I was walking home from the Barnes and Noble in the late afternoon. Every few minutes, a drop or two of rain hit my shiny scalp. As I struggled up and down the Ten Broeck hills, Benny rang me up and broke the news that Norm Van Lier had been found dead in his apartment. Our reactions ran the gamut from shock to silence and, finally, to uproarious laughter over shared Stormin' Norman anecdotes.
There was, as a single example, the time seven years ago that Norm decked a fireman. Based on news reports and what I think I know of Norm's ways, it wasn't hard to imagine what had happened. Norm was at home in his lakefront highrise, probably sitting in his beloved beanbag chair - or, at least, its modern-day equivalent- and listening to that first, brilliant Chicago Transit Authority album (my own favorite cut from it is "Questions 67 & 68.") Perhaps he'd employed some additional aid to achieve a certain tranquil frame of mind; no one can say. Whatever. The sound of sirens stopping in front of his building caused him to high-tail it down to the lobby.
Rattled that his mood had been broken, Norm had a head full of steam as he exited the elevator. In the lobby, he encountered a stranger wearing a white T-shirt. Apparently, a few cross words were exchanged.
The dialogue might have gone something like this:
Norm: "Who the fuck are you?"
T-shirted stranger: "Who the fuck are you?"
The next thing anybody knew, the man in the white T-shirt, actually one of the responding firefighters, was laying on the marble floor rubbing his jaw.
True? Who knows. But like all good stories, it ought to have been. Stormin' Norman was the toughest, meanest, most competitive son of a bitch you can imagine.
I knew that Benny would write about him yesterday. Norm Van Lier was to Benny what Ron Santo is to me. That is, a teenager's fixation. Even as we've become thicker, grayer, and more flatulent with the years, Benny and I have hung on to our boyhood idols, Norm and Santo. In fact, we've each written long, in-depth Chicago Reader cover stories of our respective paladins. The hardest part of the extended times we'd spent with Norm and Santo was trying not to look like the awe-struck, acne-faced geeks we'd reverted to.
After I hung up with Benny, I planned to follow up on his post by writing today that his affinity for Norm was baffling because no two more diverse personalities exist on this planet. Benny is the most accommodating, understanding, serene man on six continents. Norm was, of course, Stormin' Norman.
Yet, mirabile dictu, Benny expounded on that very dichotomy. Norm was everything Benny wasn't and, often, wanted to be.
It wasn't so with Santo and me. He was impulsive, confrontational, uncontrollable, thin-skinned, opinionated, and a general pain in the ass. Subtract 16 years and the exceptional baseball skills, and that would be the precise description of me.
Benny idolized what he wasn't; I idolized what I was. That's ironic because throughout his adult life, Benny has appeared to be very comfortable within his own skin. I, on the other hand, have spent most of my life trying to jump out of mine.
Benny and I will have that conversation again, perhaps very soon. Santo turned 69 on Wednesday. He's a diabetic and has a troublesome heart. We'll express our shock, turn silent, and then laugh ourselves to tears recounting the time he set his toupee on fire in the Shea Stadium broadcast booth.
What is it with us and jocks? Benny Jay and I have constructed our lives to be the antitheses of single-minded, physically-oriented, acquisitive, pugnacious professional athletes. Today we revere Philip Roth and Amnesty International. We discuss lofty concepts like altruism, egalitarianism, and the inner workings of the political process.
Yet we're still held in thrall by a couple of old warhorses. I doubt Stormin' Norman ever ranked altruism among his most cherished human traits. And I Santo knows why Portnoy was inexorably drawn to a girlfriend nicknamed "The Monkey," he hasn't let on yet.
We're odd birds, Benny and I.
