First Week in Marquette Park

In the city of Chicago, it is extremely difficult to tell the difference between an insane homeless man, limping to a subway station in order to get his 8 hours, (with hourly interruptions to switch trains, and avoid being noticed at the end of the line) and a man, with a liberal concept of personal grooming, who sprained his ankle during his morning jog.  They both have generally the same attire, mannerisms, and smell.  They also have the same look in their eyes. They both look desperate, and exhausted. They both have a goal to achieve, but something insurmountable is standing in their way.

The look on both of their faces is nearly identical, but the very slight difference accounts for very different meanings. The limping jogger's face says, "Why does home have to be so far away, I'm beginning to feel like I'll never get there. I wish I could just lay down and rest my ankle for a minute. In fact, I wish I could just forgo the indignity of hobbling around in the rain altogether, and just fall asleep right here, and forget it all." The homeless man's face says that he will probably be sleeping in that very spot, and is not contemplating the matter with the same enthusiasm as the jogger. 

The same is true for those who are highly enthusiastic about music, but are woefully incapable of expressing it without seeming like they are shouting at invisible snakes crawling up their legs. I saw one such man beneath the rails at the Fullerton red line stop. He was sitting at a circular cement disk which served both as a bench, and as a pedestal for a sculpture. The sculpture resembles a spaceship from a science fiction TV series. Not the protagonist's ship, but perhaps that of a species with whom the protagonist has a "Stay The Fuck Away From Me" treaty. It resembles a flattish egg with creases, and sits atop three pillars. I hate it. The sight of it makes me feel like the world is turning upside down. It's something about the pillars. It doesn't look like they should hold the egg up. But then again, there's no gravity in space. 

The man sitting near the sculpture was bopping his head up and down in an alarming manner. The rest of his body was at its mercy. He was also reciting some kind of lyrical work, but it was too aggressive to be rap. The words were very staccato, and resembled the barks of a German Shepard. And the tone suggested the preface to a Hollywood gang rumble.  It was as though he were rehearsing a scene in which he carried on a heated argument in a hip-hop themed musical. I may never know if the jogger or the bopper were anything other than perfectly normal, but I have a pretty good idea about the teenagers in the McDonalds two doors down from my apartment.; they were drunk as fuck. 

For the entire fifteen minutes I spent in that McDonalds, an athletic, well dressed Asian teen with spiky hair was clearly applying all his powers of mind, and all his ability to command the attention of another individual, but still only managed to repeat the first half of a sentence about fifteen times. "But you know that Kaylie—hey—hey guys—hey guys—you know that Kaylie—hey guys…" After a while, I began to consider whether or not there was any possibility at all I knew the Kaylie in question, simply because I was desperate to give the poor kid a chance to have his moment, and was going to find it difficult to order over that noise, combined with the stunted ear piercing laughter of the individual behind me. 

His laughter was so loud, and so obviously fake, it was clear he was performing for someone. Under my breath I mutter, "I'll have what he's having." The two middle eastern men in front of me turn around and agree. "I know right?" One of them, much more talkative than the other, goes on to say "Tourists, these guys." He points in the direction of the laughter, though, from our vantage point, we can't see the individual from whom the audible bilge is emitting. This makes the sheer volume of it all the more remarkable. "Tourists." He smiles, I agree, and feel much better about hating someone I don't know. 

I live on my own now, and this has had unexpected effects on my behavior. For instance, I now only get dressed if I know for certain I'm going to see another human being. It started as simply not wanting my hair to make my shirts wet after showers, and decayed fairly quickly into "Fuck it. I'll just put a towel on the floor and play video games until I dry off." Another thing is that, lately, I've devoted a lot of time to the study of foreign languages. I didn't realize until writing this just how ironic that is; I have absolutely no one to talk to. I'm lucky to catch someone on the phone long enough to be told "I'm sorry, I have a lot to get done, maybe later", so it goes without saying that I've yet to find someone with whom to practice the Japanese dialect of Akihabara.  

Nearly eight hours after leaving the McDonalds, I still haven't slept. I decide that it might be a good idea to go grocery shopping, and part of me knows that I will probably come home with cookies and carbonated water. I had the willpower to quit many things. I got over my Prozac addiction, cut down my caffeine to one drink a week, and canceled my membership on Wikipedia. But Oreos and carbonated water will probably be with me to my dying day. 

When I walk up to the door, feelings of irrational paranoia start to take over. It's been a long time since I've seen the world at 8 a.m., and because I'm severely sleep deprived, my inner monologue gets replaced with the voice of David Sedaris, and I begin to feel antagonized by everything I can see. It takes me about a minute to realize how to open the front door of the building. I would push it weakly, and it would push back. I did this about three times, and then my mind drifted to the Animated Film Watership Down. I think, "Why does anyone watch that fucking movie? It's depressing as shit. I know why I haven't seen it; because the plot synopsis on Wikipedia (I'd caved that night and spellchecked the article) made me want to fucking kill myself." I realize that I'm still pushing the door back and forth like the bellows of a pipe organ, and remember that if I push slightly harder, it will, in fact, open. 

The next door goes faster, but is just as terrifying. "I wonder if this one is going to explode. It's probably a bomb. Everything's a fucking bomb." My hair is frizzy as I stagger to the Dominick's beyond the 'L' station. I wear my normal clothes, but the zombie-like expression on my face and the fact that I'm muttering this essay to myself out loud seem to put my appearance in a different context. People I pass look at my socks and my sandals, and then look back up at me as if beneath my feet are two giant hairy tarantulas who carry me around like living roller-skates. There's an expectation that looking straight into my eyes will yield some kind of explanation. Perhaps they're expecting that right as they look at me, I'll laugh sheepishly and explain "Oh, yeah, I was at a costume party dressed as a German beach-goer." But this is simply how I've dressed for the last four years. I've never apologized for it, and I'm not going to start now. Just like the individual with the limp made no efforts to conceal his pain, and the person near the sculpture had no reservations about enjoying his song, or whatever it was, to the absolute fullest.  I come to realize that at this moment, mumbling, gazing to and fro crazily, my stigmatizing fashion accessories occasionally causing me to trip, nearly dropping my peanut butter cream Oreos and 12 pack of carbonated water, that I'm the jogger. I'm the bopper. And I'm definitely, looking for home.