Then, and now

This has been stewing in my brain for a while. A few months, really, since I started school and really got absorbed back into Chicago.

This time it's different. I've started to distinguish my Chicago lives as in Single Chicago and Married Chicago, and while that's not necessarily always the best descriptor, it is mostly apt. There was an excitement, an unpredictability, a wildness to Single Chicago. I was discovering everything for the first time. I don't know if I expected to pick up where I left off by moving back.

I'm seeing a whole new part of the city now. A part that feels old and settled, and not so flighty. More real. For one, I live further in the city than I used to. School takes me to an area I've never been, as well as my internship on the south side, and my school tutoring, on the west side. These areas and existences are so far removed from the (it seems like, now) priviledged life I used to have.

Sometimes I miss the constant rapture, the moments where I absolutely lose my breath over the fact that I live in Chicago. It feels more solid in my bones. Not something I even think about anymore.

And I think about what I used to love about the city, and most of it revolved around a life I don't have anymore. One that I can't afford to have anymore. It gives me a different perspective, not having money to do the things I used to. But really, I used to have the money to do whatever I wanted, and now I just have the money to do what I need to do.

I don't think Married is any better than Single, or vice versa. Just different.

Chicago

What a day.

I don't know if I can even say that with much emphasis, because lately, every day has been one of those days. I came to the realization today, though, that I am not well suited for the job I have. It's just not in my nature to be aggressive and assertive, which the job really demands in order to do it effectively. And I hate thinking I'm bad across the board, when I know there are parts of my job that I really excel at.

So I was thinking about my future. Thinking about the possibility of returning to Chicago instead of sticking it out here and doing my graduate work through an extension program. And I came up with a selling point: Loyola has a really great clinical program, meaning I'd get a lot of experience in counseling, and then maybe I wouldn't have to work in a shelter again.

I also had an odd experience with a co-worker that made me think, "what era do we live in again?" I can't and won't make a blanket statement about how backwards the South is, but one co-worker sure is.

So I had these anecdotes as ammunition for talking to Tim tonight. "I'm not trying to pressure you, but I just have a few more reasons why Chicago would be a good next move . . ."

I didn't have a chance to tell him before he said, ". . . I've been thinking about animals in the zoo. How they're raised there, and if you take them out of the zoo, they don't thrive. That their habitat has become the zoo. I think maybe the Ellie habitat is hard wood floors, elevated trains, and tall buildings . . ."

And so we talked seriously about Chicago--what we need to do to prepare, how we would survive there on a grad student's loans and a new actor's sparse salary. Where we would live. Where we'd work. How we might have to base our lives out of his mom's basement for a month or two--a definite time limit there--to save up some money. How we'd bike to work and school to save on train fare and gas money.

Later, when I thanked him for the talk, I said, "It's good to at least talk about. I'll try not to focus on it too much and think it's a done deal" (because I have a tendancy to assume that when we talk about things, that means we decide to do them.)

And he said, "Well . . . isn't that what it sort of seems like it is?"

Busses

Today I went to a training seminar for area resources. One of the sections was about the local transit system. Fifteen bus routes that don't even cover half the city, and end by 8 p.m. You definitely need a car to get around this city. I'd never even try to plan a trip on a bus; it'd be a major undertaking.

Discussing the bus system gave me a sudden sock in the gut. Chicago. Oh, Chicago. The busses there are dirty, smelly, and always running late. God I loved them. Knowing how to maneuver the city in them, being able to decide on a whim to go somewhere, and hop on the bus . . . that made the city mine. Even if I was walking down the street, not aiming to catch the bus at all, just the sight of one made my stomach jump with excitement, knowing what freedom I had if I wanted to go wherever I wanted.

I don't know if this qualifies as a spiritual experience, but it's definitely moving: riding the bus home from a bar, slightly buzzed, whizzing through the city. It's different than riding the trains, which sail above the city. The buses delve through the heart of it, and I take note of places every time we pass, check them off in my heart. I felt like such a living, breathing molecule of the city in moments like those.

And so it aches to remember, and realize I'm now living in a place where cars replace walking to the store, the bus, to work.

And then? The strange thing is that it's been a while since I existed with a constant ache for Chicago. I'd wake up missing it, get through the day missing it, and fall asleep missing it. As visceral as my response to the local busses was today, reminding me of Chicago, so intense too was the realization that I hadn't been consciously missing it lately. Like a cold sore on your lip that you worry and worry and are constantly aware of--that you believe will never heal--suddenly one day you wake up and discover that it's been ages since the cold sore has healed.

I moved to Chicago the day after I graduated from college. I couldn't wait to leave Kansas in the dust and get to a place where I really belonged. I spent most of my early 20s trying to forget where I came from. It made sense in my head. In a way I could never exactly name, I didn't feel like I belonged in the place I grew up. I always felt like an outsider. Strange, to spend 21 years in one place and feel your connection tenuous at best.

I'd visit Kansas again on holidays and feel uneasy. The wide open spaces were hard to take in. My depth perception would be wonky for the first day or two of each visit, and I wouldn't be able to look outside at the hills.

Chicago seemed to bring out who I really was, though being a naive country girl suddenly urbanized was an adjustment. I'm sure I made a lot of missteps and tried on a lot of different "me"s before I found the right fit. But it was my city, and I was deeply sunk in a long-term love affair with it. Every experience I had confirmed my love and sense of place. I met glamorous city girls, and dated underground music geeks. One I fell for hard for several years, and when we discussed our future, I only felt a slight twinge that I'd be settling down with another die-hard city boy. Only once or twice did I wish he were the camping type, and after him, I dated boys so urban that if you put a tire iron in their hand and pointed to the flat, they wouldn't know what to do.

It started to seem ridiculous, these skills that I had (I was changing flats at 14!) that I didn't find mirrored in my dates. I stopped revering encyclopedic knowledge of obscure bands above rugged survival skills. And I despaired that I'd ever find a good combination of the two.

Tim brought back my sense of place, only it's no longer Chicago. I can't escape my past. The small town, the rural homestead, lonely flint hills that are the most beautiful lands I've ever seen. I'm fascinated by it all, amazed even now at growing up in an existence so far removed from any kid I know today. I've worked with kids who don't even know where Kansas is on a map, nor have ever seen a real farm. I write so frequently about the past because it intrigues me, and, I think, helps me get to the bottom of who I am today. It may in fact be the most interesting part about me.

Packing

I took the pictures off the wall today, and suddenly the place looks empty. Previously it just looked like a bomb went off inside.

My allergies are going crazy with all the dust I'm stirring up. It kind of reminds me of, oh crap, Chicago. The one thing I've successfully repressed about Chicago is how for about 9 or 10 months out of the year, I can't breathe at all for the multitudes of dust bunnies scurrying around the hardwood floors. Our carpet here may be dirty and cat-puke-stained, but at least it keeps the dust out of the air.

I feel pretty unstressed about everything, though. I started packing a month and a half ago, and though Tim would occasionally ask me for something right after I packed it, it was a good idea to start that early. I could pack a few boxes each night and not knock myself out. Now I'm down to deciding which clothing I can use to pad fragile items, and which to leave for 5 more days of work, a weekend of packing, and what to put in a suitcase to have handy when I arrive, and deciding what I can live without for the last week in Alabama and the first week in Chicago.

Everything is ready! The last detail I had been fretting over (not hearing from the landlady on if she got our lease and worrying the apartment had fallen through) has been resolved.

I don't want to jinx it, but I am basking in the utter lack of stress.

Chicago weather

I love Chicago more when it's beautiful outside. This weekend, it was shorts weather. We biked, took walks, spent time hauling out the big plants to the back porch, repotting, pruning the dead leaves, just enjoying being outside.

I never realize how much I need the outside until the warm spring winds come and blow the grey off of everything. Now I have a hard time staying in.

The end of this school year is so close I can taste it. Only one more session of two of my classes. My most hated class closed today after we convinced (with not too much work) our prof that we should do evals today and skip next week. One big paper to finesse, and two short ones to crank out. It's been remarkably stress-free.

Thinking back

The day after I graduated from college, my belongings were packed in the back of a truck, and my parents and I drove to Chicago.

Growing up, every time we'd visit, we'd arrive the same way, from the south, up the Dan Ryan to LSD, and then the home stretch to my grandparents' home just north of the city, in Evanston. Coming up Sheridan Road in Rogers Park, I'd get a thrill of excitement, because to me, Rogers Park was the city. It was the embodiment of everything I believed Chicago to be.

So I was finally there! The city was mine! (Well, sort of. The fact that I lived in what could technically be called a suburb didn't phase me.) Evanston wasn't a typical suburb, anyway. It was a cross between being its own city and a small town.

That summer, I ran the baked streets, getting to know the cafes, vintage bookstores, and thrifts. I worked at a cafe near Northwestern, and I flirted with the intellectual professors who'd spend their Sunday mornings over my coffee and a newspaper. Sometimes nights I'd walk through the neighborhood on the lake, the one with unbelievably fancy mansions and daydream about what it would be like to live in one.

I was lonely still, missing my Kansas boyfriend and worried about job prospects, but it was also a glorious time, filled with newness. The world unrolled itself at my feet, and I could have done anything.

Memories like that rush back at the touch of hot summer wind, or the smell of coffee beans freshly ground. Certain music can resurrect the exact feelings I had at any given moment during that period. The experience is so deeply imprinted upon my psyche.

It goes without saying that there is an entire chamber of my heart devoted to Evanston. I still work here, 9.5 years after that beautiful summer. So I was excited to also do my internship here.
And it's different.

I'm older.

I'm seeing a different side of the city, the one where 25% of the citizens live at or below the poverty line. Where the streets I formerly skipped down, if I turn left instead of right, I discover low-income areas I never knew existed.

Knowing about the urban problems that Evanston's pretty, tree-lined streets cover up sour my memories of the perfect college "town" I used to know. It's hard to enjoy its beauty when I know about the uneasy alliance between the priviledged and unpriviledged.

But sometimes, sometimes sometimes, I'm able to walk into the organic cafe that's near my internship, sit down with some tea, and be transported back, unfettered, in the glorious spell that this place once cast upon me.

How much do I love my family?

I love my family. I knew that before, but I realized it full-force after returning from Alabama.

I'm not just talking about my sister, mother, and father. There is my grandmother, 5.5 uncles (only one who lives all that far away; and the half includes a new-ish, not-yet-married-into-the-family one), 5 aunts (again, only one who lives all that far away), and 10.5 (again, one new-ish, not-yet-married-into-the-family one--who I can't wait to meet!) cousins. (And I suppose it would only be fair to also include a mother-in-law, sister-in-law, nephew; oh yeah, and my father-in-law and his wife.)

I know not everyone is lucky enough to be so close to their extended family. During the lesser holidays, like Easter, when my parents aren't in Chicago, I spend it with my relatives and feel enveloped by warmth and love. It is truly spectacular. If I seriously consider it, I'd say family parties are among the most fun I can have in a large (and I mean large) group of people. There's just such a level of comfort among people who have known and loved me for 31.5 years.

And yet, one of the things I treasure the most is how that hasn't remained static for my entire life. I'm able to be friends with my aunts and uncles now, and my cousins, after not knowing them much since I didn't grow up in Chicago like most of them did, well, they've turned into really awesome adults.

Next weekend, we are going out for a Family Dinner. Deciding on the right restaurant took about thirty e-mails, which is what happens when you have twenty opinionated Polish-Czechs trying to come to a consensus. In the past year, we've started gathering, every three, four months or so, outside of the regular family parties for holidays and birthdays, to try new restaurants and drink a lot of beer (in fact, the restaurant was chosen primarily for its BYOB-ness, since, holy crap, the Bartas can put away the zimny piwo). It's fantastic. I love so much that we're getting together . . . because we want to. You know you have something special when you want to spend time with your family outside of the requisite holidays.

I guess the next opportunity for a party will be my graduation. I have made a lot of great friends throughout the whole grad school process, and I want to commemorate it somehow with them. However, all I can think about is: what a great family party that will be!

Corridor of smells

Sometimes I think I could ride through Chicago with my eyes closed, still knowing exactly where I am based on the smells.

I bike to work via Elston, an industrial diagonal that's quieter than expected during rush hour. It cuts through factories along the interstate and Metra lines. Within the first few blocks on my route, I pass Home Depot. Sometimes if they're busy, the fresh scent of sawdust will waft out to the street. A few blocks later, Dunkin Donuts' sugar and Popeyes' oil compete for air space.

The Metra has a stop at Ashland and Elston, and squealing brakes burn metal. At North, Stanley's fruit stand spills out onto the sidewalk. Last week the ground was littered with pineapple cores and rinds.

Further south, after Elston runs into Milwaukee, I pass the Matchbox, Chicago's smallest bar and the scene of frequent hijinks in my early twenties. And it's clear that, though I have moved on to more sober pursuits, there were many behind to take my place.

Somewhere in the area is a bread factory, but only my nose knows where.

I've reached River North by the time I start smelling chocolate, slightly burnt, like you'd smell from hot cocoa. Blommer's Chocolate Factory is where I leave the diagonal and plunge into Loop traffic, the frentic pace causing me to lose touch with smells and focus solely on watching for impatient morning drivers so I don't get hit.

Where I'm from

I know it's more complex than where I was born and raised. But I still never know how to answer people when they ask.

I was born in Colorado. Though I spent a mere six months there, and only returned to camp and backpack there as a child, leaving the flat dust bowl prairies of western Kansas and eastern Colorado, seeing the mountains emerge from the clouds, has always felt like coming home.

Kansas. Where I spent twenty-one years of life. Has never, ever, EVER felt like home. It was always strange to feel so isolated, an outsider to the place that was fully saturated in my history. The whole time I was growing up there, I'd wonder what I would have been like had we stayed in Colorado. I had this idea that I would have felt more comfortable being ME. Maybe I would have. After all, we left a hippie enclave to establish a life in a thoroughly conservative small town. Aside from a group of family friends, no one else lived the way we did. (And of course, by the time the real estate boom hit Boulder, I would have been the daughter of wealthy parents, for the property they owned back in the seventies is now worth millions.)

Chicago. That's what I always say when people ask. Yet I really only spent six or seven years there. How accurate or appropriate is it to use that as my answer then? I feel all melodramatic, like I'm back in high school poetry class, talking about how my heart belongs to Chicago. But it's true.

First Friday

It would be embarrassing to say that I'm buzzed from four tablespoon-sized cups of wine, so I'll say it's the excitement of having something to do with a new friend tonight.

My new work friend Fran and I went to the art museum for their First Friday activities. Wine tasting, snacks, cash bar, a jazzy country band, and art. I invited her to go because we had recently talked about the special photography exhibits that were about to close at the museum: Ansel Adams and William Wegman. We wandered the halls (the building and grounds are extraordinarily beautiful; the regular art collection merely so-so) and tried to carry on a conversation as the band's danceable music and loud voices of other people bounced off the tile floors. Terrible acoustics, there.

It was a neat event. I might have appreciated it in and of itself had my mind not currently been filled with Chicago again, so I compared it to the First Friday art openings I had been to there, and it was, well, very different. In Chicago, I could have indulged in more wine, because I wouldn't have to worry about driving home. And after the galleries closed, my friends and I would have spent many minutes narrowing down the choices of what to do next.

There are too many obstacles here: I considered inviting Fran to come over because we both enjoyed one of the proseccos at the tasting, and we could have gotten a bottle at Fresh Market, but then how would she have gotten herself home after we polished off a bottle together? And also, I need to clean the apartment because the MIL is arriving any minute.

But, I am making a new friend, and that's the most important part.

Sweet home, Chicago

My heart starts to skip a beat when I realize that the days have melted away, and it's TOMORROW that I get to spend three long days there. With my family! I think it's been long enough that I've forgotten--or repressed--a bit exactly how much I miss the city, and them. Today every now and then it would occur to me, and I'd get a huge rush of emotion, a welling in my chest, I am so excited to see them.

The thing is, though, now that the time is upon me, I'm scared. I'm scared it's going to be too good. (I know it will. Chicago always exceeds.) I'm worried as soon as I'm back in the city of my heart of hearts, leaving will be twice as hard. And the recovery--the hangover of 36 hours of friends, family, beer, chana masala, and naan--will be harder than ever to get over.

I've worked so hard. This week, as I was driving to my first official tennis match (0-6, 0-6; we sucked hard), I thought, "This is my home now." I like the life I'm starting to carve out here. I am having so much fun playing tennis. I am so excited by the possibility that I might be able to play the piano in a church band. It makes me so happy to socialize with the costume girls, and other stage crew members. And my job, well, that's a big amazing reason to love it here. But the city, too. Things are becoming familiar and comfortable.

I caught myself saying something in a decidedly un-me-like drawl the other day. This went waaaay beyond "fixin' to" or "y'all." And I liked it. I don't want to be around my family having to choke back y'alls. I have finally gotten my mouth around them, and "you guys" is now a thing of my past.

Because I don't talk enough about the weather

I went walking outside last night, and the weather reminded me so much of what I grew up with in Kansas. I can't believe I'm finding it down here; I love it.

There was something powerful about the melancholic dark dampness of Kansas springs. In Chicago, it was grey for months, and then suddenly in the summer, hot as hell. In Kansas, and Alabama, the springtime sun dips behind a cloud, and the sky turns into rumbling dark moments of thunder and rain. It reminds me of high school. As much as I think, in theory, that high school was something to be endured, survived, and forgotten, there were times of incredible brilliance, too. My favorite memories are enclosed in a rainy day.

Prom. Junior, senior year? It doesn't matter anymore. They both took place during a spring storm. Suddenly school hierarchy melted away, and everyone was best friends. I attended both with my girl friends, no dates, and there was something fun and carefree about it, rather than depressing because of the lack of boy attention. I got to dance with someone I'd never admit to having a crush on. The (junior) prom I engineered ended up a masterful success. At an after-party, the class asshole taught me how to use a lasso, and we were friends for a brief moment. (That could have, of course, presaged our random drunken one-night-stands in college, but who knew at the time?) The after-after-party, the first party I ever attended that had beer (I was sheltered!), and an NC-17 movie. We ran barefoot in our princess dresses through the puddles to our cars, and we all drove home at dawn, still raining, to sleep for the whole weekend.

In Chicago, the grey-ness of winter drags at the soul, and it seems interminable to even hope that the sun is just in hiding. The grey days here have power behind them. A hint of menace, and thunder, and an exciting promise. Spring, rebirth? Seems like such a fucking cliche. But still.

Music

Every time I listen to Ani's Little Plastic Castles album, it hurts my heart. I hadn't listened to much of her music, despite being an angsty feminist college grrrl with occasional "well, maybe I should date women?" inclinations. It came to me--from a boyfriend, actually--as I graduated from collegeand struck out for Chicago, and it has come to perfectly encapsulate the dreams, expectations, and feelings I have about the city.

I'm not much for lyrics. They're always the least important part about a song for me. When people include lyrics in their writing, I generally skip over them, because they don't resonate with me. But in "Deep Dish," I searched the lyrics particularly because it's a Chicago song. And this struck me:

this is only a possibility in a world of possibilities
there are obviously there are many possibilities
ranging from small to large
before long there will be short
before short there was nothing
when there was nothing
there was always the possibility of something becoming what it is

The album makes me feel like I'm walking alone at night in the middle of a deserted street in Rogers Park, walking towards the lake, my head back, my arms wide, embracing everything. A cool summer night, and I am perfectly alone, and perfectly full of contentment and the kind of experiences that make you gasp and say, "so this is what it's like to be alive!" It's enough of an overwhelming feeling that I can't listen to the album around other people, because they'd never understand why I choke up or suddenly become somber.

In truth, the album made me want to be a person I never was, and gave me dreams about the kind of life I'd live that wasn't a reality for the kind of person I am. So my life never lived up to the fantasy, and it took a while to realize that my life worked out exactly the way it was supposed to. So I'm not the kind of person who has lots of angsty politicos for friends, and I didn't live in a spare, dusty apartment with an intellectual cat, a fouton, and millions of books. No candles stuck in wine bottles, and dinner parties where we debated all the Deep Subjects. When it hurts that I am not the type of person I wanted to be, I try to remember that type of person wouldn't own a purple velvet couch. One purchased new, anyway.

Sundays in the South

I have my weekends planned out pretty well. One day is for relaxing, the other for shopping. (It always surprises me how many groceries we go through a week.) The shopping day often also requires a trip to Target, which is never an appealing way to pass an hour or so. So this weekend, I defied my usual practice and spent Saturday relaxing, cleaning, and napping with the kitties. It was perfect. But that didn’t mean Sunday dawned and I jumped out of bed ready to shop.

But it helped that it is gorgeous today. Sixty or 65 degrees, which I believe is unusual for this time of year here. The streets were quieter than usual, and I decided to go to the music store first as a treat. I was looking forward to walking in wearing my J. Lo velour track suit, and completely confounding the clerk when I asked for a “Teach Yourself the Concertina” book and a go at the drum sets. Of course, being Sunday, it was closed. I was disappointed, but since the day was so beautiful, and it was good to get out of the house, I instead thought about what I love about Sundays here.

Most things are closed. I used to love spending Sunday mornings having breakfast at a diner, or at Café Selmarie, so it was hard to adjust to nothing being open here. Now I love how quiet it is. Everything shuts down, so I’m forced to relax. I appreciate the slower pace of life. In Chicago, Sunday was a mad dash to do something, to maximize my weekend, my time off before I went back to a job that I (irrationally) hated. If I didn’t do something cool, I’d end up in the evening with a heavy feeling in my stomach, a serious depression facing the rest of the night. Angela Chase did say it best: “There’s something about Sunday night that really makes you want to kill yourself.”

(Was it really the frenetic pace of Chicago that made me feel like I never absorbed enough culture or city life? Or was it that I hated my job, felt stagnant in life, had a bunch of dreams that hinged on “next year” and “when x happens, I can do y”?)

At any rate, being here forces me to make the most of the little that’s here, and since I don’t like most of what’s here (though there is a real, authentic coffeehouse I keep meaning to check out), I feel more comfortable not doing anything. Relaxing, and enjoying my time off work.

I love this slow, deliberate pace of life. A quiet, reflective Sunday afternoon is my church. Wind in the trees the hymns, and a still pool of water my prayer.

Could I really spend my life in a small town that afforded this to me? Maybe I could, if it weren’t this small town.

Chicago

I hate Delta airlines for minimizing my return to Chicago. Four hours late, arriving at 3 a.m. instead of 11 p.m. turns a triumphant return into a desire for bed—anywhere, it doesn’t matter, just sleep.

So my first encounter with the city was Christmas morning, driving into my sister’s; and the sight of the skyline made me cry. I felt like a part of me had been missing, and I didn’t realize it until I found it again.

That’s what it was like being around my family again, too. My parents and sister, and then later my aunts and uncles, cousins and grandmother. Only this time it wasn’t an ache in my chest to remind me of what I had missed, but a huge envelopment of warmth, like a hug that went on for 6 hours, until we had to beg off for tiredness, pack presents and cookie tins in the car, and drive home, digesting family time the whole way. Tim has never been around a family like ours, and it’s overwhelming, but I don’t know it any other way. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

(My aunt gave us a star ornament that had two pictures of my cousin on it. I think the way she survives, the way she remembers him, is to keep him a part of her life every single moment. Which is hard for me, because it’s difficult to remember without guilt someone I didn’t particularly like until his death, at which point I realized I did love him.)

Chicago concerts

Of all the things I miss about Chicago, the biggest one right now is the Old Town School of Folk Music. I used to volunteer for their concerts—and I forgot to tell them that I moved—so I got a sign-up sheet for the spring 2005 concerts. And now my heart hurts from missing all these good ones:

Jan. 16: Robbie Fulks’ Secret Country (Bill Kirchen, Phil Lee)

Jan. 23: Eric Bibb
I volunteered for a Leo Kottke show about four years ago, and the then-unknown blues guitarist Eric Bibb opened for him. I was absolutely blown away. It was just him on stage with his guitar. He did slap bass, stomped his feet, and had a fantastic voice. He’s now my favorite contemporary blues guitarist. Fantastic!

Jan. 30: Danu
When I studied in Ireland the summer I was 20, one night we were out at a pub with a live band that night (I think it was the Quays). Officially a live band, not a pick-up group like most pubs there had in the afternoon. One of my classmates, Stephanie, had some connection to them (maybe she picked them up in another pub earlier in the day? Those were the sorts of connections she made.), and knew them. We drank a lot of Murphy’s, and pretended to Irish step dance on the dance floor (annoying drunk Americans, I know, I know). The band was amazing. I think we may have met them afterwards (but by now, one pub night in Galway eight years ago tends to blend with another). What I particularly remember from the evening is: 1. Irish guys know where Kansas is because everyone in the world is familiar with “The Wizard of Oz.” 2. Danu was amazing.

Feb. 5, 6: Alejandro Escovedo
Alt-country god.

Feb. 12: Lhasa
Slinky melancholy tango. The woman (never sure if she is Lhasa, or if that’s the group’s name) has an incredible god. This is what the Old Town Web site says about her: “She is a strange and unusual singer who is part hippie blues singer, part Edith Piaf and a smokey, murky version of Tom Waits as Mexican jazz diva.”

March 12: Ladysmith Black Mambazo
I know them mostly as the South African singers who were on Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album.

I would kill to go to any of these shows.

My friend K

Thinking about music, I dug out an old tape, dusted off my Walkman, and started listening to the mix tape that changed my life. Well, the person who did.

I met K at my first job out of college. Six months into it, and two girls started inviting me to eat lunch with them in the staff lounge. They were sweet, and I was lonely, but we didn't have a lot in common besides being the entirety of young people at ALA. One day, a new girl sat with us. One of the girls (a Polish girl whose name I have long since forgotten) usually dominated the conversations, and this day talked about her neighborhood, Hyde Park, in slightly derogatory racial terms. I don't remember exactly what, but it was the sort of talk that made me feel uncomfortable immediately, but nothing so outragiously heinous that you could pinpoint it and say something against it. Or, nothing I could. But K called her on it. She challenged what the girl was saying, and eloquently debated her side. I was horrified to be part of the group, and thrilled at her arguments. I wanted to tug on her sleeve and say, "I'm not with them. I don't agree with what she says. I'm different."

Somehow she must have known already, for in the next week or month, we ran into each other again; she put her hand on my arm, looked into my eyes, and asked how I was in a way that made me believe she really wanted to know, and did I want to have lunch. I fell partway in love with her.

She was completely free of artifice or casual office chitchat. She could talk to anyone about anything, and our conversations, stolen throughout the day through instant messages and afternoon breaks to the cafe next door to work, slid immediately into the deep end of pool: relationships, hopes, and dreams. When we met, she had just been dumped, cheated on by a suave, beautiful, dreadlocked reggae musician who was well known in the Chicago music scene. I never understood how any sane man could treat her badly, or why she would put up with it. If I hadn't heard the stories, I would have envisioned her in a really healthy, loving relationship with an incredible guy.

She was the person we all wanted to have a drink with. To have K come to one of your parties was a coup. At one of mine, she came late and spent most of the time drinking and smoking on the back porch (she claimed shyness and being uncomfortable at parties), but with her came an entourage of interesting people. Her beautiful, Peruvian not-boyfriend cleared a space in the living room for dancing and broke several hearts that night. I fell for another of her beautiful friends, a Mexican man with long silky hair and a shy smile, whose undocumented status allowed him only to work as a restaurant advertiser, or, the person who drives around stuffing building foyers with restaurant menus. She laughed and smiled and taught me what to say to him. It was always startling and slightly exotic to hear fluent Spanish come out of her, for she was a blonde Swedish giantess.

Once after work, we walked to the House of Blues to catch a free Indigo Girls early concert. Half the city must have known about it, because people lined up for blocks to get in. K was always affectionate, holding arms, a kisser-goodbye. As we walked, she grabbed my hand, and we walked for blocks like that. Given the large turnout of lesbians in the line, I wondered if it had something to do with that, but it also seemed so innocent; there were no conspiratorial glances, yet I secretly hoped people thought we were together.

About kissing girls, though, she always said, "Don't do it. It just gets you into trouble," and quit drinking tequila because of that.

She taught me to accessorize. I was still an awkward country girl who suddenly had to dress for the office, for drinks out, for parties, for meeting cool and interesting people. I've never been able to pull off a sarong like her, and I realized that nothing I did or wore would be as cool as her, for it wasn't even the dress, the accessories, chunky necklaces, flowing scarves; it was the air that K exuded.

The mix tape came from an evening of wine, candlelight, and the perfect joint. We were laying around her living room, listening to music, and she found out I loved folk. So she made me the mix of Greg Brown, Ricki Lee Jones, Shawn Colvin, and so on. I listened to it so much that I could hear one line from a song, and know what song followed.

We didn't hang out as much as I would have liked to--part of that was an abusive boyfriend who hated me spending time with her--but when she'd hear about a feminist art show, she'd invite me. In the fall, we drove up to Wisconsin for a stretch of country road filled with potters' open houses, antique barns, and fall festivities: pumpkins for sale, hot apple cider.

One Friday, she invited me to the Flat Iron building in Wicker Park for their First Friday open house. K had caught the attention of a lesbian artist at a street festival who invited her to the opening, and she didn't want to go alone. We drank beer and walked in and out of artists' living rooms and studios. She found her artist friend and they went off to talk. I was left to make friends myself in whatever studio I had been left. Something I both feared and appreciated was being with her--or not with her--at parties. She didn't pander to my shyness, but expected that I could make my own way and meet people the way she could. I wandered into a huge loft space where a rave was taking place, and out onto the metal fire escape that hung over the intersection of Milwaukee and Damen. I shared a joint with the boys out there, and, warmed by the high, I felt myself melt into the city night.

What I have always loved about drugs and large parties is the insularity, the perfect aloneness. I can't remember a thing about the rave, nor the guys who shared their smoke with me. I only remember myself and my thoughts, how the orange glow from the street signs and bar lights created a new world for me.

Eventually I stumbled out of the party, and somehow found K. We drove to Clark's, open all night, for breakfast, and she laughed at my wide smile and love for everything, and chided me for not finding her when they were passing around the joint.

After a year or two, she left Chicago to run a school in Mexico. My problem back then was not understanding why she wanted to be my friend. In the face of her friendship, I wanted to be confident, an equal counterpart, but I never believed someone like her could truly want or need the friendship of someone like me. So I fell out of touch. How much would I like to have done things differently?

But perhaps she existed in my life so shortly for a specific reason, to show me the person I wanted to be.

In the past

The last time someone screamed in my face and raised his hand to me, it was nine years ago—almost nine years ago exactly, and thinking about it still knocks the wind out of me.

When I moved to Chicago, I started working part-time at a cafe to meet people and make friends. I loved it. It was a Northwestern hangout, so most of the customers and workers were college students, but one night an older guy came in for coffee. I could tell he was probably about my age.

He was wearing a Dublin tee-shirt, and I asked him about it. Turned out he had studied there during college, too, so we talked about our Ireland experiences.

I remember that night so clearly. I wasn't a coffee drinker because I couldn't handle the caffeine, but for some reason I was hopped up on it that night. I was having fun and flirting with all the customers. The other worker wandered over and wondered who I was talking to, and I made a joke about Ireland or cute boys or something. I only worked once or twice a week, so I was excited to go back, hoping to see this guy again. It was a few weeks until I did, but he seemed to recognize me, and we sat and talked. Kevin was an aspiring writer, like me. We had a lot to talk about. A few meetings later, he gave me his phone number, but I didn't call him because I had a boyfriend.

I later found out he had gone to the cafe every day after our meeting in hopes of seeing me again. Not because he thought I was cute (though of course he did) but because whatever I had teased him about had angered him to distraction. He prepared a cut down for me, and went back to the cafe to use it on me. As days passed without seeing me, his anger lessened, and then I was so friendly and interesting when we spoke for the second time, he decided to save it.

(I didn't know that until deep into our relationship. I wonder if it would have made a difference if I had known earlier.)

For we did start dating. He was intelligent and witty, could debate about anything. I was skittish, though, not wanting to commit to anyone after the recent breakup with somebody I had loved. We slept together for the first time on Halloween afternoon of 1998, and lying in bed afterwards, I said, "You know we're not exclusive, right?" That evening I went to a party, made out with a much older man, and started dating him as well.

If I had to articulate it, I'd have said I didn't particularly like Kevin that much, if at all, and used my last breakup as an excuse to end things right before Christmas. There was just something about him that was dark and ugly and hurtful, and I could feel it. I didn't like him and I didn't like myself when I was around him. The breakup lasted a few weeks, though. I was lonely and needed a friend. There was also something about him that drew me near, something that made me overlook the darkness.

We got back together and got serious immediately. I got drunk at a blues club and said, "I love you."

"I know," he said.

Then came the day things changed for good. He lent me his car so I could drive him to one of his friends' houses for a party. On the way down we discussed my friend Heather. Heather had told me she wasn't that comfortable around him, that there was something about him that made her uneasy. Kevin wanted to hang out with her, he said, independently of me. He said he wanted to get to know her as a friend, not as my friend. I refused to give him her phone number and skirted the issue, for I didn't really want to tell him that Heather didn't like him.

He started yelling and pressing the issue. Said that I was insecure if I thought he was interested in her. I was surprised he brought that up. Jealousy wasn't in my nature.

I'd never argued with a boyfriend before. I'd never had one so angry at me before. I was terrified. I dropped him off, went back home, and sobbed for the rest of the evening. I decided to break up with him. I practiced what I was going to say, and picked him up again after the game was over. He grabbed me and hugged me tight, so tight I couldn't get my words out. I didn't know what to do, so I rode home with him and he spent the night.

Looking back, I could say that was the moment when I knew I gave up and gave him permission to be abusive, but what did I know then? I just didn't know what to do. (Would you believe I was volunteering for a battered women's shelter then? If I had let myself make the connection, I still probably would have thought, "but my situation is not nearly as bad as the women I'm talking to in crisis . . .")

He hated all my friends. Particularly a girl that I worshipped and adored. She was an amazing, unique individual, and I didn't understand how he could hate her. He also believed I was having sex with all my guy friends, and would yell at me about it until I'd say, "Fine. That's what you believe? Go ahead. I don't care," because saying, "No, of course I didn't sleep with them, don't be ridiculous," was like talking to a wall.

The last time I socialized with any of my male friends was a party I threw with my roommates in the spring. After I finished talking to one of them, I went to sit next to Kevin, and he grabbed me hard and said, "Tell me you love me. Say it." He had a smirk on his face like he had won something. He tried to start a fight with them when they left, and then we screamed at each other all night. We stopped going out, because I couldn't deal with being in public with him. Not because we'd argue around other people, but because I felt terrified going to a bar or club with him, like being seen in public as a couple would make it more real, and I'd have to give in to the feelings of doom and suffocation that I'd been pushing away to the back of my brain and do something about it.

We'd argue all the time. He was so good at it. I've never met anyone who could hit me so hard using only words. I don't remember if our arguments would end up with me against the wall, him in my face, or if the words just make me remember it like that. They got under my skin and tore at my flesh. I had no recourse but to batter my arms against him to push him away and leave the argument. I remember at that time some discussions with some online friends about hitting. One woman in particular I remember stating unequivocally that it was absolutely never acceptable to hit anyone, even hitting back in defense. I thought, "You lucky bitch. You have no idea what it's like. How words can hurt worse until the only way you can escape is by lashing out with your fists." But of course I couldn't say it. Of course I didn't want to make it real by telling other people.

I'd try to avoid sex with him and lay in bed feeling a huge weight pressing down on me until I couldn't breathe. I couldn't envision the future past the next day, because I'd think about ways to kill myself to get out of being with him. Yet . . . and yet? I thought I couldn't survive without him. I didn't have many friends anymore, for those connections had been tenuous at best, and he had made me sever them. One day the next fall (about 6 months after we'd started dating), I was watching a movie with Heather, and started sobbing. I couldn't lie anymore. I told her I had to break up with him.

A few days later, I told him. I said, "Kevin, I'm not happy in this relationship. I want to break up."

He said: "No. We're not breaking up."

I responded, "But I'm not in love with you."

"No. You haven't even given me a chance. We've never talked about this before. We're not throwing this away."

I said, "But I'm not attracted to you anymore. I don't even want to have sex with you."

Yet somehow he battered me down with his words. He was so good at talking. In the end, I didn't even question the idea that breaking up should be a mutual step. I didn't know I had the right to put a stop to it, by the time he was done talking. I agreed to try.

It lasted a week. I couldn't try. I knew I needed to be away from him. The next breakup was slightly better. But he lived with my roommates and I, so getting out was tricky. The night we broke up for good, he said, "it's going to be so hard to sleep in my own bed. . . ." (we still had our own bedrooms in the apartment) and I thought, "I need to hurt him as little as possible," so I could slip out as easily as possible, and let him continue to share my bed. Then it became a habit until I moved out a month later. I was never tempted to stay with him. Oddly, we really did seem to get along better as friends, and I started enjoying the time we spent together again.

Until one night when he said, "Tell me the truth. Are you still attracted to me? Have you at all considered having sex again?"

He wanted the truth? I told it, and it felt good.

No. No, not for one single second.

He leapt out of bed. "Liar!" and then he left.

A few minutes later, he came back, and poured a pitcher filled with ice water and cubes on me under the covers. I started screaming and jumped on him. He threw me off, and dragged me into the living room. I was hitting at him, half angry for the water, and half just trying to get him away from me. He backhanded me across the face, and I shut down, went numb. He grabbed me to hug me, and I couldn't move. I couldn't even tell him to get away from me, to never ever touch me again. I let him herd me back to bed, where he put new dry sheets on the bed, tucked me in, and curled around my stiff, uncomprehending body. Before we drifted off to sleep, he started laughing. "I'm sorry, but that was thoroughly enjoyable, that water."

I moved out, and we stayed in touch a little bit, mostly because I was scared of what his reaction would be if I cut things off entirely. In the end, he gave me a reason to, and I stopped answering the phone. After a very, very long while he stopped calling. After, I unlisted my phone numbers, and kept my name off apartment buzzers. I breathed a sigh of relief when I got promoted at work and got a new extension number he wouldn't know. We never spoke again.

I've seen him three times since. The first, two years later, he was walking in my new neighborhood, the second place I moved after leaving him. I kept my head down--luckily, I was wearing a hat--and was terrified that he had moved into my neighborhood. I had a panic attack every time I saw a turquoise Ford Focus driving past me on the street. It became instinct to scan the backs for the particular bumper sticker I remembered.

Nine years later, I doubt he's still in Chicago, or even has the same old car, but I still lose my breath at turquoise Ford Focuses.

The second, a year or two after the first incident, I was volunteering for a concert at my guitar school. I was sitting near the sound booth, keeping track of the set list. I was hidden in back. I saw a guy up front. He shook his hair out, raised his arms to tuck his hair behind his ears, and my stomach dropped. It was a specific gesture I will remember as Kevin's forever. It is branded on my brain. I spent the rest of the concert reminding myself to breathe, and ran out the back door afterwards.

The third and last time, I was on a date. This was perhaps four or five years after we broke up. The date was going horribly already and near the end of it, I got up to go to the bathroom and walked past the bar. Kevin was sitting there, waiting for a table with a woman. I don't know if he saw me. I went back to my date and started crying. We left. How do you explain to a second-date why you start crying after returning from the bathroom?

I don't think much about him anymore. I made pretty specific choices to date guys a whole world of different from him. I don't flinch at anger anymore and bow my head. But it's surprising how quickly I can remember it all like it was yesterday.

July 4th

"Gorey Stories" opened tonight, and I was disappointed by the timing. Running until 9:30, we missed almost all of the fireworks set off from Navy Pier. Disappointed because in all my many years in Chicago, I've actually never seen them, and this year I was right at the lake doing the show.

I had forgotten, though, that sometimes the civilian fireworks are just as spectacular as the city's. Biking home, west on Fullerton, the night spread out before me as a sparkling jewel. The last mile home was particularly livid. I biked through a fug of gunpowder and falling embers, and nearly hit a few parked cars as I swerved on my ride, watching the sky.

I love how into the holiday this city is, though given the high density of undocumented immigrants in my neighborhood, I suspect the fiery celebrations are more for a love of pretty explosives rather than the history of this country.

This time last year, I was also sitting under a shower of fireworks, but at a Biscuits game in Montgomery. As soon as the last play was completed, every light in the stadium was cut, and music started up as the pyrotechnics blasted. For a good ten minutes or so, the sky lit up. Finally, "Sweet Home Alabama" was played, and the crowd went wild for the finale. Tim and I grinned at each other, deliriously happy to be in that spot at that moment.

And forever since then, that song makes me happy. It reminds me of a time when I felt like part of a community. I felt like I was an Alabamian, like that sweet home was my home. For a little while, it was.

And I love that now any time I see fireworks, that's what I'll think of.