In case of fire: looking for sex in Cicero
Two more clueless fucks we could not be at this point in the evening. We are going to look for trouble, but we have no idea where we are going. Instead of coming into the city from the 'burbs, Frank and I are just two guys doing research going the other way. We are hoping trouble will be looking for us, too.
How much more contemporary can you get? Get a few guys together with a couple of twenties and some singles burning in their pockets. Do they know where they're going when they're a) hoping to objectify and ogle a few edifying female forms; b) trying to determine the cost of the more essential sexual transactions, only for the purposes of setting a market price, of course; and c) wanting to be humiliated and quickly taken for the entirety of one's meager roll by a disdainful, exceptionally unkind female whose standards you will truly never know?
We figure our whole-hearted lack of research will pay off. We're not looking for Gentlemen's Clubs, because we are not gentlemen. Most guys now expect flesh pits to be franchised offerings-McDonald's-of-sex to take your Big Mac to; brightly lit, squeaky clean, adequately bounced for troublemakers wholly unlike yourself, being the well-upholstered pillar of the community who would wake in the morning with a hangover but no regret. But that holds no savor. Not for us Chicago's translucent pasties. We are going to Cicero.
We plot strategy at the press feed for Iron Mike's Grille. Ditka shimmers past, notably slim, face redder than a Maine lobster, clutching a beer and stogie. He is an inspiration to us both. We refuse the temptation to ask Da Coach for names, numbers, jock-taught stripper bonhomie. Still, we have not brushed up on proper store-front cathouse comportment. We figure to wing it. Worse, we realize, sampling the hooch, neither of us has the number of the joint that An Esteemed Elder had suggested as a fine and proper ground zero from which to begin. (That night, we learn it was bulldozed several years ago over its intermittent bursts of civic bad manners.)
We whip down the Eisenhower toward Roosevelt Road, further back among dead presidents. But we're sniffing out a different dead man's legend, the enduring Capone-era rep of Cicero as the frontier town just across the city limits. We move into an all-embracing, invisible pillow of cornstarch reek.
Cicero looms in the most industrial way. We pull over for a moment so Frank can use his cell phone to 411 the numbers of some likely joints. Nope. Nope. Doesn't exist. No listing. Sorry.
More deeply uninformed, we head the other way and soon pass a promising joint. First, however, we want to check out a bar that's been recommended by a local, who assured us all questions would be answered within. Craning his neck back, Frank asks, "How much sexual heat can you invest in a place with the sign, 'Ample Parking in Rear.'"
At the bar we've been directed to, we have to buzz and be examined through a one-way mirror. Our goateed faces pass muster, tall thin Mutt and shorter, not-so-thin Jeff. As we pass under the bar's neon sign, Frank observes, "You notice the 'Good Food' part is burned out."
We order beers and I reminisce about the bar just up the road, The Midnite Hour, where, about ten years ago, I had been in my last major bar fight. I feel nostalgic. It was the room where I realized that if I were a truly large man, I'd probably be in jail somewhere in Tennessee today.
This bar's not just blue-collar, it's blue-collar just-after-getting-off-work. Instead of mingling, we continue to plot. "Whenever customers would complain about paying their girls up front," I ask Frank, "Do you know what madams used to tell them?"
"No, what?"
"'Why, darlin', in case of fire, of course.'"
In the men's room, I find a "novelty" machine and click in a couple of quarters.
When I return to the bar, Frank says, "The red light over the register went off."
"What do you mean?"
"You bought a condom. It went off when you bought it."
"You're lying," I say.
We examine the package together-"Evening Magic... The modern pre-shaped condom in four colors." We don't open it to see if it's like Neapolitan ice cream.
"Here's the part we should worry about," Frank says, turning it over. "Store at room temperature. Avoid excess heat."
No one cares that we're here. We proceed to have the kind of warm-belly, weak-minded conversation that leads brothers-in-law to drink more and plan hunting expeditions on which one will be grievously, unforgivably wounded. We are bonding when we are supposed to be on a wild cooch chase. The bartender leans against the Craftsman Tool calendar on the side of the cash register.
"Tuesday is usually bad weather because it's my day off," she says, barely mustering the energy to reminisce about the day before.
"Whenever it rains or snows on Tuesday, you know Judy's not working," a patron interprets. Another of many long pauses fills the room. A customer who entered after us says in a musical Russian accent, "I have this bakery delight, Judy, this bread, you want to try it? I just came from the factory."
When he goes to his car to fetch it, the interpreter lights up a cigarillo, says, "Yeah the pita bread, whatever it is."
The Russian gives Judy the fresh staff of life. "That's not Greek bread," the interpreter laughs, "It says Chihuahua! That's a torta-jero!"
We finish the suds and move next door to peek into The Awesome Midnite Hour Lounge Open Until 6am. A small crouch of a hunch of a sorrow of a man makes a solitary display of terrible posture, agleam in the dim yet glassy blue light suffusing the bar.
We return to the club that Frank had spied. The room is strangely silent and still. Girls mill. On a couple of televisions, a toupeed man forms words that are lost to the strains of Madonna's "Borderline."
We sit at the bar and are approached by a five-foot, middle-aged Chinese woman, dressed in white shirt, black pants and vest. From her stern expression, I expect her to say, "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Ilsa." There's not an ounce of subtext in her makeup. We are pigs and we must pay. We must order drinks.
We are two copacetic smiles anxious to be told the happy lies. Two goatees ready to be mistaken for properly heeled goats.
"Genuine Draft or High Life?"
"High Life," Frank says, grinning.
We are approached by a woman who shows us her Bubble Yum while she chews. We envision her doing a performance-art project: "Suzanne Somers Is Chrissy Snow." She tells us the rules. She recites the prices. Now we know: $150 in the backroom for forty-five minutes. We've never danced that long before.
The ample ebony thighs of a woman in a too-small nightie are being traced by the pale, yet hairy wrists of a large, baritoned man. We call him Turtleneck Tommy. "You must be my lucky star," Madonna sings, "Because you shine on me wherever you are."
The liquor is sequestered in a thoroughly illumined broom closet. Another stern woman--think Frau Blucher from "Young Frankenstein"--is riding herd on the Jack, Chambord and Grand Marnier.
I wonder if a fleshstress will press her case in the men's room that has no lock.
"Are you guys in a band?" is the usual query. "You don't look like the usual guys we get in here." And that's basically what Jocelyn says when she walks up. She has that essential Polish-Russian-German look, a lanky, coltish art-babe type. Blonde, patrician. We discover a bit more by the verbal quotation marks as well as raised eyebrows she displays at her stage name.
"So why's there no stage show in Cicero?"
Seems the mayor keeps issuing a series of two-week bans on the up-front dancing, although the backroom boogie seems to be in full flourish.
"Why not turn Cicero City Hall into a strip club instead?" I venture. "That heritage is a blessing."
Turns out, she's in a band. We have mutual acquaintances. "How's business?" Frank asks. "I'm still stripping," Jocelyn says. We settle in for a nice long chat about the music scene, how Chicago acts generally find better treatment on the road. Here we are three city folk in a titty-winkum bar in a nearly be-legended 'burb, none of us bothered that we are somehow failing to exact the expected transaction. We pay for the eight-dollar drink that goes only to the house, ready to pay for more.
"So, uh, would you like to go into the back room?" she asks. We smile, squint, bite our fingernails.
"I guess that would be a little weird at this point," she agrees.
I slip Jocelyn two fives as we say goodnight, in a way the eagle-eyed shouldn't be able to see. "Close your eyes and think of music."
How much more contemporary can you get? Get a few guys together with a couple of twenties and some singles burning in their pockets. Do they know where they're going when they're a) hoping to objectify and ogle a few edifying female forms; b) trying to determine the cost of the more essential sexual transactions, only for the purposes of setting a market price, of course; and c) wanting to be humiliated and quickly taken for the entirety of one's meager roll by a disdainful, exceptionally unkind female whose standards you will truly never know?
We figure our whole-hearted lack of research will pay off. We're not looking for Gentlemen's Clubs, because we are not gentlemen. Most guys now expect flesh pits to be franchised offerings-McDonald's-of-sex to take your Big Mac to; brightly lit, squeaky clean, adequately bounced for troublemakers wholly unlike yourself, being the well-upholstered pillar of the community who would wake in the morning with a hangover but no regret. But that holds no savor. Not for us Chicago's translucent pasties. We are going to Cicero.
We plot strategy at the press feed for Iron Mike's Grille. Ditka shimmers past, notably slim, face redder than a Maine lobster, clutching a beer and stogie. He is an inspiration to us both. We refuse the temptation to ask Da Coach for names, numbers, jock-taught stripper bonhomie. Still, we have not brushed up on proper store-front cathouse comportment. We figure to wing it. Worse, we realize, sampling the hooch, neither of us has the number of the joint that An Esteemed Elder had suggested as a fine and proper ground zero from which to begin. (That night, we learn it was bulldozed several years ago over its intermittent bursts of civic bad manners.)
We whip down the Eisenhower toward Roosevelt Road, further back among dead presidents. But we're sniffing out a different dead man's legend, the enduring Capone-era rep of Cicero as the frontier town just across the city limits. We move into an all-embracing, invisible pillow of cornstarch reek.
Cicero looms in the most industrial way. We pull over for a moment so Frank can use his cell phone to 411 the numbers of some likely joints. Nope. Nope. Doesn't exist. No listing. Sorry.
More deeply uninformed, we head the other way and soon pass a promising joint. First, however, we want to check out a bar that's been recommended by a local, who assured us all questions would be answered within. Craning his neck back, Frank asks, "How much sexual heat can you invest in a place with the sign, 'Ample Parking in Rear.'"
At the bar we've been directed to, we have to buzz and be examined through a one-way mirror. Our goateed faces pass muster, tall thin Mutt and shorter, not-so-thin Jeff. As we pass under the bar's neon sign, Frank observes, "You notice the 'Good Food' part is burned out."
We order beers and I reminisce about the bar just up the road, The Midnite Hour, where, about ten years ago, I had been in my last major bar fight. I feel nostalgic. It was the room where I realized that if I were a truly large man, I'd probably be in jail somewhere in Tennessee today.
This bar's not just blue-collar, it's blue-collar just-after-getting-off-work. Instead of mingling, we continue to plot. "Whenever customers would complain about paying their girls up front," I ask Frank, "Do you know what madams used to tell them?"
"No, what?"
"'Why, darlin', in case of fire, of course.'"
In the men's room, I find a "novelty" machine and click in a couple of quarters.
When I return to the bar, Frank says, "The red light over the register went off."
"What do you mean?"
"You bought a condom. It went off when you bought it."
"You're lying," I say.
We examine the package together-"Evening Magic... The modern pre-shaped condom in four colors." We don't open it to see if it's like Neapolitan ice cream.
"Here's the part we should worry about," Frank says, turning it over. "Store at room temperature. Avoid excess heat."
No one cares that we're here. We proceed to have the kind of warm-belly, weak-minded conversation that leads brothers-in-law to drink more and plan hunting expeditions on which one will be grievously, unforgivably wounded. We are bonding when we are supposed to be on a wild cooch chase. The bartender leans against the Craftsman Tool calendar on the side of the cash register.
"Tuesday is usually bad weather because it's my day off," she says, barely mustering the energy to reminisce about the day before.
"Whenever it rains or snows on Tuesday, you know Judy's not working," a patron interprets. Another of many long pauses fills the room. A customer who entered after us says in a musical Russian accent, "I have this bakery delight, Judy, this bread, you want to try it? I just came from the factory."
When he goes to his car to fetch it, the interpreter lights up a cigarillo, says, "Yeah the pita bread, whatever it is."
The Russian gives Judy the fresh staff of life. "That's not Greek bread," the interpreter laughs, "It says Chihuahua! That's a torta-jero!"
We finish the suds and move next door to peek into The Awesome Midnite Hour Lounge Open Until 6am. A small crouch of a hunch of a sorrow of a man makes a solitary display of terrible posture, agleam in the dim yet glassy blue light suffusing the bar.
We return to the club that Frank had spied. The room is strangely silent and still. Girls mill. On a couple of televisions, a toupeed man forms words that are lost to the strains of Madonna's "Borderline."
We sit at the bar and are approached by a five-foot, middle-aged Chinese woman, dressed in white shirt, black pants and vest. From her stern expression, I expect her to say, "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Ilsa." There's not an ounce of subtext in her makeup. We are pigs and we must pay. We must order drinks.
We are two copacetic smiles anxious to be told the happy lies. Two goatees ready to be mistaken for properly heeled goats.
"Genuine Draft or High Life?"
"High Life," Frank says, grinning.
We are approached by a woman who shows us her Bubble Yum while she chews. We envision her doing a performance-art project: "Suzanne Somers Is Chrissy Snow." She tells us the rules. She recites the prices. Now we know: $150 in the backroom for forty-five minutes. We've never danced that long before.
The ample ebony thighs of a woman in a too-small nightie are being traced by the pale, yet hairy wrists of a large, baritoned man. We call him Turtleneck Tommy. "You must be my lucky star," Madonna sings, "Because you shine on me wherever you are."
The liquor is sequestered in a thoroughly illumined broom closet. Another stern woman--think Frau Blucher from "Young Frankenstein"--is riding herd on the Jack, Chambord and Grand Marnier.
I wonder if a fleshstress will press her case in the men's room that has no lock.
"Are you guys in a band?" is the usual query. "You don't look like the usual guys we get in here." And that's basically what Jocelyn says when she walks up. She has that essential Polish-Russian-German look, a lanky, coltish art-babe type. Blonde, patrician. We discover a bit more by the verbal quotation marks as well as raised eyebrows she displays at her stage name.
"So why's there no stage show in Cicero?"
Seems the mayor keeps issuing a series of two-week bans on the up-front dancing, although the backroom boogie seems to be in full flourish.
"Why not turn Cicero City Hall into a strip club instead?" I venture. "That heritage is a blessing."
Turns out, she's in a band. We have mutual acquaintances. "How's business?" Frank asks. "I'm still stripping," Jocelyn says. We settle in for a nice long chat about the music scene, how Chicago acts generally find better treatment on the road. Here we are three city folk in a titty-winkum bar in a nearly be-legended 'burb, none of us bothered that we are somehow failing to exact the expected transaction. We pay for the eight-dollar drink that goes only to the house, ready to pay for more.
"So, uh, would you like to go into the back room?" she asks. We smile, squint, bite our fingernails.
"I guess that would be a little weird at this point," she agrees.
I slip Jocelyn two fives as we say goodnight, in a way the eagle-eyed shouldn't be able to see. "Close your eyes and think of music."
