Chicago Chronicle

a SomeWhat Fictional Account of my June 2005 Chicago Return

by Arthur Mullen

My plane landed at Midway Airport and Luis Tubens met me at the arrival gate. I hugged him. We had no idea what the week ahead held in store, and so bravely (in retrospect) we saddled up in his mid-1980's Cadillac with black leather interior and all four original white-wall tires, and he smoked it out the spiraling airport parking garage exit, turned right. We disappeared into the yawning Windy City streets...

“And then it was the huge winds in great trees at night- the remote, demented winds- the sharp, clean raining of the acorns to the earth, and a demon’s whisper of evil and unbodied jubilation in your heart, speaking of triumph, flight, and darkness, new lands, morning, and a shining city...” Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock

Heatwave hit town about the same Wednesday evening I did. Midwestern teams had a lock on the NBA Finals and now it was a Civil matter of Detroit in the North versus San Antonio in the South. The Chicago Cubs were to play the Chicago White Sox that weekend. Dusty Baker said if fan appreciation were measured by attendance, the city went with the Cubs. Everyone knew he was right. US Cellular field looked like a spider on it’s back in the June heat. The dark palace of Skeletor.

As for the aforementioned weather, it was hot and dusty. Laying back in the grass of Wicker Park the trees sport leaf Afros and many limbs lazy sway. Dust devils whipped around the baseball diamond there. Ascended into the air in cyclonical curlings and reached out over the green park as a strange arm of desert wind...

But whatever. I had been clearly reading too much Thomas Wolfe, as evidenced by my ridiculous outbursts of flowy prose, and it ain’t my style. My intestines had been pizza-puffed into a noxious state. By Wednesday night I had recovered the book of CDs I had given to Luis years ago. A data trove from my numbered mix tape days, I had hoped to get something more valuable out of it than just the mp3s I listened to in high school. But that is all there was.

“CUSTOMERS WANTED. -No Experience Necessary- Warm Beer. Lazy Help. Lousy Conversation. In case we’re closed.... just slide your money under the door. HOME TAVERN 2828 N. Lincoln Ave...”

I spent five hours out of the hazy heat of the sun in the AC bliss of the Home Tavern Thursday, to watch the Cubs lose, again. Dogs ran wild in the joint... a beagle, a black Labrador, a springer spaniel. I took a look at the draft selection and chose 312, the downtown area code, and kicked the begging beagle back. Beer is like a box a chocolates, for dogs it’s no damn good. The pizza-puffery of my stomach subsided somewhat with the brews.

The bartender and proprietor, Mike, made Polish jokes such as, “What’s the most useless thing in a Polish woman’s body? Her husband.” He described himself as a closeted genius. I believed him because after one good play by the Cubs the man hollered that the key player was, “A tremendous machine!” That seemed a pretty genius thing to say.

The barflies goaded me to say, “Chowdah,” and would giggle. I informed them with perfect diction that though I work in Boston, I grew up in Connecticut. Jerry the Mick sang in his Bing-Crosby-on-whiskey voice, “Chooowwddah.” I told him he’d make a good Boston cop, and he sang, “Please halt ye merry gentleman...” Jerry went out and bought chicken wings next door, as well as chicken quesadillas for Mike and me. I offered to buy him a couple beers in return, but he went into the back room with the pool table and started snoring.

Unfortunately Mike the Proprietor could tolerate no jukebox music distracting him during the Cubs game. The instant the Brewers finally got the last out I was up at the box with 7 credits, the selection cards flapping, a DJ gleam in my eye. I played “Spanish Harlem”, “Green River”, “Spanish Caravan”, and “Stoned Soul Picnic” amongst other tunes, and so impressed the crowd at the Home Tavern that I was immediately approached and offered a job.

The man was one Chef Moses. The job was $12. an hour plus gratuity to be his head waiter at the Riverside Café. He told me to meet him there Sunday for brunch. Well, I didn’t know if Moses was desperate or drunk, but I did find out he has a nineteen year old girlfriend from Boston. I went back to his house with him following the “job interview” to score something, but ended up only with a ride back to Luis’ crib. I was pushed reeling out the door of his brother’s rusty purple car on the corner of California and the expressway. Scammed out of thirty dollars, there would be no brunch.

That Thursday night Luis came home from work and we lapped up cheeseburgers, more pizza-puffs and pop, put the Grind Date into the stereo and kicked back for a while. Let the heat and the light roll back like a tide into cool evening. Desdemona de Sade, also known as Anne, picked me up in her Mini Cooper around eleven. We went to Neo, a nightclub with a serious eighties night.

We pushed past the bouncers into the dark throbbing place, a mix of Goth and Culture Club. The DJ was talking over the last beats of a song. Next thing I knew he was introducing the Smiths. I headed to the bar... memories of Andar the indie emo animal and his Smiths presentation at Columbia College with my friend Austin... and that one night we all chilled to play “the song game” and he played the Smiths over and over... how he overlipped the pipe like a fallace. I drank rum and orange juice and let the acidity salve my intestines.

Desdemona introduced me to all her cute ex-boyfriends and I was a tremendous dancing machine. She danced in high heels, and I was impressed... but the dance floor crowd was very serious about their eighties music, and there were rules, too. Nothing from commercial radio. Most people wore black, but if not black, don’t be plain. Eventually I tired and sat down to close my eyes a minute. A bouncer asked if I was okay and Anne text-messaged my phone. I mumbled, “The airplane makes me sleepy, sir,” and started a conversation with a handsome guy sitting next to me. He of course turned out to be one of the ex-boyfriends. Anne drove us home.

Miles I walked Friday morning to get to my tree in Wicker Park... under which I sat and observed the park in heat. The dog park, fountain, baseball diamond, chess table, and my tree. The living tree that roots me to this shining city, that I sit under for shade and have drawn and finger-painted and that I dream about. I guess the insects really own the tree. They chased me out onto the grass in their biting and crawling attempt to annex my body to their trunk.

“I'm thinking Arby's because at least I know where I'm going to eat lunch today...” ran the television commercial. At least I... what? I worship Jesus because at least I know who I'm going to eat every Sunday, right? That's confidence. Plus at five dollars for five roast beef sandwiches... I'm thinking that's some cheap roast meat!

Friday early in the afternoon I left Wicker Park after hours of lying belly down in the grass and walked two blocks North to the Damen stop on the Blue Line and met my friend Ben. We walked the ten blocks back to his place through a blistering heat. On the way there he filled me in on the status of his horse and carriage operation.

Unfortunately the story involved businesses folding and pay cuts. Not as exciting a story as his one about the escapist horse that galloped full-tilt unbridled down the traffic-choked Magnificent Mile... but pay cuts are real, too.

Ben is a real Bob Villa type and at his apartment he showed me all the floors, frames and doors he replaced, the shelves installed, the walls repainted in solid colors, and a huge canvas hanging in his living room where he practices single stroke tags with spray paint. The apartment is a good metaphor for Ben the person: solid hard work with a creative reserve.

Luis picked me up in the Caddy from Ben's and we proceeded to the South Side to watch the Cubs game with Tony Tone. The AC was intense in Tone's crib in Pilsen, as was the interior decorating with near life-size family glamour shots... Nothing was as intense as the 72'' projection television three feet from our seats. It was the best place to watch the game but the worst (and first) game of the Cubs/Sox series to watch.

The Sox ran up nine runs in a single inning and we were about to bounce when Tone got a knock on his door. The knocker was Doctor Fern and his girlfriend. These are names they have given one another... I suggested that they all call me Arthur the Claw to blank expressions and dead silence. Well, the Cubs played shitty that Friday but at least I got to see Louey Lou Tubens jive talk that shit with Tony Tone and Doctor Fern... three stylin' the trifecta.

Luis was fiending mashed potatoes so we said peace to the boys and sulleyed forth to find some. At the joint we ate half a chicken each with double mashed potatoes, and I asked questions relating to the Chicken Chronicles. Those are the multi-chaptered chronicles of Luis Tubens as a youth in Shurz High School spearheading a plot to release live fowl into the hallways. I bet that our two chicken halves, if left uneaten and properly rejoined, would have reconstituted the body and blood of that first chicken released into the wild hallways of Shurz.

After chickening our intestines we went to Logan Square to visit with Luis' grandma and because she has an air-conditioned toilet available always for her grandson. Luis plans ahead and kills many birds with his stones. While he was in there I amused his grandma with my lack of Spanish skills, and dramatic reactions to the Spanish soap opera on TV. It was nice to see her, and even though she is always talking some jive shit about me in Spanish that grandma makes the best rice and the best spaghettis in Chicago.

Luis' uncle Lucito has a common law wife. This has always made me stop to think. Anyway he was on the way over to Grandma's house so that Luis could drive him home in the Caddy. Because it was so freakin' hot out we went out looking for him on Milwaukee Avenue, but the man was not in sight, so we returned to Grandma's and there he was on the sidewalk, ready to go not to his home, but to the supermarket.

So he got in the backseat and Luis drove him to Aldi's for some juice or pop or something. I couldn't tell what the hell the man was talking about because his mouth runs a mile a minute. The Puerto Rican Boomhauer communicates through a gumbo of English, Spanish and auction-talk. It's like a whole other language that Luis can usually understand, but that Friday the heat had fried his lips or something.

“Cha cha cha cha cha cha cha, man...” said Lucito as we pulled into the Aldi's parking lot. “Mmmhmm... bet,” said Luis as he parked the car. I shrugged my shoulders. Silence from the back seat. “Cha cha CHA cha cha CHA cha!” screamed Lucito. Luis twisted around in the leather seat. “What?!” Lucito got his pops, juice, sandwiches or whatever. We drove back to his place, and he hit Luis up for loot and whatever else.

Back at the crib relaxing Friday night, Luis fielded calls from several girls and used me as an excuse for why he couldn't get up with them. I was the happiest boy in the world for that, because it was high time for Tubens time. We chilled out and, in time, we passed out.

Saturday morning I woke up with clumps of Huey hair blocking my nasal passages, which I picked out, balled up and ate, washing them down with Dunkin' Donuts coffee. I demanded a Bizmark donut (the sprinkled powdered pastry puff with jelly AND crème inside) from the girl at the register but she didn't believe that such a thing existed, pointed instead to the Manager's Special, a frosted crueller. To the woman's disbelief I whipped out my wallet and showed her a picture of my Bizmark, named Danny, who weighed about two hundred fifty pounds last time I saw him.

Luis and I took the Caddy over to Victor's place, to the alley in the back because Luis loves to drive down alleys and honk on his way back out. We met Victor in the alley behind his house and he gave us each a dub handshake. Victor is a sharp young fella.

After that business it was time for a barbecue with Luis' dad side of the family. We almost didn't go because of the dubs and Luis' ambivalence, but made it down there after a phonecall. We drove over to Riits Park where I was introduced to that side of the Tubens tribe for the first time. The stepmom, Lydia, was very kind and fed us more chicken and ribs and salad than we knew what to do with. Well, I knew what to do, which was eat everything offered, but God forbid Tubens ingests some salad or anything green. We threw around a football a while and bounced so Luis could get ready for work.

Late that afternoon while Luis tended bar at a Mexican Fine Arts Museum event I busied myself with a trip to Radio Shack up on Belmont. I bought a couple wires and brought them home and with just a couple wires I retooled Luis' stereo system, amplifying signal reception, boosting the bass and connecting the turntable. I showered and got myself cleaned up for Anne's graduation party that night. I put on my new blue jeans and aftershave.

Desdemona had people come over at ten but I ended being an hour late for my El mistake of transferring deep downtown in the Loop instead of taking a bus over to the lake. Sparkling clean in my new blue jeans I did show up eventually and offered Anne a congratulatory bottle of scotch. Just to freak people out I drank a sort of dark rum liqueur called Tattoo with orange juice... a concoction resembling grey iced coffee.

Anne and her chataholic friend Adriana had both dyed their hairs and looked fabulous with the new 'doos. Adriana is one of the chitchattiest people I've met, which can only be a good thing, unless there is friction which is when it gets ridiculous! Her friend Cindy told a story of how she once woke herself up sleep-shouting, “Adriana! How could you say that!” in the middle of a dream. People have been traumatized by Adriana's mouth. At some point the swing on the front porch collapsed, crashing to the floor under the weight of three butts in a scene that harkened back to the party porch collapse of a few years ago.

Tubens appeared magically floating in the air, Indian-style. I grabbed him and dragged him to the other end of the house, the back porch, where blazin' seemed a little safer. A curly haired youthman stormed into our session and declared that the Cubs suck and how big a Sox fan he was. Tubens magically defended the Cubs (who beat the Sox on Saturday) in a spirit of calm maturity, setting a fine example that sent the youthman a yard or so farther down the puberty path. As a street attorney, I too understand that no bad vibes over sports are to be seriously fought over.

The party Saturday night was all good. Luis and I rode home in the Caddy feeling fine, well and fit. We talked about how we'd be in Michigan the next day. What we didn't know was that the Caddy wasn't feeling so fine, well and fit, that I had left my cellphone behind at Anne's house, or even where and what Holland, Michigan is... What this all meant was still hidden behind the curtain Saturday night and we slept like babies in the AC, Baby Huey attacking Luis' feet.

We woke up groggy and slow in the Sunday humidity. Crawled out of bed and into the Caddy. Luis wanted to get some Harold's Chickenshack chicken but found out they were closed. Thank God, I didn't want to share a car with a bucket of chicken for three hours under the blazing sun. We rolled through Church traffic to a gas station down by 20th Street. Instead of fried chicken he geared up on transmission fluid, engine oil and Super gasoline. I had black coffee.

We piled back into the Caddy stopping only to Map Quest the driving directions to Holland at the Museum. Then we hit the open road. It was South down past 100th Street where we picked up the Skyway and disappeared into an ant-sized speck on the map following a razor-thin ribbon under the power lines, into the factories and fields of Indiana, the rural Midwest...

The Caddy was full-tilt cruising, the white-walls wailing the concrete expressway, and we bowled past the Welcome to Michigan sign. The sky was blue and the fields golden, yet iridescently shining every color, an organic oil spill. Windows were rolled down, hip hop blasted on the speakers. Both of us were loose yet focused, smoking: Pall Malls, two joints...

“Hey Luis.” I remember I said, “Do you hear a noise? A rattling or something?” Luis turned down the music and we both listened attentively. Nothing but the white-walls smacking the pavement. “I guess I'm just paranoid, sorry about that...” Before I could finish my apology the tire blew out with a bang. Luis fought the car over to the side of the highway.

I met Luis' distressed look, in silence he opened the driver's side door and leapt out to take a look. As he did an object leapt from his lap halfway to the double yellow line of the highway. An R.V. hauling a trailer ran it over at eighty miles per hour. “What was that?!” I yelled over the roar of the traffic. “Shit! That's my cellphone, dude!” In disbelief I got out the car and helped Luis retrieve the pieces. We reassembled the phone but the thing would not recover. Luis' phone was dead, the tire was messed up, and the temperature was in the hundreds of degrees.

The tread of the tire had shredded somehow. “I hope it wasn't the strut,” Luis said. I looked at him and he looked at me. Obviously, neither of us knew the difference between strut and shinola. I groaned and told Luis I'd call up our ex-roommate in Holland, tell him to come pick us up. I began rifling though my bag for my cellphone. I rifled and rifled... no cellphone. I had left the thing at Anne's the night before. We were fucked. With mighty stoicism and the calming help of the joints, I leaned back into the hot leather of the passenger seat to wait for the cops to arrive...

“You know,” Luis broke the silence, face caked with sweat, “The tube of the tire is intact.” I got out and watched him drive slowly through the weeds alongside the expressway. It was true. The tread had blown out and shredded but the tube was miraculously intact. “Okay,” we agreed, and drove bumpily at twenty miles per hour with emergency flashers on, back onto the shoulder and down to the next exit.

Off the expressway at last we pulled onto a road from our directions called Blue Star Highway, to a gas station and a Burger King. It was Sunday so the mechanics were all in Church or drinking beers at home. The car limped to a parking place.

At the gas station we got loads of quarters and brought them over to the pay phone. As Luis and I are both children of the cellphone generation and have no memory of friend's numbers in our brains, we made no calls. Instead we took the quarters over to the Burger King, where Luis ate the biggest singular burger meal I have ever witnessed at the King. I had a single cheeseburger.

Back at the gas station we found the Caddy with the flashers still on. I took some pictures, as a record in case we were found dead. We tested it a little more, detected no leaking air or rubber rubbing, and decided to drive the last fifteen or so miles into Holland, Michigan on the bare tube, at fifteen or so miles per hour. And that's what we did.

Holland is a mixed up Midwestern city, sprawling yet small and subdued. We pulled the Caddy up to the curb on treelined twenty something street across from some tennis courts. Luis knocked on Jacob's door. The address matched our Map Quest and the thumping bass corroborated, as our former roommate is a bassy DJ. Olive skin and curly black hair, thick lips spread to show his teeth, his face appeared behind the screen. After hugging Luis he walked us down the street to his girlfriend Branis' house for a birthday barbecue.

Jacob and I had a falling out two years ago in the Chi and hadn't seen or spoken to one another since. Still, the chill lasted less than a minute in the heat. In no time we were chilling, what with the temperature and the chicken. Luis ate more chicken on a shishkebab spire and I chainsmoked and talked to people.

A curly blond boy from Tennessee had brought along a game called Cornhole. Cornhole is the type of game only simple Southerners could create, but its a lot of fun, too. There are two ramps about twenty feet apart, each with a hole near the top. Teams of two take turns tossing beanbags (or cornbags, literally) back and forth for points. One point if the bag lands on the ramp, three points a cornhole. Every time one of the Midwestern boys hit a cornhole they'd holler, “Yakem!” For reasons never explained.

Everyone at the barbecue took turns at Cornhole, ate chicken, played dominoes, and drank beer or wine, while Tom Petty spun on repeat. I had a couple of beers, chainsmoked and listened to the life story of Jugs, a mother of three who cries at sermons. “I'm not religious, I'm spiritual,” Jugs insisted, as she explained how she cried at Church every Sunday and how much her three children love Vacation Bible School. “My husband is a deep sea diver and he's always away.” She told me how valuable every human life is. How children in Burma get sold to slavery for three dollars but are as valuable as you and me. Jugs said she didn't know much about me but then I couldn't get a word in edgewise.

Eventually the backyard BBQ broke up with the birthday broad Brandis bellowing, “Saugatuck!” and the boys, girls, Luis, Jacob, Jugs and I jumping into various cars and heading out to a bar which, ironically, was right down the Blue Star Highway from Burger King and the gas station that been our oasis in the Midwestern desert just that afternoon.

The bar was overpriced and weird, with dead cats hanging from the ceiling. Dead cats spinning lazily like ceiling fans. Luis actually choked down a rum and coke. That may or may not have emboldened him to the point of mocking the White Sox Believer woman bartender, when it was found out that the Chicago Cubs beat them mightily that Sunday afternoon, and had thus closed out the weekend series two to one in enemy turf. Luis never drinks, and it was his one and only.

I drank a little scotch and chainsmoked staring at the dead cats, as I savored smoking indoors. Our hosts, Jacob and Brandis, got pretty tipsy and led us from our barstools out to the streets of Saugatuck to inspect other bars, which were all closed. We packed up from the dead cat palace before closing time and got back to Jacob's pad, where he spun us some records before he headed to bed.

That left Luis and me in the living room with roommate Mike who took over on the turntables and a square-shaped Indian/Mexican American guy named John on the loveseat watching Ultimate Fighting Championship. Luis and I sat on opposite ends of the longer couch, overcome with post traumatic stress disorder, beats, and beatdowns.

Later that night we played Cornhole in the front yard by the illumination of John's headlights with his car stereo softly spitting hip hop. At the closing time we found our way back into the dark house to our opposite ends of the couch. Luis and I slept by reclining back into the brown leather. John stayed up real late, watching from the loveseat as a Japanese pro wrestler slowly took out the legs of a Danish kickboxer.

We left the house in the Caddy around nine Monday morning, moving appropriately slow for a Monday morning. After several service stations we located one that had the right size tire. “Half an hour,” the mechanic said. “I love mechanics,” goes Luis, “They're just doing it! They don't even talk to one another, man.” Jacob responded that who he really loves is Luis' uncle, Lucito, on the basis of his common law wife. “Shit,” said Jacob. “If I could get a woman to live with me and do all that and not have to marry her I'd do it. I respect that shit.”

We had these conversations while walked across major roadways and expanses of suburban big box landscaping for food at Craig's Cruisers. Of course Craig's wasn't cruising at that time of day, so we crossed another street to get to the Arby's in the Big Kmart parking lot. Arby's was closed but the Big K was wide open, but upon inspection lacked the requisite Little Caesar's. We went to the supermarket and I got a pop.

Drank it while we trudged across the parking lots and the street separating us from OK Tire, where the service was complete. “Thirty dollars,” said the mechanic, and Luis paid up. He wanted to go get some breakfast and celebrate the low price of the fix. “Thank God it wasn't the strut,” I pointed out. The Cadillac made it to a restaurant breakfast joint in a strut, and we ate eggs. “Would you boys mind not cussing so much?” asked the waitress, twice. Luis dropped less F bombs and the waitress dropped the check.

Back at Jacob's crib we rolled up a Phillie and got down for the rest of the morning. Eventually we packed up our things and got going. But as we headed for the door Luis was seized by a passion and he hit one massive bowl of water in the kitchen, with a half Coke bottle bobbing in it, tip covered in aluminum.

Luis started up the Caddy and we were on our way back to Chicago when we realized that we'd missed a crucial left turn, only blocks from Jacob's. After we turned the car around, I noticed a police cruiser coming straight at us, and told Luis. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and the cops must have seen that when we were at a stop sign across from one another. They turned around, got behind the Caddy, and turned on the flashing lights...

“Shit, I have a suspended license,” said Luis, which kicked off our tour of the Holland Police Department. For some reason we were handcuffed and brought in to the slammer in separate cruisers. The cops locked me in jail and threw away the key, but I slid my ATM card out to Luis from under the crack. Once they had their money, they had no choice but to let us go. There was a man in that jail, suffering under a blanket, next to a massive pile of Burger King wrappers. Once in a while the blanket would lift up and you could see his forehead; bruises and blood.

We got the hell out of there, drove straight back to Illinois in stone coldsilence. The shining city never looked so pretty, or treated us so well by comparison. “What else do the cops do out there besides profiling based on seatbelt laws?” asked Luis. We listened to the Drive, and the oldies soothed our pain.

That evening we had two more half chickens to fill the void created by that contact with jail. Then we drove over to Anne's to retrieve my cell phone, but met a dead end on one of Luis' alleyway jags. After three successful alleyways we simply hit a parking lot between buildings, and had to turn around.

“Don't go down there, it's a dog path,” I said of a skinny driveway leading out of the parking lot, the only other exit. Luis tried but the car wouldn't shift, at the exact moment I said this. He would later claim that this moment came to him in a dream, but it was like a nightmare. The Caddy was again out of commission. We pushed the car out one thousand feet out of the alleyway. More accurately, I pushed and Luis steered. Pushing together we physically paralleled parked on the street. That was the last time I rode in the Caddy.

Anne came to the rescue, scooping us up in her Mini Cooper, after we called her from a payphone. Luis got her to take him to T Mobile and replaced his cellphone there with contract extension. Anne invited us over to hang out for a while, which we did, where I got my cellphone and said peace to her and Adriana. That night I got the farewell dub shake from Victor, and Ben came over to say goodbye. Baby Huey, Luis and I slept in the sweet A.C., sweet home Chicago.

In the morning I was on a plane back to Connecticut. Upon landing the captain gave clearance to re-activate our cellphones. I saw I had a message: “Arthur, how you doing? This is Chef Moses. Hi, I just found your number. I couldn't find... I couldn't remember where I wrote it down that day... Ohh... let's talk buddy...”