My Friend Kenneth
By Michael Woyan
Page 2
America's first National Book
Award winner
Nelson Algren, Nobel Prize winning
author
Saul Bellow, Pulitzer Prize winning
writers
Mike Royko, Gene Siskel, Roger
Ebert, David
Mamet and Studs Terkel all were
frequent
patrons since it first opened
its doors in
1958 and became something of
an institution.
The Old Town Ale House is a true
Chicago
joint, its smoky air full of
stories.
After Steve moved in with the
woman that
would become his wife, the apartment
above
the Old Town Ale House became
officially
in my charge. This meant placing
ads in the
Chicago Reader for roommates
and embarking
on the unpleasant task of interviewing
and
choosing the least undesirable
candidates
from the dozens of respondents
for the two
available rooms. Invariably,
the process
provided me with no less than
a parade of
idiots in which to make a choice
of with
whom I was going to share my
home for the
following year. Not exactly settled
in their
lives, individuals looking for
roommate situations
are transient in nature, are
only looking
for transitional housing and
are usually
transitional in most other areas
of their
lives, too. This process would
provide me
with a hodge-podge of students,
people in
career crisis, just out of bad
relationships
and marriages, new to town and
in a general
state of "finding themselves."
I know. I was one of those guys.
But now this was becoming my
home and I quickly
and often learned that folks
that are nice
and courteous and reliable people
during
the interview process are generally
less
so after they've moved in to
what they consider
as temporary quarters. My quarters,
mind
you. These were the circumstances
in which
I met Kenneth McCarthy. By the
time Kenneth's
shadow reached my door, my six-
month experiment
at 219 West North Avenue had
become a six
year proposition, and although
I wasn't yet
ready to admit it was a permanent
domicile,
I had grown a tad comfortable
in my spacious
vintage surroundings.
His response to the ad was reasonably
economical,
asking only a few questions and
offering
little about himself other than
to say that
he was an Irish national clerking
at the
Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
We agreed to
a time for him to view the place
and ended
the conversation with dispatch.
When the day came for Kenneth
to look at
the apartment, I answered the
door to a thunderous,
though somewhat shrill, "I'LL
TAKE IT!"
The only response I could muster
after this
entrance other than to scratch
my ears for
relief was, "Well Ken, I
don't think
we've quite yet decided if we'll
take you."
To which he rebutted with an
auditory progeny
to match his first exclamation,
"OH
NONSENSE!" He then proceeded
to go on
about where he was going to put
all his personal
effects and what a perfect location
this
would be for him and which lines
of public
transportation he would take
to work, etc.,
etc. etc. I remember wondering
if perhaps
he had become hard of hearing
from working
on the floor of the Exchange.
After participating
for many years of organized athletics,
I've
known some loud people in my
life but never
had I met anyone as loud and
as gregarious
as Kenneth. I told him, somewhat
patronizingly,
that I would contact him over
the coming
week after finishing the balance
of interviews
remaining, hoping there might
be someone,
anyone who could meet my minimum
requirements,
that might be quieter. That person
never
came. I felt like an owner of
a football
team who has the fifth overall
pick in the
NFL draft during a particularly
lean year
for talent.
So when it came time for Kenneth
to move
in, I needed to make the obligatory
lecture
about house rules, the basic
quirks of a
temperamental vintage apartment
and to lay
out the necessary boundaries
regardless of
any visions he might have of
the household
becoming a perfect family. That
simply would
not happen. Space must be respected
as does
quiet time. My other roommate
was a nervous
research scientist who jumped
if a car horn
sounded outside. Some day when
returning
home, I fully expected to find
him hiding
under the sofa due to Kenneth.
However, the
most striking thing I noticed
of this unusually
loud man during this conversation
was how
attentively he listened. I felt
relieved
that this Irishman in an often-boorish
profession
seemed to listen like a European,
which is
the civilized art of asking a
question and
waiting for an answer. Cautiously,
I was
put at ease, right away.
As time passed, I became more
and more comfortable
as his habits became more familiar.
At the
time my schedule was eclectic,
often working
from home in the afternoons;
his operated
like a Swiss timepiece. After
leaving at
6:45 every morning, he would
arrive home
from the Exchange about 3:30pm
every weekday,
change out of his sweaty clothes
and repair
to the kitchen (just out of my
earshot) to
watch his cooking shows on cable.
I would
later learn that this was his
much needed
quiet time following the daily
ritual of
shouting and jostling for dollars
on the
Exchange's floor of dreams, a
respite of
sorts from capitalism's ruthless
and random
fairness. His entrance was a
good deal later
and louder on Fridays, following
celebratory
libations with fellow co-conspirators,
relieved
to have survived another week
and occasionally
sad with regret for those who
did not. We
never drank together. Ed, the
jittery but
earnest research scientist was
soon to move
out. I suspected his departure
was for reasons
of privacy and hopes of dignity
that his
inevitable emergence from his
sexual closet
of orientation might come to
pass more easily.
We never really knew for sure.
For me, he
was a near-perfect roommate because
he was
never there, but we wished him
well all the
same. What I did know for sure
was that Kenneth
was now to be included in the
selection of
a new roommate, the prospect
of which chilled
me.
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Freind "
Written By Michael Woyan