You Hate Gutter Punks: Here’s My Reason to Love Them.
Gutter punks are not steampunks are not burners.
We’ve all begged, borrowed or stolen.
For some value of those terms.
We’ve all been guilty: stolen time from jobs fucking around on FB, borrowed pens, begged for attention… humiliated ourselves begging to belong.
Chicago in the summer and fall is a hub for gutter punks who get immediately derided on local forums. Reddit’s r/chicago, Nextdoor Chicago and neighborhood Facebook groups explode with photos of these kids on expensive cell phones. Eye roll emojis abound.
But when I saw them, I got it.
I’ve never been goth, or punk, or nerd, or geek or or or… felt accepted by any subculture. Even in the storytelling world, I… am an outlier, not fully comfortable in my own skin. But when they see me. These dropouts see into me.
After exiting college I found myself barely surviving with two full time jobs in New Orleans. Staring at the Mississippi River I was approached by two, dirty toothed boys. They both wore calculated ripped up, black T-shirts in a way that felt natural. After asking me for a cigarette I didn’t have, they changed tactics. Asked me to jump a freight train with them. “Tomorrow, just leave everything behind.”
Whispered while sweeping a hand over the River’s horizon, “Listen to the Goddess Nike, and just do it.”
I was broke. I wanted to. But not broke enough to be free.
I have a vagabond’s heart. I feel a kinship, I’ve been homeless, but it is fundamentally different than what gutter punks do and are. I told myself, “I’m gutter punk adjacent.”
Gutter Punk is Self-Descriptive.
From my experience, not a monolith but… they are the 18–30 year olds you see with smiling faces. They have a street urchin uniform. They aren’t your typical homeless, they have a different vibe. They’ve read Foucault and Rushdie. Often run with a dog and congregate in small packs. They usually look a little athletic. You occasionally see glossy photos of them in collections of Getty Images titled, “How the other half lives.”
There’s an acute existential dread which hits gutter punks.
A kind of dissonance, an acknowledgement they just can’t square within themselves. They aren’t okay with a hypocrisy most of us take for granted. The only way to exist in this capitalist society is to be exploitive.
Not being able to square it, they make a choice, an active choice, to just BE FREE. Try something else. I can’t do their intellectual arguments justice! You see them in the summer and maybe you think they have rich parents. But what I want you to know is… they are authentic.
I wanted to be swept away by a boxcar. Let the roots grow out of my dirty, dyed blue hair. Those boys jumped the train but I… didn’t belong.
A few years later, I find myself in Chicago.
Sitting on the Wicker Park sidewalk east of Damen Avenue, just laughing and telling stories late into the night with four new gutter punk fast friends.
Johnny is the youngest, skinny, short hair with a longer frock that might turn into a mohawk someday. He’s got thin dexterous fingers, grimy nails, and a handsome smile. The girl’s name is Sarah, she’s got these chubby cheeks so when she smiles her single dimple is accentuated. There’s a quiet sleepy looking kid in faded khaki overalls. They call him Big Man.
The fourth guy is leaving because, “Alright, Sarah, if you sneak me $50 out of your magic pouch, I’ll figure out how to procure the rest and I’ll get your dog out of the pound.”
The leather pouch is produced as if through sleight of hand. She sneaks out a fifty dollar bill and then the pouch is gone.
He frowns, “Stay here.” Leaves with, “I’ll be back,” determination.
This is My Cue to Leave, Right?
But Sarah touches my hand and quotes Taylor Swift, “All you had to do was stay.”
Minutes later appears this younger than us, gay man — more a boy. Thin kid muscles exposed by his tight white t-shirt and the cold fall breeze. He’s channeling early aughts energy with his frosted tips, swooshed forward and then straight up. Bouncing the balls of his feet on the curb, he turns to us and says, “FUCK ALL THE HATERS. You’re FABULOUS AND FIERCE!”
Johnny gives a smug smile, they catch each other’s eyes.
This new dude says his name is Perry. Then he immediately, full open mouth to the heavens, screams, “COCAINE!” And runs West down Chicago Avenue, arms and legs flailing. The four of us are cracking up.
But also… the mood shifts. Johnny and Sarah… I wonder if they are friends with benefits. Because their ears perk and they give each other an eye. I don’t recognize the meaning. Do they want to kiss? Kiss him?
The moment passes and we spend a half hour teaching each other card tricks. Cackling with passers by — and I am feeling free. For now, I belong.
In the Bible there’s a parable about the prodigal son.
They kill the fatted calf when he returns. They welcome him back.
That’s how gutter punks treat me. They welcome me back. Only, unlike the parable, I’m not only guilty of copping out on this lifestyle in the past, I know I’m going to be guilty of abandoning them again. I don’t want to. I am uncomfortable with how comfortable capitalism has left me. I want to sit on corners and tell stories of street life for pocket change. Nourish my soul by being so poor I’m hungry. Rid myself of the guilt of meager success.
Thirty minutes later, Perry is back. “Wait a second, are you homeless?”
I start to raise my hand to tell him I’m not, but Sarah, stops me. She answers for all of us, “Kinda. Yeah.”
“You can’t sleep out here.”
Big Man assures the frost tipped young man, they have slept under Chicago stars, and will again.
“Well, not on my watch! Tonight, I’m triple U druuunk, so you should come with me. Cocaine!” He puts his right hand on his hip and points West, “I only live like a block away.”
Sarah, Johnny, and Big Man are following Perry. He’s a homosexual COCAINE-screaming pied piper. I figure okay, this is it… but Sarah runs back, takes me by the hand and says, “Your adventure doesn’t end here, this is where it starts.”
And I don’t know if it’s been clear to you, but that’s what I’ve been begging for. It’s like… I don’t… I’m a pretty independent person, I’ve wanted to belong… but when I see these kids, I just, I feel like I get it. And I am them and they are me, and if only they got to know me, they’d get it. And it was just this gift… it’s what I needed to hear. Repeated. Forever. Needed them to remind me when I forget.
So we are walking West and have past Damen so I’m like, “Perry, where the fuck do you live?”
“I told you, a block away. I live on Western.”
Western is Six Blocks Away.
I can tell Perry doesn’t live on Western.
But he screams the word cocaine again and now Johnny is 1000% in. So Perry hands Johnny his phone. “You should call my drug dealer.”
“Is it labeled correctly? Can I search, hashtag drug dealer?” Johnny asks.
Sarah steals the phone and starts scrolling through names trying to jog Perry’s memory. “Becca? David? Mark Goofy Hat?”
Big Man is asking us to slow down.
Perry says Mark Goofy Hat isn’t his drug dealer but is sooo sexy you could just die. Stops under the yellow moon, looks at Johnny, says, “Just like you.” Touches his nose, “Boop.”
Then Perry steals the phone back to call Mark and tell him he’s sexy and irresistible and they should totally get back together. All while Sarah is saying, “It’s 2 AM the only person you should be harassing is your drug dealer, but hey MARK, CALL US BACK AND TELL US WHO THIS DUDE’S Drug dealer is.”
Most people sober up over time.
As we walk Perry just keeps getting drunker.
We are carrying him. He lives 8 blocks past Western. Once in his house he has 2 minutes of zoomies trying to cajole Johnny to snuggle-time before he passes out: alone on his giant leopard print waterbed.
Sarah Shut his Bedroom Door.
The two boys start snooping around his apartment, looking for things to steal.
I cop a dad voice, “He’s letting us stay in his apartment, we should not steal his shit.”
Johnny disagrees. “You’re a boy scout, Dan. So I get where you’re coming from, but look.” He cocks his eyebrow. “If we don’t steal from him, what kind of message are we sending? That it’s okay to invite 4 strangers into his apartment in the middle of the night. When he’s black out drunk? Do you want to be responsible for the horrible-horrible-horrible which happens, the next time he pulls a stunt like this? Because if he has a good experience once, he’s definitely doing this again.”
Big Man laughs, “They won’t really take anything, and I’m just looking for food. Which obviously, if he’s offering us a place to stay, he expects us to eat.”
The whole time, Johnny keeps calling people on Perry’s phone.
Sarah giving up on that gambit, sneaks back into Perry’s room. Shakes him but he doesn’t wake up. So when Sarah gets back, sure that Perry is dead asleep, she instructs Big Man to pull a giant framed photo of a train off the wall.
The train was crossing a metal bridge.
The perspective such that it was about to blast out of the photo and whiz through our heads.
Big Man set it on a coffee table. Then Sarah pulled some powder out of her secret pouch. It was not white. Spreads the sepia tone dust and clumps over the black and white, smokey engine barreling towards us.
“Wait, you had coke this whole time, why were you holding out on him?” I don’t understand.
“He’s a fucking douchebag,” she says.
Big Man tells me, “It’s not coke.”
“Wait, what?”
I look at Johnny and he is apologetic. “Yeah, do you want us to not do it in front of you?”
Sarah sounds so tired, “It’s heroin. It’s okay though, I’m not addicted, I just like how it feels.”
“I’m not a heroin expert, but I don’t think that’s how it works, how many times have you done it?”
“I never shoot it. Just snort or smoke it.” She brushes a curl out of her face as she prepares a straw.
“Okay, but… I just want to point out, you aren’t sharing with Perry, and the second he’s passed out you pull the nearest flat, glass object off the wall to snort a line. That — seems like a jonesing kind of behavior. It’s fucking 3 AM. You’re not even going to be high enough to stay awake.”
She passes the straw to Johnny. “You’ve got a point. But I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve got a dog… if you can take care of a dog, I don’t think you really have a problem. You couldn’t take care of a dog, and be a drug addict.”
I… hung out for a little while longer. But within 30 minutes all three of them were spaced out… so I said goodbye.
“It’s okay, I forgive you,” Sarah whispers. Her single dimple smile and closed eyes hold my imagination as I slip out the door.
Standing on the El Train’s platform I contemplate what she meant by, “I forgive you…” Blanket forgiveness. Unconditional. It gave me permission to be me. To fail. To occasionally thwart adventure by ending stories early. Permission to give up my longing to be more than gutter punk adjacent.
Forgiveness for participating in an unfair world.
Forgiveness as universal gift.
Thank you for reading My Reason to Love Gutter Punks.
I’ve been producing Live Lit Shows in Chicago for over 11 years. This story was originally performed for a theater audience in 2021 for Soul Stories Live. It has been reworked for Medium.
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