Tinfoil Viking Science: Bridgeport Eavesdropping

Situation Normal. Atmosphere Breathable. Brainstem Injected. Dialogue Engaged.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Bridgeport Eavesdropping

My new home will be at 31st and Wallace. I wandered around the neighborhood, ducking under White Sox flags and hopping over sidewalk fissures. I downed a few beers at the VFW hall and The Redwood Lounge. I like the neighborhood. During my visit, my ears were fed speech both crass and anecdotal, all of it magic:

"I wouldn't fuck her with a stolen dick."

"You couldn't get laid at a women's prison even if you had a fistful of pardons."

Here's a good one:

"Steroids will make you batshit crazy, man. I knew this nice little guy- he was half Japanese I think- his name was Mike Onaga. He was shy and nerdy, you know? Real short, too, couldn't have weighed in over a buck-ten, buck-twenty. He started taking 'roids back in... lemme see here... musta been 86. He was telling me about the steroid cycles. The first year on them, he could only take two cycles a year or his heart could explode.

"Two years later he was fucking built, man. He musta gained 130 pounds. He wasn't nice anymore, but he liked me, so what did I care, right? He became a mean motherfucker with a hard-on for trouble. When we worked at Jewel-Osco, that crazy little fucker would pick up whole grocery carts. You know, the metal ones! Heavy steel! He'd lift 'em up in the air and throw them over four aisles! Four aisles of groceries! It was insane. They'd crash into cake mixes or soap bottles or whatever and just knock shit all over, and Mike would scream and howl like a fuckin animal.

"He's in jail now. He was raging all the time, and he got in a fight with some dude at a concert. Musta been in 1990. He bashed the guy's head into the metal stairs and then stomped his head. Killed him. I think it was at the Vic... no, it was the Avalon. That's right. That mighta had something to do with the Avalon shutting down, I don't know. He's probably still locked up."

I'm gonna like living in Bridgeport. Home sweet home.

11:31 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm

7 Comments:

October 10, 2005 5:08 PM, Lance Manion said...: My brother knew a steroid nut who took a ton of mescaline and freaked out and trashed a college concert. This guy was literally ripping up the stage. College security tried to stop him and he wiped out the entire security force. The guy then went home to sleep it off. He was later awoken by the SWAT team storming his apartment.
October 11, 2005 12:47 AM, Latigo Flint said...: That's beautiful stuff there Steve about Mike Onaga.

(I await the day good fortune comes our way.)
October 11, 2005 11:29 AM, Dave Morris said...: This story makes me wonder why more kids don't do steroids. Isn't that just the coolest???
October 11, 2005 1:00 PM, Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm said...: Imogene,

You're correct about Bridgeport, although I think that's changing.

When I was in one bar, there was a small group of old guys watching the Cowboys-Eagles game. They were drunk and hollering about Donovan McNabb, calling him "that (n-word excized) from Mt.Carmel."

Mt. Carmel is a high school here in Chicago. As they did this, another group of guys, also white, also decked out in blue collar flannels and union t-shirts, but much younger, twenties and thrities, yelled back "African American citizen!"

They looked mad. They weren't being sarcastic or making fun of political correctness. They seemed genuinely annoyed by their elders' usage of derogatory terms.

Hopefully, the younger set feels that way across the board.
October 11, 2005 1:40 PM, Lara said...: Haha, that's awesome. Gotta love the overheard conversations.
October 12, 2005 8:22 AM, Kerouaced said...: Nice piece...In the gym once I had a guy, I think he was Mr. Pennsylvania or some shit, roid rage on me. I was using a squat rack he wanted to use. I told him I was using it when he tried to take the weight off the bar. He started spitting and cussing and hopping around like he'd just been attacked by a nest of hornets. He then proceeded that day to try and squat a fairly heavy weight and crashed with it. A few days later I easily squated the same weight five times with that cocksucker watching. Funny, that roided out piece of shit never bothered me again...
October 16, 2005 5:12 PM, Bookfraud said...: late to the game, but...

bridgeport: yeah, home to the daleys and formerly of racist import. i hear it's still living in the 50s, but getting better.

as a cubs fan, i don't know what's worse: the sox, cardinals, or astros winning the series. feh.