“They sat together in the park / As the evening sky grew dark…”

– Bob Dylan

…When they met for the first time in a bar in Chicago she pulled out a switchblade knife, flicked it open, and rammed the tip of the blade down into the wooden table between them, right down between his fingers that were resting on the table, just like they do in the movies.

He stared into her eyes and she stared into his eyes and he realized at that moment that she hadn’t completely missed with the knife as he looked down and saw the bright red blood puddling on the wood before he felt the liquid warmth oozing around his drunk fingers.

But that was okay, he was just recently turned thirty years old and she was twenty-three, and such things would never have stopped either of them back in those days. Stopped them from drinking and staying out all night, that is. He grabbed a bunch of tissue from the bathroom and wrapped it around the nicked finger and they kept on drinking and talking in the bars until the bars shut down and then they went to the lakeshore where they huddled in their coats under a tree on a bench sharing a pint of Jack and another pack of cigarettes and watching the sun come up over the gigantic, steaming water. I didn’t know (and I also knew) I was looking for her and now I’ve gone and found my soul mate, he thought. Things will never be the same.

She looked like Morticia Addams (from the television show) at twenty-three. Her long, black, dark, smooth, silky, wavy, beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, amazing, curling, sweet-smelling, living, breathing, shining, flowing, glowing hair fell well below her shoulders and down her back and her big, bright, wild, long-lashed, unusual green eyes were so big and green they almost looked unnatural somehow, like some ancient visionary witch who could see through walls and around corners and into the innards of the workings of trees and people and so forth. Her green eyes made him feel like life itself is simply supernatural. She was a goth girl in 1999, pierced and tattooed (and shaved, he would later find out) in all the right places but not too much, either. Not too much, and not too little.

She spent most of that first night telling him about all the crimes she’d been involved in. Date rapes and gang rapes (most of those had happened to her, but not all), thefts, drug deals, assaults on authority, insults to authority, pranks and law-breaking practical jokes of all sorts. Whether she was displaying herself as the victim or showing herself to be the creator of victims (who deserved it, she said), the tales she told him about herself that first night were both totally outlandish and utterly convincing. He knew instinctively that there was something fishy going on with all of this but it was only a few months later that he would suddenly realize that 99% of this stuff was what Hemingway called “total bullshit.” She knew that he was more than a bit of a criminal at heart himself and she knew that he’d feel sorry for her about the gang rapes and the date rapes, so it never occurred to her that she should stop herself and confine herself to the straight facts, he later realized. She was busy creating a character for him, that first night; she might as well have been on stage (but a very intimate stage, like the most intense closet drama ever invented, where much of the talking was done in inimitable whispers in the hidden corners of dark bars, just the two of us), and just like an audience member is highly unlikely to jump up onto the stage and interrupt the performance of an actress, no matter how convincing or unconvincing her performance is, he was unlikely to call any of her wild tales into question that first night. Although he did say things like, “No shit?” and “You’re kidding me,” and “That is hard to believe” over and over again.

When he showed a little bit of doubt, all it did was spur her on to fresh versions of new crazy tales meant to convince him that she was not the person she really was, or rather that she was a person who enjoyed breaking the rules much more than she had ever actually enjoyed breaking the rules or would in the future.

And so they fell in love and spent every single minute together (almost, or it felt like it) for about three weeks in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, 1999.

The end came, or rather the end of the first stage in their relationship came, one night a few days before Christmas when they were in an Irish Bar in Lincoln Park right across from the park and the lake. Snow was falling outside and when he came back from the bathroom she was sitting right next to (too close to, much too close to) a gigantic goon who she’d earlier told him was a former boyfriend. The guy was probably twenty-five years old, built like a heavyweight boxer and with a very mean look in his eye whenever anyone else got near her. The alcohol took over for everyone and the three of them started drinking together, knocking back shots of Jack one after another as if it were some sort of contest, and even though she was much smaller physically than both of the men, she kept up with them for a while until she suddenly disappeared, into the bathroom it turned out. When she returned, she was pale, very pale, even paler than usual, as in ghostly white, and even deathly white, and she had a small, apologetic smile on her lips (and almost like she already knew what was going to happen soon). Then it was his turn to disappear into the bathroom although he wasn’t throwing up because he almost never did no matter how much he drank. When he turned around, there was a guy he’d never seen before standing there holding her switchblade knife out at him, the exact same knife or at least the same kind of knife with the blade pointed right at his lower stomach about three or four feet away from him.

This stranger then informed him that she was with the other guy again now, that they had gotten back together now and the best thing for him (the main character in this story) to do now would be to get the hell out of here as fast as he could before six or seven of them ganged up on him, dragged him into the back alley, and all used their switchblades on him at once.

The main character of this story went back out into the bar looking for her but she was gone and he soon realized that the guy with the knife in the bathroom hadn’t been joking, or not much. There were at least three or four other gang members ranged around the bar and they were all quietly drinking and waiting for the signal to do the deed, and the deed was this: drag him into the alley and go to work on him with their knives, four or five against one, just like he’d been warned was the case. He could tell, he could very much feel, by their presence who these people were and that none of this was a joke, at all; they were gang members in a gang town that had been a gang town since day one and still was. (See the End Note at the end of this very true story.) If he didn’t leave, and leave now, he would get himself killed or at the very least sent straight to the hospital, left for dead or half-dead in a Lincoln Park alley near the dumpsters behind a dive bar.

Later that night, or earlier that day, anyway it was around six in the morning, as he was lying in his tiny apartment on the futon finally about to drift off to sleep after a very tormented and drunken few hours lying there thinking about her, his telephone rang. It was in the days of the fabled answering machine. He refused to answer the phone; but he did listen to what she said into the answering machine.

She accused him of abandoning her and she informed him that she had become the victim of an unwanted act of sodomy which had been perpetrated upon her in her apartment by the ex-boyfriend who she’d disappeared with and taken back to her apartment. There was something about the way she said it all that told him that this time she wasn’t lying about any of it. And she told him it was his fault and he realized that she was right, as absurd as it all sounded, she was definitely correct: it was his fault. It was his fault! It was all his fault. And this was like The Wall of Pink Floyd.

She said, “It’s all your fault because…because…because you disappointed me.”

End Note: Of Chicago’s 200-plus neighborhoods, 100 of them (or more) are run by gangs; the rest are run gang-style by people who wear conventional business suits and parade around as if they aren’t in a gang. Because there are many ways to stab someone in the back, and not all of them involve knives. Someone is doing it to you this very second, you can be sure (if you are good) (one way or another).

The Drifter and All Images by The Drifter

And…

Hail to the Drifter

Last year, during the run of normal conversation about the upcoming opening of this site, it was decided that the Drifter should hold court every Sunday. He has quickly become a tradition to the degree that I was gobsmacked catatonic to learn that he has been shaking the dust off his boots for an entire year. 

In the world of writing, getting creative things done in an orderly manner is as likely as the Wildebeest outwitting the Lionesses. Some things cannot happen because they run contrary to the governing Will of the universe. In the U.S.A. this was compared to the likelihood of the Chicago Cubs winning a World Series, but when that happened ten years ago, those who turned to St. Jude for succor gained an extra kick in their steps and shone less sadness in their smiles. But since it has been ten years, some of the old lachrymose expressions have slowly returned to faces that look more natural that way. But such a fate will never befall the Drifter (said to be of or near Chicago), who, frankly, tells it like it is and does not need a well pitched game or left handed hitting to get himself across.

Hail to the Drifter, may he find solace on the long and dusty road as another year begins.

Leila