Diary Friday

This journal entry is basically a continuation from last week’s – same time period, same characters. It’s two entries blended together.

Chicago. During a fall which is now known as “the magic time”. Best friend Ann Marie. Pat McCurdy shows at Lounge Ax every Monday. The Emerald Queen afterwards. Hanging out with MS (Note from Sheila: His blog-name is now Window-Boy) the old flame of yore.

It was a frivolous time in my life – a time of high-pitched emotion – a time in my life when I actually included descriptions of what I was wearing, to go along with every journal entry. I was young – I was free – I was having the time of my life.

I sang with Pat McCurdy every week, and became a wee bit famous, in my own small way. The “magic time” is when that experience really blossomed.

November

I remember events by my outfits. That night, at Pat, was a blue denim and black mini-skirt kind of night. I had a feeling re: MS; by this point I totally believed he would be there. I sat for the first set with Ann and she came back after going to the bathroom (“doing a sweep” for MS) and said, “Let your heart SING!”

I went back to sit with him. I felt like I was shooting out light from beneath my skin. I was so happy!

Pat had me sing with him. The intro to that song pulls my heart up and out of my body. He makes me feel like I could fly. If only I could run fast enough.

After the show, everyone was heading to the Emerald Queen, all of us exiting together. Pat was leaving too. I made MS do the velociraptor for Pat.

(Ed: A quick note: MS did absolutely riotous “imitations” of dinosaurs. He had been developing his velociraptor imitation for some time, and I was addicted to it. I would be sitting at the bar, doing my thing, and glance over and see MS at the jukebox, as a velociraptor, picking out songs. Or he would suddenly become a pterodactyl as he took a sip of beer. He became known, in my group of Lounge Ax friends who had a habit of giving everybody nicknames: “Dinosaur Boy.”)

MS did NOT want to do his velociraptor for Pat, and I made him. Afterwards, MS was just wincing about it. “Pat McCurdy was having none of my velociraptor.”

We all had this HYSTERICAL walk over to the Emerald Queen. MS and I, our arms around each other, were lurching across Lincoln Avenue. It was 1:30 in the morning, and a huge crowd of us had been set loose. Gus Kapinsky was leapfrogging over parking meters, one after the other after the other. We made MS watch him do this.

Still stuck on Pat’s clear animosity towards him, and Pat’s indifference to his velociraptor, MS stood on the curb and pretended he was about to leap off and commit suicide. “I’m gonna jump!” he screamed.

No cars in sight. Long empty black street. Street lights changing from green to yellow to red with no cars there.

Suddenly MS announced bluntly, “A velociraptor can go 75-80 miles an hour” and he took off. Other Lounge Ax people heading to the Emerald Queen, some in 2s, others in larger groups, saw him gallop by, and started laughing, pointing. “Look! It’s Dinosaur Boy!”

Voices echoing. Cold.

MS was a velociraptor. He peered hungrily into the windows of a car pulling out of a lot.

I was laughing so hard I thought I might need medical attention.

MS said to me after, “When I move my body … people laugh.”

Thinking of the velociraptor, the spontaneous jazz dances, the circus horses, the ostrich running through my apartment, I had to agree.

At one point, at the Emerald Queen, some Sinatra song came on and MS suddenly leapt up and made a spectacle of himself with an impromptu jazz dance. A crowd surrounded him, roaring with laughter. Ann and I were mopping off tears. There were actual people watching, but MS was performing for an imaginary crowd, which was my favorite part. Also, he and I had literally been in the middle of a conversation, there hadn’t even been a lull, and he responded, mid-sentence, to the call of the music.

MS turned to me suddenly, later, and said, “You wanna see my circus horse?”

You really have to ask?

The place was packed with people and suddenly MS pranced through the crowd, and all I can say is he WAS a circus horse down to the expression in his damn eyeballs.

I heard people murmuring, “What’s going on” as MS high-stepped around me. He became himself for a second to explain to me what he did physically to become a horse (he had a theory about it) and then he became a horse again.

Ann turned around in the middle of all this and saw him high-stepping by. She watched him for a moment and then slowly looked to me for an explanation. Her expression was priceless.

I said quietly, “He’s a circus horse.”

She nodded, accepting this. “Oh.”

MS said to me, word for word, “You and me … we laugh. We hang out with each other and we laugh. Know what I mean? It makes me happy. I like laughing with you. For too long I’ve lived my life like that Pat song about being artistic. I don’t want to do that anymore. I like being happy.”

And then – 2 weeks later – came my birthday extravaganza, held during a Pat show at Lounge Ax.

Ann Marie basically decorated the bar. She is so incredible. There was a huge bunch of balloons (“Here. Arrange these in a festive manner,” she ordered Lady Elaine).

(Ed: This is so hostile but there was another Pat fan who she and I did not like, who was a bit crazy, and obsessed with McCurdy in a kind of stalkerish way – not in the ultra COOL and sophisticated way that ANN and I were obsessed with Pat McCurdy (sarcasm) – and basically this stalker-fan’s nose and his chin almost touched – so Ann Marie and I called him “Lady Elaine” after the puppet on Mr. Rogers, because we felt there was a resemblance. We did not call him “Lady Elaine” to his face, but we would blatantly refer to him as such, “Wow, look at how Lady Elaine is hovering around Pat…” “Loved Lady Elaine’s crazy air guitar during ‘Knock Things Over'”…So the image of Ann Marie ordering “Lady Elaine” to arrange balloons in a “festive manner” … I just … It’s just freakin’ funny, that’s all.)

Ann Marie baked cupcakes, brought candy. It was a total extravaganza. Everyone knew it was my birthday. I wore my mermaid dress and a black choker. (Ed: How embarrassing – but I warned you up front! Every diary entry during the “magic time” is accompanied by a description of my clothes…)

I went to find MS and he was sitting at the bar, so cute, waiting for me. I was so happy to see him I was high on him. We were a happy couple. We are a happy couple.

I pointed to all the balloons, arranged by Lady Elaine. “Those are for me.”

He asked me how my actual birthday was and I told him pretty bad and that I had cried on the train. He was hurt by this news. “You cried on your birthday?”

Then he said, “I thought about you on your birthday. I thought about calling you, but …” and he stopped himself with this very inward-look on his face. He had no word of excuse, he looked confused at his own behavior. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”

I said, “You should have! Of course, at the first sound of your voice I would have dissolved into tears.”

We laughed at that.

I asked him how his Thanksgiving was and he said, “It was all right,” but with such an evident edgy look of misery and anxiety in his eyes. He cannot mask his emotions. I responded to the look on his face, not his words. “Not good, huh.”

He shrugged and then said, “Well … clearly I have issues.”

I couldn’t help myself. I burst into laughter right in his face. He has assimilated me! Me, always talking about “issues”. He looked truly confused, like, “What did I just say?” – and I kept laughing, and then he began YELLING at me, “No! No! I don’t have issues. I have PROBLEMS. I don’t have issues. I have PROBLEMS.”

Ann Marie wrote me a fairy story for my birthday. I was living in such a euphoric state. Everything was perfect. Ann also gave me flannel sheets! Bless you, Ann!! I love them. She went totally nuts for my birthday. She is an incredible party planner.

I had raved to MS about how I wanted flannel sheets, and he told me I had to get some. So I showed them to him, all excited. “Look, MS! Flannel sheets!” He was cute – kind of withdrawn, but smiling, shy, kind. “Hey! You just told me you wanted some!”

Half of our conversations are about objects and their faults or virtues: bureaus, incense, coffee makers, coffee tables, banana pickers jackets, new blue jeans, veal parmesan sandwiches, his special mattress he had as a teenager, etc.

I loved it that MS would get all puffed up like a peacock because he was “the guy with Sheila”. He would pretend there was an imaginary crowd around him and he’d say in a very over-it casual tone, “Yeah … I’m with her. It’s no big deal. I’m just with her.”

MS told me his mother said his haircut made him look like a “jackass”.

We left the bar with a huge fanfare because of all my gifts and balloons.

Pat had had me sing, and had also led the entire place in singing happy birthday to me.

MS helped me carry some of my stuff out. Ann said he was behaving “very husbandly” which is so true. He was loaded down with all my gifts, and I was keeping him waiting as I said good-bye to everyone five times. He was grumbling about it, and impatient.

“I have to say good-bye to Ann Marie!”

“Didn’t you already do that?”

“Yeah, but not for the last time!”

He sat in the car, exhaling frustration as I flew around hugging everyone and saying goodbye to Ann Marie 10 times.

We released all of my balloons into the air outside of Lounge Ax. They floated up over the Biograph and disappeared into the black.

I climbed into the car with MS, this person I have known for almost 2 years now, and we peeled away from the curb.