Letter

A young woman came up and asked for a Chicago Handshake and I didn’t know what that was. She acted surprised, then said it was an Old Style and a shot of Malört. I did my best not to make a face and went off to get it. When I came back she admitted that she’d only heard it from a few customers at the bar she worked at and only in the last few months. What I thought was: if this is some test of local cred or authenticity, then I’d rather stay a phony from elsewhere.

Later the same night there was a heated argument about whether Pilsen is part of the real South Side. Arguments like this are almost always based on anger or insecurity rather than logic, fact, or reason. Voices were raised as the warring sides practically beat their chests to demonstrate how true blue and authentic they were. None of the real Chicago debates ever persuade me. The city is an ever-changing amalgam of different populations coming and going. The people who claim it as theirs are usually venal and small-minded. No town should belong to anyone, especially a town as complicated and contradictory as Chicago.

I’ve lived here more than half my life and will probably spend the rest of it here, but I doubt there will come a time when I’ll wanna claim that it belongs to me. Best case scenario, I will contribute enough to be considered part of it. That would be plenty.

A week later another drinker asked simply for a Handshake. I hesitated a moment, then poured her a pint of PBR to chase her Malört. She didn’t send it back and ask for an Old Style instead. Guess she’s not a true Chicagoan either. That, or the fact that PBR is a dollar cheaper and four ounces more beer, might have consoled her. My friend Paul happened to be at the bar so I asked him if he’d ever heard of a Chicago Handshake. He’s a historian of this city and he’d never heard of it. A quick Google search revealed the drink to be a marketing gimmick cooked up a couple years ago by the producers of the booze involved.

Gimmickry, chest-beating, and posturing are key cultural values around here these days. Beat your chest enough and you might even get to be president. I would never claim to be an authority on authenticity or what is real, but I can smell a sales job a mile away. So if you wanna come shake my hand, that’s fine; just don’t do it to test where I’m from or what I’m worth, or to sell me two drinks I wouldn’t even drink for free.

p.s. I reviewed Pamela Bannos’ masterful new biography of photographer Vivian Maier for New City.

I don’t understand cats. In fact, I often find them kind of unnerving. They are like invaders in your home. They stroll about like they own the place and nap through the days, then run up and down the hallways like maniacs all night. The way they look at (or through) you is disconcerting. I always think of Don, who lived above the Blue Light. His cats began eating him a few days after he was dead and could not feed them anymore.‌
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‌I’ve only lived with them myself for a few years. The first time, they belonged to a neglectful roommate. I wound up the one feeding them many times, but could only watch in horror as they tried to lick cadmium yellow out of their fur; living in an apartment with two painters, that kind of thing was par for the course. The second time was much better. Gustav was Shay’s cat and mostly did his own thing. He was old and sick at the end. I dug a hole to bury him in the back yard of her house in Beverly.‌
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‌Despite these contrary feelings, I’ve always enjoyed painting them. There’s a reason cat videos rival porn for taking up most space on the internet. They have personality to burn. When my Sunday coworker Jesse asked if I’d do one of his and his wife’s little fuckers, I didn’t hesitate. Like every other cat owner everywhere, they have ten million photos to chose from. He sent me dozens. I collaged the best of them into a source image for my painting.‌
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‌I framed it and brought it into the bar a couple weeks ago. We hung it up on an empty bit of wall for the night. Jesse would go over to it occasionally and walk away smiling throughout his shift. I doubt I’ll live with any again but will probably be immortalizing many more cats in the years to come.‌
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‌I can live with that.‌

Kelly’s friend Mike is a clown. I don’t mean that as a character judgment but as a statement of fact. His name is Mike but once he puts on the greasepaint he’s Puddles. On Thursday, on the rooftop of the Prudential, with Millennium Park and Michigan Avenue for a backdrop, Mike held my wrist, gazed into my eyes, and sang me Happy Birthday to You. It wasn’t Puddles serenading me but it was pretty damn close.

Kelly, Mike, his wife, Shannon, and I left the Prudential and went for dinner at Club Lago. Mike not only picked up the check (after only meeting me a couple hours earlier) but invited me to come see his show Saturday at the Genesee Theatre in Waukegan. The only thing I could offer in return was to drive them there and back.

I pulled up at the Waldorf at 11:30am and we piled Puddles’ gear and merch into the back of the Jeep Grand Cherokee I’d just picked up downtown. We drove to Lincoln Square to hang out with Kelly and her dogs, to shop for shaving and other toiletry products at Merz and to pick up Puddles’ manager, Stuart, then we continued on to Waukegan.

I hadn’t heard of Puddles before a month or two ago when Kelly showed me some YouTube clips of him singing a song on America’s Got Talent and some other places. She had talked about her old friend Mike for years but watching him as Puddles was another thing altogether. I didn’t know what to make of it because he was a clown who doesn’t talk, yet he sings with not an ounce of irony or eye-winking involved. I had no idea what to expect from his live show.

We pulled up to the back of the theater and shlepped all the gear inside to two dressing rooms; one was for Shannon, Stuart, and me, the other, for the clown. There was a veggie tray, some beer, bottled water, and a bottle of Templeton Rye on a side table and a Kuerig coffee machine on another. An overstuffed red couch and armchair completed the furnishings. There was a concert shot of REO Speedwagon in action on one wall, along with a couple of other photos of acts I didn’t recognize. We’d been told that the theater was maintained and supported by the family behind Uline, so it was no surprise to find no shortage of paper products on hand, highlighted by a veritable pyramid of toilet tissue in the closet.

While Puddles was soundchecking, I sat in the armchair reading Tree of Smoke and chatting with Stuart, who had set up shop next to the Kuerig machine. Turns out he’s also Tom Waits’ manager, so I told him one of my all-time show regrets was not going to see Frank’s Wild Years at the Orpheum in Boston back in ’87. Stuart said that was the first tour he worked with Waits. Then he tried out a card trick on me. He’s a lifelong devotee of magic and both he and Mike are members of the Magic Castle.

A few minutes before showtime I wandered out to the lobby to take in the crowd. They’d sold 1500 tickets. Puddles’ biggest show yet. And in Waukegan of all places. A town neither Mike nor Stuart had ever heard of. (I had tried to think of the Tom Waits set near Waukegan and Stuart said Johnsburg, the town his wife was from.) The people streaming into the beautiful old theater ranged from eight to eighty. Everybody looked happy to be there and eager for the show to begin. I heard a roar from the audience behind me before even settling in my seat. Puddles was making his way down the aisle toward the stage.

He settled himself in a chair and started chewing an ever-growing wad of gum. He would take out the gum and stick it to the door of his suitcase, then pop it back in his mouth throughout the night. He never talked—communicating with winks, grunts, and gestures—in other words, being a real clown. But then he would sing and the temperature in the room would change. Whether it was “All By Myself”, “Where Is My Mind”, “Major Tom’, or any of the other dozen or so numbers, he delivered them all straight. His singing was no joke either. But then he’d finish singing and take three minutes straining his back while trying to push a plastic chair a few feet down stage.

At the end it was announced that Puddles would be taking pictures in the lobby next to the merch table (or souvenirs as Mike had insisted on calling them). The line stretched back into the theater and lasted an hour or more, but Puddles made sure each fan had a real human moment with him, even chasing a disgruntled middle-aged man outside and taking extra pictures after the man had cursed out security for trying, quite reasonably, to move him along so others could take their turn. In all, they shuttled nearly 600 people through. I was almost as impressed with his equanimity during this invasion of his personal space as with his jaw-dropping stage act.

Back in the dressing room a few minutes after the last of the fans had left, Puddles was packed back up into oversized rolling cases and Mike had reappeared. We said goodbye to the theater staff and Stuart, who was heading to O’Hare, and drove through the quiet Waukegan streets back to Chicago.

Clowns get a bum rap these days. Between the mediocre Stephen King one killing it at the multiplexes and the bumbling Bozo in the Oval Office, it’s easy to forget that clowns exist to spread joy. Go see Puddles and he’ll set you straight.