The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 1996. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

(While narrator is reading story, a woman is also on stage, translating into sign language.) I am transfixed every time she does it, which is about three or four times now. In the middle of other activities, the woman reaches up and runs her hands across her chest (duplicates action), pushing them against her sternum, displacing her breasts just so slightly by the movement. There is a sensuality there that I find impossible to ignore.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I am currently sitting in a dark Wicker Park bar, watching my first ever signing of an open mike night. It has already been a night of surprises. I was brought here originally because my friend John described it to me as'the meat market of poetry readings,' which is kind of like saying'the meat market of science fiction conventions,' but I decide to go anyway. Surprise number one -- everyone is hot. I'm like an alcoholic in a liquor store -- I don't even know who to flirt with, there are so many attractive people here. The girls are hot. The boys are hot. The entire bar staff is hot, for God's sake -- and they're all poets, too!

Surprise number two is that this girl has shown up that I once got drunk with and tried to hit on. She read a poem about how guys get drunk and...try to hit on her, which, I suppose, technically, is surprise number three, but really, it's no surprise, when you stop and think about it.

The next surprise is when one of the art school dropouts jumps up on stage and starts signing with the poets. I am not used to this, because usually when someone is translating an event, they have on one of those all-black mime-like outfits and they go stand in the corner when they're not needed, like an exile, or a leper.

She makes these weird faces when she signs, like I always see signers do, gross exaggerations of emotion, like a clown, big wide smiles and deep dark frowns. I wonder to myself if this is a rule they teach in sign language school, or if the fact that you are literally communicating with your body just unconsciously makes you add your face to the communication.

The biggest surprise, however, is the aforementioned sensuality of the signing itself, something that I don't think I've ever noticed before in signing, except maybe if you count watching Children of a Lesser God, which I don't count, because I think that I was more occupied with the fact that I wanted to have sex with Marlee Matlin than I was with the sexiness inherent in the signing itself.

The thing is...(long pause). The thing is, I figure out, is that signers can't literally translate word-for-word -- they'd be up there all night. So every gesture, every body movement, has to contain the maximum amount of narrative and emotional content possible, for greatest communication. Not like me, who can (starts swinging hands more and more in the next two sentences) swing my hands in the air while I'm ranting and trying to make a point, never having to worry if my hands are saying anything, because I can just blather on and on and on, until my point is made. Or, until someone pops me in the mouth. But that's another story.

So, while a poet is busy taking up three lines of type trying to describe a beautiful person, she simply (spreads legs apart and runs hands down them, describing curves in the figure as he goes). Or when a woman is painstakingly retelling the glory of finally kicking her misogynistic, abusive, little-dicked boyfriend out of her apartment, she beautifully sums it up with a sign even I can understand...(slams foot on the ground, scrunches up face, and flips off the audience).

And, of course, in matters of the heart, (rubbing chest) she executes the chest rub that I am falling in love with. Literally, I think I am falling in love with her as I watch her sign. Well, okay, maybe not her, but I'm falling in love with this expressive, emotional, intense language that I always knew existed, but never really just...stopped and examined before.

There really weren't that many more surprises that night -- the host kept saying things like 'Don't forget to tip your waitresses, comrades' and this guy had a whole series of poems about how prostitutes keep falling in love with him, and really, (murmuring) well, really...you can't have an open mike night without...you know...at least one of those guys. This is the same guy, incidentally, who actually found a way to use the word 'peckerbending' in a poem, which is actually quite impressive in a...well, a...(looks up into the air) well. And when my friend John, who is also finishing up his novel, got up to read, a new episode of 'Rocky and Bullwinkle' starts up on the TV behind him, and the title of the episode is 'Bullwinkle Sells Out,' which makes me just stop and ponder the implications for about twenty minutes.

They even have a live drummer, who on request -- (points at drummer, who starts playing a soft funk beat):

(Reads in a 'performing poet' rhythm and meter)
will play a pulsing, pounding rhythm
to go along with the poets
who read their lines with this
lilt and drop
lilt and drop
that slowly, quietly, peacefully
puts me to sleep

(Points at the drummer again, who stops playing.) I mean, why do poets read like that? Poets everywhere? Was there some seminar or something I missed in college?

I once got drunk at this bar at State and Division and there were these two deaf guys and man, were they trashed. They kept signing to each other, but they were slurring their sign language and they couldn't understand each other. Then they got in a fight and they kept (demonstrating) pushing the other guy and signing, and pushing the other guy and signing, at the same time. Watching this woman do her (hands down legs) and her (rubs chest) makes me wonder for the first time what it must be like when two deaf people talk dirty to each other.

I am desperate this week to learn a sentence in sign -- any sentence -- to end this with. I am fascinated with the idea of ending my story with a sentence that she and she alone will understand. But, I can't find a single person all week who knows sign language, and as I rack my brain to see if I can remember anything from that Sign Language merit badge I got when I was twelve, they only sign I can come up with is (puts one arm over the other like holding a baby, and rocks the arms back and forth), which may or may not be 'baby,' but that's too easy to guess, and besides, I don't want to sign something that may be construed by her as (in a smarmy voice) "Hey, baby."

Instead, I'm going to ask the woman to end the story for me, by signing a sentence, a sentence of her own, an unspoken sentence, that will be a direct message for me. I hope for it to convey a sense of what it must be like for a deaf person to stumble upon a juicy, intense spoken conversation and not be able to tell what the hell's being said. Maybe it would be good for us hearing people to be left in the dark for once. And this is the sentence -- (woman turns to narrator and signs an extemporaneous sentence).