Big Mike: Don Belton Lives

Anybody who wonders why Don Belton is dead — and there are plenty here in Bloomington, Indiana asking just that — should know that he died for somebody else’s sin.

Let me amend that — he died for a lot of people’s sins.

I never met Don Belton but I’m told he dropped into Soma Coffeehouse now and again. I sit at Soma every morning, clacking away at these keys, trying to leave something worthwhile for people to discover and read long after I’m gone. That’s the driving force behind many writers. If it drove Don Belton, then he succeeded in his life.

He wrote constantly, maybe even compulsively. There are two types of writers on this Earth — those who sit in front of that blank screen and feel paralysis and those who feel paralyzed when they’re not tapping or jotting away. Don Belton seems to have been the latter type. Me? Only in recent years have I joined the compulsive club. I spent too many years grappling with faulty brain wiring before I finally found enough peace to begin really writing.

When I was younger, I always envied my contemporaries who could produce on demand. People like Benny Jay and Amy Krouse-Rosenthal, people with talent and wit, smart people, sensitive and eager to share what they’ve learned about this crazy, mixed-up world. They seemed to be putting something new out every other day. Oh, I’d produce for a few months at a stretch, then I’d go through an equally long stretch sitting paralyzed in front of that blank screen.

So my journey from there to here has been, well, a long story. Don Belton’s story must have been just as lengthy and circuitous.

Don Belton was a man as well as a writer. The man had just met someone who made him swoon. He said so in the last of the hundreds of daily journals he’d kept throughout his life. He’d met someone, he scribbled, who made him happy.

Boyce, the computer geek who often sits next to me at Soma, tells me that whenever Don Belton walked into the place, he lit it up with his smile. The few pictures I’ve found show him to be a handsome guy who looked about twenty years younger than he was. I could imagine his smile making someone’s heart beat a little faster.

How much was he smiling from the time he met this new someone until he hit the kitchen floor a couple of days later? I hope a lot of people saw that smile. It would have been a beautiful parting gift.

Don Belton was an assistant professor in the English Department at Indiana University. He wrote the novel “Almost Midnight,” edited the journal “Speak My Name: Black Men on Masculinity and the American Dream,” and contributed to dozens of magazines, newspapers and literary compilations.

Who wouldn’t want to meet and spend some time with a fellow like that? Who wouldn’t be infatuated? Heck, I’m straight and Don Belton looks to me as if he’d be a hell of a catch!

Maybe when I was younger and not yet settled down with The Loved One, I’d even hope to have a fling with him. I’d been around the block a few times during my 20s and 30s. I wasn’t averse to pushing the boundaries of my sexuality. Once I asked one of my platonic gay pals, How do I know I’m not gay? He said simply, Who do you want to kiss passionately, a man or a woman?

That question was a good enough answer for me. There’s nothing in the world like kissing a beautiful woman. It can make me high as a kite for days afterward. Kissing a man? Meh.

Many people, though, would react a tad more strongly to the idea of kissing someone of the same sex. Some people even get angry just thinking about it. Others become so enraged that they lose their minds.

And some people hear two voices in their heads. One tells them that they want to passionately kiss someone of their own sex. The other tells them that if they do, they’re going to burn in hell, they’ll be worthless little shits, their lives will be ruined. That voice sometimes tells them they ought to beat the living bejesus out of anyone who succumbs to that temptation. Punish them. Break their heads. Make ‘em bleed. Kill ‘em.

It’s a Christmas party. Don Belton is the host. A handsome man. Young looking. Smart. Interesting. Accomplished. Utterly likable. People gravitate toward him. Imagine a young man in his early 20s seeing Don Belton for the first time. Perhaps this young man has been fighting temptations for a long time. Maybe he even joined the US Marine Corps to prove to the world as well as to himself that he was a real man and not some worthless little shit who wants to kiss fags.

Perhaps the alcohol is good. Everything feels comfortable and warm in the host’s home. Perhaps the former Marine forgets he’s supposed to fight off all those temptations that have been crowding his mind for too many years. Perhaps he falls into Don Belton’s arms after the last of the guests have gone home.

Don Belton’s so happy he crows about it in his journal. He’s high as a kite for a couple of days because he has passionately kissed a beautiful man. That beautiful man, though, might be stewing. He is a worthless little shit who kisses fags. And it’s all Don Belton’s fault for being so attractive, so inviting. God damn him.

But sometimes god works too slowly. Sometimes, we have to do the work of god ourselves. The beautiful man visits Don Belton at his home. The next day, one of Don Belton’s friends discovers him dead on his kitchen floor with a half dozen stab wounds in his back.

The next book I read will be “Almost Midnight.” Don Belton’s gone. I never knew him. But he’ll come alive as I read.

And the next time some son of a bitch tells me gays don’t deserve to marry each other or that their homosexuality is wrong or sick, I’m gonna tell him to go fuck himself.

Benny Jay: That’s Pathetic

I’m sitting round the kitchen table with Kiki, a friend of my older daughter, and we’re playing the pathetic game.

That’s the game where you swap stories to see who was more pathetic back in the day. It’s an easy game to play. You might want to try it. Lord knows, we all qualify.

She gets off to a strong start, telling me about how she used to pay some kid named Kevin to do her math homework. It was freshman year of high school; Kevin had just moved to town from India. He barely spoke English, had a heavy accent. But he was a whiz at math. She paid him five dollars an assignment.

“Five dollars?” I ask.

“Five dollars,” she says.

“You should have called me. I’d have done your math homework for $4.50 — saved you some money….”

He’d do her homework in the lunchroom or during homeroom. By the way, she wasn’t his only client. Other kids were buying his homework-doing services, too. He probably thought he’d landed in the richest – and dumbest – country in the universe, if ordinary working-class kids could afford to pay him so much money to do something they could have just as easily have done by themselves.

“That’s pretty pathetic,” I say.

“I know,” she says.

“But not as pathetic as this….”

I tell her how I used to hang out in my bedroom, listening to the local rock `n roll station unveil the week’s top ten songs. I’d keep track on a piece of paper. The deejay would say something like “at number ten `Only the Strong Survive’ by Jerry Butler.” And I’d write: “10.) Only the Strong Survive by Jerry Butler.” And so on and so forth right on down to number one.

“This was your freshmen year of high school?” she asks.

“Actually, I might have done it through sophomore year….”

“Oh, my goodness….”

When the countdown was over,  I’d take that piece of paper and store it in a plastic three-ring notebook I kept on the bookcase by my bed. I still had that notebook when I went off to college.

“Really pathetic,” she says.

“For all I know it’s still in my parent’s attic….”

“But not as pathetic as me paying Kevin five dollars to do my homework….”

“Okay, well, how `bout this?”

When I wasn’t sitting in my bedroom listening to radio count downs on my transistor radio, I was sitting in that same bedroom listening to Bulls games on that same transistor radio and keeping track of the score on another piece of paper that I filed in another three-ring notebook.

“No….”

I tracked everything – shots taken and made, points, rebounds, assists, steals, block shots, etc. This was back before the Internet – way before the Internet – so my running track was pretty much the only compilation of who was doing what on the Bulls.

“Now that’s pathetic,” she says.

But, wait – it gets worse. During breaks in the game I’d write down the names of my favorite Bulls. Bob “Butterbean” Love; Chet “the Jet” Walker; “Stormin’” Norman Van Lier. Just write them down – sort of like doodling.

“You wrote their names on a piece of paper?” she asks.

“Yes….”

“Why?”

“I dunno — cause I was pathetic….”

“Wow….”

I sit back in my chair, like I’m proud.

“So what’s more pathetic?” I ask. “Me obsessing over the Bulls or you giving some kid five dollars to do your math homework?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ll have to think about that….”

“Let’s just call it a tie….”

Big Mike: A Whale Of A Guy

In the late 1990s and early 00s, I never felt happier than when I was at the Whale. Despite the fact that it was on the edge of the grim, grimy, semi-industrial wasteland that separates East Pilsen from Bridgeport on Chicago’s south side, and the fact that the noisy, filthy Dan Ryan Expressway loomed overheard a couple of hundred yards to the east, the Whale was heaven.

The place was located on the southeast corner of Halsted St. and Canalport Ave, across the street from a taco joint and next door to a pest exterminator. It was a beige aluminum-sided two story storefront with an apartment on the second floor. Its exterior walls came right up to the sidewalk.

When you turned into the alley behind it, though, you’d see the delightful little courtyard with ivy-covered walls it enclosed. Any night, as long as it wasn’t sleeting or frigid out (and, occasionally, even then), there’d be a circle of local artists and other no-goodniks sitting around a fire pit, drinking Negra Modelo or Maker’s Mark, waiting for the spare ribs to be ready.

The Whale was home to an artists’ collective that I was fortunate enough to be invited to join back in January, 1998. We were wood carvers, sculptors, bass guitarists, painters, song writers, poets, storytellers, film and video directors, modern-day Rube Goldbergs, performance artists, and others who couldn’t fit in anywhere else except with a bunch of rag-tag creative types.

On that frigid Sunday night I was wasting time at Bic’s Hardware Cafe when a tough-looking character came in, tapped me on the shoulder and told me to follow him. What with the filterless Camel dangling from his lips and his calloused hands, I might have figured he was a bill collector but, fortunately, I’d seen him around the neighborhood now and again. This mug, named Tim, loaded me into his car and told me not to ask questions. Then he drove me into the alley behind the Whale. We entered the place and I found it filled with people, just finishing up a sumptuous pot luck meal.

Several of the people surrounded me, dancing and laughing. They placed a titanic sombrero on my head and covered my shoulders with an old velour cape. One guy handed me a long, bent pipe brush and said, “This is your scepter.”

He continued: “Welcome to the weekly meeting of the Ever-So-Secret Order of the Lampreys. You’ve been selected as our adjudicator. It is your duty to judge the art that’s been made over the last week by our members. Tonight you are all-powerful. You are a deity. Wield your power wisely.” He motioned for me to sit in a chair.

For the next two hours, I watched and judged as some two dozen sculptures, drawings, paintings, poems, and musical pieces were paraded before me. I don’t recall ever having much more fun.

Immediately after the festivities were completed, the guy who’d handed me my scepter stripped off my royal raiment. “Now you’re nothing,” he shouted gleefully. The mug named Tim, a Camel still dangling from his lips, smirked. “Now you’re just like one of us,” he said. I couldn’t wait to come back to the next Sunday night’s meeting.

As the weeks passed, I found myself spending more and more time at the Whale. I’ve only felt at home twice in my life: Now, in Bloomington, Indiana (imagine that — Bloomington goddamned Indiana!) and then, when I was spending every possible free moment at the Whale.

The Whale, by the way, was also a man’s home. The fellow who’d anointed me adjudicator that January Sunday night? He was Kenneth Morrison, the Perle Mesta of East Pilsen. He’d throw a party to celebrate anything, up to and including the sunset. And there’d always be more food and booze than an army could consume. Twice a year, in June and October, Kenneth’d put on a pig roast, a two-day long fete that drew hundreds of neighbors, hipsters and artists from all over the city. There’d be dancing and drinking starting on Saturday afternoon when he’d put the pig over the coals and live music all through the next day. Oh, and the famed belt sander races would put an exclamation point on the weekend on Sunday evening.

Kenneth opened his home and his heart to anyone who was in need. And, believe me, in the artists’ enclave of East Pilsen, there never was any shortage of people in need. Kenneth opened up his wallet and bailed me out of a tough scrape once. A few weeks later, I confessed it’d take me a while to pay him back. He said, “Forget it. Consider it a gift.”

I could have kissed him. Nevertheless, a year later I squared my account with him. “What’s this for?” he said, looking at the nine C-notes I placed into his hand. “I told you it was a gift.”

Now Kenneth’s in need. The Whale burned down this month. He and his tenants, good old Nat from The Hideout and Michelle, are now couch surfing. They lost all their clothes and keepsakes. All the art that ever was brought to the Lamprey meetings has been destroyed. I cried when I heard the news. I cried for the art. I cried for the memories. But most of all, I cried for Kenneth, one of the best guys I ever met.

All the good that Kenneth ever did is being repaid in spades. The neighborhood is rallying around him. It’s called love.

Kenneth figures he’ll rebuild the Whale. If he does, I don’t doubt he’ll throw the party to end all parties.

Letter From Milo: The Aristocrat House (final pages of the 1st chapter)

Here are the last few pages of the 1st chapter of “The Aristocrat House,” in which Uncle Rudy learns one of life’s great lessons (see the last sentence).

The Aristocrat House

The bump on the head seemed to calm Uncle Rudy down. He sat up and looked around curiously, blinking his eyes, as if he had just awakened and was confused about his whereabouts. His chafed, swollen and bleeding face had a placid expression that slowly turned to a look of great sadness. Shaking his head and sighing deeply, he rose unsteadily to his feet and stumbled into the kitchen.

I followed him into the kitchen, just in case he attacked Vivian again. I didn’t know how I could stop him, or even if I could stop him, but I knew I couldn’t let him do anything more stupid than he had already done.

Uncle Rudy ignored Vivian, however, and went directly to the sink, where he turned on the tap and began splashing water on his abused face. After gingerly patting his face dry with a paper towel and lighting a cigarette, he turned to Vivian and said, “Viv, baby, we can work through this. It was just a little misunderstanding.”

Still seated on the floor and crying, Vivian blubbered, “Get out! Just get out!”

Trying to compose his battered face into a smile, Uncle Rudy replied, “Come on, honey, be reasonable. Every love affair has its rough spots.”

Vivian looked up and laughed bitterly. “Are you crazy! Get out before I call the cops.”

“Baby, baby, there’s no reason to…”

“I mean it! I want you out of here.”

Uncle Rudy tried to turn on the charm. “Sweetheart, you mean the world to me. What about all those great…”

“If you’re not out of here in 10 minutes, I’m calling the cops.”

“Ok, ok,” Uncle Rudy said, holding out his hands in supplication. “If that’s the way you want it.”

“10 minutes or I’ll have you arrested for stealing from me,” she said, angrily. “And take that pimply brat with you,” she added, unnecessarily, I thought.

20 minutes later we were driving away from Vivian’s, all of our belongings stuffed into the trunk or piled on the back seat. Uncle Rudy had pinched a couple of whiskey bottles before we left and had one propped between his legs, sipping from it as he drove.

“I can’t believe that one-legged cunt had the nerve to throw me out,” he commented, morosely. “And just when I was getting close to her money, too.”

“What makes you think she had any money?” I asked. I wouldn’t have guessed that Vivian had any real money. She dressed plainly, lived in a small apartment and drove a car that was three or four years old. If she had any substantial money, she hid it well. It seemed to me that she was just a lonely woman, desperate for company, who had run into some bad breaks, one of them being Uncle Rudy.

“Think about it,” Uncle Rudy continued. “She must have gotten some compensation for that leg. They’ve got laws in this country. You lose and arm or a leg on the job, they’ve got to pay you for it. I bet she was sitting on 10 or 15 thousand dollars.” Wistfully, he added, “You know what I could do with that kind of money?”

He drove a while in sullen silence, muttering and drinking, no doubt thinking about the fortune that had just slipped through his fingers. After working his way through a third of the whiskey bottle, he seemed to snap out of his self-pitying funk.

“It just goes to show you,” he said, ruefully, his words beginning to slur. “A woman doesn’t need two legs to walk all over a man.”

Benny Jay: Tyrus Thomas Comes Back

I’m in a restaurant with my family — parents, wife, sister, kids — talking about this and that….

I feel a buzz in my pocket….

It’s the cell phone — some one’s sending me a text….

Discreetly, very discreetly, I reach into my pocket, withdraw the phone, flip it open and look down to see the message…..

“Tell Deng to stop shooting that damn jump shot”

It’s Norm and he’s speaking in a Bulls code that only we understand. He’s assuming that I’m watching the game — cause, what else would I be doing? — and he’s assuming that I’m upset cause Luol Deng, the starting Bulls forward, is settling for jump shots instead of driving for the basket.

I assume this means the Bulls are losing. They’re always losing. Even when they’re winning. Like Monday. They had a thirty-five point lead in the third quarter and lost the game. I don’t want to talk about it. How can you blow a thirty-five point lead? I still don’t want to talk about it. It’s cause they didn’t have Tyrus Thomas. He got hurt — broke his arm. Has been out for six weeks. Or has it been seven? I love Tyrus Thomas. If they had Tyrus Thomas, they wouldn’t have blown that aforementioned thirty-five point lead I don’t want to talk about….

“Excuse me,” I say.

I get out of my seat and walk across the restaurant to the bathroom. It’s a pretty clean bathroom. One urinal. One stall. I look around. No one there. Just to be sure, I bend down and peer under the stall. No feet. Good. I take out my phone. I punch in Norm’s number. I write: “whos winning wats score im at a restaurant”

Oops. The door opens. Someone comes in. I hastily turn and face the urinal, like I’m taking a leak.

“Hey,” says a voice.

“Hey,” I say back.

He goes into the stall.  He starts taking a leak.  Geez — he sounds like a freaking race horse.

The phone buzzes. It’s a return message from Norm: “Bulls up 14 3:00 left n 3rd”

I look around. The guy’s still peeing. I type back: “good keep me posted”

I keep up the role play — splashing water on my hands — as if Secretariat over in the stall gives a damn about me.

I go back to the table. I take my seat. There’s a bunch of conversations happening at once. I’m thinking — it’s probably the fourth quarter. They probably blew the lead. Just like on Monday. God, how the hell did they blow a thirty-five point lead? I don’t want to even think about that game….

Bzzz.

The phone.  It’s Norm. Got to be. Who else? He’s sending an update. The game’s over. Must be. If I look at this message, I will know if the Bulls won or lost. The answer’s in this phone. Good God, the suspense is killing me….

Discretely, I take the phone out of my pocket, flip it open and look down:

“bulls win by 11 tyrus hits 20″

“Yes,” I softly exclaim.  “Yes….”

Outside the restaurant, I tell my sister: “Bulls won….”

“So,” she says.

“So, they’re coming back….”

“They suck….”

“No, they don’t….”

“Yes, they do….”

“No, they don’t….”

“Bulls suck, Bulls suck….”

Ah, yes, another fun-filled exchange with my sister. Sometimes I think we were put on earth to torture one another. Isn’t that what all siblings are for?

But it doesn’t really matter cause — guess what? Tyrus is back and the Bulls won…..

Big Mike: Funny How?

Been reading T.J. English’s book, “Havana Nocturne,” about the Mob’s control of Cuba during the Batista years. New York’s Meyer Lansky and Tampa’s Santo Trafficante, along with a few lesser gangland lights, had a strangle-hold on the gaming and hotel businesses in the island’s capital city in the 1950s. Hoping to turn Havana into the Monte Carlo of the Caribbean, they funneled untold millions into the pockets of dictator Fulgencio Batista and his cronies even as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and their gang slept on the rainforest floor in the mountains of eastern Cuba, waiting for a chance to oust the repressive regime.

Reading about the Mob — real history and not cinematic mythology — always unsettles me. Whenever people speak of mobsters, they titter and almost seem nostalgic for the days of Vito Corleone’s sponsorship of Johnny Fontaine (intentionally portrayed to suggest Frank Sinatra), the Chicago Outfit crowning Jack Kennedy president or even Tommy DeVito challenging Henry Hill by saying, “Funny how?”

The romance created by Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorcese aside, the mob was a terrifying bunch of sociopaths. No matter how elegantly Sam Giancana dressed, or how efficiently Anthony Accardo and Murray Humphreys ran their corporate empire, they still would have no second thoughts about bashing a guy’s skull in with a baseball bat.

I lived among mid- and lower-level Outfit soldiers in Chicago’s northwest side. In my neighborhood, virtually every block was home to several juice collectors, union goons, bookies or policy operatives. They wore pricey Italian knit sweaters and gleaming Stacy Adams shoes. They drove shiny Buick or Cadillac convertibles and decorated their homes for the holidays with more lights than can be found on the national Christmas tree in Washington, DC.

To the immediate south and west, the real big shots of the Outfit — Accardo, Giancana and others — lived in regal suburban homes among “respectable” neighbors like bank presidents and corporate execs.

Surrounded by these dirty guys, my pals and I viewed them with nervous humor and not a little bit of awe. We all dreamed of driving shiny Buick or Cadillac convertibles as soon as we got our drivers licenses. And any time we could, we joked about Mobsters.

For instance, there was a kid named Renaldo Collera, Ronnie for short. He was a sweet guy, wouldn’t hurt a soul, but he was strong as an ox. He was the best athlete among us. He could run like the wind, hit the ball a mile, throw perfect spirals and sink baskets from halfway to Elmwood Park. A Sicilian, Ronnie had a shock of curly hair so wild that it stood straight up even in a mild breeze. For this and his physical attributes, we called him The Jungle Man.

Poor Jungle Man. When we were in eighth grade, his daddy-o made the papers. A clerk in the City Collector’s Office, Salvatore Collera handled liquor license applications. It seems he’d handle some applications in a far more timely manner than most, primarily because those particular applicants had wisely given him generous cash gifts. Unfortunately for The Jungle Man’s pop, the US Attorney took a dim view of such largesse and prosecuted him. Sallie Collera eventually was invited to spend a few years as a guest of the federal Bureau of Prisons.

One hot afternoon, after playing hardball in the Lovett School field, we were walking toward The Jungle Man’s house where, he promised, he’d mix up some Wyler’s lemonade for us. Suddenly, a long, black Cadillac squealed around the corner. Fat Marc, sweaty and panting, hollered out, “Take cover! It’s Sallie Collera! It’s a mob hit!” The rest of us leaped into the bushes as if for protection, screaming in laughter. That is, the rest of us except The Jungle Man.

“You fuckin’ assholes!” he yelled.

Fat Marc called out from the bushes, “Hey Jungle, whattsa matter with you? You wanna get hit?”

“Stop it, you jags!” The Jungle Man demanded, his eyes filling with tears.

Naturally, we could no more stop it than we could stop ourselves from breathing. The Jungle Man stomped off. “Yo Jung,” Banana Nose Joe called out, “what about the lemonade?” The Jungle Man flashed the finger at us without turning around.

We laughed ourselves silly for the next few minutes. After catching his breath, Banana Nose Joe suggested we run over to Connie’s Italian Beef, pick up some real lemonade and bring it to The Jungle Man. Within an hour, we were all sitting on The Jungle Man’s stoop, sipping lemonades and making fun of Banana’s nose and Fat Marc’s weight.

The Jungle Man was smart guy. The next time he saw a long, black Cadillac while we were all together, he yelled out, “Take cover!” All of us — The Jungle Man included — leaped into the bushes as if for protection. We roared doubly hard that time and The Jungle Man had preempted any further teasing about the Mob and his daddy-o.

Funny thing is, no official had ever accused Sallie Collera of Mob connections. But what with The Jungle Man’s Sicilian roots and the fact that Sallie was a convicted felon, well, we felt compelled to make the connection.

We’d have never made fun of guys whose fathers really were connected, guys whose fathers’ pictures were regularly in the papers. We weren’t interested in having our jaws broken or worse. We’d all seen the deep purple blood stains on sidewalks where real Mobsters had been hit.

Randolph Street: Highway 61–End Of The Road

Christmas–Percy, Mississippi

Little Man–Blue Grass Iowa

Tractors–Lancaster, Wisconsin

Cotton Candy–Grandview, Iowa

Shoes–Percy, Mississippi

Road’s End–Thunder Bay.Ontario

This concludes my personal look at Mid-America. Shot between 1976 and 1985, these were taken along the approximately 1700 miles of US Highway 61 that follows the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Minneapolis, then to Duluth and along the western edge of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay, Ontario.  All photographs © Jon Randolph