Letter

There’s a new layer to people’s reaction when they find out where I’m from.

I’ve been in this country a long time and pass for native more often than not. But when someone new hears the foreign name the more forward ones will ask how I got it and I tell them. They’re always surprised. Usually it’s the happy discovery of something exotic. They’re delighted, intrigued. They ask if I still speak the old language and are impressed when I say I do.

It wasn’t that way at first. Seven and eight year olds don’t delight in others’ difference. I remember getting called a Commie a few times in school. But I mastered the language quick enough that by fourth grade few classmates could guess where I was from. I wasn’t proud or happy about my foreign origins either. The project was to assimilate as quickly and completely as possible.

I’ve failed utterly but few can tell. I pass, as I said before. For decades, aside from telling those who ask that I’ve never been back to my home country and never intend to, the question of where I’m from has rarely been of much concern to anyone but myself. That changed February 24th, 2022.

About a decade ago I briefly dated a woman who had a bizarre fixation on Vladimir Putin. She was American and would have identified as a radical left-winger, maybe even a communist, yet she belonged to a personality cult dedicated to the Russian dictator. I was amused by her fixation and chalked it up to mild mental illness. When I broke it off with her she screamed at me in the middle of a crowded Lincoln Park coffeeshop. It was an ugly scene. The coffeeshop has long since closed and I have no clue what happened to this woman. Perhaps she’s moved to Russia to fight for her hero.

I can’t pretend to understand why Putin continues to fight his hopeless war but have devoted many hours listening to Russian-language podcasts and reading Russian books. There’s a schism happening for intelligent people in that country. Many have left never to return. But unlike my family and others of their circle who decided to emigrate, few of this current crop could have predicted their exodus or have planned it. Many long to return but know the country they’ll find will not be the same one they fled. This is one of the reasons I tell people I have no interest in going to Russia. It helps that when I left it wasn’t even called Russia but the Soviet Union. I say I’m from a country that no longer exists. What can the new refugees say?

When people find out I’m from there now they ask cautiously about what I think about the war. Others ask whether I’ve been discriminated against or attacked for being from there. It’s a bizarre question for somebody from a minority family that left to escape ethnic oppression among other reasons, but that’s where we’re at. The other day I heard a historian trace a lot of Putin’s “ideology” to American right-wingers like Reagan. The homophobia, nationalism, et al. are similar for sure. It’s a small small world and there’s no telling what will inspire people.

At a time when multinational companies are changing their branding from Russian to Ukrainian out of hollow fear for losing prestige shelf space rather than moral conviction, I find myself diving into all kinds of media in my cursed mother tongue.

One of my favorite recent discoveries is the writing of Alla Gorbunova. I just finished her novel in stories, It’s the End of the World, My Love, which was recently translated into English. I recorded a reading of the opening story a few weeks ago; here’s another.

Listen to an epic talk I recorded with musician Mark Shippy in his practice space. Also, Mallory and I discuss the latest Scream movie, which we saw together in the dystopian neighborhood of Wrigleyville.

Finally, here’s a movie to avoid.

Mr. Beef is dead. In the obit his son says his father was grateful to the dumb TV show that made the Chicago delicacy he served for forty-five years out of a humble building near the mouth of a highway known to people all over the country. Business was way up since that show hit the air.

I haven’t gone in a few years but was a regular when I drove a cab. Mr. Beef has two key requirements for a cabbie: a parking lot and easy access to a latrine. I loved the sandwich too. Got the combo, dipped, with giardiniera. It’s not a beautiful dish and there’s no way to eat it without making a mess but maybe that’s proof of its worth.

I assume the son will keep the place running but it’s one of those businesses that are from a different time. I always think about the children’s book where a little house stood with an old woman living inside who refused to move as skyscrapers grew all around. Can’t remember what it’s called. I don’t have a drawing of Mr. Beef but here’s one of another anomalous business a couple blocks away.

I think it’s still there. Though the coffeeshop turned into a gourmet chicken shack for a time. Don’t know what’s served there now. I tracked the buildings and business going up, down, or vanishing closer when I was zipping all over the city. Now I mostly watch changes closer to home. I still miss the Hamburger Heaven Express—”closed do to fire” according to the particle board covering the blown out windows—sitting forgotten at the end of my block. Joanie’s Resale Shop on Halsted, emptied out after she died. I used to buy gaudy frames from her and never spent more than five dollars for a single one.

What TV shows make out of places like this rarely catches much of their charm. The one based on Mr. Beef features a sous chef. No Italian beef joint ever had a sous chef. That’s when I switched the channel. There is a whole tradition of chefs turning fast-food staples into fine-dining. The place I go for brunch every Sunday is like that. You can order Spam and Italian beef and hot dogs but they’ll set you back quite a bit more than Mr. Beef. But they do accept credit cards.

The Duck Inn was opened by Kevin Hickey nearly nine years ago where the Gem Bar used to be. It sits just past where the bridge on Loomis Street passes over the place where the river and the sanitary canal meet. There’s a park just west of there where I did a few paintings some years ago. It’s at the end of my block. Where it dead-ends into water.

Last Monday I went to the restaurant when it was closed and Kevin and I talked for three hours about his childhood, spent largely within a couple blocks of where we now sat. I found out the building a Thai restaurant where I sometimes get to-go used to house his family’s funeral home business and that his father grew up in an apartment where that restaurant now sits. The Gem Bar was run by a family whose relations ran a bank on Archer Avenue that was closed recently for massive fraud and embezzlement. The guy who ran it committed suicide and our former alderman—a descendent of Old Man Daley, who lived in the family house on Lowe Ave—just got out of jail for accepting one of their phony loans. Phony, only in the sense it never needed to be paid back.

Kevin had many stories in and out of the restaurant racket, though none about Mr. Beef. His obit appeared a day after Kevin and I recorded.

Listen.

Read a review of a pretty great verite look at the admissions process at a Prague art school.

I pack a pannier bag with three each of my books and set out. I go to brunch at the Duck like almost every other Sunday. But then I bike north to Rogers Park. It’s a sunny day. Unseasonably warm, like almost every day this winter. I listen to podcasts as I ride. The most direct route is Loomis to the Loop, then Elston to Cortland to Southport, onto Clark, then Glenwood. But I opt for Racine to Sheridan to Broadway. The Southport route goes past the Music Box, which I take all the time. It’s good to change it up now and then.

I’m going to participate in a reading at a cafe I’ve never been to. Wes invited me. I’m not invited to anything often so I tend to say yes more often than no when it happens. My feeling about book readings is ambivalent at best. especially ones that I’m a part of. I’m not a performer so it feels wrong to take up room on a stage. But like I said I don’t turn down invitations and there’s a chance I could sell some books. So I’m going.

Wes tells me I’ll have about twenty minutes so I print out a letter from the new thing I’m working on and three pieces from old books. They’re sequenced in reverse chronological order. I’ll be taking listeners backwards through time. It’s a kind of variety pack sampler of my preoccupations. Bartending, cab life, making art, and failed relationships. They’ll hopefully have a good sense if my books are anything they want to mess with.

I’ve never spent much time worrying about an audience. For decades it wasn’t even an issue since, as a painter, I didn’t have one. I had occasional buyers, but they weren’t watching any part of the process and weren’t expected to respond in real time. Listeners at literary events aren’t responding to a thing being made either unless it’s an improvised performance. What they get is a weird audio recreation of a thing meant to be read silently in their heads while alone. This is what I always get hung up on with readings. I’ve never written anything calculated to be heard aloud.

On the other hand, reading work in progress out loud has been part of my editing process since the first book. A wise editor named Erin Dewitt told me to do that and I’ve been reading paragraphs out loud in empty rooms ever since. It helps to hear how the rhythm of words works or doesn’t work. Reading to others feels weird, unnatural. Aside from bedtime stories it’s not a thing I can easily integrate in my mind. There will always be an element of it that feels wrong. Like I’m misusing the thing I made. It’s a different sort of communication than this amateur oratory.

The cafe is on a quiet strip of Loyola blocked from the bustle of the university and L stop by train tracks. I dead end into them when looking for the place. The woman who runs the cafe knows my name from the Rainbo Club. Says she read one of my books. I think she’s the ex-girlfriend of one of the former longtime bartenders. Small world. The little back room is filling up. I lay out my merch next to Wes’s. He introduces me to a woman whose name I instantly forget. I’m terrible with names. He introduces me to a few others. Rae shows up. And Kathleen and Eric. I see Jas poke his head in after Wes has started reading/playing. He has a friend accompany him on bass and piano, and plays guitar and sings when not reading.

I get through it the best I can. People seem to enjoy it okay. A few come up to talk after. I sell seven books.

Here’s a so-so recording of what it was like.

The Mute Duo record I made art for is up for presale. Happy with the way this one turned out and it’s beautiful music. Pick one up before they’ve all flown the coop. In the meantime, look at a bunch of the process images that went into it.

Mallory and I talked about The Amityville Horror and the even greater horror of sequels.

Also: Cocaine Bear.