Andy worked 4 jobs. (1) He was a waiter at the Mc Cormick Center Plaza, which is where we met. (2) He worked at UPS unloading boxes from trucks. (3) He cleaned a bar every morning. (4) He was a hired thug for different gangs.
Andy had at least 4 girlfriends as well. None of them knew of the others’ existence. It wasn’t that he was particularly clever; they were all particularly stupid. He had an infant son with one of them. Because she was black, his mother wouldn’t allow her or the baby inside the house. Because he was half Italian, he still lived with his mother.
His mother, although married to a Mexican and clearly a minority in her own right, was extremely racist, which is why she adored me. He brought me around to show me off to her a few times, and she was not inhibited about her dying wish being a holy union between her son and me. Not that she was dying; she simply had a dramatic streak a mile wide.
Over time, I had the opportunity to meet all of Andy’s girlfriends. They were all very sweet and each one of them confided in me that they suspected he might have “someone else”. I was very sweet in return and assured them I hadn’t seen any girls in Andy’s company, with the one exception of whomever I happened to be talking to that day. For some reason which I do not know and would probably not be proud to find out about, I personally was above suspicion.
Andy was quite the charmer. He had a mustache like Heraldo Rivera and the first time he ever met me, he promised me “I’m gonna lick you DRYYYYYYYYYY”, which I found rather amusing, if not completely endearing. But, like most good one-liners, it ended up getting sweeter with time/sinking in on me, and over time, the oft-repeated phrase became a reliable refrain of comfort and consistency in my otherwise manic routine.
In spite of his racist upbringing, Andy was an equal opportunity thug. He and his friend, a very large man with nondescript features and whose name I forget, were like the "Equalizers" of the Chicago gangland community, providing street justice to all -- for a fee. Not to negate their own strong work ethic and spirit of entrepreneurialism; but what really made them a hot commodity was the fact that between the two of them, they owned two coffins.
The basic drill was this: some homey needed some other homey to be taught a lesson. Andy and his friend's paid service was simple yet very effective, and in continuous high demand: they'd follow their target and knock the person out with a baseball bat. When the guy woke up, he'd find himself inside a closed coffin. Then he'd completely freak out and repent, at which point he would be released back into the wilderness of Gangland.
According to Andy's own clinical field studies in the matter, people tend to change their ways very rapidly when they wake up inside a coffin.
What worked for Andy, worked for me. He was the only guy I knew who seemed to be able to afford to buy me steak for dinner on a regular basis, and I truly respected that gentlemanly quality in him. He kind of came across as a pretty nice guy on a number of different levels, as long as you ignored the 4th job, the 4 other girlfriends and his partner's claims that he made and ate cat roadkill pizza on a regular basis. I didn't like to think of myself as "easy" or having low standards; rather I preferred to think of myself as having an open mind and an open heart, and from that point of view I'd say there were worse guys out there that I could've been dating.
Showing posts with label Chicago. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicago. Show all posts
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Eddie Love, Part II
Anyone who still has questions about whether there’s alien life on this planet has not met Eddie Love.
When in motion, it was beyond question that Eddie was, in fact, an alien. In a non-ambulant state, Eddie’s looks were certainly passable: a large-ish, hawk-shaped nose (on a good day, a Roman nose; on a bad day it was a Jewish one), warm, sincere brown puppy eyes, and a not overly short build that could certainly pass for somewhat muscled and sound.
Once he started walking, it was all over. To my well-trained anthropologist’s eye, it was evident beyond any reasonable doubt that Eddie had only very recently joined the human race. Clinically speaking, he definitely displayed a number of symptoms characteristic of arrested evolutionary development. He still had proverbial egg yolk behind his ears.
Eddie’s body lacked not only definition, it seemed to lack perimeter. He had a slow, methodical gait best described as something between lumbering and plodding. It was less one foot in front of the other than like one of those wind-up toys whose feet sort of mechanically loop, or rotate, in front of each other.
Although he did not, I could never shake the eerie impression that Eddie had webbed feet. Especially with his toes turned slightly inwards, he walked almost exactly as if he were wearing scuba flippers.
But the worst part about Eddie in motion occurred above the waist, not below it.
Eddie stuck his ass out when he walked. I don’t mean a little bit. I mean he put Black Ghetto Mama to shame. He had a fairly sizeable ass for a white human male, and if he’d worn it tucked somewhat in, it could have even have been considered an attractive physical feature. However, Eddie walked his ass around as if there were peacock feathers sprouting out of it.
But like I said, the worst part of Eddie in motion was above the waist.
What I’m getting at is Eddie’s hands. When Eddie walked, he tucked his elbows up and wore his hands at just above shoulder level, wrists extended back to expose his palms gleefully facing front. From the waist up, his body language was a perpetual expression of a pleasantly surprised Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Maybe he used his hands to counterbalance the weight of his hyper-extended ass. But it was very, very certain that Eddie was simply not used to inhabiting a humanoid form and that he just didn’t quite know how to pull it off.
After a few weeks of watching this, any possible remnants of novelty had worn off and all that was left for me was the grating chafe of embarrassment of being associated with a half-hatched human amoeba. Eddie wasn’t one to take subtle hints: if he were, he would’ve noticed that my tendency to walk on the opposite sidewalk of him when we were going somewhere in public bespoke of an underlying situation that would require eventual address. After all, I lived in Southside Chicago, and any reputational considerations aside, it was an actual safety hazard to be seen walking down those streets with a white man who walked like a blissed-out, oblivious fag.
I tried to enlighten him; to appeal to his senses, as it were. “When we walk down the street together, you are supposed to protect me from real or potential threats”, I lectured him. “This is how you walk” (I imitated a large bird with a spear stuck in its ass). “It does not make me feel safe and protected to walk with you”.
I allowed a few minutes to let the weight of my words penetrate, visualizing a brain deep inside his skull of a consistency, density and color not unlike the ancient peat bog from whence I imagine he had emerged. (In spite of how amazingly dense he was, I was to find out later that Eddie had a genius-level IQ, which made him the closest thing to an idiot savant that I’ve ever dated – or known otherwise). I then launched into the first of what would become a series of walking lessons for Eddie.
My only real goal was to teach him how to walk like a human male, not even so much out of self-interest or to “change him” than for the purely altruistic goal of helping him escape detection for a few more years until his work on this planet was complete. It was painfully obvious that Eddie was new at this human thing, and it was my job to do right by my expensive cultural anthropology degree to teach him our ways so he at least had a fighting chance.
Every woman wants a guy to make her feel special. Eddie definitely did this for me. I felt like he was an important project which, once complete, might change the course of human history as we know it. For the first time in a long while, I felt historically relevant, probably not unlike Rudyard Kipling, when he expressed his sentiments towards his responsibility for the civilization of savages in his famous poem titled “The White Man’s Burden”. Eddie was my savage little alien, sent to me for reasons I had yet to fully understand.
When in motion, it was beyond question that Eddie was, in fact, an alien. In a non-ambulant state, Eddie’s looks were certainly passable: a large-ish, hawk-shaped nose (on a good day, a Roman nose; on a bad day it was a Jewish one), warm, sincere brown puppy eyes, and a not overly short build that could certainly pass for somewhat muscled and sound.
Once he started walking, it was all over. To my well-trained anthropologist’s eye, it was evident beyond any reasonable doubt that Eddie had only very recently joined the human race. Clinically speaking, he definitely displayed a number of symptoms characteristic of arrested evolutionary development. He still had proverbial egg yolk behind his ears.
Eddie’s body lacked not only definition, it seemed to lack perimeter. He had a slow, methodical gait best described as something between lumbering and plodding. It was less one foot in front of the other than like one of those wind-up toys whose feet sort of mechanically loop, or rotate, in front of each other.
Although he did not, I could never shake the eerie impression that Eddie had webbed feet. Especially with his toes turned slightly inwards, he walked almost exactly as if he were wearing scuba flippers.
But the worst part about Eddie in motion occurred above the waist, not below it.
Eddie stuck his ass out when he walked. I don’t mean a little bit. I mean he put Black Ghetto Mama to shame. He had a fairly sizeable ass for a white human male, and if he’d worn it tucked somewhat in, it could have even have been considered an attractive physical feature. However, Eddie walked his ass around as if there were peacock feathers sprouting out of it.
But like I said, the worst part of Eddie in motion was above the waist.
What I’m getting at is Eddie’s hands. When Eddie walked, he tucked his elbows up and wore his hands at just above shoulder level, wrists extended back to expose his palms gleefully facing front. From the waist up, his body language was a perpetual expression of a pleasantly surprised Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Maybe he used his hands to counterbalance the weight of his hyper-extended ass. But it was very, very certain that Eddie was simply not used to inhabiting a humanoid form and that he just didn’t quite know how to pull it off.
After a few weeks of watching this, any possible remnants of novelty had worn off and all that was left for me was the grating chafe of embarrassment of being associated with a half-hatched human amoeba. Eddie wasn’t one to take subtle hints: if he were, he would’ve noticed that my tendency to walk on the opposite sidewalk of him when we were going somewhere in public bespoke of an underlying situation that would require eventual address. After all, I lived in Southside Chicago, and any reputational considerations aside, it was an actual safety hazard to be seen walking down those streets with a white man who walked like a blissed-out, oblivious fag.
I tried to enlighten him; to appeal to his senses, as it were. “When we walk down the street together, you are supposed to protect me from real or potential threats”, I lectured him. “This is how you walk” (I imitated a large bird with a spear stuck in its ass). “It does not make me feel safe and protected to walk with you”.
I allowed a few minutes to let the weight of my words penetrate, visualizing a brain deep inside his skull of a consistency, density and color not unlike the ancient peat bog from whence I imagine he had emerged. (In spite of how amazingly dense he was, I was to find out later that Eddie had a genius-level IQ, which made him the closest thing to an idiot savant that I’ve ever dated – or known otherwise). I then launched into the first of what would become a series of walking lessons for Eddie.
My only real goal was to teach him how to walk like a human male, not even so much out of self-interest or to “change him” than for the purely altruistic goal of helping him escape detection for a few more years until his work on this planet was complete. It was painfully obvious that Eddie was new at this human thing, and it was my job to do right by my expensive cultural anthropology degree to teach him our ways so he at least had a fighting chance.
Every woman wants a guy to make her feel special. Eddie definitely did this for me. I felt like he was an important project which, once complete, might change the course of human history as we know it. For the first time in a long while, I felt historically relevant, probably not unlike Rudyard Kipling, when he expressed his sentiments towards his responsibility for the civilization of savages in his famous poem titled “The White Man’s Burden”. Eddie was my savage little alien, sent to me for reasons I had yet to fully understand.
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