LOUTS

I got off the L yesterday afternoon after the Cubs game let out and the neighborhood was littered, as usual, with drunken and drunken-seeming louts. I was walking behind some on the sidewalk and then in front of them. I could hear them talking about the message on my head: Oh, I gotta put my glasses on to read that. Out? Pull out? That's what my girlfriend says, I can't pull out. We gotta stay in there. We gotta really go in there with soldiers and stay. We can't pull out. We gotta push.

Etc., etc.

When I walked in my gate and went up the porch steps I turned and waved.

Later I went with B to see a Brecht play up the street. Because he's in a scooter we were on the first row. The theater was small and almost packed, the second night, with at least one big critic there. It was loud and intense, much screaming. Cartoonish. Polemical. Typical Brecht. Some good acting. Finally it ended. We went out. In the little lobby the Big Critic was talking to some people. On the sidewalk there were about 15 people smoking, including at least one of the actors. There was a static-ness, not a rush to leave.

About two hours later, reading about the play on the Internet, I realized there were scenes we didn't see. We'd left at halftime. Both B and I see live theater at least every other month. Between us we must have seen thousands of performances. At this play, there hadn't been the bowing at the end. (I'm sure there's a word for that, which escapes me, just as I couldn't remember the word for airplane "gate" the other day and had to call L.) But with B's spaciness from his MS and with my chemo brain, we missed the obvious. We were louts.