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.

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!

My kind of party

I wasn't looking forward to the party we went to last night. There are always a lot of people I don't know at parties like this, incurably hip people who annoy the hell out of me. The reason we go, though, is that these parties are thrown by one of Tim's childhood friends, J, another impossibly hip person who is also a Really Good Person, and his girlfriend K.

Tim thinks I go overboard when we have friends for dinner. I spend a long time mulling over the menu, and come up with much deliciousness, including fabulous desserts we'd never make just for ourselves. Sometimes I think that our guests can be slightly uncomfortable at the amount of effort I put into things, not realizing how happy I am planning and making sumptous meals.

But this is nothing compared to J and K. They go so very far overboard that it is ridiculously fun to see what they come up with. In an "oh my god, I get to eat this food?" way, and also in a "oh no, they didn't!"

Last night there was a grill going all night, churning out charred vegetables, marinated tofu, pork skewers, flank steak, many different sausages. Out of nowhere, a skate wing appeared, just because it was on sale, and J wanted to try it.

In the dining room, there was an immense table filled with fresh watermelon and pineapple, rice, corn salsa, shish kabobs. In the living room was the bar area. All the liquor you could hope for, and a huge soup tureen filled with sangria made with blood-orange soda, among other things. In the freezer, homemade sangria baby popsicles.

Planted in the middle of the kitchen was K, standing over a deep fryer. Knowing of its presence, we brought hush puppy batter. But the dough sat next to the fryer for a few hours, while K first shaved sweet potatoes into the boiling oil, then sweet potato fries, and finally, yellow tomatoes dipped in a beer batter she whipped up on the spot.

Finally it was time for the hush puppies, and I spent about half an hour watching over them, and listening to people rave. By that time, it was late, and the drunken suggestions about what to fry next were pouring in. J got out a vacuum-sealed can of Pillsbury croissant dough. He and Tim fashioned them into circles, and golden doughnuts soon rose to the top of the boiling oil. Sprinkled with powdered sugar, I swear I have never in my life had a better donut!

Meanwhile, K was still in the kitchen, chopping rubarb stalks and warming strawberries in a pot with fresh ginger. She poured the strawberry mix over the rubarb and put it in the oven to make a crumble.

We couldn't stay for it. I was getting tired.

K's friends are used to her staying in the kitchen, and will drift by through the night to chat. It was the kind of party I've always wanted to host. To be in my kitchen all night, making deliciousness for friends who have come to visit. Yes, that's my kind of party.

Socializing

So it continues to get easier. Whether that means I am more comfortable and confident with myself, or with the people Tim works with, I don't know.

It helps a lot that he always says how much they already like me. That could be from all the treats I've made for parties and tech rehearsals (I guess people like you lots if you feed them good food?), or by association with Tim (people always love him, so I get the benefit of the doubt).

What really bothers me, though, is when he says how his friends always talk about wanting to get to know me, and how they're disappointed if I don't go to parties, or leave early. I make an effort. I do socialize as much as my schedule allows. But it's not my responsibility that they get to know me. If they want to get to know me, they need to come to me and strike up a conversation. Because that's what I do when I want to get to know someone. I feel like I'm doing as much as I can to offer them a glimpse of me and who I am.

I would like for someone to show me they want to get to know me by actually talking to me. I automatically assume that if someone doesn't make an effort, they're not interested in me. I don't think I'm the only one who feels that way.

So that arguing point gets used frequently, and Tim says it's more than striking up a conversation. It's being there, hanging out, in the group, vibing (ha) and stuff. But I don't really understand how people would get to know me that way. In big groups, particularly ones discussing theatre things ad nauseum, I don't say much. Someone needs to be the listener, so that's me. I don't mind that, but if anyone thinks they know me after that, they're mistaken.

He always says I appear intimidating. My shyness, and people thinking that I'm some kind of holy saint for the work I do (which also annoys me). I'm not going to lie, I prefer "intimidating" to "shy."

So when did that word/personality trait become such an incredibly negative thing?

Glorious sadness

Just a small town girl, livin in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin anywhere
Just a city boy, born and raised in south detroit
He took the midnight train goin anywhere

When I was in college, I had what I thought was a great idea for a short story. I think it was about an abused woman. My boyfriend at the time started yelling at me, "Why can't you write anything happy??" He didn't understand when I said that sadness was more compelling.

I've always been drawn to it. I have that luxury, I suppose, given that I have had a overwhelmingly normal, functional life filled with much happiness. There's a hyperreality to sadness, an idea of, "this is it; this is what it means to really feel."

That must explain why I am obsessed with 80s music. It's desperate and sad, melodies that plaster themselves across a heart and chest that is barely keeping it together. One note away from falling apart. Listening to it summons the feelings, the physicality of it in an instant.

When I was in junior high, I got invited to a slumber party at D's house. I don't know why. Perhaps her mother suggested it. We certainly weren't friends. She was sweet and kind, and popular for those reasons, but she also continually sported a leather jacket from her much older boyfriend (she started dating high school boys when we was in the 5th grade, yet as far as I knew, never suffered any vicious talk behind her back about it). To note that these jackets, the succession of them, were probably Members-Only jackets really puts a damper on how thoroughly bad ass they seemed. For she didn't date the cross country team, the basketball team; she dated the guys who took welding for the express purpose of pouring their creative energies into making water pipes and got caught smoking behind the gym instead of participating in P.E. class. Guys she somehow tamed into watching their language and politely extinguishing their butts when she came around.

This was the girl who invited me to a slumber party. This was the girl about whose parties I'd heard whispered rumors. To say I was rattled and mystified at my invitation is an understatement. I wondered if it was a joke or if she had somehow lost a bet and I was the butt of it.

It was unlike any sleepover I'd ever been to. We got to order pizza, and drink Mountain Dew in her room, making prank calls on her private phone line. Her bedroom walls were plastered with posters of Warrant, Stryker, and Motley Crue. We watched videos on MTV (a channel I had only heard about). D talked knowledgeably about the themes in her favorite song, "Janie's Got a Gun," using words I had never even heard before, and she sighed over Nikki Sixx and Janie Lane.

Then her boyfriend drove past. He and his friends picked us up, and we cruised Main for a while. It was something I knew older kids to do; never imagined I would do it, too. The high school boys blared their hair metal and tolerated us waving our arms out of the windows in the air stream and shrieking.

It was almost too much for my system. Wired on caffeine and newness, the whole evening had a dreamlike quality. It became imperative to cross my arms in front of my chest, holding myself together in an attempt to keep my chest from breaking open and merging with the night. I didn't know how to stop it, how to put on the brakes and regain control out of the heady dizziness that the night became. I didn't want to. I didn't want it to ever end. It was wildly beautiful, desperate, and sad. I couldn't have articulated it then, but I sensed something beyond my experience, beyond my maturity, about the gorgeous tragedy of boys looking for excitement in a dead-end small town, of beautiful, ripening girls, children really, anxiously expanding the boundaries of experience.

Party

I'm in the middle of preparing for my birthday party tonight, a dessert extravaganza. It just stopped lightning-ing and thundering, and the air is now cool and drizzling. It reminds me of late-summer Kansas.

Preparing for the party reminds me of Alabama. My main social outlet for a while there was having parties. I'd spend the afternoon planning the menu, shopping, and preparing. I'm like pathologically organized, so there usually weren't any last-minute scrambles. The party almost wasn't the point; the preparation was.

When I've told people about this party, their usual response is, "but it's your birthday! You shouldn't be the one making everything." They don't realize that it's the best present to myself--getting to daydream about what deliciousness I'm going to cook, poring over my overstuffed recipe collectiong, preparing the food, and hosting the party.

The party starts in two and a half hours, and everything is mostly ready. Pictures to follow.

Sound

For Christmas, an aunt and uncle got us an alarm clock. It is the clock to end all clocks, with a laser display that will shine the time and outside temperature (there's a remote sensor) on the ceiling when the alarm goes off. And it has soothing sounds to help you fall asleep. Things like Rainforest, Waves, Thunder, Rain, Summer Night, and so on. They're all really cool, and for digital sounds--impressively realistic. So much that when we tried out out Thunder, I felt this sword go through me and I couldn't move.

I was instantly transported back to Kansas springtime. Junior prom, to be exact, when it started storming after the dance, on the way to the after-party, and Sarah and I held our dyed shoes in our hands, and skipped through the puddles to the parties. My first party that included beer, boys, and an NC-17 movie, and arriving home at 5:30 a.m., the first light on the horizon, and fog lifting off the sodden ground.

I guess smell is supposedly the best sense memory we have, but for me, it's sound. I have so many sound memories that affect me on a daily basis, but only a few smell memories I remember right now (one of which was a random whiff of junior high locker room while crossing the street in Chicago a few years ago). And I can't even conjure up what that smell could possibly have been now, yet I can still hear refrains from songs in my head, the way my first car sounded when I revved the engine, and what our phone ring sounded like when we shared a party line.

Socializing and stuff

Theatre parties. I never go, because they're always on Sunday nights. But this week, I worked overtime on Friday, so I was able to take off most of Monday. So Sunday night, I squeezed myself into a pretty black strapless top, my new grass-green capris, and went out to have some fun and a gross amount of vodka lemonade. While I'm generally bored when actors start yapping about theatre, this party included crew and stage hands. At this theatre, they are some of the nicest, most down-to-earth people I've ever met. I met some of the Wardrobe girls who invited me to their weekly scrapbooking/movie nights. I chatted about knitting with a Prop Runner, whose husband just got a new Star Wars tattoo. And one of the actors informed Tim that he had a "very hot wife."

It always amazes me how happiness can increase beauty tenfold. I miss having a social life.

The party spilled over into Monday night, when about fifteen people showed up at the baseball stadium for a Biscuits home game. I had forgotten how much fun it is to watch baseball, eat hot dogs and drink beer with a rowdy bunch of friends.

Tonight I start tennis lessons. I'm scared. I haven't played in nearly ten years, and my tendonitis is raging right now. But I'm excited.

And this Saturday I'm volunteering for an arts festival at the fine arts museum. I love how busy and involved I am. I'm even looking forward to the governor's conference on domestic violence that I'm attending this week, a chance to hang out outside of work (sort of) with a few co-workers.

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.

Back on the sauce

Yesterday--worst day ever for no particular reason--I came home not sure if I wanted to punch Tim or hug him (both). I was starving, tired, and incredibly grumpy. Normally, encountering a husband goofy off afternoon cocktails is recipe for disaster. I just wanted to curl up and do nothing for the whole night.

But after getting the hugging and punching out of the way, he convinced me to go over to a castmate's house. We biked over to find a few of his friends were sitting out on the porch, enjoying their day off, drinking lemonade and cheap vodka. Generally, I hate getting stuck at actor parties. I get so bored when their constant topic of conversation is theatre. I don't need them to ask me in-depth questions about my life--I could just go for neutral topics of conversation like music or movies . . . anything that doesn't involve references to Godot or the genius of Stoppard. I don't know who these playwrights are. I haven't yet read their stuff, and I probably never will. (And maybe that makes me a bitch, considering theatre is Tim's passion, but thank god he's got more going on in his head than a catalogue of plays.)

So there was, of course, the usual shop talk. One of the professional actors--the star of one or two of the rep shows--is a 23-year-old savant. She's the new theatre darling. She's nice enough, but a young person who has only known the acting life isn't that well-rounded. (And I'm not into swapping meaningful theatre quotes.) So honestly, she bores me.

But it was wonderful to sit outside and let two vodka lemonades warm me. And I know enough about the theatre company to be able to participate in (or rather, enjoy listening to) the gossip.

We biked home hungry. The downside of drinking early is that I never feel like cooking after. We headed towards Panera, then--an easy ride down a frontage road on the same side of the highway as our apartment complex. Half-way there, though, we saw a roadhouse across the street we'd never been to. Crossing the street on bikes isn't particularly a good idea (biking on streets here, never), but traffic was light. And all it took was "are you up for an adventure?" and we crossed and had good beer, delicious fries, and nasty cheeseburgers.

Having adventures is my favorite part about being with Tim. Exploring new things together. It was a wonderful evening. Getting to bond with Tim again, bike around, drink some beer . . . We didn't have to think about work, and we tapped out drum rhythms on the table in time with the piped-in classic rock. We finally rolled into bed late, happy and cuddling.