Big Mike: Black Comedy Excerpt No. 22 — “They Were Totally Into It”
The craziness of the late 60s and early 70s is in full swing. And it all seems to have come to a head at Anna and Chet’s wedding. Revolution, racism, organized crime, violence, alcoholism, repressed homosexuality, police brutality — man, it was just a typical wedding on the Northwest Side of Chicago. And remember, nothing ever happens in Galewood. Hah! Here’s the latest installment of my novel, Black Comedy. — Big Mike
The old Mondi house on Natchez already has been paid for. So has the honeymoon in Jamaica. Otherwise, Al Dudek would take both these prizes away from Anna and Chet. It kills him to think he would do so. For twenty years he would have forgiven his only daughter for everything up to and including murder. But this? This might be worse than murder.
Not only have Anna and Chet insulted every single one of Al’s friends and business associates, she’s essentially turned her back on a carefully crafted world, a world she’s been able to eat well in, in which she could buy every new style that the kids are wearing nowadays and go to good schools and get a college education. Anna, God love her, has never missed a meal. She’s never known from need. Not like Al and Tree who braved the Great Depression.
Anna’s Never Had To Miss A Meal, Thank God
Space
And Al would have severed his left arm in exchange for sheltering his daughter from need.
Sure, Al is enraged by Chet’s and Anna’s and Robby Waters’ performance at the wedding. Maybe the worst thing about it all is how Tree kept looking at him as if to say I told you so.
Sometimes…, sometimes…, Al just wants to give Tree a crack on the side of the head. Not that he’d ever do it, of course, but sometimes….
So, yeah, Al is hot. But as Saturday turns into Sunday, after Tree has gone to bed with her usual post-nuptial whiskey sour headache and Joey, that testa di stronzo*, has passed out in his room and Al finds himself in his recliner, alone, the TV on with the sound off, he weeps.
It’s a good thing Al doesn’t know what Anna had Chet had done after the limousine dropped them off at the TWA terminal at O’Hare. He would have cracked the both of ‘em on the side of the head — and maybe more. They’d cashed in their tickets for Jamaica and exchanged them for the next flight to Toronto where they boarded a plane for Havana, Cuba. Chet had convinced Anna that they should take this great opportunity to visit the only true revolutionary society on this Earth. Not only that, there were the beaches.
So the newlyweds visit some elementary schools, an adult literacy education program, a free clinic, and even a revolutionary museum wherein they gaze upon a pair of Santo Trafficante’s tortoise-shell glasses, Meyer Lansky’s fedora, an outlawed slot machine, and even a poisoned cigar — a gift to Fidel Castro from his friends in the CIA.
And they go to the beach.
You Sure About That Cigar, Fidel?
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On the flight home, by way of Toronto once again, Chet casts a wary eye at the stewardess who looks for all the world like one of those Up With People pains in the ass and when he is sure she isn’t eavesdropping, he whispers to Anna, “El Comandante, man, he’s amazing. We need someone like that in America. We need someone to smash the system!”
Anna nods and asked him to rub Jergens lotion on her sunburned shoulders. She can take Fidel Castro or leave him. But she knows better than to argue with her new husband about him. She’d noted the skinny, desperate kids in the Havana streets begging for food and stealing tourists’ luggage. She’d seen the slums behind Castro’s Potemkin villages. She has read about women slogging away in cigar factories while men run the government and business. When she mentioned these things to Chet he responded simply, “That’s stupid. You sound just like a woman.”
Freedom For Everyone! (Well, Almost Everyone)
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She had a momentary flash that perhaps she was stupid. After all, Chet was a Northwestern man — well, an expelled Northwestern man — maybe he knew more than she did about this kind of thing. Anna didn’t feel particularly stupid but if that was the assessment of a high school salutatorian and bearded journalist and philosopher, who was she to argue? So she didn’t. It was easier just to lay back and get a nice tan.
Anna and Chet settle in to their new house. She stays home and reads and hangs curtains. He goes out every day to cover (and foment) the coming revolution.
A week after the couple have returned from their honeymoon in Cuba, Chet goes to an antiwar rally downtown. The organizers — Chet included — had hoped for a big press turnout. They’d forgotten that it’s a Saturday and none of the city’s newspaper editors or TV producers feel like paying time and a half for reporters and photographers to cover what will be, in their opinion, just another protest march.
It’s early the next morning. Anna has just bailed Chet out of jail. She listens as he describes the events of the previous day. She finds herself wondering if perhaps he’s exaggerating a bit. After all, she’d watched John Drury on the Channel 9 news and he hadn’t even mentioned any protest march. Then again, Chet is sporting a lip so fat she can hang her jacket on it. Here’s the story as Chet relates it to Anna in the cab ride home:
“What? Are you freakin’ kidding me, man? You must have fallen asleep. This had to be on the news. Fuck, man, it was a massacre!
“We started off at the Federal Building, right? The pigs told us we had to stay on one side of the sidewalk. Can you dig it? One half of the sidewalk for five thousand people, baby. It was a set-up.
“Here it is, Saturday afternoon, there’s no traffic on State Street, I mean none. It’s downtown — nobody’s downtown on Saturday! But here’s the cops — right? — stopping us at every corner for the red light. Come on, now! Try stopping ten thousand people just like that. So the lights change and people start pushing forward but the cops stand in front of us, holding us back. Who knows why. People start shoving and the cops start whacking people with their billy clubs. Every corner, man, whack, whack, whack! It was sickening.
…That Great Street
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“They let us go on to the next corner and same thing happened all over again. I think the cops were diggin’ whacking people, you know? And get this — the cops weren’t wearing their badges or nameplates. This one cop, he was whackin’ the crap out of this little old lady so I go, ‘Stop it, man. What’s your name? What’s your badge number?’ What do you think he did? Boom, right across my face with his billy club. I pulled back just in time or he’d have broken my nose or put out a few teeth. As it was, he gave me this.”
All touches his fat lip and winces. Anna winces with him.
Chet continues: “So, like, the cops hold back a group of us at one corner but here comes the group from the previous corner and now you’ve got hundreds of people in this tight space. Naturally, they’re going to spread out over the sidewalk. But here’s the cops, whackin’ people on the back of their legs and their asses. They go, ‘Get the fuck back in line, hippie scum!’
“Some of us go, ‘Shut up, man! There’s no need to call us names!’ The cops whacked all of us who said that, too.
“Finally we got to the Civic Center, you know, where they have the Picasso? We had a permit, man. We were going to have speakers and some music and all. We weren’t looking for a fight. But as soon as all the marchers got to the plaza — I mean it, just as soon as everybody got there, twenty thousand people — the pigs told us to disperse. What the fuck, man!
“You Know, Where They Have The Picasso”
Space
“We went, ‘Fuck off, man!’ That’s when the pigs went wild. They started swinging their billy clubs like crazy. They were hitting everything that moved. Man, you can’t believe the sound of a billy club coming down on a person’s skull. I thought I was going to barf.
“We started running, all twenty five thousand of us, and the cops chased us all over the Loop. I mean we were dispersing, right? What’d they want us to do? They chased us just to whack us for the fuck of it, man!
“Man, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was out in front of Kroch & Brentano’s over there under the el on Wabash? You know it, you’ve been there. I tried to duck inside but this big fat cop — I swear to God he looked just like that cop from down the block. He goes, ‘Stay out of there, faggot motherfucker!’ and he started coming at me.”
At this point, Chet is very nearly bouncing up and down in the back seat of the cab. Anna thinks, Is that a smile on his face? Then Anna’s struck by another strange thought — Chet’s really digging this.
He goes on: “Kroch’s has this revolving door. I saw the manager bending over trying to trip the locks on it. I knew I couldn’t get in there in time. I figured I’d run but here was this fat cop and he had two or three other pigs right behind him. I knew I couldn’t get away. So I said, ‘Here goes.’ I just jumped at them. Man, they hit every inch of my body with their billy clubs! They were kicking and punching. They were totally into it.
“They Were Totally Into It”
Space
“I grabbed at that fat cop’s shirt and I tore off his breast pocket, you know? What do you think he had in it? His badge and his nameplate. They came clinking out on the sidewalk. I was on my hands and knees anyway so I grabbed for them. I could only get his nameplate. I jammed it down into the crotch of my pants. I was hoping they wouldn’t kick me in the balls because then I’d have this pig’s name on my scrotum for the rest of my life!”
Now Anna realizes she’s right — Chet is grinning broadly. He digs the shit out of this.
Chet reaches down the front of his jeans. He pulls out the two-inch wide nameplate and shows it to Anna. It reads “Sanfillipo.”
Anna gasps. “It was him!”
“Yes it was,’ Chet says. “The same pig who was twisting Robby’s balls off at the wedding.”
“I hate the cops,” Anna says.
Chet corrects her: “The pigs.”
The two are silent for a few minutes. Because she’d had to bail Chet out at police headquarters at 11th and State, the cab had taken the Eisenhower Expressway out to the West Side. The driver exits at Austin Boulevard and heads north. There is a Sinclair station at Harrison Street. A hand lettered sign is taped up on the inside of the station’s front window. It reads, “Support Your Local Police.”
Anna and Chet see the sign at the same time. They both shake their heads. Finally, Chet speaks: “We gotta blow this country up, man!”
***
* A Helpful Glossary:
Testa di Stronzo — Shithead
***
Join us Tuesday for the next installment of Black Comedy.
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El Dragón: Ain’t That A Bitch?
It was lunch time on a Friday and I and three other customers were patiently waiting for take-out orders at an Indian restaurant.
I was killing time messing with my Blackberry, when a white dude dressed in a business suit walked into the small establishment and headed directly toward me.
“Can I see your lunch menu?” he nonchalantly asked me.
I paused for a second and thought, “Ain’t that a bitch?”
There I was dressed like a preppy in a Polo shirt and khakis and sitting among other customers in the waiting area, but this motherfucker assumed that I was part of the staff because I was the only dark-skinned brother in the mix.
You wouldn’t think Matt Damon worked in an Indian restaurant….
I looked him square in the face and calmly replied: “I don’t work here.”
Being a cynic, I didn’t expect an apology and, sure enough, I didn’t get one. The white dude merely shrugged the incident off and uttered: “Oh.”
Sadly, this wasn’t the first time a white person assumed that I was a server.
One November not too many years ago, I was in a very homogeneous north side neighborhood waiting for a college friend outside a trendy brew pub that was broadcasting “The Game.” As I stood in front of the joint, a patrician-looking man donning a crimson sweater with a letterman “H” drove up and asked me to valet his Beamer.
I guess that I would have taken the sanguine gibe in stride and chalked it off as good old-school rivalry if the Harvard prick had had some way of knowing that I am a Yale man. Unfortunately, I was wearing a winter coat that covered the colors of my alma mater, which means that the Cantabrigian fucker really thought I was a valet. Ain’t that a bitch?
So why would you think Demian Bichir does?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand that this shit is not the worst type of racism that one can experience. Indeed, I have encountered some really fucked-up racism in my life. However, this shit happens to me often enough that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry anymore.
The tragedy of it all is that even some of the most liberal-minded and racially tolerant white people that I know have fucked up and made an ignorant assumption or two based on my race and ethnicity.
To this day, I bust the balls of a good friend of many years who made such an assumption when we first met. It was my first day as a practicing attorney and I was taking a break by the vending machines. My soon-to-be friend walked over and introduced himself.
“Hi. I’m so-and-so,” he said.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I replied. “My name is such-and-such.”
“You must be one of our new clerks….”
“No,” I indignantly replied, “I’m a new attorney….”
Oops.
An immediate and sincere apology followed and we have been cool since then. But it just goes to show you how entrenched racism is in the American psyche.
Now, you tell me: Ain’t that a bitch?
By El Dragón
Editor’s Note: El Dragón’s last piece for The Third City was Commendation.
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Randolph Street: El Autobus
Two Buses–Guatemala City
Bus Driver–Guatemala City
Prensa Libre–Guatemala City
Boy With Limes–Guatemala City
Snacks–Guatemala
Wiperless Rain
Fare Collector
Roof Fare Collection
Engine Trouble
Ford–Antigua
All photos © Jon Randolph
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Just Mids: Keanu Reeves Takes a Leak
My brothers and I are sitting in terminal at LAX, waiting our flight back to Chicago, when my dad scurries up with the news.
“Guess who I just ran into?” he asks, as if he’s referring to an old friend.
“Who?” I say, not even glancing up from my US weekly.
“Oh,” he nonchalantly replies, “just Keanu Reeves….”
“What!”
My brother Jordan and I exchange glances and we’re out of our seats, my magazine strewn on the floor.
My giddy-ass self takes off running, even though I don’t know where to go.
“Where is he?” I call over my shoulder, slowing to a jogging pace.
“Headed towards the Men’s room….”
I spot the washroom logo down the long hallway of terminals. Shit, I could miss him. Can’t let that happen.
It was Keanu all right — he had the beard and everything!
So I’m running like I’m about to miss my flight and all of the other frequent flyers don’t seem to care, or even notice for that matter.
DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THERE IS SOMEONE FAMOUS AMONG US?! I want to scream. But I decide I’ll keep this little celeb secret to myself.
I’ll have time alone with Keanu long before the other mere mortals hear about how he had been in the east bathroom. By that time I’ll be skipping back to my family, delighted with the phone number sharpied onto my arm…signed Reeves, call me anytime.
Snapping out of fantasyland, I pretend to text someone to cover up the fact I’m actually standing outside of the men’s bathroom, gaping like an excited monkey about to get a banana.
He appears from the bathroom.
His bodyguard walks in front of him, blocking my view entirely.
I then proceed to bob up and down, left and right to get a good glimpse but all I see is his newfound beard.
Jordan then comes out of the same bathroom, and says excitedly, “I just took a pee next to Keanu Reeves!”
Of course he did….
“Sweet, Jor,” I reply grimly while trying to steady my shitty camera phone si I can at least get a picture of his ass as he walks in the other direction.
“With that picture quality it could be anyone’s ass,” my brother says.
Oops — guess I took a picture of the wrong ass….
“Shut up,” is the best comeback I can come up with.
“Dude, he didn’t even wash his hands.”
“Ew,” I respond, trying to sound all of a sudden uninterested.
“He didn’t because if he went to the mirror, a ton of people would recognize him, ya know?” he says. “But with that beard, it was even hard to tell if it was him or not….”
“Did you even say anything to him?”
“Thought about it – but, nah, I couldn’t even force myself to pee….”
“Stage fright-lookin’ ass….”
“Dude, I don’t even care – it’s going to be my Facebook status.”
“What — that you had stage fright standing next to Keanu Reeves?”
By then we make it back to the family and he proceeds to tell the whole story again. I slump down into my seat.
After hearing the story, my other brother, Brad, pipes up, “Bro, did you even look down, I mean was it big?”
“Yeah, right,” says Jordan. “Imagine the famous pussy that thing must’ve touched.”
Then he has the nerve to turn to me, “Nik, you got a square I can bum? I mean it’s sort of a celebration considering who I just peed next to and I just ran out.”
“No,” I say. “All the rest of my cigarettes are reserved for my new boyfriend, Keanu. Sorry.”
By Just Mids
Editor’s Note: Just Mids is making her Third City debut — welcome aboard! Ass photo by Sam Adams….
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Brenna Swift: Dogs, Dogs, Dogs!
Photos taken one day not too long ago at Montrose Beach….
And if this isn’t enough dogs for you, check out this….
By Brenna Swift
Editor’s Note: Brenna Swift‘s last bit for The Third City was all about how she broke up a fight between Eminem and Johnny Depp….
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Benny Jay: Dog Do
My wife takes Nicky, the dog, to the vet for a checkup – ringworm, or something. I’m not really sure.
Comes back and tells me – “I got to tell you something….”
I’m right in the middle of writing – ideas all fresh and vulnerable. If I don’t get them down, they’re lost forever. That sort of thing.
“Not a good time,” I say.
“No, I have to tell you….”
I sigh, put down my pencil, and turn to face her.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s about the dog….”
“What about her?”
“It’s…Well…Ugh…Uhm….”
Uh-oh, not a good sign. I’ve learned that if what you have to say can’t be said outright, it really means you don’t want to say it at all.
Happy Nicky — before the scalping….
“I took Nicky to the vet,” she says.
“Yes, I know….”
“And the vet shaved her butt….”
I look at my wife. She nods her head, like I’m supposed to know what this means.
“And you’re telling me this because?”
“Well,” says my wife. “For the next few days, you’re probably going to see more of Nicky’s butt than you want to. Here – let me show you….”
She calls the dog over and leans down to grab her. But the Nicky slips away. I get off my chair to grab her. But she gives me the side step. I swear that dog knows what we’re up to. When we go left, she goes right – quicker than a bed bug. Got us going in circles, as the song says.
Finally, my wife collars her and turns her around so I can see her buttocks and – What the fu!!!
“Oh, my God!” I exclaim.
“I told you,” says my wife.
“What did that vet do to our poor dog?”
“I know….”
“She looks like a freaking baboon….”
My hand to God, it was almost this bad….
“Well, it’s not that bad….”
“This is a humiliation – the dog’s gonna get a complex. Everywhere she goes, people are going to see right up her ass….”
“It’s not my fault….”
“Well, whose fault is it?”
“I didn’t do it….”
“Why would you have the vet shave her ass in the first place?”
“I thought it was getting shaggy back there – she was shedding. And it was getting dirty when she poohed….”
“Okay, first of all, more details than I need. And second of all, dogs don’t pooh, they crap….”
“So, the vet gave her a trim….”
“It’s more like a scalping….”
“It’ll grow back….”
“How the hell am I gonna take her for walks – she’s gonna have to wear a diaper….”
I’m telling you – for the whole conversation, Nicky’s sitting there looking up at us like a spectator at a tennis match, with her head going back and forth watching whoever’s talking.
Fast forward several hours. I’m walking her. It’s dark – no one can see us. I pass a neighbor.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hey,” I say.
He pauses as we pass.
“Ugh,” he says. “Is there something wrong with your dog?”
“No, nothing….”
“What happened to her ass?”
Oh, brother….
Editor’s Note: If you still want more dog stuff — and, let’s face it, some of us just can’t get enough, check out Brenna Swift’s latest….
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No Blaise: The Maccabi Games
This summer I’m working at a day camp, and spending a massive amount of time with children.
This Monday marked the beginning of Week Six at camp and Day One of the Maccabi Games.
The Maccabi Games are pretty much the child’s version of the Olympics, with colors rather than countries competing. Orange, green, gray, purple, yellow, white, blue, and — most importantly — red, go up against each other in different events.
I’m writing this blog Monday night, so I’ve only been able to record the first day of the games. Which were pretty hilarious.
Teams were announced on Friday, which gave everyone the whole weekend to plan their outfits and come fully decked out in colors on Monday.
Alas, my group of second grade girls still showed up in whatever color they felt like wearing that morning. Which, for all but one girl, wasn’t red.
Thank goodness — just a few minutes later we covered them in face paint, duct tape, glitter, and anything else that would stick to them.
When I told a little red team boy he shouldn’t put duct tape on his bare skin because it would hurt when he had to pull it off he replied simply, “I’m tough.”
That’s how we roll in Red!
After each team covered themselves head-to-toe in team colors, there was the first counselor competition. Yes, we counselors also have to compete in random challenges, like “Face the Cookie” where one counselor from each team has to try and wiggle one cookie from his/her forehead to his/her mouth without moving his/her head.
We could have used him on our cookie-eating team!
If that sounds nearly impossible, that’s cause it is. Well, except for one counselor who managed to manipulate five cookies down his face and into his pie hole.
Then there was the T-shirt relay. Each team stood in height order and passed an official Maccabi Games T-shirt down the line until every kid on every team had one. Whichever team did this the fastest won. I’m guessing the camp director’s motivation for creating this game was a desire to quickly pass out those T-shirts.
Lunch break. Yay – everyone wins!
After lunch my team took on the dreaded Yellow Team in a riveting game of “Everybody’s It.” The title is literal. Everyone runs around trying to tag everyone else on the other team. One of the red team players asked the all-important question, “What’s the point?”
When that clusterfuck concluded, we took on the White Team in the highly civilized game of “Stuck in the Mud.” That’s where two people from each team are “it” and once you’re tagged you have to stand frozen with your legs apart until someone comes and crawls under you, setting you free to re-enter the rat race.
I was in charge of waving the Red-team flag, which is apparently a lot harder than it sounds. At least, another counselor informed me that the flag wasn’t a Goddamn sparkler, and that I had to do a better job.
Well, excuse me!
Once time was up in that game, a team won by having the least amount of people still “stuck”. The officials counted those still trapped by telling all the kids who hadn’t been tagged to sit down. Of course, my team sat down whether or not they were still “stuck”. We won both rounds.
All the teams then gathered for a song/cheer competition as well as one last counselor competition. Rather than sliding cookies into their mouths, this time counselors had to stack five apples and have them stay stacked for five seconds.
Again, one counselor did actually figure out how to do this. But, it wasn’t me….
The cheer competition is exactly what it sounds like. Each team tries to come up with the most creative way to continuously shout their team color.
Taio Cruz — Red Team for Life!
The song competition consisted of teams rewriting popular songs to make them about their colors.
Red: Dynamite-Taio Cruz
Blue: Party in the USA-Miley Cyrus
Orange: Baby-Justin Bieber
Gray: Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night-Black Eyed Peas
Green: California Girls-Katy Perry
White: Play That Funky Music-Wild Cherry
Purple: Dynamite-Taio Cruz (We had the idea first!)
Yellow: Party in the USA-Miley Cyrus
And that was just day one.
WHOSE HOUSE?
RED’S HOUSE!
Damn, straight….
By No Blaise
Editor’s Note: When she’s not leading her Red Team to victory, No Blaise is writing bits for The Third City, like this one.
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Guest Blogger:
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Candyman. Written by Benny Jay. Read by Joel Reitsma, Lorenzo Toia, Ray Jay 3000, Andy Orscheln and No Blaise. Produced by Jus Buckingham of King Conundrum Productions.
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