How I Earned $51.60 and Inner Peace

            

            Well, I’ve got a new dream job (at least for the warmer months): the guy who checks credentials at the gate to the County Criminal Courthouse parking lot.  By “credentials”, I mean whatever document you’ve received telling you that you have to go to the courthouse.  The gig is that you sit in a rocking chair, and rock, and wave folks through, and smile.  Well, I would smile.  And I’d probably be the only person in a quarter mile radius smiling, because folks down at 26^th and California just hate to be there.

            My ticket to the lot was my jury duty summons.  I blew off my first summons, and they kindly sent me a second one, along with a letter that basically said, “Seriously, go.  Go to jury duty.”  They sounded like they meant business, so I showed up (on time, which was unnecessary.  Feel free to stroll in there at whatever time you damn well please.  It’ll be fine.)

            The case I got called in on was for aggravated battery, the accusation being that in April, in that very courthouse, the defendant struck a Cook County deputy sheriff.  There were at least twice as many of us as the court would need for a jury, and they promptly called my lucky ass up to try out one of those old, wooden jury recliners.  I was the second person to have to respond to the judge’s questions about my character and my ability to perform my jurily duty without bias.  And, I got the only big laugh of the day when I responded to the judge’s inquiry about my exam schedule with, “I should probably know this.”  Despite appearing scatterbrained, I was, indeed, deemed fit to serve on a Cook County Criminal Court jury.

            There are two things that are important to a group of fourteen (twelve jurors, two alternates) diverse Chicagoans forced to occupy a courthouse together for hours on end: food and justice.  Three days of talking about food, thinking about justice, eating, listening to testimonies, and holding back the compulsion to discuss the trial, and the savory justice that we were all looking to dish out.

            Lunch the First Day came before the jurors had been selected, before we got any kind of group dynamic going (we didn’t even know who was going to be in the group yet), and so I ate in the cafeteria, at a table with a bunch of silent people.  I got a tuna salad on rye with lettuce and tomatoes, and a cranberry juice cocktail that would have been right at home drizzled over a plate of IHOP pancakes.  Everyone else at the table had (a) a lot more food than I did, and (b) a grim expression, like we were all praying for the governor’s pardon with every joyless bite.  This made me sad, so I tried to force a smile to distance myself from these folks.  I’m sure it worked, but I probably looked more deranged than relentlessly cheery.  Perhaps one is not supposed to smile in a courthouse cafeteria.  The place was stiff like a hospital eatery (not bubbly like a college dorm dining hall), and I thought how it’s sad that the free citizens who have to endure the most sterile, cold, lifeless dining environments are the sick and the accused- the people who could most benefit from the belly-warming ritual of breaking bread with loved ones and well-wishers.  I caught myself indulging my craving to be miserable, and resolved to avoid these types of places in the future.  Then I directed my attention through the huge cafeteria windows to the skyline, and went about my business of having a good sit.

            Imagine a random group of Philadelphians being forced to hang out for a few days.  You wouldn’t expect them to chat endlessly about cheese steak, would you?  I mean, these are actual citizens, not cartoons, right?  Folks, it’s no exaggeration when I tell you that we spent most of our time in that jury room talking about pizza (this was still the part when we weren’t allowed to discuss the trial).  It’s not unreasonable to say that, as a group, pizza was literally all we talked about.  Every now and then, the conversation would steer towards dining in general, but we never went more than a few minutes without somebody bringing up pizza again.  Chicago people love pizza and eat it all the time and have strong opinions about it and this town is truly obsessed with pizza, and I’m not excluding Citizen Steve from this culinary infatuation.  (I realize I’ve used the word “pizza” a bunch of times now, and as a caring writer, I would normally splice in a synonym for “pizza” here and there, but in Chicago, we don’t call it a “pie,” or say, “Let’s grab a slice;” we call it “pizza” and nothing else.)  Sure, the conversation was well-worn territory, and it didn’t expand anybody’s horizons.  But our fourteen faces lit the table, exchanging thoughts with hungry eyes and eager tongues, like an extended family around a couple 18” Palermo’s Specials.

            Cook County Judge Michael Brown’s courtroom is a theater, and Judge Brown is a really good narrator.  He spoke with a seemingly rehearsed calm that emanated throughout the room.  The proverbial and literal “order in the court” was palpable enough to keep my anxiety down to levels unheard of this time of year. 

The state’s attorneys were actors; the testifying officers were real, stammering people; the defense lawyer was somewhere in between; and the defendant was a very still and very silent prop.  At the beginning of each witness’ testimony, I would lower my brow and rub my beard and listen intently, evaluating the plausibility of the story, and systematically comparing the details to the other testimonies, carefully keeping a mental register of the inconsistencies between them all.  And, invariably, somewhere in the middle of each retelling of this convoluted tale (whose total events clocked in at about a minute, but whose details were infinite) my mind would naturally drift to the nature of truth itself, and how I didn’t think anybody was really lying; rather, they were just painting the scene so that it made sense with their feelings and interests, the way I color my life stories so that they make sense in a bar, or on a long car ride, or in a blog, for that matter.  It was at this point in the thought process that I’d start to worry that Judge Brown could read from my face that I was thinking not about the trial, but about the cosmic impossibility of knowable objective truth, and so I would direct my attention back to the witness stand.

            We heard all of the testimonies on the Second Day, and Judge Brown dismissed the court for lunch halfway through.  As promised, we were escorted to a private dining hall for our complimentary meals, and excited we all were for such a treat.  The private hall turned out to be a closed-off wing of the previous day’s Sad Cafeteria, where we were served lukewarm mostaccioli with meat sauce and zucchini on paper plates by a tardy gentleman who kept saying, “It is what it is,” over and over.  A few jurors took some good-natured cracks at the cuisine, and one guy said, “Hey, this ain’t bad!”  Most of us shrugged and said, “It is what it is,” between plastic forkfuls of pasta.  Then we talked about the joy of garden-fresh zucchini, and about where in the city you can get an awesome baked mostaccioli, and, “Hey, ya know, dat place has good pizza, too,” and the conversation once again came to a full, cheesy circle as we all held back our thoughts on the man whose fate we would soon collectively determine.

            The guy at the gate didn’t even look for my credentials by Day Three; he just waved me on through.  I whizzed through security like a pro, greeted my comrades as we assembled in our jury room, and, eventually, we were shuffled to our usual courtroom seats.  The state’s attorney made his Oscar bid of a closing argument, rapidly toggling his speaking volume and exploring the space allotted to him; at one point, he got right up next to the defendant and pointed his very official looking index finger right at him in a spectacle of condemnation.  The defense attorney followed this performance with a layman’s retort- a bro-ish “nuh-uh” of an argument.  He was like a guy in an improv class in a scene where he gets to be a lawyer.  Once his spiel was wrapped, Judge Brown capably explained the pertinent laws to us, making very clear our duties and guidelines.  With that, we were escorted back into our jury room, and the deliberation began.

            Lunch was served to us right in the jury room that day.  A deputy sheriff knocked and entered, smilingly asked us to please not talk about the case until he left the room, and set down our buffet-style trays of chicken patties, buns, potato casserole, and, like, half a twelver of Pepsi.  I stuck with my hot coffee.  The only condiment they brought us was mayonnaise, which was awesome.

Our foreman suggested, and we all agreed, that we’d continue our deliberation informally amongst ourselves until we had all finished eating. 

A woman who grew up in my neighborhood had waived her right to a bun, and instead was eating her chicken patty with a plastic fork and knife.  “Did you make eye contact with the defendant?” she asked nobody in particular.  “It was unsettling.”

Our foreman, a forty-something from Evanston, had some casserole and an empty bun on his paper plate.  He was either a vegetarian, or he didn’t trust the courthouse chicken.  “I think after we eat we ought to go through the events chronologically, giving everybody a chance to comment.”  This is why we chose him as foreman.

The South Sider across from me, who was on his second helping of everything, was thinking aloud about the concept of reasonable doubt.  The chubby girl to the right of me chewed merrily and joked about the lawyers being full of baloney.  The small woman to my left ate just like she spoke: infrequently and strangely.

After everybody had had their fill, we took our first vote.  It was almost unanimous.  We talked for about twenty more minutes, then we took another vote.  Five minutes later, Judge Brown ordered the room to their feet as we marched back into the courtroom.  The Evanston foreman was holding our verdict, which Judge Brown soon read aloud.

Upon leaving the courthouse, I put my sunglasses on and took my scarf off, as it was warmer outside than it had been in that old building.  In me there rose a feeling of content- a peace beyond the calmness that I had borrowed from Judge Brown.  I found my car and steered towards the Stevenson, satisfied that I had had a part in securing a man’s freedom, and that I had earned $17.20 a day for doing it.  That adds up to $51.60- enough to buy a pizza dinner for me and a handful of friends, if the price is fair.

Comments on Dick Daley

            

            There aren’t many things that have been true my whole life.  First I was from Tommy Moore, then Queen of Martyrs.  Dad alive; dad dead.  God used to exist; not no more.  I’m taller.

            Little Company of Mary hospital is still there.  I guess that Potter Pavilion wasn’t always there.  Still, the main building is the same.  A few weeks ago I was in the ER and the woman there asked me if I had ever been there before.  “I was born here,” I said.  She smiled.  “So were my mom, my dad, and my sister.”  She finished filling out her form.

            A truth of life will be a lie in a few months: that the mayor of Chicago is Mayor Daley.  My generation doesn’t even need to say “Richard M.” or “Daley Jr.”  He’s just always been Mayor Daley to us.

            I’m told I met him when I was five.  A few times, maybe.  It’s all a blur to me.  I’ve seen him plenty of times, usually at Fire Department related events.  He’s not friendly looking.  I’ve always liked that about him.  He doesn’t look mean, it’s just that he doesn’t have that bullshit smile, like Blagojevich.  In fact, he looks a bit unsure of himself.  Like he knows what he wants, but he doesn’t think he has the means to get it.

            The last time I saw him in person was on my birthday a couple months ago.  He gave a speech to the new class of police officers graduating from the academy.  He used it as a platform to rant in defense of the handgun ban.  I must admit his segue from pertinent material to this political sound-byte op was smooth.  Something about cops making tough decisions and having to answer to the community for those decisions.  Once I noticed that the speech had taken a deliberate shift (which took me a while; the segue was really good) I was a bit perplexed, and then I had a moment of naivety when I turned around and actually noticed the news crews behind me for the first time.  I felt like a child for having this moment of realization- a lesson in local politics and media.  My mom and I were both visibly upset.  I don’t know how she feels about gun laws, but we both thought the tirade was a hijacking of the new officers’ moment of recognition.  Nobody around us seemed to care, or even notice that the speech was off-topic.  Were they jaded or naïve?  Or did they just not care?

            Daley’s greatest accomplishments involve the beautification of Chicago through projects like Millennium Park and Navy Pier.  Despite my reminders to my friends that the free events at these places are bullshit because they come at the taxpayers’ expense, I do enjoy the fruits of these public projects pretty frequently, and I do not think that private entities would have necessarily cleaned up those sites and replaced them with anything pretty, and I have been to ugly industrial towns in Ohio and Michigan whose local governments have not invested in sightly endeavors, and so I curb my libertarianism when it comes to certain city projects that really do drive tourism and make everyday city life a little more beautiful.  So, bravo, Mr. Mayor.

            Thinking about the mayoral race, whose candidates are presently still mostly in the speculative phase, I’m starting to understand why I hear more about local politics around the city than I do about national politics.  You might actually know somebody who is right in the thick of a local scandal, or your buddy plays softball in the park where Blagojevich goes jogging, or you run into an alderman at a bar, where he is shitfaced.  And so you read about what happened in some public building (which you happen to walk by every day) involving a couple guys from your neighborhood, and you feel connected.  And suddenly Chicago doesn’t seem so big.  And developing some influence (or, in my case, a readership) feels like it’s right within reach. 

And that’s really what I think I like about Daley.  He looks like and talks like and practically is a guy from my neighborhood, and he makes me believe that the little patch of grass behind my mom’s garage where I play with my dog really isn’t so far from the world of news cameras and multi-million dollar contracts and international debates- a world populated by women and guys.  Guys like Mayor Daley.  Guys like me.

Being A Better Man

Or, failing that, being a man.
            There’s a trend brewing among hyper-introspective guys like me across the web: the embarking upon and chronicling of one’s quest to “be a better man”.  It’s a movement born of a generation who has watched mook after bumbling oaf pervade its fall sitcoms.  It has seen masculinity’s tumble from the world of tailored suits and firm handshakes to a mess of apathy and shirked responsibility.  And some of this generation have assessed the state of manhood today and said, “You know what? Not for me.”

            Among those writers keeping his bumbling in check is Chicago native Caleb Gardner, who keeps the blog TheExceptionalMan.com.  In addition to offering cultural critical gems like the above graphic, Gardner focuses largely on clothing and grooming.  This focus has steered readers his way via the growing men’s style sector of the blogosphere, whose united stance seems to connect masculinity, adulthood, and investing some serious effort into your wardrobe.

            I am unrepentantly a foot soldier of the expanding army of newly style-conscious men, whose tales are told day after day on blogs like PutThisOn.com, which bears the tagline “a web series about dressing like a grownup”.  It was this very emphasis on adulthood (specifically manhood) that won me over throughout this overwhelming 2010, and got me to start getting picky about every garment that gets pulled over or fastened to my newly in-decent-repair body.  I’ve become demanding in regards to fit, exploratory in the realm of texture, and I’ve seriously limited the colors that pervade my wardrobe, choosing shades that mingle well with my eyes, skin, and hair. 

One year ago, that last sentence would have made me laugh.  It also would have sounded like a lot of work.  And it is.  What’s worse, it’s the kind of work that doesn’t feel like icing on the cake, a bonus boon to my existing sense of worth.  Rather, it’s what I feel I need to do just to reach my baseline; my gridiron tapes that need reviewing before I take to the field and actually gain some yardage.  Dressing well feels not like an accomplishment, but like a necessity for me to achieve anything.

Speaking of accomplishments, Esquire writer-at-large Chris Jones recently launched his blog My Second Empire, in which he chronicles his restoration of a 140-year-old house for his family in a small Canadian town.  He’ll be putting his less-than-masterful carpentry skills to use on the mansion while he simultaneously works through his shortlist of “better man” goals, which involve family devotion, health, and creative output.  This man is up to his Canadian waist in icing on the cake.  Happy family?  Check.  Secure career?  Check.  Now he’s improving things that many folks have no business obtaining in the first place.  Jones has earned the “better” in his ambition to be a better man.

What’s admirable about the quests of Gardner and Jones is that their self-improvement agendas have distinct goals, dealing in specific areas of their lives.  So even though I feel I haven’t earned the ambition of being a “better” man, I can model my own plan from a similar perspective.  I can isolate distinct elements of my life and try to improve them.  And, should I fail, I can at least pound out some amusing sentences about my attempts.

The big picture goal for my pursuit is to relate less to malcontented sons of privilege, like James Dean’s Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause, and more to contemporary cowboys who have staked out some America for them and theirs, like… umm… there’s gotta be a guy like this somewhere in contemporary pop culture…

Hank Hill?  Well, no matter.  The point is, I’d like to be a guy at whom folks point and say, “That man has his shit together.”  With that in mind, I’ve compiled a short list of areas in my life that need some assessment.  Here goes:

·      Openness.  I’d like to be emotionally available to those in my life.  A good start towards this is to be communicatively available, meaning I need to start answering my phone, and promptly responding to messages, Facebook or otherwise.

·      Productivity.  I’ve got to stop giving myself a break in my free time, and respond to my reflective observation that tangible pieces of work (songs, essays, letters to friends and family) are the only healthy remedies for my chronic anxiety, occasional depression, and the fuck-it-all emptiness that runs like a current underneath my perpetual hyper vigilance.

·      Mindfulness.  As fall continues its march across my city, I’m going to acknowledge the vague sense of dread that is constantly present in my noggin, and, without judging it, take a peek beyond my anxiety, unveiling my bitter Chicago in all its truth and complexity.  I resolve to take time to love Chicago every day without relying on spending, eating, or drinking as gateways to appreciation.

Suppose I make some good strides in these areas.  Will that make me a man?  We learned in The Big Lebowski that being a man can be defined as “being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost,” accompanied by “a pair of testicles.”  I suppose this endeavor will test my resolve to pay the price for doing the right thing.  So, barring a run-in with castration-threatening nihilists, checking off these three bullet points will be a bar mitzvah of sorts for old Citizen Steve.  (Insert your favorite Yiddish saying here.)

So. How do we kick this thing off?  I’ll let Tobias pull the trigger.

Citizen Steve Speaks - A Bit Of Compulsive Reflection

   "When his substance of choice is eliminated, the addict will begin to obsess over some other substance(s) or compulsive behavior(s)." -Something that might well be written in some nonfiction book about addiction.
   You know what I like about Altoids smalls? They're small.
   I've been saying this for weeks now, making sure each time that I'm not saying it to somebody who's already heard me say it. I don't know why I like this non-joke so much. Something about it feels natural and very much befitting to my personality. I especially enjoy when somebody correctly guesses the answer, leaving me to quickly echo their response.
"They're small?"
"They're small."
   The 7-11 was out of the wintergreen smalls last night, so I had to get a tin of the peppermint ones. Today I automatically popped one in after my early-afternoon cigarillo, and found that my tongue is not in any shape to deal with peppermint when it is coated in tobacco smoke. When the mild burning subsided, I mused that the scents of peppermint and tobacco now ran through my breath, and this is exactly the combination of scents attributed to the grandfather in the original "Parent Trap". I smelled the way an early 1960's old man smelled. I was happy to smell this way, as I strolled along Lawndale Avenue, the sun sneaking in past the edges of my brown sunglasses, and my dog panting laboriously as she pulled at her leash. I wished it was a leather leash. I'm going to buy her a leather leash.
   I've found that the right combination of coffee and cigars (read: a fucking ton of coffee and cigars) can minimize my obsessively self-aware social discomfort that has tailed alongside my newfound sobriety. Over the weekend, I was able to channel the old Steve, Steve the Drinker, in a moment of shirtless buffoonery in the upper canopy of the Chicago skyline. I was partly proud that I could shed my self-conscious awkwardness for a beat and go with the drunken flow, despite my sobriety. But I couldn't help but ask myself, "Is this really sobriety?"
   Nope. It wasn't. I hadn't had a drink; therefore, I was sober. But sobriety isn't the recreation of a former self through less harmful substances, places, people, and attitudes. It's not being so caffeinated that I shake worse than I ever did during alcohol withdrawal. It's not trying to be "mysterious" so that I don't come off as awkward. Sobriety is being awkward sometimes. It's getting frustrated with problems rather than getting away from problems. And sometimes, sobriety is realizing that a certain scene just ain't my scene any more. And it's at those times that I'm always glad that I'm sober, so I can just hop in my car and drive away.
   So, I'm finding my way in this mess of coffee, cigars, and Altoids smalls. What a clean mess, it is, compared to the mess I was living in until January 11, 2010. At least I can see it all around me.
   My compulsive spending habit, on the other hand, is more difficult for me to wrap my head around. But I'm afraid that, for now, I'll give in to my self-destructive mechanism of putting off thinking about it for another day.