dubuque
Weird night tonight. Over a hundred people, but less fun than last night's show with 30.
After the show, I meet this one young guy with some facial piercings who says he really liked my stuff and thought a lot of the audience was too dumb for it. He seems very wise, this guy. I walk around the room, meet some more guys (where were all the girls?), bricklayers who were in town for a month working on a building. They're very down on Dubuque, which I don't really get because they're all from small towns too. One's from somewhere in Missouri, one from Jackson, Illinois...
I head to this bar downtown. I went there when I was here last year and met some interesting people including a funky drunk girl who had little cut-scars all over her forearms - the kind that look self-inflicted. Last year it was packed. This year, near empty. A bartender and two girls playing cribbage. A couple tables with people in the back. But - just like last year - one dollar Captain and Cokes. How can I say no? So I'm sipping mine and this guy Rob comes over, recognizes me from the show. We talk a little. His wife is down in Mexico with friends. He thinks she's been cheating on him after ten years married. He said he was neglecting her and himself, but now he's lost weight and is giving her more attention and he hopes it's not too late. They've got two kids. He's my age.
Then the bricklayers come in. Small town.
"Hey!" I go and talk to them. One asks me for the second time if I want some bud. I turn him down again and he's disappointed. I point out a sign behind the bar for Kaufman cigars. I'm pointing a lot and talking about them and Joe, the bricklayer from Missouri says "Know what happens where I come from, when you point too much?"
"What? You chop off my finger?"
"That's right."
"Why?"
"That's just how it is."
"But I'm friendly-pointing!"
"Don't matter."
I'm a little tipsy and he doesn't seem too menacing, so I start screwing with him, putting my finger down on the bar as if readying it to be chopped. He reaches for a sheath on his belt, and I say, "Whoa, keep that shiv where it is!" It all seems lighthearted and I put my finger back down a few times and it's pretty funny to me and maybe the Captain and Coke on top of the Jack Daniels I had at the show is making me brave and/or stupid.
His friend Andy is amused but says, "You don't know who you're messing with there." So I stop. Now I'm curious about this guy, Joe. I notice a small tattoo on his left hand. Right in the web between thumb and forefinger a cross with three short rays near the top. I've heard about gang members having tattoos there. Once I read about an eye with one small tear for each person the wearer has killed.
"So what's the story on the tattoo?"
Joe doesn't seem eager to explain it. Andy says, "What, the dot?"
Dot? I hadn't even seen it, but now I do - just a little black-green 3mm dot low on the back of the same hand on the left side. "What's that?"
Andy, a clean-cut guy with wire rims, still friendly, explains, "That means 'I hate niggers.'" it comes out so casually it doesn't fully register.
"What? Really?"
"Yeah. Lots of kids get it now and call it party dots."
"Yeah," Joe pipes in, "But this ain't no party dot."
The cross I found out was some kind of white gang thing but I couldn't get anything more specific.
"What? You have a problem with our African American brothers?" I say it with a smile.
"That's right," says Joe.
How do I handle this? You always like to imagine you'll say something, register your disgust, argue, but it seems pretty futile in this case. On the surface, everything still seems friendly and I try to keep it in that vein without going along.
I say, "Man, you've got too much hair to be a skinhead." (He's got long black hair.) That doesn't go anywhere, and I have to ask: "What about Jews?"
Andy says, "You're okay as long as you're white."
"But Jews aren't really white."
"What do you mean? What color are you then?"
"Well my skin is white, but I still can't join the Klan."
Joe makes a joke about his hood in the car. I say I want to buy him a beer so he'll go back and tell his people that Jews are okay. He shows me another tattoo on his left calf that says "100% HONKY". During my show I said, "What's up, honkies?!" And he tells me he yelled when I said that. He liked it. Guess the Aryan Nation isn't big on irony.
"Come on," I say. "People are people. We're all friends here right? Let me buy you a beer."
"Okay."
"All you have to do is yell out 'I love Jews!'"
He doesn't take me up on it. I believe his exact words are "No fucking way!" But he doesn't stab me either, so I guess I can say it was a good night. Lost a little innocence, but kept my fingers. Tomorrow I'm off to liberal Madison.
Wednesday, November 20, 2002