Thursday, March 13, 2008

If Nelson Algren were to come back to Division Street from the dead, I imagine he'd be pretty disappointed. He'd see all the new construction condo developments that took the place of his beloved (or oft written about) Polish dives. The Jimmy John's where there used to be boarding houses. The Boundary, where there used to be a Tug and Maul. The wealth where there used to be reality ... and desperation.

That is, until he stumbled into Rite Liquors. Perhaps the last bastion of genuine tomfoolery, debauchery and misogyny left on West Division Street.

I enter the place frequently. To take cash out of its ATM, to buy vodka for my homemade cocktails, to buy mixers for said vodka in my cocktails. The place is the closest liquor outlet to my apartment. What can I do?

I walk by there in the morning and the drunks are outside. Smoking cigarettes. Spitting last night's built up phlegm onto the sidewalk. 10 a.m. ain't too early for them to start drinking. I know they're doing it for a reason.

But I walk in there, with my $2,000 computer. My $300 iPod. My fashionable (or at least recently washed) clothes. I look like a corporate schmuck to the just-off-the-clock postal workers, the lifelong degenerate drunks, the missing-teeth sluts. But I know who they are. I've met them all before. I'm just a guy from Council Bluffs, Iowa, for fuck's sake. They don't know they're nothing I ain't never seen before. But they look at me like I'm some kind of different breed. Like I'm really any different from them. And when I walk out of there, with my leather bag, my vodka, my Sprite, and my apparent spite for what they consist of, I just want to turn and holler "I could have very easily been any of you, but I chose not to be."

And I wonder if Algren would appreciate me for that, or spite me for it.

1 Comments:

At 8:13 PM, Blogger duke said...

Thanks for the tip on Algren. Clearly the Godfather of "Ghetto Lit."

Ruben Carter so fascinated him that he moved to Paterson, New Jersey? At age 70? That's dedication to your craft.

And words of wisdom: "I don't recommend being a bachelor, but it helps if you want to write."

 

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