boys that smell like salami and boys that never apologize

The parade was wicked. I nearly had to cut a bitch--she wanted to know who had invited me to the party deck, her grandma's friend's sister's party deck, because they were having a problem with underage drinkers. I'm 30, Mary Kate. I can pull out my earrings and grease up my face before you can call your cousin Bridget to get me off your ass. Representing Ohirish! Anyway, I didn't fight her, because like it or not, this is not my city. I don't know these people. But I know my girl Mandy "Up For Anything" Burnham. She was taking amazing pictures left and right and up and down. I have to get my hands on them. It's me in a tiara with countless old men in green pants, carrying shillelaghs.

Up For Anything has became an photo ethnographer. We spent Friday in Englewood taking pictures of the South Side Masonic Auditorium, the graffiti, the burnt old buildings: we were trying to avoid the ghetto cliches, but that is what Englewood has to offer. Plus I'm a social worker and former seedy neighborhood dweller and general down-with-the-streets type (not deep in the streets, though, never that raw) and yet it was amazing, the sense of otherness, the catcalls, the go-back-homes. Segregation city, my friends. Welcome.

Spring sort-of arrived. It does not have the muggy sentimentality that spurs me to listen to Cap'n Jazz and go for a walk, but it did prompt Fluffy-headed Social Worker and I to take the top down on the Cabrio and drive to the Hideout for bands, bands, bands. Guess what? One of the bands is some of Cap'n Jazz! Dude was singing and lisping and everyone is married with adorable children. Aging is amazing. Listening to the CD makes me think of the boy who stole my record and threw pennies at me and dressed a vacuum as a lumberjack for my 19th birthday. Remember summer in Columbus when you were 19? If you were me then you were in love with your friends and hating yourself. We spent a lot of time on the porch roof.