Big Mike: This Revolutionary Was A Chicken

Bronson and I were a couple of Chicago kids who found each other at Fenwick High School in Oak Park. Most guys who attended Fenwick, which was all boys until 1991, were suburban kids who came from money. The kids from Chicago came from blue-collar families, their parents having scraped together the then-astronomical yearly tuition of $675 any way they could.

Class distinction asserted itself early on so I wound up hanging with the Jungle Man, my old pal from elementary school, Dago Mike, whose family owned a tiny Italian restaurant, and Bronson — all of them city boys and all of whom would be the first of their families to attend college.

Bronson wasn’t Paul C.‘s real name. He insisted on being called that though. It was his homage to a TV character, the protagonist of a short-lived Friday night drama, “Then Came Bronson,” about a drifter on a motorcycle who rode from town to town, always finding trouble and always figuring out how to rectify it. Bronson — my Bronson — wore a woolen watch cap pulled down low over his forehead, just like his TV nickname-sake. He also saw himself, similarly as a modern day cowboy, a loner, a disaffected outsider, never knuckling under to The Man.

I saw myself that way, too. When I learned Bronson wasn’t Paul C’s real name, I decided I needed a meaningful nickname as well. At the time, I idolized Abbie Hoffman. He was the first political figure-as-standup comedian. He wore an American flag shirt. He wrote a book called “Steal This Book!” (I was too chicken to actually steal it so I bought it.) He was one of my heroes of the Chicago Eight (that’s right, Eight — people forget that Bobby Seale was one of the original defendants until Judge Julius Hoffman separated him from the others — that is, after he had him gagged and chained to his chair — I wonder how thrilled Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck would have been over that one had they been around.)

So I became Abbie. Only I misspelled it Abbey everywhere I wrote it. That’s all Bronson called me.

One Friday afternoon Bronson yelled from from down the hall between periods.

“Hey, Abbey! Wait up!”

“What’s up, man?”

“Let’s go to the basketball game tonight.”

“What basketball game?” I was puzzled. We were freaks, hippies (albeit with short hair and wearing school ties.) We never talked sports, only Jethro Tull and The Who, pot and other topics befitting young rebels attending an exclusive Catholic suburban college prep school.

“The Fenwick game, you variose knafe!” Bronson had a habit of inventing imaginary, quasi-medieval-sounding insults.

“Aw, I don’t wanna go.”

“You have to. It’ll be a trip. I’ll pay,” Bronson insisted.

Even though I was barely 16, I knew enough never to turn down anything free. Bronson picked me up in his father’s aircraft carrier-sized Buick deuce-and-a-quarter at six-thirty. I slid in and Bronson was positively giddy. “This is gonna be so fuckin’ great!” he said, grinning.

He shifted into park and said, “Hold on, Abbey. I got somethin’ for ya.” Bronson dug into his jeans pocket and fished out a little tinfoil packet. “Acid,” he said. “Let’s drop!”

I’d done it a few times before, every time feeling as though I was on the verge of losing what little sanity I had to begin with. But I figured I’d be with my pal and if anything went wrong — say the fabric of the cosmos suddenly started tearing itself open — Bronson’d know how to catch me before I fell through the tear.

We arrived at the Tony Lawless Gym well before game time but just as the acid kicked in. Never had the Friars‘ black and white looked so colorful. Strangely, Bronson began heckling everyone and everything the moment he stepped into the place.

“Bronson,” I hissed. “Cool it, man! We’ll get busted!”

Bronson waved at me dismissively. “Fuck that, man.”

We climbed to our seats in the top row of the bleachers which, under the circumstances, seemed to be somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Bronson heckled and jeered and shook his fist as the players from both teams came onto the court. I wished I could shrink to the size of a field mouse (which I believed physically possible at the moment) but instead grew to the size of a rhinoceros. Acid, right?

Anyway, the game began and Bronson screamed and waved like a madman, complaining about every call, insulting all the visiting players, pooh-poohing the accomplishments of the home team.

“Bronson! Please!” I begged.

Again, he waved me off.

Toward the end of the first half, someone called a timeout. As the players huddled, Bronson went into high gear, screaming, jumping out of his seat, challenging players to come up and fight him. My eyes were rolling in my head, imagining being jailed for tripping and then being thrown out of school.

Suddenly, Fenwick’s dean of discipline, Mr. Chmiel grabbed a microphone and demanded Bronson stop causing such a ruckus. It only made Bronson redouble his efforts. Mr. Chmiel, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes slits, stood staring at Bronson.

Finally, Mr. Chmiel barked into the mike, “If you don’t stop it up there, I’m gonna throw you outta here!”

Bronson stood up. “Oh yeah?” he yelled. “Whyncha come up and make me?” I inched away from Bronson, praying that no one could see me.

Mr. Chmiel took a few steps forward and, without the mike but as loudly as if he was still using it, roared, “Why don’t you come down here?”

At this point, the top of my head spewed lava. Bronson leaped up and dashed down toward the gym floor. My jaw collided with my sternum. Bronson reached the gym floor and yelled, “Try and catch me!” With that he began running around the court with Mr. Chmiel in hot pursuit. My eyes became saucers. The two ran around and around until Bronson decided to climb up a scaffold, the top of which was even higher than our seats. Mr. Chmiel followed. Now I was starting to wonder what it would feel like to wear a straightjacket.

Now the two reached the top of the scaffold, There was the sound of scuffling and then, a flash! The figure of Bronson, legs akimbo, his woolen watch cap still pulled low over his forehead, came flying off the top of the scaffolding. It spun around like a child’s pinwheel. Several women in the crowd shrieked. A couple of men gasped.

That’s it, I said to myself. I’ve now lost my mind. Too bad. I’m only a teenager. I would have liked to be able to move out of the house eventually. Instead, it’s the mental institution for me. I hope I don’t pee in my pants too much.

The figure of Bronson hit the floor with a sickening thud. The place went deadly quiet. Then both Bronson and Mr. Chmiel popped their heads out from on top of the scaffold, waving and laughing. They climbed down to the laughter and cheers of the crowd, stopping and waving triumphantly every few feet. One of the equipment managers ran out on the floor, picked up the lifeless dummy dressed up as Bronson and carried it away.

When Bronson eventually got back to our seats, he slapped me on the back. “How was that, Abbey?”

I didn’t answer. My jaw was still fused to my sternum. The idea that the hard-assed, no-nonsense, absolutely humorless Mr. Chmiel would engage in such planned antic with a freak like Bronson would have been mind boggling even if I weren’t under the influence of a psychedelic drug. As it was, I was certain I’d sleep that night either in a lunatic asylum or a rabbit hole.

After a few long moments, Bronson turned to me again and said, “Well?”

I narrowed my eyes. “I’m never ever gonna do acid with you again, you fucker!”

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