“Amplifying things, good or bad, was what Chicago did best” – Abbot Kahler, ‘Sin In The Second City’
It’s Labor Day weekend, shoutout to workers. Say hey, kid, here’s an idea: don’t go to work Tuesday, either.
What I’ve Been Reading Lately:
If there is a single, unifying constant that applies to the entire history of the United States—other than “capitalism sure is evil but we sure do love it,” our greatest animating truth—it is that the United States of America cannot be normal about sex. Sex is both fascinating and tedious. Nearly everyone agrees that sex is great, but after that, everyone starts talking about caveats. I’m frankly bored by everyone’s caveats. I’ve been on the internet since I was 13, and I went to church regularly before that, so I know about everyone’s caveats.
As such, a history book about the vice district in Chicago isn’t going to get me reading for details like “there was a sex worker named Suzy Poon Tang and she had a bouquet of roses tattooed quote-unquote ‘under her navel’” or “there was a john called the Gold Coin Kid and he brought in a bag of $5 gold coins and told the woman he was with that his favorite game as a kid was ‘pitching pennies’ and if she spread her legs she could keep any coins that ‘hit the bull’s-eye’” as much as said book is going to hold my interest by telling me how Chicago got from housing a vice district downtown to, y’know, today, where we’ve all seen the Admiral ad with the redhead on taxicabs, but that’s about it. All this is to say, I might not be the audience for a narrative history book, but I enjoyed Sin In The Second City by Karen Abbot (now publishing as Abbot Kahler).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not so bored by sordid songs of sin that I don’t giggle at things like “it was called the Everleigh Club and men would say they were going to get ‘Ever-laid’ tonight.” I’m also not such a sexless dork that I’m cheering for the preachers and reformers as I’m reading. Mostly, I was pretty sold on the Everleigh Sisters’ model of a dignified brothel run by women. The dichotomy set up is sort of like “starting your OnlyFans” vs. “being human trafficked.” Unfortunately, making connections to issues today is where I start to feel tired. Sex workers exist, have always existed, and always will exist. I wish we could all stop being weird about it.
One thing: wish this book was a tad more intersectional. In creating narrative nonfiction, there’s this sort of uncritical presentation of the Everleigh Sisters “not considering themselves prejudiced” when they try to refuse Jack Johnson entry into the club. There’s liberal use of “Negro” and “Jew” in settings other than direct quotations—period accurate, but maybe something I personally would’ve re-thought. When the Chicago Daily Socialist runs an erroneous article about the Everleigh Club having a girl under 17 working there, the third-person omniscient narrator, purporting to speak for Minna’s thoughts, says “Obviously, the Socialist’s editors resented the club because neither they nor their audience could afford to step through its doors.” There’s a lot of talk of “white slavery”—a term that does describe what some of the lesser brothels were doing, but feels monstrously lacking in perspective when the author ends a whole section with this:
“There is undoubtedly more actual physical restraint imposed on these modern slaves of our cities,” opined the Chicago Record Herald, “than was ordinarily imposed on the black slaves of the old plantations.” (130)
That is, uh, demonstrably untrue, Chicago Record Herald. Does Abbot Kahler know that?
LINKS!
Wooooo went long on the sex book, my bad! Here we go:
A great companion piece to Sin In The Second City is Chapter 15 of Robert Loerzel’s The Coolest Spot in Chicago: A History of Green Mill Gardens and the Beginnings of Uptown. You know how I know Chicago is my kinda town? “Personal liberty” meant, in those days, “to many people, it meant being able to drink whenever they wanted.” It’s like a pre-Prohibition “We Get The Food And Then We Eat The Food Until All The Food Is Gone.”
The Nib is ending this week, which is a huge bummer. I realized recently that I kind of am trying to recreate the newspaper experience with my internet usage, and The Nib was a great way to get comics. Here’s “Deforestation” by Eleri Harris, an excellent comic on a subject near and dear to my heart.
Blistering CBP prison story from Christian H. Morales over at Latine Lit, “Four Oreos in the Icebox.” You will leave this story thinking we should abolish ICE, but that’s not the point of the story. It’s a love story.
I have thought of Sylvia Plath without meaning to multiple times this week, which is never a bad thing. Then, I stumbled onto Nazifa Islam’s poem in Vagabond City, “Apart,” a found poem from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. Maybe a Sylvia Plath re-read is in my weekend plans.
The homie Adrian Sobol is starting a poetry journal, Kicking Your Ass, and it’s thrilling for reasons beyond “Adrian is starting a poetry journal.” Check out this, from the about page: “Think of us as your literary complaint department. Upset about a too cold breeze? A long line at the store? A haircut that’s pretty good, but not great? Whatever is kicking your ass, there’s poetry to be made from that.” Hell yeah. We love it. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got about poetry was when my undergrad prof, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, told us to “go out and write some Chicago poems” and then was profoundly disappointed that no one wrote about Patio Beef.
That’s all this week, should we go out with the champ?
If you’re a service worker, may you clean up in tips this weekend. And sex work is service work!
Sorry you got an email,
Chris