Letter

Monday night at the bar.

A guy in his late twenties sits left of the taps, right where the sinks are. He orders a PBR and thanks me profusely, then goes back to casting his serial-killer eyes around the room. He comes to the bar pretty regularly but usually takes a table in the back. Where he sits tonight there’s no way I can ignore him.

He tries to make small talk but it comes off as veiled insults. He’s going for jocular humor maybe, but the results are the non sequitur ravings of a lunatic. I can’t tell how aware he is of what he sounds like. I look back down at the pint glasses I’m rinsing, then wander down the bar, acting as if I have something to do, aside from getting away from him.

He orders a Schlitz tallboy, then summons me back a few minutes later and sticks out his thumb for me to look at. He claims there was a piece of glass on the lip of the can, but I see nothing on his skin. I pass my fingers over the remaining cans in the cooler just to make sure, then offer him one on the house for his trouble.

A couple beers later he’s well into muttering to himself and attempting conversations with neighboring drinkers, who do their best to pretend not to hear him. He asks politely for one last beer, and, after hesitating a moment, I comply. Fifteen minutes later he asks for another. I tell him I think he had the right idea last time. He wants to know why. I explain that in my professional opinion he’s had enough, that he’s talking to himself, and harassing other patrons.

“So it’s because I’m being aggressive, not crazy, right?”

I let it hang there, then start to walk away. He mumbles something about remembering how he was treated here and stalks out.

Can’t wait till next time. There’s always a next time with ones like him.

I get home on Wednesday, take off my clothes, and get ready to turn on the TV, when Elliott texts, “What time is Peter’s band on tonight?” I didn’t know what he’s talking about, but a quick internet search yields the Minibeast gig at the Hideout. Minibeast is Peter Prescott’s solo act of the last few years. I got both their records but figured they’d never tour. It’s harder and harder to do so these days unless you have a big audience. I love the soundscape-y thing Minibeast does but doubt it’s for the arenas.

I’ve loved every one of Prescott’s bands. From the Volcano Suns in the 80s, to Kustomized and the Peer Group in the 90s, and the reformed Mission of Burma and this new thing in the last couple decades. So I put my clothes back on and pedal across town to the Hideout.

I see Peter a few minutes after walking in, sweaty and panting. “I had a feeling you’d be here,” he says. The room is practically empty, except for an oblivious couple on a very loud date and four or five people there for the music. Watching Prescott on stage takes me back. Over thirty years of going to see this guy and it’s made me happy every time. “I’m sixty years old…way past my sell-by date!” he tells me.

Hardly. I would’ve been mad to have missed him. I see Elliott at the bar thank him over and over for the head’s up. 

I’ve always loved swimming but haven’t gone much the last few years. One of the reasons is that I don’t like the beach. Nothing about roasting in the sun among hundreds of other people is appealing. The burning ball of fire in the sky has never been my friend and worrying about things getting stolen while you’re in the water is a drag. But I love being in the water. It’s one of the few things which make summer bearable.

Shay was in town last month and she invited me to go swimming at the Dvorak Park Pool. It’s bizarre fact that in my twenty-four years in Chicago I’d never been to a Park District swimming pool. Shay was staying at a friend’s vacated apartment in Pilsen so Dvorak Park had the closest pool. We met at the entrance on May Street and went to the lockers to change. I didn’t even have a combination lock to store my clothes in the lockers, so I met Shay back out on the street and gave her my stuff to stow away before going to swim.

The men’s changing area at Dvorak is a weirdly large and empty space. There’s a bathroom next to the showers which lead out to the pool, a wall of lockers, and two walls of shallow wooden stalls, with no doors or curtains, for changing. Through the dozen or so times I’ve now been in this place there’s never been more than three or for other people in it with me at the same time. It resembles some sort of corral or holding pen for animals who have been gone for decades. I can’t quite put my finger on what makes it so odd to be in but it always makes me think of one of those De Chirico paintings, which are unpeopled but still ominously portend of doings just out of the frame. 

Out by the pool all my misgivings disappear. I recognize several people right away as regulars from the bar. They don’t acknowledge me, but that’s not surprising since I’m out of context and have nothing but blue swimming trunks on. It’s sort of like art kid happy hour here, minus cocktails or much clothes. I see an older guy who I’ve had to kick out of the bar twice for harassing women and don’t make eye contact. Fortunately, thanks either to his alcoholism or to my “disguise”, he doesn’t register my presence. In the water I’m talking to Shay about my upcoming art show at Dominican University, when an older man comes up to the edge of the water and tells me he teaches there. Small world. Shay teases me about being famous. Does being spotted at a neighborhood swimming pool constitute fame?

Whatever the social situation, being in the water is remarkably calming. Even in this artificial, chlorinated version of the sea there is a sensation of being closer to where we all come from. It’s a primal feeling, like some sort of equilibrium being restored which is unavailable while on land.

I’ve been going back to Dvorak Park at least a couple times a week since. I try to go during Adult Swim but don’t really mind having kids splashing about in the shallow end. I clumsily try to swim laps. It’s been so long since I did this regularly that I don’t really know how to breathe in the water correctly. But each time I go back it gets a little easier. I aim to make it a regular thing. One of the things I like best about swimming is that unlike other forms of exercise sweat is instantly reabsorbed into the environment. There’s few things I hate more in my life than sweating.

On my last visit, I had the place to myself for a few minutes. Then a guy who used to cook at Skylark showed up with his girlfriend. I recalled running into them awhile ago at Rossi’s downtown and telling them to avoid Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper, which I’d just suffered through at the Film Center. Then I swam the length of the pool a few times, trying to remember how to repeat strokes I haven’t practiced since I was a child. I’ll keep going back until the weather turns.

I try to catch the Handsome Family whenever they come back to town so when I booked my trip to the East Coast forgetting that I had a ticket to their show here, I wasn’t happy. The band helped me find a buyer for my ticket but that still meant I’d miss a band I love. Then a couple weeks ago I looked at their website and realized they were playing Milwaukee a couple days after my return to Chicago.

I texted my Sunday doorman from Skylark to see what a day’s car rental for a Tuesday might be—his other job’s at Enterprise—and asked him to book one for me. Then I emailed Rennie from the band that I wouldn’t be missing them after all. She offered to put me on the list but I told her I’d already bought a ticket. The one in Milwaukee cost a fraction of the Chicago one anyway.

I got to Milwaukee with a few hours to kill so I went to the art museum. I’ve still yet to witness the famous Calatrava wings opening or closing but enjoy that place anyway. It’s small enough that your eyes don’t glaze over from sensory overload after a visit. There was a good show of Goya prints, many with an eerie resemblance to the front page of the New York Times on most days in 2018. A couple great little John Marin oil seascapes and a Maurice Utrillo streetscape I kept returning to.

I found Shank Hall after a couple wrong turns, then, with a few hours still left before the show, I sat at a Starbuck’s to write up a review of some movie I now can’t remember. A woman in almost theatrically-exaggerated street urchin garb sat next to me and tried repeatedly to interrupt my work with her yammering. I learned without wanting to that she went by Gypsy out on the streets.

I arrived at the club at 9pm sharp and was the first customer. There was an oblong bar near the street-side window and a stage with some cocktail tables in the back. I took a spot next to a couple tables marked “Reserved” up front, ordered a drink, and opened my book. 

As opener Chris Crofton started his set, the “Reserved” tables were taken by some middle-aged couples. Rennie from the Handsome Family came and sat with them for awhile. One of the men kept peering at my sketch of Crofton, then blurted out that he wanted it. I don’t usually give away or sell pages from my sketchbook because I like to keep the books intact, but because the guy was so brazenly forward and was connected with the band I decided to make an exception. I took out my Swiss Army knife, cut the page out, and handed it to the guy. He seemed overjoyed and showed it off to all his friends. Then he left it on the table and walked away to sit somewhere else. 

I went back to drawing, trying not to be irritated, but the drawing sitting forgotten on the next table was like a magnet of bad feelings. I waited as long as I could stand, then snatched the drawing up and slipped it back into my sketchbook.

The Handsome Family played a lot of old favorites as they were celebrating the 20th anniversary of their great “Through The Trees” LP. The club wasn’t full and I don’t know how familiar the audience was with the band apart from that theme song from “True Detective” but I was just happy to hear them play a bunch of music I know by heart. I’ll always think “The Woman Downstairs” should be Chicago’s anthem.

Racing back home down a mostly empty interstate, I thought again about that guy asking for my drawing, then forgetting all about it. There have been many people who have paid me money for my work now but this jackass assumed that, not only could he have it for free, but it was perfectly fine to discard it once his attention drifted elsewhere. I thought about the great band I’d just listened to and wondered how much indifference they have to deal with as they go from town to town. My great advantage is that I rarely have to face the callousness head on because what I do isn’t a public performance. It’s lousy though and it makes me feel less of people.

—Here’s the conversation I mentioned recording with Gil Roth in a noisy NYC coffeeshop last week. Also, a review of William Inge’s Bus Stop. 

—I made some illustrations for this excerpt from a harrowing story of rape in Ghana. 

—Here’s a sketch of God Alone playing their record-release show. You can buy their LP which I painted the cover for here.