Went to a party last night – dragged myself out of bed where I was sleeping solitude and feeling overwhelmed after a long long week. The party was interesting, but something somehow is missing inside, the jazz pretty beat of meetings. Maybe, maybe not.

So, here how it went:

Shoes, a shelf that can hold 25 pairs but is overflowing with designers I’ll never recognize and me looking down at one of the four pairs of shoes I’ve got. It’s Ay’s birthday, she’s older than I am and coming from New York, so seems to know the city, the concept of, and the heels on her 30+ shoes are pounded down into the whites. She names them, speaks about her shoes like they mark different places she’s been and the memories of what happened there. They are her rocks, her pinned butterflies, her shells collected, stamps from other countries with dates marked across their backs like the moment of their breaking. I get to talk quite a bit with Ay that night. A father in the CIA and all the implications for loss of home within that truth and the look that follows our “ohhhhh, how interesting.” The look of, okay here we go again. She’s got a large mouth, Ay, many white teeth with a few miniature spaces in between. Her face is long, with medium-length brown hair and bluegreen eyes. She’s worried about teaching and she talks about her one-day wedding, saying it will be to the music “it’s about time,” or some reallife equivalent of. She seems aware enough of the game to be a little sad.

L and her girlfriend-to-be, Z, playing finger-foreplay and knee-touchy on the couch, the bed in the living room, near the window, outside smoking. Their frames turn slightly inward towards each other, a 50˚ protection against the “getting to know you, getting to know all about you” song their bodies are playing. Both are lipstick-l's although there’s a little rougher edge assumed in L’s wooing role. It’s almost too much watching such beginnings, their rapid mode of flirtation. Such love-riding seems such a far world away from what I’m capable of; my body desires different structures these days. Although both have their places.

I ran into a boy – B (who “likes gays – thinks that gays are great people”) – who has the dilemma of a girl sleeping up in his bed upstairs. She has a boyfriend but flew to Chicago to see B. B is confused; he perceives a dilemma. I listen to his story and then pass it on. It’s interesting to see “interviewing techniques.” Ay wants everything defined.

“Define dilemma.”
“Define relationship.”
“How old are you?”
“Define love.”

I am awestruck by her assumption that a boy B’s age would be able to approach such questions. The story that took him 3 minutes to tell me is stretched into a 25 minute interrogation via every other word progressed. B is obviously frustrated. He just wants someone to say, “Enjoy sex with her and see what comes. Don’t expect too much.” Ay doesn’t care; she’s enjoying making young lust suffer. C is more like me and wants to get to the point. “What exactly is the dilemma you’re talking about?” There is no dilemma, there is only confusion about what’s wanted.

Some sweet sweet people are there. M tells stories and laughs. She reminds me of a version of K if K had thrown herself out there to win. M manages to fit into every little space – to talk about shoes with Ay, to talk about fishing with me, to talk about art history with the second C. T smiles for the picture, mentions that this is a smile he’s never gotten down. He’s right because the smile looks like something taken out of a mystery grabbag. I forgive him instantly for telling me my leads have “no sense of place” (haha). We talk baseball a bit, and I get to talk about fishing some, because he’s a boy and that means he’s curious about all things fishing.

I talk a little about it and feel like I’m showing off. All I have left are the experiences within me, but I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about them. I think I’m supposed to just keep listening. “Oh, her,” I can just hear the others around me thinking. I’ve been feeling vulnerable recently… odd.

Thankfully, there are sweet folks there: Ad who talks about magical realism and Shoeless Joe, which I need to get, and P, who talks about an urban youth art program he’s volunteering for. Another fellow, metro or gay, who slides his hand lightly down my back as he passes, making me realize how much I love the casual touch of those who move around rooms.

But the evening runs out finally and I’m left to say goodbye. Everybody makes their way home, taking cabs, walking with arms around each other. Two’s sluff off into the night, heading into the urban ark, and I snag a telephone book—grateful on two accounts: 1) I finally have a phone book, and 2) I have something multifarious to wrap my arms around and take home… I feel like I’ve accomplished something, found my match in Chicago's names.

So, I walk across Belmont and wait for the bus.

I wait for a really long time, and then a 6’3” drunk black transvestite whore comes up and asks me why I’ve got a book on my lap.

“I don’t have one at home.”

“Sheet, girl, I know what you sayin.” She sits down. “I don know what you’re going to say about this, but I’m goin borrow that book on your lap.” And she does. The next hour is one of the most bizarre I’ve had in a long time, and it makes me feel alive and so very far afield to have an hour-long conversation with a black transvestite whore, her drug dealer, and a friend who holds a whining beagle on a leash. They pass a joint amongst themselves, and two other girls drift in, and then out, of the conversation; one making the flight to taxi whereas the other jaunts on down the street.

“That’s Agatha” the Trans tells me. “She a good girl. A little…” the Trans makes a crack-smoking motion here, “but she a good girl. Fell in love with this Mexican man,..”

Agatha, who was right there says, “He was an unusual Mexican in that he was actually tall.” Agatha wanders a few feet off and wrestles a little with the friend holding the beagle.

“…yeah, well, she fell hard. She be lovin that man bad and he leave her, and she be all actin like she the one doin the leavin, because sometimes that’s what we need to think, knowhatI’msayinwhitegirl?”

(I speckle the conversation with yeah’s, oh’s, that’s true, little uncomfortable and obsessive laughs…)

The other girl who taxied on out of there apparently was chased off because “I talked too much,” says the Trans, “I’m always doin that and if you talk too much, you scare people off. They just some things people don wanna hear, knowhatI’msayin?”

“Boy, yep.” I pause thinking maybe the Trans will interpret my statement the wrong way, because I’m enjoying this conversation. I don’t feel like it’s not my business. I feel vaguely flattered to have a black Trans whore paying attention to me on the street corner while her drug dealer and friend smoke up and stay quiet.

I think I’m so far away from everything I know is North and everything I know is South, because I actually feel safer with these three strange black men waiting by the bus stop than I do with all the kids in my graduate program. I feel safe in knowing that I haven’t got a clue what is going on. That I can’t possibly understand how two men—one with a baseball cap and the other with a handkerchief around his head, both with baggy pants and thick coats, one with a think coat he opens, shows, and say “you see how many girls got on up in there”—are smoking it up and talking and hanging out on the streetcorner with a huge trans, but they look totally hetero and average, and I haven’t a clue what it is I’m supposed to be seeing.

I have to admit, I’m a little nervous too. A comparison to movies where things would work out simpler, cleaner, and more judgmentally. I mean, this feels okay, the Trans thumbing randomly through my phone book (I wonder idly if I’m going to get it back when/if the bus ever arrives)…

“Tell me, girl,” she says, “if you were goin to pick the richest wealthiest suburb in Chicago, which would it be?”

I mention I’m new to Chicago.

“Ah, shit, then I’m asking the wrooooong person, ain I. You don be knowing anything, do you? Ah, well, if you were to pick the biggest and ritziest hotel name what would it be? ‘Cause I’m all up in storage, and I think I might as well have a spoil-me-good apartment. You think I can get 250$ a week, that’s what I’m lookin for. I'm a goin have me a fridgerator and stove in the richest, nicest hotel in here. But I need the suburb in Chicago whey they’s money. So what hotel would you pick….? Ah, girl, you don even know nothin about hotels. You homeless, sweetie?”

“No, I’ve got a place.”

“You goin go stay with a friend, then, huh?” I tell her I’ve got my own place and stand up, start pacing out into the road to see when the bus is going to come.

“You a little tomboy, ain you girl, but you cute. Ain got no titties though, I can see.”

There’s no denying that she’s got bigger titties than me. “I lost all mine.”

“Sheeee, girl, where’d they go?”

I laugh and imagine my titties running around loose someplace, having fun without me. “They ran away with my heart, that’s all.”

“They do that? Titties run away with hearts?”

I think of the dish and the spoon… together a dinnerware pair.

The trans-whore gets to a new topic, talking with her drug dealer. The only thing I can make out from what she and her friend say is “motherfuckin, bam bam, motherfuckin, la la, motherfuckin, hoo ha, knowhatI’msayin?” She turns to me at the end of this and says, “Man, I jus cannot get mad at this man, I mean, he’s my drug dealer, and one jus cannot get mad at their drug dealer, amIright?”

I say I think she’s probably right. Her phone rings and it’s a loud male’s voice (she covers the end of the phone and says it’s her mom.) Agatha wanders back drunk, and the Trans puts his hand over the phone, “You is all washed out, girl. I mean, you look like you should be Betty Boop, but you got that hair. Who done your hair?” She reaches up and pulls the hair out of Agatha’s face.

Agatha says “woaaah, I just did it.”

“And why it come out all light in the front like that?”

Agatha doesn’t know, and turns to me, “I’m shit ass drunk” and I smile. The Trans is back on the phone talking with Mom again, and then she thrusts the phone at Agatha. “Here, you talk to Mom.”

Agatha talks to Mom. “We ain comin in. You wanna go back to my place and sleep all by your own self, welcome, but we out here tonight.” She cusses mom out, and the Trans tells me she’s Polish. That explains it. Agatha finally gets off the phone and the Trans (who I’m starting to note has the widest face I’ve every seen. It’s a head that must weight at least twenty-five pounds) tells her, “Well, you certainly tole my mom.”

“Oh, shit that was your Mom?”
“Oh, sweetie, you think it was one my clients?” and the Trans laughs.
“I’m a call her right back.”

But Agatha can’t work the phone. I start wondering if Mom means Mom or if it’s short for the Sugar? The Trans starts talking about moving out, and all the guys who treat her like shit: “It’s always some fat black woman.” She tells me she’d never hit a white girl (her eye go all wide), but that she’d hit a black girl. “They goin go all up in my face like that, with their big motherfuckin la la, and hell yeah, I’m a goin hit them.”

She turns to me, “It’s a tough world out here, girl.” I nod.

“It’s not so safe, you know.” I nod.

“You gotta take care of yourself, I mean, he was all mad because he had all those other ho’s but he neeeever had me, knowhatI’msaying, and he ain never goin to have me. tSall about respect, girl. All about respect….” I nod. “An I’m goin go find myself some big motherfuckin ritzy hotel and I’m gonna sit in a bathtub with those pearls in my water, and if I feels like stickin around Chicago, I will, but if I don feel like it, I’m goin head outa this town.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” I tell her. She nods again, and turns to her drug dealer.

“Did I ever tell you about the one with the pistol?” she asks him. He gets excited. He’s working on a bag of Wonderbread and slices of ham. He’s been tilting his head back, opening his mouth, and dangling the slices into his mouth, one by one. Then tucking his head and chewing the length of dissolution. But he gets all excited about the pistol.

“Who had a goddamn pistol, motherfuckin la la, motherfuckin knowhatImean?” She describes it in fast forward. What I understand is that the man pulled a pistol on her when she was leaving and made her go back in somewhere. For what, I don’t know.

“Where you from?” she asks me when she’s finished. I tell her Seattle area. “Oh, Washington DC?” and I say "No, State.”

She doesn’t know anything about Seattle, but she looks at me and we both know that I’m far afield. But she smiles and starts telling me the story of a man respecting her. She holds out her hand occasionally, long painted red nails—polished smooth at the edges. She’s got a wig on, I think it’s a wig, medium-length flattened black-blonde hair. I put my hand in hers whenever she holds it out, and she gives me a slide-5. “Respect,” she says, “It’s all about respect.”

I agree with her. All the way. Who’s going to respect you if you don’t demand it? If you set yourself up to lose some titties every time, as she put it? The low thrum of their “motherfuckin lala motherfuckin hooha knowhatImean, motherfuckin bam” rocks me back, says “you, sweetwhitegirl, ain never had your heart runaway, knowhatImean, ain never had to play games as fast and hard as we motherfuckin playin them, knowhatImean, and we talkin to you here this night out in the open cool wind of Chicago along a Belmont street where Polish crackheads floating in and out the conversation and Johns is callin up on the phone and my two drug dealers hiding their joint when the cops comes drivin around, and we talkin to you here this night because you listenin. you respectin. and you gotta get yourself on home safe tonight. an we gotta get ourselves some ritzy hotel someday in the richest Chicago motherfuckin suburb.”

The drug dealer finally asks the Trans if she’s ready to go, and she says, “Hey, yeah. I ain gettin nowhere with this here phonebook.” She closes it up slowly and hands it back to me. Stands up and starts walking away with her drug dealers. Then, as she keeps walking, she turns and shouts, “Girl,” she says, “what you doin?”

“Well,” I say, “I think I’m giving up on this bus ever coming.”

“Yeah,” she says, “you catch a taxi.”

I start walking cross the street the other way, heading west to think, and she calls out, “They ain nothin I like better than seein a little white girl sittin in a taxi.”

I laugh and wave goodbye, say “Yeah, yeah, I’ll go get one.”

And about five minutes later my bus comes at the stop three blocks up. I catch it home and think about how far this place is from anything I understand and how happy I am about this, and about how all this Unknown was made my business and people talk and talk and talk in so many different ways and I get to sometimes hear what they’re telling me, just because they’re willing to speak. I think all this, carry the phonebook on home, arms wrapped around it, thinking about names.