Alone on my own in Champaign at 7 in the morning, The Great Wall wouldn't be open till eleven. There's a little crowd that shows up there around noon, people who work on campus dropping in to wash down their lunch with a couple beers, and others who aren't working just dropping in to have a place to go. There’s a little better crowd around five after work, but you know I wanted to make an entrance, Catfish is back, and there wouldn't be a good enough crowd for that until maybe ten at night. So a lot of time to kill, and I needed to catch up on some sleep, so the place to go would be Diamond Dan's, or as I liked to call it, the bunkhouse.
He had the whole first floor in one of those bigass old houses a little north of campus, a big frontroom, and a lot of couches, sometimes a mattress or two on the floor. It's where you went when you were down on your luck. You couldn't pay any rent, but if you came into a little money you could buy some groceries, or better beer. Ah I knew those couches, the red one that was the best one, you slept like a baby in that one, the green one was okay, but a little short for a big guy like me so I had to scrunch up a bit, and the blue one was kind of broken in the middle. Couldn’t get much sleep out of that one unless you were pretty drunk, and even then you would be sore in the morning. Well I didn't know who was staying there now, and I suspected that the red one would be taken, but I kind of had hopes for the green one.
Dan's a great guy, but kind of boring sometimes, a big sports fan, he can go on and on, and he never notices that you are kind of nodding off and just keeps going on ratatat, which is why when I stumbled in I wasn't delighted to see him holding that stained coffee cup, his eyes and mouth wide open. You know that whole sports thing, we guys are always supposed to be interested in it, and I like sports well enough, well I pretend to, chicks dig it. Okay, not really, but they like to think that their man is into sports, because then when I say something like oh man I really want to watch the Orange Bowl, but I'll give that all up, just to be with you, well then they are all impressed.
But when it's just you and Dan, and no chicks around to impress, it gets really boring, especially when that green couch is sitting empty and looking so good, and you can just see where your head will rest, and really it's not going to be such a scrunch, and Ted, over there on the red couch is beginning to yawn and stretch a little, almost ready to roll off.
But Dan has gone on through basketball and football, and it's like he's just warming up, getting the lesser stuff out of the way, so he can get his concentration on what really interests him, what really floats his boat, and that's the White Sox. Most of these college kids at Champaign are from Chicago, and Itch and most of the others I hang with were college kids once so they are too. What it is is that there is the north side and the south side, and the north side is the rich side so that's mostly where they come from, and the Cubs are the north side team and so most everybody here is a Cub fan. But Dan is from the south side so he is a White Sox fan. Has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about it, which I guess you can understand coming from the south side where everybody is a Sox fan to Champaign where everybody is a Cub fan.
Myself I'm a bit of an outsider to all that, coming from Wisconsin and all, though I've adapted to being a Cub fan because that is who most of the babes root for, and they have this sad lovable loser image which just leads straight to romance. But outside of pitching Cubbie woo, I'm not that rabid about it, so maybe Dan thinks I'm someone he could convert. At any rate when he bad mouths the Cubs I don't put my back up. Which doesn't make that much difference anyway, because when he is on that White Sox roll, fired up with that grimy coffee cup, which he refills without a pause, yelling from the kitchen, he is in his own world.
And meanwhile Ted has left that comfy red couch and stumbled off to the bathroom, so it sits open now and aching for Catfish's aching bones, and I'm watching Dan's flapping jaws through half-shut eyes, which is alright really, because the longer it takes me to curl into that red paradise the longer it will be till I wake up, and there is a lot of time to kill before I make my entrance into the Great Wall. Too early and there won't be anybody there, too late and the crowd will be already into their own things and not so responsive to Catfish coming back.
Well this and that, this and that, a nice long snooze on the sweet red couch, no disturbing dreams like on that damn Greyhound bus, some TV in the empty bunkhouse, a little stroll out for a sandwich, but no dropping in on old pals, don't want to get the word out, don't want to dampen my entrance. As nine approaches I'm getting a little giddy, pop the top on an Old Style to relax myself just a little. All the while I'm thinking isn't this a little silly, this whole windup. But you know I need this, the big entrance. I need to feel the buzz, just to know it is all worth it, my coming back to Champaign, because there is a little doubt. Just a bit of feeling that maybe there isn't that much difference between me and the fat old guy sitting next to me on the bus.
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