Is that all there is?

Saturday night I went to a fancy Latin-fusion restaurant in the South Loop, in what turned out to be Chinatown, just a short walk in fancy clothes past the Jamaican dealers hanging in front of the Hilliard Homes Housing Project. The young lady who got me into this mess called as I walked, confidently, through their action. "Is the block hot?!" she yelled. Yes, indeed. Walking through industrial decay to drop $70 on a meatless entree and stupid Cuban drink is not hot, however, and why would I do such a thing? I feel it is my duty, in Chicago, to take everyone up on each social opportunity. Enough of this pseudo-slumming all the time, I thought. I am nearly 30, and I am a young professional, and I should go to Something-fusion restaurants in emerging parts of the city.

Why am I so stupid all the time? I have no palate and this is not the time to develop one. I don't know why I can't remember this: if you have to take public transportation to a restaurant you can only afford because of the Earned Income Credit in your tax return, then maybe you are going to the wrong restaurant. Another example: at this fancy place I spoke with someone who had been to a real live sex party. The whole thing was like a Russian matrushka doll; the sex party had been much seedier and sadder than my informant had expected. We talked about the sex party while sipping fancy drinks in a scene that looked pleasant enough but was much sillier and flatter than I had expected. At the core of the evening's matrushka is a tiny doll holding some kind of warm, flat disk...what is that? It's a Crunch Wrap Supreme from Taco Bell, beans no meat. Give me that taco, kokalajan, I'll trade you for this mango picante ceviche remoillade.

The evening continued with a ride in a BMW to the newest, hottest lounge, which was deemed not hot when we arrived, at which point I requested a drop at the Blue Line.

Here was the highlight of my evening, sad as it is: my ten minutes on the Lullaby Express. The final car had four homeless people along the right side windows, one every other row, in their multiple puffy layers and moon boots and complete surrender to sleep. They snored in unison. Faces buried in their coats, they resembled plush toys. This is what we feared would happen to our Care Bears when we grew tired of them and threw them out: our loyal friends were left to the cruel world of abuse and trampling and trying to sleep on public transportation. On the off chance that every bit of our joy and comfort is part of a mystical aggregate, I used the Lullaby Express' calm melancholy to beam great swells of love to their tummies.

And then off to see the same friends I see every weekend, the ones who live three blocks away, at the same place we always go to, even when we say we won't. Beaming love to tummies all the way, and for that I thank you, Lullaby Express.

And now I’m lying here I’ve had too much booze, I’ve been shat on and spat on and raped and abused

"But that is one reason why I find the subject of substance abuse fascinating. What we are really talking about is consciousness, our mode of being. In fact, I think the desire to alter that consciousness is holy; the desire to strive for a higher consciousness, to order the waves of thought so that they come in brighter patterns, clearer, more colorful, and the desire to loosen up a crowd so that we can be, for a few moments, the people we dream of being -- these are lofty and sacred desires. When those desires go awry, it's trouble. But that doesn't mean that the impulse to get high is bad."

Words from Cary Tennis, salon.com, who is the man. The total man. The picture of Shane MacGowan was sent to me by my friend Baby Mama, no explanation given. Is any explanation needed? How lofty are his sacred desires?

I get nothin' but abuse

There's a discarded hubcap on the tracks at Logan Square. It looked pretty new, and since the tracks are underground, someone had to carry a hubcap downstairs and then throw it on the tracks. Since it's Logan Square, my money is on 1) ironical hipsters, 2) stoopid high schoolers, 3) un borracho.
My first car was a LeMans that was always losing hubcaps, and the younger me resents the loss of a perfectly nice hubcap. But after days lost to a high fever and horrible stomach cramps, it was a nice welcome back to the working week.

Work which involved a client coming in reeking of liquor. Her excuses were weak--because she was drunk, probably. But cough syrup? I am naive but not yet headless. If I were in the grips of an endless and destructive addition, I would have said that my Burger King cup was filled with rubbing alcohol because of a cut on my foot that requires near constant disinfecting. After this, in two hours of total chaos, an angry 4 year old repeatedly punched me and spat right in my face. If I knew how to link songs to weblogs then a) I would get a better frackin job, b) you would join me in listening to 'Punks Jump Up to Beat Down' by the Brand Nubians. I get nothin but abuse.

The confusion is this: from whence does this abuse come? From my clients? I'm the one who went and insinuated myself in their lives, and to be perfectly honest, if we could pan away from nearly every room I have occupied professionally, and you could do some kind of abuse-measuring infrared tracking, I'm glowing blue. I'm the safest. Some tiny-fist-punching and toddler spit is, in comparison, the ball pit at McPlayland.

If it is not the kids or the moms then it is me, my agency, or my God. It is not me because, despite the Sainted title, I am not the martyr type. At the most, to any one task, I give 85%. Because I flirted with anarchism as an undergrad, I find that, clearly, the Man is taking advantage of my poor professional boundaries. As Best Friend pointed out, this is my first professional job, all Mastered out and whatnot. It is incumbent upon me to make my supervisors aware of how much I can handle, which is: not much. Just enough.

As far as blaming God, let us remember the time in Gyumri Bible study that Jen Haile said (and oh if you could hear that sweet Texas accent), "I was not promised a life of ease but a life of peace." To this I add: I was not promised a life free from punches and spit, but a life which I hope is not full of shit. And this one I like, and may have tattooed on my neck or something: I was not promised a life without debt, but a life that is def.

A final note: while home sick, I watched a documentary on the Clash. Oh, Joe Strummer. I fear I will never know one so righteous and pretty as you. Except for my companion as I watched TV and writhed in pain: our new cat, Mary. She loves the Clash, constant attention, and napping.

She is learning to play the drums.

So be easy and free when you're drinking with me,

I'm a man you don't meet everyday.

When you are single and wild, Irish and 29, you come upon a crossroads nearly every weekend. Friends are falling off the edge of the earth right and left, like your grandparents and uncles and step-parents before them. There is the seduction of alcohol in the wildness, as a cure for loneliness, as a bit of transcendence if you are too boring to imagine much else. I am a sucker for maudlin poetry and inebriated sentimentality, am genetically and behaviorally predisposed to alcoholism, and have a deep selfish well of gluttony that food can longer satiate. So I am setting up roadblocks and always cautious regarding liquor and beer, because I feel alcoholism hanging around me like a soft, fringed scarf, like wet hair on a hot day.

However. This is St. Patrick's Day, and we are who we are: four cousins, full Ohirish, drinking all day. Diana Gomez, bless her loving, troubled heart, gave a speech once about the function of 'spirit' in Armenian life, and in the lives of the poor and drinking, in general. She had joined AA after she survived the drinking that killed her husband, but then she started drinking again, and felt it was leading her to holiness. One of the holiest moments in my blessed life was in an Al-Anon meeting. Who am I to judge? I mean, really. Who am I? I spent the whole day listening to Shane MacGowan songs, and he's an actual pickle now, he's retarded and toothless. But before he was retarded and toothless he was a better man than I will ever know.

These pictures document the tradgectory of the evening. At some point Shannon and Kevin staged a fight that no one else knew was staged, and the help was coming from the kitchen to watch. At some later point it seemed a good idea to drag her to the front and force her to Irish dance. She didn't want to, she said she couldn't feel her legs, but she actually looked amazing. Because I was enamored of cousins, and had some sheets in the wind, I didn't mingle enough or collect the random friendships that St. Patrick's Day brings. I will say, however, that I have been in many, many restrooms, drunk and sober. And there is no kinder, sweeter, chattier place than a crowded women's' restroom at an Irish bar on St. Patricks Day. There were many slurred compliments, questions about our last names, and pointless stories about what this guy at the bar said. We're best friends! I love your hair! It was a team effort to remove toilet paper from the bottom of my sparkley shoes.

There are moments of crystalline clarity and real joy, and then moments of horrible physical pain and humiliation. St. Patrick's Day is the sum total of human life, maybe? Anyway. We have spent the last two days walking slowly and eating only greasy and puffy foods. We are thinking of what people gave up and tore themselves from; we are living good lives, big, rich, loving lives, and so I thank the drunks and saints and martyrs that came before us. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wherever we go we celebrate the land that makes us refugees

This is an adorable blogger conceit, heading posts with song lyrics. I only know a handful of songs so this should end soon.

I thought about titling this post, and therefore this weekend:

The Irish are Idiots. Or: Happy Fake Patrick's Day.

But I don't think the Irish are idiots. Sometimes I feel like an idiot, and I have some claim to Irishness, but we cannot blight a whole people because I sometimes dislike my Americanness. I love St. Patrick's Day festivities because it focuses my natural tendency to sentimentality, which the Irish claim as their own, by the way. It is also a nice time to exercise my internal class struggle; I like to see the trashy Irish, and those folks whose own trashiness has drawn them to Irishness. Also when I think of myself as an island, a lone intellectual and spiritual searcher walking these mean streets without a clique to back me, I have to face that I am just another jackass wearing a green sweatshirt and making eyes at redheads.

The South Side parade is the best in the world. I don't know how this North/South thing is even debated; it is the difference between a big hot basket of fish and chips and a photograph of poop. Which would you rather eat? At the parade you are right up there and free to yell whatever you want. I let the Morgan Park Dance Squad know that "You are beautiful, ladies!" I got an older couple to yell "We love history!" with me at the Beverly Hills Historical Society. I sprayed silly string on some toddlers. We gave Sexy Eyes to some firefighters, we motioned for them to call us, I will be checking 'missed connections' on craigslist for days. I enjoy hooting, waving, yelling, and dancing, and I like to be on pavement: parades are heaven.

The real deal is coming up. Cousins are coming into town. When the pain of the world has got me down, when I am crying for all the children that are not my children, it is time to gather those I love around me and take them to a bar, do some hooting, yelling, and dancing, and then get them drunk enough that I can tell them how much I love them.

I won't have far to go when I go crazy

Everyone who feels lots of pain regarding their mothers should bring a teddy bear to Logan Square, right there by the eagle. And then we should wail on those teddy bears with all our might. Like Dr. Phil making those wives beat their chair/husbands. How fucked up would that be?

I came up with a continuum about mother pain the other night. It had been a rough, rough week. I get to a place where it is all understanding and love, compassion for my hurt, hurt mama, and then she does some petty ass thing and I could destroy her, I have to go in my room sobbing and hash it out with God and demons.

I was thinking about how there are people who have never doubted, and do not doubt to this day, that their mothers love them. And then there are people who know that their mothers love them, sort of, but they also know that most of the time they didn't feel loved. This feeling loved is the real continuum. On the other end are those that did not feel loved and have to face that maybe they weren't loved. This is tricky. This is where being loved and feeling loved skip tracks and get all mangled up and there I am, dazed, thrown from the wreck and crying like an Oscar winner. Keening like an Armenian woman at a funeral. Hurt.

I was also thinking about trees and all we can learn from tree rings. And thinking that I have little bubbles or cavities interspersed in my rings that map those times that I felt truly and deeply unloved. Scaring times that I moved through but I think they remain and every once and awhile some jab--from my mother, myself, anyone--snags and I get wrecked for a bit. On a scale from 1 to 10 of feeling loved, 10 being all loved, 1 not so much, I have been a 2, but now I am an 8. That seems right. 10 is just greedy, and would probably involve sex.

And many of the kids I work with are stuck at 2 or 3, long term, and they have burdens and memories that are breathtaking in their emptiness. My tiny ripples of hurt fully acknowledge their puniness in comparison.

For some reason I was also thinking that I want a concrete answer about this mother stuff. I want the world to stop, everyone to close their eyes, and answer from 1 to 10 how loved they feel by their mothers. I know it doesn't correlate to anything--absolutely nothing correlates, there will be no answers--but I just want to know. And it isn't just mothers, it's all things, love comes from everywhere, but right now I am thinking about mothers all the time. My grandmother and my mother and I, and they women I work with and the motherless children, everything keeps this in my mind and in my heart.

Not that I don't think about other things, including: Project Runway, am I going to have to declare bankruptcy, how loved I feel by God, how maybe there is no God, are all my principals a way to keep myself hobbled and meek, I ate too much, I miss my cousins, is the car going to make it, I love this song, I love this kid, this kid is going to make me pinch him, or bite him.

Chicagoland is your greater area

Little Lady is back in the psych ward. I went to see her today. I am not a women of the whole world, but I have been around, and this place was grimy. The hospital, the street, the dudes on the street, the whole bombed-out area. MLK Jr. came to Chicago to save the west side, once upon a time. He did not succeed, people. It is bleak.

I took Jackson downtown, toward the looming Sears Tower. My friend from Texas called it "Chicago's big middle figure to the world." I passed the demolition of some project towers around Western--research indicates that Rockwell Gardens is 'changing.' Changing with a slow-moving wrecking ball. When being torn down I think buildings look like they were made of fabric the whole time: how the cement clings to the iron rods, and everything is shredded.

I passed Malcolm X College and thought, damn, I should have gone to MXC. Because I want to wear the sweatshirt and I can't really justify that without having attending MXC.

After a tasty Korean lunch with a generous friend I took Pulaski down to 183rd. And while my Little Lady is stuck in hellville, a young woman for whom I am the legal guardian went and 'mauled' another girl. Sweet Boy decided to re-up with his crew, even though 3 kids have been shot in his neighborhood. Another, possibly sweeter boy is struggling with encopresis--look it up. I wore bright tights and a nice skirt and prayed for all of them when they weren't looking.

As much as I hate my own poverty and as sick and sad as things are making me lately, Chicago makes it better. From 183rd I traveled through the suburbs of the Black middle class--was there ever a better town name than 'Country Club Hills'? Through the fringes of Beverly and the remnants of the Irish Mafia, past the stunningly, warmingly, nostalgic 1960s apartment complexes of the southwest side. Who lives in those buildings? My dad did, during one of their separations, and I remember the smell and the globe chandeliers and the open slat stairwells. I imagine that all of those buildings are filled with divorcees, old people, and ghosts from swankier times.

There is a strange little strip of perfect brick bungalows just south of Little Village. And as always, when in the near south side, I miss Pilsen. I miss the checkerboard brick house I would pretend was mine as I walked to the Fairplay. When the debt disappears it will be time to man up and get some land. Right now, my fantasy choice is between the checkerboard on Oakley or a mini-castle in Beverly.

But make no mistake: Chicago, I am yours.