I was looking at my textbook yesterday. There was a story about a woman that lived in the Polish area of Chicago. It reminded me of Christen and her apartment on Cortez Street in the Ukrainian section on the west side of Chicago.
You get old enough, and the stories and experiences pile up like a bunch of dirty clothes.
When I think of Christen's apartment I think of manic love, extreme weather, Elliot Smith, wood floors and the steps that led up from the front door, past the strange anonymous neighbor, and into her rickety apartment.
We'd met at a friend's wedding, in Las Vegas. I sat across from her at a mediocre buffet. I noticed she had sweat rings under her arms to go along with the hair under her arms. She was confident, even cocky, and had a big mouth; literally.
I followed her around that weekend like a puppy. If she was doing something I wasn't, then I was sad. If she wasn't in the same room as me I was sad. She even played the horse race game with me. When she left at 3 a.m. Monday morning, to go back to her little world in Chicago, I nearly cried.
And somehow, despite her having a boyfriend at the time, despite me living a few thousand miles away in Oakland, California, through weeks of rigorously planned emails, Christen called me at 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon on the free 800 phone number my roommate had illegally set up for me through his job at a non-profit long distance phone service.
Again I was reconnected with that Las Vegas feeling. That cracking conversation. That wit. The confidence. I hung up after an hour feeling like it had lasted a minute. The following week she and her boyfriend had broken up. A couple weeks after that I was on a plane to Chicago.
We met in Midway Airport. She was a couple minutes late, but she came. She brought me a collector's tea spoon that said Chicago. I brought her a corsage; she'd never been to prom. Minutes later we were filling up her 84 oxidized Volvo in the cool October evening air just outside the airport.
There's nothing like Chicago in California. The brick, the bags in trees, the alleyways people honk as they drive through. The closest thing is San Francisco, and I love San Francisco dearly, but I was born there. Being born can't compare to helplessly falling in love and chasing it halfway across the country. Chicago sounded, felt, and wreaked like a city in a way I'd never known.
That night, after drinking a couple of beers in her kitchen, we got close. "You’re snuggly!" she said. I snickered through my nose. It was the only sound I could manage. I was so attracted, scared, joyful, hopeful, and speechless. We kissed for the first time.
I was a lost cause. I idolized Christen. I loved her city. I loved the dark windy evenings where the naked branches swayed and disappeared into old apartment buildings and factories. I loved her goofy brothers who grew hot peppers in a broken down loft that had a board for a door. I loved the way she pulled me into a pile of leaves outside Frank Lloyd Wright's former home.