Wayne Sallee Haunts the City

Drumming up some readers for my buddy Wayne's blog here, Frankenstein 1959, which lately has been full of oddly charming (that's our clan's cri de guerre, "odd but charming") posts about what it's like getting around a major city with cerebral palsy, only enough money for a bookstore or to buy a friend a drink, and a humanist's eye for the people he shares the bus stop with, the ones on their way home to a cardboard box. Wayne's primarily a horror writer by trade (Fiends by Torchlight, Horror in the Heartland and others)but this stuff is a purer gold. It reminds me of Nelson Algren's Chicago, City on the Make crossed with John Callahan's Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot with the weather eye of the son of a Chicago cop (I mean, cahp) if they'd gone to school with the crew of Mystery Science Theater. I'm hoping his journal entries-- taking a wrong turn on foot in the cul de sac of a gated community designed to keep poor people out and being unable to hop the fence through which he can see the relative freedom of the streets-- will turn into a book someday.

"Going back to my post about the Wow! Signal and Elvis going home, HEF commented that the static from space was really a dinner bell. One night, he, I, Jeff, and Andrew smoked pot in his basement and I exclaimed "I am Emily Dickinson!" to which the other men choked down the goodness and of course I meant to say that I was Spartacus. And to this day I am reminded of this event....
"Tonight was the Printers Ball, a yearly thing. This time around it was at the MCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art. The photo above is from last year's event in Bridgeport in which the police were called because Bridgeport is full of @$$holes. I can type those words about Mayor Daley's old neighborhood and get away with it because NOBODY in Bridgeport is smart enough to use Google and type in Bridgeport Is Full Of @$$holes. So there, you Irish hillbillies. It was a neat little event and I soon realized that most everybody there was half my age....
"I was wearing a kind of tealish Hawaiian shirt, but I'd look pretty silly wearing my jeans and just the jacket and my three chest hairs. Silly there, but fashionable in Wrigleyville. I also got a whatever kind of look girls give guys twice their age from this Claire Danesish gal as I refilled my water bottle. She was by herself but I had nothing to say because I AM AN IDIOT. I could be with her right now, holding hands over deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati's before sneaking out the back way because I only have $22.37 and a giant Pope coin to my name. ...
"The Man in this case being the SS/Disability Board. I am STILL filling out the online form, mostly because I keep getting pages where I am repeating the same thing. Where I am repeating the same thing. I'm better today, as the evening has worn on. I'm in fighting mode again. But, I tell you, this damn form--now I'm up to my employment history, Christ knows if they want info from 1977 as they did with my medical info, I think I was a night dishwasher at a Golden Bear off State Road--this form, this THING, its as if Charles has ordered me at gunpoint to transcribe the history of the Green Lantern Corps. ...
"NFM Mike and I discussed porn while waiting for the Red Line and a young waif flipping through a magazine moved ever further away as I discussed such grand titles as THE NEIGHBORS SUCK AND SO DO WE, and the book I swear I will one day find again and one day own, I can see the cover as if it was 1979 all over again, MY DACHSHUND, MY LOVER. (I know if I keep mentioning the book, it will come to be in my possession.) And that was my last, oh, 18 hours or so. One more week of summer. I felt sooo old at that party tonight."

Waynes blog here and website with books for sale here