Chicago
At the supermarket a man in his sixties was talking to the maintenance worker about the adult bookstore a few doors down. “So you’re in there, after paying three or four bucks for tokens and another fifty cents just for walking in the door. Your movie starts and then some guy sticks his dick through a hole in the wall. And what do I want with that, right? It’s disgusting, and the tokens are good for only three or four minutes before the screen turns black. Hell, for a few more bucks I could buy the whole stinking movie. Do you see what I’m talking about? I wouldn’t go into the place, but I got a lot of friends there.”
March 18, 1986
Chicago
I voted this morning at an elementary school. The children seemed excited to have so many adults around, one of whom, an older gay man in a leather vest, wore a pin that read DIGNITY.
One of the people I voted for this morning was named Lee Botts. Her campaign slogan is HER BOTTOM LINE IS CLEAN WATER. Someone tampered with the sign she had in front of the school, and now it reads LEE BOTTS. HER BOTTOM IS CLEAN.
March 21, 1986
Chicago
On the L I sat next to a black woman studying a textbook. “How’s your math?” she asked as I settled in.
I thought she’d said mouth, so I said, “Excuse me?”
She pointed to her book. “Algebra. I could use some help with these problems.”
Math is my worst subject, so I apologized, then watched as she wrote and scribbled in her margins.
May 6, 1986
Chicago
I found this excellent bit of advice in The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette: “If you start to shake hands with someone who has lost an arm, shake his other hand. If he has lost both arms, shake the tip of his artificial hand (be quick and unembarrassed about it).”
May 7, 1986
Chicago
I went to the airport today to meet Mom and Aunt Joyce, who had a short layover on their way home from Santa Fe. I’m broke but didn’t want to say anything about it, didn’t want to be too obvious, but then of course I did say something. We had a coffee, and afterward Aunt Joyce pressed $20 into my hand. Mom slipped me two $20s and a $10. Then she gave me a check, and I left the airport cursing and muttering to myself, because I was angry and embarrassed to be twenty-nine and hinting around for money. I make myself sick.
May 10, 1986
Chicago
Man on the bus with a gray beard and a cheap suit: “I’ll kick your fucking ass, bitch.” He said this to every woman who walked down the aisle. “I’ll kick your fucking ass!”
June 1, 1986
Chicago
I went to an Indian restaurant last night with Rick, Jeannie, and a humorless couple they know from Maine who just moved to Chicago. The husband was fine, actually, but his wife, Liza—what a pain. Before moving into their apartment on Addison and Western, they lived in a tepee. She and her husband are macrobiotic. We all met at my apartment, and after I rolled a joint and some of us started smoking, impatient Liza said, “I’m sorry, but can we talk on the way to the restaurant?”
Later I asked why she’s so unhappy living here, and she said, “It’s too involved to get into with you.”
It was fun to make her angry and disgusted and watch her roll her eyes.
The Indian restaurant we went to was cheap. It only cost $3 to eat, and I laughed when Liza ordered the potato cutlet.
“Is something funny?” she asked.
“It’s just the word cutlet used for a potato,” I said.
While we ate, Indian prom couples paraded up and down the street. They were kids, and they looked great, so sophisticated. We’d just finished when a woman wandered in and approached our table for money. She wore a scarf on her head, pulled down low enough to cover her eyebrows. “Are youse people familiar with this neighborhood?” she asked. “’Cause I’m scared stiff.”
This stretch of Devon Avenue, in the thick of an Indian neighborhood, is the last place to be frightened. “I been to the fire station and all over,” she said. “I was outside looking at youse people and crying my eyes out.”
She rubbed the back of her hands and tugged at her scarf. “See, I got a baby at home and it hasn’t eaten all day. I got to get some formula. The guys at the fire station gave me a couple bucks, but let me tell you, I’m scared. The baby has one diaper left and, see, I’m a waitress. I worked four days but don’t get my check ’til Tuesday and I got to get some formula. I been right outside this window, crying my eyes out.”
The woman was around my age, and while Rick reached for his wallet, she pulled what she said was a birth certificate from her pocket and flashed it for a second. “See, I got a baby. I’m not lying.”
I wondered what she’d do if I offered to buy the birth certificate for $20. Not that I would have, it was just an idea, and such a cruel one it made me blush.
June 7, 1986
Chicago
Finally, Amy has moved from Raleigh to Chicago. After she sat shell-shocked on the couch for a week, looking out the window at the horrible neighborhood I’m now living in, I took her to apply for cocktail-waitressing jobs. One of the places we went to this afternoon was called the Bar Association. We walked in to find the manager sitting at a table and eating a slice of white chocolate cake. “Here,” he said, holding out his fork, “try a bite.”
We just stood there.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” he said. “I don’t have AIDS or nothing.”
We each took a forkful and told him it was good, which seemed to make him happy.
On our way back to the apartment, Amy bought a lottery ticket at Sun Drugs. She asked the woman behind the counter how these things work, and when the woman explained that hundreds of thousands of people play each week, Amy was disappointed. She thought only a handful of people bought tickets and that her odds of winning were one in ten.
June 29, 1986
Chicago
Now that Amy has a job, it’s time for her to find a place of her own. This afternoon we answered an ad we’d seen in the Reader. Someone named Jerry was looking for a roommate, and we arrived to find a full-grown man with long oily hair. His teeth were amber pegs, like dried corn kernels. “After you called I was going to clean up, but I watched TV instead,” he admitted.
Jerry had collages of wrestling stars hanging on his bedroom walls. He told us he’d made them himself, and then he showed us one of Elvis Presley he was working on. He drank from a coffee mug with the word ME on it, and when not holding it he scratched his elbow a lot.
It seems that Jerry’s last roommate drove the gas bill up by using the oven all the time. “She was always baking potatoes,” he told us. “All hours of the day. One night she put two or three in the oven and then fell asleep. I got up the next morning and those potatoes was baked, roasted, broasted, I don’t know what all, but they was burnt and black.”