The Death of Imagination

I was supposed to host cocktails a week ago Saturday, but I bailed. Only two people checked in with me about them, Eyefield and an ex-bartender friend, so I told both of them they were still welcome to come over if they wanted. The latter chose instead to schedule brunch with me for yesterday while Eyefield opted to meet me at the bar instead.

Later in the week, bantering with him via text took a weird turn. We ended up having a rather serious conversation, I got another glimpse of how maybe we were more attached that we make out, and we made plans for dinner on Thursday that got scuppered by his ex, who's moved back into the house he still owns half of. He sounded mollified when I rescheduled for Saturday, but Saturday came and went without him getting back in touch to finalise plans.

Maybe I should've insisted more, since I'd hoped to use the opportunity to get to know him better and clarify things. I told my therapist earlier in the week that I was dallying with two guys (let's not scare the horses too much) but that they understood nothing serious would come of it because it's Too Early. "Are you sure they know that?" she asked and I took the hint.

You might ask why my usual tendency toward obsessiveness didn't kick in and the answer is basically that I was too darn busy. Fearful of another weekend of staring at the ceiling, I overbooked: Counter-protest Saturday morning, Printers Row Book Fest Saturday afternoon, dinner out Saturday evening. The aforementioned brunch Sunday morning, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE) Sunday afternoon, and dinner out again Sunday evening.

So rather than pester Eyefields, I figured if he really wanted to see me, he'd do something about it, and after killing time at Printers Row helping my colleagues at the Press re-place books knocked over by sudden gusts, I accepted an invitation from Bunj to come and hang out. He'd been hunkered inside with a possible cold, but felt better when I arrived and took me on a stroll around his neighbourhood, a fast-changing corner of River North.

By the time I got home, I was tired and hungry, but I saw how the unseasonable heat had wilted the grounds and threw myself into watering them. Dinner ended up being some reheated rice and beans on tortillas and before I went to bed, I told myself, "I'll sleep soundly tonight," which I mostly did.

Despite lollygagging the next morning, I would have been spot on time for brunch if not for the behemoth of Midsommerfest acting like a planetary body, curving the paths of CTA busses with its huge centre of gravity. One block away from Vincent, my namesake texted me, "We've made a terrible mistake"; Vincent, as it turns out, only opens at 11 a.m. "Why not Big Jones?" I asked, since it was just around the corner and I knew it was open.

We ended up spending most of our time chatting about alcohols and mixology, so I proposed a visit to the local liquor store afterwards. They disappointed me by not having my preferred apricot liqueur in stock, but we had plenty of time to ogle and chat. He wanted to do a lap of the fair, which was just filling up, before heading home and I accompanied him on the first leg before sprinting off to CAKE.

JB had gotten there nearly an hour earlier and systematically worked his way around the perimeter of the main vendor space. We started on the fleshy heart of the room and were joined by GOP. One of our fellow gamers from Necessarily Evil was wrangling volunteers that day and introduced us to some fresh meat recently transplanted from Boston. But JB and I needed a bite to eat and I pointed out that martinis were half off at the lounge across the street.

Small plate service didn't start until 4 p.m., so we contented ourselves with fries and two "candy manhattans" while GOP opted for a big blue drink. An hour of girl talk, and who should come by but Mr New Meat. He was in the company of a member of the Rogers Park Bear Crowd that I knew well enough to call by name and not draw a look of confusion. He even noticed the absence of my hair so I had to explain why I'd been so scarce the year before.

I convinced them to stay for drinks and, in return, New Meat convinced me to have a third martini (and fourth drink of the day from the julep I'd had at brunch). Everyone else drifted away and it was just the two of us talking about his pending divorce and recent move to Chicago. He's another Missouri boy who's lived most of his life somewhere else; he's also another Far North Side bear working around the corner from my brother.

I ended up so drunk I thought I'd forgotten my phone when I hadn't. Of course, it took walking all the way back from the Addison platform, where I'd seen NM onto a southbound train, to discover this. Again, I'd expected to hear from someone regarding afternoon/evening plans and again I'd heard nothing. This time, though, I still treated myself to dinner out, though there was more watering to be done when I got home.

I went out over the weekend. It was fine.

After brunch Saturday morning, even before I remembered it would be Bear Night, I thought it might be nice to go out. Then a friend whose offer to take me back to King Spa I'd previously rejected asked if I was free for dinner. We batted back choices before deciding to take a chance on Hopleaf. I had some half-baked idea that the cold might keep people away. We only waited about 40 minutes for a table despite arriving right around 7, so perhaps I was right.

Afterwards we ventured DILF night at SoFo. I've probably complained before about how impossible the crowds become there later in the evening. My buddy also pointed out how the daddy/chaser ratio drops as the old men go home and are replaced by younger pups. By about 10:30, we'd had enough. I'd caught up with a few acquaintances and successfully talked to a few cuties. So we headed up to Touché.

Here there were more people I knew, mostly in the bar buddy class. One was without his husband for the day; by the evening's end, he was coming on pretty aggressively. Another was a friend from the Great Lakes Bears going way back ("Don't do the math," he pleaded) who was seeing me for the first time in a couple months. "This isn't the appropriate place for this," he said before giving me a crushing hug beside the back bar. I've always appreciated running into him, since he's also lost a husband (at the same hospital, even) so there's a depth to his sympathy most others can't approach. He acknowledged upfront how worthless words were even while conceding the importance of saying them.

I also ran into one of the cuties from SoFo. In our brief exchange, he'd given me reason to hope. In the course of chatting, I quickly learned that he'd been roommates with clintswan, which told me he was good people. (Well, that plus the information that they were still on speaking terms.) I also learned about his boyfriend in Little Rock, which again indicated that he was a decent sort and not one of the game-playing assholes I'm told the gay dating scene is rife with. We left at the same time, and wished each other a pleasant rest in our respective beds.

The next day, I met up with Diego for the beer bust at Big Chicks. This was something I didn't even do when I lived in the hood. (Sunday afternoon always meant dinner with monshu--generally at my place, so I'd be busy with preparations.) I ran into my buddy from the night before plus Coleman and some other regulars. All very pleasant and affirming (everyone likes the new do, apparently) and I'm entertaining making it part of my regular routine.

Wednesday I had a terrific lunch with my newest colleague where I learned both that we have closely shared tastes in fiction and that the new Chinese place downtown is good. However, I managed to forget the risks of having several cups of oolong with lunch and, as a result, slept pretty fitfully. Then I had to get up early for a start-of-the-day meeting followed directly by an all-staff in a chilly former chapel across the street. But after that I broke free.

It was itchwoot's last full day in Chicago and I was flattered that he wanted me to be a part of it. Since it was his clean-up day, I left the itinerary up to him and he announced an interest in the vintage store on Belmont between Clark and Halsted. Remembering his interest in music and a conversation we had about grits, I suggested combining this with a meal at Wishbone and a trip to Reckless. It was like a trip back to my misspent youth.

As always, though, I misjudged the distance from the Belmont station to Lincoln and the interest value of that stretch. I was completely surprised by the huge construction pit on the northeast corner; whatever complex they're building there, I'm sure it's going to be just awful. Lunch at Wishbone, though, was anything but. They do their seafood chowder the wrong way (i.e. with tomato sauce), but their fried green tomatoes are almost as good as Dixie Kitchen's and their crabcakes are better.

Even though I promised we'd take the bus back, I needed a little time before I was ready to rise. Reckless had moved, but only down the block and across the street. We spent over an hour there pawing through shelves of CD inserts in small mylar sleeves, so I would call that a success. We spent at least as much time at Hollywood Mirror, which wore on me as we inched toward 4 p.m. and my damn backpack kept getting heavier. Still, I offered up the comics store up the corner, but his response was "Lassn uns mal in ein Café".

I couldn't think of a good spot nearby and, since his next stop was Loyola anyway, I decided we'd get a jump on rush hour and head directly up to Granville so we could visit Metropolis. At this point, his tiredness was finally beginning to show a bit as well and the conversation drooped at times, but we managed not to push things past the point of diminishing returns before the time came to walk him up to dedos' and say our farewells.

I'm going to chalk down the limpness of last session to a combination of the absence of vianegativa and everyone's need to reacquaint ourselves with the system and setting after such a long break, because today's session was terrific. I still feel like I'm not quite holding my own with the other players, but two of their characters are so OTT that I feel a certain responsibility to play someone, well, responsible. This has left me casting about a bit for a story arc, but now I'm thinking it could be Dante's in Clerks: the realisation that not everything rests on your shoulders just because you claim it does.

A few days ago, it had occurred to me that, at about this point in Necessary Evil, vianegativa had found a way to make my skin crawl with he'd done with a character of mine whereas JB hasn't come close to that, so I began to question whether he really had that in him. I think I have my answer now, and I didn't have to wait for my character to get screwed over in order to find it. Enjoy your new body, Boo! Hope it suits you better than your last one.

I think the weekend had a good balance of staying in and going out, even if I was more of a slug yesterday than I meant to be. I did consider returning to the beach once it became clear that the thunderstorms were a no-show once again, but I thought it might be anticlimactic after the great time I had Saturday.

You could not have asked for better beach weather: hot, but not too humid (not for this Missourian, at least), and a bit of a breeze. As expected, everyone and their lover was there, yet somehow I managed not to see anyone I knew when I arrived. (It only occurred to me after I'd been there a while that a chunk of the Far North Side Mature Bear crowd would be attending the wedding of two of our own and a number of the remainder would be in NOLA for Decadence.)

After a time, however, I ran across BDA and his two frisky friends, which allowed me to lay my towel very much in the thick of things. At times I was like a weathercock, not sure which direction to turn in. One advantage to the company I was in was that whenever any of us fell silent for a moment, there was no reason to ask why or to excuse oneself. As they left Diego came by, then his hot new Peruvian daddy.

Actual summer weather has arrived and with it such a flurry of street festivals that I can't keep track. Yesterday, Nuphy met us in Chinatown for our first trip to Xi'an Cuisine and we found ourselves smack in the centre of the Chinatown Summer Fair. This may not be the most useless Chicago festival, but it holds the distinction of being the most useless one I've ever attended more than once. It's the weekend of the year when all the souvenir shops dump their tacky junk on folding tables in the street so that instead of sifting through it in air-conditioned comfort you get to do it in full sun and suffocating humidity along with a thousand other clueless merrymakers. Hold me back.

The weather was perfect for a beach day, and when I posted this, a friend said he was tied down working the "Celebrate Clark Street World Music Festival". This said nothing to me, and I assumed it was in Lincoln Park. No, it's just the same old local street fair rebranded to highlight its musical acts. Personally, I think of it as "DILFest". I don't go for the music or the food but for the "stroller meat". My friend owns a pet accessory store (what else do you call this proliferation of little shops full of treats and chew toys but no actual pets?) and hanging out with him and his cronies was way fun. One thing about the homo world which will never cease to amuse me is how often I learn more about a man's sexual tastes than I could tell you about those of people I've known since highschool even before I learn his name. There's more of a range there than merits the alternative nickname "Papifest", but for those of us who love Latino daddies, it is sort of one-stop shopping.

Meanwhile, there were at least two other fests the same day, plus a White Sox game. I'm glad to have dodged all of these coming back up from Nuphy's place by bus and bus even if it did take a real bite out of the afternoon. The Old Man and I were still too full from lunch to fix a real dinner, so we nibbled on cheese and fruit and then I had a bite of a squash blossom quesadilla and two filled churros. (Not my wisest choice ever.) Between the meat-heavy lunch and the meat-and-salmon-heavy appetiser dinner of the night before, I expected a gout attack and was pleased to experience none.

Good weekend, with the right mix of leisure, work, and socialisation. Friday I went to work on the parkway corner. At some point, I decided the amount of sand in the subsoil dumped in the middle wasn't sufficient to loosen up the dirt enough (Dad warned me later that adding too little sand to clay and "you end up with concrete") and lugged a 70-lb bag back from Clark-Devon Hardware for this purpose. Mixing in more compost would also help, but without Scooter's assistance, I wasn't about to attempt our plan to empty the composter into the wheelbarrow and work it all in. All that effort left me more worn out for the barbecue that evening with Turtle and Turtlewife than I wanted to be. When's the last time I was the one nodding off in the front room while monshu kept chatting away?

Saturday, however, my power nap turned into a two-hour sleep binge, so making it through cocktails with mollpeartree's coworker and two of his female friends was no problem. To my surprise, the Old Man not only made it through fireworks on the roofdeck afterwards but was up at home reading until past midnight. I know this because I was up until nearly two carousing at Touché and at some point realised I didn't have my phone. Before panicking, I decided to stroll home and check and found it sitting on the computer desk from whence it had never made it into my pocket. (I did not want to get down and start searching that floor!) Slow night, with few of the regulars about, but I did run into a couple nice fellas I hadn't seen in a while.

Besides, I'd shoehorned my Bear socialisation earlier. dedos and his better half hosted an impromptu game day, where I was introduced to Gloom, a cheery card game where the aim is to make your extended Gothic family as miserable as possible before bumping them all off in ghastlycrumb fashion. I was very close to winning the second hand until karma bit my ass and took my most miserable relation out of play. I don't know what it is about the warmer weather, but JB's game night went so well he's got another planned for this Friday. I'm wondering if I shouldn't get into the action myself one of these days.

Sunday it was back into the fields. I finally got tired of waiting for the new neighbours upstairs to remove their tulips and did it myself so I could transplant the bargain kale, carrots, and beets while they still had some time left to mature. The cardoon is looking pretty sad; I'm not thinking will get anything from it at this point, but now that I've had time to mound it properly (à la asparagus) we shall see. Fig came by Friday morning with more plants and diagnosed an earwig infestation, so we're going to lay some traps and hope for the best.

Oddly, given last week's revelations, Scooter was around all weekend, doing chores (such as watering the grass) and hanging out with his wife as if nothing were amiss. So who even knows what's going on there. Thursday night I ended up chatting for a couple hours with the Bear Upstairs and he eventually joined us, quite visibly lit. He was a teetotaller until recently, something which--given that he bartends--I'd always ascribed to alcoholism. So I'm not sure if this is a cause of the current rift or a response to it (and probably shouldn't be speculating either way).

I'm feeling very good about my gay friend group right now. It's important to say so because of how much whining I do. I really do know some good people. And some very funny people and some very clever ones. And some who are all three, plus talented to boot. And I know a lot more people who will put up with me, even when I'm being something of a dick or wanker. I'm tired and still a little buzzed, but tomorrow will be an easy day and there's gaming to look forward to in the evening (with a selection of these same gay friends).

People just want to be remembered. Of course, if you asked us what we wanted, I'm sure we'd all say "love" and "respect". But we recognise that those are in short supply sometimes--particularly when you're looking for them. So when it comes to what we're willing to settle for, it can be as simple as just someone knowing your name.

This was the theme of my weekend. My cocktails were an unexpected success. I beat a couple bushes, but mostly people came to me. One of these was Martian Boy, who's moved back home to Indiana after the better part of a decade on the East Coast. Diego, his ex, was also expected at the gathering. I didn't think there'd be a problem there, and I was right. They've both recently come out of LTRs. I don't think that mattered much for Diego, who's always been able to maintain good relations with exes, but it may have helped MB's perspective that his dream husband turned out to be a complete dickhead.

This all came out in, of all places, the back bar at Touché's when I ran into a long-lost coworker who I first met through Diego. (I asked for his phone number, and when I supplied his surname without prompting his response was, "I can't believe you remember that!") He'd been singing his praises for a few minutes before I pointed out, "By the way, this is his ex." When the man himself finally arrived, the mutual friend was like, "We've been saying such nice things about you I feel like we should be tearing you down now."

Earlier, in the kitchen, I told the stories of my first meeting with each of them. Diego lived across the hall from monshu, but we didn't actually speak until I ran into him at a restaurant dining with a mutual acquaintance (who neither of us keeps up any longer). Some time later, I knocked on his door to find him for some reason and Martian Boy answered it wearing nothing but longjohn bottoms. (I remember a brief moment of mutually checking-out; he professes not to.)

I probably couldn't tell you ten things about MB despite nominally knowing him for years. But recalling that incident was enough for him to praise my memory effusively at the bar later. The trigger was running into another old acquaintance, this one a rare visitor to Touché. In fact, he claimed that the last time he'd been there was the last time he'd seen me, and that was roughly a year ago. We'd hung out in the hallway chatting for a while. He'd told me all about his amazing scrotum, which could be wound around several times.

So naturally the first thing I said when I saw him was, "HELICOPTER BALLS!" He feigned embarrassment, but under it he was gratified. Then I told MB the story about how I'd first met him: in the same bar, wearing a "FREE HUGS" t-shirt. I'd taken him up on his offer, then experienced a moment of awkwardness as it became clear that I wasn't quite his target audience. As he left, he said, "See you again a year from now." Before he went, I asked him for his given name and I'm determined to remember it for the next time.

All of these little occurrences returned to my mind on Sunday evening as I watched Ayoade's adaptation of The Double with Jesse Eisenberg. Eisenberg's character is too meek to claim the love and respect he deeply craves. All he really wants is recognition on the most basic level: for someone to know his name and his face and recall them spontaneously. And when even that is denied him, he has a complete breakdown.

I worry about some of these men, that they're never far from that themselves. Whenever I haven't seen one of them for a while, dark thoughts cross my mind. But Saturday wasn't like that. The bar was filled with familiar faces; we went over en masse and held together surprisingly well over the course of the evening. It was a little victory against the forces of entropy and forgetfulness.