Letter

I text Mallory that I’m thinking of going to her reading in Pilsen on Saturday night but she answers she’s sick in bed and won’t make it. I decide to go anyway. It’s not far from home and I recognize a couple readers’ names from the internet.

I lock up my bike on the short iron fence to the right of the entrance. It’s a corner building and the poster said to look for the side door. It’s open and I see a set of mismatched chairs set up so I know I’m in the right place.

There are only a couple people inside. I’m early, as usual. I pick a seat and look around. The hostess offers wine but I still have my ice coffee from Jumping Bean.

The walls are partially repainted a dark green but show worn away layers of previous paint jobs, it’s intentional like ripped jeans. A small sidetable stands near the back wall like a podium for the chairs, holding a vase of flowers. The wall behind is full of lit candles in small compartments, stretching up to the ceiling. A small bathroom is on the left wall, with another passageway just beyond it. Several women go in and out, making final preparations for their guests’ arrival.

Soon the seats fill and the reading begins. From where I sit, the readers’ faces are each partially obscured by flowers. The level of interference varies according to the reader’s stature and posture. It’s dark too. Only candlelight and the phones and laptops off which they read to illuminate their faces.

I like the translations of 90s Chinese poems, first read in the original. The reader says the writer belonged to a group called the Lower Body Poets and, indeed, many of the poems had to do with functions of that part of the anatomy.

A few people ask about the drawings after and the hostess asks to take some photos. I want to ask her what she does here when there aren’t literary events. I heard her refer to the place as an apothecary but don’t see many vials or tinctures. Maybe they’re in another room through the doorway the women passed through before.

I wonder whether I could read in such darkness. I’d probably bring a clip light and ruin the vibe. I ask the hostess whether there’ll be more readings and she says she hopes there will be.

I go home and scan the drawings and post them online. Many of the readers “like” them and that’s the end of that.

I didn’t account for the weather when I accepted the bar shift. It was going to be a long day anyway. My Sundays are pretty set: I get to the Duck at 10:30am, right when they open, and stay till 1ish. Then I proceed at a leisurely pace to the bookstore for my 2pm-7pm shift.

Halfway into my second Bloody Mary, Joe texts to suggest I stay home to avoid the thunderstorms threatening the area. I assure him I won’t melt but ask if I can come in an hour early and leave at 6pm so I can have a proper dinner break before the 8pm barshift.

I fully intend to bike to the bar but five minutes into the ride my pants are soaked through from the pelting rain. I go home and change and go wait for the bus. First the Archer for half an hour, then, after giving up on that one, I walk to the Orange Line and catch the Ashland one north. By the time it drops me at Division, there are about twenty-five minutes till my shift. I grab an order of Popeye’s chicken tenders and wolf them down al fresco, shielded from the downpour in the bus shelter.

Mike sends a warning text about having the Oscars on. It’s a tradition going back to Kenny’s Sundays. Sure enough, the TV’s on when I walk through the door at five minutes to 8. I stopped watching the show many years ago because it made me angry whenever I wasn’t bored. Hollywood’s annual circle jerk is so far past irrelevant by now that even talking about it is to give it oxygen it doesn’t deserve. But Mike loves it and I would never stand in the way of love, no matter how misplaced.

There is a small group of guys watching. They ask me to put the close-captioning on and I ask Mike if he knows how to do that. The guys move to a booth after a few minutes but the show keeps going. The TV is atop the photobooth and the group running in and out of there between flashes occasionally looks up at the screen. At one point, a plastic surgery disaster slightly resembling Lionel Richie appears and I say, Hello…, as plaintively as I can manage. That gets a couple laughs.

Keefe comes in with a friend. He tells me they’ve just returned from Madison after playing a gig. Another bandmate insisted they eat at the world’s largest Culver’s. He said it was a Wisconsin tradition. Keefe remarks that Culver’s employees are always extra friendly. I say it’s the same at Trader Joe’s and that it always makes me a little uneasy.

As soon as PT Anderson’s worst movie wins best picture I turn the TV off.

A guy I know to be a Michelin-starred chef comes in and asks how many bars in the city are playing Tindersticks right now. That’s what I have on. I tell him I wouldn’t know. I guess he means this as a compliment. Then he shares a piece of gossip about the love life of a singer I know. Why he feels the need to share this is beyond me. Does he know there’s some personal history involved? As far as I know, the guy doesn’t even know my name.

My bartender from the Duck comes in toward the end of the night with her boyfriend and another friend. It’s the first time the shoe’s been on the other foot and she’s clearly amused by the experience.

It’s starting to snow as I walk down Division after locking up. The bus is going across just as I approach the intersection. I wave at it and to my surprise he stops. There is only one other passenger onboard the entire way to Bridgeport. The driver fairly shouts his end of the conversation at the other man the whole way. They talk about where they grew up, the sports they played, the guys they knew who’d made it to the big time.

I can talk all day and night, he says, and I believe him. It’s pretty funny and keeps me awake till it’s time to get off at the Orange Line.

Reviewed a great production of Mickle Maher’s Song About Himself and the Matisse show at the Art Institute.

In case you’re looking for a radio station, try this one.

Digging through the dozens of cardboard boxes in the back closet of the bookstore, I came upon two oversized folders containing portraits of US presidents. I researched what the folder might fetch on the market and it didn’t come to too much. Joe decided to keep one and gave me the other.

The folder was published to commemorate the bicentennial. There are thirty-seven sheets starting with Washington, ending with Nixon. Kind of like baseball cards but the size of a small poster. The backs contain a bunch of the president’s stats. I have no idea what the practical purpose of this set was. Did the publishers imagine patriotic families gathering in suburban living rooms to take turns reciting highlights from their favorite executive’s career? It’s the kind of thing that has “collectible” printed on the cover, ensuring it never will be.

My first and only thought after taking the presidents home is to cut up and deface them. Though nothing I can do to their stillborn visages can match the feeling of dread I have before having at them with the Exacto, glue, and markers. It’s a real rogues’ gallery. Maybe it’s only the perspective from the present-day quagmire but I have trouble imagining that anyone looking at this collection of mugs would feel anything but disgust and revulsion. It’s a real parade of creeps.

I know a bit about a few of them; less about others. A few times I’ve read from the stat sheets on the back but nothing of what I learned there informed what I’ve done to their faces once I flipped them back over.

I rarely respond to political art. It usually has a short shelf life and only resonates, if at all, in its own moment. I’m not thinking of what I’m doing to the presidents as particularly political. It’s more about meditating on an empire as it circles the drain. Coming upon this folder feels a little like that scene in Planet of the Apes where they pass the head of the Statue of Liberty, toppled over and buried on the beach.

I’ve done seven and have thirty to go. I’m thinking of putting them all up in a row in the window cases at the Rainbo Club in September. It is the two-hundred-and-a-halfth anniversary of this thing this year.

Not much to celebrate but I keep making more things to put up on walls anyway.

I wrote about Abel Ferrara’s memoir and rewatching a bunch of his movies.

A couple weeks left to catch my Firecat show.