It took me about three hours to warm up after my frigid isolated walk along Lake Michigan’s frozen shore. I took pictures, but could only bear taking off my gloves for about 15 seconds at a time. There was (of course) no other human being in sight, because everybody else has some commonsense. But I couldn’t come here and not visit the lake, I still think of it as MY lake.
When I first moved to Chicago, I got an apartment on Melrose, a couple buildings in from Lake Shore Drive. The apartment was a shit-hole box in a shit-hole slum-tenement (since torn down). The whole place had the sickly-sweet stench of roach poison, and there was an old-fashioned elevator with an iron gate you had to yank open at your floor. Sometimes getting that gate open took some doing. Also the elevator would stall between floors and I’d have to scream for help. But it was the first time I lived alone, it was my first place, and it was from there that I launched my life in Chicago.
Because of the closeness of the lake (all I had to do was go out my door, turn left, cross Lake Shore Drive, go underneath the overpass, and there I was, at Belmont Marina, and then, a bit further on to the Lake itself) it was accessible to me in a way it wasn’t in other neighborhoods. I lived in other neighborhoods in Chicago, later, and of course a bus-ride to the lake was only 15, 20 minutes away, but there was nothing like having it be right outside my door. I didn’t realize how good I had it until I moved further west into the city.
I ran 5 miles a day, along the lake, working off the excess energy I had had for a couple of months after fleeing my terrible relationship which had moved me around from Rhode Island, to Boston, to Philadelphia, and then an extended cross-country trip to California (we took months to get there, breaking up violently along the way). He started his job in San Francisco, and I lived in Los Angeles, where I knew no one, crashed in the spare bedroom of an old lady I didn’t know, and careened around on the freeways in our Westfalia camper van (with no GPS, remember: GPS has changed my experience of Los Angeles driving) looking for work. Now when I go to Los Angeles, I have so many friends and family there. My brother, Melody, my nephews, my cousins, friends. Then, there was no one. Meanwhile, I was grieving the death of my first relationship as though it was an actual death. It got so bad that finally, on a whim, really, I called up my friend Jackie (from a pay phone in the Valley) and said, “I have no idea how I’m going to pull this off but I’m moving to Chicago as soon as I can. Can I crash with you there until I get on my feet?” “YES. OH MY GOD. YES. GET HERE AS FAST AS YOU CAN.”
I sold everything, including the camper van, and moved to Chicago with two suitcases of stuff. Literally. And no money. I crashed with Jackie for no longer than a month. I signed up with a temp agency my first day in Chicago. I auditioned for a play, got cast and started rehearsals. This was before I even had a permanent address. (This is why young actors need to move to Chicago. If you’re talented, you will work.) After a month of temping, I put down rent and security deposit at the aforementioned shithole on Melrose. On my first day in that apartment, I went to the nearby animal shelter, and picked out a cat, huddled in the corner of his little cage, terrified and neurotic and sweet. I took him home with me and named him Samuel (after the little boy in Witness, since something about the cat’s personality suggested that little boy. Also, there’s the adorable moment in Witness when the little boy shows Harrison Ford how to hold a kitten.)
So I was all set. I had no furniture but I had a cat. I had no cooking utensils but I had a cat. I dragged a single-bed mattress home from a second-hand store. No bed-frame. For a month or two that was the only furniture I had. After being ensconced in what was essentially a middle-aged relationship from the age of 20-24, a relationship devoted to “things” in a way that I still define as middle-aged, it was so GLORIOUS to have NOTHING and to not CARE that I had nothing. (Our relationship was like the other relationships I still see around me and feel no desire to have, STILL: we cared about shopping for futon frames, we cared about cookware, we cared about comparison-shopping, we shopped for cars, we shopped for stereo speakers, we cared about carefully hanging our artwork – to be honest: HE cared. I didn’t give a shit. I realize everyone has to do these things, but I have a lowest-maintenance-possible attitude towards ALL of it. Don’t spend too much time shopping or browsing or thinking about “things” because all of that time can be spent reading/writing/movie-watching. Don’t spend time on stuff that doesn’t matter to you. Back then, I was a wild-child bohemian – I always was – and I knew it but I thought being grown-up was what a relationship was about, and my boyfriend was pretty dominant and set the terms. “Why don’t you care about what kind of Crock Pot we get? Do you want to weigh in on it?” “No. I don’t care. I could live in a tiny room with no Crock Pot and never miss it.” He never understood this, and thought I was wrong, and so then I thought I was wrong, and Jesus Mary and Joseph it’s just a Crock Pot. Is caring about a Crock Pot a requirement of being an adult?)
SO. Once in Chicago, I bought the bare minimum of things I would need to survive, and I spent the least amount of money possible. I bought a couple of cooking things at a second-hand store. I bought one or two towels, a laundry basket, and some clothes-hangers.
Jackie had a little black-and-white television and she gave it to me. But I rarely watched television since I was so busy already with temp-jobs, rehearsals, acting classes, and beginning my insane tear through the theatrical social scene. (The percentage of men to women in my demographic/career was 10 to 1. It was an extremely favorable situation for a woman. In other words, you had to beat them off with a stick.)
The first guy I met was an improv comedian named Phil. We are still friends. Jackie was involved at Improv Olympic, studying improv, and going to shows there was always a huge part of my time in Chicago (especially since my eventual main flame was a star at Improv Olympic). But even weirder, the night I met Phil was also the night I met Ann Marie (she and Phil were there together), and she became one of my best friends (but we wouldn’t even meet for real until a year later), and I also met M. on that same night – the guy would be my main flame the entire time in Chicago and years after that (although the thing with him didn’t start up until months after we met either). But I met all of them on the same night. I said later that that was the night when “we all met before we met.” Improv Olympic was always weirdly powerful like that. It was a vortex of awesome people. (Hello, Adam McKay, Oscar-nominee, who was best friends with my main flame. And on and on …)
This new life, so fun, so exciting, was punctuated by huge crying jags because my relationship was over. With Crock Pot Futon man. And he had already started dating someone else (whom he would eventually marry, stay with for 20 years and then divorce). But he still called me all the time. Land-lines. Answering machines. So it was all a bit MAD. Not to mention the disorientation of starting up a new life in a new city, with temp jobs and learning the L system, and learning my lines, and making out with people at midnight-raves in abandoned warehouses where you needed a password to even get into the joint.
All of this frenzied activity was launched from that shit-hole apartment on Melrose. I so wish the building was still there, so I could go in and look around. See if they updated that stupid elevator. M. and I got stuck in there one night and yelled for help but no one came. We then proceeded to use our entrapment-time wisely. I’m not sure if you can say that Melrose Street has gentrified. It looks pretty much the same, although my rat-trap apartment building has gone. There’s construction going on in the vacant lot where my building used to be. Maybe it’ll be gleaming modern condos, who knows. There’s the Jewish community center I remember so well. A couple of apartment complexes that are only 5 or 6 stories, with that ugly 1960s/70s aesthetics. And then some old-school art-deco-isn buildings, like mine once upon a time was. With the Melrose Diner at the corner, where I ate breakfast at the counter practically every day.
And every day, I’d suit up in running shorts and sneakers, come out the front door of the building, and start my daily run. Turn left, jog to the end of the block, cross the street, run underneath the overpass, run around the Marina, and then head off down the lake shore. B-52s blaring in my ears, my walkman in a little pouch at my waist. I had lost about 30 pounds over the year before, due to worry and depression and anxiety, not to mention living on rice and beans during the months I was living out of my van. But with those runs, I got strong. My whole body changed. I became addicted to the adrenaline and the sweat, as well as my transforming profile and silhouette. I barely recognized myself. Nothing like being a late-bloomer whom nobody paid attention to in high school because when you do come into your own you really enjoy it.
But when I visited Melrose Street, and then the Lake, I hadn’t really realized just how much I would be bombarded with those memories of what were just a rote daily occurrence. The second I reached Melrose, I could FEEL it, coming to life again. That was my routine. This was my world, my haunts. Memories were everywhere. Not just physical memories, but memories of my SELF. That frantic ambitious young woman, so ramped up by the adrenaline of moving to Chicago that I couldn’t sleep. I’d lie on my single-bed mattress on the floor, with my new cat Sammy curled up around my head (he could never ever get close enough to me. If he could have crawled inside my mouth, he would have) and stare up at the blank ceiling, my heart racing in my chest. Everything was unknown. I had saved my own life and I couldn’t get used to the feeling yet.
I knew it would be cold down there on the Lake. I hoped to see ice on the water, one of my favorite things about Lake Michigan. As long as I lived in Chicago, I never “got used” to the place. It was always pleasing to me, I was always aware of the beauty of the city, its familiar rhythms, the Loop, the Lake. It was my home, and it still has my heart. It’s nice to live in a place where you look around and go, “Ah. I have CHOSEN this.” A lot of people live where they end up. And that might work for them. But I have lived where I have CHOSEN to live, and it makes a huge difference in perspective.
It was just around sunset time when I reached the frozen Marina. I had accidentally timed it perfectly. The world was starting to descend into cold blue shadows, but the sky was still blazing pink, with stray gleams of gold, and once I got to the lake, the couple of boats on the horizon blazed with reflections. The ice on the Marina was a deep dreamy blue, with long geometric cracks shivering across it, but there were some ice-floes that caught that gentle gold/pink of the sky. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry. I couldn’t look at it hard enough. Tromping through the brown dead grass towards the lake (which could not be seen because the land goes gently upwards in a little hill), I saw again the sights that so pleased me when I lived here. (And it was an unfamiliar sight to me, an East Coast girl.) You knew the lake was there, right beyond that little up-rising of land, but you could not see it. There were random trees on that little hill, and so they stood out stark against the sky, alone, with an almost Andrew Wyeth grandeur. Once you go over that little hill, you are confronted with the vast-ness of the lake, but before you get there, all you can see are those trees, black-sketched against the sky, solitary, almost bleak.
The lake-shore, a beautiful cement sweeping “park”, really, was ice-coated, but there were spots where you could maneuver. The water was heaving up and down, freezing blue, with a flock of hearty ducks clustered by the shore. I’m sure they were thinking, “Who is that crazy human?” I was vaguely aware that I needed to be really careful. If I slipped on the ice and broke my ankle … well, it would not be beyond the realm of possibility to imagine that I could actually DIE out there. And the wind was ferocious. So, you know, I kept my distance from that ice-coated section right next to the lake.
I was out there for about 20 minutes. That was all I could take. And I had already planned to walk across Belmont to get to the theatre where I was meeting Mitchell. The same theatre where we had my public script-reading! That was the last time I was there, so it felt valedictory in some way.
I could have taken the bus across Belmont. I know. But I didn’t want to. Yes. It was freezing. But my gloves were good. My coat is basically a sleeping bag. I was fine. And I wanted to see where I used to take those daily runs, pounding up and down the lake shore, working off the energy, the mania, the anxiety, staggering home drenched in sweat where Samuel was waiting for me, meowing with devastation that I had dared to leave him for an hour.
This was my world. My place. It was the first home I had made for myself. It was the first place I actually CHOSE.
And I can still feel what that felt like. The shivering dangerous freedom in it.
The words, the pictures, fantastic. Chicago has never been one of my favorite cities. The weather is too freakin cold for too long for this East Coast girl. But it is beautiful in its own unique way. Your writing is so vivid. I can see you running around the lake, making out in the stuck elevator (who hasn’t?), and comforting Samuel when he needed it.
Carolyn –
// The weather is too freakin cold for too long for this East Coast girl. //
It was so funny, I talked to two separate friends in Chicago who said that they loved Chicago but knew they would eventually move because they couldn’t take the winters. They sure are brutal. Not just the cold, but how long they LAST!
Apparently the cold snap is going to lighten up this week and give some 50 degree weather days which is insanely schizophrenic.
Samuel was the most neurotic cat I have ever had. He had been so mistreated before he came to me – and a scrawny grey little adult cat – not really attractive (although I thought he was beautiful) – and too old for people who went shopping for kittens (which is most people). Therefore, he was on Death Row in the shelter – I had gone in there knowing I wanted a Death Row kitty, and he stood at the edge of his cage, literally yowling the entire time I was browsing the other cages. It felt like he was trying to get my attention. And that was it. I was like, I’m taking THAT one, I have no choice in the matter. I would vacuum and he would drape himself around my neck like a fur stole. I was so sad when he died but he was one of the best cats ever!!
Thanks for reading!
And New York has been so weirdly warm this winter – with a couple snowstorms to break up the monotony – that it was almost good to be in a city where the cold really meant business.
But now New York is freezing. That’s the way it goes.
Sheila
Beautiful! I’ll be pretty much echoing Carolyn’s comments, it’s all so vivid, we are right there with you!
And when it’s freezing here I always think, I’m glad I’m not in Chicago! Not knowing a thing about Chicago except that it’s colder then NYC.
Also, I love the part about not wanting all those things with that guy. I’m still that way, but with someone who also doesn’t give a shit about that. I had similar experiences with a first boyfriend when I was young that I was made to feel like I was a wild wolf when I was living with him. So now we are still not going to buy nice things for the house or even clothes we need, it’s going to go to art supplies or things like that. But I can have sad feelings about that for some reason. What’s wrong with us?!
Regina:
Wild wolf. Ha!! I so relate to that.
I don’t believe in judging other for what they spend their money on. It’s when they assume that all people share the same values – and if you don’t you’re a mess or not really an adult – that it gets annoying.
Regina:
I’m not sure about why it’s still sad … But I do know that anyone who values things or appearances that much (no judgment if it’s right for them!!) is not a good fit for me.
My books are in order. Nothing matches but everything is loved and has traveled with me.
That boyfriend I mentioned was practically a Sleeping With the Enemy kind of guy and I totally bought into it. Those types honestly believe their way is the only way. Shivers!!
That lone tree in the field looks soooo damn cold!
Right?? Wind-buffeted and alone!
Sheila
Oh Sad in the way there are those dark moments where I doubt everything and all those Sleeping with the Enemy people were right.
Our daughter is a writer and she is really going for it now. The first couple of pieces she sent us about her childhood I was taken back a bit seeing things in print (well, we didn’t have rice and beans everyday! haha!) But it was good writing, it was true, and it was her truth and her vision. I know she was looking for our blessings and a freedom to write, and we gave it to her, “It’s good! Keep writing!” Without mentioning inner anxious thoughts about maybe we should have given her a more normal upbringing. She also has a take on a time and place that really doesn’t exist anymore and she has a story to tell. But some of it I do think how nuts we were and in those sad dark moments, “what were we thinking?!” But like your books she knows she was loved and treasured and she traveled with us too! Thanks again for your writing Sheila, you really hit nerves with me and get me to thinking about all kinds of stuff!
Regina: thank you so much for sharing that about your daughter! Strange to see her side of things, and her perspective, and you two are wonderful to be like “Go for it!”
It’s a real struggle sometimes to be okay with who you are.
My mother JUST told me that when I broke up with that bad boyfriend my dad thought a second ( he knew the guy well, he was practically a member of our family) and said, “Well, Sheila’s a bohemian.”
No judgement. Just an acknowledgement and understanding of why the guy wasn’t right for me.
I WISH I had known then that he said that!! (Not to blame my mother…) But it was so validating to hear that! And that Dad was like, “Sheila will have a different path.”
Good father.
NOBODY said to me, “You’re crazy. He’s such a good catch.” (Which he was: money, good looks, lawyer, etc. We were just not right for each other. Not everyone is for everyone.)
So it’s kind of nice to have parents who don’t put that kind of conventional pressure on you. Because it’s bad enough – we put so much pressure on ourselves, anyway!
This really hit all the right buttons for me today. Damn you’re awesome Sheila. I’d love to articulate all the ways in which this piece resonated with me, but I’m no wordsmith, so instead I’ll just say: Thank you.
Thank you so much, Selina!
It’s weird and powerful to go back to such a familiar haunt, isn’t it? But not all familiar haunts have the same resonance. It’s a very strange thing.
Sheila
Great story! I love your writings on your father. You get this really clear picture of him and of course feel the love you have for him. And also because I wish I had a Dad like that, and I think my husband does with our daughter. Thanks Sheila.
Sheila – What a lovely reminiscence. I’m glad people are afraid of the cold because it keeps them from moving to our city. It’s already too crowded. But native Chicagoans tend to embrace the cold as a sign of our heartiness and solidarity – and frankly, it’s much warmer and drier now than the winters I grew up in.
My lakefront memories center around my college on the lake, Loyola – Lake Shore Campus. I used to love to go into the doorway of Madonna Della Strada, preferably high, and let the wind and spray whip around me. Or sit on the lawn that used to slope down to the lake and read. Or sit on the rocks and contemplate the infinite. I have never wanted to live away from a large body of water, and I’m quite sure I never will leave my home town. I used to think it was the grown-up thing to do to move away from one’s home town. Now that I’ve turned the corner on 60, I know that Chicago is the place of my heart and my choice to stay here was a sign that I knew myself much better than I ever gave myself credit for.
And thank you for reminding me of that lovely evening of your play reading. I remember it very fondly.
Marilyn –
// I’m glad people are afraid of the cold because it keeps them from moving to our city. //
Very good point!
I didn’t mind the winters so much when I lived there – although I did get frost-bite during one particularly bad storm and my ear was exposed in between my apartment and the brown-line. That was all it took!
and yeah – Mitchell told me it had been pretty mild the week before – and the temperature plunged while I was there. When I returned to New York, it was zero degrees – and now today – it’s practically in the 50s. So I don’t know what is happening.
// I have never wanted to live away from a large body of water //
You and me both. In Rhode Island, where I grew up of course – you are rarely more than half-an-hour drive away from the Atlantic. While there is beauty in Oklahoma, Kansas – I love those great plains too – and the SUNSETS – I don’t think I could live there, because of the whole no-huge-heaving-body-of-water right down the street thing. I have a friend who grew up in Colorado and feels the same way about the mountains.
I always keep that Chicago door open – somewhere in my mind (and this last trip really made me realize it.) I’ve lived where I live for most of my life now. But I always think, “Maybe someday I’ll go back there.”
I understand the “home town” thing – my sister who still lives in Rhode Island feels the same way. It’s her place, her community, she’s lived elsewhere but she’s glad she’s back there now.
Beautiful, Sheila! So fun reading all your posts about your trip…so glad you had such a nice time. Whenever I think about that brief LA period of your life (after your break-up) I think of Rolling Rock. Love you friend!
Rolling Rock. Hahahahaha
You and my friend Brooke always mention the Rolling Rocks. Hilarious.
(for your refresher course: Brooke is not “pees by side of the road” but the OTHER one.)
Haha! The shorthand of old friends.
I know!! And that other descriptor really shouldn’t be said although I guess “pees by side of road” is not all that great either.
But helpful shorthand!
Not sure I mentioned this in the last Chicago reminiscence, but I lived on Briar Place, between Broadway & Sheridan.
I think I know where that is. Same-ish area, I believe? I took the Sheridan bus when I was there from Bryn Mawr down to Belmont, I think – can’t remember the bus number. It started off down Sheridan and then swooped left to go down Lake Shore Drive.
Seriously, you and I probably passed each other a million times on the street, or in bookstores, or in numerous other venues.
When I lived on Melrose, it was referred to as Boys Town due to the sheer gay-ness of the area. I am not sure if that is still true.
It’s two blocks south of Melrose, right by the lake. I used to go to the Melrose Diner a lot. Usually before or after a visit to the Unabridged Bookstore. I went to a lot of readings there, many by gay authors – so yes, Boys Town. I once got into this weirdly long conversation with Adam Mars-Jones about Germaine Greer.
I had a crazy nice apartment. We pro-rated the rooms, so mine was fairly small and dark, but one of my roommates (who had a real job) had a sun room attached to her bedroom and paid about half the rent. She was never there because she worked all the time, so the rest of us always hung out in her gorgeous space and, like, wore her scarves and played her CDs. Ah, youth.
Unabridged!! I am pretty sure it’s still there – I used to follow them on FB – that was definitely a major haunt and yes, right around the corner. We were basically next-door neighbors.
// wore her scarves and played her CDs //
Hahahaha That is awesome.
I only lived on Melrose for a year – Mitchell had moved in with me, and we were living in one room, so we up-graded to a two-bedroom on Ashland, before settling down finally in Wrigleyville in our best apartment.
But I always missed the nearness of the lake.
And the Ashland apartment felt like it was in the boonies – not because it was so far away from everything but because the Ashland bus did not go by our house (weirdly) – you had to walk 3 or 4 blocks to pick it up. And the train was also not nearby – it was a 15 minute walk or so. So the apartment was in a kind of inconvenient no-man’s-land, equally far away from public transportation.
Wrigleyville was much more convenient – and we were on a side street, right behind the Music Box – so although we could hear the screams from Wrigley Field a couple blocks away, we weren’t in the thick of it.
Southport has changed so much – it’s all upscale boutiques now. I hope the Music Box can stay strong!
One memory I have of Unabridged is going there to check out Madonna’s Sex Book, which was literally chained to the main counter. People were lining up to flip through it.
Great post Sheila! Harkens me back to my first place in Chicago, near you with the same elevator at 620 W. Surf which Michael McDermott named an album after the year before. One night my next door neighbor who sang in a cabaret was up all night cooking drugs in his bath tub and blasting Barbara Streisand and I asked him to turn down the music and he came over every 10 minutes for the rest of the night and I called the police at 5am to walk me to my car and my brother who came to help me move my things out the next day said the building smelled like cats and old people. Then the detective started calling me at all hours and getting aggressive and scary and I had to change my phone number. Oh crazy youth! When I met my husband he rode his bike everywhere and HATED cars and lectured on their evils but he quickly got used to mine and would say “I used to think Ashland was the end of the earth, now I see it’s Western.” We’ve never lived more than a few blocks from the lake! I can’t imagine not seeing the lake every day – it feeds me!