Benny Jay: David Copperfield’s Magic Trick
In the middle of the day, I get an email from my buddy Danny. The header says it all: “This will blow your away!!!”
Hmm? I scan down and come to an image of David Copperfield – you know, the magician….
There are six face cards – King of Hearts, Jack of Spades, King of Spades, Queen of Diamonds, Queen of Clubs and Jack of Diamonds.
“You can see six different cards,” the instructions read. “Think on one. Just think on it. Do not touch it. Do not click on it. I will find the card in your mind.”
I sit back. I wonder –is this some sort of Internet scam that will cost me money? Can’t think of how it could. What the hell — I pick the Jack of Clubs.
I scan down to another picture of Copperfield. “Now look straight into my eyes and think of your card,” the instructions read.
I’m like – I’m not going to look into your eyes. This is too weird. Then I think – just go with it. I look around my room – like there might be someone watching me. And then I look into David Copperfield’s eye and think: Jack of Clubs.
In my life, I know I’ve done dumber things….
Well, guess what? When I scan down, there are only five cards on the screen. The Jack of Clubs is missing.
What the fu….
A sucker’s born every minute….
I drop down to another picture of Copperfield. The message reads: “I do not know you. I could not see the card you have chosen. But I know exactly the card that is on your mind.”
I try it again – only with the Queen of Diamonds.
No Queen of Diamonds.
I call Danny. “Is this for real?” I ask.
“I’m telling you,” he says.
From the background, I hear Joan, Danny’s wife, saying something about telepathic rays.
“What’s she saying?” I ask.
“She’s saying the computer can read images off of your eyes,” says Danny.
“Read images off my eyes?”
“I didn’t say it – Joan said it….”
“A computer can’t read images off your eyes?”
“The way to test it is to put on sunglasses….”
“Sunglasses?”
“That way the computer can’t see your eyes….”
“Great idea!” I exclaim. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Down the stairs I scramble. Back I race with my sunglasses. “Okay,” I say.
“Got the sunglasses?”
“Hold on….”
I put on the sunglasses. I pick the Queen of Hearts. I look into Copperfield’s eyes….
“Oh, my God,” I say. “It works!”
“You mean, he couldn’t name the card?” says Danny.
“No, he named the card.”
“That kills the sunglasses theory….”
I hang up. I look out the window. I look at the computer. I get another idea. How about if I close my eyes all together? I’ll think of a card, but I won’t let him see my eyes? Oh, perfect – why didn’t I think of this before?
I run through it again. Only this time I don’t look into his eyes.
He still gets the right card.
Damn!
I call Milo. His specialty is scams….
I send him the email. I run him through the game. He picks the Queen of Hearts.
“Did it disappear?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says.
“See?” I say. “It’s fucking magic….”
By the way, I’ve been swearing more – under Milo’s advisement.
“Benny,” he says. “There’s an old saying – never bet on another man’s trick….”
“Huh?”
“Let’s say a man comes up to you, holds up a deck of cards and says — `I bet I can make a jack of clubs jump out of the deck and spit tobacco juice in your eyes.’”
“Yeah….”
“Don’t take his bet….”
“Why?”
“Cause you’ll wind up owing him money on the bet and you’ll have tobacco juice in your eye….”
“Huh?”
“It’s a trick, Benny. Just like this David Copperfield thing is a trick. And the guy running the trick knows he can pull it off of he wouldn’t make the bet.”
I tell Milo how I put on sunglasses.
There’s a pause. “You didn’t really put on sunglasses….”
“Well, ugh, actually it was Danny’s idea….”
“Benny – it’s got nothing to do with reading your eyes. That picture of David Copperfield can’t magically read your mind. It’s not magic. There’s no such thing as magic — only tricks.”
It dawns on me – I just might be the biggest sucker in Chicago. I decide not to tell Milo about doing the trick with my eyes closed.
“What does David Copperfield get out of this?” I ask.
“I don’t know, but you got to figure out he’s getting something. That guy’s one of the most successful entertainers of all time. He’s made like a billion dollars. I hear he owns an island in the Carribbean.”
“An island?”
“An island….”
“Wow, I want to own an island….”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. We got to come up with a scam like that for The Third City. As soon as we figure out how to cut Big Mike out of the money, of course….”
Fast forward twenty or so hours….
My cell phone rings. It’s Milo. He’s all excited. Like he’s figured something out: “Benny, here’s what you do. Look at Copperfield’s eyes and say, `I’m thinking of no card….”
“Oh, brilliant, Milo.”
I call up the e-mail. I look at Copperfield’s eyes. I say, “I’m thinking of no card.”
“What happened?” asks Milo.
“The Jack of Diamonds disappeared,” I say.
“The Jack of Diamonds?”
“Yeah — what’s that mean?”
“I don’t know….”
“You don’t know?”
“Yeah, I don’t know….”
“What do you mean you don’t know — you’re supposed to know this shit, Milo….”
“You think I’m as good as David Copperfield? That fucker’s good. That’s why he owns an island. I’m telling you, Benny — we play our cards right and we’ll own an island, too….”
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Big Mike: Black Comedy Excerpt No. 9 — Just For Us Girls
This is the latest installment of my novel-in-progress, Black Comedy. — Big Mike
Inner City Crime and Delinquency 190 let out some three hours ago, at 1:55. Anna’s been walking aimlessly away from Circle Campus since then. She’s made her way east on Harrison Street, past the Main Post Office and the B & O station, down to State Street. From there she heads north, past the strip joints and adult book stores between Congress and Jackson, across from the Sears flagship store and up toward Carson, Pirie, Scott and Marshall Field’s. She scuffs her heels as she walks, not even bothering much to look into the windows of the the department stores, with their mannequins sporting miniskirts and kicky gogo boots. A few days before she’d have stared at them and thought I’d look really sexy in that.
Today, though, she doesn’t feel sexy at all.
She continues north until she hits the river, then she takes a right and follows it past the Executive House to Michigan Avenue. She loiters a bit precisely in the middle of the Michigan Avenue Bridge , the part where the two leafs of the bascule meet, a three inch gap between them. Anna leans on the railing, her back to the sidewalk, looking straight down, through the gap. The dark alga-green Chicago River flows westward about 30 feet below, out from the lake, contrary to what nature intends and hydrodynamics demands.
She stares for long moments as the ceaseless clack clack clack of high heels passes behind her, the rhythm of high-heeled secretaries dashing from deli to office, say, carrying late lunches, probably thick pastrami sandwiches from Moe’s Deli on Wabash north of the river, for their bosses south of the river. Occasionally she hears the chink chink chink of the toe- and heel-cleated oxblood wingtips worn by porcine businessmen, lawyers maybe, whose caseloads are hefty enough for them to be able to afford offices nearby but not so hefty as to afford them the luxury of secretaries.
For the briefest of moments, Anna loses herself in the staccato heel music and the sight of the continuous flow below. She even forgets for a second or two the reason she fantasized jumping into the river when she found herself 30 feet above it.
Anna shakes her head clear. She remembers hearing that the bridge tenders in the towers pay special heed to pedestrians who linger too long on the bridge, gazing gloomily below. She looks up toward the north tower and sees a guy standing there, in the window, staring at her. One of tens of thousands of Richard J. Daley’s patronage workers, maybe even part of Alderman Rocco Bianco’s 36th Ward army, the man is visible from his breastline up, as wide as Two Ton Baker from the Riverview commercials, chomping a cigar like a fat bulldog worrying a biscuit. She waves to him as if to say, Hi, I’m fine, I’m not going to kill myself, honest! The man responds by puffing out a head-enveloping cloud of cigar smoke.
Space
Anna begins walking again, northbound still, past the gleaming new Equitable Building and the neo-gothic Tribune Tower. Without the hypnotic river serving to put her into an amnesiac trance, she thinks of nothing but the reason she actually did want to kill herself a beat before as the fat man with the cigar stared at her.
She pauses in front of Stuart Brent’s bookshop. A light autumn rain begins. She goes inside. She touches book covers displayed on tables. She scans the titles on shelves without seeing them. She comes to Modern Fiction. There, midway on the second shelf from the top, she sees Sex and the Single Girl. She read it last summer, before she began her sophomore year at Circle, before she met Chet, before…, you know.
Anna’d made sure she’d left her copy of the book out where Tree could see it. She’d left it on the end table in the living room. She’d left it on the kitchen table. She’d left it on her bed. Once she’d even left it on the bathroom sink. No one, much to Anna’s disappointment, had commented on it.
What wanted to convey was that she was a single girl. An independent single girl. A girl who could make her own decisions. A girl who could fend for herself. A girl who could have sex — even though she hadn’t yet. But she could.
Anna pulls out a copy of the book and leafs through it. She thinks: I wish I’d never read this damned thing. She carefully reshelves it and walks out of the store, rain or no rain.
Space
Now Anna finds herself at the corner of Walton and Michigan, peering through a hole in the construction barricade surrounding the John Hancock Center which will be the second tallest building in the world when it’s completed in late in ’68. Right now it looks like nothing more than a rust-colored Botero-designed oil derrick.
It is the most remarkable feature of the Chicago skyline already but for all Anna is concerned it may as well be an oak tree or a fire hydrant or one of those porcine businessmen with cleated wingtips.
In the thirty-five minutes it took Anna to amble from the Michigan Avenue Bridge to this spot she has been muttering, mantra-like, the words It can’t be, it can’t be.
Finally, after standing here not looking at the soon-to-be second tallest building in the world, Anna says to herself, Who am I kdding? I’m pregnant.
In short order, she makes a decision. For what she hopes will be the last time in her life, she will ask Ma for help.
When Anna makes it home, it is dark. Tree is washing the dishes. Even though she hears Anna come in the back door, she doesn’t look up from her suds.
“Hi, Ma,” Anna says.
At last, Tree looks up. “Oh, it’s you,” she says in her most practiced uninterested tone. “Dinner’s over. We waited but we didn’t hear anything. You don’t call?”
“I couldn’t call,” Anna says.
“They don’t have public phones anywhere anymore?”
“Yeah, Ma. They have public phones. I couldn’t find any.”
“Oh,” Tree says. She scrubs the cacciatore baking dish, her eyes slits, her mouth a pinched dot.
“Ma?”
“What?”
“We need to talk.”
“You should have called if you needed to talk.”
“Ma, enough. Don’t start with me, eh?”
“Alright, whaddya wanna talk about?”
Anna tells her. Throughout Anna’s monologue, Tree never once acknowledges a thing her daughter says. She finishes washing the last of the knives and forks, washes and rinses out the sink, hangs the dishrag up to dry, wipes her hands on the red and white kitchen towel, pumps a dab of Jergen’s in her left palm, and rubs her hands together. All the while, Anna pours her heart out. When both she and her daughter are finished with their respective tasks, Tree says, “Okay, that’s it. I’m tired now. I’m going to bed.”
And she leaves.
Anna remains sitting at the kitchen table with her mouth open.
Two days later, on Saturday morning, before Pa and Joey get up, Anna pads into the kitchen in her blue bunny slippers. Ma’s sitting at the kitchen table, sipping her black coffee and smoking a Pall Mall. Anna slips into the chair opposite her mother. Tree gets up, takes the Pall Mall butt out of her mouth, holds it under a thin stream of water from the faucet until it’s extinguished with a tiny phish, and tosses it into the garbage bag.
Tree reaches into the pocket of her robe and pulls out an enveloped before she sits back down. She pushes the envelope wordlessly toward Anna.
The envelope reads Trans World Airlines. Anna opens it. It contains two round trip tickets for TWA Flight 17 from O’Hare to Denver International, departure Monday at 6:30 A.M. and arrival back in Chicago Tuesday, 6:15 P.M.
Anna doesn’t ask what it all means. Colorado’d been in all the newspapers earlier in the year as the first state to relax its abortion laws.
Sunday, Tree tells Al she and Anna are taking a short trip on a plane tomorrow.
“Where you goin’?” Al asks.
“Denver,” Tree says. “It’s just for us girls.”
Al doesn’t ask any more questions. He’s smart enough not to want to know anything more about it.
Will the Denver jaunt make Anna any smarter? Tune in Thursday for the next installment of Black Comedy.
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Letter From Milo: The Chicago Chainsaw Massacre
A few years ago some rotten bastard broke into my garage and stole my chainsaw. It was a loss of staggering proportions. I have yet to recover.
Now, losing a chainsaw may not seem like much of a problem to the sissified, cheese-eating, ballet-going, opera-loving, Prius-driving readers of The Third City, but any real man will tell you that, next to castration, losing a chainsaw is about the worst thing that can happen to a guy. It’s like a Hell’s Angel losing his Harley or a bluesman losing his Mojo – the symbol of his manliness, the totem of his tribe is gone and a vital part of his spirit has vanished with it.
You see, over the decades and centuries, symbols of manliness are slowly being erased from human society. Trophy scalps are frowned upon, high noon shoot-outs on Main Streets are illegal in many municipalities, dueling scars are relics of another era, Detroit has not made a decent piece of iron since the GTO and high stakes poker is played by nerds on the internet. Even tattoos, which were once the province of sailors, circus freaks and wild South Sea Islanders, are as common as braces at Chicago’s Latin School.
In my opinion, the only remaining symbols of masculinity are power tools.
And the unrivaled king of power tools, the epitome of macho-osity, the defining symbol of manhood, is the almighty chainsaw.
Some of you may say, “As usual, Milo, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. A gun is much more of a masculine symbol than a chainsaw.”
Bullshit! The only thing a gun is good for is killing people and animals. You can’t cut down a tree with a gun. You can’t clear brush with a gun. Plus, has there ever been a better horror movie prop than a chainsaw? There is absolutely nothing better than the sound of a chainsaw sputtering into action for scaring the shit out of a bunch of horny teenagers camping in an isolated spot in the north woods.
Back in the days when I was still a proud chainsaw owner I would look for any excuse to use it. If there was no reason to use it I would take it out of the garage and mess with it – clean it, change the oil, check the spark plug. The smell of the chainsaw, a combination of oil, gas, grease and sawdust, was intoxicating. It sent my testosterone levels soaring.
Then when I was satisfied that it was in top condition, I would pull the ripcord and start the bad motherfucker. When it roared to life, the vibration of it ran up my arm, through my shoulder, down my side and settled in my nuts. It was beautiful.
I was a wreck in the days and weeks after my beloved chainsaw was stolen. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, and my already considerable consumption of alcohol and drugs tripled. The lovely Mrs. Milo, always sensitive to my every mood, and tenderly solicitous of my well-being, was worried.
“What the hell is wrong with you!”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Is this about that stupid chainsaw?”
“It’s more than a chainsaw, honey. It’s a symbol of…”
“Quit acting like an idiot. Just go out and buy a new one.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not meant to have a chainsaw. Maybe this is a sign from…”
“Oh, my God! You need serious help. Have you been drinking already?”
“I may have had a smidgeon of vodka with my bacon and eggs this morning.”
As the years passed I thought I had recovered from the emasculating loss of my chainsaw. But, then, something happened a few days ago that sent me back into the depths of despair.
An uncommonly violent storm hit Chicago, heavy rains, rumbling claps of thunder, lightning flashing as often as a disco strobe light, and winds that gusted to 70 miles per hour. Power went out in many parts of the City. Downtown office buildings had windows blown out. And trees were knocked down by the fierce winds.
On the block where I live, large branches were torn from the trees that line the street. It seemed that every yard was littered by broken branches, including mine.
Then, the morning after the storm, I heard sounds that opened a wound that I thought had healed. It was the sound of chainsaws roaring to life. It seemed that all the manly men on block — the accountants, the insurance agents, the lawyers, the hair dresser, and the restaurant owner – had pulled out their chain saws and were preparing to clean the debris from their yards. They were doing what men do best, fiddling with power tools and cutting wood.
And what was I doing? I didn’t have a chainsaw. There was nothing I could do.
I pulled the drapes, turned off the lights and retreated to the basement to lick my wounds and try to salvage the ragged remnants of my self esteem. That’s where the lovely Mrs. Milo found me, all alone, sitting in the dark, feeling extremely sorry for myself. She took one look at me, nodded knowingly, and patted me gently on my receding hairline.
“It’s the chainsaw thing, isn’t it?”
I didn’t bother answering. Who cares what a broken and defeated man has to say?
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Benny Jay: Game Seven
For Game Seven, I go to Norm’s, where the real battle’s going down.
Norm’s a Lakers man and I’m for the Celtics. Well, not really for the Celtics. I’m really for the Bulls. But of course since the Bulls aren’t in it – haven’t been in years, let’s not talk about it — I have to take a different stand and the stand I take is against the Lakers. Cause as you must know by now – I hate the Lakers!
Why the hate? Envy. They’re rich and beautiful and have the great West Coast lifestyle. And I’m neither rich nor beautiful and I live in Chicago.
Need I say more?
As for Norm, he hates the Celtics with a passion that’s so pure it seems to go back centuries, even though Norm can’t be much more than forty years old.
Why his hate? No reason really other than that’s just the way it’s always been.
When I arrive, I survey our crowd. Sandra – Norm’s better half – is for the Lakers (naturally). Cap and J Dub are for the Celtics (my brothers). J.R. – Cap’s older brother – says he thinks the Lakers are going to win. Which is an equivocation cause I didn’t ask him who he thought would win. I asked him who he wanted to win. Just goes to show you — you can’t make a man take a stand.
That leaves Ross.
“Lakers,” he says.
“Lakers?” I ask.
“I hate those mother fucking Celtics. I even hate that mother-fucking Leprechaun on their mother-fucking shirt.”
See what I’m saying. As the great Brian Scalabrine (more on him to come) once put it in regards to something else: This shit is ridiculous.
Anyway, the game starts and right away I’m complaining about Joey Crawford, one of the referees. I’ve got this notion – not sure where it comes from — that he favors the Lakers.
“Stop crying, Benny,” says Norm. “You already makin’ up excuses and your Celtics haven’t even lost. You keep crying, you’re gonna need a towel.”
Crawford calls a foul on Kevin Garnett.
“That’s no foul,” I say.
“That’s a foul, Benny,” says Norm.
“Look at the replay — he barely even touched him….”
“But he did touch him, Benny….”
“Barely….”
“A foul’s a foul, dawg….”
And so on….
With thirty or so seconds left in the half the Celtics bring in my man Scalabrine — the big red headed back-up forward who almost never gets a chance to play but always seems to have something to say. Which I guess is why I like him so much.
My man — Brian Scalabrine!
“Scalabrine’s gonna hit a three,” I say.
“Scalabrine ain’t gonna hit shit, Benny,” says Norm.
“Watch….”
“Scalabrine sucks, Benny….”
The ball comes to Scalabrine. He breaks for the basket. He’s gonna score! He….
Gets called for traveling.
Norm’s roaring. “That’s your man, Benny – Brian fuckin’ Scalabrine. He ain’t shit, Benny. I told you – Scalabrine sucks!”
“That wasn’t traveling,” I say.
“He traveled, Benny,” says Norm.
“That was Joey Crawford making another call for the Lakers….”
“There you go – crying again. We gonna have to get you that towel….”
Well, you know what happens. The Lakers pull away in the fourth quarter – like they always do. The low point comes late in the game when Sasha Vujacic –this bum of all bums who I absolutely, positively cannot stand for no other reason than he’s really good looking and he plays for the Lakers and he’s probably really rich and has tons of girlfriends — hits two free throws to seal it in the final seconds.
Norm’s man Sasha gets all the chicks….
Norm’s talking about Sasha this and Sasha that. Keeps calling him Sasha. Like they’re best friends or something.
And then – the clincher — Sandra leaves the room and comes back with a towel.
“Here you go, Benny,” she says. “Just in case you need to dry your eyes.”
Aw, funny – the whole family’s got jokes.
When it’s over I watch the celebration. Confetti falls, Lakers rejoice. Kobe hugs Ron Artest. Kobe hugs Phil Jackson. Phil Jackson hugs Ron Artest. Ah, geez, can’t take it anymore….
“They can celebrate this year,” I say. “But next year — it’s Derrick Rose’s turn.”
“Yeah, man,” says Norm.
“The Bulls are gonna sign LeBron or Bosh or someone. And we’ll be talking five peats.”
“I’ll drink to that, Benny,” says Norm.
We rise from our chairs, gather in a circle, raise our arms and clink our beer cans – To the Bulls!
Cause this Celtics/Lakers shit is temporary, but the Bulls are forever….
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Big Mike: Black Comedy Exerpt No. 8 — “We Gotta Put A Stop To This”
Al’s been trying to get Tree’s attention through three excerpts now. He wants to find out more about this Chet, this kid his daughter Anna is seeing, this kid who’s just been kicked out of Northwestern University for throwing a can of red paint at Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford. As if Al hasn’t got enough problems already. From the novel-in-progress, Black Comedy.
“TREE-E-E-E-E-E-E! Goddamn it!”
Tree jumps. The Pall Mall dangling from her lips falls onto the bedspread. Tree quickly brushes the burning butt off the bed.
“Jeez Christ, Al! Whatsa matter, you having a heart attack, god forbid?”
“Yeah, I’m havin’ a heart attack. You’re givin’ it to me. What the hell are you doin’ that you can’t hear me?”
Tree holds up her paperback. Al studies it for a moment. “The Valley of the Dolls,” he says. “Isn’t that smut?”
Space
“It is not smut,” Tree says, huffy. “It’s a bestseller.”
This Ain’t Smut — Look That’s Patty Duke On The Right!
Space
“Well lah de dah. Now answer me — who’s this Chet?”
“I’ll be damned,” Tree says. The very name makes her wince. “He’s that hippie bum that Anna’s going out with. This goddamn college crap. What the hell is a girl goin’ to college for? Chrissakes. She meets all these weirdos and pervs. And she thinks she’s gonna save the world. She can’t even clean her own bedroom.”
“Don’t start,” Al says.
“Yeah — ‘Don’t start.’ You’re the one that encouraged her. ‘Get an education. Get an education.’ Lotta good it’ll do her.”
“Tree….”
“Don’t ‘Tree’ me. Joey, god love ‘im, he’s the one that oughta be going to college. Poor baby. I don’t know what we did to deserve this.”
“It ain’t our fault, Tree. Sometimes god gives parents a special kid just as a test,” Al says. He looks down at the shag carpeting of their bedroom. He shakes his head — tiny little shakes. “Hey, this ain’t about Joey. This Chet — Anna serious about him?”
“How serious can a twenty-year-old be?”
“I don’t know, Tree. You were pretty serious about me when you were 20.”
“That was different. Times are changing,” Tree says as she lights another Pall Mall.
“So is this guy a hophead or what?”
“Naw,” Tree says. “Worse. He’s one of these radicals. I don’t know if he’s a red or not. He better not be or I swear to god I’ll have him thrown in jail.”
Space
“Hold on now,” Al says. “We ain’t throwin’ nobody in jail around here. He’s a kid. These kids have ideas and next thing you know they’re embarrassed they ever though of them.”
“He’s no kid. He’s twenty-two years old. He’s a grown man. And you’re awfully forgiving nowadays.”
“Anna’s got a good head on her shoulders.”
“Pshh.”
“What ‘pshh‘?”
“I’ll tell you what ‘pssh,’” Tree says sitting up. “That girl thinks she’s Princess Grace. She had everything handed to her on a silver platter. She never had to work a day in her life. She don’t know from hardship. She don’t know from nothing.”
Who Do Ya Think You Are, Princess Grace Or Somebody?
Space
Al’s shaking his head again. He’s heard this before. Maybe two thousand times before. Tree takes a deep drag and tries to continue. “These damned broads, they….”
“Whoa! Hold on there now. Our daughter is not a ‘damned broad,’” Al says.
“I know, I know. I don’t mean Anna. I mean the rest of ‘em. They’re taking the pill, they’re wearing miniskirts up to their necks, they’re going out with all these bums, they’re smoking this marijuana stuff. How they gonna raise a family? What’re they gonna tell their kids?”
“Anna better not be smokin’ that marijuana stuff,” Al says, puffing out his chest and pointing skyward like the orator Cicero.
“You’re a good talker,” Tree says.
Big Talker
Space
Al lets it pass. “So what’d this Chet do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why’d he get expelled?”
Now Tree swings her legs off the bed. “What’re you talking about? He got expelled?”
“Joey told me.”
“How does Joey know?”
“Anna told ‘im.”
Tree sits silently for a few moments, steaming. Finally she speaks. “I don’t like this at all. Not one bit. We gotta put a stop to this.”
Of course, we know Anna’s deeply and forever in love with Chet, as only a moon-eyed college sophomore can be. Hey, she’s known him a full month and a half already. Plus, (she doesn’t know this yet) a single egg in her left fallopian tube is now undergoing exponential cell division. How is Tree going to put a stop to all this? Check in with us Tuesday for the next installment of Black Comedy.
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Randolph Street Redux 2: Portraits in Black & White
Mike Royko
Floyd Saunders–The Mayor of Southport
Rosa–At Rosa’s Blues Club
Carney
Julian Schnabel
Gwendolyn Brooks–Poet
These were first posted last March. Next week, new stuff. Thanx.
All photos © Jon Randolph
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Benny Jay: Alan’s Miracle
Go to the Cubs game the other night….
They won three to nothing. I know — Cubs win. Amazing, right? But that’s not the story.
I go with my old friend, Jeff, and his in laws — Alan and Barbara. A couple of retired teachers, must be in their seventies.
Always got along with Alan. He’s a good story teller, usually has something interesting to say. When I met him he was younger than I am now. I point that out to Alan — he can’t believe it either.
After the game, we’re walking through the crowd back to his car. I ask him what’s been going on and he tells me he had this scrape with Lou Gehrig‘s disease.
We walked home from Wrigley Field at night….
That’s the disease where your muscles wither to the point where you can’t move a finger or talk.
“It was mental agony, Benny — torture. I could barely flick a light switch. I thought I had it for sure.”
He went to several doctors. One knew less than the other. If there’s a message to the tale it’s that 1.) doctors don’t know everything and 2.) find yourself one does.
“That’s a contradiction,” I say.
“Tell me about it,” he says.
Anyway, he found a doctor who did an examination and told him it was a neurological ailment — not Lou Gehrig’s disease — that’s treatable by pills.
“I’ll skip the details and come to the point,” he says. “I took the pills and I got better.”
“That simple?” I say.
“That simple….”
He’d been on the phone with his sister right after he took the first dosage. At the start of the conversation he could barely put together a sentence. By the time he hung up the phone, he was already feeling better. And every day he kept getting better and better until he was back to normal.
“I’m telling you, Benny — it was a miracle.”
He’s saying this, by the way, while we walk out of Wrigley Field, up Waveland to Clark Street and down Clark to Belle Plaine — a journey of at least a half a mile.
A few months ago the man could barely flick a light switch and now he’s walking half a mile through crowds of people, carrying on an animated conversation. It is a miracle.
In a month or so, he and Barbara will drive north to Michigan to spend a week with their children and grandchildren. They’ll walk the beach. Swim. Play cards. Whatever.
“Benny, every day — it’s a blessing.”
We say goodbye at his car and I make the long walk home. Don’t tell anyone — I stop at Baskin & Robbins for some ice cream. Get the vanilla soft-serve. Damn, that’s good.
I’m walking home, eating my ice cream and thinking of Alan.
You hear so much bad news in the world. Senseless, shocking, inexplicable violence and horrors. It’s reassuring to hear a story that’s more of a blessing and less like a curse.
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Pull My Finger. Written by Milo. Read by Andy Orscheln, Lorenzo Toia, Joel Reitsma, Nels, Laura Korn and introducing Benny Jay as Rolando. Produced by King Conundrum.
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