“So, you’re a Pisces or an Aquarius, right?”
“No, not really.”
“Oh ok, bye.”

Friday night I went out to dancing again. Bleps.

I keep looking places up on the web, trying to find just the right blend, but it hasn’t come yet. Most people in Chicago go out in groups or in pairs and then sit around talking amongst themselves, and once again, I feel like the idiot loner who just can’t help herself.











I chose The Circuit as the nightclub of the night, which a company called “Chixmix Productions” was dj-ing for—a company about which I had seen lesbian fervor on Craiglist, but which was also described by one pissed-off girl as “a bunch of snotty-ass dykes who won’t talk to you as they stand around primping.” I agree with the latter part of this sentiment, but not the former. The clientele doesn’t seem snotty—it just seems young, awkward, boring.

Black-Eyed Peas was playing as I walked in, but quickly ended for Nelly and other psuedo-rap. I ran to the bar, searching for a tap that didn’t consist of Bud Light, but soon realized I’d have to spring for a mixed drink if I wanted something not the consistency of watered-down piss. The cover was just about right—5 bucks—but a Greyhound cost me $6 and jarred nastily with the mint-gum I was chewing. I stood in a corner, and within twenty seconds was assaulted by a girl.

“First, what’s your name?”

I told her, and then listened unbelieving as she asked me if I was one of two astrological signs. She ran off as soon as I deflated her guessing game, and I sighed in relief. But three minutes later she was back.

“You look just like a friend of mine named Brenda. If you’re not Pisces or Aquarius, you must be a Libra or something else.”

Wow. I spent a few seconds calculating the odds of her hitting the right sign after the 17% chance of Pisces or Aquarius was used up (10% if we discount the “or something”).

“Yeah, Libra is close enough.”
“So, I have to go, but can I get your number? Can we hang out sometime?”

I’ve never had someone ask for my number who hadn’t earned the right by at least dancing with me, or buying me a drink, or saving me from a male letch, or shoving some glue-like substance under my nose, telling me to inhale, and then shrugging it off when I say no thanks, I don’t do that stuff. I’d been in the club for a record eight minutes before Alma—“which means soul in Spanish”—found me, ran through the gamut of The Worst Pick-Up Lines Ever, and then fled the club on her way somewhere else.

“Uh, I guess. Sure. But give me your number instead. I’ll call you if I feel like it.”

She startled the pissiness out of me. Her number, written on a matchbook, tucked into my pocket, I watched the massacre on the dance floor.

The club itself—swank. Actually, I think it out-swanked itself. Wooden floors, flashing screens, a dry-ice machine hissing smoke onto the dancefloor in a valiant attempt to mask the fact that about only fifteen people were dancing on a floor built for a hundred. Perfectly constructed lights, flashing orbs, a screen with bubbly kitsch screen-saver projected on it. Three bars, and delicate pastels painted on the walls.

The dancers made me cringe. I try not to be snotty, because I would say my one criterion is joy de vivre, but the 80’s robot totterings of a bunch of fat baseball hats dancing to hip-hop ruffled my spirits. I counted a sum total of two dancers who weren’t half bad (courageous), and at some point the floor became self-conscious and an evacuation took place until a girl came up and requested something that turned out to be: Besa me! Suavamente… beh – sa – me, or salsa. Definitely an upswing, but the next thirty minutes became a techno-salsa mix that swung into light jazz, all of which designed primarily for close couples to spin each other (I saw at least two pairs knocking heads), until it fell into an onfloor make-out session.

I left after forty-five minutes of torture and walked with my headphones on until I got to a bus stop where a man complimented my ripped jeans.

At the very least, I tell myself that I’m doing research for my travel-writing class. I’ve pretty much picked writing about the dance scene just because I couldn’t really think of anything else. Although I’m thinking of switching to art shows, just because I’m finally running out of the steam to go dancing by myself. After Bville, Guayaquil, Montanita, and now Chicago, I’m starting to question the reasoning behind my quest.

Here’s my short travel-writing article, which is over-wordy and dense because I had to keep it under 750 words, a definite stumper for my brevity-challenged self:

“Coming from the east, the black façade of Boystown’s Berlin seems surprisingly flat and quiet for a Saturday night at 1:00am. I pass by slowly, hoping a queue of like-gendered patrons will open its large entrance door for that one peek inside. The one peek: a necessary calming balm to either give the impression of having found temporary domicile, or the virtual elastic band from which one will shoot off elsewhere... But no such luck; I can hear a vague rhythm—certainly possessing solid techno bass—from within the shell, but it still takes a second neighborhood circle before I suck in my breath and dive. The truth about diving alone into the big city nightclub is that if you’re in it for the dancing, but desperately want to dodge the fellow who will inevitably start to grind right in the middle of Bjork, following some simple procedures will help.

“After the reconnaissance loop and initial freefall through the $5 cover, I always start by finding the zone of safety to which I can later retreat after throwing myself onto the dance floor, grooving with Fischerspooner, and then hitting exhaustion. At the Berlin, my zone of safety takes place behind the red shirt of a broad-shouldered queerboy with dreadlocks and a music-smile. You know, the music-smile: correct routine involves finding those people who wear them and together creating the zone. Standing next to the smile, feet twitch and tap—the irrepressible jazz of body—as one seeks out the comfort of familiar faces. Back home, the singular queer nightclub fills with the familiar: baseball-hatted females, doggy collars, dazzlingly sexy nancy-dancers, butches whose muscles one must admire while playing pool, and white-haired men who stand in the corners. With only one drag queen named Betty, who stands centerstage and lips songs while one hand rests on her second belly, drama is scarce yet still palpable. At the Berlin, the familiar is distinctly different.

“Most of Berlin’s crowd dresses well and looks hetero or male, including the packs of salsa-techno men who formally invite the few girls to dance. From the zone of safety, one can afford to turn a few away while searching out the ripest opportunity for the scouting missions. Having seen Party Monster, one would know the best scouting mission formula, but the one-person adaptation uses a combination of arrogant stalk and wistful “searching for that friend who promised to meet me.” In times of dire need, glancing at a watch and then studying the door gives the impression of waiting, which can later be shrugged off as a friendly “I’ve been stood up again” if anyone looks like a more promising dancer than the three most recently brushed off.

“Yet scouting missions contain a threefold import. One: when alone, it can be imperative to dart off for a loosening beer, which—at $4.75 a pint—seems a little pricey at the Berlin. More reason to leisurely sip the booze, give polite thanks to the girl who says “nice tattoo,” and take in the lay of the land—the second scouting significance. After a few minutes under the wide muraled grin of a woman suspiciously resembling Madonna, the sense of déjà vu might set in: didn’t I just see that man? The answer to the question is probably yes. Incredibly small, the Berlin uses mirrors along the western wall to give the appearance of depth. Bustling next to the mirrors, dancers form circles and bob alongside each other, rarely climbing onto one of the three central stages, which have encircling ropes that exude the feel of a boxing ring. You won’t find pool tables, but three bar areas overflow with talkers. Scouting undeniably unmasks the unfamiliar: despite the well-dj’d music, we’re in a bar-scene where the actual dancing limps along until about 2am, when all the last-minute shoppers show up.

“But one should never forget the third reason for the scouting mission: with careful examination of the dance floor, places open for the solitary dancer to insert herself. If chosen poorly, the dancer will be squeezed out of place like a pea from a pod. If chosen correctly, she can quaff music energy while enjoying the saucy grins of beautiful gayboys and bathing in the sweaty dance heat from a crowd of searching eyes. And one shouldn’t forget the last step of the procedure: always ride the music current until time comes to whirl out the door like a fish breaching for home.”

Yeah. I think I already wrote a little bit about that dance experience out here somewhere on the blog. Sigh.

So, what’s going on? What the hell is Chicago?

Well, bad dancing experiences aside, things have been running crazy. After Cixous, which knocked my socks off and sent me off to bed exhausted, I went to a Robert Bresson flick titled Un condamné à mort s'est échappé or A Man Condemned to Death Escapes, which I expected to be another French quirk, but which turned out to be beautiful and incredibly tense. I sat clutching the edges of my shirt, listening to the girls next to me gasping when the character was nearly caught, and gasping when he had to face a guard who stood in the way of his freedom. The film itself was quiet, very quiet, and the voice of the narrator comforting. Although I knew the ending of the film via title, I still spent an amazing amount of time worrying—not for the main character, but for everyone around him. We may know the eventual fate of one, but we don’t know the deaths and losses of his community. So, the bare and meditative movement of the piece encourages reflection on groups, resistance, and the roulette game of life.

I left the film center alone… feeling like maybe I too was making my own form of escape and wondering who got to stay behind in prison. As I walked out, the bells of a nearby church hit 8:00, and cars flowed, people coupled up, cigarettes were smoked, and I hopped on the subway, feeling more alone maybe than I have in quite some time. Not alone in the sense of people not around me, but alone because it has been awhile since I’ve run into anyone with a compatible and fidgeting sensibility as mine (here in Chicago, that is). I wondered if to make art is to be alone, which doesn’t entirely make sense. Art should be about community, should it not? I spend quite a bit of time wondering about that.

Truthfully, I haven’t exactly found tight friends here, with the one exception of my roommate, who made me a birthday cake, inspires me to wash dishes, feeds me Chinese soups, and seems to thrive on taking me to new places in Chicago to eat. I’ve gone to innumerable parties and made lots of chitchat, at one point stumbling into a 45-minute conversation about birth control and television that left me feeling red-faced and strange, or estranged, one of the two. It wasn't a bad conversation, exactly, it just left me wondering what I had to add... Of course, it drifted onto other topics eventually, but I was a little tipsy and once I feel outside of something... sigh. This is my life.

Inside, I feel chockablock. Every time I step on the subway, I meet a new face. Last week, a conversation, if that’s what it was, with a man talking about the difference between blacks and whites, salvation, who knows what. I was a little drunk and my main purpose in the conversation was to not back off. He moved up in my face, thumped the air with a tube of strawberry chapstick, which he would then use to grease his already-red lips while talking about blue eyes, black men who didn’t understand him, etc. I didn’t move away or look down. This, I think, caused him to ask me what I did in my life. I told him I was a writer and we discussed whether books or stories or what. He then took the book I was carrying (JoAnn Beard’s Boys of My Youth) out of my hand—I calmed myself down by saying if it was lost, I could always pay for it—and indicated to me while waving the book around, that he could sell anything I wrote from of the back of his car. He told me I should just do it, write what I knew to be true, and before long, with a Buick trek across the universe, he would have sold a thousand, then more than a thousand of my books. Then he handed back my library-borrowed stories.

Why is it I feel I have nobody here to share such a tale with? I’m at a school of artists, and I’ve been getting the vibe that I’m never going to fit. I hear reference to all the other students going out together to restaurants, baseball games, bars, etc… and yet I have yet to be invited by anyone, although I managed to foist myself onto one sushi dinner with two other writers. Part of me doesn’t want to try to force myself in if I don't fit, but I’m so tired of exploring this world by myself and would really appreciate toe-stepping like funk down the street with my friends. Where is the music? Where is the dare? When will it come to me?

I've had a great workshop, met a few teachers, heard a story about an octopus, gone to every “wine-night,” and had an intriguing conversation about re-enactment with a girl from an eastern-block country, who invited me to re-enact part of the script for an eight-minute film she is doing, and I talk with everyone I can.

But I think I’m going to turn stupid as all hell if I don’t find an intellectual conversation that lasts past seven minutes or a subway ride, or a body that can shake its ass. Enough with the girls asking me my sign, for god’s sake.