He mimed being exploded backwards out of something, a pained looked on his face.
Then he made a motion like he was taking out a whip, whipping me with the sound effect ‘Tish.’
“Du’s got a fucking chain-whip too, man,” he said. “Fucking rip your head off, son. Tish.”
“Oh fuck no,” I said.
“Oh fuck yeah, du,” he said, turning and whipping something else. “Tish.”
“What if my skin is made of liquid metal too?” I said.
“Fuckin nuts, bro,” he said, lighting a handrolled cigarette. “Fuckatta here.”
He talked about an upcoming movie where multiple superheroes were going to be fighting together.
He listed them, doing a pose for each.
“[Character],” he said, then stood straight up and crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Shing, shing.”
Then he said, “[Character]” and flexed in a really dramatic way and said, “Byahhhhh.”
Then he said, “[Character]” and acted like he was holding a powerful orb of energy between his curled hands, and said, “Nyah ha haaaaaa.”
I said, “Hell yeah, man. Can’t fuck with that”—even though I wasn’t sure you couldn’t fuck with that.
Somebody could probably fuck with that.
Spider-Man stopped and narrowed his eyes at me and listed all the superheroes again, louder but somehow more calm too.
He didn’t think I’d truly understood what grouping those superheroes together meant.
And it bothered him.
“Fuck,” I said. Then I did a shrug, making a face I’d never made. “They don’t have a weakness.”
“No weaknesses,” he said, smiling. “Dahhhhhh. Fuckatta here.”
He backed up and performed a move.
“Fuck with us,” he said. “Try it. Go on.”
He did an elaborate jumpkick move, landing by someone trying to get past on the sidewalk.
He bowed — remained bowed — using both arms to usher the person onward.
“So, what are you doing today then?” I said.
He straightened up and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, sniffing. “Uh, nothing man, just went out to get some piña colada to drink with my woman.”
He told me they lived a block away, in an alley underneath the Blue Line tracks.
“If I can’t get piña colada I’ll get margarita, fuck it,” he said, looking toward the store. “I better go see what they got though. My girl gonna beat my ass. I been gone so long haha. You know what I’m sayin, naaaaang. When I get back, she’a whoop my ass!” He laughed while making a face that could also be used during a guitar solo. “She’a whoop my ass.”
75 % of conversations in Chicago seemed to involve a whooped ass.
Or an ass that should’ve been whooped.
An ass that narrowly avoided its whooping.
An ass that wouldn’t escape its whooping.
A theoretical ass whooping.
Facts.
Enactments.
“Alright, later man,” I said. “I hope they have piña colada.”
I put my hand out.
We shook hands and locked thumbs.
“Later,” he said, snapping.
He jogged toward the 7/11 to hold the door for someone.
I walked down Fullerton.
There was an ad on the side of a bus that read, ‘Every baby will grow up to be somebody important’—showing a baby dressed as a firefighter, one dressed as a doctor, and one as a hamburger.
Actually no, I couldn’t see the third one — think it was a judge maybe.
SPIDER-MAN AND JANET AND HAPPINESS INC
The next day, I went to the alley beneath the train tracks where Spider-Man lived.
He was standing next to a wheelchair, trying on what looked like an official U.S. Air Force shirt.
“Yo!” he said, straightening the arms out on the shirt and examining the patches. “How you like it?”
“Looks good, man,” I said.
“Dahhhhhh. Shit’s fuckin badass, du. Somebody dropped it off for me last night.”
Against a brick wall behind him there were two green recycling dumpsters with a mattress between them, and a tarp pinned down to each dumpster for cover.
I heard someone moving behind it.
There was a younger overweight guy sitting on an overturned bucket against a train track column, silently drawing.
I asked Spider-Man if he wanted some beers.
“Hayo yeah, man, come on,” he said. “Come with me.” He patted the guy drawing. “Be back, man.”
The guy didn’t react at all.
On the other end of the alley there was a carwash exit, freight door open with foamy water pooling out.
We entered the carwash and walked through the big garage area where employees were hand-drying cars.
Spider-Man led me to a door inside the carwash that was the back entrance to a small liquor store where he worked.
Once a week he swept, vacuumed, and took out boxes for five King Cobra 40ozs. and five handrolled cigarettes.
“Yeah, I come over here,” he said, walking me around the 10’ x 10’ liquor store. “Sweep a little, fiss fiss, then I grab those boxes over there, vacuum the carpets, woosh woosh. Presto magnifico.”
I bought a tallboy for myself and a 40 for Spider-Man.
We went back through the carwash.
Spider-Man moved his fist and said, “A-ohhhhhhhhh” to the employees.
No one reacted.
We walked out through the big freight door and crossed the alley.
Spider-Man’s woman had taken down the tarp.
She was sitting on the bed, staring up, crosseyed.
She had a baseball hat on backwards, her thick tangled black hair coming out all sides.
She wore a Bulls T-shirt and a diaper made of garbage bags, her legs posed in front of her.
She was eating a rolled-up piece of deli turkey, slices stacked on her unshaven thigh.
“This my girl, Janet,” Spider-Man said, smiling and gesturing toward her.
“Hi, nice to meet you,” I said.
She said, “Um, nice a meet you too. Hi I’m juh, Janet.”
She strained when talking, breathless.
“She my girl,” Spider-Man said, opening the 40 and smiling at me.
He took a pull.
I grabbed an empty bucket and flipped it over.
I sat and opened my tallboy.
“Here man,” Spider-Man said. He went behind a dumpster and came back with a folding chair. “This shit right here, this shit is pure bamboo. Fuckatta here.”
He set up the chair, his open Air Force shirt blowing in the wind.
“Thanks,” I said, sitting down. “Oh, shit. Nice.”
“Pure, 100 percent bamboo,” he said, making an ‘ok’ sign.
Janet said, “Bum boo,” chewing turkey with her mouth open. “Hehe, shit. Dayum. Fock dat.”
A train passed over us, going towards the California stop.
It was hot out.
Sweat went down my chest into my bellybutton.
The guy who was drawing, he’d look up every once in a while and whisper something to himself, then go back to drawing.
He had a lisp like someone was pinching his lips open a little.
One time he looked up and said something and we made eye contact and he kept looking at me and eventually I said, “What?”
He leaned forward, handing me his drawings.
It was a stack of ‘To:/From:’ stickers from the post office.