New & Notable
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My first major publicity gig for the British version of the book (yes, Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs) was an interview with Kate Mosse on the BBC. I was a tad dough-headed as it was far too early in the morning, but it was utterly brilliant as I was in the Chicago National Public Radio studios and I have a fetish for all things public radio. After the interview, Mary gave me a tour, showing me the studios, the rainbow-wired sound room, and the view of Chicago from their perch at the end of Navy Pier. She also gave me a really cool mug from Chicago Public Radio.
Moné
This funny thing happened to me. I ate lunch at Taqueria, one of the two Mexican joints around the corner from Jaime’s, and then ducked into the Internet café to do some email. After a while, this beautiful and staggeringly pregnant young woman came in and sat down at the computer next to me. Conversation arose and I learned she was from Minnesota, she was 24 years old, she played hockey and rugby at university, she used to work as a nurse, she was due to give birth to a boy on January 2nd. She also complained about her 44-year-old boyfriend, the father’s child, who rarely made time to see her. She lived on the North Side of Chicago, he the South, and it seemed they saw each other about once every 10 days.
So, it was one of those pleasant, unremarkable encounters that happen on the road. Until this woman asked me for computer help. She needed to post an ad on roomservice.com, which is some kind of escort network. It turns out, that under the name Moné, she had been working as an escort for the past ten months.
“It’s the best job I ever had,’ she told me. ‘You earn 300 dollars an hour and you just have to be able to separate having sex from making love.’
Maybe … but I wasn’t so convinced by the happy hooker thing. For my research on my next book (the murderer was an aspiring pimp) I read Iceberg Slim’s ‘Pimp’ and Moné’s story seemed like one of Iceberg’s stories. She met her ‘boyfriend’ in a club and began prostituting herself less than two months later. The man didn’t seem to care much about her or the child. And she was from rural Minnesota and the word was that Chicago pimps loved to prey on young women from rural Minnesota because they are blond, blue-eyed and incredibly naïve.
Then there was the whole question of the baby. Moné was still working, still taking calls at nearly eight months pregnant, putting on great shoes and slinky maternity dresses and arriving at the downtown hotels to service clients. My great love, the woman who saw me through the book and is now, sadly, my ex-great love, had a theory about pregnant sex. She thought the baby could feel the father’s energy and that the splashes of the father’s sperm were healthy for the baby. I believe this too, so the inverse must be true. How does the baby feel about his mother’s hooking? There must be incredibly bad energy there.
After the Internet café, Moné took me to the Salvation Army to try and buy me a warmer jacket and the whole thing was extremely disconcerting. A part of me was charmed because she was such a lively and fun woman (a Gemini); part of me wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her (she would have none of it; her mother tried to talk out of hooking but to no avail); part of me hated men, especially asshole pimp men; and part of me hated myself because there was a tremor of titillation to be shopping for used clothes with a beautiful pregnant escort.
In the end, there was nothing to be done. Moné drove off to try and track down her boyfriend and I drove up north along Lake Michigan to Winnetka, wondering where Moné and her child would be in two, five, ten years. I am optimistic by nature but I have a hard time seeing a happy ending here.
Barbara’s Bookstore
Reason number 48 for Sparkle Hayter’s magnificence? A veteran of a dozen book tours, in Europe and North America on the way down to Boston she counselled me on the pitfalls ahead. Don’t worry if nobody shows up, she said, it happens and when it does just smile and retire to a bar for drink.
So, indeed, it does happen and thankfully I was well warned. I blame the Chicago weather of course. Scalpel winds, burning snow flurries, temperatures near zero and not in a happy Celsius kind of way. I sure the hell wouldn’t have left my apartment to go to a bookstore reading so I am pleased to report that my readers are wise people too.
But you know what? Things turned out. I got to spend some good time with some good people. Kevin was there because he is the manager type at Barabara’s Bookstore. Incredible guy who organizes circus parties and keeps this intriguing blog about is material purchases and his attempts to have a weekly ‘Buy Nothing Day. It’s at: www.consumatron.com. Give it an eye.
Then there was Mike, a writer with ‘Stop Smiling (The Magazine for High-Minded Lowlifes)’. He came to do an interview, which we happily conducted at the Skylark, an authentic Chicago bar recommended by Bookstore Kevin which served collard greens and artichoke-spinach dip and, clearly, beer. Hunter S. Thompson once said that the key to interviewing was to get your subject drunk and record everything he says. I am pleased to report Mike seems to be in the Thompson school of journalism.
The Art Institute of Chicago
This is one of those museums you need about 18 visits to do justice to. A few hours was enough to awe me.
I saw a new van Gogh I loved, some men getting drunk at an outdoor fair.
Then there was a Magritte that posed an interesting translation challenge. The painting is of a train emerging from a fire place and his original French title was ‘La durée poignardée’. The English title became ‘Time Transfixed’ and Magritte hated it. I agree it doesn’t capture the depth of the French but I haven’t yet come up with a better translation. Anyone?
This painting by Archibald Motley Jr. pretty much depicts the atmosphere at the Green Mill, which I iterate, is one of my favourite bars in my history of barring.
Posted in New & Notable, Waystations | Leave a commentJaime Verdugo
I met Jaime (he is of Mexican extract, so his name is pronounced ‘Haime’ because ‘J’ is ‘H’ in Spanish) at Shakespeare and Company in 2000. He was broke with no place else to go and asked George to stay and was allowed two weeks at the bookstore. I am exceedingly happy to have met him.
Jaime has lived in big cities. New York, Mexico City, Los Angeles, detours through Paris, Amsterdam and Austin, and now Chicago. He is one of those people who definitely has a file at some government agency, either through his work with indymedia.org or just his general subversive ways. He writes too, which you can experience for yourself here.
Jaime moved to Chicago three months ago and still has nothing in his apartment. When I say nothing, I am barely exaggerating. He has a bed roll, two guitars, some books and CDs. But no furniture, no wall art, no plants, a starkly empty fridge. The lack of comforts makes everything seem a little more real. If you are poor and rootless and new to a city, why bother to pretend otherwise?
A windy city …
So, suddenly I remember what if feels like to be cold. Ever since moving to the south of France, I have been telling people I am a proud Canadian who has unfortunately become allergic to Canadian winters. Now the story makes sense again.
I got into Chicago last night and the wind was blowing fierce. How fierce? The local ABC affiliate reported that one young man was crushed under a roof that got blown off a building, a hundred billboards were toppled and trees lost their branches across the city. In more clinical terms, the temperature, with wind chill, was something like 3 degrees, which is in Fahrenheit, which, if my calculations are correct, makes for minus 79 Celsius. This kind of cold makes every minute outside unpleasant. My muscles ached from tensing, my ear froze, my teeth hurt. But the amazing thing … well, there are two.
First, despite all this torturous wind, this isn’t the reason for the city’s nickname. Chicago is called the Windy City because of all the corrupt politicians who have blown hot wind here. The name apparently dates back to the 1920s. Three separate Chicogoans, all huddled against this vile cold wind, told me this story in an ‘Isn’t that ironic’ sort of way.
And the second amazing thing is that I absolutely love Chicago despite my physical discomfort. Everyone I have met, everything I have visited, it all feels tremendously real. It has got me thinking of that old saying about how adversity builds character. If you live in a tough place, whether it be my town of Marseille with its poverty and crime, or a place like Chicago with its six months of hard weather, it takes a little fortitude to endure it. That fortitude makes for strong and interesting people. Though I love places like Paris, I think that for the mainstream population, the city is too easy to create real characters, that the BoBos who thrive there end up like those damn hollow chocolate Easter bunnies, real sweet and alluring on the surface, but when you really push, nothing inside.
Of course, my opinion of Chicago might be affected by the fact that within two hours of my arrival, I was in perhaps the best bar of my life. The joint is called the Green Mill, it is a jazz bar that has been operating continuously since 1907, it has booths and a real stand up bar and mirrors and four types of bourbon and music that makes you want to spend your whole life in one of those booths drinking that bourbon.
