15 Minutes with Kevin in Evanston
I had gotten to downtown Evanston from downtown Chicago for my headshrinker appointment quicker than intended. I meandered along the sidewalks with the bonus time. People were out. It was dinnertime. The mighty Chicago suburb along the lake was bustling as much as a college town can bustle in the summer. Then I saw him screaming at the cops.
A heavyset guy, probably twenty-two. He wore baggy clothes and a backpack. His hair and beard looked Covid Vogue. I could tell from across the street, he was hammered. And being the good Samaritan that I am, I crossed the street in a manner that made sure the cops would see me as I hung back to observe the interaction. You know, just in case the Evanston po-po got overly excited or began to fear for their lives. But they were cool. They sat in their squad car as this big guy hurled drunken gibberish at them.
After a minute, he ran out of words and the cops drove off. The kid looked distraught. Like he had had a really bad day for way too long. I approached him slowly.
“Hey, man. You want to grab a beer?”
Now, you must understand that this was not me enabling an already drunk and potentially troubled young person. This was an attempt to soothe the kid. I’ve seen enough distraught drunkards like this to know that what they often need is a friend. Better yet, a stranger to throw a bendable ear their way. And offering to buy them a beer is the bait. And it almost always works.
He looked at me confused. “You’re not gonna fuck me, are you?”
“Nope. I got about fifteen minutes before I need to be somewhere. C’mon. Let’s grab a beer.”
“Okay,” he muttered in an alcoholic’s accent.
We walked the sidewalks looking for a good place to pop in for a quick beer. A lot of places were closed. Some were way too crowded. We started talking. His name was Kevin and he hated “everything and everyone.” He was not a Northwestern student. “I just fucking live here,” he told me through a sloppy mouth. He copped to the bad day, though I couldn’t get the details of when it began or what made it so bad or what his endgame was. Finally, we found a place that looked to be serving beer and had a little bit of room for us at the bar. We walked in.
‘Ah, Christ,” I said. “It’s trivia night.”
“Ohhhhh-kay! This is the final question of round one—our pop culture round…” the trivia host blurted out like every bar trivia host does as if they don’t know they sound exactly like a strip club DJ when they all do.
I found Kevin and I two seats at the end of the big bar in the center of the restaurant. Made eye contact with one of the bartenders. They glared at me. I looked at Kevin. “This place sucks, I’m sorry. But it’ll have to do.” The manager approached. I knew he was the manager because he had that authoritative look restaurant managers have when they’re carrying the keycard that gives them veto power to orders entered incorrectly. He got right in Kevin’s face.
“I thought I told you you couldn’t come back in here?”
I laughed. “I’m sorry,” I said to the manager who also wielded human veto power, “I didn’t know. We’re leaving. Come on, Kevin.”
Kevin waddled out unhappily, but I think unsure of why we were leaving so soon. Outside I said to him, “You already got kicked out of the only place serving beer right now? C’mon, man. You gotta tell me these things. What’d you do?”
Kevin didn’t hear me. He was focused halfway down the block and across the street where three other cops were gathered. Evanston is a mostly peaceful town. It’s filled with money and beautiful homes with BLM signs and Love Has No Home Here and Pride flags decorating yards and wrap around porches. It’s a social justice-keyboard warrior’s utopia. Which is what made such an active police presence on the streets such an odd sight. Maybe Kevin was the reason. Maybe they really wanted to play bar trivia.
“Gimme five minutes,” Kevin said to me.
“What are you doing?”
“Just gimme five minutes!” He headed toward the cops.
“Leave ‘em alone, man. They don’t matter. Let’s find somewhere else to—”
“I said, fucking gimme five minutes!”
He took off and started ranting and raving at the cops. I stood back and watched. There was nothing I could do. Kevin was on his own. His endgame, I had figured out, was just to let his rage unfurl until the booze wore off. At which point, assuming he avoided arrest, he’d walk home. I figured this because I had been there before. And truth be told, I was having a bit of a bad day, too. Nothing specific. Just a general sense of annoyance with being awake. It happens. It’s one of the reasons we drink beer in bars and put up with bar trivia hosts.
Checked my watch. I had seven minutes before my therapy appointment. I walked away from Kevin and back past the entrance of the bar we’d just left only to see a new drunkard having a conversation with yet another group of three cops.
This woman was not a friendly and everyone knew it. Which is why she was being filmed by three different women, all of whom likely lived in gorgeous homes with wraparound porches and BLM signs in their yards. The drunk woman looked like a recycled paper straw wrapped in a Confederate Flag. You know, the flag that was so proudly waved by patriots during the Capitol Insurrection. This flag was a skintight mini skirt. Low cut showing off nothing.
“Why are you wearing that?” one of the women filming with their phones asked her.
“This?” She vamped for the cameras. “This represents the South.”
“And what does it represent about the South?” another videographer asked.
“Pride.” The word poured out of her mouth like cold molasses from a moonshine jug.
“I thought pride was rainbows,” I said.
She laughed. “You’re cute.”
“No. No,” I said.
“Where are you from?” the first camera woman asked.
“Lombard,” the proud, drunk idiot said.
And with that, I headed over to my therapist’s office where we talked exclusively about how much I love ironing and what that says about my relationship with my father.
Next week, we’re going to talk about Kevin.
