More From Ennui Land

I have been encountering more people from my time as one of the owners of Ennui Cafe back in the day. Of course, some of them will say, “I didn’t know that you owned that place.” There were reasons for that and maybe I will hash them out later, but for now, I will allow sleeping curs to lie because it is what they do best. I think that the best stories are the ones that I was privy to in person- a naked man walking in and asking for coffee, bums locking themselves in our one bathroom and taking a nap, four women stupid enough to mess with my sister Peach, the challenged guy who wore a foam hockey puck on his head with his Sunday suit, and how Christmas Eve was always special on the corner of Lunt and Sheridan.

Ennui Cafe existed in a time warp. It was an old-school coffee house with regulars that liked to claim space and tell. you how to do everything. Some of our customers were the last of the patchouli cloud hippies and thought that everything should be free. In Haji’s case, he figured that he could be free of his clothes. He was a hippie chess player ad seemed to be spiraling. I think that the last phase was him buying a guitar and strumming out of tune.

It was a full moon night in August of 2002. Now while I am not entirely sure of the year, I am certain of the full moon and the month. It was Africa hot in Chicago and there was a full moon because everybody was in high dudgeon. The ice maker didn’t make ice fast enough so I made several trips on my bike to the gas station on Touhy for the cheapest 10-pounders. That was one of those rare nights where I would get to go home before 10 and even maybe take a bath. One of my most trusted baristas was on duty and I could trust Paulie to clean and close up as well as set unusual rat traps. Before you et all panty twisted about rats, every freaking restaurant in Chicago has them. Bet on it. When the restaurants closed those rodent fuckers came out in the open slumming for food.

Anyway, I was home and peeling off my sweaty and bleach-stained tee shirt. The minute I dropped trou the phone rang. I hated that stupid flip phone. There is no joy in always being available but that is what I was with that cafe-always available. I flipped it open.

Paul: Hey Kat…Haji is naked

Kathy: What the fuck you mean he’s naked?

Paul: Well, he came in and asked for a cup of coffee and he is naked.

Kathy: Butt naked?

Paul: Butt naked.

Kathy: Did he pay for his coffee?

Paul: Oh yeah.

Kathy: Where did he have the money?

Paul: In his hand. I told him that he would not get any refills without his clothes.

My mind was racing as I slid my work clothes back on and jumped on my bike. Why the hell does all of the weird shit happen at my place? Why have I attracted the weirdest chess players ever? Why can’t they go play in the park at North Avenue and get their coffee from Mickey D’s? I was zooming up on Lunt and saw the Chicago police slowly following Haji who was driving an old wood-sided car. I caught his gaze and his eyes glinted in the streetlights. That was one crazy motherfucker-smiling, gripping the wheel, and just having a gleeful time.

The other chess players kept playing their game as if nothing was happening. They were slapping the timer in beat with the bass rumbling cars driving down Sheridan. I looked to my left and there it was- the Sturgeon Moon lighting up the water and beaming through the trees still thick with leaves. I poured myself an iced coffee. I carried that ice on my back and dammit, I was going to get some of it.

Kathy: ‘Night Paul.

Paul: “Night Kat.

The naked guy was bound to happen. I always said that when the naked guy came in, it was time to find a buyer. I wished on that August moon for someone to come along and write a check so I could go and find a real job, collect a check, and not sweat my rent. ‘Night Kathy.

Ennui Land

Once upon a time, there was a land called Ennui. It was a place. It was a state of mind. It was a stage for all those who wished to display their drama, power, falling in and out of various dimensions, and speechifying over a cup of mediocre coffee. It was at the vortex of Lunt and Sheridan and I lived a part of my life there for nearly 16 years. It was just a place to go have coffee in the beginning. I was working at the local tofu hut and discovered that this place had a beverage called an iced mochaccino.

It was where I first met Leona who became my boss and also a long-time neighbor in Rogers Park. I was wearing a black shirt with alligators embroidered on it. I walked up to the counter and Leona grabbed a toy alligator and pointed it at my shirt. “Gra-rah-rah!”, she said. It took me a moment to realize that her alligator was saying hello to my alligators and I began a relationship with Ennui Cafe. I left the tofu hut shortly thereafter and started working at Ennui part-time.

It was a revelation to meet those who considered themselves the intelligentsia of Roger sPark or the RP as I came to call it. I was hoping that all of my coworkers would be as cool as Leona. It was not a shock -more of an annoyance to find that some of them were connected to a former university dean and deeply into Continental Philosophy. I knew about Nietzche, Kierkegaard, Sarte and all the other dour men. That shit gave me a headache as does most elitist navel-gazing. I am a Chicago girl and from a family of union people. If it didn’t make money, feed you, and literally cover your ass - who cares! In my mind, it was definitely a White people thing. Who else had the money or time for beingness and nothingness?

One of my coworkers was named Betts- short for Elizabeth- as she had been anointed as Betts by the leader Ricard like what rhymes with retard. He was quite handsome in a Robert Plant kind of way with Botticelli curls and a swaggering gait. His approach to the counter for his daily cup of coffee -the only one that he paid for, was stiff and courtly with a little bow. He always wore his shirt open to the navel. The handsome thing wore off the minute he opened his mouth. “Perhaps you would like to join us for a party. There will be food and dancing to Odette!” What the… Odette- dancing? I declined but eventually did accept an invitation out of curiosity. More on that surreal shit later.

Betts was a condescending sort who never did her side work. She served coffee to have worldly conversations with the Ricard people. She always had a book to read while sitting on the stairs to the coatroom also known as the cubbyhole. I was always washing the dishes, wiping tables, and keeping things in order. It is called work. One day, she left with Ricard and his posse of the bored and beautiful intellectuals and did not wash the dishes. That bitch left me with a bus tub full of their detritus. I told Leona the next morning that I did not want to work with Betts anymore. Apparently, Betts got herself a new asshole torn and was peeved with me. Ah! One less fuck to give.

“You know Kathy, we work things out among ourselves and don’t go running to Leona to tell on each other”, she sniped. I replied, “There was no we. All of you jerks left me with the side work. Fuck that and you if you think you get to do it again”, I retorted. Well, that placed me firmly in the plebeian camp as far she and the Ricard people were concerned. For many years I enjoyed tossing smarty pants stuff at them proving that they were definitely not my intellectual superiors. Unfortunately, it made Ricard even more determined to get inside my head. I guess that he had not met an intelligent one- meaning Negro. The fun was just beginning.

Who Gets the Blame?

The world is a hot mess literally. I really don’t know if we will be around long enough for climate change to make us extinct along with millions of other species that did nothing to deserve it. Russia has invaded Ukraine and everyone is aghast wondering “HOW could Putin be so cruel? It’s genocide!” Let me tell you something, Western-style capitalism is the cause. I remember when the Soviet Union was standing in line for toilet paper on the regular. That was the proletariat dressed in fifty shades of drab with a babushka to get 4 eggs and maybe butter. The leaders from Stalin on down were awash in beluga and furs. They were not residents of the Soviet housing bunkers where three or four families share an apartment. We call that the projects here in Chicago, They got a taste of that good life and it started with Reagan as do most shitty things about America.

Reagan wined and dined Gorbachev and ignored how much Raisa did not dig Nancy. The excesses began and suddenly Yeltsin is doing the vodka boogie for all the world to see. Capitalism came to the Soviet Union and the wall came tumbling down. Everywhere people wanted to be like America and just like in America the people were given just enough taste of instant gratification, but only a select few got the big rubles and yuan to wash in American real estate. Fabulous darling! You can get just enough cheesy couture to look like a$100 dollar hooker. With inflation, that was a $5 crack ‘ho just a few short years ago. The same thing happened in China. I do not recall a time when China was the land of luxury brands rather than the enforcers of the number of children a woman could not have. None of the right-wing evangelicals were screeching about abortion then. There were fashionable ethnic babies to buy/adopt.

So yeah, American Capitalism is emulated. The American lifestyle and gross indulgence in luxury are what people everywhere want. I think that the only real culture to come out of America is “I got mine and I’m going to take yours via taxation and various systemic “isms” so screw you!” All of the hue and cry about oligarchs in Russia and all the shit they are buying are the chickens coming home to roost. Where did they get the idea that this was cool? Who sent so much manufacturing to China that I defy you to find more than ten items made in America in a Walmart. There was a fire at a Walmart distribution center and people had to be evacuated or sheltered indoors with the windows closed. Why? All of that Chinese manufacturing is done with toxic ingredients that have sickened millions of Chinese- not the ones buying Louis Vuitton, etc. It is not surprising that we handed the means of making oligarchs and kleptocrats to the denizens behind the Iron Curtain and “Red China”.

They can buy property here in America where no average American can ever dream of living. Estates costing in excess of $20 million are common because there is a tiny fraction of the world that has that kind of cash. They do not care how many people get shit on or killed in other countries. They can launder more of their money with “philanthropy”. They will write a big check and get a Ukrainian nanny to take care of their children with various Slavic wives, and say, “I did my part”.

It’s not enough to lay the blame on the 45th American president. This started way before him and as a real estate baron, he could smell investment money to slap the family name on the outside of whatever crap was built. 45 is a dummy with a hand up his back moving his lips. It’s the cabal that has the serious liquidity that runs the game and all of us are pawns.

I cannot say what the future will bring but I will wager that there are a lot of people who think the same way about how we ended up in this tar pit economy. Also, all of the piss and cornmeal-smelling punks who call themselves “right-wing, will be in the same bucket- sheltering inside eating Jim Bakker’s powdered bunker food with the windows closed.

A Year Later

This time last year, George Floyd was murdered under the knee of a Minnesota police officer. The images are burned into my memory. It makes me queasy to see yet another Black person made into a martyr for the cause of dismantling a racist system. There are some in our duly elected government, that deny the reality of systemic racism and poverty. How is it that the whole world was watching for so many protests as the chant went and still did nothing? What was different about this man’s life that moved the whole world to actually watch? We were witnesses. Enough people witnessed Derek Chauvin kneel on a pleading man’s neck for 9 and 1/2 minutes to impact the collective consciousness enough, and swirl the tide a little.

The tide has not turned. If you read some of the reader responses in conservative papers like the Wall Street Journal, you will also witness how many of your neighbors and countrymen believe that Chauvin subdued a criminal and committed no crime. The Journal always seems to put my comments before a review board. Suddenly, they are all “woke” about bullying and denigrating others except when it comes to challenging a presumed White comment writer. You have to be a subscriber to say “boo” in the comments, and I am, but I get edited or blocked quite often. The tide has not turned when you look at the rise of a Q Anon Nation and all of the bottom feeders that lapped up the detritus falling from the mouths of the 45th presidential administration. Racism and not giving a crap about the poor of the world was their M.O. These people are head and shoulders above Snidely Whiplash for cartoonish evil.

Our country was led by a man who puts on more makeup than a drag queen going out for coffee. That should have been the first clue. No wonder his wives didn’t catch on about his philandering and entitled boinking of porn actresses and beauty pageant contestants. He had his own makeup on his collar. 45 did not care about Black people or poor people. He wanted shiny White sycophants. There mumbled condolences about George Floyd and then a branding of Black Lives Matter as a violent and terrorist organization. The protests around the world took the spotlight off of him. Covid 19 took the spotlight off of him. Herman Cain died because of a super spreader rally in Tulsa. I had to dig deep to find a word from the 45th president on Cain’s passing. Nothing about Covid or that it was more than probable that Cain picked up the virus at the underwhelming rally.

My friend Herman Cain, a Powerful Voice of Freedom and all that is good, passed away this morning. Herman had an incredible career and was adored by everyone that ever met him, especially me. He was a very special man, an American Patriot, and great friend.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020

Whoop de do. If anything, 45 and his pack of thieves made money from the death and misery of others. His organization got checks from some of those commenters in the Wall Street Journal. He made money from the contributions of people who built the detention camps along the border. There was money in building that ridiculous wall. Who do you think got the contract on that hot mess? Bah! Tariffs. What tariffs when it involves one of his friends.

Now, one year later and with a more sane Executive government in charge, there has been some change but not in the tide to make it shameful to be a racist. It shows up in strange ways. The Roe V. Wade shit stirrers think that banning abortion will stop so much premarital and extramarital sex. It’s not about unborn babies. It’s about restocking an underclass with fresh meat to hunt. It’s always a numbers game in America.

The tide is against those born into the underclass. it was against George Floyd and no amount of settlement money will change that or bring him back to enjoy freedom from being seen as a threat. All of these television specials and channels showing Black themed movies that proclaim their dedication to wokeness are making money off of death. All of a sudden magazines that never featured a Black story have Bllack faces on the cover to make money off of that country club White guilt. I am sure that I am not telling you anything new. The news, the specials, and movies to honor the Black consciousness can either be stirring the tide or stoking the flames. Are you feeling queasy yet?

What Happens Now?

I was in the midst of deleting emails and came upon an excellent way to delete them en masse. Just put the current president- he who shall not be spoken from my lips- in the subject box and hit enter. I was aghast at how many emails came up with him or one of his deeds in the feed. I subscribe to four newspapers and they drop headlines at a rapid pace. It depends on how fast the Twit in Chief tweets on any given day. There were literally hundreds of emails heading for the little dumpster icon. I wish that delete button would make him and his toxic crew of sycophants go away as easily. I had a not so sudden realization that every time someone mentions him, he gets press- it’s the nature of the job. Even when there is resistance, there is persistence of his malignant stain on our history. The economy is teetering. There are homeless tent cities popping up like the Hoovervilles of the Depression. The underlying social pandemic of racism has bubbled up from its festering state. Add that to the health pandemic of sarsCoV19 and there’s an explosive shit storm a’brew. Cities are rife with protests that have not quieted in spite of Federal Brown Shirts flooding some cities and taking people off the street. Anyone else feel like we’re in Pinochet’s Chile where people were considered “disappeared”. Are we headed to an era where families and friends sit in stadiums holding up posters with pictures of “the disappeared”? What happens now?

I can only say what I think should happen. We should relegate the apricot bucket of swine fat to the back pages of the paper. The same should be for his enablers, family, and the hallowed “base” of knuckle dragging idiots. If they read anything, it’s Breitbart on the internet news and Fox. What am I saying? They can’t read. 45 can barely put a sentence together and has to have the highlights read to him. They are all just stank rotten. I can smell them from the pages of the papers. Expensive cologne, bad breath, underlying incontinence wear, and the smell of makeup counter. Under it all, they are human-painfully human and I cannot seem to muster any sort of compassion for them. I feel like I am drinking poison and expecting them to die which is what happens every time one of the regime gets a headline. Even if it’s laughable like the walk of shame after Tulsa. He gets sympathy from the sycophants and silence from those who want to ride his greasy coattails. We should turn the channel when his face appears. Maybe the more legitimate stations will stop referring to him by name and stop putting his picture on the screen. Until November 3rd, we need to be aware that whatever crawls from any crevice of the administration is a liar and poisonous. His silicone injected mouthpiece in heels will continue to trot out explanations of his lies. Don’t watch. The legitimate press should not show up or if they do show up, don’t ask questions. Let’s see who blinks first.

Aunt Jemima…What Took You so Long?

On June 17, 2020, Quaker/Pepsico decided to change the name of a long beloved advertising icon. That’s right, Aunt Jemima will no longer grace the syrup bottles, corn meal (yellow, white, and self-rising) or pancake mix in your pantries. America, Aunt Jemima has been emancipated. So the fuck what? When I was a kid, we saw Aunt Jemima products in the store, right next to Uncle Ben, and the Cream of Wheat guy. After January 1st, 1863, America kept on making money from the flesh of Black folks by keeping them commercially, economically, and literally in subservient roles. The rice people tried to tell us for years that Uncle Ben was a real rice grower leading people to believe that a Black guy was getting a piece of every dollar we spent on rice. To clarify, we mostly used Riceland that had the stereotypical Asian in a sampan hat that couldn’t pronounce L’s. Anybody that grew up in the South and grew anything in dirt, knew that Uncle Ben was the same as Uncle Remus and Uncle Tom. Black people didn’t get shit from any of these ‘relatives’ except a proclivity for diabetes and hypertension from all the carbohydrates, pork, and salt.

I grew up watching a commercial where a table full of cherry cheeked White kids and their square jawed White dad waited for breakfast. When White Mom glided into the dining room impeccably dressed with Carol Bishop makeup spackled on her face with a tray heaped with fluffy pancakes, they all chimed, “Aunt Jemima, What took you so long?” Okay, a couple things. The terms uncle and aunt were applied to older Black people who were past the sexualized phase but still useful. We grew rice and became your uncle in a white porter jacket. Wait. You do know that no one wears a white porter jacket to pick rice- right? It made people comfortable to know that a safe Uncle whatsit is cooking and not pillaging White womanhood. Uncle Remus was a happy Negro singin’ and telling stories about Brother Rabbit aka Brer’ Rabbit. He was no threat in his overalls and straw hat. Again, the White folks is safe, and it’s okay for little boys with cowlicks, bare feet, and a piece of grass in their teeth to hang out with a jovial ‘good’ Negro. Someone said something about Mrs. Butterworth. Did anybody think that the syrup was modeled on a Black woman? I certainly didn’t. She was a Mrs., like Miss Evelyn and Miss Lottie next door to my grandparents. Only Mrs. Butterworth was a spinster White woman living in New Hampshire with her special friend . We couldn’t afford syrup anyway. My mom used to make syrup from boiling sugar to pour over our non-Jemima pancakes, because we couldn’t afford that stuff either.

Okay, kudos to retiring Aunt Jemima. It is a step forward from using people of color as minstrel shills, and we can all add the permed and pearled Jemima to our Negrobilia collection. You know what took Aunt Jemima so long? She was profitable because of her desexualized and subjugated Blackness. She made a lot of money for you just like slave labor. Now go spread some of that money reinvesting in educational systems that will free the minds of those in her image. Free Uncle Ben!!