Sometimes, in the midst of a real crap-load kind of winter day, people (usually stupid ones) will ask me, "Ryan, why do you hate winter so much, the snow is so pretty?" I usually just look at them blankly for a long moment before hysterically explaining that: " Well, Basically for 4 months out of the year I have shitty hair because if I don't wear a hat I will probably literally die. I have to wear coats which no matter how you slice it, make me look fat. Don't get me wrong, my coats are cute, but they do make me look fat. So for 4 months out of 12, I feel fat and unattractive! I get depressed, everything hurts, my penis shrinks and I can't go outside for more than 15 minutes (tops) before hypothermia begins to set in and snow melts into my socks." Also, without fail, once a year, I will nearly get frostbite and or freeze to death.
Last year, when I was in denial of winter's arrival, I decided that I would ride my scooter to my 6:00a.m.work meeting while the weather was just reaching a toasty 28 degrees. I didn't want to break out the winter coats just yet, so I wore a much more slimming sweatshirt instead. Somewhere around twenty minutes into my scoot to work I realized my hands were frozen around the handle bars, that I was blacking out and that I hadn't stopped grinding my teeth since I started my moped. Also I should mention I was having trouble blinking because the wind was freezing my eye balls. My red Honda Metropolitan scooter topped out at 36 miles per hour, so for forty minutes I crawled through empty dark streets at 5:30am. Freezing to death.
When I got to work I played it cool and waved at my coworkers on the way to the bathroom, where I ran hot water over my hands. It was so painful I actually couldn't cry. I wanted to, I thought if I cried it would distract me from my pain, but it was such an acute pain my brain couldn't do anything other than feel that pain. Not even cry. I admitted it was winter after that, and pouted the rest of the day knowing I'd have to wear a coat for four months and live confined indoors, like a prisoner.
The year before that the same thing happened on a February morning, except replace the scooter with my legs. The sun was out, so naturally I thought it was a hundred degrees outside. I set out in my fall jacket for a brisk walk to a coffee shop two miles away. Oh and I didn't wear socks because the sun was out and I wanted to feel sunny air hit my feet through the holes of my slippers. I remember wondering why I was stiff as a board and why my fingers were blue when I glanced at a UMB bank time and date billboard and then reading that the temperature was 14 degrees.
This year I'm fighting off winter as hard as I ever have. When I tell people I just moved to Chicago, the first thing they say is, "so this is your first Chicago winter?"
"Yeah," I say.
"Ohhhhh," is a choice response, followed by cynical laughter and walking away without finishing the sentence. It's the sort of "ohhhhhh," someone says when a friend reveals they have gone back to their abusive ex. "I know he loves me and he only hit me that once, plus I'm pregnant and we're going to keep it." "Ohhhhhhh," they might say in response while thinking what an idiot the other person is. I'm not exaggerating when I say this exact conversation happens every time it is mentioned that I am new to Chicago. At first I brushed it off, but after probably the hundredth person to walk away laughing, I started getting scared.
I don't know if I'm cut out for Chicago winters. I'm beginning to wonder if Chicago is even where I needed to move to, "find myself." I hate to admit it, because of how horrifically cliche it sounds, but if you take away all my other reasons, "I'm moving for art, I'm moving to get a fresh start," or, "I'm moving to Chicago for love," the only real reason; the only true reason I moved is because I don't know who I am or where I belong and I thought the city would start my heart again. So far Chicago has started my heart. It has started it in ways that make me feel everything all at once, in a way that makes me realize how blank and def and stoned my heart has been for the bulk and most recent corners of my life.
I've been looking for signs from the universe, for an affermation that I made the right decision coming here. For a while my daily affermation has been the orginal Banksey art work spray painted on the side of a crappy burger joint in the West Loop. The artwork depicts the baby from the Untouchables plummiting down the Odessa Stairs while Capone's henchmen shoot eachother. I remember walking past that piece of art six months ago, and knowing somehow, that I would soon be living a block away from it. But now the ass holes at the crappy burger joint have covered up the Banksey in an effort to make their crappy burger slum look more like every other crappy slum building surrounding it.
Along with being an encouraging piece of art, the Banksey was also my compas. I knew when I looked at it I was facing East, or as I like to call it, "Eat." I've always had trouble with directions and have thus hated people who give them using North, East, South or West as a refference point to where I should be heading. "All you gotta do is go North on Belmount and then go West on Main street and then take a sharp East when you see a tree with a pair of rollerskates tied around it and then my house is the one facing due North." When people talk to me like this, all I can do from telling them what an ass hole they sound like, is to laugh and say, "I don't know what the fuck your talking about." What ever happend to the good ol fashioned series of left and right directions. I like those directions.
When I was young, my ugly friend Spohia taught me a neat trick that I still use today...like everyday. "I always remember North, East, South and West by saying, 'Never Eat Soggy Waffles'. Since 'Never' is the first word of the sentence it goes on top, and then you just make a cross with your figers," she said to me after I told her she was stupid for thinking the sun sets in the West, becuase it deffinatley set in the South. I've been wrong before though. So now, every single time I need to figure out where I am I physically have to point my fingers infront of me and say, "Never Eat Soggy Waffles."
I've been trying to explore more areas using the never eat soggy waffles navigation system, but I've had mono for the past few weeks so I havn't gotten a chance to really explore the city as much as I'd like to. I actually havn't had a chance to do much of anything other than sleep and explode diareah out of my ass two to three times a day. People keep asking me where I got mono, "oh my gosh, well how'd you get it, have you been making out with a lot of people?" I usually tell them I don't know.
I'd like to say that I don't actually know where I got mono, but I'm pretty sure the gangbang I attended earlyer in the year might have had something to do with it. Of coarse I've only told a few people this, as I'm finally learning when it's appropriate to filter my thoughts, but I can't help but think what an intrusive question it is in the first place. "Where did you get mono?" I feel like with such a probing question I should give people the truth. "I got mono from a sex party I went to a few months ago, in the basement of a dollar store." I don't care if it offends people, the truth often does. I think people need to be more aware of the questions they ask and the answeres they may recieve, and any part I can have in helping people reach that awareness fills me with joy.
I gave Kevin and his roomate Popkee mono too. I feel really bad about it, but I've never had more fun being deathly ill in my life. The first time I had mono I was bed written for a month while I watched my dip shit boyfriend play Kingdom Hearts on the Playstation and smoke a lot of pot. It was awful. Kevin, Popkee and myself have been lying around their apartment being sick and watching movies and eating terrible food on a make shift twenty foot couch. We've been sleeping so much I'm getting bed soars. Mono makes me so tired I litterally fell asleep the other morning while I was tying my shoe laces to go to work. I wasn't late though, don't worry.
I started feeling better though a few days ago and decided to celibrate by throwing on a scarf and walking through the Loop in search of a store with enough pizzaz to possess a Christmas gift worthy of Jen Harris. I almost frooze to death during my half hour search for the Brown Line train to Kimball. I finally called my friend Johnathan for directions. "Go North to Lake and then go East, you'll see the Brown Line entrance a few blocks down Lake." I pulled my frozen hands out of my pockets and held my frozen pointer infront of me and while making a cross said, "never eat soggy waffles."
And then I wasn't lost anymore.
