How to flirt, for gals and guys.

Setting: elevator in downtown building. I board, followed by cute and plump woman in late 20s.

SHE: (smiles) Got any more of that cinnamon gum?

ME: Mmmm ... maybe. Lemme see. I think I have just one piece. (Fishes around in pockets) Yeah, just one. You wanna take my last piece?

SHE: Mm-hmm.

ME: You'd take the very last stick of gum from a stranger?

SHE: Yeah. Remember, when you do a good deed, it always comes back around to you.

ME: Okay. Just be here tomorrow with some gum. Same bat-time, same bat-place.

SHE: (Laughs, smiles big) Okay.

ME: (Getting off ... off the elevator, that is) But anyway, do enjoy it. Bye!

SHE: Bye-bye, sugar!

Children Are Now Okay In the Art World

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO feel about this. On the one hand, I'm glad that kiddos get the nod, from the hallowed halls of the School of the Art Institute, as being sufficiently hip, cool, maybe even subversive, to be allowed into the once child-free zone of Art.

 On the other hand, I'm sad that it was ever otherwise. I wrote about mommy rock here nine years ago (nine years ago?!) and also, while we're at it, my observations about wanting to see more vivacious and exploring energy of children in the adult art scene are part of another post.

This is Division

SATURDAY NIGHT, ABOUT 8:30, Jackson Blue Line platform: I enter and take a seat on a bench.

On the opposite side of the bench behind me sit a middle-aged black man and woman in well-worn clothes. Standing before them is a fortyish brotha with braided hair pulled back into a ponytail. He looks like he's seen better days too. He’s saying something, in heavily slurred speech, to the man and woman. After a few moments, I realize he is praying:

“And God, I just pray that you continue to give us mo' blessin's and mo' blessin's, so that we can spread 'em 'round to others, just like you did by givin' us yo’ son Jesus. In Jesus' name, amen."

He goes on to exhort his tiny congregation: "I tell yall, I don't need nothin'! He take care of all my needs. Do I look like I'm homeless? I just don't wanna live at home. But I just, I just wanna spread God's blessin's. And the reason why I spread 'em on to you is, you gon' spread 'em on to someone else. 'Cause God has blessed me."

"Amen," I say, under my breath.

"What Jesus did? He didn't come wit' the clean people. He came wit' the nasty people. Us. He made sure the world got taken care of. We know he was God in a man's body. But you know what he did? He was good to er-rybody. I wanna be like Jesus. Good Jesus. Good God."

The other two listen respectfully to the impromptu sermon.

"Mary was pregnant," the preacher continues. "Joseph don't know if he did it. And God gave him a dream and said, 'That's my son.' If yo wife came up pregnant with a baby and you didn't do it, what would you do?"

He continues in this vein for a little while, until the westbound Congress train comes roaring up. They all get on board and the train is soon gone.

The cockles of my heart thus warmed, I’m in good spirits as I wait for the O'hare-bound train. It arrives a few minutes later. Once in, I pick a seat near the head of the car — almost straight across from a large black woman in a scuzzy, dark blue bubble coat. She's sprawled across two seats, as if she owns the place.

No sooner have I sat down than she starts up hollering, as if continuing a conversation with someone at the other end of the car.

"I'm Amer — I’m a United State! I'm a American citizen!" she announces, to everyone and no one.

"I got married once. I got an American baby. Sheeit. You got to marry them! When you marry them, you got mucho money!"  Her speech is not only loud but slurred, and her voice sounds like she’s smoked a pack, downed a fifth, then chewed up the bottle and swallowed that too.

From the loudspeaker, the Friendly Male Announcer Voice breaks in: "CHANGE TO THE BLUE LINE TRAINS AT WASHINGTON.”

"Cause they ain't no United State!" the woman yells. Then her tone turns smug. "I know the game and I know the rules. I got monaaaaaaaaay!"

She pauses a few moments, then continues: "My sister got 'em cause I'm homeless. My older sister got my baby. She nine years old. She a Mexican."

"THIS IS WASHINGTON."

"Mucho money. Yeah! Dinero. I took it. I ain't even marry the bitch, and I still got that money. Pesos!"

Perhaps in case we haven’t gotten it, she repeats: "Money!”

A thirtyish guy with glasses, sitting a few rows down from me, smirks in our direction.

“I don't spend no pesos on bitches,” the woman declares. “I'm not no mothafuckin' — I say money, bitch! Money, money, money!"

At this moment I can’t help but think of a couple of images from “In Living Color”: The “Mo’ Money” guys, and the stumbling stew bum who went to the toilet in a jar.

I know this woman's got issues. I know she's hurting inside. Problem is I’m hurting inside, too — from holding back the laughter. I feel like I'm about to laugh up my small intestine. I know I'm wrong, but I can't help it. 

Here she goes again. "You marry them, and they not legally — you gotta marry them,” she informs us. “And you get money! Because you's a United States … I'm a United State! Baby, you got to marry that Mexican man!"

At Clark and Lake a bunch of folks, all white, board the train. There are some college-age kids, as well as a couple shepherding a cherubic, flaxen-haired little boy and girl of four or five. They come our way, only to be greeted by Ms. Mucho Money.

"Hey hey girl, what's up party girl!" the woman shouts at the little girl.

As the passengers situate themselves and the train rattles along its way, she yells out what sounds like: "Let's all fuck each other! Look all these bitches. (Cough, cough) Party, party, partaaaaay! Happy New Year. Happpy Meerrrrrrrry Christmas! Y’all get the fuck off my El.”

The embarrassed white people try to ignore her, while muffled titters emanate from somewhere in the back of the car.

To one of the twentysomething girls who’d just boarded — or perhaps in mockery to the guys on the train who were ogling them  — she comments: “Whoo-pee doo! Jest looka that ass. Hey baby girl!"

By now I’m crying—from laughing. I’m a horrible human being.

The yuppie couple decide they're going to move on to the next car. "Go ahead and go," Mucho Money yells. "Go. Go!"

A fiftysomething white guy with glasses and mustache, a Cubs-fan looking kinda guy, sits down next to me. He could reach across the aisle and slightly back, and touch Ms. Mucho. The kid or kids with him (I’m not quite sure, as he is partly obstructing my view) sit a couple seats in front of her.

She keeps running her mouth. "They lookin' at ass. He lookin' at ass." A few of the college girls giggle amongst themselves.

"Ha ha ha ha," she laugh-coughs. "Yall lookin' at ass and cain't get the ass. Ha ha ha ha! Woo woo woo woooooooo! Yall lookin' at all these kids' ass. Ooh, it's a kid over here, I'm sorry. I'm sorry baby girl. I'm sorry."

Oh yeah, that’s right. There are children nearby. This is not funny. I try to stop laughing and to look appropriately concerned.

"DOORS OPEN ON THE LEFT AT GRAND.”

"I'm sorry," the woman says again, to the little blonde girl, reaching over as if to pat her on the head.

"Stay away from her," warns the mustachioed guy sitting next to me, apparently her dad.

"Whaa — I —"

"Stay away from her," he repeats, like he means it.

She glares at him. "Hey,” she retorts, even more loudly than before. “I got kids too. Someone like you — you stay away. Now put that to the bank! You stay away. Now you said the wrong mothafuckin' thing."

A twentysomething, bearded guy sitting kitty-corner from me pipes up: "Hey, hey, can you not talk like that around the kids?" 

"I'm sorry baby."

"Thank you."

Without missing a beat, she turns back to Dad: "You got old men rapin' kids! Old men rapin' kids! And women! Now take that to the bank! I got kids! Ass-hole! Suck my dick. My kids is grown, bitch! Now git yo white ass and straighten it up!"

Now it's not just deranged and obscene; it's become overtly hostile and racial. I begin to feel chagrined. As the only other awake black person in sight (the brotha behind me is knocked out, or pretending to be), I feel like it's somehow my job to speak up, to say or do something. To make a show of racial goodwill, or whatever. But I stay silent, lapsing back into observer mode. I say a silent prayer for her, though.

Mucho rants on:  "All yall white people killin' people! You done hung yo’self an' killin' kids and killin' grown people. Bitch, I'm a homeless bitch! Now take that to the bank, bitch! . . ."

"CHICAGO IS NEXT."

" . . . And I'm a homeless person. All the shit happen on the news — you done did it! Cause yall rich! You white! You fucked up old man. You the one killin' mothafuckas!"

The noise drowns her out momentarily. People stare out windows.

" . . . "All these women getting' killed! Hangin' themselves. Turn to the news, ass-hole! Don't fuck wit' me — cause I ride."

More giggles from somewhere in the car. 

"Yall rich. Got money. Yall hangin' yo own people. Look at Jerry Springer. Look at Jerry Springer. Don't tell me what the fuck — tell me what to do on my mothafuckin' train . . ."

"DIVISION IS NEXT."

" . . . Ugly mothafucka!"

The roar of the train at top speed nearly drowns her out, and the dad next to me is attempting to ignore her. But she continues to rail: "You done raped all these kids. Kilt all these kids. Kilt all these Mooslims. You got nerve to talk shit to me on my ghetto — it's the ghetto — da ghettooooooooo! . . .

"THIS IS DIVISION."

 . . . "You rape yo kids, you rape yo mama, you rape yo daddy—don't come and talk no shit on me on my mothafuckin' train bitch! And you live in the suburbs! You betta suck my dick! All yall rapists! Come on my mothafuckin' train. This the ghetto. You rape. You rob. You take yo kids and fuck yo own kids . . ."

"DAMEN IS NEXT. DOORS OPEN TO THE RIGHT AT DAMEN.”

"That's what the kids pick up. ... Don't come on the ghetto and talk shit. Ooh baby ... I'm a get paid ... Why ya want fuck yo kids? Why yo wanna do this, mom? ... Cause I ain't had no dick ... ahhurg."

In all this time —  since the bearded young man spoke — no one else has said a peep to her. As I exit at Damen, I’m feeling bad for not having said or done something. But what?

While the train's stopped, I see a conductor's head sticking out a window on the far end. I sprint down to her and tell her there's a foul-mouthed disorderly woman in the second-from-last car, #3122.

"Okay, I'll report it," she sighs, as if she's heard this a hundred times.

*  *  * 

After midnight I return to the Damen platform to head back south. I light up a Camel and listen to three dudes talk about the metal show they just saw at the Double Door. The southbound is taking its time. But within a few minutes, along comes a northbound O’Hare train and pulls up on the opposite side. I look through the windows. Is that —? 

Yep. It’s Ms. Mucho again. Same car 3122, same corner, same seat. Only now she appears more tranquil, mouth shut and hood pulled halfway over her face. She wipes her nose with a tissue as the train shuts its doors and takes her into the night.

"How big of a bang is this gonna be?" (A retro-post)

1. WHO WAS AT GALLERY Chicago?

Your standard, predominantly senior-hipster crowd. A performance artist who, am told, used to get naked and smear himself with mayo and ketchup, a guy in drag with his (her?) flamboyant dreadlocked black performance artist friend, an old Navy Seal (who almost drunkenly broke down in tears while relating to me how he’d been ordered to kill women and children in Third World countries), a lady multimedia-whiz/programmer/art instructor who's 40something going on 16, a rotund mustachioed character who styles himself a "Count" and speaks in a British accent (who is actually the cousin of the Navy Seal, it's said), a sequin-wearing poet/artiste of a certain age who -- well, I'll tell you about her in a moment.
 But this was one of those nights when the mix of hormones, the carnival-like atmosphere and natural chemical libations and inhalants was just right; when things that ordinarily wouldn't've happened did; or is it, that the things that ordinarily would've happened but for our everyday inhibitions?

The Count -- who says he is descended from the Brits by way of the Melungeons -- insists that the U.S.A. are illegitimate, still owned by the British Virginia Company.
The  retired SEAL -- who tells me he has been to Bohemian Grove in a private security capacity  --  repeats his claim that "The Great Owl" predicted the elder and younger Bush's electoral victories, but had said Dubya would lose the upcoming contest.

"How does a white stone owl 'tell' you something?" I query. He declines to say.
"Metaphorically, you mean?" I probe further.

"Yes, not literally. They have a vote."
This was news to me, since in all the exposes I'd read to date, there was never any word of any votes being taken on any official matters.

Although I try to draw him out further on his Grove knowledge, it seems he still takes his secrecy oath very, very seriously. It very well could be he is not as "retired" as he says he is.

The 50something sequin-wearing poet/artiste starts rambling (it should be noted, we've all been imbibing various types of booze as well as smoking some kind of herb that Lee brought) on some kind of metaphysical rant that starts with "You're the middle of the circle ... "

So I say "but from the perspective of infinity, we're all in the middle of the circle."

"But what if you wanna get beyond the center -- fly out into space and see the edge?"

That one has me stumped. So I decide to take the convo in a whole different direction. I adopt my "seductive" voice and come up with the corniest lines I can muster.

"Well speaking of outer space and all, I'd love to make you  see the stars, baby."

She giggles like a fourteen-year-old. "Oooh, so how big of a bang is this gonna be?

"Like the original...only bigger!"

"So. Tell me some poetry."

"Baby, I'm a poet of the senses."

During this conversation, something funny is happening. Her skirt keeps falling: once, twice, three times her skirt falls off. It's a good thing for her that she wasn't going commando that night.
 I have no idea what the malfunction is, but I can't  resist quipping:

"See, I can even talk you right out of your clothes!"

We tease, almost kiss, just feeling the groovy vibe, the wine, the herb, the music ...

But I pull myself away from her to go pour another drink.

She comes over toward the table where I'm at and, somehow, trips over my feet and winds up on her ass on the floor.

I try to help her up, but she refuses to get up. "No ... you come down here!"

At this point we'e teasing each other silly. By now, the other buzzed/stoned guests are watching us and having a laugh. Our lips are almost meeting again ....

Aggressive Angela

Ah, for the days when I was young, chaste, and chased. I still laugh at this. I met Angela in my night music theory class. The next year, we had another class together -- Piano, I think? Angela was a temptation straight out of the fiery flames of you-know-where. Quite appropriately, the woman was hot. She was exotic, she was ripped right out of my fantasies, she was 12 years my senior, and she was on a frickin' mission -- and I was it. This is from my journal, since there were no blogs in 1992. 


OKAY, SO I HAD just gotten off the phone with that Amazonian beauty, the one I had a thang for in high school but was always too intimidated to talk to, but I met her after high school and got her phone number. You know how that goes. So I called and she was happy to hear from me. Until I let on that I hadn't found a summer job yet, and was pretty broke, plus I had just wrecked my car. Then she suddenly found a reason why she couldn't talk to me any more.
 
Oh well, next on my list: Angela. She'd been trying to reach me. She is the usual gabfest, talking about anythang and everythang: her ex-husband (she calls him “What’s-His-Name”), her kids, her mom and mom’s widowed friends, her radio career, her trip to Mexico, her interviews with famous Latin singers, her school grades. And then she stops.

And in that creamy Spanish-accented voice, comes that question I always dread:

“I’ve been telling you all about myself. Tell me a little about you.”

“Um. What do you wanna know?”

“Anything. Everything. Your background? Your childhood? How do you think?  What do you want to do with your life? What do you think about?  What do you dream about when you daydream? Do you daydream? Do you have sex dreams?”

Angelic Angela (a retro-post)

 PURSUANT TO MOVING, I've been cleaning out. This means finding all kinds of surprises from the past. This is a journal entry from 11 years ago (which I cleverly recycled into a "creative writing" piece for English Comp). I've titled this "Angelic Angela" because there's another Angela who was somewhat naughtier -- her story will follow.



June 1992

SO THERE I AM, home alone on a Friday night, and doing, of all things, a jigsaw puzzle.

I'm 18, it's the middle of summer, my parents are a thousand miles away cruising the Carribbean and my big brother's out somewhere, probably doing keg stands, and I've got the whole damn house to myself: the starting premise of a million crazy teen party movies. But I'm not a party guy. I'm actually feeling pretty antisocial; I don't want to go anywhere or see anybody. I'm usually like that. Give me a good book, a puzzle or a piano and I'll amuse myself for hours. Other people? Meh.

So it actually annoys  me for a minute when Angela, an old high-school friend who's home from college, calls me around 8:00. Maybe I'm annoyed because she's disturbed my peace; maybe, in part, I'm feeling guilty for not having been in touch with her sooner this summer. Over our entire freshman year -- she being at an out-of-state school, me being in Chicago -- she'd written about six letters to my 1 or 2.

So I tell Angie I'm busy, and that I'll call her back as soon as I can.

About an hour later, after I finish the puzzle, I call her back. She wants to go out and do something, or just hang out and chill. I tell her I'm broke; what does she have in mind?

"I don't know," she says. "Let's be creative."

---

I laugh and say all right. She wants to pick me up in ten minutes, but with a little haggling I get it up to 25. I don't feel like rushing.

So when the bell rings I open the door, expecting to see the old Angie from high school: the plain-faced, kinda nerdy girl with the mousy dishwater blonde hair pinned back and the nondescript, ill-fitted clothes.

But no. There standing on my porch is this lanky supermodel.

Not only is she wearing a touch of make-up (?!) but she's wearing some very form-fitting denim shorts. Suddenly, she's got miles of legs. Hips! And other good stuff. Hot damn!

So we jump in Angie's silver Dodge Aries. We have a lot of talking to do. But she wants to drive by the Jewel and cash a check. I go into the store with her, feeling a bit weird, as I always do when out in public with Angie. I guess I should explain: I happen to be black and 5'6"ish, and Angie is white -- very much so, with freckles -- and 6'4". (And yes, she did play center on the high school basketball team.) You can call me too self-conscious and a conformist or whatever, but trust me, you would've felt a bit like a circus act too. But, I just deal with it.

Neither of us is hungry, so she buys us a couple of Snapples and asks where we should go. It's about 9:30. I suggest the park over on Leavitt in Flossmoor. We go there and hang out and talk and play on the dark playground like a couple of oversized kids. After about an hour we notice that familiar Chevy Caprice silhouette creeping down the street toward us.

The cop stops in front of the playground, blasts us with the million-watt light mounted on his car and informs us the park is closed. He demands we show him ID as proof we're of age. Yes sir -- sig Heil! We display ID, though I feel tempted to give him a Nazi salute as he drives away. I'm sure we were the strangest twosome he'd ever seen.

So back in the Aries. I don't know of any all-ages place to go this time of night, and it'd feel weird to invite her to my house. I think of a place with a little more privacy: a condo complex located by a large pond. We get out and sit on the mowed grass, not too far from the water's edge.

The air is still and hot and in the distance lightning flickers mutely. We sit reclined side by side and we talk and we joke and we laugh and we tickle each other and I go take a leak over in the bushes and we talk some more.

We keep talking and by and by, something in her thaws out. The timid, reserved, girlish Angie melts into loose, languid, playful, a bit goofy, like she's been drinking--although all she's had is a Snapple. Her normal pinched little-girl voice has dropped about five notes and become husky and womanly. Before long she's lying there in my lap, almost drifting off to sleep (thwarted only by the ferocious mosquitoes). And I'm noticing that I'm not just there with my nerdy high-school girl-buddy: I'm there with a lanky, sexy supermodel with this sexy, husky voice and long, graceful, bared neck and she is warm and soft and right in my lap. Things start to happen -- the type of thing that happens to an 18-year-old guy when a beautiful girl (or anything, actually) is in his lap. And I'm kinda hoping she's not feeling it, but I'm kinda hoping she is. And I know how easy it would be for me to kiss her on the side of her long, graceful neck. How easy. If I did, she wouldn't stand a chance.

All through high school we've had some degree or another of friendship. But this is really the first time we've been together alone -- let alone this close. Neither of us is touchy-feely type. With me, at least, it's temperamental. I'm always reserved. Moreover, we are both Christians. I had kept it platonic in high school, knowing she had a thing for me, feeling the tension, not knowing how to handle it. With plenty of my own self-esteem and racial-identity issues to deal with, I felt even more awkward with Angie because of our double difference. I didn't want to call any more attention to myself than necessary. Plus, she was still a nerd back then, while I was trying to climb out of nerddom and get in with the cool kids. In hindsight, all dumb reasons to blow someone off like that. But teen-agers, by definition, are dumb and self-absorbed.

Wow, she smells good. Feels pretty nice, too. Part of me, the fun part, says go for it. The other part, the sensible part, says, sensibly: Don't make any promises you can't keep.

The sensible part -- maybe you call it the inhibited part -- wins this round.



I ARRIVE HOME at 5 a.m. Later that day, my brother asks me where I've been all night. "Oh, with a girl," I say with a mischievous grin, just to see the look on his face.



FALL 1996: I'm finally about to graduate college. I've recently gotten into a relationship, and it seems to be a really good match. During this time, out of the blue, I get an invite to Angie's wedding.

Since I can't schedule worth jack, I have absentmindedly set up my third date with the new galpal on the same night as Angie's wedding. There's no way the galpal can come to the wedding, but I don't want to call off what promises to be a pretty hot date (she's cooking dinner, and I'm bringing a big bottle of my favorite merlot). I end up leaving Angie's reception early to make the date -- two hours late -- pissing off both women. If I could do it again, I'd call off the date.

After the ceremony, I get into the reception line to greet the bride with her groom (who, unlike me, is height-appropriate). The new hubby, Brian, all smiles, says to me, loudly, in front of everybody: "So you're ____?  The one Angie had the big crush on in high school?"

Angie turns red--and under my brown skin, I'm surely turning red too.

But how strange, I think: What if that had been me? I still woulda felt a little like one-half of a circus act. We'd've probably found fame on daytime TV talk shows.

The new galpal and I ended up being together for the better part of a year. After me, she married, divorced, and moved to LA.  Then six years after our breakup,   she moved back to Chicago, looked me up, and we got back together. Didn't work out.

Angie and her Brian, a minister, ended up as foreign missionaries, and last I heard they're pastoring a church in Iowa. As always, I'm poor at keeping in touch.

Animal magnetism (a retro-post)

TUESDAY: You know how they sell pheromone perfumes and colognes for sexual attraction? Pheromones definitely work. What they don't tell you is that everybody already makes their own pheromones, but we wash them off, disrupting the natural pH of our skin with harsh soaps, which in the long run actually makes your body odor worse. Then we use chemical antiperspirants that block our sweat glands, which is unfortunate because that's where pheromones are secreted from. If you stop using those chemicals, you may see interesting things happen. You may notice people acting differently toward you. 

I'll relate a few instances from today. Now, I'm not bad looking and I'm used to women looking at me. But normally, unlike us males, females are smooth and discreet about it. They don't break their necks turning their heads to stare at you. But, today they're being just a bit more aggressive, and maybe it's the pheromone thing.

So, it's time for my ADD support group meeting. I get on the Halsted bus headed downtown and I see a lady I know from the local library, who smiles at me. 

Then I pass another sister who's kinda thickish and pretty. She's eyeing me, and as I take a seat just behind her, she turns her head to look at me. Then she turns her whole body around, so she's halfway facing me. Ignoring her, I take out a newsletter that I received in the mail that day, and I start to read it. 

After awhile, she asks me what I'm reading. I tell her it's a Bible prophecy newsletter, the contents of which I do not necessarily subscribe to. We start talking about Revelation, and morality, and wars, and stuff like that. There's really a lot that I could say, but not really being in a conversational mood, I don't want to unload a whole lot on her.

Turns out she's married, but she is interested (she claims) in finding an "intellectual brotha" like me for her girlfriend, who always gets caught up with dogs. (Well, I think: Obviously, she likes dogs; who am I to interfere?) But the sister has to get off soon and we just exchange a polite goodbye.

Oh, that meeting? Turns out I got the date wrong, or I didn't receive the notice that it had been cancelled. Total waste of time. But, a typical ADDventure.

So, I get on the Madison bus heading back downtown. There are a couple of real get-o lookin girls, maybe H.S., maybe college freshmen, in the back row. One is chunky and dark-skinned, with a beehive hairdo dyed loud red. I sit a row in front of them, although around a corner in the little recessed nook where they can't see me.

Suddenly I see a head pop around the corner. It's the red-beehived one. She just gawks at me for several seconds. She says nothing. I keep my mouth shut and gawk back. I don't think I even smiled. Maybe I should have raised an eyebrow or something; I didn't mean to come off like a total tool.

Now That was cute. Even if she wasn't that cute.

But the cutest was on the Red Line. Between the bus and the Red Line, I grab a salad at McDonalds, then head down into the subway. Once on board, I take that little single seat in the back of the car behind the door. I've got my salad from McD's out and I'm digging into it. The dude sitting across the aisle is a 39ish looking dude I've seen around before, probably on the train. He keeps looking at me.

Dude asks me, "That's one of those salads, isn't it? One of those McDonald's salads?"

I nod yes. "They're pretty good." I look back down to my salad and my Conscious Choice, and continue reading about Rudolf Steiner and the Waldorf schools.

  We see the usual cats pass through, hawking socks and CDs and stuff. But the most interesting visitors entered after we passed Roosevelt. Actually they came bursting through the door from the car to the back: a very dark-skinned but very odd-looking female, acting a fool, followed by some similarly silly brothas,  all whoopin' and hollerin'.   They pass me, run down the aisle, open the door at the other end, and disappear into the next car.

I see the 39ish guy keep looking at me. Then I see him sitting there jiggling his leg back and forth. My, he's restless.

A few minutes later, the door at the other end of the car opens again, and back come the woman and the rambunctious train of guys following her--loudly shouting, as before, headed back toward me. I wonder what they were all hopped up on. Upon getting a better look, first thing I notice is, the boys are feeling all over each other. Then I notice that the girl's face is awfully mannish. They pause to open the door by me. The guys turn and give me a saucy look. The one in back of the conga line reaches forward and fondles one guy in front of him. Then they disappear back through the door into the other car.

Passengers shake their heads and laugh amongst themselves. I keep reading and eating my salad.

Around 63rd or so, the guy sitting across from me, perhaps emboldened by the previous display, gets out a pad of paper and starts writing.

When we get off at 95th he hands me a folded sheet of paper. "Here, this is for you."

I almost want to say no, but don't have the heart. I take it and say thanks, then jet and run up the stairs as usual, then head out to the east side of the station to catch my bus.

The note reads:

I Don't mean any
Disrespect, but I
could'nt help to
notice you.
If you are not
offended, Please call
me. My name is
Alfonso
773-568-19XX

I have to say I wonder why on Tuesday nites there seem to be so many of these types on the Red Line. I've noticed this in previous weeks. Do they have some type of meeting every Tuesday night too?

Early Edition (a retro-post)

I'VE BEEN WORKING AS AN EXTRA on the Chicago-produced TV series “Early Edition.” The shoot today was cold, and fun. Met some cool female people: f'rinstance, Joanne, a 45-ish Assyrian who says she teaches Sunday school – and who also seems to like talking and joking about sex a lot. Then, Nye, a cute, plump sista from my alma mater, Columbia College, who conveniently lives near where I grew up, and even knows some guys I used to caddy with at Idlewild. Also, Ally from Barrington, a blonde, model type. She’s got a few inches on me, but so what. She goes to school in Ohio, but is here for a weekend visit apparently, and decided to work the show today.

They put the two of us together on the alley scene. We're shooting in the alley behind the Cultural Center, right off Lake Street. Ally is so nervous, worried about what to do. As it turns out, we'll be the ones – along with model-boy (what's his name?) and Joanne, who get to run in to Fisher (Stevens)'s bloody body after Kyle (Chandler) yells for help.

In one of the sidewalk shots, by the way, as Kyle charges down the sidewalk to the alley opening, he zigzags right behind me, almost knocking me over. I hope they use that take. However, they re-shoot it a couple times. The final time, they have just me run over to the body. No telling which take they'll use.

Scenes are shot out of order and most extras don't even get a call sheet, let alone a glance at a script. So we are only vaguely aware of what the scene's about, let alone the episode. I never did see the episode air; nor, for that matter did I ever see most of the other EE shoots I've worked, or the feature films -- even the one where I worked as a stand-in for the lead.

While we background folk stand around outside, waiting for them to set up the next shot or whatever, I leave Allie and go over to chat with Joanne, who also seems interesting. Several times while talking to Joanne, I glance up to find Allie peeking at us.

Later I go back toward her. She exults over our luck at being featured: “They like us. I wonder why?”

“Well, I know you look good on camera,” I say. “Off camera too.”

“So do you.”

I wave it off with my characteristic modesty.

Allie gladly gives me her numbers at school and at home, and demands mine. She even playfully rubs my freshly shaven head. I'm glad I've managed to look passably good after only three hours of sleep, a long day at work, my eyes glazing over from wearing unwashed contacts, and a big zit on my face. We'll have to get together sometime so she can see me on a good day.