Published in NO TOUCHING MAGAZINE, January 2008
When I moved to Chicago, I thought my life was going to be like Carrie Bradshaw’s from Sex and the City.
It was fall and my first semester of college. I was nineteen, naive and believed I was going to own rows of shoes that cost more than my rent and only freelance so I’d have enough time to sit around to contemplate my relationships. I’d have a theme song that followed my morning routine. I even picked out a studio apartment, one that was a square and had a bathroom that shot off in the back through a walk- in closet. I gave up a one bedroom because Carrie Bradshaw didn’t need a one, so why should I?
This is what gay guys do. They pretend they’re imaginary female characters. Let it go.
But reality set in after a few months. I realized that I was lucky if I could make enough money to pay for my studio, let alone buy a pair of shoes that cost the same. Contemplating your relationships all day will drive you to a place where they lock you up and don’t allow you sharp objects. And let’s face it – that theme song they play as Carrie struts down Fifth Avenue – it gets old after the tenth time you hear it, especially when you don’t have the cute shoes you thought you were going to be strutting in.
My life was not Carrie Bradshaw’s. Not even close. The truth: I was making myself miserable with my high expectations and I wasn’t happy. Home was supposed to make you happy; therefore, Chicago could never be my home.
And so there was a time when I almost gave up. I almost packed my things back in the boxes I brought them in and picked up the cell phone, the one I could barely afford, and dialed my parent’s number to move back home, back to the small town I grew up in. I even had the imaginary conversation with them rehearsed perfectly in my mind. I wasn’t, of course, going to allow them to think that I had given up, seeing as they were totally against me transferring to an art school in Chicago and living alone in a slightly “unique” neighborhood. I had to prove it was “uncontrollable circumstances,” and not that they were right all along. That conversation would go like this:
“Mom, yah, hi… yup… Got your voicemail… Sorry I didn’t call back… Yup… I’m alive… I know… I know… The city can kill you… You’ve said it a million times… Anyway…. uh… I got something to… uh… well… I’m moving back home because… I know… it’s only been a few months of living here… but… I… I need you closer in my life…”
With that, mom would’ve scheduled herself a trip from Wisconsin to save her son from his poor decisions.
So I set a deadline: finish the rest of the week before I made that call. That was three days away.
And I was OK with this. I was OK that within three days I was going back to the small bedroom I grew up in; that I’d always dreamed one day I’d escape from. The room that used to have posters of Alanis Morrisette and Fiona Apple; with burgundy carpet that was matted in places where furniture had sat for too long. I was going back to the house and the city and the state and the safety that I’d been planning on escaping from all through high school.
But really, I wasn’t OK with it.
And so that night I called a friend who seemed to always have money even though she never worked (don’t ask) and had a plethora of fake IDs (don’t ask) and always, I mean always, knew how to make a boy feel good. Her name was Rachel and she looked like Penelope Cruz without the accent. I’d met her in my Intro to Photography class at Columbia where we bonded over the fact that we both thought Posh Spice was so obviously the best Spice and had hung out on whims ever since. She wasn’t one of those dependable friends – the ones you call when the seventh boyfriend breaks your heart or when your electricity goes out because you haven’t paid the bill. She was one of those friends that called you in times she needed you and those times always came with booze. Wasted. Puking. Hangovers.
Exactly what I needed before I headed back to the prison I had chosen to return to: Home in Wisconsin.
“Meet me at 2455 North Ravenswood at eleven tonight, ‘k babe?” Rachel screeched into the phone, as she was already at some bar when she answered. I could hear loud rock music and the sounds of people playing pool. I imagined a cigarette in her hand.
“Why? What’s there…?” I yelled back.
No response. She had already hung up.
I stood in my closet with a towel wrapped around my waist and water dripping off my body contemplating whether it was worth my time to go out and meet Rachel. If I was leaving for good, I’d most likely never see her again as she had openly admitted, “I don’t do suburbs or anything without a Prada.” As I flipped through shirt after shirt on wooden hangers, I decided that I had nothing better to do than see what this Ravenswood was all about. See, I was still new to the city and didn’t know much about the neighborhoods. I was willing to give this a try.
Don’t get me wrong – Ravenswood was cute, but had nothing. I found this out after I was dropped off by a cab at the address she had given me. The area was desolate. There were houses with porch lights on but looked like no one was home. The fall wind pushed leaves over the shadows from trees that decorated the sidewalk with the use of the occasional street lamp. Power lines hummed. Yeah, it was that quiet.
I stood there in a cute, black, tight-fitting “man gett’n” t-shirt and jeans and looked at the note with the address, written on the back of a grocery list, and then looked up at the area again. I was in the right spot but there was no one around. I had imagined it to be like Wicker Park: booming with late night bars and the scent of spilt beers and cigarettes and the sounds of people laughing or yelling and the scuffing of expensive shoes on the sidewalk.
I was snapped from my daydream as a car’s headlights raced down the quiet street. From a distance, I could hear tires squealing at the turn and heading right for me. I jumped off the curb to a yard and then the car screeched to a stop. It was a green Jeep Wrangler with its top down. Two people were in it. One was a guy with black dread-locks who introduced himself as Ted. And the other was my Penelope Cruz-looking friend, Rachel.
“Get in!” she screamed as she threw open the Jeep’s door and pulled me in to the backseat. The radio was blaring some looping techno beat as I was raced off to some unknown location with Rachel, probably on too many Vodka tonics, and the guy driving the car, Ted with Dreads, screaming lyrics to the beat of the music coming out of the stereo while high.
“Where are we going?” I asked over the wind layering itself on our bodies as we drove faster down a quiet one-way street.
No one answered. Rachel lifted her arms over her head like a belly dancer and kept her eyes closed like she was in her own trance. Her black hair blew over the Jeep’s seat and wild around her face.
These kids were fucked up on something and I had only two choices: be a nerd and spaz out or share the buzz. I chose the first.
“Guys! Where are we going?” I squealed again. I was about to freak out from the fact that Ted With Dreads was driving with his eyes closed and singing down a one way street in the wrong direction, when the car came to an immediate halt. I didn’t have my seat belt on so I tumbled to the front of the car from the backseat, right on top of the stick shift.
“We’re here, yo,” Ted With Dreads said as he pulled the chunks of his black matted hair behind his ears and hopped over the Jeep’s closed door on to the street.
“Where is here?” I asked brushing my shirt’s wrinkles out. Rachel finally came out of her trance and said, “Here, man… here.” She pointed to this giant elementary school. The building was historic and in the late night dark looked like it was a million years old, with its column pillars and its many steps that led up to the large wooden door set under an awning that said “Barker Elementary”
“A school? I don’t get… it,” I said. I was shaking from the chill of the wind the Jeep ride had given me and suffering with nausea from the sudden stop of the car.
“Let’s go,” Ted With Dreads said and raced up the stone steps to the front door. His baggy jeans rode low on his ass and exposed his boxer shorts. Rachel followed. She was wearing this evil white short skirt that showed plenty of leg and these red heels that like, clicked at every jump she made up each step and a top that barely hid her breasts.
“We’re going to a school? Seriously?” I was ready to run the other way and get back home in just enough time so that I could get up early the next morning to start packing and get the hell out of the city that let me down. Being at an elementary school was proving the fact that this city was lame and that the only way you had to have fun was to play at a school.
“No. We’re going to dance!” Rachel screamed, pulling lipstick out of her purse to reapply. Ted With Dreads got to the large oak front door and rapped on it with his fist loudly.
“What the hell, you guys? This is fucking ridiculous!” I whined again.
The door creaked as it pulled open. In the distance I heard a repeated thump. Aa bald guy with tattoos and his lip pierced peeked through the door.
“What’s up?” The guy asked.
“Willy Wonka,” Ted With Dreads said.
The guy looked him over, then Rachel, and then me.
“Go ahead.”
“Willy Wonka?” I whispered to Rachel.
“Yeah, it was code word.”
“For what?”
“To get into the party, silly!”
As we walked down the dark hallway surrounded by metal school lockers, we finally reached these double closed doors; you could hear the bass of the music beating into your chest. We opened the large wood doors and there, inside what was the school’s gym, were hundreds of people, dancing to a DJ who was spinning records in the middle of the room.
The space was dark, but highlighted by these shooting laser lights – blue, pink, green, yellow – that hit all the walls and bodies who were dancing in clumps to trance-like music. There was the smell of pot. There were kids with insane haircuts. Then there was me, in utter shock. It really was a party.
“Are we supposed to be here?!” I screamed into Rachel’s ear. A cocktail had magically appeared in her hand. “That’s the fun!” She screamed back. “They totally broke in here… no one knows we’re here!”
Holy. Shit. I had just broken the law.
This was scary for a boy who just moved to the city and hadn’t even been out drinking and partying at legal places, let alone places that were, um, breaking in to schools (where little kids play dodge ball!).
“We have to go!” I yelled to Rachel. She was smoking a cigarette that had also magically appeared into her fingers and was now eyeing up some sweaty-looking guy that was wearing chinos and flip-flops with curly hair and licking his lips to get her attention.
“You go!” She screamed. “We’re staying.”
Pissed, I started heading towards the door to leave. In that moment, I pulled my house keys out of my pocket. I looked at the apartment keys laying in my palm. For another few days this apartment was still going to be mine. Then I was leaving everything. Was that how I was going to end the story of Chicago? Packing and giving up?
I decided to give the rave a try. I looked back towards Rachel’s direction to tell her I was going to stay, but she was completely gone. I frantically searched for her, and then one of my favorite songs came on and I had this feeling of relaxation swish over me. It was like fate, where you feel like you have to participate because it was like you were meant to participate—some other power was in control.
I swayed my body towards the middle of the dance floor. No dance partner. No friends. Just the music and me and the shooting colored lights hitting my face at uncalculated times. My eyes were closed and the smell of pot and sweaty bodies and the feeling that we were all there sharing the same moment vibrated through me. I felt free. I felt forgotten about. I felt like I could just be whoever I wanted to be. For the first time, I was happy. I didn’t want to be Carrie Bradshaw, be anyone else, or have any expectations. I just wanted to feel bliss – like this moment – forever.
But suddenly, the fluorescent gym lights flickered on and some girl shrieked, “POLICE! RUN!”
I looked toward the doors we had entered, disoriented by the bright lights, and saw at least twenty-five cops dressed like they were raiding a riot, with large bullet proof shields blocking their faces and beat sticks and guns aimed at all the chaos of dancers and druggies and partiers scurrying around like ants that just had their hill crushed.
People were stomping on each other and screaming as if they were being chased by rabid cougars, pushing to get closer to exits, any exits. But I was frozen. I’d never been caught by the cops doing anything wrong and my first instinct was to stay put because running from the cops was a bad thing. I had seen it on that reality TV show “Cops.”
But my other instinct, “Fuck, I don’t have bail money,” kicked in and I darted toward the door.
I ran to where a slew of people squeezed out of one door, which was opposite of where the cops busted in. I could hear the officers barking, “STAY PUT OR WE WILL SEND IN THE DOGS!” then barking as German Shepherds were sent in to collect us perpetrators, shredding our jeans and pants by the ankles and gnawing at the sensitive skin on the heels of our feet.
But I just focused on the door, pushed my way out through the drunk and drugged mess.
Then, as I was just about to kick a hippie girl and some skinny gay kid wearing glitter and butterfly wings, I felt a huge hand grasp my shoulder. I squealed and my stomach dropped. I immediately imagined my pristine permanent record that in my mind was held under glass somewhere, clean and crisp and white, now marked up with red-penned PERPETRATOR and set on fire. The good kid I was, deleted in flames!
I turned around and it was Ted With Dreads, showing me an exit on the other side of the gym that no one had noticed.
“We’ll get in the Jeep, but I lost Rachel, man!” He told me while we ran alongside each other.
But as we raced toward the door, I turned to find that Ted With Dreads was taken down by a giant German Shepherd that was shaking his leg in its jaw. Ted screamed in pain and as I exited the building, I could hear him scream: “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Not the pot!!!!!!!!!”
Escaping in to the night felt like drinking a glass of cold water when you’ve been sweating for hours. I was breathing heavily and shivering from fear and my brain swirled with all the possibilities that could’ve happened: jail time, fines, a scar on my permanent record, major dog bites…
Then, in the quiet walk home with the chill of fall tackling my bare arms, my head began to calm. I was blocks away from the mess and realized this had been the best night I had in all of the time I’d lived in the city. I had expected nothing and that was the key. All the expectations I was putting on the city and on myself were blocking the moments where life was actually happening. For the second time that night, I felt happiness. I realized that I couldn’t move back to Wisconsin. Because Wisconsin was no longer home.
I then imagined a new phone conversation with my mom in my head:
“Mom, yah it’s me. I’m staying in Chicago. I know… I know… You hate me being here. But, you know what… this is my home.”