The diner is quiet. I shift the position of my knees and stare at the greasy rings the milk had left floating on my coffee. I has thought to write you since midday, and planned to do so upon arriving home but lost motivation as dinner rice boiled. Cigarettes on the porch did not give retorts as they once did, although I imagined coffee might, and so I aborted the stove for the twelve-block walk. I might not be able to get everything out in one sitting but there’s the din of the waiters slamming down plates and silverware, of the other late diners calling out for more of something, and this seems to help some.
(Because you wanted something-)
I’m not that cool. Intolerably lonely at times, I make excuses to go to bed early, to allow my comforter consume me in the dark. Lying there for days, it seems, I think of you.
Hopefully you catch it, the hazy blue before the storm, grey dust beneath the rug, me, because I’m so tired of splaying my limbs across the pavement in the middle of the road, waiting for you to notice.
Water kicks into my ribs and there’s laughing somewhere distant. At this point I am recalling memories - kickball, the burning house, dad in San Diego. Synapses flitting off what feels like my tongue, but I’m not sure if I’m speaking when the overcast blue sinks over.
I’m still alive. Twice I’ve nearly drowned, and water continues to fascinate me as something surreal. I will never understand the full significance of bass nests in the shallow gravel or minnows, trapped in cages Eric forgot about. I’m nostalgic for it all, especially the winters. The swans couldn’t fly so mom nestled them in our gazebos, tossing the hay and checking the insulation three times a day. The lake froze over, seemingly thicker as the years passed, and the cherry tree died. When we moved away and gave the paddle boat to our aunt for her lake house I was a nervous wreck.
When you become love inclined, realize that more is less. Keep your intrigue and never believe a broken thing is attractive. Heal yourself first - plant a new cherry tree and lay the swans to rest. Hold their pictures in your heavy head as significant, as comfort when you need it. Do not repeat their stories out of respect for them if nothing else.
I have heard that when you are young you see things adults do not. I never came out of that. I still find the girl on the dock, skipping stones, when I am drinking wine on my porch at eleven o’clock. There is a considerable someone, and the reality is I cannot speak of the situation, other than that it has me plucking water lotus from the breaks in city concrete. I am comfortable, even when I am not so certain of the desired outcome. The comfort, like the insulation on the gazebos, is enough for now.
Getting off my Friday night shift at the bar, three a.m. brings me a phone call from an estranged ex lover. Prior to the call, I hadn’t known he was back in Chicago, much less in a neighboring area. My soft spot for him is evident as I hang up and drive to meet him outside Flat Iron, the bar we went to on our first date. Valentine’s Day, we were both lonely and agreed to celebrate solitude by drinking together after meeting the night before. We stayed until four and my car got towed. It cost $37 for a cab to the tow yard and another $250 to bail it out. What foreshadowing life affords; he left as quickly as he came, roughly six weeks later.
He’s drunk as he stumbles into the middle of the street toward my car.
“Coooome in. I just won pool. With. My new friendsssss. Meet them, babe.”
Please get in the fucking car. I used to think this was cute, his irresponsibility in a drunken stupor, because it is only then he lets his guard down. He’s been beautiful and enigmatic since I first set hazy sight on him. For months I went to battle, trying to wear him down into loving me. He never did.
He closes the door and I pull away from the curb. He’s in hysterics, speaking in broken sentences. I tell him I have work in the morning, and then about his friend who attempted courtship with me. He seems baffled momentarily before asking which friend, again?
When we get in bed I scream at him to turn down the mariachi music because my upstairs neighbors are sleeping. It is at least four. I lock him out of the bedroom and change into pajamas. I open the door and he crawls into my bed as I warn him not to touch me - let’s just sleep. He is confident and handsome and of course does not listen. I hardly object.
In the morning I scream at him to wake up. I’ve already showered and wrapped myself in spring clothes - a navy dress in floral print. He argues in half-sleep, tells me to stop screaming and rolls over. Ten minutes pass. I pace in the kitchen and reflect on the night he yelled at me several weeks before. Threaded neatly, we were able to skip the line at The Mid. Once we got inside he somehow lost his friends and believed it to be my fault. At that time I still saw him as the one I wanted, needed even, and responded to his lecture with baby-this, baby-that. An argument ensued, and it was only when he screamed to leave him alone that the bouncer came over and I walked out of the club. I wanted to cry in the car, but I didn’t have the heart.
That memory is not a good one to have on my mind as I kick at him, waking him up for the final time. He says he does not remember last night.
As we walk through the front gate I think I see someone I know drive past the house. The lingering look through the windshield tells me someone has finally figured me out.
I leave him on the street corner near the flat where he stays when he’s in town.
Later, he asks if I like him.
I suggest we have a conversation - sober - and take a walk to the beach.
He complains we would have to talk about real things. I decide immediately what I deserve, and he does not talk to me again.
My grandmother and I take a drive. She complains of pills, lots of them, and there’s an echo of something my father said - you can tell a lot about a society by how it treats its elderly.
She wants to see her family home with the brick she’d picked out at the stoneyard fifty years ago. Still standing and still the most beautiful flat on the street, I say,
“It’s lovely.”
When I was telling my mother this she commented on the way of living in the past. My grandmother had grown to see the time as pleasant, though things were not necessarily better then. Her husband - my grandfather - left her and their four sons. As the pink sandstone fades in the rearview, she sighs.
“It was our family home.”
It is one of those defining moments you are able to recognize as you grow older. That there was a life before you, and your existence is both a byproduct and sponge of the love, divorce and illness that came of it.
On Sunday morning I bike two miles to Trinity on Halsted in Lincoln Park. I’d been there the night prior and an advertisement for a bloody mary special caught my eye. I vowed to return, and whether I am going alone doesn’t matter. I just need to get out of the house.
Sweaty with a flower in my hair, I make friends with three attractive men waiting for brunch at the window table. The windows are wide open and the breeze feels good on my face, so I look up momentarily from checking my email to catch the one I’d soon learn was Mark looking at me. When he sees this, he shifts his eyes up to the horse race on the flat screen behind me. I sip my bloody mary, wondering if he is intrigued or repulsed. Probably a little bit of both.
“How’s that bloody mary?”
“It’s good.”
The three of them order a round, and their food arrives. It is that awkward point in the conversation in which none of us know whether to continue the conversation or go back to our respective tasks - i.e. them enjoying egg white omelets and me reading my daily horoscope via smartphone. We do a little bit of both, and I stay for another bloody mary to converse with them further. During the conversation, they tell me of a “goth club” they frequent with a $5 cover and regulars who wear tinfoil in their hair.
“We go there ironically.” Alex says. I picture the three of them in khakis and polos on the second floor of a candlelit red and black room, perhaps topless and pierced women grinding against them. The thought makes me laugh, and the three of them look at me quizzically and in unison.
I sneak in a hint of the bar where I work and what days I work there. Quiet plugs, these tactics. A piece of advice is always leave them wanting more, professionally or personally.
I announce my departure once I finish the last pickle in the pint glass. My left eye waters a little, and I wonder if they notice as I am walking out. I unlock the red beach cruiser, a gift from a friend who moved out of the state. I ride north on Halsted and west on Diversey. An acquaintance on his motorcycle pulls next to me at a light. He smirks and asks if I want to race before turning into the gas station parking lot. A black guy on a roadster pulls up next to me and comments,
“I like your toenails.”
He is still riding behind me when I get to my block so I go to the grocery store for asparagus. How quaint all of this is.
It was so cold I could feel the pavement burning through my shoes. Ladies of the city, we were, stepping smoothly through alleyways and dimly lit side streets. Stoned and on the hunt for cheap margaritas, we were celebrating a birthday. By the time we got to the bar and were seated on the third floor, I was like something sick, sinking into the vinyl booth, wanting to exist completely or not at all.
Waterfall. Never have I ever. Make a rule. Thumbs down. No swearing, no name calling. Samantha, pick a date…
How gorgeous we must have looked, spun in gold material and purple eyes, daring anyone to take a look. I walked twelve blocks home, drunk and happy as hell, because the rest of them went to an elusive gay bar in Boystown. I am responsible. The day job, I insist.
Despite the bomb threats and anarchist protests over the last weekend, Chicago has never felt more like home. It’s time to make a decision - I need to love it or leave it.
I just hope the giant spider in the bathroom doesn’t kill me in my sleep.
