The teacher was discussing discipline, and the chatterbox interrupted, saying, “I know what you’re talking about because I used to be a dancer. I studied dance…well…let me go back. See, I always did art, but at the start the pieces were made of wood. I feel like I put them on the back burner, with dance, you know, on the front one. Even so, I feel like they were related to movement. So anyway, I studied dance for three years and then I moved to New York, which, let me say, wasn’t all that great. But I went anyway and nothing happened. I mean that nothing in the dance world was happening for me, and it was very discouraging until I said to myself, Hey, what about the sculpture? And I knew then that art was really my first love. It was at the core of everything, so I said to myself, Better go back to school. So I moved back here and…yeah, the discipline thing is really important. Now I’m working in metal.”
She delivered at least ten monologues this morning, all while smoking and rubbing at the blue circles under her eyes. I sort of love to hear her talk. She’s just burning up with her own thoughts. Tomorrow, she said, she’s driving to a place to buy aluminum.
October 15, 1986
Chicago
I’m thinking Neil must have a cold. She sneezes all the time now and sleeps on the stereo in the living room. It’s cold and drafty there, so I don’t get it at all. Early this morning, at around six, I woke up from a bad dream. Then I had a cigarette and took Neil off the stereo. I thought she should sleep with me for a change, but she didn’t want to. Now she’s sniffling and sneezing, and so am I. We’re in the same boat, only I sleep in bed and she sleeps on the stereo.
October 17, 1986
Chicago
I ate lunch at McDonald’s and saw a fat wallet fall out of a man’s jacket pocket and onto the floor. Broke as I am, I did not think of waiting until he walked away and then taking it. Instead I said, “Hey, you dropped your wallet.”
He said, “Oh,” and looked at me as if I were the one who’d taken it from his pocket.
Tonight at the coffee shop a telephone number fell out of my library book and a man pointed it out to me. It was not an important number, but still I pretended that this guy had saved my life. He did not seem to care.
October 19, 1986
Chicago
A man approached me on the street, saying, “Sir?”
I told him I’d already given away all my change, and he said, “No, I don’t want money. I want a job. I need one.”
I told him there was a labor pickup on Broadway and Wilson and that he might try there early in the morning. The fellow was black and had nice clothes on. He was a few years older than me and said, “I have experience in accounting.” This last word was whispered, which was strange.
I told him that I didn’t know anything about accounting.
“Well, can you give me some money, then?” he asked. “I’m hungry. Can you buy me something to eat?”
I said no, and he continued, “What if I come to your place and you fix me something?”
October 22, 1986
Chicago
Today we had a critique in painting class. One guy who spoke a lot has bangs down to his chin. He wears medallions and paints his fingernails black. I’d written him off as being too affected, but he was one of the few people to comment on his classmates’ work. Now I feel bad for having judged him.
Another person I noticed was Don, who is also in my writing class. He’s a little older than me, and I’m sort of fascinated by him. Ask Don where he’s from, and he’ll say he’s been all over the world. Don introduced himself on the first day as a poet, a filmmaker, a painter, and a photographer.
I might say, “I paint. I take pictures, I try to write, et cetera,” but would never in a thousand years use those titles for myself the way he does.
Don is interesting to me because he treats everyone like a child. He scolds and gives pats on the head. His poetry is about “sittin’” in a hotel room with “nothin’” but his memories and an “ol’ trombone.” His paintings are equally clichéd—night scenes, mainly. Norman Rockwell with a five o’clock shadow. Don is complex in an odd way. “I guess you could say that I’ve always been a loner,” he says, and, “Really, my concerns are very intellectual.” He spends a lot of time telling you how smart he is, which is odd because, if you’re truly all that bright, people can usually figure it out on their own.
October 23, 1986
Chicago
I followed a couple down Wilson Avenue last week, walked behind them for two blocks, and the woman said fuck eleven times. She was angry at a friend who was supposedly spreading lies about her. “I’m going to fucking talk to that bitch Donna and say, ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, spreading these fucking lies? It’s none of your business who I fucking fuck, you fucking asshole. I’ll knock your fucking teeth down your fucking throat if I ever…’?”
I would have followed them longer, but I was carrying heavy groceries.
October 27, 1986
Chicago
At the Kentland Western Pancake House in Kentland, Indiana, we sat beside a table of high school athletes. They’d just come from a football game and were eating fries and talking about the coach. One thing about him, they all agreed, was that he wears loose shorts and always wants to sit on the desk. When the coach does that, his balls hang out. You don’t want to notice them, but you pretty much have to. They’re just this guy’s hairy balls, and you don’t look at them because you’re interested or anything, but how can you not notice them?
November 2, 1986
Chicago
On my way to work I stopped at George’s, ordered a cheeseburger, and sat down. The place was empty except for me and a woman my age who wore tight blue slacks tucked into her boots, an expensive-looking sweater, and a coat with a jeweled medallion pinned to the lapel. She asked for the barbecued chicken and said to me, “Did you order fries? If not, you don’t have to because some are coming with my chicken and I don’t really want them.”
I told her thanks, but I was already scheduled for some. When her order was ready, she brought it to my table, though there were a dozen unoccupied ones. Eating messy food like barbecued chicken really made her feel primitive, she said. Then she told me she lives on Dakin Avenue, in a building called Melissa-Ann, which sounded to her like a snack cake. She said she was a graphic designer and guessed I was an English major. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “I bet you’re at…DePaul.”
A mother walked into George’s just then and scolded her children for dawdling. “I could have cooked the fucking food myself in the time it’s taking you to order it,” she said.
“Don’t you hate it when parents curse and don’t treat their children with respect?” the woman who lives on Dakin asked.
I told her that my mother’s new favorite word is fuck but that she can’t figure out its place in a sentence. “She’ll say, ‘I don’t give a fucking darn what you think.’”
The woman who lives on Dakin considered this. She tore her chicken from the bone with her fingers. I enjoyed her company, and I think she enjoyed mine, but we never introduced ourselves.
November 3, 1986
Chicago
On the radio, someone was talking about cranes. The ones he’d studied had been taken from their mother at birth. At first they were raised by hand puppets, then later by men who were dressed like cranes. How does a man dress like a crane? I wondered. And are birds really dumb enough to fall for it?
November 20, 1986