The Hotel Paganini.

I just booked a hotel room in Amsterdam.

Hey, if you happen to be in Amsterdam on June 3rd, ring me up at the Hotel Paganini, because that’s where I’ll be.

I was determined to book a nice place. Since I’ll only have one night in the city, I felt like I ought to “go big or go home” when it came to my accommodations. It’s not every June 3rd that one finds oneself in the Netherlands; I figure if one does find oneself in the Netherlands, one ought to find oneself there in style. I decided to seek out a four or five star hotel.

I can justify the cost. Since I don’t drink or get high, many of Amsterdam’s legendary earthly delights will not be a part of my trip. If I can’t get twisted out of my mind on Ecstasy and go have sex with hookers or go to some all-night, all-day, all-night heroin den and hang with the Dutch mafia, I might as well have turndown service and little soaps.

Trouble is, all the four and five star hotels I found were downright fugly. There’s a certain brand of tacky that exists in Europe. I can’t put my finger on it, but it involves chrome, blonde wood, piping, and the colors navy blue, forest green, and taupe. Whatever it is, it ain’t pretty. I looked through these hotels and couldn’t see where “elegance” or “premium” came in; all I saw was yucky.

So then I lowered my standards, star-ratingly speaking, and found the perfectly acceptable Symphony Hotel Paganini. The hotel is a traditional house, actually, not a hotel building. It’s very Dutch looking. It overlooks canals and they tell me it’s in close proximity to the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum, Anne Frank’s house and, yes, the red light district.

The hotel is perfect. Perfect for hookers.

——-

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Story Hour.

There’s a play in the show right now where three of us girls braid each other’s hair.

What a strong sense memory. I don’t believe I had braided anyone’s hair since the third grade; J.A. wrote this play and put me in it, so now I’m braiding again. While I’m braiding hers, K.K. is braiding mine.

It’s nice.

I remember when my third grade teacher, Mrs. Camp, would read to us for story hour. All the girls would sit Indian-style on the carpet, snaking ourselves into a line of amateur hairstylists all around the room. You’d do the hair of the girl in front of you; the girl behind you would do yours.

I’m not sure, but I think that it was probably pretty common to wish you didn’t have to do any braiding, but maybe I should only speak for myself. I know that I only wanted to get my hair braided and just enjoy the sensation of hands on my head and in my hair, twisting and plaiting and tying up with elastics and barettes. It felt really good. I wanted to enjoy it and not have to worry about the girl in front of me.

My mom was never a mom that did hair; several girls in my grade had moms who spent lots of time on their daughters’ hair, but my mom wasn’t into it. I usually just combed it, and that was it. Only during story time did I have the chance to have a pretty hairdo.

Oh, I’m sad tonight.

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To Douglas Post, On the Occasion of Seeing His Play, “Cynical Weathers.”

Dear Mr. Post:

Tonight, my boyfriend and I attended the Victory Gardens’ production of your newest play, “Cynical Weathers” at the restored Biograph Theatre.

We did not stay for the second act.

I’d like to explain why. Would you mind? Please, have a brownie and some tea. Yes, they are homemade. Milk and sugar? Lovely. Now, then.

Are you familiar with Arthur Miller, Mr. Post? Yes, of course you are. You are certainly familiar, then, with one of Miller’s most famous plays: “The Crucible.” Miller wrote “The Crucible” in 1952. The play was about the Salem witch trials, as you know, but has been pored over by scholars, students, and audiences since it was first performed as an allegory for the McCarthyism that held America hostage for nearly ten years starting in 1948.

During that time, Arthur Miller was reported to be a Communist “friendly” and was subsequently blacklisted. He and many other American artists at that time were jailed or suffered personal and professional exile due to their unpopular political viewpoints. These people were oppressed.

Artists were jailed, sir. Exiled. Truly oppressed. Yes, you may have another brownie.

When Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible,” he clearly had all this in mind. He wanted to write a play that examined what was going on in the world. He was ascribing to that tried-and-true, author-to-author advice of “write what you know.” One certainly knows how one feels about politics, right? Right! It seems like a good idea, then, if you’re a playwright, to write a play incorporating (or even based upon) your political views. Arthur Miller did it with “The Crucible”; and you did it, with “Cynical Weathers.”

But “The Crucible” is a good play. Your play is pathetic.

Arthur Miller had the most compelling reasons any writer has ever had to write a “political” anything. He had hard evidence that his words could land him swiftly in prison. His name was actually on a blacklist that infringed on his civil liberties. Few would have blamed him if he had chosen to write a straight up polemic, a play where nothing actually happened, a “play” in name only, political commentary thinly veiled as art. He could’ve done that. But he did not.

Arthur Miller knew—he knew—that if he did, no one would care. He knew that if he wanted anyone to ever read his play again, or think of it, or analyze it critically, or remember the title of the damned thing, for God’s sake, he had to write a good story. Though “The Crucible” is based on actual events, Miller wrote in an affair between his main character and a teenage girl! Because! It helped make for a good story! His characters were complex, flawed, sympathetic, and busy with all sorts of juicy conflict. Thus, we remember the play. And we examine it for its deeper meanings to this day. That was Miller’s intention, after all. Checkmate.

Don’t you think you ought to have learned something from Arthur Miller? You’re an accomplished playwright, Mr. Post. Don’t you suppose that you ought to take a cue from Arthur Miller, who, three years prior, had written Death of a Salesman, possibly the finest play in the entire American theatre cannon; Arthur Miller who proudly claimed the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Arthur Miller, who wed none other than Marilyn Monroe?

How dare you write that ridiculous, offensive nonsense and then sink back into your Pottery Barn couch in your South Loop condo and pat yourself on the back. Your play was a disgrace. Your characters weren’t strong enough to approach one-dimensional; the protagonist was a dickless, milquetoast shade of grey; his wife, a detestable bitch; the “other woman” was nuanced only in that she was cut from not one but two archetypal cloths—“nutty” and “tempestuous”; the supporting characters were a pair of embarassing chuckle-heads to whom you assigned minority status for street cred.

And with this motley crew as your mouthpiece, you threw your whiny politics at us.

Do you truly believe that the “Religious Right” is oppressing you, Mr. Post? Can you prove to me that this black force of righteous hate is threatening your livelihood? Because I was at Victory Gardens tonight and it looks like these scary, Capitol Hill-infiltrating, Bible-thumping Powers That Be are treating you awfully well. It’s a nice theatre and I’m pretty sure your company benefitted from a fair amount of government grant money this year. I highly doubt you were subpoenaed on opening night by Men In Suits who asked you to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee or any committee similar to it. Still, you surely feel that your play is “political,” that it is “timely,” and that it is “risky.” On the contrary, it is juvenile and ultimately unwatchable. 

You should be ashamed of yourself. Arthur Miller would be ashamed.

No, you may not have another brownie. Now, get out.

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The Frightening Night.

I have a spooky story to tell.

It’s nearly 1:30am and I’m tired, but I have to write about what just happened.

So D.W. and I went to see a movie tonight at the Davis Theatre. The Davis is in Lincoln Square. We live in in Edgewater. It’s about three miles away. We decided to walk. The night was cool, but we have jackets and scarves and strong legs, so we hoofed it over to Leland and Lincoln. The movie, an Indian film called “The Namesake,” was good and so was the popcorn.

On the way home, D.W. remarked how full and bright the moon was. I looked up and nodded, thinking back to my waitressing days and how weird people would get when there was a full moon. Empirical evidence or not, I swear it’s true.

Just as I was recalling this, D.W.‘s hand flew out and grabbed my arm. He had stopped dead in his tracks and now I was stopped too.

“Oh my God. Look at that.”

I looked to my right and saw a white, faceless mannequin, posed in a bent-over fashion in the garden of the house we were passing. The mannequin was wearing a bonnet and was pouring water from a plastic watering can into a bird bath or gazing pool of some kind—she was clearly hooked up to a fountain somehow. She wore a quilted dress, which was fully animated by the breeze that was blowing. Several lights were aimed at her from below, casting a glaring light and a long shadow on the house behind her.

D.W. shuddered. “What the hell would possess someone to put that in their garden?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s a scarecrow thing.”

We both agreed that it was spooky and continued our walk home.

Not five minutes later, at Ashland and Winona, (not far from the theatre where I happen to spend a great deal of my time), we crossed to the northeast corner of the intersection and got onto the sidewalk.

“Watch out!” D.W. suddenly yelled, and I heard the sound of water splattering onto the sidewalk very close to where I was standing.

I leapt out of the way just in time. As I was dodging the stream of what we can only hope was water, D.W. was looking up. We quickly scrambled to the side of the building and surveyed the situation. What we had here was a condemned building. “Keep Out” signs were posted in nearly every window and those without signs were broken or hanging open. The outer door to the building as well as the inner door to the stairwell were both propped wide open with a broom handle. From the street, we could see graffiti on the walls inside.

As soon as those seconds of initial confusion wore off, the anger came in. “Hey!” shouted D.W. up to the second story window. “Why don’t you come down here?”

I was happy to contribute to that idea myself, yelling, “You wanna pour water on me? Come down here! I can pour water, too!” I turned to D.W. “Did you see him?”

“I just saw his hand and the pitcher he was holding,” he said. “The arm came out; it turned the pitcher and then disappeared back inside.”

“A pitcher? But the water came down in a stream, though.” I had turned in time to see it the moment it happened. From the arc of the water, I had thought someone was spitting on us, actually.

D.W. was getting out his phone. “Well, it wasn’t a pitcher, exactly. It was like a watering can or something. I’m gonna call 311. There are squatters or crackheads up there.”

A chill ran through me. “Wait, what did you say?”

“I’m gonna call the cops.”

“No, about the person. It was a watering can?”

“Yeah, I think so.” There was a glimmer of recognition in D.W.‘s eyes. He knew what I was thinking.

“Like that mannequin.”

Our eyes got very wide. Neither one of us is interested in spooky stories or working ourselves into a frenzy over imaginary worries, but it was all so creepy. A condemned building is an ominous thing. The windows were open or broken; those spray-painted words looked frightening and desperate under the single bulb still lit in the hallway; the propped open door was proof that there was activity where there ought not to have been any. On top of that, someone was in there. At least one someone. At least one someone who felt it would be fun to pour water on passersby like us.

D.W. described the hand that poured the water emerge from the black “like something from a haunted house.”

The cops came quickly and went up into the building. We could see their flashlights going into each room in the dark. As we waited on the street, one of the second-floor windows suddenly opened and a woman’s head came out of the darkness.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on down there?” she asked. She had lived hard, this woman.

“Someone’s pouring water on people,” D.W. said.

“You mean there’s someone else here?” The woman looked drugged.

“Yeah,” I said. She went on to defend the fact that she was still there, as if we were the authorities.

“I got one more load to take outta here, but I can’t do it till tomorrow,” she said. “I’m the last one left, I thought. These gang bangers, though, you never know what they’re up to.” She retreated into her room and out of sight.

Later, as we turned the corner to the apartment, I stopped. “D.W.,” I said slowly, “It was her.”

“What?”

“It was that woman who poured the water.”

D.W.‘s eyebrows lifted. “Wow. You’re probably right.”

“Seriously,” I said. “Seven cops went up there. They didn’t find anything. But that woman was there, on the second floor. Same floor as the watering can. I think it was her.”

It had to have been that woman. Because there isn’t a mannequin on the second floor of that condemned building. We know that. We know that mannequins don’t play jokes on people at 12:30am as they walk on the streets below.

But like, define “mannequin.”

——-

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