I always told people I was going home.
This is what I would tell people when they asked what my plans were for Thanksgiving or Christmas or if they asked me what I was doing a particular weekend and it involved me going back to Wisconsin.
“I’m going home.”
And for years, this was true. There’s that whole concept of where is home when you are in college? You know, if you go to college and then go back to live with your parents in the summer, where is home? Obviously, it’s where you will be moving back. It’s the same when you only live in a city for a only a few years. Like, when I moved to the city almost seven years ago to go to college. I literally only knew one person and that was barely. I lived in this shack of a studio(seriously, ask my parents/friends/brother about this place and they will all use the same word “Shack” with multiple adjectives such as “Shitty” or “INSANELY tiny” or “Unbelievably too expensive for what it was”) and to me, it was never home. Home was when I got to go back and see all my close friends who were still in high school or my family who still lived in the same houses in the same cities or, well, who were still alive. Home wasn’t a place where the kitchen and the bed were within feet of each other. Home wasn’t neighbors who often got so high they would flush pizza down the toilet which would cause a flood and leakage from their apartment above me to my apartment below them which would eventually destroy everything in my apartment from books to photographs to my writing and photography portfolio to my futon bed that wasn’t that great in the first place, but wasn’t much better when it smelled like toilet water that had filtered through years of old ceiling material.
Anyway, the city wasn’t home.
But things change.
I spent almost a week in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. At my parent’s house. Their house. Not mine. This may have sunk in a bit more over the years when the colors of my old bedroom went from blue to flower wallpaper and when the decorations went from Alanis Morissette posters to teddy bears. This may have sunk in a bit more when my brother moved out a few years ago. Or even more when my last neighbor who I had grown up with moved to Spain to study. Or even in moments, like last night, when I actually braved it out to a bar or two with an old friend and had high school classmates who hadn’t seen me in years come up and re-introduce themselves in flirty ways thinking I was new to the city in Wisconsin. Things have been adding up over the years.
But what really made it sink in is when I got off the train tonight. It was a mix of snow and rain. The Chicago wind slapped my face the minute I left the station. I even think I stepped in a puddle when I rounded a corner heading to catch the bus. The tall buildings were all in their right places. The el train rumbled by making the same old screeching noise. The cabs honked and sped around other cars. Unconsciously, I took in a giant breath. It smelled like winter. It smelled like Chicago. It smelled like home.

This morning while going through my old closet in my old bedroom in the old house I used to grow up in the old town I grew up in my mom pulled out a coat: my Letterman’s jacket.
“You still want this?” She asks.
I look at it. I got it Sophomore year of high school when I made the Varsity diving and swim team. I got it to put my letter on it. A giant letter “C” that was sewed to the left breast of the green leather exterior. I got it so I could pin the medals I would win at local and state meets. I got it because that’s what guys did at my high school. They wore jackets. They played sports. They walked around with giant “C’s” on their chest.
I hated that coat.
“Eh… ” I said while putting it on. It was two sizes too big and the second I saw it on me in the mirror I felt like I was fourteen and reeking of chlorine. I hated it. It wasn’t me then and totally wasn’t me now. “I don’t think I have anything to do with it now.”
My mom tells me to throw in on a pile and we can donate it. As she leaves my brother comes in eating a piece of toast. He sees me wearing the jacket, laughs and says: You’re keeping that, right?
“No, why?”
“Dude, if some guy saw that in your closet at your apartment… all I’m say’n is Jock Fetish, duh bro.”
He leaves my room crunching on his toast as I put the jacket in my suitcase.

After extensive research I have discovered I have a type. This research has been studied and collected and totally identified through watching the Travel Channel, History Channel, and the National Geographic Channel.
After a few days of planting myself in front of cable t.v.(damn you cable t.v. and your whole addictive “I’m going to make the hours of the day fly by” style.) I have fallen for three different t.v. hosting personalities. And, um, apparently I have also just discovered my type.
This is Don, he’s from “Cities of the Under World” on the History Channel. Honestly, I don’t really like the show, but I do get that butterfly feeling every time I know I get to see him.

This is Bear. He has an accent. He has to survive in wild conditions that are insanely dangerous on Man Vs. Wild. I don’t even camp. This relationship probably wouldn’t work. But, dang, he’s pretty to watch eat cooked roaches.

This is Marsh. He’s also a host on the History channel. He’s. Pretty. And I even learned some history stuff. Everyone say: “Hiiiiiiii Marsh”.

Byron’s type: Rugged. Scruffy. On cable Television.

I may or may have not enjoyed(and, ahem, slightly wept at) the aforementioned movies.

On Christmas Eve, two years ago, my brother and I drove to a house that was ten minutes away wearing our pajama bottoms and pea coats. It was, like, eight in the morning and I was without coffee(which, folks, as I get older this becomes more important. MUCH. More. Important). Brandon, my brother, woke me up and yelled: “Get your ass out of bed. We’re going for a ride.”
I knew where we were going. We were on our way to pick up this guy:

Kayne. The best damn dog in the world. An Australian Shepard that even as a puppy was a keeper. It took this guy a week to house break and only a month to learn sit, stay, fetch, roll-over, high-five(yes, like a frat dude) and to make blueberry muffins while reciting the Theory of Relativity. A damn good dog. Plus, I’m his uncle.
But this dog also has the best damn owner, my brother, who I adore. He’s my best friend. He’s the guy that will laugh at my really really bad puns. He’s the guy that I threatened people’s lives for in high school when he was a freshman and getting teased. He’s the guy I blamed breaking one of my mom’s expensive collectibles so I could go out to the mall with my friends while he had to sit in his room and read my old Box Car Children series. He’s the guy I can call and will be judged by because he loves me and will not hold back what I really need to hear.
Which is why it’s killing me what he’s going through.
Kayne disappeared three days ago. He was at the groomers. Someone opened the door. Kayne took off. They think he thought he saw my brother and now is lost. This is totally unlike him.
I just got back to Wisconsin today for the holiday and have spent the last four hours driving around with my one of my childhood friends. We have pulled in to vacant parking lots where he might be hiding behind an abandon building. We have circled in quiet neighborhoods hoping he might be asleep on someone’s front porch. We have passed out fliers. We have knocked on doors.
It’s cold outside. It’s been three days. Some people are crazy when it comes to animals. Your brain tends to not have good thoughts when these are your options. But this is my brother. And this dog is his life. And if I have to get up and search the entire five days of my visit I will do it because I can’t let my little brother down. This dog means the world to him. Then this means the world to me.
“What if… what if we don’t find him?” Sarah, one of my best friends, asks while we both squint in to dark cornfields watching the shapes of trees and street lights hit our faces as she drives.
The big brother in me wants to punch her in the arm and say something like: “Stop! We can’t be like that. We’ll find him!” But the adult me, the one that needs that coffee when he wakes up and has weighed the options, sits quietly for a second then rolls down the window to yell: “Kayne!” in to the cold.

Thanks for making me blush.

Byron’s Christmas list from 1988:
Legos. Crayons. He-man super hero action figures. Pound Puppies.
Byron’s Christmas list from 2008:
This. This. THIS!

Never. Doubt. My gayness.

After a few good glasses of champagne with my friend Rion and the witty conversation that comes with Byron’s consumption of glasses of champagne, we left and walked out in to a slew of falling snow. As we said our goodbyes and walked in opposite directions I shivered starting to remember the me last year at this time. Everything felt so hard. The cold. The snow. The walking home alone to an empty house.
This year the snow seems softer.
So does the walking home alone to an empty house.