MICHAEL BOATMAN.NET

DAY 10

CHICAGO: CITY OF SYPHILIS

Of course, when I look back at it now, I realize that that’s where everything began to fall apart. Chi-town; City With The Big Shoulders; Home of Al Capone and more repressed functional alcoholics than you can shake a bratwurst at.

There have been no shortage of bitter ironies on the road from New York: The incontinent mobster in Hoboken who vomited on my agent; the lesbian animal rights activist in Atlantic City who demanded a full refund because of my use of the term “chicken titties” in chapter 2; falling asleep in that bar in Bucks County Pennsylvania and waking up in bed with the same lesbian and her “husband,” a local theater critic she called “Larry the Fag”, and a truly regrettable taste in my mouth.

But for sheer viciousness, nothing beats Chicago.

Nothing beats this morning, the hours I spent shivering in the back of a State Street Barnes and Noble in which the heaters had all gone offline. I arrived at the store on time (for a change) to find a surprisingly enthusiastic crowd of fans waiting for me. Some of them applauded as they trembled in the bitter January hellwind shrieking off that fucking Lake. I even smiled as the manager, a red-faced Hasidic Jew with one green eye, pushed open the door and a blast of freezing wind that could have come straight from Satan’s backside shoved my half-hearted greeting back down my throat. I think I said something like, “Holy F-F-fuck!”

The Jewish Cyclops informed me that the heating had gone out inside the store and now the vents were blowing cold air. He promised me that he’d handled the problem, though, and proudly ushered me in. A few minutes later, I was sitting on a metal chair, trying to keep my taint from freezing to the seat, and signing copies of “the book” (I’m starting to think of “the book” as the key to the door of my very own personal damnation), when I looked up, expecting to see another awkward, male, bald overweight Midwesterner, and instead locked eyes with the woman I’ve been searching for my entire life.

She was tall, with long curly brown hair and a supermodel’s build. She might have been the cloned love-child of Tyra Banks and Rebecca Romjin-Stamos, only about fifteen years on the happy side of forty. And she was looking at me with a warmth that I’ve dreamed about but never experienced, even after ten years of marriage. When she stepped up to the table, I was ready to give her my soul.

“I’ve loved you from the moment I read your first story, “The Incredible Heat Death of Frank the Cat?” she said. “I recorded every episode of your TV show too. I love the ones where you get to talk a lot.”

She leaned in to me, her full sensuous lips pursed, her light brown eyes fixed on me and only me. “Can we go somewhere when you’re done here? You won’t be sorry.”

I managed to sputter something completely inane, I can’t remember what. I hadn’t gotten laid since my wife left, nearly a month earlier. (I dimly remember something…wet happening with the lesbian back in Bucks County. Unfortunately I also flashed on her husband “Larry the Fag,” laughing from somewhere over my right shoulder and arguing that, “…a goddamn donkey punch oughtta show him who’s boss…” or something. I quickly buried that particular memory.)

I smiled, opened my mouth with every intention of telling my dreamwoman of my deepest, most poetic feelings.

That’s when it happened.

For sheer Windy City thrills, nothing beats sitting there with your mouth hanging open while a drizzling pizzle of urine suddenly bursts uncontrollably from your cold-whipped member. Nothing could hope to compare with the sudden blast of white hot agony that lanced from that same member and mako-sharked its way up though my guts, or the not-so-mannish yelp of surprise that blathered out of my mouth. I think I said something like, “Hoi…uwp?” Then I shot to my feet, clutching my manparts,

“Jesus, he’s pissed himself!”

It was the Jewish Cyclops. The fucker. But he was right. A small but steady stream of urine was leaking out of me, staining the fronts of my jeans. I looked down and was horrified to see that I was already standing in a puddle of slushy yellow ice. And it hurt sooooo bad. It felt like someone was ram-jacking a glass thermometer up my urethra; digging for semen samples the hard way. I looked over at the Cyclops, hoping he’d toss me a towel or a prayer shawl or something. He just stood there shaking his head, his little side-curls bouncing, frowning as if he’d just caught a whiff of something horrible. I suppose he probably had.

Anyway, the drizzle stopped; the pain rolled back and when I was able to uncross my eyes, the first thing I saw was my dream woman. She was staring at me with the same disdain on her face I’d just enjoyed from the Cyclops. I tried to pull it all back, the moment of contact, the possibility of anonymous intercourse. I smiled, reached out my hand, sensing, hoping that she would understand- even though I didn’t- and said the first thing that popped into my mind.

“Well…at least I didn’t shit myself.”

I laughed. Dreamwoman didn’t. She turned, tossed her copy of the book back to the Jewish Cyclops, and catwalked out of the Barnes and Noble and out of my life.

“Wait,” I said lamely.

My “fans” laughed. Then every one of them turned and walked away, shaking their heads.

“Oh come on, everybody,” I cried. “It’s the cold. It’s so cold!”

But of course that didn’t make sense. I was left there, terrified and alone.

What the hell is wrong with me?

My jeans were wet and smelled like…well… like piss. I needed to get to a doctor, fast: I had a disturbing stinging sensation in my testicles and the inescapable feeling that the pain was only dozing, waiting for another golden moment to rear up and firebomb my reproductive pathways . Even worse: the display table in front of me sagged with the weight of more than three- dozen unsigned books.

God, how I hated Chicago.

NEXT: DAYS 12 through 14: MILWAUKEE: I WILL BATHE WITH WHORES