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ashtrayfloors · 2 years

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Late afternoon, late September, I drove to Kenosha to hang out with Beagan. Honey lattes from The Buzz Cafe, sipped while walking around by the lake. The early autumn wind roared off the waves, pulled our hair from bobby pins and ponytails. We scoped sculptures, talked about all our romantic and sexual frustrations.

Being newly single after a long time in a relationship (her), trying to keep the spark alive in a long term relationship (me), both come with hardships. We talked of unreciprocated crushes, and ghost-lovers coming to throw pennies at our windows and remind us of the old days. Of the torches we still carry, and the ones that burnt out long ago—either way, smoke gets in your eyes.

We talked of feeling old and boring. How the things we used to do to bring excitement to our lives—staying out late, drinking all night, going to shows once a week at least, traveling, taking many lovers—are either completely out of the question or just sound too exhausting. I asked if all my stories now would be about the old days, and then we made a vow—that the next time we saw each other, we’d have stories to share, no matter how small.

I headed home. Listened to Big Star and sang along. “In the Street,” “September Gurls,” “The Ballad of El Goodo.” December boys got it bad; and there ain’t no one goin’ to turn me ‘round. Honeyed autumn light burnished the treetops. Well, maybe Beagan and I are old and boring now, but I’m glad we’re still here, and still in each other’s lives. Even if I don’t live the exciting life I once did, I’m glad I’m still here, to listen to Big Star, to drive down my favorite highway at golden hour.

* * *

Then. A week of stressful days, cleaning & pricing everything for the garage sale. But. A week of wild nights, P. & I getting passionate and vampy, neckbitten, having hot kinky sex.

Made a good chunk of change at the garage sale, and the money disappeared almost immediately, gone to rent & bills. But still. Good to get rid of some clutter, let go, make way.

Colored my hair, darkest brown, felt more like myself than I had in ages. Then a week of prepping for MWPZF. Finally finished the gender and sexuality zine I’ve been trying to write for years, and now I never have to write about gender and sexuality again. (Well, no—I’ll write about them again, but probably not in such an extensive, exhausting way.) Long walks with the kiddos to see the turning leaves, to spy the houses beginning to decorate for Halloween. And stress & lack of sleep & no sex, and printing, cutting, collating, stapling.

* * *

Then the trip to Chicago. It was a day of moments of synchronicity, a day of the perfect songs playing at the perfect times; it was a day of new memories layered upon old memories layered upon even older memories. The now layered on top of 2014 on top of 2013 on top of 2010 on top of 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998. (Layers and layers of ghosts.) It was a day of writing new poems in my head while being reminded of things I’ve written in the past.

It was so good just to be on a train again. October train, to Chicago! Chicago! I once wrote that it seemed I was always on trains in the springtime, but oh, there have been so many autumn trains. My rail-riding has its seasons, just like anything. Metras and Amtraks in the autumn, freight trains in the spring. (Though, of course, as soon as I wrote that, I remembered all the autumn freight rides and the springtime commuter trains.)

The trip down was streaks of blue sky, white cloud, autumn leaves crimson & scarlet, orange & gold, giving way to smears of redbrown brick, gray cement, rainbows of graffiti. I listened to a Wilco playlist, and “Via Chicago” came on just as the train breached the city limits, and there was this low-hanging layer of gray clouds cracked through with October morninglight and the whole skyline glowing and Jeff Tweedy singing I’m coming home, and I was, I was.

* * *

The train pulled into Union Station, everyone grabbed their luggage and queued up to debark. In the station, I found a bathroom, freshened up a bit, then went to wander around the Great Hall for a few minutes. I thought of the time in 2010, visiting Maggie while on a trip back to the midwest from California, when there were two guys on a stage in the Great Hall, dressed as Jake and Elwood Blues, playing “Gimme Some Lovin’,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” et. al. And oh, come on, baby, don't you wanna go? Back to that same old place, Sweet home Chicago.

I exited out to Canal Street, and way down here on Canal Street / the bike messengers stare you down / and businessmen brush right past you / in their rush to get out of town. I passed the river, a horrible pea-soup green, and thought of the time I wrote about the Chicago River, which is green year-round, not just on St. Paddy’s Day.

No surprise, it was really fucking windy. I thought of my black scally, stolen by the Chicago wind all those years ago, and was glad I was wearing a beanie, because those aren’t so easily snatched by the greedy fingers of the wind.

I got a bit turned around while looking for the Quincy CTA station; it had been eight years since I was in that part of the city. While wandering and trying to get my bearings back, I caught sight of Lou Malnati’s, and remembered my rewrite of the first chapter of On The Road (which took place in Chicago, natch, rather than NYC), how they got off the Amtrak at Canal Street and cut around the corner looking for a place to eat and went right in Lou Malnati’s, and since then Lou Malnati’s has always been a big symbol of Chicago for Deanna.

I wandered some more, snapped photos of interesting graffiti and stickers. I got tired of carrying my travel mug and wanted to stash it in my bag, but it was still half-full. I happened to be near this shiny high-rise of condos and fancy businesses that had all these benches out front, and signs everywhere: Benches for Customers and Residents ONLY. It’d be one thing if it was a fenced-in courtyard, but public space should be for the public. So fuck you, buddy. I dumped my coffee all over one of the benches. It was petty, and extremely satisfying. I finally righted my direction, found the Quincy station. Then it was on to the Orange Line, headed to the Roosevelt Station. The El curved between buildings, buildings I remembered, and oh, oh.

* * *

I got to MWPZF about an hour late, but no one was mad. I showed the volunteers my vaccination card, got my official MWPZF pin & my pronoun pin. There were hugs and hellos with Milo and Jonas and Julia, and then I went to set up my table. One of the people at the table next to mine was Enola, whom I have known through zines and teh Interwebs for years now, and it was so rad to finally meet her in person. I collated and stapled more copies of my zines (I always carry my saddle-stitch with me; one must have a really good stapler to use at a zine fest), then arranged them & made price signs. All while listening to the rumble and screech of the El on the tracks that ran right past the building.

There was so much nostalgia: general zine fest nostalgia, plus the fact of being at Columbia College, the school I attended from ’01-’04. But there were new memories being made at the same time, and it was so good just to be in a room filled with old friends and new friends, queers and weirdos, artists and writers and zinesters.

After a while, I asked Enola and her table-mates to watch my table for a bit so I could go find food and coffee. I found a Peet’s nearby, and decided to go there, have a moment of nostalgia for my time in the Bay Area amidst all the Chicago nostalgia. I ordered a coffee and a sandwich. The barista was a cute freckled ginger queer; I noticed they were wearing a he/they pronoun pin next to their name tag, and he noticed my they/them pin at the same time, and we totally pointed in a “same hat!” way. (Though I guess they were just similar hats, haha.)

While waiting for my sandwich, I had more Chicago nostalgia. There was a Metro poster on the bulletin board, listing recent and upcoming shows. One was Smashing Pumpkins. I remembered a time back when I worked in the Fiction Writing Department office at Columbia College. One morning, I was there with my friend and coworker K., and Billy fucking Corgan walked in. Turned out he was pals with one of the professors, and she’d invited him to sit in on her class. He politely asked us to direct him to said class, and K., who was like, in love with Billy, briefly lost the power of speech. Though I am a long-time Pumpkins fan, I was not starstruck by Mr. Corgan’s presence, so I had to direct him to the class.

I took my time moseying the couple blocks back to MWPZF; stopped here and there to take bites of my sandwich or snap more photos of strange street art.

More zine fest moments:

Enola and I talked about Piedmont, the neighborhood in Oakland where I first discovered her zines, at Book Zoo, 11+ years ago.

I sold a lot of zines, and the kiddos did too. (Both my kiddos made their very own zines for me to sell at MWPZF). I also bought a lot of zines (+ some pins and stickers) and traded for several more.

Jim Joyce had a bowl of metal studs on his table, for people to take and affix to whatever. I had already taken a few and put them on my leather jacket, but he told me to take as many as I wanted cuz: “You’re a rocker,” he said. He gave me a copy of his Misfits zine for the same reason.

I talked with Red about writing zines about rough shit—their most recent one is about the death of friends & the ensuing grief, mine includes lots of moments of biphobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc. We talked about how on the one hand, writing that stuff can be cathartic, and it is important to write about, but on the other hand, sometimes it feels like you’re retraumatizing yourself.

Someone who approached my table realized who I was and said: “You’re famous!” “I am?” I asked. “In the zine world you are!” Turned out they were a zine librarian, and have been familiar with my stuff since way back in the Safety Pin Girl/Jessica Disobedience days.

Someone approached my table while I was putting together more copies. I said: “Just think of it as performance art.” “It’s a durational zine,” they replied.

Julia and I talked about how our zine output has slowed down significantly since the pandemic hit. “Part of it is just the lack of socializing,” they said. “Right?” I said. “What am I gonna write about? ‘Oh, I did my dayjob, played with my kids, went to the grocery store.’ No one wants to read that shit, so I guess I’ll just write about Ye Olde Days, when my life was exciting, for the one millionth time.” Julia said: “Yeah, but even if I’m writing fiction it’s like…if I don’t go out in the world and get enough external stimulation, my brain is just mush.” And yeah, exactly that.

Someone commented on how early the dark was falling, and it does get dark early in that part of Chicago, when you’re nestled in among all the tall tall buildings blocking out the sun.

* * *

There were some ghosts I feared to see that day, but most of them stayed in the realm of the ephemeral. The only one who materialized in corporeal form was the one I never imagined would, the ghost I most feared and most longed for—Derry.

He showed up toward the end of the zine fest. I knew instantly it was him, before I even saw his face. I would know him anywhere. He looked the same, just older. Hey, me too. (And I feel so much older now, and you’re much older, too…) He looked the same, just a few more lines crinkling the edges of his crooked smile, a few more lines framing his blue-green eyes. “Hi, you,” he said. “I thought I might find you here.”

I tried, I tried to play it cool. I told him zine fest was nearly over, I needed to start packing up. He bought a few zines, and said: “I’ll let you pack up. Are you busy after this? If you want to hang out for a bit, I’ll buy you a drink.”

I packed my stuff, said my goodbyes, hugged my zine pals one last time. Derry was waiting at an outdoor table at a bar a few blocks away. When he saw me walk up, he got out of his chair, and hugged me so tight he lifted me off the ground for a split second. He, ever the gentleman, pulled my chair out for me. Then he asked what I wanted to drink, and I said Jameson, and, just like the night I’d detailed in A Foggy Night in Lakeview, he said: “That’s my girl.” And just like that night, I swooned.

He went and got our drinks, and when he came back, I didn’t know where to start. Where do you start with someone whom you’ve known for twenty years, but haven’t spoken to in person in thirteen years, haven’t spoken to even via email or phone for over eight?

I didn’t know where to start, so I got all self-deprecating. “If I’d known you were gonna show up today, I would’ve put more effort into my appearance,” I said.

“You know you’re gorgeous no matter what,” he said. Well, fuck.

“I hope it’s okay that I showed up today,” he said. “I just saw that this zine fest was happening, and I figured you might be there, and I…”

“It’s totally okay. I—I’m sorry I never respond to your emails. I’m always happy to hear from you, it’s just that if I respond I’m afraid it will open everything up again, and I…”

Beat, pause, we stared into one another’s eyes to see who would think of something to say first.

“Anyway. Tell me a story.” He smiled.

And that too was like the old days, the way every time I ran into him, be it at a show, or a bar, or on the street, he’d say Tell me a story!, and when I did, he’d hang on every word.

So I told him the story of the last time I’d been in Chicago until that day; about the show at J.’s house. Then I asked him to tell me a story, and he told me one about his recent trip to Philadelphia.

We finished our drinks, and decided to walk for a bit. We found a bench to sit on, and we both lit cigarettes. (Yeah, I’ve started smoking again, occasionally. I feel bad about it, but also… To quote Kat Case: we are what we hate and it’s sick but we don’t necessarily also hate what we are.)

Once again, what to say?

“Oh,” I said, “I have a new chapbook. It’s all sold out but I brought a couple author copies with me.”

I looked at his hands as I handed him the copy, and noticed that his claddagh was on his right hand, with the heart facing outward. I stopped wearing mine altogether after the last gasp of our on-again-off-again thing, and then I met P., and fell in love, and got married, and of course I don’t regret any of that. P.’s my life partner. But Derry’s the only one I would have turned my claddagh inward for, and when I realized we’d never be able to make it work in that way, it made me too sad to keep wearing it.

He saw me looking at his ring, and just said: “Yeah, I haven’t been able to make anything stick, since…” (Don’t say it, don’t say it.) “…oh, but you have.” (Lucky that you found someone to make you feel secure…) He asked after my family. (How’s your husband, how’s the kids…)

“You know,” he said, “when I email you, or suggest we hang out next time you’re in town, I’m never trying to start things up all over again. I just miss you and want to know how you’re doing, is all.”

“I know,” I said. “I know your intentions are good. But you know how it is with us. We’ll never have closure; the closest we can get to it is to just not speak to or see one another. Every time we’ve tried to just be friends, everything starts all over again. And then it ends all over again, and it hurts all over again, because we’ve never been able to get the timing right.”

(There’s a time for us. Someday, a time for us. There’s a place for us. I know you know the movie song. One day we’re gonna realize, it was just that the time was wrong.)

“I know,” he said. “Well. You probably have to head back to the train station, huh?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I probably should.”

We rose from the bench, and we hugged, and before we went our separate ways, he said: “Cheers, love.”

Then I headed north, he headed south, and We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time.

* * *

I still had quite a while before my train, so I decided to walk slow, and explore along the way. I thought about going to the Art Institute, to stand again in front of Nighthawks and America Windows, to feel the magic hum & cry about art, but it was already closed for the day. I wondered if it had always closed so early. I feel like I used to go there late late in the evening, after classes, but that may have been my memory playing tricks on me. Maybe it never was that late; maybe it was just winter, when it gets dark early, in that part of town where it gets darker earlier no matter the time of year. So, no Art Institute, well, let’s walk past and through the other old haunts. By then, my bearings had returned, and I knew that part of town again like it had only been days since I was there instead of nine whole years.

First, I headed to Grant Park, wandered around there for a bit. Scoped the art—both the sanctioned sculptural kind, and the illicit graffiti. I thought of that poem I wrote, about a different park in Chicago, how it was covered in art & scrawlings more fabulous / than anything to be found in some dim whispering / Near North Side gallery or any Poetry magazine.

I found the bridge I used to sit on between classes, the big stone bridge over the Metra train tracks. I was going to sit on it for a while, but it was blocked off for a marathon, so I took pictures of the back of it and wandered farther into the park.

There were pigeons everywhere, oil-slick feathered heads and beady eyes, and people everywhere—teenagers skateboarding, couples kissing or walking their dogs, gay men cruising. I saw one guy giving me the eye, felt glad I looked boyish enough that day that he saw me as someone he might want, but I knew that if it had really come down to brass tacks he would’ve been surprised and perhaps disappointed by what he found, and anyway— My picking-up-strangers days, my fucking-in-public days, are long gone. I smiled, but shook my head slightly, and he nodded and moved on.

I moved on, too. Walked on the sidewalk that runs alongside the park, headed north. Past the CCC building I worked in and had most of my classes in, and when you’re standin on the 14th floor / you can always feel a building swayin. Past the Congress Plaza Hotel, the haunted hotel Maggie and I stayed in that last time I saw her. Past the former site of the Artists Cafe, another place I often went between classes. The food was overpriced but back then it was one of the only cafes in the area, and anyway the coffee was good and strong and the refills were free and it was a great place to people-watch and daydream and write. I composed the bulk of Safety Pin Girl #16 there.

There was a group of people gathered in a plaza-like area of the park. One of them was standing on something and speaking through a megaphone. I couldn’t make it out, but at first I was kinda charmed. Chicago, y’know? Soapbox city. As I got closer, I saw that one member of the group was holding a sign that said Free Anti-Depression Hugs. Then I noticed that some other members of the group were carrying signs with Bible verses written on them. And they were all men, and all of them kinda looked like Proud Boys. Gross. “Hey, sister,” the one with the Free Hugs sign said as I passed by. “I am not your fucking sister,” I growled.

Winding, wending. Past epic graffiti murals; skeletons sprawled across the sides of buildings, adjacent to vacant lots. Then the Harold Washington Library Center, the architecture of which has always seemed straight out of Gotham City. The library I once spent so much of my time at, c. 2001 to 2004. Back in 2001, they still had typewriters you could rent for a dime an hour; it was on those typewriters I typed most of Safety Pin Girl #13 and bits of #14 & #15.

And how funny time is. I thought of how the last time I was in that part of Chicago was nine years ago. And when I was there in 2013, I kept thinking of 2003, how that was ten years gone. And in 2003, I thought of 1996, seven years past. Everything is just layers and layers of ghosts.

At the Harold Washington Library station, I caught the Orange Line back to Quincy, back to Union Station to wait for my train.

* * *

Back at Union Station, I looked at the Amtrak departures board, just so I knew exactly what gate my train would be departing from. But of course I saw all the rest of that night’s departures, and had that desire I always have in a train station—that desire to hop on a different train than the one I’m supposed to board, to go somewhere else. I noticed that the City of New Orleans was set to depart from a different track at the same time the Hiawatha Line would be taking me back to Wisconsin, and that was the one I most wished I could ride.

Of course I couldn’t, so I went to get a beer at the railroad station bar—a God Damn Pigeon Porter from Spiteful Brewing. I watched all the conductors & the porters (& I’m all outta quarters…) & the people—Japanese tourists & high school kids & Amish families & punk rockers—walk by. I got out my notebook & wrote, wrote a tanka, wrote notes about my day, drank my beer. The bar was playing all these ‘90s sadboy songs, and I suppose it was inevitable that I got a bit melancholy. About to leave the city of my heart, and who knew when I’d be back again; had seen some old friends and old flames oh, so briefly, and who knew when I’d see them again; and all the sad, nostalgic songs. Emotional masochist that I am, I pulled out one of the zines I’d picked up at MWPZF—Red’s grief zine. Reading the raw explorations of loss, and some of them about Jack Terricloth—well, I began to cry.

Then I heard someone say: “Hey, sister, you alright?” I looked around, not sure who was speaking or if they were talking to me, and also, not again, sister? Oh shit, they were talking to me—but it wasn’t a fascist-looking religious freak, it was a gorgeous hippie woman. I’d noticed her & her traveling companions when I first sat down at the bar, because they were the most interesting characters there. One of her companions noticed my hesitancy in responding, must have clocked my genderqueerness, said: “Or…brother? Sister or brother, it’s all good.” It wasn’t like getting ma’am-sirred, it was instead this affirmation that I could be both sister and brother and it was cool. I wiped my eyes and smiled. “Come sit with us,” the woman said, “if you want to.” So I did.

I don’t always like hippies, but these cats seemed cool. First of all, they obviously weren’t the type of hippies that are strangely hung up on regressive gender roles. Secondly, they were authentic weirdos. The woman, S., had on a very Janis Joplin-esque dress and long vest, yards of beads, tall boots, a knit cap from which her dark hair spilled out. One of the guys, D., the one who’d called me brother, was wearing a black hat and a black leather jacket with fringe hanging from the sleeves, and had an old camera around his neck. The other guy, F., had a scruffy reddish beard and a long thin braid running down his back and was wearing a sailor’s cap. The way they interacted with each other, the way they touched one another, I got the feeling they were some kind of polycule, though I couldn’t figure out in what permutation and anyway, it was none of my business.

We all just started talking, in that way where you can be more open with people whom you’ve only just met and will most likely never see again than you can be with even your closest friends. (Well, mostly S. and D. and I talked; F. was more of a listener.) I told them a bit about why I’d been crying, S. told me about a friend of theirs who’d recently died. We talked loss and grief. D. asked if he could take my picture; said he always took pictures of the people he met on his travels. I said yes, of course, and smiled sadly; sadly smiling in the railroad station barlight, I don’t know if there could be a more perfect situation for a portrait of me. I noticed that his camera was a Miranda Sensomat, just like the one I used to have during my wannabe-photographer days. We talked photography for a bit. They asked if I wanted to go outside and get high with them; I said I’d go but declined the weed, as I knew it would just make me anxious at that point. So we all gathered up our luggage and hauled it outside, sat by the river in the deepening dusk. They got stoned & I smoked a cigarette. I talked about how sad I was to be leaving Chicago, S. said: “I know what you mean, it’s one of my favorite cities, too.” S. asked where I was headed, I said: “Oh, just Wisconsin.” They were about to board the City of New Orleans. I started humming the Arlo Guthrie song, because I’m incapable of not thinking of that song when I think of that train. F. got his guitar out of its case and started playing along, and S. sang, her voice deep and warm: Riding on the City of New Orleans, Illinois Central, Monday morning rail. D. and I joined in, soon all of us were singing: Good mornin’ America, how are ya? Don’t ya know me? I’m your native son. When that song ended, S. went into another: Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin’ for a train… And I joined in, because how could I not? Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.

After our jamboree, we parted ways. I went to rustle up some grub, ended up with the driest, blandest sandwich ever. Sat in the food court, listened to everyone around me chattering, bits of conversations overlapping and interrupted by the pre-recorded voiceover. “Now boarding, Track 7, Now boarding, Track 8.” Now I’m waitin for the train to take me home / I’m tired and it’s gettin pretty late / I’m sittin here on a wooden bench / They’re boardin track seven, track eight. I went outside for one last cigarette, one last look at the river, all the lights coming on in the buildings along the river, lights shining on the river. Chicago, city of light. A homeless man walked over to me, asked if I could spare a smoke. I had one left in the pack, aside from the one I was smoking, and I gave it to him, lit it for him. “That’ll do,” he nodded, smiled. “That’ll do.” He sat down near me and started telling me a bit about his life, how he was once a blues musician—making the second time in my life when I befriended a homeless Chicagoan who was once a blues musician—and I’m a friend to the friendless, not that I chose it. If I had, well then, who knows? Then back inside for one more quick beer before I had to board the train; Goose Island’s 312, this time.

* * *

On the trip back, I was exhausted but unable to sleep (you know I could never fall asleep on a train). Lou Reed on my headphones, “Vanishing Act.” How I used to wish I could vanish into smoke beneath the El tracks. How I’ve spent so much of my life leaving (people, places, scenes), vanishing, & then trying to go back & getting sad when everything and everyone has moved on without me. It might be nice to disappear / To have a vanishing act / To always be looking forward / Never look over your back, but I kept looking back, and I should’ve been more careful what I wished for. I looked out the window, watched the lights of the city fade to suburbs, stretches of nightblack broken occasionally by the lights of houses & used car lots. I thought of the fall of ’00, when I was often on the train (though it was Metra, then, not Amtrak) late at night, headed from Evanston back to Kenosha, to visit D. I had a brief pang of nostalgia for those nights, for getting into the Kenosha station ‘round midnight, hopping into one of the few cabs, riding out to Parkside. Watching art house films in D.’s bed, getting drunk on White Russians, going outside to smoke and befriending all the other drunk dorm-dwellers. That was before I knew what a shitty boyfriend D. would turn out to be, when I still thought he was the love of my life. I don’t miss him, but—sometimes you miss the memories, not the person.

Zine-famous rocker with a breaking heart, me; I wrote poems in my head, thought about the whirlwind twelve hours I’d just had. The meetings & partings, sorrow and joy. In some ways, the day was healing, allowed me to make new memories, grow new flesh over the sites of gaping wounds. But other wounds had just been opened up all over again. Despite it all, it had been good just to be in my heart-city. Of course Nelson Algren says Chicago never can love you, but I think she does love me, even after all these years. I thought of Brendan Kennelly’s poem “Clearing a Space,” which is about Dublin, but which I have always associated with Chicago. To having been used so much, and without mercy, / And still to be capable of rediscovering / In itself the old nakedness / Is what makes a friend of the city…

I had a brief longing, another one that always arises when I’m on a train, for the train to stop in the middle of nowhere, so I could get off and just…well, vanish. Keep going until I couldn’t anymore, disappear into the fields beyond the fields. But the train pulled into the Sturtevant station just a little after 9 p.m., as scheduled. And though the Chicago wind didn’t steal my hat, I lost it anyway—I left it on the train. A small sacrifice to the gods of Chicago and Amtrak; the gods of old friends and old flames.

* * *

For a few days after, I was a little bit sore & a little bit sick. Sore because I’d walked over four miles that day in Chicago, a four-mile walk down memory lane. But heartsore, too. I didn’t mind it so much. As I once wrote: All the best things in life leave you sore, sweaty, or hungover. Sick because I’d been going going going for weeks, never resting, & whenever I push myself like that, my body requires a rest afterward. And I was sad, too. That day in Chicago just threw into even sharper relief what my life lacks. It had been so long that certain people, and Chicago herself, were distant aches, but seeing them again brought the ache back with a vengeance. But mostly it wasn’t even about specific people or a location. It was because I realized how much happier I am when I get to write, when I get to talk to people, when I get to wander and explore…and I don’t get to do much of any of that. As my witch-wife once wrote: To tell the truth, I’m lonely for adventure. It hasn’t been away very long, but I get restless fast. And yes, I’m better at finding the beauty & inspiration in the day-to-day than I used to be, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still need slightly grander adventures from time to time. And the trip reminded me of that. Another ache, brought back with a vengeance.

There were bright spots. Teaching the kids about Indigenous People’s Day. Bringing the jasmine & basil & rosemary inside before the weather got too cold. Beginning to decorate for Halloween, making Halloween cookies. Cooking hearty, comforting meals. Taking the kids to the zoo for Jack o’ Lantern Nights. Texting Beagan, saying I finally had stories for her, and it turned out she has stories for me too, and I said: “I guess we’re not so old and boring, after all,” and she said: “Yeah. We’re still hot and interesting and have stories!” Making plans for art & writing & music; making art, writing. More ghost-boys crawling out of the walls. Listening to the neighborhood crows during the day, the owls & coyotes & trains at night. Listening to jazz, rereading Lynda Hull as I always do when I’m full of longing & thinking of the past. Thinking about how often I have been scolded for romanticizing certain things in my writing, but how Lynda Hull did it, too. I have said that it has been a survival tactic for me, and I think it was for Lynda—Mark Doty has said that the way she wrote about her past was her way of making history bearable.

There was more sadness—thinking of Jack, and missing him, and wishing I could be at the last-ever Hallowmas this year. Thinking of the old friends that are out of my life, how they could be dead and I’d never know. And there was more stress—problems with the kiddos, money worries, no time to do anything I wanted or needed to do. Lack of sleep, lack of sex (P. and I hadn’t had sex since that week before the garage sale). And the sadness that had at first seemed manageable spiraled into a deeper depression, and I had a bit of a nervous breakdown.

But y’know, I posted about it all on Facebook, and my friends stepped up and made it better. Whether by commiserating in the comments, or offering further help. A. ordered a bunch of copies of Wisconsin Death Trip to sell in their shop. I got asked to curate the January edition of BONK! Performance Hour—and it’s a paying gig. I decided that since I can’t make it to Hallowmas, I’d at least record something for the Songs Jack Taught Us project, and M. sent me the complete W/IFS songbook, and the very next day I saw a car with a New Jersey license plate, which seemed a good omen. And there was the queer zines edition of Zine Club, and I finally got another copyediting job, and we put up our outdoor Halloween decorations, and P. and I finally had sex again, and it really seemed like things were looking up.

And then we all got the stomach flu, and though the kiddos and P. recovered in about 24 hours, it took me four days to fully recover. But I’m feeling better now. I’m embracing the lead-up to Halloween, dressing goth and being witchy, writing silly songs about skeleton boyfriends and silly stories about haunted sinuses, working on my Peter Lorre prose poems again. D.’s new therapist seems great, and he has his second appointment with her on Tuesday. Two days ago, I took a long walk with C., crunched through the autumn leaves, with the trees aflame overhead. Yesterday afternoon, P. and I recorded a song for Songs Jack Taught Us; because of being sick, we didn’t have time to work out an Inferno song, so we did a cover of “Hobo’s Lullaby,” a song I know Jack loved. Now we approach Mischief Night, Halloween, All Hallows Day. The most wonderful time of the year.

Things can be hard, and I definitely need to make some big changes in my life if I want to make it at all sustainable, but I now feel hopeful that I can. None of us get through this life unscathed, and really, I wouldn’t want to. I would rather be ashes than dust.

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