Blue Man Blues

I was lonesome and discontent, always searching for that manic feel that I had lost along the way. Then the train came up to the next stop.

The humid breeze somehow struck chills in my neck as it grazed my face when the doors from the El cracked open. One after the other, distinct new faces appeared inside the car in downtown Chicago. There was no A/C kicking, and it was damn hot.

As the doors were shutting, a blue arm stuck through the gap and caused the automatics to open back up. The blue-armed man was breathing hard while smoke from his last puff was still coming out of his nose as he walked inside, trying to suck in the suffocating air. Everyone paused for a second to acknowledge and give the young man the attention that he so disserved.

He was covered in blue – blue shoes, socks and spandex tights. His body was caked in royal blue paint. His blue nipples revealed the only evidence that he didn’t have a shirt on, and the paint was layered thick up his neck, on his face and over his frizzy hair. His dark eyes scanned all the people who tried not to stare as he dabbed drips of sweat off his forehead with his red handkerchief that he pulled out from his tights. He wasn’t shy in the otherwise hush car.

“Damn, it’s hot!" By his tone, it was obvious that he knew he was on a stage and was more than willing to play the main part. "No A/C in here? It is hot!”

He stood close to my seat in the crowded car, and his crotch was awkwardly leveled with my eyes.

“Damn paint gonna drip right off me," he said. "Sweat box gonna cost me some bills.”

The car we rode in was a sweatbox, all right. There were no open seats, and the blue man was the lone stander as the El moved down the tracks through the sweaty city. Everybody seemed hot and anxious and irritated.

The blue man's bulge was just inches from my face, but he didn't seem shy as he looked down at my blush.

“Hey how you doing man.”

“I’m hot.” I tried to turn my head to the side as best I could.

“Care if I sit down?”

I was sitting in a one-seater, but I'd be more comfortable if I'd squeeze beside the odd blue man. I slid over as far as I could and the man squished in beside me. His blue head lay beneath the cherry, the red ball emergency button, and the kid across the aisle, picking his nose with one hand, and rubbing melted ice cream stuck to his face with the other, probably thought that if he pushed the cherry, the blue man would say something.

“It’s been a long day,” he said. “Got up 7 in the A.M., went downtown and got paid a few hours.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

“Just stand. Sort of observe.”

“That’s all you do? You stand on the street and people give you money?”

“It’s a sad world man. Truth is, everybody’s the same. All blended. People do the same thing, look the same way. But if you blue, you stand out. People respond.” His lips beamed into a proud grin that could come off as cocky, and he chewed his gum with his mouth closed with a sort of ambition. “You become you, and there nobody else like it.”

“Why does that make people want to give you money?”

“Cause I place a bucket in front of me, that’s why. People are fools, man.” He leaned back in the seat, unbothered that his sticky skin was touching mine. He patted his forehead with his handkerchief and hummed with the rhythm of the El in motion for a minute or so before his loud voice awkwardly cracked open again.

“This is me, I’m blue. If you never let yourself be yourself, you’ll never know yourself. Know what I’m sayin?” He half laughed and then started to snap his gum impulsively.

The rest of the ride became quiet again. I wondered if I was the only one who felt the uncomfortable vibe that drifted in and through the car. The silence of the passengers and the faded din from the faraway engine continued its rhythm with the rollers on the tracks.

When the crackled intercom announcement interrupted the silence and said that we were approaching Grand, I woke up from an eye-open daze. The reverberation of the El had briefly hypnotize my thoughts, and I had just realized that I was thinking deep about what the blue man had so openly and clearly expressed.

As I stood up to exit, something clicked. Vigorous emotion of hope and reason became cloudless and coherent inside of my head. The blue man made so much sense! I thought I had an epiphany – I briefly thought that I finally had my life figured out. The blue man had saved me. "If you never let yourself be yourself, you'll never know yourself," I thought. I turned around before I stepped outside of the car and nodded goodbye to that lively blue man.

*

A few hours later I saw him standing tall, propped up on a crate with his hands to his sides. Posed like a soldier, stiff and mute, he stared high into nothing and no movement came from his slender blue body. He was not real; more like a cartoon character stuck in a TV set standing high in a society over human beings not sure how to respond to something so strange.

“Hey, remember me? From the El?” I yelled to get the man's attention and be heard over the clustered gathering.

He budged to consider my existence, and the bucket by the crate got heavier by the minute. I stared at him for a while before I realized that something was different about the blue man. I stepped forward to stuff a dollar bill into the bucket, and my body languished and became tired and ill.

Afterwards, I dragged my feet across the street to Rock Bottom Brewery with the burden of loneliness again weighted heavy on my shoulders. Before I stepped inside the brewery, I glanced back at the intrigued people gathered around that surreal blue man. Everybody was laughing while throwing money into his bucket.

Spectators mingled and took digital pictures of the only human being that could glow in the dark. My eyes became heavy when they focused on the blue man before I walked inside. His head was blue and bright and over all in sight, and his glassy eyes had dazed off and veered away. He was stoned and I was about to be too. When I think of him today, he is vivid in my mind. He is Blue Man Blues.