For the Love of God

A couple days ago, I biked past a car parked on 55th street. The exterior and interior were painted and polished in bright purple & neon green. It looked like the Impala version of my little brother's Ghost Buster van. The entire car was purple and green. Next to the Impala was an older woman with an earnest expression. She had on a red track suit, red socks and red patent leather shoes, red sunglasses, and a massive wide-brimmed red straw hat.

You can't make this sh*t up.

I don't love Hyde Park. But it is a very special place. Among other things, it's full of under-appreciated and truly frightening people. In the last few days, what with it being the 47th 95-degree day in a row, everyone's just starting to lose it. I've had a few encounters with people who deserve some kind of a badge. Or at least they should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for most uninterpretable behavior.

You just can't make this sh*t up. I wish I had photos.

Monday.
I was reading at the Point. It was hot. Where I was sitting there's a cluster of slippery rocks that people use to get in and out of the water. At this particular moment, a large black man was falling out of the water. He very near fell into my lap. I looked up. If the point of a wet t-shirt contest is that there's something sexy and fun about seeing sleek and fit people nearly naked, the point of a wet undies contest when you're a big black dude is just beyond me. I saw everything and it wasn't fun, and it definitely wasn't sexy. This is lake water we're talking about. I felt bad for him. The really important part of the story, however, is that after climbing out of the water, this dude climbs to the highest point on this big pile of rocks, and stands up there a good twenty minutes like a Calvin Klein ad on backwards day.

Story no. 2 also involves the Point, further north.

Wednesday.
I was biking on the bike path. The path is a treacherous minefield of lost toddlers, disoriented bathers and bikers who want to kill you. I want to kill everyone on the bike path. Apart from biking, you might also see people on, around and near the bike path doing things like domestic brawling, torturing injured seagulls and sitting motionless on their big fat butts in the water. Toward the end of my ride, I approached a man on my right who was running somewhat crazily back and forth down the path. His gawkiness - his arms appeared too long and his legs too short - I assumed had something to do with epilepsy. Like everyone else within a 4-meter radius of this man, I slowed down. And then I realized that the length of the arms was due to there being shoes on the ends of the arms (he was holding onto them) and the gawkiness was due to the fact that he was running barefoot on 95 degree pavement.

Thursday.
I'm really sorry I don't have pictures of this. I don't know what's wrong with me. The last story also involves underwear but it involves the Regenstein library as well. The Regenstein is the main library on campus at the University of Chicago and it contains some curious types. There are curious types at the University of Chicago, period, but there are a few unique individuals who seem to feel most at home in the Reg. I could tell you stories about Reg patrons. There are the Chinese Gropers, the Vet, Apnea Man ... stories about exceptional stupidity, exceptional hubris, and a chronic sleep disorder. There are also the poor individuals who give the impression that the Regenstein's nightly closure is the worst part of their day. What I observed on Thursday has to do I'm guessing either with record-defeating obliviousness or possibly a brain lesion. The story begins and ends on the fourth floor of the Reg. The north side, for those of you to whom this means something. I'm sitting alone. Near me are two men, each of whom is sitting at his own table. One is around 50, one about 30. In walks a woman, about my age. She looks normal. She's not wearing all red, for instance.

Oh: one quick side note. In order to fully appreciate this story, it's necessary that you know that the Reg in the wintertime is frigid. It is the coldest place you can go in Chicago that's not outside. In the summer, it's worse. It's arctic. It's so cold that I have an anorak in my locker at the library.

So in walks this woman, and she's carrying a pair of tights in addition to other normal study materials. Obviously, she's planning on being cold so she's brought some gear. She puts her stuff down at a table and kicks off her flip-flops. And then, right in the middle of the library, in plain view of one thirty-year-old woman and two semi-horrified, semi-riveted men, she proceeds, slowly, perversely, to hike up her tights, inch by inch, over her ankles, over her knees, up her thighs. And then, tossing her skirt up over her shoulder (I am not making this up!), she works the tights up and over a pair of dowdy gray underpants. And what was truly remarkable is that after sitting still for twenty minutes she took off the tights (repeating the above sequence in reverse, so that at this point I've seen her underwear twice in 20 minutes) and left the library. And then, she came back and did the whole thing over again.

If anyone has ideas about the guy on the path, I'm actually seriously concerned so let me know if you have thoughts about that one.