Chicago

My creative license has paid off. In reality, I returned home from San Antonio and had two months of activities (attended a wedding shower, attended a wedding shower, attended a retirement party, attended a wedding shower, worked on invites, took the GMAT, purchased Grand Theft Auto, buried a grandmother, interviewed for grad school, joined a church, attended my sister’s graduation party, got turned down by grad school, and of course, worked diligently to ensure my company’s manufacturing parts were packaged with the upmost quality) before going to Chicago to pick up one of Kelsey’s bridesmaids from the airport. However, since none of that makes for a good story, I can skip all of it. John Adams may have said, “facts are stubborn things,” but clearly he never heard of revisionist history. The same revisionist history that made Andrew Jackson a presidential folk hero instead of a racist bigot, I’ll use to pretend I never got far too drunk in Des Moines in May because of a magic table at a Spanish restaurant that would automatically double my drink order. Since this never happened, I certainly never passed out in the back of a taxi cab and threw up all over another one of Kelsey’s bridesmaid’s parking lots. This is perfect. While I’m at it, I never carved the f-word into the music room floor in sixth grade, apologized to my ex-boss for me not taking well his being an asshole, or bit that leopard.

For those of you unfamiliar, Chicago is located on Lake Michigan, has a giant airport, two baseball teams (one of which no one cared about until three years ago), the tallest building in the US, lots of construction, absolutely no traffic flow, lots of people from Iowa, and Oprah. Jeff, as his former nickname, My Chicago Friend, would lead you to believe, lives in Chicago, next door to Oprah. He currently attends the University of Chicago, the same grad school that turned me down, and studies science. His goal is to someday create a small genome troll that we can purchase and use as our own personal scientist. Some people are confused as to the viability of such a product. Those people clearly have never filled their car with gas and asked themselves, “Between what amounts of gas will my car reach its optimal gas mileage?” or asked themselves, “Can a set of fraternal twins feature one regular and one albino child?” With a small personal scientist around (troll-size for easy transit), you will never be confused again. You thought Wikipedia was awesome, just wait.

In a true tribute to Jeff, this micro blog will be tangential. It’s all good. He used the word parenthetically in his wedding toast.

As you know, our government recently tried to mask their gross incompetence by sending us all $600 checks. These checks, designed to stimulate the economy by giving people extra money to spend with no abandon on foreign cars and foreign electronics in reality didn’t even cover the basic cost increases of gas, food, and everything that derives itself from gas and food. The checks also allowed people to give the well-run airline industry some extra money as a reward for excellent customer service. Because of this, Bridesmaid Barb, who lives in Houston, TX, was able to attend Kelsey’s bachelorette party planned for Saturday, June 7th. I agreed to pick her up from the airport Saturday morning since the Moline airport is both unreliable and expensive.

Since he moved to Chicago, I have seen Jeff several times, probably somewhere in the teens or twenties. Every single one of these times however has not been in Chicago. Even though for my first two years out of college I had “four days off” each week and for the last year we’ve lived only three hours apart, I have been a terrible friend and never visited Chicago. I thought Barb’s impending arrival was a great excuse to go to Chicago on Friday and partake in some evening activities with Jeff and his girlfriend Bridgette. I might have spelled Bridgette wrong. She’ll get over it. Jeff agreed to host me for the evening.

I left for Chicago around 6:00 that Friday. At around 7:30 I received a call from Theo who wanted to update me on the latest between him and Veronica. What I did not mention in the end of the San Antonio blog is that when all of us left, Theo and Veronica stayed together and shopped that day. At some point in the mall, they started making out. According to Theo, it was the greatest kiss of all time. It also had some charming effect where Theo stopped using reason and logic to guide his decisions but hormones and penal cravings. He called to tell me that in only two weeks time he’s decided it might not work out between him and Veronica. I said, “Maybe it was just not to be.” He disagreed. She could have been the one, but she just didn’t communicate well. She sometimes would go away on trips with her kids, who he suspected had hearing problems, without letting him know. I asked him if maybe that was because he only knew her two weeks. He didn’t think so. I changed subjects and asked him if he planned to bring anyone to the wedding. He said he wanted Veronica to come and he’d continue to work on her.

I get to Chicago at 9:00, hungry and thirsty. Jeff, Bridgette, and I took a cab four blocks to a delicious Mexican restaurant. There was a three drink minimum, so the three of us made sure we drank the correct amount of margaritas.

Jeff and I have an interesting history. We’ve known each other since seventh grade when we initially shared an interest in Michael Crichton novels and he made fun of the “geek binder” I carried my schoolwork around in. At the time I was fat and unpopular, and Jeff was nerdy and unpopular. We didn’t associate in the same nerd circles, but we kept in touch through our advanced math classes. At some point between ninth and tenth grade, I lost a lot of weight. This gave me the confidence to tell everyone what I thought about them. For some reason, instead of people hating the former fat kid with the blossoming ego, they found him enjoyable and kept him around. The cool kids liked me! Great! Then, the summer before my senior year in high school some friends and I went to see the overrated movie Gladiator. Jeff and a couple of other guys from high school were there. We started talking and enjoyed it quite a bit. At that point I realized Jeff was cool enough to associate with us cool kids. It was nice to have him around because sometimes, and I mean this to offend all you stupid people, it’s nice to talk to other smart people. We ended up living together for three years at Iowa State along with Dave and Dan.

In addition to being old friends, we have the tendency to encourage the other to steal. There is a restaurant in Cedar Falls that had a really unique statue by the front door. When we were back in town for our freshman homecoming, Jeff encouraged me to steal it. I wussed out and told him no. He told me to hold the door. I opened the door, and he rocketed away with the Small Man statue.

After margaritas, Jeff, Bridgette, and I walked to another bar. I learned at this bar that anyone who lives in a big city and can’t find someone to intercourse regularly should probably kill themselves. Everyone everywhere was looking to get theirs. The three of us ended up at a table next to a bachelor party for a minor league hockey player. The party drifted over and swallowed our table, so we made conversation with minor league hockey players. In fact, one of them is supposed to make it big this year. I would tell you his name, but because he’s a hockey player I forgot it. Either way, I tried to bullshit my way through talk of the Stanley Cup finals even though the last full hockey game I watched was the movie Miracle. The point of this conversation is that because we needed to be cool in front of the jocks, we lost all track of time and ordered drink after drink. The bartender shouted closing time, and we left.

My three favorite Jeff memories: 1) The time he came home from the bars with a swollen eye because two frat guys beat him up. Earlier in the night he decided he wanted to beat some frat guy up, but since they travel in packs, he lost. Also earlier in the night several of us had filled Jeff’s room with a stack of thirty pizza boxes. He did not find it amusing upon his return. He entered the apartment, stormed back to his room, kicked all the pizza boxes, and went to the shower. I left my room and saw blood on the wall. I opened the bathroom door and asked Jeff if he was okay. “Yup,” he responded. I asked him if he was bleeding. “Yup,” he responded. I asked him if it was the wrong night to fill his room with pizza boxes. “Yup,” he responded. 2) The time in Iowa City after the Cyclones beat the Hawkeyes with an amazing comeback he got all upset at how pissy and morose our Hawk friends were being. We decided to leave town and on the way to pick up Dan he leaned out the window and started talking to everyone like we were in the movie Sling Blade. Since students at the University of Iowa only watched Joe Dirt, they were confused. 3) The time he dressed as angry Walter from the Big Lebowski and ended up drinking himself into an angry irrational oblivion.

Even though our bar closed, I insisted we go to another bar on the way home. We found one and walked up to the bar. I asked if we could pay cash for three quick shots. She told me I could only order shots and pay in cash. I said that’s exactly what I wanted. There were two waitresses/bartendresses. One of them was a man-woman while the other was a girl who thought she was much prettier than she was. The “pretty” bartender ended up serving us our drinks. She wore a low-cut shirt with a big metallic object in the middle of her breasts. I asked the woman, “Ma’am, what is the giant object between your breasts?” Not a fan of the question, she said, “It’s a bottle opener. It’s for opening bottles.” Here’s the thing, and I say this as a man who is now fully committed to one set of bosoms for the rest of his life: Women, if you wear an incredibly low cut shirt, your breasts will be looked at. If you place any sort of object between your breasts in the incredibly low cut shirt, your breasts will be looked at and the object will be asked about. You can’t be angry. It’s genetics. Just ask my genome troll.

One shot later, we walked back towards Jeff’s apartment. On the way there I really wanted to steal something. Unfortunately, shops were closed and breaking windows is taking good fun too far. Luckily for me, some store had a rolled up rug outside. Clearly this rug was mine now. I picked up the rug and brought it back to Jeff’s. Once there, I unrolled the rug in front of the Small Man statue he still has and uses. Jeff and I then got very hungry and decided it would be a good idea to walk to the grocery store and buy frozen pizza. Then…..grocery store….bought strangers gas even though they lied to us….sat outside by the grill….stained my shirt with….talked with Ian on the phone….woke up. Details are sketchy. I woke up next to an uneaten pizza with a mouth that tasted like cigarettes.

Jeff cooked me a delicious breakfast I was too hung-over to eat and off to the airport I went.