March 11th, 2009
The first week The Loved One and I lived in our current home, we witnessed a manhunt out our front window. That was two years ago. The manhunt, believe it or not, finally came to a conclusion last week.
We’d bought our house in June, 2007, in a little town called Murray Hill, population 630. It’s a bedroom community built on the rolling hills of an old potato farm in the early 70s. Fences are banned, contributing to a more collegial atmosphere. Rather than chat with my neighbors over the fence, we mosey out in the middle of the undulating greensward between our homes. No one really knows where one property ends and another begins.
Murray Hill for a brief period of time had it’s own little private police force even though the worst crime in these parts was when someone’s dog left a pile of Lincoln Logs on someone else’s lawn. The private police force was quickly voted out when it became clear the only thing the officers were doing was ticketing residents for rolling through the stop sign.
The place was considered so safe that many people kept their garage doors open and even left their back doors unlocked. That is, until recently.
That’s why it was so shocking when, on a July Sunday evening two years ago, The Loved One and I were aroused by the sound of a police helicopter overhead. Murray Hill Pike was teeming with citizens carrying flashlights and holding back dogs straining at their leashes. One neighbor who’s a Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy rode his bicycle up and down the pike wearing flip-flops, a T-shirt, cutoffs, and his holstered service revolver.
I asked my new neighbor Captain Billy what was wrong. “Ah, some little son of a bitch broke into somebody’s house,” he said. “The woman left her purse near the window and the kid musta saw it, broke through the screen, reached in and took it.”
The Loved One and I chuckled. It was as though we were now living in Mayberry.
Ever since then. I’d been hearing about the Burglar Who Was Terrorizing The Area. Word circulating through the crowd at Dick’s Pizza was that people were beginning to shut their garage doors and lock their back doors. It wasn’t quite the reaction Chicago had when Richard Speck was on the loose for four days in July, 1966, but it would do for a small town.
Then one night last week as I sat at the bar at Dick’s enjoying a diet cola, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Mayor Judy. She’s actually the garbage commissioner of the adjoining town of Goose Creek but she gets a kick of me calling her mayor.
“Didja hear?” Judy exclaimed. “They caught the burglar!”
Suddenly it was as if a cloud had been lifted from over Dick’s. I could have sworn there was merriment in the air. Everybody started talking at once.
Here’s the story as Mayor Judy told it: “Yeah, they caught him. Just a kid from down near Westport Road, you know, where it’s not so nice. They got him on 61 counts. He’s been doing it for years. He says he was doing it to support his family’s drug habit. He doesn’t do drugs himself. He wasn’t hurting anybody, just reaching inside most houses to grab money or a purse.”
Later, I caught
the story on the local news. It seems the lad, 22, was less than superlative as a desperado. Toward the end of his reign of terror, he would swipe keys from some houses and then drive the victims’ cars home. When the cops started finding the stolen cars in the same neighborhood, they figured they knew where he lived.
One night last February, he broke into a home in St. Matthews, sat in the living room, turned on the TV, and ordered some cable porn. He sat there for more than an hour hoping the residents, who were upstairs sleeping, would come down and shoot him. He was tired, he later told the police, of his life of crime.
The kid got tired of waiting for the residents to come down and put him out of his misery so he walked outside and hailed a cab to take him home. He paid the fare using money he’d grabbed from the house.
He’s in custody now. Murray Hill, Goose Creek, Barbour Meade, and the other villages of the East End are now safe. Still, I don’t think people are going to be leaving their back doors unlocked again.
March 9th, 2009
In the middle of the day, I get my Younger Daughter out of school and drive her to the orthodontist.
While she’s getting her braces removed, I’m killing time at Einstein’s bagel shop — head down, lost in thoughts, jotting notes to myself, concentrating on the words — when I hear her call my name.
I look up and I see her only I have to look twice to make sure it’s really her. It’s like I dropped her off when she was 15 and suddenly she’s 17.
“I look older, don’t I?” she says.
I’m not sure what to say, so I try to say something funny: “Okay, that’s it — we gotta watch out for those boys….”
“Dad….”
“The horny bastards….”
“Oh, my God….”
“Did your older sister give you the older sister talk yet?”
“You are so weird….”
Back in the car, heading for school, I’m feeling like time’s passing too fast. I’m heading into a new phase of life and I’m not sure I want to get there.
Then “Southern Man” comes on the radio.
“Yes!” I exclaim.
I crank up the dial and sing along. I know the words so well, I’m like Pete Seeger leading the crowd through “This Land is Your Land.” I call out the line before Neil Young sings them: “`I see cotton and I see black….’”
“He’s talkin’ about slavery,” I say.
“`Tall white mansions and little shacks….’”
“Tell it, Neil, tell it….”
“`Southern Man when will you pay them back?’”
I’m slamming my hand against the steering wheel in beat to the song….
“`I hear screamin’ and bullwhips crackin’ — how long, how long, ahhh!’”
“He’s not even singing anymore. He’s so mad — he’s just howling. You tell `em, Neil!”
We stop at the light. “Listen to the guitar solo — it’s blind rage!”
I’m doing a wicked air guitar. Got my left hand working the frets and my right hand picking the strings. I’m playing note for note with Neil Young. At some point I switch to air piano, banging the imaginary keyboard. Then I go back to guitar. Man, I do it all….
When the song’s over, I’m almost exhausted.
“Good song,” says my daughter.
“God, I love Neil Young,” I say. “He’s one of the only old rockers who gets better with time. Like John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan — especially Bob Dylan.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence. At the school, she flashes me a no-braces smile and says, “thanks, dad,” as she hops out the door.
“Don’t forget to watch out for those boys,” I yell. But she’s gone so fast she doesn’t hear a word I’m saying….
March 9th, 2009
In the late 1970′s and early 80′s I had a little problem with cocaine. I wasn’t the only one. In my social circle the drug seemed to be everywhere. At the parties and gatherings I attended there were more runny noses than in a classroom of first graders during cold and flu season.
At the time there was a lot of misinformation being spread about cocaine. It wasn’t addictive (bullshit). It was great for your sex life (occasionally). It was as harmless as reefer (what a crock of shit). The truth of the matter is that cocaine ruined lives and killed people. And when some genius figured out how to distill the essence of cocaine and turn it into crack, well, you’ve read the papers.
My coke connection was a guy I’ll call Gary. He had been a pot dealer for years before adding coke to his inventory. He had an apartment about half a block from Wrigley Field, and I used to spend a lot of time there, getting high, listening to Gary’s extensive record collection and chatting with his clients when they stopped by to pick up an ounce or two of weed.
I met a lot of characters at Gary’s place. He had been around a long time and had collected an interesting customer base. A lot of theater people and musicians were regulars, as were a contingent of Lincoln Avenue hippies and barflies left over from the 60′s.
The only thing that changed when Gary started dealing coke was that he began making more money. He still liked having people around and was very generous with his product. There were always joints available and a few lines of white powder and a rolled-and-taped hundred dollar bill on a small mirror he kept on his coffee table.
One of Gary’s customers was a guy named Walt, who tended bar at popular local jazz club. I happened to be at Gary’s one day when Walt called and said he was going to stop by. When Gary got off the phone, he was as excited as I’d ever seen him.
“Man, oh, man. Guess who’s dropping by?”
“I heard. It’s Walt, right?”
“Yeah, guess who he’s bring with him.”
“Prince Charles?”
“Dexter fucking Gordon.”
“The saxophone player?”
“One of the greatest ever. The fucking guy’s a legend. Fuck, man. Dexter Gordon.”
It just so happened that I had read about Dexter Gordon in the Tribune that morning. He was making his first American tour in 30 years. Like many American jazz men, Dexter had been an expatriate for much of his career. The expatriates left the country for many reasons – racism, greater financial opportunities, drug problems. Sadly, in Dexter’s case, it was drugs. America’s drug laws were brutal in the 40′s and 50′s, when Dexter was in his prime. Instead of treatment, addicts were locked up for years, doing hard time just for having “marks,” which are the scars left by hypodermic needles. For a better idea of the drug hysteria of the time, read “Straight Life,” the biography of another brilliant saxophone player, the great Art Pepper.
Dexter Gordon was an impressive looking man. He must have been in his late 50′s or early 60′s, but looked younger. He was about 6’5″ tall, a light-complected black man with freckles and closely cropped red hair. He looked a bit like the photos I’d seen of Malcolm X. When he spoke, his voice had a growl like Louis Armstrong.
Dexter was warm, open and talkative. We discussed all sorts of things, the upcoming Chicago Jazz Fest, baseball (he was a Mets) fan), a recording date he was planning, his performance that evening. He spent about three hours with us. I don’t recall everything we talked about, but I do remember that Dexter snorted about two grams of coke.
The man was snorting coke as quickly as Gary could dish it out, and, as I mentioned, Gary was generous with his drugs. I did my share but couldn’t keep up with Dexter. He wasn’t a Hoover, he was a Black and Decker Industrial Strength Wet/Dry Vac. Even Gary was impressed by the amount of coke Dexter was putting away.
It was a pleasant afternoon, one I’ll never forget. When it came time for Dexter to leave, he thanked Gary profusely for his hospitality and invited us to his show. He said he’d leave comps with the bartender.
Due to extenuating circumstances, I didn’t make it to the show, but I made it a point to read the Tribune the next morning to see if there was a review of Dexter’s show. There was indeed a review. I don’t remember the exact wording of the review but it went something like this.
“I am in awe of Dexter Gordon. His career, once derailed by drug addiction, is back on the fast track. The show he put on last night was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Now that Dexter has put his drug problems behind him, his playing is better than ever,”
It did my heart good to read that Dexter Gordon had given up drugs and straightened out his life. Good saxophone players are hard to find.
March 8th, 2009
Friday was a very special sports anniversary. On March 6th, 1973, New York Yankees pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich announced to the world that they’d swapped families. Yep, wives, kids, and – as every news report was obliged to mention – even dogs.
How weird were the 1970s? I grew up in the era. As a 17-year-old in 1973, I concluded that sex of every stripe and variety was my birthright. And that wasn’t just because my glands were pumping out male hormones like a kegger on St. Patrick’s Day but because I’d taken a look around and seen my fellow citizens humping like toy poodles.
I also was a relatively well-read kid so I kept up with every advancement made by one oppressed minority or another. This new era thrilled me. Blacks were slowly but surely gaining rights and opportunities. Women were standing up. Gays and lesbians were peeking out of the closet.
I wanted in on the party so I searched for the ugly brutality that had been keeping me down. I longed to thrust my first in the air and declare death to The Man. Unfortunately, I was a white male growing up in a middle class family in a comfortable bungalow. There wasn’t a right or privilege envisioned by Jefferson or Douglas or Freidan or even Abbie Hoffman (my idol – I insisted my friends call me Abbie) that I did not already possess. I was in no position to fight The Man; I was only a couple of years away from becoming The Man.
But I was a clever revolutionary tyro. Why, I’d simply become a member of an oppressed class, like magic! So I pondered who I should become. I had a beard worthy of the Smith Bros. so telling people I was a woman was out. My hair was kinky (my grade school nickname was Nigger Hair) and I became rather dark in the summer but I realized few would believe my ancestors came from the Ivory Coast. Then it hit me.
I’d discovered Woody Allen‘s movies around that time. He not only talked openly about being a Jew but he elevated Jewishness to an art form. And, yeah, I had the kinky hair. That’s it – I’m a Jew!
The fellows at my Roman Catholic high school were immediately skeptical when I adopted a trace of a New York accent and interspersed my conversation with Yiddishisms. One Friday in the lunchroom, my pal Bronson (who’d taken his nickname from the motorcycle-riding drifter in the television show “Then Came Bronson“) ran up and told me he’d gotten tickets to see the bands War and Parliament at the old International Amphitheater that night.
“Let’s go, Abbie,” he gushed. “It’s gonna be dynamite!”
“Oy,” I moaned. “If only I could. Such a drive! And the noise! You want I should have a headache for the next three days?”
“Abbie,” Bronson said firmly, “you’re not a Jew.”
My face turned red. After a beat, I admitted in a low voice, “I know.” Thus ended my flirtation with the tribe of Abraham.
Next, I decided to become gay. Well, not in practice, for god’s sake. Only in my public pronouncements. And not fully gay either. My pals and I were sitting on a bench in Amundsen Park, palming a joint, when I blurted an announcement. “I gotta move down by the lake,” I said, trying to keep the toke down. “Gotta be around my own kind. I’m bi.”
This statement was met with less than rousing enthusiasm. In fact, later that night, Fat Marc, the toughest guy in the neighborhood and heretofore one of my best friends, blackened both my eyes.
Finally I concluded I was sexually oppressed. Heterosexually oppressed, that is. After all, I thought about the subject night and day yet I was no nearer to tasting its pleasures than I was to leaping to the top of the new Standard Oil Building. Society was keeping me down, man! This sick, repressive, puritanical country was denying me my basic right to ecstasy. I was ready to take to the streets.
No matter that I was a gawky, pimply-faced dweeb with moves that would have made Julius Kelp look like George Clooney. That wasn’t keeping me chaste. It was The Man.
Even though I had all the zeal of a newly converted revolutionary, I still couldn’t get laid. But I talked a great game. I announced that I planned to have sex with as many human beings as possible. I’d do it in beds, on kitchen countertops, in parks, on sunlit hills, in misty forests, in luxury hotels, in confessionals, in the soup aisle, and in the bleachers.
Especially in the bleachers. It would combine the two loves of my life – baseball and sex. I might be assumed into heaven had I the opportunity to display my swordsmanship under a blanket in the sparsely populated centerfield bleachers. Heck, the camera might even catch me at work and Jack Brickhouse might say, enviously, “Now there’s a young man who knows what he’s doing!”
It was at this time I read about Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich. They and their wives had attended a wife-swapping party one night and gotten into the spirit of things. Next thing they knew, each had fallen in love with the other’s mate and vice versa. Soon, the moving vans were on the way.
Sportswriters and other establishment types had apoplexy. The world, they predicted, was about to spin wildly out of its orbit. I loved it. Peterson and Kekich became my favorite baseball players.
They knew how to stick it to The Man.
March 6th, 2009
My Younger Daughter and I are driving over to North and Halsted to pick up a package from a friend.
I pull to the side of the road, get the package, and prepare to drive off, when I get a call on my cell phone from my Older Daughter in Iowa who’s in tears cause she only got a C plus on her college term paper.
I tell her to calm down, a C plus is not the end of the world. It’s a lot better than, say, a D or an F….
I’m trying to be funny, but she doesn’t laugh. Nothing I say consoles her. I can hardly even squeeze in a word, cause she’s going on and on about how she wants to be a good writer, but she’ll never be a good writer no matter how much she tries — and she really tries — and it’s soooo unfair!
Meanwhile, my younger daughter, is irritated. “C’mon — let’s go,” she says. “I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat….”
So I tell my older daughter: “Look, I gotta get your sister something to eat — I’ll call you back….”
And she says: “She comes first — she always comes first. You don’t care about me….”
“How can you say I don’t care about you, I’m listening, right?”
“Oh, thanks,” she says, really sarcastically.
I get this idea. My younger daughter — who has her permit and is learning to drive — takes the wheel and I sit on the passenger’s side. That way we can drive to the restaurant and I can talk to my older daughter.
As my younger daughter grips the wheel and bravely plows ahead, my older daughter goes through her paper. It’s about Barack Obama‘s now-famous campaign speech on race relations. And she’s literally reading it line by line: “Reverend Wright put Obama in a tough situation….”
“What do we do now?” asks my younger daughter, as we pull up to the intersection of Halsted and Division.
“Go left,” I say.
“What?” asks my older daughter.
“Nothing,” I say. “I wasn’t talking to you….”
“Are you even listening?”
“Yes, you’re talking about Reverend Wright….”
We approach the intersection of Clybourn and Division. “Now, what?” asks my younger daughter.
“Turn left on Clybourn,” I say.
“Left?”
“Yes….”
“You got to say it louder,” she says.
“Louder?”
“Are you listening to me,” asks my older daughter, “or are you listening to her?”
“You — I’m listening to you. Always. I’m all ears….”
She continues to read her paper about Barack Obama and Reverend Wright.
We approach Southport. “Which way?” asks my younger daughter.
I cover the phone’s speaker and say: “Left….”
“Left?”
“I mean, right — right. God, why do I say left when I mean right?”
“Huh?” asks my older daughter.
I’d taken my hand off the speaker. “Nothing,” I say. “It sounds fine….”
“You’re not really listening — you’re just saying that….”
I’m starting to get irritated: “I’m listening, for God sakes. It’s a fine paper. Don’t worry about it. For crying out loud, it’s not the end of the world — it’s just one paper. You’ll do better next time. Writing is like shooting baskets. The more you do it, the better you’ll be….”
“Right?” asks my younger daughter. “Do I go right?”
Now I’m starting to get irritated at her: “Yes, you go right. You know you go right. Why are you even asking directions? You grew up in this town….”
“Don’t yell….”
“I’m not yelling….”
“Yes, you are yelling….”
“Are you listening to me?” asks my older daughter.
“Yes — yes. Practice. Remember, practice….”
She hangs up. My younger daughter pulls behind a dumpster about a half block from where we plan to eat. I scan the sidewalk for no-parking signs. All clear.
I close my eyes and take a breath. God, I need a drink — and I don’t even drink. I step out.
“Are we too far from the curb?” asks my daughter.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I can walk to the curb….”
I smile to myself. It’s been thirty years since I first saw “Annie Hall,” and I’m still stealing lines from Woody Allen….
March 6th, 2009
I haven’t lived in Gary, Indiana since the late 1960′s, but the town still has a grip on my imagination. There was a time, in my early teens, when I thought it was the greatest place on earth. It was a crude, tough, smelly, violent town, open 24 hours a day to accommodate the shiftworkers at the local mills and foundries. A person, if so inclined, could find a meal, a drink, a card game, a joint, uppers or downers, or a piece of ass any time of the day or night.
Both my Parents worked odd hours so parental supervision was close to non-existent. I had the run of the streets and I took full advantage of my freedom. I wandered around at all hours of the day and night, going places and seeing things that no 13- or 14-year-old should go or see. My favorite part of town was the tavern district, a wild and woolly neighborhood where anything went. It was a decadent, noisy, chaotic neon wonderland of saloons, greasy spoons, poolrooms, private gambling clubs, whorehouses, pawnshops, and of course, a bail bondsman.
There was even a clothing store I’ll call Tom Smith’s. It sold the cheapest, ugliest clothes imaginable. The only reason the store was succesful was that it would give anyone credit. Any unemployed mope with a bad credit history could walk into the place, agree to pay 225 percent interest compounded daily and walk out wearing a purple shark skin Nehru jacket, pointy-toed patent leather shoes with Cuban heels, and a stingy-brim hat with a jaunty feather in the band. The only reason I mention the store is because of its garish neon sign. In my opinion it displayed one of the great advertising slogans. It read, Tom Smith’s Fashions, Rome, London, Paris, Gary.
As I mentioned, Gary was a tough town. Steelworkers took pride in working hard, playing hard, and fighting hard. In fact, the best street fighters attained the status of local heroes. Their exploits passed down for generations (a Gary generation lasted about five years). Great street fights were recounted endlessly, dissected, and analyzed the way Big Mike and Benny Jay can break down a Cubs game.
“Pete would have had him if Don didn’t kick him in the nuts.”
“Well, that’s part of it. No rules in a street fight.”
“That’s not the point. Don just got lucky. Pete was kicking his ass.”
“Final score is all that matters.”
“If they fought 10 times Pete would win nine of them.”
“Unless he got kicked in the nuts.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“You are.”
“Well, fuck you.”
“Fuck you, too.”
“You wanna go outside?”
“Anytime, punk.”
Every tough town idolized its street fighters. In his wonderful book “Manchild in the Promised Land,” the great Claude Brown devoted pages to rhapsodizing about Harlem‘s storied street fighters. My friends and I would spend hours talking about our local heros – who was tougher, who could kick whose ass, was size more important than speed, how important was getting in the first punch. Street fights were our epics, our Trojan Wars and Waterloos. In our minds, the combatants were idealized and adored, blue collar Achilles and Hectors, who worked at U.S. Steel and drove Chevys instead of chariots.
When I was a kid I could count on seeing a good street fight once or twice a week. But times have changed. I haven’t seen a street fight in years. Men don’t settle their differences with fists anymore. Nowadays they’re more like to settle their disputes with Glocks or assault rifles.
It’s a different, more dangerous world. I remember when it all changed for me, back in the early 1970′s. I didn’t personally witness this incident but I got the story from several occasionally reliable people who claim to have seen it.
Crazy Ray Volk and Skinny Johnson had a beef. They were both infatuated with a go-go dancer who worked in a bar that Skinny Johnson managed on U.S. 20 in Gary. It was a love triangle played out on a very mean stage. The dancer led both men on, apparently enjoying the attention. The two men, however, weren’t satisfied with sharing the dancer’s, ah, charms. Each wanted her for himself. The they had several confrontations, exchanging insults and the direst threats.
One evening Crazy Ray showed up at the bar with a pistol. Skinny Johnson saw Crazy Ray coming at him and dove behind the bar where, coincidentally, he also had a pistol. Crazy Ray began firing at Skinny Johnson. He must have been drunk because he was fewer than 10 feet away and missed all six shots, firing until the pistol was empty. When he realized that Crazy Ray’s pistol was empty, Skinny Johnson stood up and fired twice, hitting Crazy Ray in the chest with both shots. Skinny must have been sober because it was a fine piece of shooting
As Crazy Ray lay dying he uttered a few last words. Legend has it he said, “Damn, I wish I would have brought my other gun with me.” RIP Crazy Ray.
If there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s that street fighters can lose a fight and live to battle another day. Losers of gunfights are generally one and done.
March 5th, 2009
Tuesday was Trivia night at Dick’s Pizza. Skip the Trombonist, my usual teammate, had to substitute for Andy the Trivia-meister, who was busy helping an old pal settle into alcohol rehab. I have a lot of trouble with Skip’s questions whenever he fills in but I’m an ace when Andy runs the show. Andy and I must have similar interests. I do know this: we both have copies of the “New York Times Almanac” in the bathroom. Perhaps Skip doesn’t read in the bathroom.
Anyway, I was happy to be out from under the sobriquet, Team Gorlock. The name was Skip’s idea. He’s a devotee of ”The Colbert Report.” Gorlock, a character on the show, is Stephen Colbert‘s lawyer.
Since I was playing alone against five other teams, I chose the moniker Frankie Machine in honor of one of Chicago’s greatest authors. That was the lead character’s name in Nelson Algren‘s book, “The Man with the Golden Arm.”
I quickly found myself firmly ensconced in second place. Here’s a sample question: What do Karl Marx, Bob Dylan, and Sonny Liston have in common? (Answer at the end of the post.)
I sat next to a garrulous young couple – a pretty woman and her athletic-looking partner. She’d struck up a conversation with me before the game started, asking about the crossword puzzle I was doing while I waited. She proceeded to tell me her name was Natasha, that she was an accountant, that she’d been born in Guyana, that she was highly ambitious, and that she’d lived in Orlando, Florida until recently.
Natasha asked me what I do. When she learned I’m a writer a lightbulb flashed on over her head. “Do you write biographies?” she asked.
“I’ll write anything as long as the money’s right.”
“Have you ever heard of Dee Brown?”
The name sounded familiar. I remembered that Dee Brown had written “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” one of the seminal consciousness-raising Native American books of the 1970s. “Yeah,” I said, “I think so.”
She pointed a thumb at her escort and said, “Here he is.”
I recoiled a bit. Dee Brown, I figured, ought to be pushing 100. Natasha noted my puzzlement.
“You know, Dee Brown,” she said. “The basketball player. He won the Slam Dunk Contest in 1991.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, but not too convincingly. The fellow appeared too callow to be even the younger Dee Brown.
A few moments later, I pressed Natasha, “So he’s really Dee Brown the basketball player?”
“Of course he is! Why would I lie? Do I look like a liar?”
I don’t know what a liar looks like but I do know Dee Brown was a star for the Boston Celtics in the 90s. Natasha introduced me to him with the preamble that I was a fine writer and would like to write a biography of him. I was about to say I’d expressed no such desire when the fellow clasped my hand eagerly and began telling me he was in Louisville to start up a basketball camp for youngsters. “Write a story about me,” he said, handing me his card. “Anything you can do will help.”
He and Natasha decided to play Trivia. They called themselves Royal Crown. Skip insisted on calling them Royal Clown. During the first round, I moaned out loud about the difficulty of the questions. “They ain’t so hard,” the fellow said. “I got at least six out of ten.”
“Six out of ten! You’re shitting me,” I blurted. I figured I’d answered only four correctly.
“Damn,” he said. “This is easy.”
Skip then announced the first round scores. The fellow and Natasha had answered only two correctly. “Aw, man!” the fellow moaned.
When the game was over, I’d finished in second place while Royal Crown was second to last. Still, the fellow pranced around the room high-fiving people.
And then, like that, the couple left. Someone told Jason the Bartender that the fellow was Dee Brown. Jason, a basketball fanatic, tilted his head. “Yeah?’ he said. “Didn’t look like him.”
My mind immediately flashed to a story I’d read in the papers last fall. A New Jersey man was arrested after spending the summer telling people he was the New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain. Apparently, his summer was packed with free drinks and food and more sex than he’d ever had before. The man was charged with criminal simulation and theft of services.
I fingered this Dee Brown fellow’s card. Could he be the real thing? I’ll let you know in a future post.
(Trivia answer: all three appeared on the Beatles‘ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album cover.)
