American Yarnprose>Winter Makes Mad Monsters And Great Storytellers Of Us All

Winter Makes Mad Monsters And Great Storytellers Of Us All, I Guess

It’s after midnight in the town of the blues.

Three afro-teens hail a cab on downtown Wabash Avenue and blurt out as the cabbie puts the taxi in park, leans over, unlocks his doors and pushes his right back door open, “Do you go to Cabrini?" (Cabrini Green-AKA the most famous of all Chicago housing complexes for the supposed impoverished afro population of the city)

The trio laughs and snortily giggles like English schoolgirls.

The downtown plazas illuminate faded Christmas memories like an out of tune Upright.

I am waiting on an underground platform, taking notes of solos, couples and groups’ conversations, piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit, bite-by-bite.

I have always wondered about the art of the public conversation. Talking publicly, yet the words are echoed privately between friends. Omissions. Public embarrassments. Achievements. Secret lives and loves. Lies and deceit. Gossips.

“Hey! Want a newspaper?” this guy in gray down puffered coat says to me.

“Wow, man! That paper is getting passed ‘round to everyone,” his companion remarks.

“Gives me something to write on (to use as a lean against),” I say, accepting the tabloided newssheet.

Reading ‘bout the new football league, his companion remarks. “You can be a stripper in a topless bar and then be a cheerleader the following Sunday.”

“You did it right, you did it wrong,” the drunken college frat boy babbles on while pointing to first, presumably his girlfriend, a tall beanpole with Barbie doll attributes, then to his best buddy.

“What is a groundhog anyway?” a gray-coated, blue-jeaned, pony-tailed blonde with nerdy glasses and gray clogs asks to a blue-coated, gray-panted, gym-shoed crewcutted boy, presumably her friend, leaning against the railcar door.

“Like Andy took 10 times,” the drunken frat boy shouts, while poking his best buddy madly like a meat hook through an animal carcass. Neon lights caress one another, playing, a ‘tag-you’re-it’ game, as the train raggles by.

Faces in the railcar are humble, tired and sullen. Some are dour. Others look disinterested. Still others are puzzled and pale. The people sitting behind me needed to die in order to live again, I thought. They need to immerse themselves in the lost land of ape life in drag, where Buddha meditates quietly in pink snow fog, bound and gagged.

“Holy shit! One dollar off,” a mister says to his missus. “I only say it (that) when I go to the men’s room,” he chortles, provoking a light “Hahaha,” response from his soul mate.

Snowflakes crochet beneath pale lamplights on empty pavement.

As I make my way down the steps, past the coffee shop and home to my apartment, I overhear a philosophical man speaking to a group of college boys walking the other way in a.m. 1:30 Chicago dusk.

“God created us in different skins, but he gave us the same souls.”

Winter makes mad monsters and great storytellers of us all, I guess.