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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v114) (the January 2013 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

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I’m freezing my ass off on the steam grates

Fritz Hamilton

    I’m freezing my ass off on the steam grates behind the U.S. Post Office in Chicago, the biggest P.O. in America, filled with mad postal workers, most of them drunk. Women have been raped in the stairways of this building, & no one was caught. Bundles of mail for Alaska have been thrown into the bag for Alabama, & no one has cared. It’s now Alabama’s problem until it’s thrown into the Arkansas bag. Two months from now it may or may not arrive at its right destination. This bundle of junk mail will then cost the tax payers a hundred thousand dollars.
    Others are also lying on the steam grates. The steam rises around them keeping them alive all night. Then it’s off to MacDonald’s or to the library to sleep over Danielle Steele or Dean Koontz until they travel to the Pacific Gardens Mission for hotdogs & beans & to get their souls saved, then out to steal a pint of Wild Irish Peach from Walgreen’s, to swig it down in the subway & pass out before a cantankerous cop clubs their ass & forces them back into the cold. Sometimes they’re sick enough to be thrown into the wagon & a day or two at Cty Hospital.
    So much for the old city of slaughtered hogs, now content to butcher its people & throw away the carcasses in Potter’s Field. Every year the Catholics have a service over them to roust their souls from Hell & send them up to Heaven - Chicago, the sweet hovel of do-gooders.
    “Hey, Roger,” I say to the smelly fool lying beside me.
    “Whatcha want, cool dick?” Roger grumbles.
    “How many kids you have?”
    “Fuck you.”
    “I sometimes wonder about my little one in Boise.”
    “How old?”
    “Probably around forty.”
    “Forget it. She’s in the women’s pen in Idaho by now pairing up with a bulldyke screw.”
    “Maybe not. Maybe she’s a nun.”
    “Pairing up with a priest or mother superior.”
    “You’re one cynical bastard, you know that?”
    “& you’re goody goody, rolling in the wildflowers.”
    “Not too many wildflowers growing through the steam grates.”
    PLOP! I reach the back of my neck & get a handful of birdshit. It’s still a little warm. It makes me grateful, grateful to be alive in Chicago. I see the sun’s beginning to rise. I made it through another night, & I’m grateful! Grateful on the grates!
    GRATEFUL ...
    !

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