Of course, not everyone from my high school ended up in the steel mills. A lot of kids found other roads to travel. The school produced its share of doctors, lawyers, businessmen, entertainers and professional athletes. Even I turned out pretty well, becoming a famous, wealthy and beloved blogger here at The Third City.

Another Horace Mann alum who did pretty well was a math whiz named Joey Stiglitz, who graduated a few years ahead of me. Like most Gary kids who are good with numbers, Joey aspired to be a bookie. Unfortunately, he failed miserably as an odds maker and, in desperation, turned to the study of Economics, where, according to all reports, he distinguished himself. He even won the Nobel Prize in Economics which, I’ve heard, comes with a handsome check.

As I had mentioned, many of Horace Mann’s graduates travelled different roads. Sadly, there were a few unfortunates who ended up the road to nowhere.

One of these poor souls was the older brother of a classmate of mine, named Jim Koledis. Jim had always been a mean, scrappy and quarrelsome kid. His greatest joy in life was street fighting. He wasn’t big or physically imposing, yet he would fight anybody, at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all.

Chuck Wepner was like Jim’s younger brother….

Jim was fearless to the point of stupidity and he lost as many fights as he won. Even when Jim won a fight, he took a lot of punishment. When he lost, he often suffered savage beatings. The Marquis of Queensbury’s rules were generally ignored in Gary street fights. Putting the boot to a downed opponent was considered good form. I don’t remember the details, but I do recall that Jim had been hospitalized several times, for broken bones, serious concussions and, once, a fractured skull.

By his early 20s, Jim was punch drunk, a damaged human being. His speech was slurred and he was unsteady on his feet. He suffered uncontrollable tremors and was prone to hallucinations. Still, Jim remained true to his nature. Despite his pitiful physical and mental condition, he continued picking fights with people.

Jim’s family tried to help. They had him institutionalized for a couple of months in the mental hospital in Westville, Indiana (now a state-run prison) but couldn’t afford the upkeep. When Jim left the Westville, he lived on the streets of Gary.

I lost track of Jim after he was released from the hospital. I had my own problems. In the summer of my 19th year I got drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Vietnam. After 14 months and seven days of doing my very best to keep the Southeast Asian dominoes upright, I was honorably discharged. I considered myself fortunate to come home in one piece and somewhat sane.

With nothing better to do and extremely averse to taking an honest job in a steel mill, I enrolled in college. I spent a couple of months in Gary, killing time, waiting for the next semester to start at Indiana State University, where I planned to drink a lot of beer, smoke a lot of reefer, chase chicks and perhaps do a little studying, all courtesy of the G.I. Bill.

Milo back in his glory days….

One day I was wandering around the Tavern District, which was my favorite part of town. It was where Gary’s finest saloons, pool rooms, whorehouses and gambling joints were located. I was about to duck into a pool room, known as The Club, to see if I could get a nine-ball game going, when I saw Jim standing on the corner of Broadway and 5th Avenue.

I was about a quarter of a block away, but I could see that Jim was panhandling. He was accosting people on the street, saying a few words to them and holding out his hand. Most people waved him off or walked around him. A few people took a moment to listen to his pitch before walking away. I didn’t see anyone give him money.

When I approached him I saw that Jim looked even worse than I remembered. The brutal, violent life he had lived was plainly written on his face. And he was raggedly dressed, in layers of torn and soiled clothing, and wearing a shabby overcoat in the middle of summer. He looked like a bum, which is what he had become.

He didn’t recognize me. He treated me like any other possible benefactor.

“Hey, buddy, can you spare a buck? My baby girl just died.”

I gave him a couple of dollars and walked away. As I was leaving he quickly approached another passerby. “Hey, buddy, can you spare a buck? My baby girl just died.”

That was the last time I saw Jim. A few years later I heard that he had frozen to death in an abandoned building near the Tavern District.

The Vietnamese have a phrase that describes people like Jim. They call them “Bui Doi,” which loosely translates to “The dust of life.”

Bui Doi are the hopeless ones, poor souls who are at the mercy of events and demons which they don’t understand. They are victims of capricious fate, their place in life always uncertain and precarious. The will of heaven cannot be disputed. The dust of life is at the mercy of the slightest breeze. Bui Doi are destined to be born, suffer and die, leaving no sign of their passing.

Dust to dust.

The victim of the abuse is a woman who I’ll call Carla and we work together in a North Side office. I met Carla on my first day at work. She welcomed me to the job by asking if she could bring me a cup of coffee. After that, whenever I came into the office Carla offered to get coffee or perform some other small service for me. She was friendly to the point of meekness and extremely eager to please.

I also noticed that Carla was abnormally attuned to the moods of the other people in the office, frequently making comments like “Len’s kind of testy today” or “Jack’s having a bad day.”

I later came to understand that Carla’s personality traits – docility, eagerness to please, sensitivity to moods – were actually survival mechanisms.

Despite what I considered to be her quirky behavior, I developed a liking for Carla. So, naturally, I was shocked when she walked into the office one day with a badly bruised and battered face and a gash under one eye that had required stitches.

“Jesus, Carla! What the hell happened?”

Louisville sluggers….

She wouldn’t even look at me when I asked the question. She just said “Car accident,” then walked into her office and quietly closed the door.

A little later, I was talking to a co-worker, named Chuck, and mentioned Carla’s car accident. Chuck shook his head sadly and said, “Yeah, Carla’s accident prone. When she’s not getting banged up in car crashes, she’s walking into doors or falling down in the shower.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Carla is married to a drunken loser who beats the shit out of her every couple of months. I expect he’ll eventually kill her.”

When I was 12 or 13 years old, my family lived next door to a wife beater. He was a big brute of a steelworker and he was in the habit of getting crazy drunk every few weeks and terrorizing his family.

It always began the same way, with angry shouting, terrified screams, and the sound of breaking glass. “Ah shit,” my father would mutter in disgust. “The crazy bastard is at it again.”

In a little while, the wife and two very young daughters, usually clad in nightgowns and pajamas, would appear at our door, in tears, nearly hysterical, in desperate need of a safe place. While the terrified little family huddled in fear in our kitchen, and my mom tended to their imjuries, the husband stood in our front yard, raging, screaming insane threats at his wife. “I’ll kill you, bitch. I’ll put you in a fucking grave. I’ll…”

As bad as I felt for the wife, my heart truly ached for the little girls. What memories would they have of their father? What horrors did they relive in their dreams? How would their lives be affected? Would their scars ever fade?

There was also something else I had to worry about. My father had gone out to the front yard to try and calm the madman down and I felt I had to cover his ass. I went to my room and got my baseball bat, a fine piece of Kentucky hardwood known as a Louisville Slugger. I stood by the front door, baseball bat in hand, waiting on developments. If the drunken wife beater tried to attack my father, the Louisville Slugger would come in real handy.

Of course, the maniac never laid a hand on the old man. People who batter women and children rarely try their luck with grown men. In all honesty, I was disappointed that the bastard didn’t try to assault my father. I was hoping to take a few whacks at him with my bat. I was young and naive at the time, and knew nothing about human nature. I foolishly believed that if I hit him hard enough and often enough, he might change his monstrous behavior. Regretfully, I didn’t get a chance to test my theory.

Back at the office, I could see that Carla had begun to heal. After a week or so the bruises began to fade and the swelling went down, although the gash under her eye would leave a lasting scar. Still, a flash of anger came over me every time I saw her. The thought of some drunken bully brutalizing the poor woman kept me tense and edgy. I lost sleep wondering if there was something, anything, I could do about the situation. I hated feeling helpless.

When I ran into my co-worker, Chuck, again, I asked him if Carla’s husband ever showed up at the office.

“He comes around once in a while,” Chuck said. “He’s insanely jealous. He parks his car out front and waits for Carla to come out, just to see if she talks to any men.”

“Do me a favor. Point him out to me next time you see him.”

“Sure, no problem.”

On my way to work, the next morning, I stopped at a sporting goods store and bought a baseball bat. It was a Louisville Slugger.

NOTE: Carla is a real person. She needs help. Leave a comment if you have any suggestions.

None of these creatures poses a threat to life or limb. At worst, they can be nuisances. However, not all the wildlife in the neighborhood is harmless. A few years ago a mountain lion was spotted in Roscoe Village, in frightening proximity to children. The police had no choice but to shoot the animal.

And, recently, several of my neighbors saw a coyote loping down the middle of Eastwood Avenue, at about six in the morning. For a few days, the coyote sighting was the talk of the neighborhood.

“Coyotes are everywhere now,” one of my neighbors told me. “They’re as common as squirrels. Lincoln Park is overrun with them and the suburbs are being terrorized by packs of coyotes.”

“Jesus! That’s frightening. I didn’t realize coyotes were such a threat to people.”

“Well, they’re not much of a threat to humans. But they’re a real danger to pets. They prey on small dogs and cats.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that coyotes kill and eat cats?”

“Coyotes love to eat cats. They’ll snatch a cat right off someone’s porch.”

No self-respecting coyote would even consider eating a plate of lutefisk.

A little later, I was in my back yard, enjoying a cigarette with my morning whiskey and thinking about what my neighbor had said about coyotes. I felt bad for the dogs that were taken by coyotes, but I had no sympathy, at all, for the cats.

I know cats and dislike them. I have a cat, a big greasy fucker named Otis, and I hate the bastard. He’s made my life a living hell ever since he showed up at my back door and weaseled his way into my household. He’s an ugly, mangy and odoriferous beast whose greatest joy in life is torturing and killing helpless little animals. My back yard is littered with the pathetic, partially eaten carcasses of songbirds, ducklings and bunny rabbits. I rue the day my misguided wife and children ganged up on me and bullied me into keeping the cat.

Milo’s niece, Mara, took this picture of him trying to kill that cat….

From the moment the cat muscled his way into my home, I was determined to get rid of him. But I had to be careful. My wife and daughters had, for some inexplicable reason, grown very fond of the cat. They knew I despised the son of a bitch and would immediately blame me if something happened to him. It had to look like an accident. I had to appear blameless.

I had almost gotten rid of the cat a few times in the past, but my plans never worked out. My best opportunity came when I nearly sold Otis to my dear friend Mr. Choi, who owns a very popular home-style Korean restaurant on the North Side, but the deal fell through at the last minute. Needless to say, I was hugely disappointed.

But I’m a patient man. All good things come to those who wait. When I heard about coyotes running wild in the streets of Chicago, I knew that my time had come. After all, how could I possibly be blamed if a coyote happened to run off with the cat?

First, I had to do a little research. I learned that coyotes are nocturnal hunters, most active for five or six hours after the sun goes down. They are also scavengers, attracted by the odor of rotting, rancid meat. They thrive on the most disgusting, maggot-ridden slop imaginable. They can smell the foul stench of putrid, decaying meat from a mile away.

A couple of days later, my wife came home from work a bit later than usual. “I just saw the oddest thing,” she said.

“What’s that, dumpling?”

“There’s a couple of Big Macs, a Polish sausage and a burrito on the sidewalk in front of our house.”

“That is unusual.”

“By the way, where’s Otis?”

“I let him out.”

“It’s kind of late for the cat to be out, isn’t it?”

“He’s a fat ass. He needs the exercise.”

I quickly discovered that luring coyotes is not that easy. Apparently Big Macs, Polish sausage and burritos are not disgusting enough for them. But I’m not a quitter. I can’t even spell the word advircitie.

Every day, as the sun was going down, I’d let the cat out and plant my coyote bait. I tried everything – lutefisk, corn dogs, turducken, haggis, Vegemite, gefilte fish, Chicken McNuggets, s’mores, slabs of Velveeta, cans of Franco-American spaghetti, bags of barbeque flavored pork rinds, and a lot of food-like products made by Hormel – but nothing seemed to work.

Still, I didn’t get discouraged. I was determined to get rid of the cat. I knew that as long as I kept trying, as long as I kept setting out bait, one day a coyote would come along and settle Otis’ hash, once and for all.

A couple of days later, my wife approached me with a puzzled expression on her face. “There’s something weird going on around here,” she said.

“What’s that, precious?”

“Otis, two skunks and a raccoon are eating this big pile of food that somebody left on the sidewalk.”

“Ah, shit. This is fucking unbelievable.”

“Yeah, why would somebody dump 20 pounds of tuna noodle casserole on our sidewalk?”

Back in the late 70s, I caught Alice cheating at cards and we ended up in a brutal street fight in front of Sterch’s Tavern on Lincoln Avenue. The brawl lasted two or three hours. I was winning until she sprayed me with mace and hit me with the blackjack she kept in her 38 double d-cup bra.

My sister is another hardcase. She is a heavily-armed, violent drunkard who has already buried five husbands. All five husbands were suicides and, oddly enough, all shot themselves with the same pistol. Her current husband, Bill, sleeps with one eye open and a can of pepper spray on the nightstand.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m afraid of my sister. Anyone that knows me will tell you I’m fearless. Nothing scares me. I am a blooded veteran of life’s battlefields. I’ve stared death in the face more times than I care to remember.

Still, it doesn’t hurt to take precautions in my sister’s presence. That’s why I generally wear a Kevlar vest at family gatherings, just in case.

Like I said, there are a lot of thuggish women in this town, but the meanest, most sadistic woman I ever met was someone I’ll call Jackie, who ran an advertising agency where I once worked.

Jackie didn’t own the agency, but she had a death grip on the agency’s largest account, a leading Chicago banking institution. The account was a gift to Jackie from her father, a senile old bastard, who just happened to be a member of the bank’s board of directors.

Annie Oakley — speaking of mean women….

The bank’s advertising business was worth about 25 million dollars a year, which amounted to about 90% of the agency’s yearly gross revenue. The owner of the agency, a preening peacock of a man with a horrid comb-over, was so grateful to Jackie for bringing in the bank’s business and making him wealthy that he turned over the entire operation to her. He spent his Golden Years cashing handsome checks and sipping umbrella drinks at Riccardo’s.

Jackie was an autocrat, the absolute ruler of the agency, and she ran it with an iron hand. She functioned as creative director, account supervisor and human resources manager. Unfortunately, she was unfit for all three positions. She didn’t have a creative bone in her body, had an abrasive, unpleasant personality and was a poor judge of talent. The only thing she had going for her was access, through her father, to a large amount of advertising dollars.

Nobody at the agency had any respect for her, and she knew it. The creative department and account executives resented Jackie because she hadn’t come up through the agency system. She wasn’t one of them. She just appeared one day, like a squall at a picnic, and began wielding power like a cudgel.

Annie’s not related to Charles Oakley, who can be pretty mean himself….

Jackie was aware that she was disliked, even despised, by her underlings, but it didn’t matter to her. She seemed to draw strength from the enmity of others. Like an ogre from Greek myth, the battles of the previous day renewed her for the battles to come. When she walked into the office in the morning, fire in her eyes and a scowl on her lips, you knew someone was going to have a very bad day.

In my first couple of months at the agency, I saw an art director punch a hole in a wall and break his hand.

I saw two people go to lunch and never come back.

I saw Jackie tear up a designer’s layouts and throw them in his face.

I saw her fire someone, for no good reason, then call a security guard to have the person escorted from the building.

I saw a couple of young account executives go into the ladies room together, stay for half an hour, and come out with red eyes, swollen faces and freshly applied makeup.

I saw her fire a guy whose wife was seven months pregnant, leaving him without health insurance.

And then it was my turn.

I was staring at a blank page I had just inserted in my IBM Selectric, when Jackie barged into my office. She had a few sheets of paper in her hand and waved them at me.

“Do you expect me to show this shit to my client?” she said, in her shrill, grating voice.

“What shit are you talking about, Jackie?”

I knew this confrontation was coming. It was inevitable. In Jackie’s world, everybody got their turn on the rack. What I didn’t know was how I would react. I don’t take direction or criticism well. When pushed, my instinct is to push back. But I needed the paycheck. I needed it badly. Although I had begun sending out my resume within a week of starting at the agency, I had not gotten any nibbles yet. I was stuck until something else came along.

“The brochure copy you wrote for the bank’s mortgage department is worthless, a hack job. Any asshole on the street could have done a better job than this. I’m beginning to think I made a huge mistake by hiring you.”

“I assume you want a rewrite.”

“That’s exactly what I want, although I doubt you’ll do any better the second time around,” she said, disdainfully throwing the original sheets of copy on my desk. “I want it by end of day, and I leave a 4:00 o’clock, sharp.”

I had seen Jackie in action. That was just the opening salvo in her campaign of abuse and intimidation. I knew that things would get worse.

Fortunately, a few weeks later I got another job offer and accepted it. When I went into Jackie’s office to give my notice, she didn’t even bother looking at me. She just said, “Good riddance.”

I wish I could say I had given her a well-deserved comeuppance before leaving the agency. I wish I had done something, made some sort of gesture, to let her know exactly what I thought of her. I felt like I should have made some effort to salvage my pride. But wisely I didn’t.

Even though I was a young man at the time, inexperienced in many ways, I still knew better than to provoke a mean woman.

Editor’s Note: To leave a comment or read comments, click on the title of this post and scroll down to the bottom of the story.

I don’t know why I developed a fondness for the shady side of life. I suppose it’s in my DNA (check out one of my earlier blog posts titled “The Bum Gene”). I come from a long line of people who have a gift for excess and a healthy contempt for custom.

I’d rather spend time with a failed musician than a successful banker. I’d rather chat with an old whore than a North Shore matron, although there’s probably not much difference. I’d prefer Reverend Ike’s companionship to Pope Benedict’s. I believe Joey “the Clown” Lombardo might be a more interesting drinking buddy than Bozo the Clown. And I’m pretty sure a night on the town with Keith Richards might be a bit more fun than a pub crawl with Donny Osmond.

A while ago I made friends with a man who spent 22 years in a Mississippi prison. He had been out for just a few months when I met him. He was one of the gentlest, best natured men I had ever met, not at all what I would have expected from a hardened convict.

When I asked him what he had done, he replied, “Robbed four damn banks. I should’ve stopped at three.”

Now that’s a line you’ll never hear from a Sunday School Superintendent (apologies to Mr. Clemens).

The point I’m trying to make is that convention and conventional people bore me. As I grow older and note that the pages are flying off the calendar a little faster than I’d like, I’m finding that I have less tolerance for boredom – and no tolerance at all for boring people.

This anti-social attitude of mine, as the lovely Mrs. Milo refers to it, has caused no end of problems in our otherwise happy home.

A few months ago my wife told me that we were invited to a dinner party.

“When?”

“Tonight, a couple of hours from now at Jack and Jill’s house.”

“Sounds good. I like Jack and Jill. Who else is going to be there?”

“Walter and Wanda.”

“They’re okay. Is anyone else coming?”

(Silence)

“Honey. Is anyone else coming?

“Dan and Don and their wives are going to be there.”

“Ah fuck! You can’t be serious! I’d rather gnaw off my own foot than spend 10 minutes with those two ignorant cocksuckers.”

“Why do you say stupid things like that? Dan and Don are highly educated, well-known and accomplished men. Just because they’re not drunks and dopers and losers, like most of your friends, doesn’t make them bad people. Besides, they like you. They think you’re kind of interesting.”

“Well, I just wish you would have told me about this sooner.”

“Why, so you’d have time to figure a way to weasel out of it?”

“Ah, fuck.”

A couple of hours later I found myself at an oh so civilized dinner party. The lamb chops were superb, the wine was plentiful, the laughter was subdued, the conversation was polite and the background music was smooth jazz. Everyone was well-dressed, expensively coiffed and hygienically presentable.

I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of there.

As is usually the case with boring people, Dan and Don dominated the conversation. And, to be honest, I don’t remember a thing either of them said. I do, however, recall that neither of them said anything that contained wit, interest or originality. I kept waiting for someone to fart or pull out a joint or tell a good dick joke, but it never happened.

I was never so glad to leave a party in my life. The next time Mrs. Milo wants…

HOLD IT!

This is Mrs. Milo. I just passed by the computer, saw what my husband was writing and chased him away from the keyboard with a ball peen hammer. What he’s writing is just a pack of lies. Here’s what really happened at the party.

As soon as we walked in the door, Milo got into the booze. In a couple of hours he was roaring drunk. He couldn’t seem to operate a knife and fork so he ate most of the meal with his hands. And, since he neglected to use a napkin, most of the meal ended up in his lap.

When Don started talking about his favorite episode of “Lost,” Milo interrupted with a disgusting story about a donkey show he had seen in Tijuana in the early 70s. When Dan brought up the subject of his new golf clubs, Milo started talking about his new scheme to get access to medical marijuana.

It got worse after that. As we were leaving, Milo pinched the hostess on the ass and whispered something nasty in her ear. She looked shocked and I was mortified. The problem is that now Jill sends Milo emails all the time, which the bastard deletes before I get a chance to see them.

When we finally got outside, Milo refused to give me the car keys. He insisted that he was more than capable of driving. I had to use pepper spray on him to get the keys.

I don’t know what I ever saw in Milo. I should have married that podiatrist from Minneapolis.

I’ll admit that I’m not the easiest or most pleasant person to live with. Someone once told me they’d rather have a wolverine for a roommate than live with me. I’ve got serious issues, most of them long-standing and unresolved. And I’m adding new issues all the time.

A great philosopher once said, “It’s a wise man who knows his own shortcomings.” An even greater philosopher, I believe his name was P.T. Barnum, said, “It’s a wiser man who knows other people’s shortcomings.”

Well, I’m no great thinker, but I refuse to accept the fact that I’m the vile and disgusting creature my wife says I am. Here’s a bit of a phone conversation I overheard while she was chatting with one of her friends, probably that skanky Cathy Ivcich.

“Milo’s just been horrid lately. He hasn’t showered or shaved in almost five days. He just sits around in his ratty bathrobe muttering about his blog. He reeks of alcohol and cigarettes and I know for a fact that he’s been sneaking out to the garage to smoke pot. When I ask him what he’s doing he stares off into space and says, ‘I’ll explain everything at the proper time.’ Swear to God, if he gets that lecherous gleam in his eye, I’m going to run screaming for the nearest women’s shelter.

I figured my wife was just having a bad day. I mean, she must have been in a horrible mood to say such terrible things about her loving husband. Well, I suppose the holidays put stress on a lot of marriages.

A lot of women think they look like Sophia Loren….

Still, it was difficult to reconcile the image I had of myself with the picture that my wife had drawn of me. I wanted a second opinion.

I decided to call my sister, an elegant, refined and dignified woman, who also happens to be the CEO of a thriving medical company in downtown Chicago. I’ve always trusted her opinions and good judgment. She knows me as well as anyone. I knew I’d get a straight answer from her.

“Hi, Sis,” I said, happy to hear her lovely voice.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“I just wanted to ask you a question.”

“If you’re calling to borrow money again you can forget about it.”

“Ah, never mind.”

I was disappointed by my sister’s reaction to my call. But I supposed the holidays had taken a toll on her, too. Besides, her husband, Bill, a man after my own heart, may have been giving her a bad time again, misbehaving in his own beastly fashion.

Milo thinks he looks like Steve McQueen….

I thought about calling my sweet, gray-haired mother to see if she could provide any insights into my character, but decided against it. She’s been having trouble with her phone lately. I’ve had difficulty reaching her since she had Caller I.D. installed.

I imagine it’s just human nature to wonder about other peoples’ opinions of ourselves. Most people want to be loved, appreciated and admired. We’re all heroes in our own hearts. I imagine when a crack whore looks in a mirror she sees Sophia Loren. When a petty thief looks in a mirror he probably sees Robin Hood. When a three-chord hack in a bar band checks himself out, he sees the spitting image of Jimi Hendrix. When a Chicago alderman sees his reflection, he probably thinks he’s looking at FDR.

Self-evaluation is a tricky business. It’s generally an exercise in ego boosting. The need to know our true selves seems like a basic human desire. At the same time, the instinct to delude ourselves seems like it’s also wired into our DNA. We usually have a more accurate impression of those around us than we do of ourselves.

For example, where the lovely Mrs. Milo sees a loutish, belligerent and hygienically-challenged roisterer, I see a highly-principled man carrying on a long and noble tradition of bad behavior and genteel dissolution. Where my wife sees an aging, creepy, and increasingly ugly old man, I see a young Steve McQueen. Where she sees an obstinate, opinionated and argumentative old dog, I see a gentle, sweet-natured pussycat.

I guess I can’t blame my wife for going to Mexico to get away from me for awhile. I realize I haven’t been on my best behavior during the holiday season and the poor girl needs a break. That said, I’m still pissed that she said all those terrible things about me to her girlfriends.

That’s probably the main reason why none of them have stopped by to borrow a cup of sugar while my wife’s out of town.

The simple truth is that I still felt bad that my wife held such a poor opinion of me. I wanted someone to tell me that I was a wonderful, caring, considerate man. I reconsidered my earlier decision and decided to call my mother.

I called three times before she answered.

“Hi, Mom, it’s your favorite son.”

“What do you want?”

“Mom, I just wanted to ask a question.”

“Make it quick, I’m on my way to the casino.”

“If you’re busy, I can call you back?”

“Good idea, call me in a week or two.”

“Okay.”

“By the way, were you planning to visit me anytime soon?”

“No, not really.”

“Thank God.”

Unlike my ragged and freestyle upbringing, my wife was raised properly, learning the basics of correct behavior at an early age. In her waspishly proper household (both parents were from Boston and of English descent) farting was, no doubt, frowned upon. That’s why if there’s any farting to be done in this family, I’ll be the one doing it.

I don’t recall ever farting in church, but I’ve cut the cheese just about everywhere else. I’ve flatulated in schools, hospitals, taverns, restaurants, pool rooms, government buildings, Marshall Field’s on State Street, elevated trains, board rooms and foxholes. I have released unpleasant fumes in many of these United States and on four different continents. And I’m not done yet. My bucket list includes the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid at Giza, Buckingham Palace, the Pentagon and Carnegie Hall.

I don’t mean to come across as sexist, but I honestly believe that women are not very good at farting. They can’t seem to get the hang of it. On the rare occasions when they have to let off a bit of steam, they fire away with wimpy little tootlets that barely qualify as farts. Worst of all, in my opinion, they don’t seem to take joy in the act.

“Millicent, my precious, did you by any chance emit a bit of gas in the last few minutes?”

“Oh, Harvey, this is so embarrassing. I was praying that you wouldn’t notice. This hasn’t happened to me in years. I hope you won’t think badly of me.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, dumpling. Even the most refined and well-bred women are subject to an occasional lapse in dignified behavior. I’ll just fetch the room deodorizer, dear, and we’ll forget this unfortunate incident ever happened.”

Naturally, there are exceptions to male domination of the flatulence scene. A handful of women have equaled and, in some cases, surpassed men in the ability to break wind. Two of the most well-known female gasbags are Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman. Their foul emissions, due, no doubt, to their respective diets of moose meat and lutefisk, would turn a hyena’s stomach.

That said, men still dominate the arena. Passing gas, loudly, frequently and rankly, is a macho activity, associated with virile types like cowboys (see Blazing Saddles), firemen, lumberjacks, Navy Seals and, of course, bloggers. The editorial staff here at The Third City is a shining example of flatulent excellence, especially Benny Jay, who has eaten nothing but fried chicken and cheese grits for the past 20 years.

To prove my point, I’m going to release a partial transcript of the minutes of The Third City’s last editorial board meeting.

“Jesus! What the fuck was that!”

“Oh, lord, will somebody please open a fucking window!”

“Goddamnit, Mike! Have the decency to give a guy a warning. Smells like a rat crawled up your ass and died.”

“It wasn’t me. It was that asshole Benny.”

“It wasn’t me, either. It was that bastard Milo. The fucker’s been drinking beer and eating beef jerky all morning.”

“Don’t look at me. It was probably that shithead Randolph.”

“You idiot, Jon’s not even here.”

“Well, what about that greasy new intern we hired. He looks like a nasty fucker.”

“Will somebody please open a damned window?”

As bad as that experience was, it didn’t rank very high on my list of all-time fart horror stories. The absolute worst happened to me when I was in high school, back in Gary, Indiana.

I was driving around with five of my friends in the 1959 Mercury I had recently purchased for $110. My friends, Dickie Kaiser, Dave Spurlock, Sandy Bordeaux, Kenny Woodside, Jim Krock and I had pooled our meager resources and purchased two cases of the cheapest beer in Gary. I think we paid four dollars a case.

We were having some good clean fun, just surfing the streets, drinking beer and listening to WLS. It was a cold winter’s night, so we had the windows rolled up. At some point in the evening, when we each had four or five beers sloshing around in our bellies, Dave Spurlock cut a monster of a fart, a fart for the ages. It was so loud that I thought one of the guys had set off an M-80 in the back seat.

A second later, the inevitable occurred and the other smelly shoe dropped. The stink that permeated the car was unbearable. It was dense, clinging and as putrid as the grave. The odor was a combination of everything vile – rotten eggs, rotten fish, dog shit, dirty sneakers and a backed up sewer. I doubt anything on earth smelled worse than that particular fart.

I almost lost control of the car. Dickie Kaiser had his head hanging out of the back window, vomiting up all the beer he had been drinking. I could hear Sandy Bordeaux gagging. It was a dangerous moment.

Somehow, through sheer strength of will, I managed to pull the car over to the curb. The guys tumbled out of the car, gagging, coughing, eyes watering and noses running. Jim Krock threw up the beer he had been drinking. I gagged and spat a couple of times, but was able to keep down most of the evening’s refreshments. It was touch and go for a while, but somehow Lady Luck was on our side and we all survived.

After blowing his nose and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, Kenny Woodside said, “Good one, Dave. That was a hell of a fart.”

Dave had a huge smile on his face. He radiated joy and satisfaction. “I thought you guys would appreciate that one,” he said.