I thanked him again and then took him to the alley, where we saw that the manhole cover had been replaced. While standing there looking at it, I learned that getting a new one had been the landlord’s responsibility. “I love to catch people stealing them,” the man said. “You can get sent to prison for taking one of these babies.”
He could have walked around the corner to get back to his truck, but instead he followed me into the apartment. In the living room, he paused to look at some drawings. “Did you do these?” he asked. “What are you, some kind of…drawer?” He bent forward and chuckled. “Man, oh, man. These are great.”
I always offer coffee to people working in my home. The guy who fixed the stove, an electrician, the cops who came once, everyone. I offer and they decline. I had a feeling this guy would have said yes and then stayed until five o’clock or whatever was quitting time for him. Since he wasn’t working in my home, I didn’t offer him any, but now I wish I had. I liked him.
March 23, 1989
Chicago
The president of the NRA was on the radio today, speaking before the Commonwealth Club of California. I was working at Linda’s, refinishing her banister, and when she came in, we listened together. The guy started defending the sale of assault rifles. It’s not the guns that are the problem, he said, but the birds who use them. “These birds who are psychos and should be locked up in the nuthouse. These birds who break into houses and try to rape people.”
The guy was very folksy. “Just like my dad,” Linda said. “That could be him on the radio!”
Her father is a farmer and she grew up with guns. As a child she shot a robin. Shocked at what she’d done, she tried to set it back in the tree, thinking it might spring to life once it was returned to its rightful place.
The head of the NRA kept using the term birds. He said that sportsmen across the country enjoy the responsible use of assault rifles and that a few sicko nut birds shouldn’t ruin it for the rest of us. He wasn’t particularly articulate, but he believed in his cause and didn’t evade questions the way so many speakers before the Commonwealth Club do.
March 26, 1989
Chicago
Walking to the L, I passed two men on Leland, both of them fully grown. One of them asked for a cigarette and the other, not hearing my answer, grabbed my arm. “I said we want a cigarette!” he shouted.
You can’t go around grabbing people like that. I’m sick of how trashy it is here. It’s filthy and depressing and every day it gets worse due to the warm weather. Living in Uptown, I get the idea that people are basically stupid, cruel, and violent.
The lease runs out at the end of April, and I think I’m ready to move.
In other news, I heard that a man’s waist should be twice as thick as his neck.
March 31, 1989
Chicago
The blind man was at the IHOP tonight, eating dinner with a sighted companion who brought up a friend of his who had hoped to open a combination café/theater in the Loop and offer light meals and plays during the lunch hour. “Of course, you’d have your soup of the day and your salads and so on,” he said. “I’m talking sandwiches and so forth.”
The blind man nodded.
“But it turned out he didn’t go through with it,” the sighted man said. Apparently the friend didn’t have enough money. “So I said to him, ‘Well, money’s not everything.’ Then he said, ‘Maybe not, but it’s about ten thousand goddamn miles ahead of whatever it is that comes in second.’” He sighed, then stole a french fry off the blind man’s plate.
I graded L.’s paper today. She always arrives late to class, then settles herself in and starts eating a snack. She likes potato chips in cellophane bags. Then she’ll decide to clean out her purse, taking out papers and crumpling them up. A couple of times I’ve turned to her, saying, “Are we all done now? Got everything squared away?”
Then she’ll say either “Yes” or “Almost.” Sarcasm is lost on her.
L.’s story was among the worst things I’ve ever read in my life. How on earth did they allow her to graduate from high school? Even Tomoko, who is from Japan and can just barely speak English, is a better writer. Plus Tomoko is spirited and she tries, unlike L., who just snacks and cleans out her purse.
April 12, 1989
Chicago
Money:
$33 from Lower Links reading
$50 honorarium from Randolph Street Gallery
$83 total!
April 18, 1989
Chicago
This evening I feel fat, stupid, and ugly. I was a lousy teacher again today, completely incapable of holding an opinion. I’ll make a statement, then, at the slightest resistance, I’ll retract it. How can they respect me?
There are several students in this class whom I don’t like. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, I just don’t like them. Can they tell?
April 21, 1989
Chicago
At the market underneath the Wilson L, I pulled the shopping list out of my pocket. Just as I realized there’d been money in there too and that I’d dropped it, I turned to see a man swoop down and pick it up off the floor. He had sand-colored hair and a red, boozy face crosshatched with wrinkles. I told him politely that that was my dollar he’d just picked up, and he said, “What dollar? I didn’t pick anything up.”
“Yes, you did. I saw you.”
“You didn’t see nothing,” he told me.
I followed him to the back of the store, where he grabbed a quart of beer and a bottle of Four Roses. “Come on,” I said. “I saw you take my money. Give it back.”
This guy was in his late forties, at least, way old enough to know better. If I saw a dollar bill fall from someone’s pocket, I’d say, “Excuse me, you dropped something.” If there was no one around, I’d claim it as my own, but this was different.
At the register the man untwisted my dollar. Then he took all the change out of his pocket and slowly counted it out. When the cashier told him he was short 10 cents, he turned to me and said, “Give me a dime.”
I couldn’t believe it.
There were two men behind me in line. One of them rooted in his pocket and handed the man who’d stolen from me two nickels. Then he looked at me with mild disgust, the way you might at a skinflint, and said, “What’s a dime?”
May 5, 1989
Chicago
I really need to avoid red wine. I drank it last night at Rob and Lyn’s house and awoke hours later with a terrible fire in my throat. My uvula felt like a pilot light. When I got up this morning, my face was very white. I feel fragile today but don’t have what I’d define as a hangover. I remember what went on last night. At one point, Rob showed me his computer and explained that you can plug one into a telephone jack.