My Friend Kenneth
By Michael Woyan
Page 1 sex Page 2 drugs Page 3 sin Page 4 lust Page 5 envy Page 6 fortune Page 7 evil Page 8 pirate Page 9 thief
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.
Click here to continue "My Freind "
Written By Michael Woyan

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