Joe Stays Sober: The Cellar.

Live from the Uptown Regal Theater: My Life with Madam

By Joseph LeSanche

During the lockdown, I decided to write daily short stories for my sober group on Facebook. They were micro-fictional accounts surrounding the life and times of my sober great Aunt, Madam Eleanor L’Ouvier (Loov-e-ay). In life, my great-aunt looked, sounded, and behaved much like Auntie Mame, as portrayed by Rosalind Russell in the 1957 movie classic. In my stories, Madam Eleanor L’Ouvier owned and operated an ornate movie theater in the Uptown neighborhood on Chicago’s northside. Together, with a cast of characters that included the notorious Lawrence Avenue hookers, she and I told stories, held AA meetings, and had fun breaking the isolated tedium of the pandemic lockdown from the stage of this 1927 Vaudvillian venue. This story appeared in May of 2021

“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, in and out of the dead man’s mouth…” Eleanor sang as she walked to the center of the stage at the Uptown Regal Theater.

Wearing a brilliant, white sequin empress gown with her signature beehive-do bleached snow white and blinking eyeballs under lids brushed cumulous-white with eyeshadow, she sauntered to her seat resembling one of the infamous Lawrence Avenue hookers or at least someone who tripped on her shoelace and fell into a bleach holding vat at the…