Hey, whinos, leave the bands alone

My best friends’ band was in town last night and while there were numerous unique things to write about it — how good the show was in general, how it was neat seeing my friends playing at one of the best rock clubs in my new town, the excitement of having an all-access pass and actually knowing the guys in the headlining band — I’ll instead concentrate on the two moments awkward moments I remember being thoroughly annoyed.

As Chris (the aforementioned best friend) and I were walking down the street together after shoveling Italian Night Clubs from Jimmy John’s down our throats trying to catch up on what’s happened in our lives since we last saw each other two-and-a-half months ago, a bum approached us and began hassling Chris about what kind of music he played (the man had deduced that Chris was in a band by his interesting choice of clothing, I assume).

He told Chris if he gave him a buck he’d write a hit song for him.

This man wouldn’t let it die. He walked with us for almost an entire block before I literally had to grab Chris by the shoulder and we ducked into a thrift store to avoid me having to tell the guy to leave us the fuck alone. Had I not done so the guy would have seriously followed us all the way into the club three blocks up.

THEN, less than twenty minutes later, ANOTHER bum holding a stack of some rag of a monthly newspaper approached Pat (another guy in the band) and I and kept asking me to give him a buck for one of the papers.

I kept telling him I didn’t need one, tried to ignore him, but the persistent fucker wouldn’t budge. He just stood there kept begging me, asking me questions about myself and If I was a Bears fan while I was trying to have a conversation with Pat.

I wanted to say this:

Leave me alone MOTHERFUCKER! I’ve got a friend in town I only get to see once every three months these days and I’m trying to catch up with him, seeing how life’s treating him and whatnot, and you’re there hassling us to give you a buck for a paper that I can pick up for FREE at any bar on this fucking street! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”

But instead I simply explained to him that I knew I could find stacks of that same paper for free at any bar on this street and that it made no sense for me give him a dollar for a one.

“You’re an honest man, I trust you man, I trust you,” he kept saying over and over after handing me one of the papers, patting me on my shoulder and attempting to give me a high five with his cold, calloused hands.

After he finally left I looked down at the paper I noticed he’d taken a Sharpie and blacked out the part of the masthead that said the paper was free.

“Ha, he must’ve gone through that whole stack and blacked that out so nobody’d notice it was free,” I say to Pat laughing, somewhat endeared by the man’s acumen.

“Shit, if I had noticed that I’d have just given him a buck.”

It occurred to me then that if a person’s only experience in Chicago were to be walking around Wrigelyville on a random Fall afternoon (which for many people is their only experience in Chicago) they’d think this town had the most antagonizing vagrants in the world.

Heey boys

I was getting tired of the vaguely Irish sports pubs of Lincoln Park and the often lifeless Wicker Park dives, so I decided we’d hit Boys Town for something a little more captivating and progressive. I’d only been to the neighborhood once before, and while I’m 100 percent hetero, thoroughly enjoyed myself.

My female friend from home who was in town for the weekend was game, so we went.

The first place we hit was sort of a sports bar for gay men, which meant there were a couple TVs showing the White Sox game, deer heads decorated in party hats, beads and glasses hanging on the walls (place was called Buck’s) and couples of burly men who looked like construction workers holding hands and kissing one another. Just as we walked in a tall, thin, stylish guy approached me and made a comment about my jacket. I couldn’t hear him and just muttered something and walked past him before my friend pulled at my coat smiling.

“What?” I asked.

“That guy just said he loved your jacket.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said, and began to laugh, “first guy at the first bar we walk into hits on ya. Hilarious!”

“He wasn’t hitting on me, he was just giving me a compliment,” I retort.

“Right,” she says sarcastically. She looked around. “He’s the cutest guy in here, too.”

I have to admit I was pretty flattered. If you’re impressing a guy you’re doing something right, right?

Throughout the entire evening as we hopped from gay bar to gay bar my friend kept informing me that I was getting eye fucked the minute we walked into every establishment (I could kind of tell myself, but not to the extent that she did). It was all going straight to my head. By the middle of the night I felt more confident and desired than I had on any night at any bar during the six months I’ve lived in Chicago.

And it made me realize that hanging out in gay bars is quite possibly the ultimate self-esteem booster, one that I could see myself getting used to.

All you really have to do is put on some semi stylish clothes and open your mind. (Of course, this doesn’t work for homophobe dicks who’d start swinging the second they felt they were getting checked out by another dude.)

It also occurred to me that this would be a perfect scenario to bring a girl you were interested in.

Now bear with me here: When you’re the object of attention in any social place it builds confidence in yourself and it builds worth in the eyes of the people you’re with. If you’re at a bar and getting looked at you feel good yourself and likely the person you’re with will see you as more appealing as well.

So let’s say you’re on a date with a girl and you go to a plain old hetero bar. Odds are, since men are usually the majority at hetero bars, and tend to gawk at every woman (not just the über attractive ones) that walks into the place with “I wouldn’t mind fucking you tonight” eyes, a woman at a bar feels pretty good about herself most of the time. She knows that there are men there who find her attractive thus giving her plenty of confidence equity that she can use as leverage with a guy she’s with. Most likely, the guy she’s with will also see her as even more attractive than he normally would since most of the guys in the bar are eyeing her as well. This builds up her worth in his eyes and makes the guy probably be more aggressive in going after her (guys like it when they notice every other dude in the bar is looking at the girl he's with. Women may think it makes us jealous — and sometimes it does — but for the most part, it's just as much an ego boost for us as it is them.)

At gay bars it’s the exact opposite. The men are the objects of desire here, the women are being virtually ignored (like many men usually are at hetero bars), and the girl, noticing the other men checking out the guy she’s with, will likely see him as more attractive than she did before because she sees other people thinking he’s attractive (even if they're of the same sex).

I know it’s kind of an abstract concept, and it would get pretty suspicious after a while if whenever you took a girl out you only went to gay bars (she’d probably just end up thinking you were secretly gay and get rid of you anyway) but I'd say it's worth a try at least once or twice.

I also realized that it’d be pretty easy to find sex every night of the week if you were gay man in Chicago. The last bar we went to was this sprawling club that was filled seemingly room after packed room with men. There were at least 500 people in the joint, less than a dozen of which were females. Working with those kinds of numbers how can you not, if even mildly attractive, go home with somebody different every night of the week? Couple this with the fact that men, on average, are usually less reserved about going home with somebody else every night of the week than woman are.

Hell, the more I think about it, gay men kinda got it made.

Totally off the subject note: I got hit by a cab for the second time that night, too. This time he was moving pretty fast and I almost completely rolled up on his hood before he noticed me and slammed on the brakes.

“Do you see that fucking stop sign jackoff!?” I screamed at him as I lifted myself up off his car and stood back on the street. I was walking across an intersection that’s a four-way stop, foolishly putting faith in the cabbie to my right that he’d stop at it, which he didn’t.

As I screamed at him the old guy just confusedly shook his head in a manner that reminded me of Kumar in the robbery scene at the end of Bottle Rocket.

“I don’t know, man...I don’t know, man…” he was mouthing.