A Night to Remember, I Think
IT'S SOMETHING I've written/complained/whined about in the past. As the result of a variety of factors (shrunken and soaked brain, I would imagine, being right up there near the top of the list), my memory continues to sputter and short out on me once I try to access certain years. Much of my time in Philly is long gone. That time I spent in Minneapolis when I wasn't in the madhouse is gone. And Chicago, for some reason, is gone.
There are a couple nights in Chicago I wish I could remember better than I do. As it is, all I have are scenes.
It was spring of what I'm guessing was 1984. I'm not exactly clear on why Mongo and I decided to go to the Loop that night, but there we were. It was late-one or two in the morning-and we were sitting in a theme McDonald's, trying to get the table juke to work.
Let me back up.
Mongo, I should explain, was an eccentric and often frustrating 300-pound, thickly bearded Pakistani who told me from the start that he wanted to be a terrorist ("terrorist," mind you, being a term whose connotations were quite different back then). He didn't really have the personality to be a terrorist-he didn't believe in anything that strongly-but he knew his chemistry. He was an extraordinarily intelligent and articulate man, who spent a lot of time pretending to be dumb. He played bass, loved X and, whenever possible, made a point of mime-surfing to the opening credits of Hawaii Five-O.
I met him only shortly before I left the University of Chicago, when he showed up at my door unexpectedly one night and asked me an impossible question about Aristotle. He knew it was impossible when he asked it, but I think he was just trying to test me.
I'd been hearing whispers and rumors about him around the university for months, but I'd never met him until he showed up that night. Between then and the time I left, we hung out together quite a bit. He kept talking about blowing up the gym, but we never got around to it.
Anyway, this night in the spring of 1984, this was some time later. I was living in Madison at the time, and hopped a bus down to Chicago for a visit.
DATA MISSING
I was sitting in a large, carpeted office with Mongo. We'd stopped by to see a mutual friend who was working late. The office was otherwise empty, and the only light shone from above our friend's desk. I'm not sure what motivated us to stop by, or if our company was especially welcome.
I was smoking a cigar (which I did just to bother people at the time, and because I was hooked on the chest pain), and ashes were going everywhere. Mongo was in the chair across from me, singing, "We're goingda Iceland, Iceland, in the cold North Sea?" to the tune of a popular Paul Simon song. I don't remember the second line of Mongo's version, except that it included the term "NATO treaty." Nor am I sure how Iceland had come up originally in the conversation, but with Mongo you never knew what sort of unexpected hairpin turns the conversation might take.
I do remember distinctly that he pronounced it "Ice-laand," putting a special emphasis on the "a"-not "Icelind," the way most people pronounced it. And if anybody called him on it, he'd insist to the death that he was correct. He'd also be able to whip up a thousand different arguments to prove it.
DATA MISSING
It was about 10, and we'd decided somewhere along the line to stay up all night. There was no real reason for it-it was just something to do. I was exhausted from the bus trip down, but wasn't about to back out.
We were in his car, driving north through a series of narrow, quiet streets. Whenever anyone did show up on the sidewalk or crossing the street, Mongo aimed for them and hit the gas. And if an Asian happened to show up on the sidewalk or on the street, he'd not only aim for them and hit the gas, he'd also stick his head out the window and scream, "Outta the way, Ornamental!"
He never told me why he did these things. I think he just liked to see people running in terror.
DATA MISSING
We were at a theme McDonald's. There were several theme McDonald's in Chicago, and Mongo wanted to hit all of them that night. Maybe that was the original motivation for staying up-I'm no longer sure. I don't know if we'd been to any before we'd come to this one. We might have. Mongo loved McDonald's.
It was one or two o'clock, and we were at the Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's, which was designed to look like an old diner-lots of chrome, lots of aqua, memorabilia on the walls and mini jukeboxes in all the booths.
The place was crowded that night. More crowded than you would have expected at such an hour. And though we kept plugging in nickels and requesting songs (I kept trying to play "16 Tons"), they never came up on the p.a.
"Probably the backup," I suggested. "All these other people are trying to do the same thing."
"Or maybe it's all a big lie," he intoned. His face was very serious. We left shortly thereafter.
One thing about being with Mongo-he looked like an enforcer, so no matter how crowded a place was, people always cleared a path for him.
DATA MISSING
It must have been about three. My eyes and my mind were starting to play tricks. Faces were melted together. Buildings had turned fuzzy. I couldn't hold an image stationary. Everything was moving and shifting and blending. I don't remember what we were talking about, but I don't think I was making much sense. Thankfully he was doing the driving.
"You need some coffee," he said.
"Probably."
"And where's the best place to get coffee in Chicago?"
"I?I don't know."
"Where's the best place to get anything in Chicago?"
"I really, really don't know right now."
"McDonald's, dummy."
He spun the wheel hard to the left.
DATA MISSING
Sometime close to five we were in another theme McDonald's. This was the Wild West edition, with the split rail fence, the wagon wheels, the swinging doors and the cowboy murals.
I was drinking the sad, watery coffee and eating some sort of sandwich. I think it was there that the conversation came around to gay reverse vampires (they only come out in the daytime).
I don't know how it got there, though.
DATA MISSING
At 6:15, I was awake again. The car windows were down and the air was cold. We were both screaming.
The car was racing south along Lake Shore Drive, dodging in and out of what little traffic there was. The sun was only then beginning to edge up over the horizon of Lake Michigan, and the sky was only just beginning to lighten enough to see the silhouettes of the buildings in front of us. I'd seen dozens of sunrises over that lake when I lived there. Never with a 300-pound man screaming next to me, though.
He somehow got it in his head at that last McDonald's that we needed to be back in Hyde Park before sunrise. If we weren't, well, those gay reverse vampires were going to get us-or more specifically, me.
"Aaaaahhh!" he screamed, "They're gonna bite you on the ass!" I screamed, too, half-believing him by this time.
We made it, though. I successfully avoided the vampires and crashed on his couch for a couple hours before getting up and getting ready to head back to the bus station, not exactly clear on what had just happened.