Iyow - in your own words

Blood and Boogers and Shit, Oh My!

Here’s a story from one of those days where mundane things pass before my eyes. I don’t usually take notice, log these infinitesimally small things or seek to record them. They become part of what can only be described as another day, beneath the “dividing and indifferent blue” of an October sky.

I was walking down the street last Saturday in my neighborhood in downtown Chicago and this Black homeless man carrying a small black shopping bag and box from Saks crossed my path on his way to rummage through another garbage can. I’d watched him dig through a can near the park where Basil, my black lab and I were playing.

The dog park has only recently opened. For the past six months it has consisted of a small, grassless, muddy enclosure where dogs did their business and perfunctorily retrieved the ball a few times before heading home with nary a look back.

The park has recently been transformed. The land abuts a construction site where a thirty-story condo building has arisen. The building is complete and now the land that was cordoned off during construction is opened and a dog park. It has the feeling of an urban jungle—tall grasses, wildflowers and the occasional adolescent maple dot the hill, next to the toxic Chicago River. Recently a group of concerned pet owners gathered on a Saturday afternoon to do their civic duty. They mowed under the wildflowers and prairie grasses and unwieldy maples. I watched them work assiduously for the benefit of pet owners like myself. Then I left.

The late afternoon light was golden, the breeze perfect and Basil and I were walking tall on a crisp autumn afternoon. We were on our way home to our loft with a view of the Sears Tower. The homeless man approached me, I watched him like I watch so much—feigning disinterest and feeling a bit anxious, but maintaining an even heart rate and measured breath.

What a beautiful day. The man said.
Yes, I said.
Yes it is. I’m glad to see it.
Me too.
I turned to continue our walk.

The man began to walk with us. My heartbeat quickened with irritation at his intrusion and my own anxiety. I touched my cell phone in my pocket.

It’s the perfect day to put the grill on the deck.
Yes. It is. I said and kept walking.

I saw him turn back out of the corner of my eye and I tried to ease the tension in my forehead. I didn’t feel exactly threatened by the man. I hesitated to name what I felt. Was it fear? Was it anger? Was it disgust? Disappointment?

I kept going another two blocks, closer to home. Basil and I paused to say hi to a little Yorkie named Frankie that Basil loves. The dog is about one tenth of Basil’s size but they love to frolic together. I got to chatting with his owners (a gay couple, one man is dark the other white). Whenever we meet in the dog park I feel relieved to see them. The dog park is peopled with yuppies that have rescued mutts from a nearby shelter. These are people who proudly describe the psychoses of their dogs, who praise my black lab’s shiny coat and nod wearily when I say he is a pure bred. But there are also the others. The people who can tell you the sub-category of breed they have bought, those whose dogs where designer sweaters and leashes. But I digress.

I am talking with this couple about the new Erie Park. The dark man; I think of him as Peter… one of the unspoken rules of the dog park is that dogs’ names are exchanged but people remain nameless.

Peter had on an NYU sweatshirt. I am from New York and I have a provincial fear of Midwesterners. I try not to, but part of me wonders at who remains here, who returns here, who gets stuck here. Don’t they know that there are faster, better places to be?! I obviously have an agenda in these observations which, while unstated, may be summarized by making a brief confession: I have many maps on the walls of our loft (maps of Venice, maps of New York, maps of California). Treasure maps are important to pirates. They hold the promise. The promise is that I will not live out the rest of my life here.
All this from a sweatshirt? Yes. And these are the moments that I normally glide over.

Anyway, Peter’s sweatshirt made me realize that there are people I gravitate towards and there is a culture I seek and share. I was smiling into his face talking about our dogs when I realized that he’d had a nose job, that he spends a lot of time alone, that he’s sick, that he looks in the mirror too much, that I really like him and we could be friends, but under the laughter there would be the bond of suffering and pain. And part of the bond I share is not being white. Not being comfortable where I am. Not being entirely safe within my own skin.

Just then, the homeless man came up behind us. He opened his mouth to speak to me. I looked at him, waiting. Instead, he paused, turned and continued down the street. I felt as though being in the company of two men, even gay men, had provided me with a protection, a shield that my petite feminine self and big affable doggie had not contained. And I resented needing protection.

I walked the rest of the block to my building’s side entrance and along the way I thought about my response to the homeless man. What made him different from Peter and me?

I turned and watched the man walk the other way down my street, no longer lilting with a jaunty walk, but walking with his head bowed, shoulders rounded. He looked wounded, dirty, old and tired. Where was he heading? Did he know what was in the Saks box? Did he have a lady friend to give it to? Would he sell it to someone for cash? He seemed like a big walking trashcan to me. In the words of some self-help guru—garbage in/garbage out. But he had found the Saks box in the trash.

Perhaps he’d been thrown away. Perhaps he’d approached me the way that Basil veered towards Frankie, from a sense of kinship. I saw his earlier strut towards me in my mind’s eye. I was struck by his confidence and lightness—all inextricably tied up in the swinging little bag from Saks.

How do you get to the point where you are reaching into garbage cans? Is it that far away from where I am?

Perhaps there’s a reason I don’t talk about these days—there is nothing to log, no explanations can be given, no satisfactory ending can be reached. I see people, they touch my life and the dividing and indifferent blue sits above us.

And suddenly the blueness of that sky, so harshly beautiful and magnanimously finite, became the focus of my mind. I tried to memorize that blue. And I felt the swelling chords of a song in my heart. I saw myself in a musical, like Oz, wearing a bright orange cape, leading a muscled black lab by a red leash, arm in arm with Peter and the homeless man, skipping, off to see the wizard, and chanting “blood and boogers and shit, oh my; blood and boogers and shit, oh my; blood and boogers and shit, oh my.”