Soul Food

For the three or so hours it took to move our stuff in, we listened to an AM soul station on our clock radio. (The mover: "Y'all like that soul music, huh?") Todd chose it after he grew frustrated by the profusion of country and Christian FM offerings. It was Halloween, so they kept playing the opener to "Thriller": the squeaking door, wind, and echoing foosteps. Ooooh.

Several times, I heard a commercial for an OTC medication (for when "you overdid it last night") that was so good I'd listen to that station again just to hear it. Pun-lovers, get ready: The spot started with a woman singing, heavy R&B-style, words like "nausea...heartburn...indigestion." Then a deep male voice rattled off a few things about the product (I truly regret that I can't remember what it was; it deserves to have its name spread here), followed by the singer again, offering up the vocal ornament known in the singing biz as a 'run':

"DI - A - RHEEE - EEE - EAAA!"

I uh, shit you not.

I don' t know that this ad is in any way Birmingam or South-specific, but I like to think so.

- - -

We took lunch at the Pita Loco , one of our closest dining options, along with a Quizno’s and a Subway and something sketchy called the New York Delicatessen Something-or-Other, which appears to mostly proffer fried shit.

"Do they have Mexican food?” Todd wondered reasonably of the Pita Loco as we chowed on our falafel and gyro. No, they do not. This crazy pita has biscuits and grits and “tahbooli” and falafel that had too much of some spice in it. “It’s no Sultan’s,” I said, but I was hungry, and it sufficed.

“It’s no [insert restaurant/bar/shop].” I think I’ll be saying, or thinking, this a lot.

Pita Loco was so loco that Todd got all distracted and left his treasured leather satchel from Greece there. I’m happy to report that the nice lady behind the counter did find the “briefcase,” and had it waiting for me this morning when I stopped in.

Later, after an unpacking frenzy, we treated ourselves to beers at Speakeasy 1920, the closest bar. It’s no Weegee’s, folks. It’s not even no Black Beetle. But it’s our little neighborhood bar, and it just opened this summer, and I do not want to see it go. So we’ll continue to swill malt beverages there, because you know we like to do that kind of thing. And really, what choice do we have?

Chi - Nash - Birm

Not a bad spot for a layover.

He (She) Was Gone

OK, I'll try to quit with the 90s music refs. Don't know why they keep coming, really. Creeping old age, maybe? Yikes.

And...Cut.

I thought the fat Mexican never forgave me for leaving my office blinds up and letting light shine onto Walton street (how brazen!), but here he is, puffing up the steps to our door, offering to help us haul the last bit of stuff--cats, golf clubs, CPUs, cleaning supplies--out to the Corolla. He says he watched the movers yesterday, and it looked like they did a fine job. He says it's too bad we're leaving, we were some nice folks to have across the street.

"But I thought you hated me," I say. "You screamed at me from your stoop. You threatened to call your goon friends. You didn't like the way I sat at at my desk in the window and played with my hair. It frightened your little girls, you said."

He shakes his head. "I was a bad man then. I got worse before I got better. Lost my job as the crossing guard at the school, I was low, man, low. You know how you haven't seen me, man? I been in Indiana; I got clean, got my life turned around, you know what I'm saying? My wife, she's a queen, man; she took me back. I was crazy, I tell you, loco." He slaps Todd on the back. "Sorry man. I'm sorry I threatened you and all."

"It's alright, man," Todd says.

We pile the stuff into every last crevice in the Corolla, buy a case of Old Style at the Rico, turn up La Ley on the car stereo. We have a car party. The drunk couple from the alley come out to see what the ruckus is. They bring their own beer.

"Don't you fucking leave!" the lady screams. Her hair is a crimped orange mane; she struts and points. "You motherfuckers, you think you can just get up and fucking leave, but you know what? I'm the bitch who leaves! Yeah, that's right. Have some fucking respect!"

"Shut up, bitch," says her man-friend, smaller and darker than her.

"That's right, I'm a bitch! A bitch is supposed to bitch like a bitch!"

"You're gonna piss off all these people--"

"I'll piss off whoever the fuck I want, and you know why? Yeah, motherfucker, it's cuz your drunk ass can't tell me what to do. Yeah, that's right! Who pissed all over hisself last night? Yeah, that's right! You can't fucking hold it. You're the drunk motherfucker who---"

They're still going at it as we pull away. We leave the beer in the alley for them, next to their bashed-up Blazer. Junior at the Rico flags us down as we approach the corner, grinning big, and loads us up with two gallons of pico de gallo. He says we might need it where we're going.

Thinking into the box

Packing. Sad again. It’s dull gray today, perfect for indulging ze melancholie; how convenient! We finished Six Feet Under last night (had to squeeze in that closure-inside-the-closure) and yes, I bawled at the end sequence, all the old and dying Fishers. I will see my mother die, my father die. And I can't even handle leaving a place I've lived for less than 10 years.

Moving requires a sorting-through of the past; it forces you to confront who you were and are. It results in reacquaintance with a lot of past loves. Todd puts on Gish, which--absurdly enough, I know--makes me sadder still. I was such the little pothead when I was into this album. And to think: it came from Chicago! I was about to move to Atlanta. About to return, more or less, from whence I came, after having left for the North. I’m doing the same thing now. Will the pattern repeat?

Todd and I came to Chicago apart, but at almost the exact same time, late summer, 1998; we leave together now to go back to a region that’s our shared homeland, but to a place altogether new to both of us. I guess in certain ways that's perfect. But I wonder if we should’ve just stayed put, made our home in the place our lives dovetailed. That could’ve been perfect too.

When the Smashing Pumpkins were breaking out, Todd was listening as a high school student in Rock Hill; I was listening as a college sophomore in Middletown, Conn. People in Chicago—in what was I guess still a rough Wicker Park (god, to have known it then!)—were listening to Smashing Pumpkins and--I guess?--feeling proud of their export.

By the time we moved to Chicago, Corgan was less hero than joke.

if i could settle down. . .

Several times lately I've heard Pavement's "Range Life," a song that reminds me of winter '93-'94, when I lived in Atlanta, and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was hot, hot. In particular, it reminds me of one drive home to Nashville, around March I think, during which I cried and cried until I put on said album and started to feel better, despite myself.

There's significance here somewhere.

Or just oppressive nostalgia.

(...Well I got absolutley no one, no one but myself to blame.)

Open Letter to All the People of Chicago:

Dear all Chicagoans, waiting in line, sitting on buses, crossing intersections, etc:

Do you know how lucky you are to be here?

Are you glad to be here?

Be very very glad to be here!!!

Thank you.

Best,
S

--
On the other hand, it's a good time to leave: my legs are starting to fucking itch again. I am in hope that warm B'ham will = no more itchy-dry legs. Please let it be so, o goddesses of moisture-rich skin.

Chicago's goodbye gift to me

Just a little bit of early snow. The tip of winter.

<3

I have never before wanted to wear a tee-shirt that reads

I HEART [CITY].

I do now.

What I'd like to do now

is plunk this 3-flat down in B’ham’s Highland Park area, say right across the street from cute Rushton Park. Would the air be chillier around the building? Would everyone else who took up living there start wearing scarves and hats even when it’s not that cold? Would I look out my window and see a skyline mirage? Would someone open a "Puerto Rico" market down the block?

It’s fun to think about lifting up a whole Chgo greystone, Wizard of Oz-style. You know, tornadically. Upon touching down it would squash not a striped-stockinged witch, but, oh I don't know, grab me a redneck neocon of your choice. I don't want to think about politics right now.

I am sentimental. About this apartment, about so much. I don't think I've appreciated our Walton Street idyll enough. I’ve let the dust bunnies roll. I’ve complained about the apartment's lack of storage space, but now I'm moving somewhere with decidedly less of that. Our Walton home is huge, sunny as all get-out (light, I say, and Dills corrects me: “Not ‘light,’ bright!”), and brimming with vintage charm.

Last month I stared across the street at another greystone, with birds perched on the edge of its roof, and a buckeye tree out front. I watched the squirrels bum-rush the buckeye for its goods. They jumped from a buckeye branch to one on the next tree over, which bounced under their weight. Stashed their loot, and did it again.

September, and the sentiment was pooling. I bet there are no buckeyes left on the ground now for me to pick up and take along for good luck. Fair enough; our squirrel friends are setting up for winter, which they’re hardwired to do. I moon over the past, over what can’t be done over.

Yeah, I could learn a thing or two from our squirrel friends.