I’m pretty exhausted right now, but there were a couple of things I wanted to tell you about tonight before the day washes over me tomorrow (my folks’ last day in town!) and I lose my thoughts to the rush of the rest of the summer, which is passing more quickly than I ever could have guessed it would.
The first thing is that last night, after having spent several days preening and flirting, blazing with color and life and history and imagination, Chicago turned around and threw on another face. A drunken face.
The city was still showing off in the late afternoon, when we snagged four of the very last seats in the auditorium of the Harold Washington Library downtown so we could hear Salman Rushdie read from his sexy new book and fend off (quite handily, I have to say) various rather odd questions about what he predicted for the future of the human race and the planet.
Chicago’s charm began to fade just a little when it organized a sudden downpour just as we were walking to our dinner reservations at Morton’s (where my dad was very excited about taking us to celebrate our upcoming anniversary). But we ducked into a conveniently located coffeeshop to wait out the storm, and while the counter staff there could perhaps have been a trifle more helpful and a trifle less pugnacious, things looked up when we got to the restaurant and received a hilarious and surprisingly graphic overview of the dinner menu from our waiter, complete with demonstration-cuts of meat wrapped in cellophane. Dinner (which began with lobster bisque, ended with a cake oozing warm, volcanic chocolate from the inside, and consisted primarily of tender, juicy steaks accompanied by mounds of wonderful potatoes) was pretty darned delicious.
But then it was past nine and still blustery, and (of course) there was train construction going on, so (of course) the red line was running on the wrong tracks for the evening. After surviving the wet, windy walk to the station, we had to go two stops north and out of our way before turning around and coming back south. The southbound train car we walked onto contained an unconscionably loud and very, very drunk bachelor’s party in Chicago for the night from the suburbs. They chanted. They sang. They yelled. They laughed. They attempted to make the entire train car jealous of their incredible joy and camaraderie (they failed). They wondered out loud why their stop (which, being on the subway tracks, the red line was never going to pass that night) was so long in coming.
And then they got off the train, and their sudden absence revealed the fact that on the other side of the car an entirely separate but equally loud party existed which was having an animated gossip session. One particularly egregious woman belonging to this group insisted on describing (in great detail and with a certain amount of awe), the extraordinarily large size of an acquaintance’s butt. I declare, I was so fascinated by her conversation that I almost didn’t notice the fact that our train was lurching and jerking along as if being driven by one of the members of the aforementioned drunken bachelor’s party.
By the time we had gotten off the train, waited for the bus, gotten on the bus, and traveled, exhausted, to within three blocks of our apartment, our ears were ringing, our feet were wet, and the fact that yet another highly intoxicated person sitting near the front of our bus suddenly dropped over and vomited copiously onto the floor was actually pretty funny.
So thanks, Chicago. You sure showed my parents that you know how to ring in a Thursday night in style.
The second thing is that I feel like I’ve done what my city has: shown both my best and my worst to my parents. As usual. Things were sunny for a while, but my storm clouds always blow in, don’t they? Ah well. Every time we visit with each other, I learn a little more about both them and myself. Every time I stumble on the wrong words to say and hear I understand a little better the ways in which we are different, the ways in which our mutual attempts to accommodate and please each other meet with confusion and resistance on both sides. And every time, the sun returns in the end.
Tomorrow we’re supposed to have thosai for lunch on Devon Road and then—if sunshine prevails over the clouds—meander over here for the afternoon. Wish us luck, love, and light.
See you later, lovelies.
