When the Great Big City-Sized Shoe Fits

Some places are like water to a fish.

I spent my week in Chicago, my home of thirty years. I sold some books, saw some friends, ate some very specific Chi-town cuisine, and wandered around like a tourist of my own experience. There is existing and there is belonging. Every one of us feels out-of-place and unique in our way. Carving out who you will be to the world is amped up in the best ways when you feel like a puzzle piece in a puzzle for which you are a part. Like a soul mate, finding your puzzle is important and transformative.

My parents lived in Marion, KS for a decade or so and I saw that, while my mother invested herself in the tiny town of just over 2,000, her puzzle was in Riverside Park in Wichita. She got out in the community, was active in her church, and practically built the local food bank by herself but her longing was for her place which was 90 minutes away. I visited their home in Marion dozens of times for Christmas and Independence Day and I never realized how out of place she felt, how isolated. Seeing her in Wichita I observe the difference and it is definitive. She feels like she belongs in the tree-lined streets of Riverside Park in a way that she could never belong to Marion.

A surprising refrain from at least seven different people in four separate locations was the admonition that “Chicago needs you.” I’m not certain of that but it does reflect a specific outsized persona I had while here that there are folks who felt the absence enough to suggest it. I’d say that I need Chicago and if I can add to the swirling humanity something cool, so be it.

There’s something indestructible about this city. Alive, hungry. NYC has the feeling that every square inch is filled. Not so much with Chicago but the ratio is pretty high. Plainly put, Chicago is a world-class city.

I surmise that some of my reaction to the place is in direct contrast with Wichita for the past year and an observation of all that is missing from there to here. Walking to an Italian place with my host the first night and passing four places in three blocks that had either live music or a poetry reading ongoing visible from the street filled with cold, excited people. I stared at each with a sense of yearning. I could walk for ten miles in Wichita and still come up short on that angle. I miss that a lot.

I was here nearly a year ago in November. At that time I was sort of drowning and in need of a life raft. Chicago was that raft and jump started my wounded soul into some action. During that visit, I was flooded with memories of my time with Dana—every storefront, restaurant, venue, theater, street corner, or alleyway reminded me off some moment with her years before. It was a drag in a lot of ways but like a purge of sorts so it served a pragmatic purpose. This time around, I was likewise bombarded by memories but of a different sort—recollections of things I’d done or people I knew long before even meeting her. Walking for miles through neighborhoods of my past turned out to be a perfect activity.

One morning, I drove because it was cold and drizzly. I went by the apartment Dana and I shared above Easy Bar and in the past year the building has been sold, demolished and rebuilt as a commercial space. The area where our apartment was is now the roof of a Wok Restaurant. In the grand scheme, I know this means next to nothing but it felt like both I and Chicago were done with that marriage.

This all felt quite good.

Walking downtown, I notice in a window my image and I realize that the black jacket I had was old and reminded me of who I used to be. It was a jacket I bought just as that marriage was taking off and decided that I kind of hated it now. So I wandered into Macy’s and looked around for something new. I found a pretty classic leather-ish jacket, tried it on and committed to new skin. I bought it, transferred all my pocket stuff to the cool, and walked out onto the street. To my right was a homeless kid (I say ‘kid’ but he might’ve been thirty). He had no coat of any kind and sat on the wall with a sign.

“Yo. Do you want this jacket?”

He looked at me suspiciously.

“Why?”

“I just bought a new one and don’t want it anymore. It’s yours if you’d like.”

He thought for a moment, checking out the jacket then me for a moment. “Can I try it on?”

I hand it over. He hops up, puts on the jacket, and looks into the Macy’s window. It fits and he’s pleased. “You don’t want nothing for it?”

“All yours.”

He takes another look, nods at me, and sits back down as if I didn’t exist.

This new jacket feels amazing.

During the week (and especially at both the Literate Ape book thing and the Chicago Reader UnGala) I run into dozens of people I know. I find myself boiling down my five year experience into an elevator pitch.

“Moved to Vegas, worked as a casino manager in the shittiest casino there. Wrote a book about it. Wife decided prostitution was her calling in life, so we got divorced. Wrote a book about that. too. Went to Kansas to spend time with my family. Looking to move back in the spring.”

The prostitute thing shocks but it seems the moving back is the sticking point which is nice. If anyone wants details about the absurdist divorce, I tell them “Buy the book.” and the conversation moves past.

I’m finding a unique sense of humility that perhaps I needed but never embraced. I see people who I feel I was less than generous with and want them to know that I’m regretful of that. Life handed me some serious humble pie and I want to own it while also acknowledging that the only things I’ve ever accomplished came at the behest of my overwhelming overconfidence and arrogance. The project seems to be to mesh that humility with that extreme Kirk-ness so I’m working the angles.

The book event at Haymarket was the bomb. Walking into the place, I was filled with nothing less than joy. John, the owner, was ebullient and immediately asked where I parked and then gave me the code to the employee’s parking. David sent things up, I parked and it suddenly like going back in time. The room, the stage, the microphones, the beer. This was my place for years. As people I hadn’t seen in a long time trickled in I found myself surprised that many of them had not seen each other in a long time, too. It was like an odd family reunion.

The night went really well—I was taken back by the fact that the stories written while I was in agony over the nuclear explosion of my divorce were really funny and I laughed at my deposed anguish along with the crowd. I sold almost all of my books, David sold a few as well (despite not actually having books to sell).

The next night Joe and I headed to the Reader UnGala. We stopped at a brewery nearby, grabbed a pint, then went to the Epiphany Arts Church and it was supremely cool. Music upstairs, music downstairs, lots of well-dressed people dancing and eating and drinking. Black, brown, white. Straight, gay, trans. It was, again, like being home. Of course, at the bar, I’m immediately recognized and throw out my elevator pitch. We run into Allison Cuddy in the hallway (a colleague from my days at WBEZ) and, as most people I used to know back in the day, the look of surprise but pleasantly so is fun. We ran into a couple of Joe’s friends, Jill Hopkins, Katie Prout and her fiancé, and half a dozen others.

Joe decided he wanted to buy a few raffle tickets but the app is funky. He is suddenly Don Quixote attacking windmills and he finally gets some purchased but accidentally buys $217 in raffle tickets. He’s pissed so I buy him another beer and we two old men sit, listening to music from another generation, checking out the dancing girls about half our age and the men our age trying to look cool for these young ladies. We were decidedly not attempting cool and it was a blast.

Oh, and I had meetings. I met with a few of my connects to big foundations, big media, and the city to plant the seeds that I was eventually coming back to Chicago and the meetings went exactly as I expected. Pleased to hear I was coming back, no gigs now but they'll keep an eye out. I know better than to count on anything but I'm trying to change it up a bit—I've done the thing where I simply go without a plan, a job, or a place to live half a dozen times in my life and I've landed on my feet each and every time—for shits and giggles, I'm thinking some forward strategy might be a thing to try.

I ate Pequod's Pizza, Green Street BBQ, a Spanish omelet at Little Goat Diner, a full-on Chicago char dog (no ketchup). I drank beer, had some delicious whiskey, and walked for a grand total of forty-five miles.

On my last day, having had my meetings, sold my books, hung out with friends, Joe comp'd me for his Shoreline Architectural Tour on the river. I was there to see him do his thing and, frankly, he's excellent. What I didn't expect was the tour of this amazing city reminding me just how amazing it has been and continues to be. These tours are a bit of rah-rah for Chicago and I found myself swept up in the cheerleading.

Takeaways:

I have some incredible friends in Chicago.

I miss the place like a thirsty man longs for a beer.

That great big city-sized shoe just fits.