Dry as snow can be, for today (asterisk) is fucking cold in Chicago. To describe the cold in any other terms, as John Cusak would attest, would be presumptuous and unjust.
Today the snow is like what people who have never seen cocaine might imagine cocaine looks like, or like what people who actively use cocaine might dream about in moments of sad disillusion, a la that joke in Better Off Dead when Charles De Mar and Lane Meyer stand at the top of the K-12, and Lane is facing his dream, his death, his potential future as a well-laid adult. At which point Charles (or Miles, Dudley "Booger" Dawson, Dr. Soberin Exx, and c.), snorter of all that might fit through a straw, says, "Oh! Ugh! Outrageous! This is pure snow! It's everywhere!" Inuits must have a word for this type of snow—tinyflaked and dry, powder sugary, and thus far untarnished by the inevitable mudslush sprayed from our potholed city roads.
Dry as snow can be, for today (asterisk) is fucking cold in Chicago. To describe the cold in any other terms, as John Cusak would attest, would be presumptuous and unjust. To see him in the role of Lane Meyer—dread-weary, lovelorn, single-skied and -gloved, scarfed, bundled—is to recognize: here is a young man (nineteen in the film, babyfaced) who has known true cold. While Francisco's lament to bitter coldness and sickness of heart speaks on behalf of his Denmark, Cusak's Lane Meyer is a product of fictional Greenville in name only. For Cusak was informed by Chicago winters, true cold, meaning his Lane Meyer can shrug away Greenville's pseudo-winter and devote his attention to the real issues at hand: lost love, transitions to adulthood, domestic threats and foreign interests. In fact perhaps the coldest component of Better Off Dead is its context within the long-running Cold War, which in 1985 was itself transitioning in the hands of the newly elected Mikhail Gorbachev, a man who once proclaimed, completely unprovoked, that Chicago's winters were, if I've translated this right, colder than fuck itself.
But the dog, my dog, appears to love at least "this" snow, if not snow and cold both. Jesus you should see her. The running and jumping and sliding and the tongue, the tongue out hanging; hip dysplasia be damned. Oh, and dogs smile. This is a fact. And not in that French bulldog way, that weird wrinkled mien of perpetual surprise and wheezy joy over which emotion claims no control. Rather, here is a dog smiling like you and I might smile, were it slightly less fucking cold.
No leash. I stand in Kedzie's strip of Boulevard grass and hope she doesn't careen off into the road, these manic circles and this smile of hers. But there is really no containing this force. And when she has to shit? You can see it in her gait! Back arched, ass down, slightly pained, though right now running is top priority, bowels be damned. It is that enviable canine singularity of purpose, that reckless joyfulness. She will go until she falls, and then she will sleep.
In a fictional winter coat pocket I carry a bag called "Pooch Pick Up," made from biodegradable cornstarch. I secretly take pleasure from the tactile sensation of picking up my pooch's warm excrement on a day like today. And it is a well-known fact that dogshit karma is among the fastest-working karmas around. A week ago I forgot my Pooch Pick Up bag and by midnight I had stepped in two different piles.
Lies, of course. This claim to present tense, this notion of "a week ago".
Not a lie: Gorbachev was a mere 54 years old in 1985. Soon enough he had spearheaded the monumental perestroika and glasnost reforms, but even before those Reagan had warmed to the idea of discussions about scaling back the arms race. Geneva, 1985, the two men sharing a stage and agreeing in principle to reducing each country's nuclear arsenal by half.
And Better Off Dead? As much a product of the year after Orwell's (or Bowie's) as even White Noise. Stand the film next to DeLillo's novel and notice the simulacra of fire (televised) contained within the Meyer family chimney. The Korean drag-racing brother who learned English from Howard Cosell, just as Willie Mink osmosed from U.S. television programs and commercials. Or Lane Meyer's claim to out-dreading even Jack Gladney, with his death-lust and repeated (failed) suicide attempts. Or how the genius little brother (with his laser, his rocket ship) echoes White Noise's subversion of the top-down model for knowledge and authority, Heinrich and Steffie and Denise taking turns usurping control from hapless Babette and Jak. And is there any better characterization of DeLillo's warnings to the danger of media than BOD's maniacal paperboy, shattering garage windows and obsessing over his two dollars?
Back on the mountain, Lane Meyer says, "Look, Charles, I gotta do this. If I don't, I'll be nothing. I'll end up like my neighbor Ricky Smith. He just sits around crocheting all day and snorting nasal spray." But the girl, the right girl, is there under his nose, or at least across the street. She cares not about the K-12, or cocaine, or his two dollars. She cares only for the Dodgers and auto repair and the smooth sounds of Lane's saxophone and soon enough Lane himself.
And so the Cold War fizzles, the film's half-winter melts away inside Dodger stadium, and this* fucking Chicago cold rings false. For to speak of Chicago winters during the summer is impossible. Today, as a matter of fact, is beautiful and clear-skied, sunny and warm, exactly the sort of July afternoon that renders Chicago completely worth it. Winter ... please. This no-asterisk summer like a shared citywide orgasm, everyone bursting onto stoops and sidewalks and roads, smiling and laughing over their beers and grilled, encased meats. Cold ... please. Now is the rumble of the el, gorgeous rippled blue of the Lake, scent of chocolate windblown from downtown. Today winter is fiction, and this outside, this warmth, truth.
Kyle Beachy was raised in St. Louis but has lived in Chicago since receiving his MFA from The School of the Art Institute in 2003. His first novel, The Slide, was published in February by The Dial Press / Random House and won the Chicago Reader's 2009 "Readers' Choice" award for Best Book by a Chicago Author in the Last Year. His short fiction appears online in Hobart, decomP, as a Featherproof MiniBook, and elsewhere. He currently teaches at SAIC and shares stories and photographs at www.kylebeachy.com.
