So its almost Christmas, which means its super close to New Years, and that means Ive been in Chicago for a year now. It seems crazy, because I honestly didn't think i would make it this long. A year ago this week I was going through all my shit, packing the essentials, and saying goodbye to everyone. I was also freaking out. A lot. I guess that was a good thing though, I was about to get on a bus to travel 1,000 miles, to go to a city I had never been too and have no job and no place to live. You already know about that though.

But I still wonder what I have really accomplished though. What did I actually do in the last year?

Lets be really cliche here, and make a randomly ordered top ten list. Isn't that what your supposed to do at the end of the year?

1. Drank a lot. To the point where I often didn't remember major parts of the night and how I ended up certain places (Todd's couch? huh? Todd doesn't remember either). There were also lots of days where I was too hung over to function before 9 pm the next day.

2. Did lots of drugs. Lets list them... Weed, Coke, muscle relaxers, Xanax, percocet, DXM. If theres anything else I dont remember (see item 1).

3. Had a bunch of one night stands, and a couple repeat fuck buddies. I dont think I want to admit to the number, we'll just say its more than 8. Some how I'm still friends with most of them.
3a. Been in conversations with 2 or more people at the same time that I had previously fucked with out it being awkward. It was a little wierd, but somehow not awkward.

4. Got in 2 somewhat major accidents on my bike. The first time I was drunk, hit a curb, flipped over the handle bars, and landed face-first on the sidewalk. My front tooth is still broken. The second time I hit a truck going through an intersection and spent about 4 hours in the ER. I went to a party that night and drank lots of beer and did a bunch of coke.

5. Lived in 2 different apartments, with different people in each one. I won't write about that though, cause I already have.

6. Had 3 different jobs. So maybe it looks bad on a resume, but I was moving up to a better position and making more money each time. I lied a little to get the current one. Actually maybe lied is the wrong word. I exagerrated about my past work experience and was offered and accepted a position I wasnt really qualified for. luckily I work with people who didn't really care and are willing to help me out and teach me stuff. Thats how you get a job as a cook without culinary school.

7. Went to lots of shows in basements and met tons of awesome people. I guess I went to being a wanna-be punk to a real punk. I totally have an in at all the shows, know people in lots of bands, and apparently im cool enough for people to share there beer and drugs with me. Maybe its time to learn how to play guitar for real, instead of just a couple chords, and be IN a band... maybe.

8. Spent 90-100 hours on Greyhound busses. Its over 30 hours to get from VT to Chicago. I did it 3 times this year. The first time moving here, then going back to VT and back to visit family in August. I learned that Xanax is the key to sanity on trips like that. I had some in August and completely zoned out most of the time.

9. Got mugged. That totally sucked. It was February, and I was walking home from a bar. I could see my apartment building when this guy comes down the sidewalk walking toward me. All of a sudden he has me against a fence and is reaching into my pockets and managed to take off with my wallet and cell phone. I sat in the snow and cried for a minute.

10. Went to Gary Indiana to buy weed and got harrased by a gang. I was with a couple other people, and we had gone to a gas station with a couple kids who lived in Gary. These guys come up to the car while were waiting for the girl, and are peeking in asking who we are before telling us to get the fuck out cause shit was about to go down. We got the fuck out. I never went back.

So maybe some people would look at that list an call me a fuck up, and say that I'm wasting my life. I don't think so though. I'll admit to having a couple regrets, but nothing I think too hard about or get depressed about (except for when I'm lying in bed at 6pm still feeling like shit between vomiting from the night before).

I didn't try to kill myself this year. I can't say that about the past couple. I guess that means things are getting better.

Huevos Rancheros y Horchata Por Favor

I shouldnt be allowed to drink whisky anymore. It leads to bad ideas and forgetting big parts of the night. Or maybe it was the three long island Ice tea's that lead to the forgetting things, or maybe the weed I smoked.... but anyway, the point is, I dont remember HUGE chunks of last Friday night. Here's what I think happened though..

The first part is pretty clear, actually I remember it perfectly. I got out of work at 10:30, and found Alex sitting on a bench in the mall outside the store. At first I thought he was waiting for me to walk to the bus, cause we take the same one home and the closest stop is about 6 blocks away. It turned out he was waiting for a couple other people to finish closing to get a ride to Skylark. I asked If I might be able to get a ride too, cause my plans involved being a loser and going home to do nothing, and he thought there would be. So we squeeze into Sarah's car with Edith and another kid whos name I dont remember, and go to the bar.

It was fucking packed in there. I got a beer, the worst PBR ever (I know what your thinking, PBR always sucks so why am i complaining about it, but it was seriously way worse than normal, and I kinda like PBR when its good). We found Joe who was already drunk, his roommate bought me another beer, then Edith comes by with her Long Island. She told me they were only $5 and super strong, so Im like, fuck that beer before liquour bullshit, Im drinking Long Islands the rest of the night. And I had three of them. Eventually Todd showed up from who the fuck knows where, and the bar closed, and I left with Joe and his roommate, I dont remember his name so we'll call him Bob. Joe and Bob live a couple blocks from me so I asked them to make sure I was with them when they left so I could walk home with them. I we start walking down Cermak, when Todd catches up asking if were going to the party. Bob goes home, but Joe and I are like Sure, why not?

So we find this girl Courtney's place and go to her party. As soon as I got into the Kitchen some other co-worker hands me a bottle of whisky and I take a shot. This is where things start getting jumpy. I think I took two more, and so did Todd. Then we go to the back where people are sitting around a dining room table smoking weed. I took a couple hits and said "hi" to the adorable Dominique.

And then Im outside, standing on the sidewalk with Joe and Todd. And Courtney is standing on the steps in the doorway asking Joe why he punched some kid.
"Your bigger than him Joe, What the fuck? He's just a kid, your a grown man, why'd you have to hit him like that?"
I found out later that it was all because Joe wanted a beer from the kid.

Jump to some Mexican restraunt in Pilsen, where Im sitting across from Todd, Ordering Huevos Rancheros and a Horchata. I briefly remembering eating them, and Todd telling me that he went to Culinary School at Kendall College.

I dont remember leaving, or walking anywhere, but Im at Todds apartment. He's showing me his broken bike frame, and two bikes, and we smoke another bowl while I pet his cats before I go to sleep on his couch and pass out.

I wake up around 1pm the next day, and decide to just go home cause I feel all awkward because I dont remember how I ended up there. He gets up, helps me find my hoodie (in the opposite corner from the rest of my stuff?) and asked me if I know where I am.
"Ummm, no." I say, slightly embarrased.

I was at 18th and Ashland, and walked home in the snow trying to fill in the blank parts from the night, and deciding that Whisky and weed probably dont go well together.

Time Stops Existing

I think a lot of people would hate living in my apartment. It's in the middle of a basement, walled off with a little "Kitchen" in the corner, a bathroom, and an akwardly shaped area for my bed and clothes and shit. I guess it's kinda odd that the refridgerator is at the foot of my hard as fuck futon. So maybe some people would have a problem with the low ceiling, exposed beams, and the giant radiator pipe (aka, "Heater") you have to duck under.



I love it down there. Theres no windows, no outside sun and weather telling day or night, no differentiation from noon and midnight. It's like there is no time, like it just stops existing, and sometimes I feel like I also stop existing. Sometimes not existing is the best feeling in the world, like when Ive just gotten home home work where Ive spent the day dealing with a bunch of pain in the ass bitches, i mean customers, then taken a crowded bus to a crowded train. Sitting on my bed with music playing, where there's no tv or radio or internet, No billboards and newspapers, noone looking at me, staring or judging or slamming through me to get off the bus. There's just the music I chose to play. When im bored and a little depressed however, all that detachment will just drive me down.

This is getting a little intense, Changing the subject.

It was just thanksgiving, my first holiday alone out here. I didn't really care though, thanksgiving kinda stopped meaning anything in my family a few years ago. Last year I stayed up in Vermont when my mom and brother went down to my aunts in CT, because it felt like it would mean a little more to spend the day with my friends. I went to my dad and Catherines for a little while, talked and had some wine. Its always a little weird for me to go there. It was kinda always my dads house, cause he grew up in it, but I always thought of it as more of my grandma's. She had lived there alone for 15 years, and it was always where we had Thanksgiving and Christmas when it still mattered in my family.

Joey and Robs was where it mattered. Where Paul, and Nate and Blake and I all contributed to dinner, and we smoked a ton of the best weed in the state, and drank several bottles of wine. Bana came after his forced-family dinner, and we spent the last night together playing video games and talking. Blake left a couple weeks later, moving to Oregon, Paul was leaving for Louisville just after Christmas. I got on the bus for Chicago 2 days after Paul, and then Nate a few days after me. My new family was splitting up and spreading across the country. Thanksgiving with my friends was a big deal.

This year I went to Nate and Aaron's. We ate leftover Aaron's mom had sent him home with, smoked some weed, drank beer, and just hung out, remembering how different last year was.

23rd and Spaulding

23rd and Spaulding had a pretty good rotation of inhabitants while we lived there. Of course it started out with me and Nate. Chicago began with me and Nate, he arrived on another bus days after I did, being thrown into the city exhausted with his life on his back. We found our first place together, after an unbelievable 48 hour apartment search.

It was January and we didn't have heat or hot water for about 2 weeks. Beds? Air mattresses from KMart. Food? peanut butter and ramen noodles. It was kinda miserable, but we made it home. I found a job first, at a fucking jimmy Johns. Nate soon found one at Dunkin' Donuts.

After a long cold winter, Chris joined the family. Somehow he became our problem after his old roommates kicked him out, and we quickly figured out why. He had no job, no motivation to find a job, and a long list of fuck buddy's who for some unknown reason would pay his way everywhere, so he ate better than us.

Joe moved in soon after Chris. He was Nate's daddy bear boyfriend, who quickly became everyones "Dad". And he hated Chris, because Chris was using us all. He finally gave the kid a much needed ultimatum. Get a job and show us proof (in the form of a pay check and some cash in MY hand) or leave. He lied, made up a bullshit job, screwed me over cause I was counting on $100 from him toward rent, and got the boot.

Nate's other boyfriend, Arron came in Chris's place, and Joe broke it off and moved back to the burbs. There was so much drama last summer. I stopped trying to keep it all straight (not that there was ANYthing straight about that place) because the lines between who was fucking who had basically become a giant knot. Throw in the hookups I would bring home, and the amount of fucking (and drinking, and snorting, and smoking...) that went on in that apartment was mind boggling.

A lot of growing up went on in that place too, especially on my part. I was 22 and moving out of my moms house. There was always food, I didn't pay rent, I didn't have any responsibilities. I suddenly found myself sleeping on an air mattress, in an apartment with no furniture, trying to figure out how I was going to eat for the next 5 days till a paycheck with the $8 and change in my worn out pocket.

Joe asked me once why I did it, why I moved to Chicago with nothing and put myself in this situation. "Because I had to get out of there." I told him.

Because I was fighting with my mom everyday, and getting kicked out of her house every other week. She would tell me I needed to get my shit together or find another place to live, So I would take off for a few days. I'd throw some clothes in my bag, and take off in my car. Usually I would smoke some weed, hang at a friends house for a while and find a couch (or floor) to crash on, or sleep in my car. After a couple of days I would go back home, usually for clothes or because I knew my mom was working and it was safe to hang low for a few hours. Most of the time I would go home in the middle of the night and go back to my bed eventually, and in the morning mom would be all apologetic and tell me I could stay. I knew it would only happen so many times though, and eventually I would be kicked out for real.

And I had no responsibility or motivation. I was a 22 year old college drop out, living rent free at my moms, and working at a grocery store. I was going to punk shows, and smoking weed on rooftops, popping pills to go to the club and getting wasted every night. It was the fucking good life, and I had to get out while I could. Because the weed and the muscle relaxers, and the percs and vicodin was coming way too easily, and I was feeling too little, and I was forgetting how to be sober.

Maybe I was running away, maybe I was saving myself, I dont really know. I got out though, and It's something different now, but I haven't figured out yet if its any better. Theres still shows, and walking down the street drinking Jack from the bottle with a joint in the other hand, and theres blow, and E. But im on my own now. If I fuck it up its all on me, cause there's no one else to save me here.

Is this for real?/

Ever had one of those days where you think about your life, and all the expectations you had and wonder, "Did I ever imagine that this would be my life?". I think that everyday.

Flash back to a year ago: Im living in Vermont, with my mom with all these big plans to move to Chicago. I didn't really know what that meant though. I was going to move, and live there. I would find an apartment and a job and everything would just happen. I didn't want to make plans. I figured plans can go wrong, and then your really fucked.

Jump ahead to January 3, 2007. Im at the Greyhound station in Chicago, completely weighed down with bags (my life) with an address in my hand. The hostel downtown where I had a bed booked for the first 4 nights. Suddenly I was home, and didn't have a place to sleep after those days, and life was suddenly way to real.

OK, back to now. Its November 13th, 2007 and I'm sitting in the corner of my art studio. Its my second living space in Chicago, and the closest to living alone I've ever been. The studio upstairs I share with a painter and an actor. I have my computer where I do graphic design work, and sometimes other random art projects. The basement is mine. I have a walled off area with a private bathroom and kitchenette that has become home. Sometimes I don't believe that I actually live here. Its the kind of space I'd always wanted, but never thought would happen.

My life isn't perfect, but im making it. I still have to work full time to pay the bills, and I have a lot of debt to pay off, but its ok. Somehow everything works out, even when I have to eat for a week on $10. I guess thats my life now. Working a shitty job, hanging out in the studio, eating what I can afford instead of what I want, and Partying. Partying past the last band, till the weed and PBR runs out, and then passing out till it's time to do it all again.