We Met Before We Met

It was a big night, the night when we met before we actually met. Later, when Ann Marie and I became friends, we would describe such a night as “cosmic tumblers clicking down” – but that is just me getting ahead of myself. The future unfurled from that one night … only I, being in the present moment, could have had no idea about that. I met people that night who would end up changing my life. But it took months – and sometimes years – for the whole thing to play itself out. An extraordinary night. My first night “out” in Chicago.

I moved to Chicago in late January, having fled from LA as though I had committed a crime there. Yes, the Westfalia gave me some problems. And yes, when I left at the airport, I saw a black-paper-cut-out silhouette, a harbinger of doom to come. Things were not good, to say the least. But was that any reason for me to literally sell all of my possessions, except for my books, and RUN to Chicago?? Well, frankly, yes.

I arrived in Chicago during a snowstorm. I was going to stay with my friend Jackie until I could get on my feet again. I had one bag of clothes, and a sleeping bag. I am a cliche. I arrived in Chicago with ONE BAG and a hundred bucks to my name. My books were all in storage in LA, until I could send for them. All I had was jeans, a couple sweaters, a toothbrush, and some underwear. That was all I needed. It was a momentous moment. The first time in my adult life that I actually CHOSE something. At least that’s how I see it. Up until then, everything had happened by default. But Chicago I CHOSE. I was in a state of heartbreak, my first relationship having crashed and burned. Jackie’s apartment was a place of healing, and a place of RIOTOUS laughter. I could relax there. When I was ready, when I had saved up enough, I could get my own place. This was all a very good plan.

Except that we both got bronchitis almost immediately upon my arrival.

Jackie and I lay in her apartment, as the snow swirled down outside, and just SUFFERED. Jackie kept murmuring, putting her hand on her throat, “I have flaming tiki torches in there …”

We suffered the tiki-torch torment for a MONTH. Neither of us had health insurance, of course, so we just battered it back with cold meds from Walgreens, and orange juice, and vitamins. (Uhm – Xenu?) There were times when it felt like we would never be well. We had a Sunday night ritual: we would watch Life Goes On, our favorite show. We LIVED that show. It was the season of Chad Lowe (marvelous work from him!!) and when Becca really came into her own. We LOVED it. We lay on her couch, enduring the tiki torches in our throats, and watched the show, croaking out our comments.

That was my introduction to Chicago. I was single for the first time in 3 and a half years. I was dealing with an awful breakup – my now ex-boyfriend calling Jackie’s house to talk about how sad he was, how much he missed me – dealing with the fact that a new life was now beginning for me. So of course I got TOTALLY sick, which put off the inevitable moment of: “Whoo-hoo, I’m single, I’m young, let’s go out and meet some MEN!”

Finally … finally … after being sick for the entire month of February … Jackie and I started getting better. Slowly but surely. We were chastened by our shared illness, we were terrified of having the tiki torches return … so we took it really slowly. I signed up with a temp agency, and immediately started getting work. I would put on my one skirt, and my one nice sweater, and go off to some office in the Loop and answer phones. I had only been to Chicago once before for less than 24 hours. I had moved there pretty much on a HUNCH. I had good friends there … but I just had a HUNCH about Chicago. That I would love it.

Manuevering the Loop, strolling into these plush offices, answering phones … completely new surroundings … a completely new LIFE … it was such a vivid and surreal time. I was still sick – the effects of bronchitis holding onto me with a death-grip … but getting better every day. I saved every penny I made. Then came the coup. My ex-boyfriend sold the Westfalia and sent me half of the money. Which – well. It was so nice, and to this day I feel like I owe him one. That chunk of cash (and it was only, like, 300 bucks – the Westfalia was BEAT UP from our cross-country journey) made it possible for me to move into my own place. Finding an apartment in Chicago was easy, easy, easy. I found a studio (in the building where Jackie used to live … I had stayed with her when we drove through Chicago on our way out west) – and moved in. I had no furniture, people. None. I slept on the floor IN MY SLEEPING BAG. I had no pots, no pans, no tables, no towels, no drapes, no NOTHING. It took me a couple months to furnish the place. I was in no rush. What did I care? I had my own place! My very first own apartment!! I had my priorities straight. I signed my lease, and immediately (at least that’s how I remember it – as immediately) downtown to the Animal Rescue League to get a cat. It was my dream to have my own cat. The cat I ended up getting deserves a post all his own – which I should do someday. I named him Sammy – he was already an adult. I can barely write about him without feeling all emotional. Anyway, I had to come pick him up the following day so he could have all his shots and stuff like that. But then I took him home – in a little crate – sitting on the L train, with poor Sammy mewling piteously from within the box.

And then there we were … in my dark little studio a block away from Lake Michigan … with no furniture … just a sleeping bag and my suitcase … and Sammy tiptoeing around the joint, staring around him with wide green eyes radiating alarm. Could it be??? thought Sammy. Could it be that I have come home to stay?????? I would wake up in the middle of the night, lying on the floor in my sleeping bag, to see Sammy perched on my pillow, right beside my head, staring into my face with huge glimmering eyes. hahahahaha He was at point-blank range. Just STARING at me. He had obviously had a hard life. Someone had messed with him before I got there. I would be like, “It’s okay, Sammy … you don’t have to get into that crate again … You get to stay here.” (Sammy thinks: Uhm … in an empty apartment? Uhm … thanks???)

This is supposed to be a post about my friend Ann Marie … and how we met before we met … but all of this stuff comes to my mind when I think about that first night. It was a momentous time for me. I was going on instinct … for the first time in my adult life. Not since I was 8 years old did I just sit down, think: “Hmmm. What do I want to do right now?” and then go ahead and DO it.

I started auditioning. I got cast in something right away. This was another thing that would end up being momentous – and, if you trace it back, if you look at all the connecting links … that experience in that show is what eventually, years later, would get me to move to New York.

Something was definitely going ON with me in those first months in Chicago, albeit at an unconscious level. I was tapping into something. The cosmic? Perhaps. I didn’t FEEL like it … but looking at the end results, I know now that I definitely was.

Jackie had moved to Chicago a year before, and had been taking improv classes at Improv Olympic, which, at that point, was just a start-up – not the monolith that it is now. It didn’t have its own theatre, like it does now – it had a space above the Wrigleyside Bar. Jackie kept telling me how fun the shows were, and how – when we got better – when the damn savages carrying the TIKI TORCHES in our throats strolled back into the jungle from whence they came – we should go to a show. “So many cute guys, Sheila! It’s so much fun!!”

So finally, in mid-March, we were ready. We were healed enough to feel that a night out, and a couple of drinks, would not plummet us back into illness.

Not to be weird, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we didn’t go to the improv show THAT night, but went another night. I sometimes actually SHIVER at the prospect. If I hadn’t met Phil, then I wouldn’t have gone out on that one date with Phil, where he took me to see Pat McCurdy … If I hadn’t gone to that one show, then I would not have heard of Pat McCurdy which meant that I would not have gone BACK to his show months later … which then meant that I would not have met Ann Marie again … and eventually become best friends with her … and eventually perform at Milwaukee Summer Fest with Pat AND Ann Marie AND Phil … and … and … and … There are SO many things that were made possible from that first night out in Chicago (a couple things I haven’t even mentioned yet), and I literally SHIVER to think of how close I came to having these beautiful things not happen. It’s more cosmic than I am even saying, because some things are sacred to me, and not something I choose to share. But this random meeting, with this beautiful nice smiling man named Phil, made SO many other things possible – that I literally feel like I will be in his debt forever!! If Jackie and I had decided to go to the improv show the NEXT night – then maybe Phil would not have been there, which meant that Ann Marie would not have been there … which … God forbid. Literally my whole LIFE would be different now … in more ways than I can even describe. Creepy. To be able to locate a moment when, almost casually, and without your knowing, your entire future is in the balance. I mean, who knows … maybe I would have discovered Pat McCurdy all on my own … and maybe I would have befriended Ann Marie ANYway, even without the Phil connection … but … the chances are slim.

I’m getting ahead of myself again, but it’s hard not to … when thinking about that amazing night … when I met not one, not two, but THREE people who would end up changing my life SIGNIFICANTLY. And not immediately, either … it would take some time for all of those cosmic tumblers to even START clicking … but the future was set into motion that night.

Jackie and I, giddy at our newfound HEALTH, primped ourselves into oblivion. It was like we had just discovered the joy of lipstick. It was like we had just discovered the FREEDOM of blow drying our hair. We were going OUT! We were leaving the sick den! We were going to … revel in our own health!!! We were going to … omigod … have a beer. Everything had a novelty to it. We had been sick for so long. I had not experienced the nightlife of Chicago. I had not been single in so long. The night was RIPE with possibility!

So off we went to the Wrigleyside – a place I will always have such affection for. So much happened there. But this night was the first. And the way the whole night played out … was pretty much the way it ALWAYS was there. It was a place of adventure.

Jackie and I sat in the audience, and just had so much fun that we were nearly hysterical. We had been released from a prison of illness. We were out of our minds. My cold beer was literally the best thing I had ever tasted in my life. I sipped it nervously at first, teeny tiny sips … fearful that at the first HINT of alcohol, the savages would come tearing out of the jungle, brandishing a conflagration of raging tiki torches … but everything seemed okay. My body was able to handle the intake of a bit of alcohol. Life was good!!

Now, a couple of things I remember – they seemed random at the time, but in reality? They were all part of the cosmic tumblers clicking down. Maybe tapping into the cosmic requires a bit of unselfconsciousness, trust, and a LACK of awareness that ANYTHING cosmic might be going on. By that I mean: people who walk around saying, “It’s meant to be!” or “Everything has a reason!!” (or “I can feel that this is the year I will meet my soulmate!!”) may actually be cutting OFF their access to the cosmic – because they are so insistent on seeing everything as cosmic. Bear with me. There are only 2 or 3 people who read me (uhm -David?) who I think will know JUST what I am talking about. Sometimes those who parrot “It’s meant to be” endlessly are not really thinking about what they are saying. Is it really meant to be? Does EVERYTHING happen for a reason? Tell that to Anne Frank. Oh, but wait – you CAN’T tell that to Anne Frank – CAUSE SHE WAS KILLED. Sorry, the “everything happens for a reason” attitude makes me cranky if it is the parroted response to any event, any where. It connotes intellectual laziness, more often than not – an unwillingness to really think about things, and contemplate the fact that shit sometimes JUST HAPPENS. Okay – so you see where I’m coming from? I’m not an anarchist, and I do believe that there are patterns … we just need to get up high enough to see the patterns … and very few people can do that. So I was not sitting in that improv club, thinking: “Everything happens for a reason!!” It is only in retrospect, looking back, that I think: “Holy God, something was really going ON that night!”

So here’s what I remember.

I remember being very taken with one of the performers. Immediately. He was sooooooo funny, and had a great energy – a huge infectious smile. Very talented guy. He was on one improv team, and before they performed, he sat out at a table in the audience with a couple friends. Every time I looked over there, I saw all of them just HOWLING with laughter. I liked him. I liked how he laughed. Turns out, his name was Phil.

I felt like I was being released from prison, and not just because of the bronchitis. I had been tear-soaked for MONTHS because of my long-drawn-out breakup … I hadn’t been able to even THINK about how fun it would be to be single again! But suddenly, sitting there in the Wrigleyside, I started to feel this shimmer … this shimmer of excitement … Like: back in the mating dance again. If I’m interested in that guy over there … then I just need to subtly send him signals I’m interested. I couldn’t do that when I was in a relationship!!

I was not aware that I was sending signals – but apparently he wasn’t the only one who picked up on the pheromonal flashing. Uhm … many others became aware of me. And I swear: I was just sitting at my table with Jackie, having a beer. But …

Now there is so much else that is weird here – but I won’t tell all yet. All in good time.

Here’s what happened, and I just so happen to have my journal entry from that moment (member this, Ann Marie??) I’ve put in initials for one person (M.) – which will become pertinent later. Jackie, since she was taking classes there, knew all of the performers – at least by sight – The same guys performed every week. She pointed them out. “And that’s Phil … and over there is M., the hottie of the improv club …” Okay, ya got that? Onward to my pheromonal flashes FROM THE AUDIENCE.

The improv had to do with telekinesis and reptilian creatures taking over the earth. The man with telekinesis ended up in a disco. It is so pathetic that there are NO woman in the company. M., I guess, felt that the situation needed to be rectified, because he stood there in his bow-legged stance, and said in his booming bass voice: “BUT … but … there were no women at this club! So …” and then suddenly – oh God – he looked down at me – Me – in the front row and said, “SO HE FORGED OUT TO FIND ONE!” And then the telekinetic individual (whose real name was Ian, I think) jumped off the stage and came SMACK over to me and promptly began trying to use his telekinetic powers on me. I was thrilled yet horrified. Did they plan this? It felt planned to me, as in: “Let’s get that orange-haired chick in the front row.”

M. watched the telekinetic guy try to press his brain waves into mine for a fruitless minute, and then he became Narrator Man again. “And wasn’t it interesting? She – a woman – resisted him. When everyone else succumbed, she was immune to his powers.” M. then screamed at the top of his lungs: “SO HE AND HIS FRIENDS FORCED HER TO DANCE WITH THEM!” The entire cast swooped off the stage, surrounded me, lifted me up out of my seat as though we were at a seance, and they carried me up on stage whooping like banshees. Disco music started blaring around us, all of the guys formed a circle around me and disco-danced AT me like maniacs, shrieking the lyrics right in my face. Suddenly I was in the middle of a telekinetically-influenced all-male disco. The audience was going crazy. Finally, they released me and let me go sit back down.

I suddenly got this weird feeling that they were all very aware of me. I just knew that, for whatever reason, I had been discussed. I felt like I was being watched.

This may sound like the thought process of a very vain girl – but it turns out I was right – which I found out later from multiple sources. There was a male pow-wow backstage – “Who is that redhead in the front row? Does anyone know her? Where did she come from? Let’s get her.” I KNEW it. I could feel it. I had been ambushed.

After the show, everyone trooped downstairs to hang out in the bar of the Wrigleyside. General drunken mayhem ensued. Again, I felt like I was being watched. M. sat at the bar – and I just felt like he was aware of me. Now that’s insane – but pheromones are strong and … I could feel that even though he WASN’T LOOKING AT ME … he knew exactly where I was at all times. It seemed a little bit crazy that I would think that but I wasn’t used to being single anymore – I wasn’t used to knowing what kind of signals I was giving out.

And then of course there was Phil. The smiling handsome man I had been so taken with.

Here’s what I wrote in my journal:

I peeked over at Phil who had gone over to the two girls who had been in the audience, obviously good friends of his. He had a cigarette stuck behind one ear and a friendly happy smile … We ensconced ourselves by the jukebox and with my radar detectors I saw Phil. I saw M.. And I remember feeling, or knowing, that some of the guys were as aware of me as I was of them. I had no idea why this would be. Funny, though: I got none of those I-am-aware-of-you vibes from Phil. He was hanging with the 2 girls who had come, drinking beer.

Jackie eventually went off to the bathroom and I sat alone, listening to music, looking around, feeling very conspicuous. And my eyes happened to fall on Phil at the very moment he decided to charge over and talk to me. I thought: “He must be on his way to the bathroom. He wouldn’t be coming over to talk to me.” But then there he was, leaning across my bar, demanding of me, “WHO ARE YOU?”

I banged my fist on the bar and demanded back, “WHY does everyone in this improv group seem to know who I am? What did I DO?”

He said, “I don’t know, man – who are you? Do you take classes here?” He called me “man” – why was I charmed by that? I don’t know why but I was.

This, to quote a very famous film, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. We began it by shouting at one another. “WHO ARE YOU?” “WHAT DID I DO?”

Cosmic tumblers click click clicking …

Jackie ended up going home – and I was left to fend for myself. But … Phil was so nice, and so much fun to talk to … that I felt okay letting her go. I didn’t need my wing-girl, I was okay.

The next cosmic tumbler is coming up … click clicking down …

Phil started interrogating me. It was SO much fun, very flirty, lots of laughter – I was a young woman, but I felt like I hadn’t flirted in eons, and I had forgotten the joy of it. “Where are you from? Are you from Chicago? Who are you? What’s your deal? WHO ARE YOU?” Laughter. Phil’s a beautiful person. He really put me at ease. So anyway, I started answering his questions – telling him I had just moved to Chicago from LA. We started bantering about LA. The freeways, the cars, etc. etc.

Onward with the journal:

At one point I sensed a presence behind me, turned, and M. had sat down next to me and was leering at me. At us. Phil gave M. an enormous grin. There was all kinds of significant telegraphing going on in their eyes.

Phil said, “M., this is Sheila. We are talking about LA.”
M. said, “I hate California.”
I said, “I hate it too.”
Then M. said to me, “Hey, that was totally unplanned, what happened tonight.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, really!”

Over the course of the evening it became the joke that to get rid of M., Phil and I would launch into a vigorous discussion of LA freeways. I think Phil really was trying to say to M., “Get lost.” Finally, Phil looked straight at me, shutting M. out, and said, “And the 10 West goes straight into that Santa Monica sunset!” M. took the hint, and walked away, but he kept trying to join our conversation. Phil would, in the middle of us talking about something else, start bellowing about the Pacific Coast Highway and then M. would cringe and cower like the Wicked Witch of the West and wince away, laughing. Phil and I would sit in expectant silence as M. sauntered toward us yet again, and then simultaneously start babbling into each other’s faces at point blank range. ‘Well, when the 5 becomes the 101 …” “Oh yeah, that 101, huh …”

Oh man, I can so see that whole SCENE. And it just makes me laugh. I can so see now, in retrospect, what was going on there. Because here’s the second cosmic tumbler: M. was obviously trying to butt in on Phil’s pick-up moment, and thankfully the two guys were man enough to make a joke about it.

But had I known what the cosmic tumbler had in store for me …

I speak of him now as “M”, he comes up a lot here. And THAT is how we met. He had seen me from backstage – and decided to “meet” me, by making me part of the improv show … but then Phil, a friend of his, “got to me first” (M.’s exact words).

If anyone able to see the future had whispered to me in that moment: “This man is going to end up being one of the most important men in your life … EVER … As a matter of fact, not too long from now, you will leave him 40 haikus in 40 days on his answer machine … ” I would have thought … huh?? What????? How would THAT happen??

It began that night. Magnets. He and I were magnets. And it SHOWED that night … even though Phil “got to me first”.

Eventually, that summer – maybe June or July – my path crossed M.’s yet again. And this time there was no Phil around to block the way, and he got my phone number with extreme efficiency and finesse. Actually, that’s not true. He bumbled, and mumbled, and ignored me, and finally asked JACKIE for my phone number, because he thought that he would scare me away. I busted him whispering to Jackie – and overheard him say, “I really like your friend …” and I was like, “What are we, in 8th grade? I will give you my phone number RIGHT NOW.” He called me the next day. Long before he would climb in my window “just to say hi”, or stand in my alley to talk to me – looking up at me, leaning out over my window-sill, we went on a couple of dates – the third date I posted here, because it always struck me as just such a funny glimpse at the two of us in a specific moment in time – before we knew each other, before we trusted, before we knew that this thing was going to just keep going. The date was complete and utter anarchy – and would have driven a more conventional girl absolutely INSANE. Like: why aren’t we progressing in a normal manner? What does it mean? What ARE we to each other? But when I met M., I didn’t want conventional. I had had enough of conventional. And … voila. There he was. Our third date, as insane as it was, set the tone for all other dates to follow. This went on for YEARS. In a funny way, I think M. knows me better than anyone. He knows everything.

But there he is – immortalized in that first diary entry of my first night out in Chicago … trying to butt in while ANOTHER guy is hitting on me.

Back to the journal entry of my first night out in Chicago – which then moves on to the THIRD cosmic tumbler (again: I had no premonition that ANY of this would be part of a cosmic tumbler. I was just flirting with Phil. I thought M. was sexy – damn sexy, and I was flattered that he was trying to hit on me, to no avail – but it was Phil who had caught my fancy first. No foreshadowing here.)

Phil said to me, “Hey, you wanna come meet all my friends?” Well, of course I did. So with this huge sweeping “follow me” gesture, he paraded me about and took me over to the two girls who had come to see the show. They were so friendly. Phil screamed, “EVERYONE! THIS IS SHEILA!” And there was none of that female behavior of taking stock of me overtly. They both beamed at me and said, “Hi, Sheila!”

Within three minutes, the three of us were laughing about the condom dispensers in the women’s bathroom, and the condoms bearing the name SAVAGE LOVE. We all watched the softball game on TV.

One of those girls would turn out to be Ann Marie – only we wouldn’t REALLY meet until MONTHS later – when I went back to a Pat show, and we started conversing in line for the girls’ bathroom. We did not put it together that we had actually met each other before until some time after that … and of course, when we remembered it – all we could do was SCREAM in each other’s faces: ‘THAT WAS YOU??? I REMEMBER YOU!!” I so remembered her smiling face grinning up at me, when Phil introduced me. The woman has spectacular dimples, and I remembered them. I also remembered how open and welcoming she was to me – this random girl their friend was blatantly hitting on. She didn’t give me hostile competitive vibes, she was so nice, so friendly, and a really cool woman – that was apparent immediately.

Phil did end up getting my phone number – he followed me outside to get it. He gave me a quick little kiss and brandished my phone number at me, “I WILL be using this!” Such a sweetheart.

Little did I know that he and Ann Marie had had a BET over who could get someone’s phone number first that night. bwahahahahahahahahaha Of course, all of this only became clear months and months later as well. Phil had obviously liked the looks of me … but he was DETERMINED to seal the deal with me (ie: get my digits) so that he could win the bet. Hence the single-mindedness. The guy could charm the bonnet off an Amish woman, I’ll tell you that.

So so funny, though … to remember that moment of introduction. Meanwhile, I was all just an unwitting part of a BET that Phil and Ann Marie had with each other … but I had no idea that months later, I would meet Ann Marie and within moments it was as though we had known each other all our lives. It was truly as though we SHOULD have been friends in high school … we clicked on THAT level.

But who could see the future that crazy snowy night at the Wrigleyside? Who could peek forward and see what would happen? That Phil and I would segue into friends. That Phil would introduce me to Pat McCurdy. That Pat McCurdy would end up writing a song for me and putting me on one of his CDs. That Pat would hire Phil, Ann Marie, our other friend Kenny and me to perform with him in front of THOUSANDS of beer-soaked music fans. That Ann Marie and I would end up becoming dear dear friends. Like lifelong friends. I mean … how often does THAT happen once you become an adult? And that M. and I would have enough insane adventures to fill a small public library. That a couple of years later, I would literally be sobbing on the phone with M., because I was leaving Chicago to move to New York, and I had a fever of 103, and I was afraid I wouldn’t get to see him before I left.

Who could predict our future intimacy from our first encounters?

M. says: “That wasn’t planned tonight, by the way.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, really!”

Flash-forward 4 years.

Me, sobbing, “I am going to be ROBBED of seeing you before I go!”
M., calm, manly, “You just get well. Don’t worry. We’ll see ea—”
Me, sobbing, insistent, “ROBBED. I am going to be ROBBED.”
Long pause.
M. continued, calm, unruffled, “You focus on getting well, Sheila. I’ll be here. Don’t worry.”

What?? From his goofball awkward flirting the first night to that?

Time-travel moments like that blow me away, and this first night out in Chicago provide a ton of them.

Phil shouting, “EVERYONE? THIS IS SHEILA!”
Ann Marie grinning up at me. “Hi!”

Flash-forward a year and a half to THIS magic Mary Mack moment.

Or flash-forward 8 years to our trip to Ireland.

Or flash-forward a couple of years to the time she showed up at my apartment in Chicago, with BARE FEET, so freaked out because a pigeon had flown through her window and basically attacked her like a rabid dog. Ann Marie had shrieked, fled the scene, and drove immediately to my house. The two of us then returned to her apartment, and snuck through her apartment wielding brooms and mops as weapons – as though we were Inspector Clouseau waiting for Cato to strike.

Or flash-forward 2 years to our unbeLIEVable experience in Milwaukee, when we performed on the big Miller Oasis stage at Milwaukee Summer Fest. I mean – WHAT? That literally had to be the funnest 4 days of my life.

The laughter that she and I have experienced … has been almost dangerous to us, medically. There was one day in particular which we now refer to as our “Beowulf day” because it was so EPIC in scope … when it literally felt like we had melded into one person. We could not stop laughing for, I am not lying, EIGHT HOURS. I felt my entire personality dissolve. I could not get it back together. We even had to go out that night – with 2 friends of hers who were in from out of town, I believe – and Ann and I were so ravaged by our day-long fit of laughter that we were barely fit to be in public. Ann informed the two guys bluntly, “We share one brain. Watch this.” Then she turned to me, BORED her eyes into my head, and said, “What am I thinking about?” I am shaking with laughter now, remembering her face. Her eyes were absolutely insane. Like – YOU try laughing for eight hours straight and see how insane YOU feel!

Our experiences have been many. I have called her at two in the morning, because the heartache was so searingly awful. She has called me at two in the morning, with her own nightmares.

We have seen a man turn into a dinosaur. We have two-stepped with cowboys. We have danced jigs in small pubs in Dublin. We have co-hosted karaeoke parties in random Chicago suburbs. We have pretended we were other people. We have watched Lady Elaine do air guitar. We have propelled ourselves into the blazing star repeatedly.

Ann Marie used to shout at M.: “I AM IN YOUR LIFE!” He would shout back: “YOU ARE NOT IN MY LIFE.” A small joke between the two of them. Funny to think about, in the context of that very first night.

I could go on.

She and I would get dressed up to go out, and she would glance at her own outfit, look at mine, and say, “Good. We’ve got that good girl/bad girl thing going on.”

I could go on!

The conversations about Anne of Green Gables! She’s read them all! Multiple times!!

I could go on!!

We ACTUALLY met, as in, the beginning of our friendship, standing in line for the girls bathroom at Lounge Ax. But it could not be more perfect that we met on that night at the Wrigleyside – before we actually met. There was always something a little bit cosmic about she and I together. We fit so well together as friends that it was always a little bit uncanny … We just CLICKED. And perhaps we needed a bit of time to get used to the idea.

To get REALLY cosmic here, it’s like the universe pushed Jackie and I to go to the Wrigleyside that night – even though we still kinda felt too sick to be out and about. And the universe then presented me with three people who were destined to be MAJOR players in the course of my life. But nothing came of it that night. Phil and I did not become friends that night. That happened much later. M. and I did not start going out that night. That happened much later. Ann Marie and I did not become friends that night. That would happen much later. But there they all were. There they all were. In one place, at one time. My very first night out in Chicago. My very first night out as a single person. I met them ALL that night. And then walked away … having no idea what had just happened.

But the cosmic tumblers had gone to work. In their invisible silent way – setting into motion the events that would eventually bring us all – yes ALL – back together again.

Very rarely do cosmic tumblers reveal themselves, very rarely do you hear them click … click … clicking down …

It was only much later that I would look back on that first night at the Wrigleyside, and think: “Hmmm. Now that is biZARRE.”

M., by the way, was mainly undaunted by the fact that Phil had obviously set his sights on me. The cocky bastard didn’t give up – for that entire first night. He never made a nuisance of himself – (I thought he was damn sexy, anyway … so having him vy for my attention was so flattering I thought I would have cardiac arrest every time I noticed it going on.) As long as Phil and I weren’t boyfriend/girlfriend, as long as I was still up for grabs, M. would let me know he was interested.

In his own … really retarded way.

We all watched the softball game on TV. At one point, I felt this tapping on my back, incessant, not hard or poking – just touch, touch, touch – like a pulsing neon light. For some reason, I totally assimilated it without turning around to see who was doing the tapping. My attitude was more along the lines of: “Hm. Someone’s poking my back. Hm.” Finally, I turned around and it was M., who, when I didn’t turn around right away to see who the fuck was TOUCHING ME, decided to see how long I would just stand there allowing him to poke me, as though there were nothing out of the ordinary about it. I came to my senses immediately, and then we both started LAUGHING about how I just stood there, nonchalantly drinking my beer, watching TV, letting him poke me in the back.

I am laughing out loud.

To me, he was just a random hot guy who was messing around with me, making me laugh, and being as GOOFY as possible … which was his way of sending me a pheromonal smoke-signal: “Pick me over Phil!”

I chose Phil. At least to go out on a date with him. But … who did I end up with? For years? M.

Gotta love the boy’s persistence. He couldn’t see the future either. I was just a “new girl” on the scene, and he wanted me, so he hit on me. But I guess on some level, on the level where things make sense, on the level of cosmic tumblers … I believe that he and I were flirting with the larger pattern, the cosmic one, in our brief encounters that night. We just weren’t ready to really go there. It wasn’t time yet.

Ann Marie smiled up at me, with her beautiful face, her shining eyes, her gorgeous hair – the girl is a knockout – and I felt her warmth, I felt her openness to me, her non-competitive thing – I felt her friendliness, and I was very much drawn to her. She and I were flirting with the larger pattern, the cosmic one, in our brief encounters that night. But it wasn’t time for us to become friends yet.

And so I thank God for Phil. The man who took me out on a date to see Pat McCurdy play. And from there … all things followed.

Without Phil, I would never have met Ann, and I just can’t picture that. I can’t picture never having have met her. The thought is truly baffling … and I am telling you: I SHIVER when I think how close the call was. Jackie and I were both still sick. We could easily have stayed in that night. Now perhaps a person who TRULY believes in cosmic-patterns, and “meant to be” would say, immediately, “If it was meant to be that you and she would be friends … you would have met ANYWAY. Somehow!”

I don’t know if I believe that.

Is ANYTHING inevitable, all on its own? Besides death, I mean? Death is coming, whether we want it to or not.

I do believe that I was destined to meet Ann Marie – it’s just that it took a couple of different meetings to seal the deal. My life is unimaginable without her in it. Truly … difficult to even picture it. She was so much a part of my experience in Chicago that I can’t separate her from ANY of it. (uhm … she and I parked in a car outside M.’s house, analyzing the quality of the light we saw in the window to discern whether or not he was there … “That looks to me like a light left on accidentally when someone leaves the house … Like, I don’t think he’s home.” Uhm – girls. Does the LIGHT actually LOOK different in different circumstances? No matter. That was the kind of friend she was.)

Her angry face berating the loser post-frat guys who refused to move out of the apartment Mitchell and I were moving into. We showed up on the morning of the move-in, a pouring rainy morning, with a Uhaul truck full of stuff … to find three stumbling hungover guys who HADN’T EVEN PACKED YET. Mitchell and I were stunned, silent … The hungover guys tried to bond with us, drunkenly, like: “hahahaha, you know how it is ..” Ann Marie peeked around a corner (she had been stalking through the apartment, staring around her in outrage) – and said, “No, you know what? We’re really pissed right now.” Wipe that smirk off your face!

She was that kind of friend. She would enter into your experience so willingly, if she was your friend. She would live it with you. If you felt the need to propel yourself into a blazing star, she would leap in there with you.

Friends like that are priceless.

Happy birthday, Ann Marie. My life would not be the same without you in it. And I’m so glad those cosmic tumblers were so busy at work that first night out … making sure our paths crossed … and then … (with a little help from Phil) making sure our paths crossed AGAIN. Like the universe was repeating itself, saying to us: “Look, girls, you are going to LOVE each other. We tried to set it up back in March at the Wrigleyside … but you didn’t really run with it … So … here you are again, ‘randomly’ next to one another in line for the bathroom at Lounge Ax. You don’t remember it yet – but you have met before … and TRUST ME. You are going to LOVE each other. You are gonna have to TRUST US on this one. We don’t do this often, but we’re giving you a second chance right now. So GO. RUN WITH IT.”

And we did.

The universe breathed a sigh of relief. “FINALLY. They got the hint. Okay … we can check that one off the list. Take ‘Get Ann Marie and Sheila to become friends’ off the list, mkay? NEXT!”