New Years

The year was forty five minutes old, making every action a first. Another first kiss, first dance, first shot of burning cinnamon schnapps from a friend of a friend, the first memory of regret once the sting settled in my stomach but the burning lingered in my throat. Soon though, life was moving in fast forward again, a new day already full of memories and moments in just a handful of minutes.

Charlie and I escaped the party out the back door. We hadn’t been alone together in over a week, the holiday season consuming all spare time for family and any obligations besides ourselves. Climbing down the back porch, I was blinded, the sudden gust of cold felt in my bones. My legs were almost bare to the elements, hidden only by thin tights. The ground was covered in snow and ice, fresh coats from unsteady storms that kept spinning in circles, showering us deeper and deeper with each blizzard. A realization came over me that we were standing on the platform of California Avenue, the yellow street lights mixing with the red heat lamps to create a soft orange haze. The bars were still full while we huddled closer to one another, savoring the hum of the heater.

I don’t recall any meaningful conversations, there had to have been. Looking back though, anything that seemed significant at the time loses meaning once you’re sober, becoming just another alcohol laced exchange, a jumbled mess of philosophical tangents with no closure.

Making plans was our go to topic as of late, trying to keep things as light as possible out of fearful optimism. Most likely we were talking about the neighborhood. A few nights ago while we were eating dinner I explained how my transient lifestyle had been taking its toll on me. I wanted roots, familiarity, the sense of community that only comes from connections that go deeper then just a name on a lease.
Drunk paired with my excitement, my sense of whimsy began to take over, I declared undying devotion to California Avenue. Or Kedzie, maybe both. Or for the tan apartment buildings that dotted the streets of Logan Square, inexpensive housing designed specifically for students, artists, working class; exemplifying the nature of Chicago, different worlds contained on a single block.

The train eventually slowed at our station, allowing the passengers to file in for their bi-annual free ride, only available on New Years and the Fourth of July. We hid behind the door partition, drunks to our backs and the cold seemed worlds away once we slid into the subway portion of the tracks.

Sitting close, hands resting on each others’ knees, our merlot stained lips moving faster then our drunken ears could chase. So many follow up questions, a ballet of fumbling words and misunderstood repetitions. Circular logic on a ride to the loop.
The train came to a screeching halt at our transfer, we slowly climbed the layers between platforms. The normally busy stop felt silly in the early hours. The bustling hallways were empty, the gigantic advertisements seemed ridiculous with only two people, drunk and suddenly mystified how an escalator works. We kept going though, aware that eventually the trains will stop running, the celebrations had to end sometime.

The majority of the city was either still at home or never even left, drinking the annual champagne at home with friends and family huddled close for their own set of firsts. We waited, peering around the corner to look for the airplane pictograph that signified our ticket home. Two trains passed, sexual tension and winter taking a toll on our patience, released only by complaining about the Orange Line until our plane was in sight.

We ducked in the conductor portion of the last car, two seats secluded away from main compartment even if we really didn’t need it them. We were alone. We felt away from it all. The cold that flushed our cheeks or the voices of other passengers, just feet away in a separate car ceased to exist. The only sounds were the clacking tracks and ourselves. The flirtations turned serious once we were alone. The innocence of a night out quickly turned pornographic. Our breaths shallow and coarse, my right leg straddling its way around his back while my left was trying to keep myself balanced on the plastic seat. Words came between the kissing, the feeling, the searching of each other. Something unmentionable but also unmistakable.

I stopped. Sitting up, my eyes an inch above his.

“I want you. Right now. Here. Now.”

Simple statements, uncomplicated and honest with their intentions. The loop flew past at thirty miles per hour. The buildings were familiar but blurred; focus was too much to ask for in the state that I was in. Charlie moved fast too, rifling, unwrapping, only to rewrap. All in correlation with the glass panes flying past, closer then they ever seemed. If the window were open I could reach out and trace along the fastly fading architecture.

A state of panic overtook me. This moment was perfect, so it couldn’t possibly be happening to me. Not the girl who spent the majority of high school hidden behind books, eager to have a conversation with Nick Adams but never with a real person, let alone specifically a real boy. Yet there I was, the same person except not. Completely different. Nonsensically in love with another person and in total lust for the moment. Absurd almost, how much a few months or a couple of drinks can do to a person.

The thoughts kept racing but I took action. I ripped my tights, hiked up my skirt until our hips were touching, friction filled the nook. We tried to match the only rhythms of the sleeping city that were available to us, the quick catching of wheel on rail that propelled us forward until the train just stopped.

With an abrupt flash of our heads from side to side, we knew we were halfway from Adams and Wabash until Roosevelt, the Polynesian restaurant advertisement I knew from so many rides on that train was the only clue.

However a dormant train didn’t stop us. Our own rhythm exceeded the clacks, the unconscious metropolis that contained us kept dreaming while we, stuck between stations, reveled in ecstasy, fueled with liquor. Millions of people were unaware of the simple beauties of that night. I placed my hand against the Plexiglas, littered with etchings from adolescent dares, felt their marks, understood why the overlooked handles were so important. Those names were not just names, drawn with an old key on the side of a train, barely decipherable from a set of lines yet somehow full of pride. Our breaths were short and deep. We disregarded the heat and we sighed on. The city only slept so long before the echo of a sunrise ran through the raw buildings pitted against the wintry lake, rousing the young and old who would see these same windows, read the same names, watch the same disappearing windows as they go around and around. The fleeting throes of passion were irresistible, causing us to act like teenagers on that winter night, a first to end all firsts. If I hadn’t noticed the weather worn faces standing on the Roosevelt platform, well, who knows?

Lake Michigan Pt. 1

Somewhere in the overflowing bins of photographs, there is one image of myself, at age seven, standing in front of a portal to another world. The entrance is dim but filled with creatures who allowed me to escape my own reality for a few hours. Somehow my eternally fleeting attention was captured by them, I stood at that portal for the entire length of a school field trip. While my classmates dashed like refracted light around the aquarium, bouncing from each glass casing to the next, I stood in the same spot, watching these magical orbs glow.
Thy would float in all directions, the only motion that could be detected was a silent swoosh of their gooey exterior. Their rings would shift colors, blending with the blue background of the container until there was a fluorescent explosion of any and all imaginable colors. I still have no idea why it was these animals that made me want to take notice of their every movement or breath, well they couldn’t breath really. They had no mouths. Or heads, for that matter. Just fragile orbs with no resemblance to me, but there I stood, impatiently fiddling with my instant camera, reading their description over and over again.

Aurelia aurita (Moon Jelly)
Thailand
NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED

My inner voice of reason tried to convince me that I wouldn’t have any photographic evidence of this new world, it probably wouldn’t even come out with the only light source being their outer membranes, only a dull glow. But another voice kept piping up, this voice just wouldn’t let it go. It kept harping on me to just do it, no one was even paying attention to these guys except me. They deserved to be immortalized through film, their phosphorous qualities would live on through the magic of my three dollar camera.
This battle went on for some time. My two selves were both determined to get their way so much so that I didn’t even notice the woman standing next to me until she tapped me on the shoulder.
“Would you like a picture with the Moon Jellies?”
“Yes, but – the sign. It said, no pictures.”
I could barely form words, which happened often to me as a child. I’d flush, my face turning as red as the lobsters in the previous display and hide, mumbling a requisite answer to whoever was talking to me until they went away, leaving me to wait for the blood to stop filling my cheeks and allow my body to function normally once more. She was pretty though, I remember that. Her chestnut hair seemed to reflect the marine world where we stood in perfect harmony, even more so then her aquamarine polo did. Then I saw the name tag.
“Oh, you work here.”
“Yes, I do.” She laughed, almost too loud, the jellies floated to the right side of the portal. She was watching me, I could tell. Even though I was staring so intensely at my own two hands, I knew that she was waiting for me to do something. Yet all I could do was stare at my hands, trying to hide the camera, trying to hide away my thoughts of disobeying the rules.
“I love these guys too. I actually got to go get them from their original home, in Thailand.”
“NO WAY!”
I realized that I was shrieking, like a little girl, which no doubt about it I was but I never behaved that way. I was what most adults would call a “creepy” child, keeping to myself more often then not, busy with my own plans and ideas that engrossed my attention for hours upon hours.
“Yep. It was pretty neat, lots of unique sea life that lives near there, much different then this Lake.”
She pointed out the window at Lake Michigan, a navy pool with patches of earth green underneath the cold water.
“Here, let me take your picture.”
She placed her hand on mine, slipping the camera from my grip into her own. I tried to stammer out a reply but instead just turned to face her, all teeth, and a little gum while standing on my tip toes.

Mom

Another Saturday in the world of a seven year old, finally free from all the stress the second grade classroom. I would grab the overstuffed green chair in our living room with s’mores pop-tarts, fresh from the toaster, and watch my Saturday morning line-up. It started off with Doug leading to Darkwing Duck and ending with Captain Planet. Feeling inspired by the environmental message of the Planeteers, I decided to wander outside to ride my bike. I grabbed my hand me down bike with the wobbly back wheel and began my adventure up and down the 64th block of Western Kildare Avenue.
My block doesn’t have many interesting features to it. It’s covered in bungalows with their eight by ten foot patches of grass for their front yard. There are a few trees scattered, one distinct elm at the south end and in the middle is a giant tree with tiny leaves that would follow me whenever I would ride past. One interesting feature of my block is the direction that it faces. There is Lee School, a public elementary school and then half of the block is just an empty field. For some reason the kids from the neighborhood would always seem to congregate there, even though there were four perfectly fine baseball fields at the park one block away. The game was always baseball but I could never join in since it wasn’t allowed for me to cross the street. So I would just sit and watch from my porch while my dog Barney would wander and sniff the grass in our front yard. But before I could hang out with the dog for the afternoon, I heard my name being called from across the street.
The most astonishing thing about it was who was calling my name. I screeched to a halt to see Mary Eileen Dalton (Marsie as her friends called her) to be waving at me. She was one of the prettiest, nicest, most popular girls in our whole second grade. It was a really big deal that she even knew my name. I would’ve given anything for her just to talk about me but here she was actually waving at me and talking to me. She told me to come join them to go sit and hang out. I didn’t even process what was going on because my feet took action for me. I think they were tired of spending their Saturdays doing nothing but riding up and down the block. I had barely crossed the street before I realized what I had done. I froze in horror at the screeching sound of my name from behind me.
“Maureen! Maureen Therese Foody!”
My Mom marched up to me, ignoring my silent pleading to have mercy on my social life. She snatched the handle of my bike and grasped my right shoulder. She dragged me back across the asphalt and back onto our bland eggshell covered sidewalk. She was lecturing me the whole time but I was elsewhere. I kept trying to glance back and see what was going on across the street. Were they watching me? Were they on the floor laughing at how pathetic I was? I couldn’t get a glimpse until we reached the top of the stairs at the platform of our stairs. They were all laughing. I would later learn that this was not because of my incident but at the very same time Kevin Schumacher split his pants, exposing his batman underoos for all to see. From then on his presence always greeted by a chorus of, “Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na, Batman!” But since I didn’t know this hilarity had occurred, I assumed everyone was laughing at me, forcing me to utter one single word.
“Damn.”
“MAUREEN!”