I learned a phrase once from a dear friend, Prentiss Smithson that I use constantly to this day. The phrase is, “I am worn to a Nub.” It is so much more glamorous to say “I am worn to a Nub” than it is to say “I am very, very tired.” I’ve learned things from my years in the Castro District, let me tell you.

Anyway, I am well and truly worn to a Nub. I was in Chicago, I was sick, and now I am home. But let’s not forget that I am also, well, me. So even though I was sick and also WTAN, things happened and before I knew it was 2:00 A.M. (I am talking about today? Yesterday?)

It was Sunday. Yesterday, moving into today. Me and my posse worked hard and then slowly broke down our booth at Bookexpo, being of course the last people who weren’t Union Workers to leave the hall. It’s a combo of excessive wine consumption and attention deficiency disorder, our inability to break down our booth in an efficient manner and I won’t bore you with those details here.

We finally emerged into a perfect Chicago night, brought our bags-full-o’-books to the hotel, and went to a Pub for dinner. That would be Kitty O’Shea’s Pub, in the Chicago Hilton & Towers. Kitty’s is not a normal hotel bar – it’s a cool place. I met one of my long-term (almost a YEAR!) boyfriends there once. We pounded a lot of fattening pub food, drank some cocktails and a bottle of wine, and then my posse (boss, co-worker, co-worker’s mate) all lit up cigars.

Being in my flawed (sick) state, I couldn’t really take the smoke. So I moved a few feet away where two guys were watching the Sopranos on a TV overhead. It was nice, mellow and smoke-free, and then the Sopranos was over and I started talking to the two guys. One was around fifty and lived in Florida, and the other was probably thirty and was a Chicago cop. We were all brought together for a moment by the Sopranos and for a little while, we really had a good time. Things were mellow and it was a perfect Sunday night in Chicago, until things went a little sour.

After a time, the young cop looks at me and says, “I don’t know who your Party is, but…..)” then goes on to tell a story about some guy he hates who is screwing the system, welfare and all that, his wife is obese, and the cop is paying for all that.

This came sort of out of nowhere, and I was like, huh? What do you mean, my Party? Then both of them were totally staring at me. And my hair is looking really, really normal right now.

I am not part of any “Party” I told them. I’m just a citizen. But somehow, somewhere, things had crossed over into a weird space. They both started railing on me about the Democrats and how they were screwing everything up. I swear to you, I said nothing to deserve this, nothing to egg them on. Those two guys went off like a Republican M80 (wish I knew the name of a larger explosive, but I don’t). The cop was fairly mellow, but that other guy… he seemed so nice, but….

I guess the gist of what I am getting at is, I am not use to meeting people who really believe what our government is telling them, i.e. George Bush is protecting you, and me, and our children, and our grandchildren, from the terrorists. Whatever, everyone has the right to their own belief system. But last night was the first night I have ever run across people who would kill ME, run ME down because I don’t believe in the same things as them. It was quite frightening. Florida guy was Really Railing – he was not making any sense at all. He was talking about building a wall around the U.S. and then all the countries that were eating all our food would dissolve. “America is the economy of the the World!” He said. “Without us, everyone else would die!”

“Uh, excuse me, (Mr. freak.)” I said. “I lived in Italy and I think they can do OK without the U.S. Also I think most countries in Europe can do without us.”

“Blah! Ha! Them… didn’t you watch CNN today?” (The D Day thing.) “Without us the Europeans would be Speaking German! Blah! Ha!”

This went on for a while. I had not the wherewithal to fight with this guy, but instead had a very sick feeling in my gut – there are Bush-loving people who HATE people who don’t love Bush out there. Florida-freak went off to the bathroom. Chicago cop said, “I gotta go.” We looked at each other. He knew he had opened this can of worms, and that it had fed on me. And that he was too much of a pussy to admit to that. He left and Florida Freak came back. Thankfully, so did my friend Chad.

At this time, there was also a guy sitting near us at the bar. His eyes looked in different directions and he was very, very drunk. He was totally deranged looking.

Chad, the only one left of my posse at that point, joined me in the bar, where Florida Democrat hater was still railing on me. The world’s problems are because of Clinton, also Democrats like me, you know.

Florida homey wasn’t prepared for Chad though. Hee hee. Chad ripped through that guy like a razor cutting through licorice. “You served?” Chad asked him. “Yeah?” The guy said. Chad really did serve, and spent time in Somalia, and I am thinking Florida guy was maybe telling a fib. The deranged guy comes up and says, “Woof, woof!” The discussion gets very animated and then the deranged guy is talking to me, and I miss the very heated departure of the Florida republican guy. Chad is grinning, but I am still chilled by the vehemence of the Florida guy. He really disliked me, and for no other reason but that I did not believe in Bush and his terrorist threat. I am too WTAN to make sense now, but will try to make sense of the whole thing a little later. In the meantime, PEACE.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2004 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Tales from a Strange Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.