, fairly ordinary day. I don’t know what all the fuss was about. It’s just winter. I like it.