Writing Archive

"This, reader, is an honest book. ...my sole purpose in writing it has been a private and domestic one. I have had no thought of serving you or of my own fame...I have intended it solely for the pleasure of my relatives and friends so that, when they have lost me — which they soon must — they may recover some features of my character and disposition, and thus keep the memory they have of me more completely and vividly alive." —MONTAIGNE

On New Year's Eve 1994, I went to a rave on acid with a few friends of mine, and it was probably the last time I stayed at a party all night. Before we caught the bus, my buddy mentioned how our shadows from the street-lamps looked like the Cosby gang in Fat Albert, and those silhouettes morphed into candy canes, gummies, and black licorice.

I was wearing baggy work pants and a sweater featuring a tasteful KRAFT mayonnaise logo. During a particularly thick beat, I was dancing by myself under a pool of strobes when a woman about my age, maybe younger, danced up to me, eventually moving in synch and pressing close to my KRAFTiness.

Of course, I had no Napoleon Dynamite skills back then, and so I had no idea how to react. She danced away with a backwards glance that said "lame" and "boo hoo" at the same time. I've spent years since, wondering what she was thinking, like why me? Was it my KRAFT sweater? It had to be the sweater. I mean, she was really good looking.

And what if I'd have met her? Gotten to know her? Would I be different now? Would I be in jail, in a better job, with kids, on the street, or famous?...

Just as I wonder sometimes what happened to those near-misses and why-nots and could've-been-should've-beens. What happened to them, and what could've happened to me? A life like that Talking Heads song, "this is not my beautiful wife"? Or a grave with all the grandeur of the Taj Mahal and secrets of the Egyptian dead...?

The Japanese rudegirl with plaid skirts, multiple piercings, and immaculate leggings, who stood in the snow with me a moment before going to take pizza orders, perhaps giving me the only chance I had to kiss her without an awkward pause between endlessly bitten-off words, a chance lost in snowflakes and smoke breaks…

The Ukrainian Hare Krishna girl, wire-rimmed glasses like John Lennon and long, thick, curly brown hair, who suggested in a group of friends that we watch a Disney video she clutched lovingly, the one who asked me to come pray with her and once showed me nude pictures that some old hippie at the Heartland took of her…

The very pale blonde Swedish evangelical girl who had recently converted to Jewish Orthodox, who reached over to write down her phone number and so pressed her hands against mine…

The Latina radio DJ with platinum highlight-streaks who tried to tell my fortune, the one whose URL i.e. name I forgot as quickly as her tarot reading…

The two or three blonde waitresses with tongue piercings who I met after their shift at either the Red Line or the Oasis, with body art and bad taste in beer and a cell phone that gets turned off every now and then…

The very tan, fake-blonde Puerto Rican from Lakeview smoking menthols, with a tailbone tattoo and tight jeans, who pulled me into a booth at the club and then just looked at me, waiting…

The healthy-plump Art Institute "hottie" — that's what the sequins spelled out across her breasts on a tight, black shirt — with red hair, an Irish brogue, and a Dutch last name, the one who left bite marks and nothing more after pulling me into the lake at 5am when the bars closed and the sun came up in Rogers Park…

The willowy Houston poet with hazel hair and ebonic drawl who looked annoyed that I wouldn’t stay a few more hours, drink a few more beers, and wait out the endurance contest of hooking up with a belly full of alcohol, surely the stratum of sleep-deprived brain cells upon which dreams are made…

The Boston stewardess who pressed her phone number in my lawyer-friend’s hand at some downtown soak-hole, drunk enough to laugh at my off-color reference to her wedding ring, saying, "I got a friend you should meet…"

The goth who stared intensely at other girls wearing black when we’d go out, asking how she’d look next to this or that one, with carnivorous, gulping glances...

I wonder. And then I make a bowl of oatmeal. And then I go jogging.

And then I sleep while sweating through nightmares I'll thankfully never remember, waking with a vague feeling of something I'd like to recollect and turn over in my mind like savoring a rapidly disintegrating yet agonizingly spicy piece of hard candy.

I wonder.