{20th Anniversary Edition} CON - Lumpen

LUMPEN
REmEmBER THIs
by Leslie Stella
I was sweating through my blazer, trying
to sound not ridiculous amid the fuselage
of the interviewer’s questions. He kept motioning
me to sit nearer the mic every time
I opened my mouth, which crooked my neck
at an unnatural angle. I began to strangle
on my own words. This is what it’s like to
be hung, I thought, this is what I’d look
like swinging from a gibbet—I’m the kind
of person who uses the word “gibbet”—and
I overtalked with this incredible pressure
against my larynx until I almost passed out
in a haze of get-me-high asphyxiation. The
radio host’s dazed expression signaled me
to stop.
It was Rick Kogan’s talk show, “The
Sunday Papers” on WGN Radio, about
a hundred years ago. My memory of it is
sketchy, but I do remember the sweating, the
incoherence, the blazer. My God, the blazer.
I might as well have just slapped a mustache
on my face.
“So when did Lumpen actually begin?”
Rick asked.
I answered in my robot voice, which
became my trademark and the reason radio
has never invited me to return. “In 1991. By
Chris and Ed. In Champaign. A result of
the Gulf War.”
“Really?” Poor Rick tried to extract
some kernel of interest from my verbal vomit,
digging through it like a bum in a Dumpster.
“Tell me about it.”
Robot. In the terror of public speaking,
I merely rearrange past sentences. “It
started in 1991. At U of I. It was just Chris
and Ed then. Lumpen was a reaction to the
Gulf War.”
He looked at me encouragingly.
Can you suffocate on your own stupidity?
“They were…against it.”
Some time later, I stumbled from the
studio into the hallway, where Chris waited
for me, looking as dazed as Rick Kogan.
“Don’t say anything,” I warned, striding
past him.
He tagged behind. “You should have
mentioned how the magazine began at U of I
in 1991, with just me and Ed.”
It was not a panic attack, not by a long
shot, but still I craved the fresh bus exhaust
in the air outside the studio. I gulped down
lungfuls. Chris caught up with me, clapped
me lightly on the shoulder.
“I like your blazer,” he said.
“Oh, blow me,” I replied wearily,
climbing into his 1989 Dodge Shadow.
We got back to the Lumpen House on
Armitage and Rockwell by noon and woke
up Ed. He lay pulsing like a larva in Little
Korea, our nickname for his bedroom, where
the furnace was located, where he turned the
thermostat up to 85, where he slept nude under
an extremely furry blanket printed with
a giant tiger’s face.
“Hey, man,” he said, feeling around
for his glasses. I never liked seeing Ed without
his glasses. It seemed to make him more
nude. “Oh no, did I sleep through the radio
thing? How’d it go?”
“Fantastic,” Chris lied.
“Awesome.” Ed held up his hand. I
tried to high-five him but missed.
He slithered out from under his blanket.
“Freezing in this hell-hole,” he muttered,
turning up the thermostat, which
would one day be broken in a fury by an enraged
Lumpen sick of the astronomical heating
bills. I took off my blazer, armpits ringed
with dried-on sweat, while Ed went to pee
without closing the bathroom door because
there was no bathroom door.
Chris chuckled. “Heh heh…you owe
me.” Well, there’s loyalty among Lumpens.
So I married him; two kinds of payback,
when you really think about it.
I was sweating through a T-shirt early
on in soccer season, watching my kids from
the sidelines with the other parents (nobody
says “soccer mom” anymore; we are all expected
to chip in and root on and attend
everything). Ninety degrees this first Saturday
of September. Both children run with
the packs but not close to the ball, avoiding
contact with others as much as possible,
which I admire. Luckily, the other team parents
are not screamers. They keep one eye on
the game while chatting or drinking steaming
coffee from paper cups. Once in a while I
hear a cheerful “Yay!” from across the field.
Two women near me are talking about
work. I hear them use a lot of office jargon.
Words like “reorg” and “touch base” and
“bandwith.” Instinctively, I want to move
away from this sound.
Today’s Snack Dad has flouted convention
by bringing Oreos instead of fruit for
the kids. He asks where Chris is this morning,
and I think of my husband, alone in our
house, and I feel a quiet stab of envy. Children
converge on us for a few short minutes,
gobbling up the mid-game Oreos amid the
pursed disapproval of the health moms. I notice
mine lagging as they return to the field,
casting plaintive looks over their shoulders at
me. I recognize those expressions that ask,
Is it time to go home yet? I lift my shoulders
slightly and say, “Soon,” but they are far
away and I do not know if they can hear me.
The Snack Dad and I talk about
our absent spouses. He knows Chris, but
couldn’t really know him, since he doesn’t
know Lumpen. He asks where Chris and I
originally met.
“We used to work at a magazine together
in the city,” I say. “A long time ago.”
I hear this question a lot. But not once
in my suburban career has anyone gone on
to ask what the name of the magazine was,
or what it was about. Just as well, because
how could I describe Lumpen to an outsider,
to a non-Lumpen? How could I mention the
articles on flying saucers and corporate voodoo
and political discord without describing,
in excruciating detail, the Lumpen House,
the benefits thrown at the Empty Bottle, the
Lumpen Circus, the nude run through the
Coyote Art Fair, our own political faction
(the Boring Theoretical Party), and all of the
Lumpens themselves? How wonderful it was
all those years ago to never hear office jargon;
but how discouraging to be paid in scones.
I used to hear different questions from
people who knew us back then, people who
asked, “Whatever happened to Lumpen?”
and “Is it still around?” and “Why did you
leave?” And I don’t have neat answers to
those questions, so I am glad I am only asked
by my friends and not grilled about it on live
radio.
But I remember this: long nights doing
layout with Ed and Chris and longer
conversations on the roof of the Lumpen
House, from where the neighbor’s dog leapt
to his death one day. In the midst of all the
controversies and craziness, Lumpen was our
cause, a calling, a drive; that message, those
words, with those people. It both ended and
continued, friendships ended and continued,
and messages grew beyond the 72 pages of
our family magazine, taking on a vibrant life
of their own.
I love Ed and Chris, and I love
Lumpen. It was a comet, a blaze of light in
the night sky over Armitage and Rockwell. I
remember this.
Mercifully, soccer ends and we three
trudge happily back to the car, heading for
home and then—who knows? The day is open
before us, wide and limitless.
Leslie Stella is the author of three novels. Her
fourth novel, a young adult title, will be published
by Marshall Cavendish in 2013. Please
visit facebook/leslie-stella.
BACK IN THE DAY
by Steve Eckardt
So, yeah, hats off to Lumpen for still being
here 20 years on — and even more to you, a
priceless reader no matter when you came
in.
Now settle round the fire, people,
the esteemed editor wants a little about
Lumpen’s early days. So here’s a story or two.
THEm
It’s been 17 years since I first walked into
Lumpen HQ, just back from covering the
Zapatista uprising in Mexico, me clutching
photos of peasants machine-gunned by the
federales –damning exposé shots photos no
major publisher would run (except for one
sweet spread in Paris Match).
Me: I was doing periodic freelance journalism,
drawn to the hot spots even as I was
raising two little daughters and working as a
CTA rail mechanic.
Them – the Lumpen people—they were
all over the place, HQ humming. Tats and
weird hair, but no BO (ok, almost).
Me already a little grizzled—and a stone
Red—and them open-minded.
But all of us with a determination to
publish—in bloody print, mind you—to get
stuff out. Truth for most of us. Art for some
others.
Of course some of the original
crew are in suburbia now. This is what
America does to rebel-minded people...
though it’s also got the bullet for for the
real revos (think Malcolm X, MLK,
George Jackson, and Fred Hampton).
ANCIENT TImEs
So let’s go back almost twenty years,
back to the old days, back when everything
were so different. It was like this:
Back then we’d just gotten rid of a President
named Bush and had a supposedlypromising
Democrat –called by many “the
first Black president”– in office.
Of course he set about doing shit Bush
could never get away with like ending welfare
and attacking social security. Plus launching
a couple new wars: “sanctions” and a “no
fly zone” against Iraq that killed more than
400,000 Iraqis (most of them children) and
bombing Yugoslavia –just to protect national
security, bring freedom and save lives, mind
you.
Speculators who’d gamed the savingsand-loan
banking system were given trillions
of public money to cover their losses.
4 5
Credit collapses (then California’s Orange
County municipal bonds) threatened
the world financial system.
The dispossessed toppled the old order
in an oil-rich country (Mexico, then), standing
firm despite being massacred,
Republicans frothed, tied up Congress,
and demanded massive tax-cuts and subsidies
for the America’s wealthy job-creators
– the “first Black president” capitulating to
them, and driving through draconian cuts on
poor and working people. (Hey, he was just
looking out for the good of the country, it was
out of money back then,)
Nonetheless opposing the merciless record
of the Dem who replaced Bush was considered
aiding and abetting the Republican
monsters.
A speculative bubble had grown, and
people were worried that a loan default or a
bankruptcy might bring down the world financial
system.
Have-not countries were being squeezed
by lenders to gut their social services and to
surrender their resources to foreign privatizers.
Yeah, that’s the way it was way back
then, back in the day.
Hard to imagine things being like that,
right?
Steve Eckardt is a CTA railcar mechanic.
Archives of his writing—and much more—
are at SeeingRed.com—though he says go to
TheMilitant.com instead. Write to him at
Seckardt@aol.com.
WHO Is ADmIRAL PIP?
by Admiral Pip
During the Lumpen salad years of the mid-
90s, it seemed as if everyone used a pseudonym.
I was an intern at In These Times,
trying to get my first article published. Jim
McNeil was the managing editor at the
time and several people involved with the
Baffler were on staff. I tried my best but
wasn’t much of a writer yet. I had just returned
to Chicago after 4 years in Brazil
teaching English and living in various ghettos
on a couple hundred bucks a month.
McNeil kept rejecting my articles, kindly
pointing out that In These Times was basically
an American news magazine. In rejecting
one short piece about a multi-million
dollar fraud he said, “doesn’t this kind of
thing happen all the time down there?”
When I finally managed to publish my first
article, based on an email conversation with
Linus Torvalds, copy editor George Hodak
changed every single sentence. One morning
I was sitting in the break room drinking
coffee when Hodak wandered in. “I’ve
been reading your stuff,” he said, “and
I was thinking. Why don’t you send it to
Lumpen. Ed Marsewski used to be an intern
here too.”
I had an old article lying around that
I wrote when I was living in Brazil during
the pre-email days about spending an afternoon
drinking with the notorious train robber
and ersatz Sex Pistols vocalist Ronald
Biggs. Ed was wildly enthusiastic about it.
I later learned that Ed is just a wildly enthusiastic
guy in general but at the time it made
me feel special. The enthusiasm was contagious.
I quickly wrote an article about going
out to the West Side with a friend who was
scoring heroin. It was a spatial analysis of a
large, nomadic street pharmacy with dozens
of employees. Nobody at Lumpen was using
their real name. There was Charmain
Thar, Chairman Pharr, Molnar, Che Maraschino,
Leslie Stella. I decided that I might
as well join the crowd. I was in a bedroom
space band called Edible Sea Worm, named
after a kind of food gathered only by women
during full moons in Indonesia. It made a
nice name. After a few articles I shortened
it to E.S. Worm. As the Easy Listening
lifestyle began to take off I changed it to Ian
Al-Sabbah, combining Ian Fleming with a
15th Century hashish assassin. Throughout
this period I would also occasionally submit
things with no byline whatsoever. I believed
in the Lumpen counter-hegemony project
and liked being an anonymous contributor
to the team. Sometimes I would use my real
name. I would do this if it was something I
was particularly proud of, like my article on
Daley’s CTA cuts, or if it was something
criticizing the CIA or FBI so as not to be
accused of being a chicken.
In 1999 I had a falling out with Ed. I
disappeared to a city called São Luis on an
island off of the coast of Northeastern Brazil
where I tried to lead a normal life drinking
and womanizing like the rest of the natives.
In 2002 Liz Armstrong wrote me to say
that she was taking over as Lumpen editor.
She asked me to write something and suggested
that I bury the hatchet with Ed. It
was an offer I couldn’t refuse, mainly because
of the compromising secret dossier that Liz
had been guarding on me all along (“I’ll put
your balls in a vice so fast it will make your
head spin,” was the phrase that she used at
the time). I was down on my luck and fed up
with my life. Liz’s email was a godsend. I
asked her for help creating a new penname. I
wanted it to be something vaguely decadent,
a gringo on the lam. I remembered the legendary
1920s circus dwarf Admiral Pip and
Liz added the title “Lord Sir”. She said,
“you are such a weirdo you should just write
about anything that you are doing at that
moment,” and I was off.
Having a good pseudonym gives you
the flexibility of not having to always tell the
truth. With a pseudonym you can exaggerate
and get a better laugh without having to
worry about being cross-examined by a bitter
Oprah or a bloated Rosie O’Donnell about
facts. Over the past 8 years, being Admiral
Pip has brought me great joy. Despite not
living there for years, I still miss Chicago
like crazy and feel like every Pip article is a
love letter to my hometown. Lately, however,
something strange has happened. As my
first and second marriages fell apart due to
my own philandering and general naughty
behavior, my inner sense of being began to
fade as Pip began to occupy an ever larger
section of my brain, my heart, my ego and
my… As the years went by, longer and more
detached from Chicago, I forgot how to
speak English. The last time I was up there
I was accused of being Croatian. For some
reason, the nautical preppie look began to appeal
to me. I began to shrink in stature and
develop a penchant for wearing overcoats.
My nose gradually shifted from bone to fur
to plastic. I bought a boat and moved to Gloria
Marina in Rio de Janeiro, running dope
for the Italians with trained dolphin. I hired
a team of Amazonian she-males for security
purposes. I have learned how to play the
Cuica and practice obscure rituals to weaken
the spirits of my enemies. I drink my morning
coffee from a human skull. I have become
surly and mean tempered and I have turned
into Admiral Pip!