Mt. Snot

Adventures in the Windy City

I used to hate Chicago.

I couldn’t decide which I hated more, the weather or the people, both were equally disgusting.

I’m referring to my time at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois, which technically isn’t Chicago but is fused with my memory of the place because of the wind and the lake and the cold.

I’m talking about boot camp.

Marching in sub-zero weather. Getting hazed by sadists. Waiting hours and hours for shitty chow and only getting two minutes to eat it. Getting up before dawn and mustering outside on the drill deck in the freezing cold to do it all over again.

The casual cruelty of it all.

If we fucked up we were sent to IT: Intensive Training, which we recruits called Indoor Tennis and was run by an old boatswain’s mate with a mustache and anchors tattooed on his earlobes. He had us strip down to our undershirts and underwear to do calisthenics in a large drill hall with all the windows open. Then, as the workout progressed, he’d close the windows and have us put on our clothes, one item at a time, so that we were doing push-ups in dungarees and sweaters and peacoats in lakes of sweat while he smoked cigarette after cigarette.

Every company had 80 people in it and we did everything together. It was like having 80 roommates—some of whom were furious or heartbroken or insane.

When we marched to chow there might be five or ten companies ahead of us in line. We’d wait outside in the freezing rain or sleet or snow and slowly shuffle forward, regretting every miserable decision that led us to this fucked-up place.

Inside the chow hall was worse. Packed with thousands of bodies it was like 80 degrees. They had us crammed in there so tight that when someone passed out there was no place to fall. We held each upright until we came to our senses. It was always a terrible feeling to wake up in a place like that, like waking up from one nightmare into another.

A week into November everyone was sick. We’d march to the chow hall and wait and wait and wait and when the doors finally opened it was like the breath of a great beast washing over us: body odor and boiled meat, seamen sweat and bacon grease. Our sinuses loosened and we hocked the phlegm from our noses and lungs and spat it out of our mouths onto a patch of ice next to the entrance, a green mound of frozen slime from thousands of sailors that grew over the course of that terrible winter like a golem.

When I think of Chicago I think of that green mountain. I don’t think of the architecture or the food or the people. I think of the scum, I think of Mt. Snot.

Every time I go to Chicago I expect it to be awful, like that motherfucker from Indoor Tennis is going to pop up and wreck my world all over again.

I went to Chicago last weekend. It was a last-minute deal to attend the Printer’s Row Lit Fest.

It was my first time at the festival but felt like a reunion. I ran into a handful of SoCal writers, including Antoine Wilson, Rob Roberge and Gina Frangello. I sat on a panel with Jen B. Larson author of Hit Girls, with whom I did an event in Cleveland earlier this spring and I bumped into a bunch of writers I hung out with in Indianapolis: Brian Allen Carr, who has a new novel coming out called Bad Foundations, Sam Berman, Parker Young, and Taylor Lewandowski, whose new bookstore Dream Palace, will be opening soon.

After being at the truly massive Bouchercon for four days the previous weekend it was nice to be at a smaller, more intimate festival that was entirely outdoors. The weather was beautiful, the people were lovely, and—aside from gentleman in a fish hat—no one accosted me.

What truly made it special was the hospitality of new friends like Burt and Fleurette from Dying Scene and Kyle Decker who proposed the panel, took me out to lunch, and showed me around town.

We closed out the night with a virtual discussion of our novels. Kyle’s debut novel This Rancid Mill is about a scuzzy punk rock private eye set in LA circa 1981. We were joined by Daniel Weizmann, whose reluctant detective novel about a Lyft drive who finds himself in a murder investigation I’ve written about before, and Jeremy Kitchen, a librarian at the Chicago Public Library who has a book coming out called Mr. Crabby You Have Died that I’m looking forward to reading.

You can watch/listen to our convo below:

Also in attendance at Printer’s Row was none other than Tod Goldberg, whom I interviewed in San Diego during Bouchercon for a profile in the Los Angeles Times to celebrate the publication of Gangsters Don’t Die, the final installment of the Gangsterland saga.

Tod Goldberg has many enemies.

A former mayor of Indio, members of the Palm Springs Facebook group and those who make comments rather than ask questions during literary events have all felt the sting of the novelist’s caustic wit.

Goldberg is charming and sharp, with a quip for every occasion, but he can also be ruthlessly profane — both in person and on the page.

It’s got quotes from Tod’s brother Lee, Jordan Harper, and Ivy Pocohoda. Check it out.

So I had a pretty decent time in Chicago. No Indoor Tennis. No mountains made of mucus. But some things never change.

I was up before dawn, marching across town, just me and the rats, to catch the subway to the airport for an uneventful flight back to California. I was back in San Diego long enough to go for a walk on the beach with Nuvia and interview a bunch of old punks for a remembrance I’m writing about Robert Becerra of The Stains.

Now I’m leaving again for New York and Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. Maybe I’ll see you there?