Diary Friday

In a weird self-referential way, I like the writing in the following journal entry. That is so vain of me to say. But oh well. It describes one of my “good-bye” moments in Chicago – a couple of weeks before I left to move to New York. It involves one of the triumvirate, by the way. Ha! And for whatever reason – the way I chose to write about the night, what I chose to tell, the details … it all seems to capture exactly what that night was all about. A lot of times it’s difficult to write about poignant moments. I feel that in this I succeeded.

Also, it was a very fun night. A wonderful memory. It’s so CHICAGO.

July 27

Last night:
Went out with three people from work. Bill, Kerry, Bill – sat outside and drank margaritas. I always knew I’d get on socially with these people. We had a wonderful time, toasting my future, but also talking about their lives, their goals, what’s up. My life is bringing up issues for all of them, making them take a look at what they want, so we had a GREAT time, getting drunk, talking about life. Then I went tattoo shopping on Belmont, and they all tagged along. After that, Bill and I walked together – we both live in the same area. We parted at Clark and Addison, and then, on a tequila impulse, I crossed the street to the improv club. The door was locked. I peeked through the window, and saw it was empty but there were some lights on. I knocked on the window. But to no avail. Oh well. I tried. I walked home.

Jim and George are there, getting ready to go out for a drink. I bombarded them with tequila-silliness, made a laughing stock out of myself. George was laughing right in my face. 5 or 10 minutes after I got home, I was getting ready to leave with Jim and George, and the phone rang. Jim was on the other line with Steven, and another call came in. “Hello?.” He looked over at me. I knew it was for me. Jim just gave me this look, then said, “Hold on one second.” Then went back to the call with Steven, said, “I’ve gotta go – Okay – bye!” and then handed the phone to me without saying anything. But I knew who it was.

“Hello?”

“Sheila?”

“Yes?”

“Sheila?”

“This is Sheila. Is this M.?”

“Yes.”

“Hi. Where are you?”

“The theatre.”

(Now that is totally weird.) “That’s so weird cause I was just up there about 15 minutes ago, knocking on the window.”

“Really? That is weird.”

“I stopped by the theatre, looking for you, like – let me in! Let me in!”

“I didn’t hear you. I’ve been up here playing the piano.”

I felt a pinch in my heart. I said, “Can I come up?”

“Yeah, come on up.”

“I want you to play for me.”

“I will.”

So I hung up and began Phase II of my evening.

George and Jim’s faces as they said goodbye to me were priceless. I had whirled through their relatively calm space with a burst of manic insane energy, and then boom, I was gone. Out the door.

Walked back up to the club. The door was now open – other people were milling about. I breezed by them and charged in to find my M. He was sitting in the downstairs space in one of the low chairs, smoking, reading over some sides. We said hello. I sat on the stage, looked over the sides with him. He told me what the audition was. He had made some changes in the script, his handwriting squiggling in the margins. I think he was glad to see me. We have such funny Dada-esque conversations. They are satisfying to me in a way that other conversations are not. He knows I’m moving to New York, but he doesn’t ask details. I don’t feel the need to offer them up. There’s an honesty in our dynamic. There’s no lying. And once you start talking honestly, it’s easier and easier to keep going. Harder and harder to stop. Lies and denials have no place. It feels unnatural and stilted with him to have it any other way.

M. came to see Lesbian Bathhouse [Ed: Yes. I was in a late-night show, which was a huge hit, called Lesbian Bathhouse. Needless to say, it is not on my resume.] – he squeezed in my show between two of his own shows. E for Effort. He said, “I liked your work” with this serious suddenly sincere look on his face. We hugged big and hard. He called me and told me when he could come. I didn’t chase him down at all. Very pro-active for one of the least pro-active men I know.

He sat in the audience, over to the side, watching my work like a hawk, empirically, leaning forward, elbows on knees, intent, not laughing much, but paying strict and rigid attention. Cute. It meant a lot to me that he came.

If I had been told, when I met this man, that three years later any of this would be going on, that we would have this normal friend-like thing going on, I would not have been able to picture it at all. But it has happened, and it doesn’t feel out of the ordinary at all.

We’ve already laughed about him visiting me in NYC. I can just see the 2 of us, wandering around Times Square, having an insanely fun Dada-esque time. He told me he’s not done much traveling – he traveled through Europe, Italy, etc., in high school with his choir, but not much else. He’s only been to Manhattan a few times.

Meg came down with her dog. [Ed: She was the owner and manager of the club.] M. introduced us. She and I have never really met, strange as that is. She was very cordial. M. gave her his sides. She would be working with him on them the next day, he wanted her help. She clearly adores him. Respects him. It was interesting to watch them together. Then Meg left, locking the doors behind her. We were alone.

We talked a little bit more about his audition, about the closing night of Hamlet. He lit 3 or 4 candles, turned off all the rest of the lights – it was such a Chicago scene – it was so US – and he sat down at the piano. He played for me for about an hour. I’ve never heard him play. He played like a maniac, vigorously, passionately. A lot of Elton John, Billy Joel – also his own stuff. He played me the first song he ever wrote: “I warn you. It is really corny” – and it was this heart-broken love-sick song. I laughed in his face, as I listened to the words.

But I sang along to the other stuff. I lay down on my back on the black stage, legs splayed out, and sang. Throwing my voice up to the ceiling. In the middle of songs, he kept apologizing for how out of shape his voice was. He’s a great piano player.

I can’t even tell you how happy and fulfilled the whole thing made me. As he played, I moved around. Sometimes I danced, sometimes I stood behind him to watch his fingers, sometimes I sat on a stool and drank a beer, listening.

I’d look across the candlelit space – at him – at the piano – at his head of crazy black hair – and I didn’t think anything. I was BEING. My soul was flying out of my body into the universe. I am! I am! I am! [Ed: I must have read over this later, and felt embarrassed by it – because I wrote a note to myself: “I just reread that last sentence and feel a bit embarrassed at the melodrama. I felt like crossing it out, but y’know what? As goofy as the sentiment is, it’s the truth. It was where I was at that night with him.”]

Fleeting. Life is so short. I am so conscious of that. Especially now, since my time left in Chicago is so short.

I’ll stop what I’m doing – and just breathe it in. Give myself the order: Stop. Listen. Smell. Look. All of this is so fleeting. My life here will be gone in 4 weeks. Appreciate. It’s not that hard to do, actually. Nothing is normal now. My future is unknown, and my present has a tangible limit to it. So I am filled with the sense of ending, of good-byes, of last times.

It’s so poignant.

I cry pretty much every day. But then again, I laugh pretty much every day too.

I said at one point to M., “My favorite album of Billy Joel’s is the Songs in the Attic album.”

He said, hands poised and ready, “What songs do you like from that album?”

“‘The Night the Lights Went Out on Broadway.'”

And he started the intro immediately. It was awesome. I love that piano at the beginning. We both sang the hell out of that song – and we forgot the lyrics at exactly the same point – and both burst into laughter.

The piano at the club is a battered old grand, with stained keys – and M. is this battered guy, this crazy guy in my life – it was fantastic. One of my favorite nights I have ever had in Chicago.

M. will be an always person in my life. He won’t just drop out of sight and heart and mind, like some of the others. I have known this for a while, but it still amazes me.

A dim candlelit bar, inhabited by me, M., and a piano. Happiness: singing with him, him playing the piano – the two of us talking in between songs. I loved lying on my back, and listening to the music. Losing myself in the moment.

M. can be such an innocent. He said to me, so cute, all enthusiastic and wistful, “Last year – did you know that Elton John and Billy Joel toured together? Can you imagine that?? The two of them together? And I missed it! Did you hear about that??”

That was such a highly publicized tour, last year, and he was so behind the times. It was endearing, him saying, “Did you hear??” like that.

I said, “Uhm … EVERYBODY knew about that tour, M.”

He shrugged, kind of sheepish, still improvising carelessly on the piano. “Well – not up on the concert scene. You know.”

“Yeah. I know.”

He got up to go back to the bathroom, after about an hour of singing, playing, talking. And I was alone. Leave me alone nowadays, and I am instantly 100% contemplative, nostalgic, aware.

It got so quiet, like a blanket over the place. I was sitting absolutely still. Only my eyes moved. I looked around, and I saw EVERYTHING. Everything. I saw life. I saw the details of the bar in a microscopic way, but I saw myself – in the context of my LIFE – and how this life is ending and a new one beginning.

I looked from candle to candle to candle – some in red glass holders, others in yellow glass holders – I saw the Hamlet sign – purple – with the T a man, head thrown back, arms spread out – exclamation point – darkened Miller Genuine Draft sign – the black pipes overhead – the silent living piano next to me – M. down the hall in the bathroom – this person in my life who has afforded me some of the funniest memories, who has really made Chicago this very specific place for me – a panorama. Every beat of my heart I felt, as I looked around – goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye

And it’s not like I spend a lot of time in a locked-up improv club with M. Last night was the first time. But it is the context I am familiar with. And I will miss the context.

Because it is done. I know it’s done.

And every second that went by, I was saying goodbye. And Thank You at the same time.

It was so vivid, so potent. Pain and joy all mixed up together. Feeling impending loss, anticipatory nostalgia, and overwhelming gratitude.

M. came out of the bathroom to find me sitting there in a daze of tears. He sat back down at the piano. Lit a cigarette. Didn’t ask, “What’s going on?” He’s always okay with me, wherever I’m at. I told him about what had just gone down. What I had just perceived. What I saw.

“I’m going to miss you,” I said.

M. said, in this very simple way, “Oh … I’ll always be here.”

And he started to play again.

Is he a piece of work or what?

After this, we poured ourselves plastic cups of beer, sat on stools, and talked. We reminisced, we laughed about the first night we met. It was great. We never talk like that. But there’s this huge good-bye approaching. He feels it too.

Then, we walked down the street to an all-night gyros place to stuff our faces. It was 2 in the morning. We walked by Wrigley Field. It always gives me this feeling – it looks like a Coliseum – especially late at night, when it is dark, and quiet. Looming above the neighborhood like some ruin of an ancient and long-gone time.

M. had hurt his arm pretty bad during his show that night, and he was being all manly about it, but I could tell he was in pain.

“Your arm?”

He nodded, being very stoic and manly. I switched to his other side and massaged his arm as we walked. He let me do this, which made me realize how bad it was.

We got to this DIVE across from The Metro. The skankiest people in the world were there. A toothless man in a baseball cap drinking coffee. Video games. I wanted nothing on the menu. I remember that M. ordered a “pizza puff” and I burst into laughter. Finally, I ordered a fish sandwich. (Not eating wasn’t an option. I was hungry.) I also ordered a huge lemonade.

M. paid. “I got this, kid”, he said with huge magnanimity, as though he is some international tycoon.

As we waited for our food, standing at the counter, M. was silently in agony, rubbing his right shoulder, flexing his hand. I felt for him.

“Oh, how bad is it? Did you pull something?”

He nodded. Manly. “It hurts.”

I said to the exhausted greasy man behind the counter, “Do you have any aspirin?”

He gestured at a bunch of packets taped up by the register. “Look, M.! You want some?”

“2 packets …”

“Here.” I ripped it off.

He opened one packet, popped the 2 aspirin in his mouth, and I held my lemonade straw up to his lips. He took the other 2 aspirin as well.

“That should help,” I said.

“Well, at least I’ll be able to sleep.” (He has a cot in the back of the theatre – he sleeps there sometimes.)

We sat at a booth, waiting, talking, drinking lemonade. We got our stuff and headed back to eat at the theatre. As we passed Wrigley Field, we both, I felt, were having the same response to the place. I was staring up at it, quiet. So was he. It was dark and quiet, in the middle of a Chicago summer night. I will miss this. My Wrigley Field.

I didn’t leap into his brain, or anything like that – I just felt like he and I were thinking the same thing. And suddenly he said, staring up at it, “It’s funny to think … people travel to Chicago … specifically … to see Wrigley Field … to see this … and to me … it’s just something that I walk by every day.”

I said, “I know just what you mean.”

We sat at the bar, in the dark, turned on the TV, and unwrapped our food. We watched “Tap” of all things. We are an absolutely ridiculous pair. We discussed the film, commented, we ate our food. Sharing, of course. My fish sandwich was supremely and wonderfully awful. Unbelievable. Perfect.

It was 3:30 by this point, by the time I was done eating, and I was ready to go home. I mean, I live a 5 minute walk away. It’s so close that I literally, even when intoxicated, cannot justify a cab.

I put my arms around M., hugged him heartily – it had been a great night – and then I left, locking the door behind me – leaving him alone inside the bar.

My dark-haired crazy friend.