The Knife Salesman *final*

This is the final version of "The Knife Salesman." I've rewritten it many times. Now I'm done with it. 

You can listen to my telling of this story on Spotify. My show is called Who Needs More Content? 

From the iPod we hear Bono’s voice singing, “The more I see, the less I know.” I’m filling out my application for Pierce Marketing. It strikes me that the Red Hot Chili Peppers expressed that same sentiment in their song “Snow.” For a minute my thoughts are amiss, trying to figure out which song was released first, who stole from whom. Then I wonder if the band that said it first ripped off someone else for that pearl of wisdom. Then I catch my mind wandering and I refocus on this awful paperwork I hate so much. 

About 20 of us are crammed into this small, white room at Pierce headquarters in a suburb north of Chicago. I want to live in Chicago again. The first time, I ran out of money and the will to live. Big city fear is a powerful thing, but so is regret. I had spent the last few months stewing on that in Fond du Lac. 

In my ideal life, I’m a writer in the Windy City. Selling knives has nothing in common with that—but hey, sometimes we must compromise. I don’t want to visit a stranger in their homes and be a hype man for knives, but the ad online said this place pays 18 bucks an hour. This is good money, in theory, in a big city in 2009. So, I’m willing to listen to what the recruiter has to say about EdgeCo brand knives and the (wink wink) opportunities Pierce has to offer. 

When I first got to the office, I was a couple minutes late. I’d like to blame the Chicago Transit Authority, but the truth is that I suck at being on time with el trains and buses in the mix. Since I was late, I was more anxious than usual. 

At the entrance, the woman behind the counter was gorgeous. I hate to gush, but she was a babe. She handed me some papers and led me to the presentation room. 

“Right this way,” the receptionist said. “Oh, and please don’t talk to the other applicants.” The others were busy scribbling away. No one looked up at me. 

I thought that was odd. Was that just a courtesy thing? Or was that a rule because people chatting freely can figure out a scam faster? Maybe I was onto something, but I went through with it anyway. I followed their rules. 

Now as I glance around, I realize that at 25, I’m one of the oldest people in the room. I wonder how many applicants can name five U-2 songs. What a hipster thing to think, I think shamefully. I tune back into page one. Filling it out is awful, and there are more pages to come.

When I get called into the manager’s office, I’m on page two of four. I tell the manager I still have a ways to go. He says not to worry. He means to sound reassuring, but I think about cows not needing name tags at the slaughterhouse for some reason. It’s a disturbing thought. The man before me has a strong build and carefully gelled blond hair. He’s handsome, in a vain and uncomfortable way. 

He starts to read page one, or pretends to, anyway. I could have filled in my name as Clang Fartotron and he still would have nodded thoughtfully. 

I turn on my sweaty-pits charm. I tell him about my Communications degree and my work at the college newspaper and TV station. Picture a nervous, thin man tryna impress an uncaring hunk. I mean, it’s gross. 

While I speak, I sense that he is hearing not words but sounds. Nerdy sounds. The playlist is his doing, I bet, so it’s like my speech is getting drowned out by “Mysterious Ways” in his mind. He’s just fantasizing about grinding against the secretary babe, front row at a U2 show at this point. 

I babble for two minutes about things I thought were achievements that seem hollow now. 

“Uh, what else…” I say. “Oh, I won a short story contest at Oshkosh. The stories were called…”

He snaps out of his daydream. 

“Uh-huh, great, I like those things. Tell you what, can you get the next applicant? We just gotta keep the line moving here.”

I’m excused. I return to the cramped, white room to graze in speechless despair with the others. Sometimes I think I can hear the sound of group sadness. It’s a dull, faint drone of thin air struggling for life. This is one of those times. 

Minutes pass with kids going in and out. The manager emerges and gets our attention. He starts his speech. He gives us the OK to talk, in response to his questions. The questions don’t require much thought. He might as well be asking us if we can come up with two words that rhyme with “knife.” 

First, the manager asks us if anyone has a penny. Caught off guard, the group is slow to produce one. 

“No one has a penny?” he laughs. “I guess you really are poor college students.”

Hey. We’re not all poor college students. Some of us are poor college graduates. 

He gets a laugh from the group. Haha, Mr. Supermodel is making fun of our poverty! Good times. At this point, I have a hunch the kids who say yes to an offer are gonna get exploited, but I laugh too. To prove that I can handle a Corporate Bro busting my chops. Later that night, lying awake on my friend’s couch, I will cuss myself out for pretending to like that man’s lame-ass joke. 

Someone finally gives him a penny. He gets out an EdgeCo blade. Knife in hand, he starts peeling the edges of the penny. I can almost hear the sound of Abe Lincoln screaming. 

It’s clear he’s done this many times before. It is kind of impressive, if you want to feel dumb instead of sad for a second. We react like the audience in an infomercial. Some of us are like, rubbing our eyes in disbelief. Others are whispering, “Holy Mary, Mother of God…” We need to get paid somehow, so we act like we’re amazed.  

I am jotting down notes. I’m raising my hand to answer questions. I know I’d be a stooge to take this job, but my people-pleaser/ good student impulses are taking over. 

I kept the notebook. Here are some of the notes I took:

“EdgeCo knives stay sharp for 7-10 years. Cutting edges are between the points, not on the points. Knives can be sold individually or in a set. Extendable flaying knives are good for fishermen.” 

“If you love knives, right now you’re feeling horny.” 

“Representatives are given $540 worth of EdgeCo supplies, used as long as the rep wants the set. Deposit of $135.” 

So, to get hired, I’d have to pay the good folks at Knife Maniac Incorporated $135. In addition to paying for these penny-shredders, there’s a four-day training seminar that pays nothing. That means, if you’ve had four whole days of training and you’re still not a great salesperson, or the customers don’t feel much like buying luxury shit due to the recession, someone could work seven appointments and still fall short of breaking even with Pierce Marketing. 

   I’m scribbling notes on a piece of paper for some reason. I’m participating in this lost cause. At the same time, I’m cursing myself for being a sucker and taking a Greyhound ride to Chicago to check out this waste of time. Even if I got enough appointments per week, I’m no salesman. 

Here’s what a meeting between a customer and me might sound like. 

“Hello there, Mrs. Thompson. Um, I have here, in my possession… some amazing knives. From the fine folks at EdgeCo. You ever feel like, uh, peeling the edge off a penny? Well, if you did, one of these could do the trick. So, would you, uh, wanna buy a set?” 

“No,” Mrs. Thompson says. “We don’t need to be breaking the bank for special knives right now. The economy is in the shitter, you know.” 

“Right. I’ve heard the news reports about that. Fittingly enough, uh, the economy is kinda why I’m tryna sell knives to people like you in the first place. Because the economy is, you know…”

“In the shitter, right,” Mrs. T says. “Yes, I figured that was what brought you into my kitchen for this uncomfortable demonstration.” 

“Uh huh. Well, I guess it’s a no-sale then. Hmmm. We’ve still got 58 minutes to go before the end of this appointment. In the meantime, if I were to shred my belt into pieces with one of these EdgeCo knives, would you maybe reconsider?” 

“No.”

“OK. Jeez, I feel like trash for even asking you that. Plus I really need this belt. It’s the only one I have. My boss told me to be more persistent. Anyway, at least I’m still making 18 bucks this hour.”

“Sure. So, do you have any other appointments today?” 

“Nope. Zero. Zero more.” 

“Well… good luck with this.” 

“Yeah. Hey, I’m starting to feel, like, really weird. Can I get a glass of water?” 

“No, you need to leave.” 

“Right then. OK, I’ll see you later. Wait, no I won’t. I mean, goodbye. Goodbye forever, Mrs. Thompson.” 

End scene. 

Now, that’s the opposite of visualizing something in a positive way, which is not a recipe for success. However, I thrive on desire and belief. Do these knives spark any desire or belief in me? No, they don’t. They make me cynical. I make my little jokes. It’s another fucking dead end. 

But the crux of the whole process was that I still want to be accepted for the job. My self-esteem is so low that I want to be accepted by anyone—even these scammers. 

So, when Prince Scammer, the manager, tells me I got the job, I’m thrilled. We shake hands. I bask in the triumph, knowing it’s all fake. Outside I light up a cigarette and walk across the street to the bus stop. 

The bus drops me off at the train station. I’m headed back to my friend’s couch, where I slept last night. On the el ride there, I don’t think much about the job I got that I was never going to work. I bust out a piece of scratch paper and start writing. 

The title is “Vampire Fight.” It is about the time I saw two vampires fighting in a basic cable movie. And I wondered whether the goal of each vampire was to bite the other one’s neck, or to drive a stake through their heart. Because vampires kill via neck bite, but vampires die by stake. What a conundrum! But the real kicker of the story was, the movie was so bad, I didn’t even wait 30 seconds to find out the answer. I changed the channel to something better, and now I’ll never know. 

I’m in Chicago, living my dream writing mostly bullshit. A small fraction of it is actually good. Ultimately, I think I took this vacation to live this dream, if only for 20 minutes. 

On my friends’ couch that night, I’m still buzzing because I got to write on the El train in Chicago. I have a moment where I even reconsider taking the stupid knife job. I’m eager to hang out, drink beer, and play Madden Football with Clay and MJ. We start a fantasy draft for some reason, where we pick players one-by-one to make our teams. I tell them I got the job, but it just might be a scam. 

Clay runs his hand through his cool emo-swipe-right hair. He peers at me with his eagle-like eyes. 

“And why would you think it’s a scam, Nick?” 

“It’s probably the magic beans,” MJ chimes in. His long legs are stretched out, beer in hand. His black hoodie is up, which seems to maximize his sarcasm. “Beware the magic beans, Nicholas.”

“OK, so here’s why I’m not so sure about it,” I say. “I gotta pay them money to sell their knives door-to-door. At first, anyway…”  

 “Oh, Jesus,” Clay says in disappointment. 

“That’s what I’m thinking, right. Except, it pays pretty well, in theory. And I do wanna move here. So, maybe there’s like a Hail Mary throw of a chance it could work out–” 

“No,” Clay says. “There’s not, Nick. Look, I know a little bit about these scams. And let me just say this…” 

At this point, Clay gives a critique so incisive and well-spoken I was thinking he was reading off a teleprompter behind me. I turn around at one point to check, but all I see is a Tom Waits poster. 

Shit, I think halfway through his speech. I wish he would just mercy-rule me here. I didn’t realize Clay was this much smarter than me until after college. I have no clue what this dude does at the museum, but I totally get why he has a job at the museum. 

Let’s resume with the end of Clay’s condemnation of Pierce Marketing that was so good it should have caused the end of money-schemes everywhere. 

“The plight of your debt is real as the desperation young workers feel in capitalist America, but you must take a stand that your education stands for something. It stands for saying no to this garbage, this grifter exploitation. Stay in Fond du Lac and work at Ma & Pa’s if you need to, but my friend, if you work one second for these obvious bloodsuckers, I will lose all respect for you.” 

“And we don’t want any of your magic beans,” MJ added. 

“Huh,” I said, controller in hand. “Well then, it seems like bad news, good news. The bad news is that spending money to come here tryna find a job has been a total failure. The good news is, I’m happy to have Donald Driver on my team.” 

I press yes to confirm and hand the controller to Clay. 

“Silver lining, I guess,” I say. 

I sip my beer. Clay looks me in the eyes. 

“I’m sorry, man.” 

###

I wake up on the couch. I have no time to say goodbye. I gotta rush to the brown line with a hangover. Because I suck at being on time with el trains in the mix, and I put down a six-pack the night before. 

Christmas is in a few days. The Greyhound Station is packed with impatient travelers. I walk in alongside Annie. She’s a cute and bookish blond. We just met 10 minutes ago on the el. Somehow we found out we were just headed for the same place, we kinda liked the way each other looked, and we got to talking. Annie is a secretary for a professor at DePaul. She’s going home to Iowa for Christmas. 

Annie and I had a lot in common. We both kinda ramble, if we’re nervous but comfortable, so we found out our moms have the same first names. Both our dads are retired cops. We’re the youngest in our families, with two brothers and a sister apiece. We’re both baseball fans who love the Cubs. 

I call attention to all this coincidental stuff, and Annie just shrugs and says, “That’s the way life is.” She is used to the stars aligning in a familiar, comforting way. I admire that feeling, but struggle to relate. 

Annie’s parents live close to the site where Field of Dreams was filmed. She tells me there’s a baseball museum in town. I’m supposed to be finding the bus to Milwaukee, but I gotta chat with Annie in the line for the De Moines bus. I get her phone number. The bus arrives. A gust of cold air rushes through the terminal. Through a shield of glass doors, I watch her lug her bags onto the bus. I walk away. 

I didn’t get to help Annie with her luggage. We never spoke again. When I look back, Annie was a better Hail Mary throw than Pierce Marketing. But I never called her. If I really wanted someone like Annie to love me, I’ll never get what the hell I was thinking.  

With Annie gone, I gotta figure out how to get home. The line to the information desk is about as long as the line for a roller coaster at Six Flags. I try to listen to the PA system to determine my next move. 

The voice that comes through the commotion is muffled and heavy with static. We are not listening to an announcement of helpful info on schedules and delays. We are listening to a standup comic do a hacky bit about the speaker box at a Taco Bell drive-thru. I hear an omniscient voice that’s supposed to be calming, but it’s unintelligible. Persistent, too. It’s like listening to God explain Himself and everything, but he’s blackout drunk on the blood of his only begotten Son. 

Shortly before my bus arrives, I start asking random people in line which bus they’re waiting for. The first three just challenge me to an uncomfortable staring contest, but human #4 throws me a frickin’ bone. 

She points an unsteady finger to gate 13. I mutter thanks and dash over there. My spot in line happens to be just outside the arcade room. Arcade zombies moan, cars explode, and machine guns fire. The indecipherable voice of the Greyhound God joins in. I tune out the sounds of chaos to stay sane. I sit down by some storage lockers and breathe a sigh of relief. 

###

I’ve taken a window seat on the bus. A jovial young lady takes a seat beside me. She’s got unkempt, stringy hair, and she speaks in broken English. She asks if she can sit beside me, and I say yes, of course. 

She shoves her luggage into the overhead compartment. Then she tells me her name is Nee-Ying. 

“Well, hi Nee-Ying,” I say. “Are you from around here?” 

She giggles nervously as a response. I get no nod or headshake. I can tell she still wants to talk though. 

“Are you from… somewhere in Asia?”

That was not the smartest question I’ve asked, but it happened. Thankfully, Nee-Ying took it in stride, because I don’t think she understood what I was saying. 

Nee-Ying aimed her phone at the window to take pictures of downtown Chicago. Later in the drive, she captures pics of the majestic skyline as we escape from it. I lean back obligingly so I don’t get in the way. 

As she cycles through her phone, I catch a glimpse of the screen. I see confusing symbols that mean nothing to me. It’s like looking at the back side of a fortune cookie strip. 

With her ticket stub in hand, Nee-Ying nudges me. She points to her stub and then to me several times. Finally, I point to myself, and then to her stub with an unknowing shrug. She nods ecstatically. I get it. 

I reach into my pocket and show her my ticket. Her brow strains intently. She inspects it. She deduces that on my trip, I’ll be making four stops. She smiles triumphantly. 

“Twenty-two dollars, each stop!” she exclaims. She leans over and points to the total price of my voyage: 88 dollars. It takes me a second to realize she’s done some math to make conversation with me. 

“Yes!” I said, almost matching her excitement. “Eighty-eight divided by four is twenty-two!” 

Nee-Ying doesn’t know much English at this point, but her math vocab really picks up the slack. 

“Yes! Twenty-two times four is eighty-eight!” 

We go back and forth celebrating the math a few times. Five minutes later, we’re running out of things to discuss. 

“So, where are you from?” I say. 

She laughs at the question. I’m a pretty funny guy. In fairness, it was pretty funny. The two of us trying to have a conversation.

Months later, while listening to a John Lennon song, I hear a lyric from the song “Borrowed Time.” It goes “The more that I see, the less that I know for sure.” Then I see Nee-Ying beside me on the bus in my mind’s eye. 

Riding the Greyhound is humbling. But the bus has to offer a destination, at least. A place where the outcasts meet up, far from homes that stifle us. I’m riding away from my destination, having gained little more than confusion. As Nee-Ying naps beside me, I tell myself that my destination hasn’t changed; I’m just getting there in reverse.

Cubs Bartman Trip Blues

 

It was a head trip at the time, but it makes logical sense when I look back. I can’t change a thing, of course, but 20 years later, I’m at peace with the loss. The mushrooms were meant for a celebration. Why else would I have taken them that night? 

It was October 14th, 2003. Cubs fans still had no clue how to celebrate. No wonder it all went wrong. I didn’t know what it was like to see my dreams come true. It was like waiting for a tree to start dancing. Not gonna happen. Not even on drugs. 

Of course, there are other reasons why it all fell apart. The foul ball, Bartman reaching out to catch it, all that dwelling on the negative in the moment instead of regaining composure. Plus, the error by the shortstop, the relievers having panic attacks and showing it, and a string of good at-bats by the team that was to win the World Series. 

***

My Nokia phone sounded “The Mexican Hat Dance.” My brother was calling. I stepped outside the college house I lived in with six other guys. If that sounds like too many guys, it is. Hadn’t done it before, won’t do it again. Not recommended. 

I was 20 and enrolled at UW-Oshkosh. I was a virgin who dreamed of writing for Conan O’Brien. I thought I was pretty smart, and I had a lot of bad ideas to get out of my system. 

Outside I breathed in the fall air and took in the warmth of the sun. 

“Hello?” I said to my brother. His excitement was so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear, flashing a smile. My brother ranted happily. 

“Yup,” I said at last. “Division champs, baby!” 

The Cubs were going to the playoffs. The top of the order was getting on base and scoring runs, the heart of the lineup was crushing it, and best of all, the starting pitching was excellent. We were psyched. I stood at the foot of a shade tree, marveling at the leaves–burnt orange and buttered scarlet—feeling like a winner. 

We talked for 10 minutes. The moment I hung up, I got a call from another Cubs fan. My other brother. 

###

When I saw the most notorious Cubs game of my lifetime, with Bartman and all the cruel twists of fate, I’ll be honest with you: I was tripping on mushrooms. I split a bag with my favorite of six roommates and friend to this day, Adam. It went for 30 bucks apiece or thereabouts. Two decades later, I don’t think they cost much more. Isn’t that something? I haven’t tripped in several years and I never want to be the reason someone takes drugs, but with so much economic strife in the world, it does seem like shrooms are inflation-proof. Silver lining, I guess. 

The Saturday night before game 6 on Tuesday, Adam and I welcomed the young man with shrooms into our living room. As you may have guessed, the dealer wore tie-dye and a hemp necklace. We said our hellos, took our seats in the bizarre cluster of beat-up couches that made up our living room, and the dealer began to open his drawstring bookbag. Only, here’s the twist: Instead of books, this rebel without a comb was keeping drugs. 

We passed around a joint even though that wasn’t exactly legal. The hippie stranger pulled out the bag of mushrooms. 

“I tripped balls on these this summer at a Phish show,” he said as an endorsement. 

“Oh, was that at Alpine Valley?” I asked. 

“Nah, dude. That was in July,” he told me. “I did Molly at that show. I saw them trippin’ balls in August. In Maryland.”

Adam excused himself to the bathroom. Wish I’d thought of that! My gift for gab left me. I thought of excusing myself to the bathroom upstairs—I didn’t have to go, but the hippie stranger didn’t know that—but my black Airwalks were glued to the floor. 

“You like Phish?” he asked. 

“Uh, not really,” I said. 

I don’t lie about bands. Silence filled the room. I’d given this guy my money and now I had no comments. Somewhere between 30 seconds and 30 days later, Adam returned. 

In mock surprise, I blurted out, “Hey, Adam’s back!” I laughed, but no one else did. 

###

The day of game 6, I was counting down the minutes to the first pitch at 7:18 pm central time. It was a Tuesday. We had partied sufficiently the weekend before. So naturally, I cut class that night to drink beer and choke down my first hallucinogen. Hell, I even liked the class—Film Studies or something like that—but I was determined to see the Cubs clinch a berth in the World Series on mushrooms. Suddenly I was greedy for supernatural joy. 

Adam and I invited a couple friends over. Todd was and still is my all-time greatest drummer/ trucker friend. He didn’t really care who was going to win, but I’d been a Cubs fan since we met in second grade, so Todd cheered for the Cubs this one time. Carter was a Brewers fan who hated the Cubs. He was obsessed with the Dave Matthews Band, and the more you got to be his friend, the more he liked to call you a “pussy.” Carter only called me that once in a great while. 

We waited for them to show. Adam and I sat on his futon, watching the pre-game on mute. An Outkast CD played on the stereo. Adam sniffed the open bag of chocolate shrooms. His face scrunched as he puzzled over the smell. He passed it to me. 

“Get an angle,” he said.

That was Adam-lingo for “check it out.” I took in the scent. It was earthy and staunch—not nauseating, but not exactly inviting either. Like Adam, I felt on the verge of gagging, but that quickly gave way to a shrug.

“Smells like a hippie getting buried alive,” I said.

We heard an aggressive knock at the door. Carter entered the room, Todd a step behind. Carter wasted no time running his mouth.

“Hey Adam, ya pussy. Olig, Cubs suck.”

“Yeah? How’d your Brewers do this year?” I said.

“Shitty,” he replied. “But at least I don’t cheer for a bunch of FIBs.”

Some Wisconsinites use this slur to describe our neighbors to the south; it means Fucking Illinois Bastards. I’ve always found the term stupid and petty. What a lame way to defend your awful, last-place team.

I was happy to see Todd, at least. I even stood up and gave him a hug.

“Hey, did you see The Strokes on Conan?” I said.

“Yeah, they rocked!” Todd said.

We made small talk. Then Adam glanced at his alarm clock. He got up, shut off the stereo, and unmuted the TV. It was 6:45, which meant it was time to take mushrooms and watch history unfold.

Todd and Carter put in their shrooms fee. Split four ways, this was sure to be one thrifty trip. We each nabbed a head and stem and choked down the chocolate fungi. It tasted like a hippie getting buried alive.

The first phase was anticipation. One tends to wonder, “What if this is a bust?” 

The TV announcers discussed the pitching matchup between the Marlins’ Carl Pavano and the Cubs’ 23-year-old All-Star Mark Prior. My mind went elsewhere at Carter’s mention of getting “fucking hammered at the Dave show.” I went over to the mini fridge to get a beer. That’s when I noticed a wine bottle-opener lying on the black surface. The kind with a corkscrew tail, two outstretched arms, and a handle that somewhat resembled a head. I didn’t call it a winged corkscrew, but that’s what it was. 

Adam and his girlfriend got drunk on wine sometimes. I stared at the silvery tool and recalled being a kid and playing with the thing as though it were a toy. I’d make it do jumping jacks and handstands until my dad told me to knock it off.

The next thing I knew, I was engulfed in the trip. Colors popped and swirled. Tiny atoms were in constant motion, bound together but fluid. My depth perception began to change. Things in the foreground emphasized that they were different from things in the background–nothing better or worse, just different and unified.

“Ope,” Adam announced. “I think it’s starting to kick in.”

“Also,” I said. “I mean, I also feel that way also.”

Todd and Carter soon confirmed we were all happily on-schedule with the shrooms. Ace Mark Prior was finishing his warm-up pitches. The crowd at Wrigley Field was electric. I was body-buzzing and in a funny mood. I grabbed the winged corkscrew and stuck it in the breast pocket of my blue-and-red–striped shirt. This thing should have a name, I realized, because imagination can bring things to life. And I’m feeling good, so I want there to be more life.

“Guys, this is my good luck charm,” I said. “Say hello to Coach Bob.”

This got a big laugh. Four freshly tripping young men could not have asked for better material. But I made it a point to laugh the least. I was going to take this character as long as it could go, so I had to be somewhat serious about him.

“Coach Bob is a Cubs fan, like me,” I said. “So, he’s gonna offer some words of encouragement to the team as the game goes along.”

Carter was cracking up. He thought I was weird.

“What in the absolute fuck?” he giggled “So… you really do gotta be outta your fuckin’ mind to cheer for the Cubs.”

Coach Bob spoke up. His voice was gritty like sandpaper. His tone suffered no fools. If I’m being honest, I was surprised to hear from him.

“Your team hasn’t sniffed the playoffs since the ‘80s and you’re in my house talking shit? Get real, son.”

Adam buried his face in his hands. “Oh, my Gaaaaaad.”

I was getting laughs, dissing Carter, and loving it. The bit was a nice distraction from my nerves, too. My heart was thumping in the top of the first inning. Prior got the leadoff man out, but then he gave up a single and a walk. With two on and one out, Carter was already jeering.

“Ooh, the Marlins want that early rally,” he taunted.

I was too nervous to respond, but Coach Bob watching from the dugout of my shirt pocket had something to say.

“We all get butterflies in the gut sometimes,” Coach Bob said. “And this young man on the mound is about to kick those butterflies in the ass.”

That was a vote of confidence in Prior, who was 18-6 with a sparkling 2.43 Earned Run Average on the year. Sure enough, Prior responded. He got future Hall-of-Famer Miguel Cabrera to fly out to center, then he got the great Derek Lee to strike out swinging to end the inning. The Chicago crowd roared. Adam gave me a high-five and I saw tracers of his arm in motion. We looked into each others’ dilated, cartoon eyes and giggled about that during the commercial break.

In the home half of the first, the speedster Kenny Lofton led off with a line-drive single. Second baseman Mark Grudzielanek had one hard-to-spell name, but he personified a solid ballplayer. Mark G sacrifice bunted to get Lofton into scoring position. Next up was Sammy Sosa—a legend who belted over 600 career homers but also kinda cheated by allegedly taking steroids. And when I say “allegedly,” I mean he 100% did that shit, but so did many star players during this exciting but shady era of America’s Pastime.

Aaanyway, Slammin’ Sammy doubled to drive in the awesomely radical Kenny Lofton. The Cubs had a chance to add to the lead, but they didn’t. Still, we were up one-to-nothing, early.

Much of the game passed with the North-Siders up a run. Prior was dialed in, making Marlins hitters look silly. He did allow a few hits, but they were only singles—no extra base hits. 

We had a tense moment in the fifth inning when Juan Pierre, the Marlins’ blazing fast leadoff man, got on base with one out. He was a threat to swipe second base, but thankfully Coach Bob had some words of advice to the Cubs’ catcher, Paul Bako. 

“Listen Bako, if Pierre tries to steal second, you gotta gun him down.” 

Seconds later, as Prior threw his pitch, Pierre was off to the races. Bako caught the ball, tore off his mask and popped to his feet in an eye blink, and threw a dart to Mark G at second base. He put the tag down on Pierre’s outstretched hand to get the threat off the bases. Two outs. I swear, with my bug-eyed perception, this play was an hour-long symphony that the universe compressed into a few seconds.

“Hell yes!” Adam cried.

“Coach Bob told him to do that!” Todd said.

“Aw, dammit,” Carter said quietly, sipping his beer.

As for the Marlins’ starter, Pavano was no slouch. He cut down all three Cubs hitters via strikeout in the bottom half of that inning. Still, I believed in the Cubs with a sort of euphoric tension.

“Just keep pitching and playing defense and we’ll win this game,” I said, rocking back and forth.

“Fuck that, they gotta add on some insurance runs,” Adam said.

“They’re gonna blow it,” Carter said. “You know they’re gonna blow it.”

Coach Bob wasn’t having it.

“Your miserable team hasn’t had a winning record in a decade, and yet you keep running your mouth under my roof."

“It’s not your roof,” Carter said. I caught him pointing at the shiny thing in my shirt pocket more so than me. Then he looked me in the eyes, whacked out of his mind and humbled for a second. I grinned with triumph.

“Olig, please stop making me talk to a wine opener.”

“I’m not making you do anything,” I said. “Keep me out of this.”

The sixth inning began with Prior striking out another future Hall-of-Famer, catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez. When the Cubs ace got to two strikes on the next hitter, Coach Bob impacted the game again.

“C’mon Marky, sit his ass down with a curveball.” 

On cue, Prior tossed a bender that plunged out of the strike zone. Cabrera swung over it for the second out.

Todd gave me a high-five in celebration. He pointed to my good luck charm.

“You’ve done it again, Coach Bob.”

“Yeah, he’s not just some regular Bob,” I explained. “He’s also a coach."

In the Cubs half of the sixth inning, Sosa singled. Next, cleanup man Moises Alou singled. Then Aramis Ramirez grounded into a double play. Adam cursed repeatedly. He chugged angrily from his liter of Gatorade. I was amazed that someone could be mad on mushrooms. I stuck with my usual depression and disappointment. 

“Coach Bob didn’t tell him to do that,” I noted softly. 

Suddenly, there were two outs. That’s baseball. Sosa had made it to third base, at least. The Marlins went to their bullpen and brought in Rookie of the Year Dontrelle Willis. The lefty shocked us all by throwing a wild pitch. Sosa darted home to give us a two-run lead. 

The Fish went down one-two-three in the top of the seventh. As was tradition at Wrigley Field, the organ player teased the opening C-note of “Take Me out to the Ballgame.” I stood in reverence, took off my Cubs hat and began to sway. This charming ditty, sung by a beer-buzzed, cartoony cartoon of a man with giant glasses named Harry Carrey, was a big reason why the Cubs had captured my heart in the first grade. Comedian, actor, and Chicago native Bernie Mac took the mic in Harry’s absence. Bernie was wearing a dope, bright-blue Cubs jacket that was insanely stylish in my shroomed-out mind. I sang along.

“Oh, this is un-fucking-believable… get a clue, man,” Carter said. He really did not want the Cubs to win. He was a true Brewers fan that way.

I didn’t care. In fact, I loved his dismay. So did Coach Bob. I felt him swaying along in the dugout of my shirt, in tune with the song and the beating of my heart. I truly had faith that the Cubs were going to make it to the World Series. 

The Cubs had a beautiful inning of scratching out a run late in an elimination game. Catcher Paul Bako singled and later scored on a Mark G RBI single. (Btw, there’s a great YouTube bit of Harry Carrey trna say Mark Grudzialanek’s name and going oh-for-twelve.)

The Marlins half of the eighth inning was next, and if I’m being honest, we’re getting close to the worst part of the story. 

Florida Pinch-hitter-man, some guy named Mike Mordecai flew out to left fielder. At this point in the game, the Cubs were up 3-0. 

“They’re five outs away from the World Series,” I said. The dream was going to come true.

According to Baseball Reference, the Cubs had a 95% chance of winning at this moment in the game. In 2003, 95 years after the Cubs last won the World Series, 58 years since they last won the pennant, these were new, glorious Cubs, it seemed, and it was time to bet your heart and mind on optimism with follow-through. Sounds like a great mindset, right? Wrong!

First off, Juan Pierre did hit a double where he kinda knocked the shit out of the ball, and that was the Marlins’ first extra-base hit.  

Next, and this is a doozy, we can’t talk about the outcome of this game without mentioning a fan, which really sucks. Like, the odds of one specific fan in a crowd of about 40,000 people somehow becoming a spectacle were extremely low. Steve Bartman was a fan who did what most other fans around him were doing in that moment of time. When you go to a ballgame, the odds of a ball finding its way directly to you, the fan, are pretty low. So, on the odd chance that it does happen, it’s a thrill, a reflex, so people tend to reach out to try to catch the ball. Call it instinct, call it a souvenir. Whatever. The point is, almost every other fan around Steve Bartman was also reaching for that ominous foul ball.

Still, the Cubs left fielder Moises Alou had tracked that ball just about perfectly. He got a great read on it right off the bat, had a chance to make the catch—and this I could see clearly, with 20/20, extrasensory shroom vision.

Dressed like a proud fan, in a blue hat with a red “C,” babyfaced and bespectacled, Bartman reached for a foul ball. But he was the one who touched the ball as Alou tried to catch it. He didn’t catch it, just deflected it. No one caught it. 

Alou was furious. He cussed into the crowd that he’d been robbed. Robbed by one of his own team’s fans. What the fuck kind of a world is this?! Oh, the drama. It got blown out of proportion. It got ugly. The players and fans began to lose their composure. Guy or gal on mushrooms refers to this as bad cosmic vibes. 

If you don’t know, or you’d just like to relive it, that same hitter who nearly popped out to left field, Luis Castillo, drew a walk on a full count. The next man at the plate, Pudge Rodriguez, cracked an RBI single to get the Marlins on the board. 

“Uh–ohhhhh!” Carter called out. “Could be the beginning of the end.” 

Hurt to say, but he was right. On TV, between Prior’s pitches to a Marlins offense getting back its mojo, they kept showing closeups of Bartman. You could tell he was anxious, and there was some animosity in the air. It was all so dumb, the human pettiness, the way they treated him. 

Alex Gonzalez had a role in the tragedy too, but no one remembers him as much. With runners on first and second, Cabrera hit a grounder to Gonzalez. It could have been an inning-ending double play. Instead, the typically sure handed Gonzalez botched it. Error on the shortstop. Bases loaded, one out. 

For historical purposes, I watched this play out on mushrooms. And I’ll never forget this lesson: A group of humans in a bad mood for the same reason can be a dangerous thing.

“Whoopsy!” Carter jeered at the error. “The wheels are falling off!” 

The Cubs-hater was onto something. What happened was, the great Derek Lee smacked a two-run double to tie the game 3-3. Cubs manager Dusty Baker took the suddenly struggling Prior out of the game and brought in reliever Kyle Farnsworth. I’m here to tell you that, overall, Kyle Farnsworth had a solid baseball career, but on the night I tried magic mushrooms, he got roughed up pretty bad.

Like, he was on the mound when Coach Bob officially died. Farnsworth got an out on a sac fly to give the Marlins their first lead. But then he surrendered a bases-loaded double to some guy named Mike Mordecai. Three Marlins scored. They were up 7-3.

I got up in a state of silent malaise. I reached into my shirt pocket. Coach Bob was retired, without ceremony, back on the surface of Adam’s mini fridge.

Farnsworth was replaced by a reliever. Commercial break. I’m seeing corporate America blah-blah-blah and reaching impact on a plane crash of emotions.

Some pitcher on the Cubs gave up another run somehow. The Marlins somehow made a third out after all those hits and led the Cubs 8-3. Their chances of winning were 98%. 

“Well, they could still score five runs in two innings to tie the game,” I said in a hollow tone. That didn’t happen. The Cubs lost the game 8-3. I was crushed. Carter was pleased, but even he showed a little decency in his final dis. 

“That shit could have only happened to the Cubs,” Carter said in summation. The son of a bitch was right. 

Even worse than the defeat on the field was the appalling sideshow of Bartman, the way he was scapegoated, demonized and threatened. As the nightmare 8th inning unfolded darker and darker, some fools in the crowd threw trash at Bartman. Pissy fans focused their fury on him. The poor guy had to be escorted out of the stadium by security for his own safety. 

Suddenly it was almost 11 on a school night. My brain and spirit were shot. The shrooms were going to keep my mind racing until two or three in the morning. I had Geology class at nine. 

Carter walked to the nearest bar. Todd walked home. No one drove on shrooms. We were pretty dumb, but not that dumb. At some point before crawling into bed with a notebook, I babbled, “Cubs could still win game seven.” 

That didn’t happen, either. The next night the Marlins beat the Cubs 9-6. The Fish went on to play the Yankees in the World Series. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a minute of the ’03 Series.

Bartman was to be hounded by the media and angry fans in the days and weeks to come. He had to go into exile, move to a different state. He was a winner of the shit luck lottery. Humans showed him no mercy. 

As for the notebook I went to bed with, I scratched out the basic lil’ trauma of what went down, and that I was on a trip that had taken a bad turn, but I didn’t get much further. I threw on a flannel and a hoodie and glumly shuffled outside to look at the stars. Or whatever stars I could find in the city to ease the pain. 

In the chilled autumn air, breath trailed out of my mouth. My hands dug into my hoodie pouch. With street lights pulsing yellow waves into my view, I did spot a faint star up there. From thousands of light years away, I could see it–so the two of us were connected, as if by wires. I got an image of wires and cords tracing back to all the stars, getting tangled and convoluted throughout the cosmos. 

I turned to the tree, the same one I gawked at while talking to my brothers about the Cubs in late September. I’d have a simpler time getting answers from this tree on the same planet as me. 

I ran my hand across its course and porous trunk. The tree had a message for me. It didn’t speak, but I felt it. The tree with its leaves half gone, getting less sunlight every day let me know this: I’m in pain too. 

Sorry to hear that, tree. I thought. 

But it’s not always this way, the tree reminded me, hinting at the changing seasons and eventual spring. 

"Yeah, I got'cha, tree," I said aloud. Because I'm weird and I felt like it. "Thanks." 

I went inside half-smiling. That was all the pick-me-up I was going to get, and it was all that I needed.