Tonight, I did something I haven't done in a million years.
I went to musical theater night at Sidetrack. Or, rather, SideTRASH. I met up with one of my favorites, Bryan, who I realized tonight is my emotional soulmate. Took me long enough. We caught up, we laughed, I might have almost cried. I also might have fallen, in the bar, picked myself up, and claimed oh so triumphantly that I didn't spill a drop of my summer time cocktail, even though I might have spilt a little on my leg. No one will ever know. The boy at the bar, while Hedwig was playing, told me I was beautiful and that was enough of a finale for me.
After I left Boystown, I got into a cab and began my ride home. When I got to Ashland and a smidge north of where I had been, an acoustic version of The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" started playing on Pandora. I pulled out my headphones and told my driver that I wanted him to take me further than I needed to go. I wanted to be driven through the heart of this city in the middle of the night for no reason other than, I needed to realize the beauty of my space, and of where I was, and I needed to feel emotional about a place. Again. I told him that i was having a movie moment, and he asked me what movie, and I told him that it was a movie in my head. A personal thing that i needed to play out. I needed an existential movie moment where I cruise past lit up office bulidings and ghettos and think, as some bourgeois song is playing in my ears that this is exactly what real beauty is. This is where I am the happiest. If I could have lived in that cab all night tonight, if I could have lived all of my life listening to the most perfect cuts all night, while crusing through neighborhoods that most people would run from. Places that I would run from if I wasn't in the safety of a taxi...The lights, the skyline, the underpass on Damen, I could stay there.
My taxi driver told me I was a very nice person, and I knew I was going to pay a fortune for a ride that would normally cost me roughly $12. I haven't been this content in a long time. I haven't been this happy in a long time. I know it sounds false and ridiculous, but, I realized, on my birthday this year, that I haven't been happy for years, and in the last week, I have found a hilarious happiness that I have missed since I moved here nine years ago. Matthew Nicholas dressing as me for my birthday, everyone who came to my birthday, musical theater night at Sidetrack, followed by my lovely lovely cab ride from Boystown to Pilsen to Humboldt Park to me busting my shit on the skreetz behind my cab. Oh yeah! Roadrash YEAH! Bloodied knee and Death Cab for Cutie. Even though I know I am very drunk right now, and that I was very drunk when I was being driven through the ghetto, and I know that this will seem like wise drunken wisdom tomorrow when I read this, I know I know I know that I am slash I was so happy tonight, so genuinely happy tonight, so genuinely happy at my party at Alice's, so in love with everyone who came, and so in love with everyone who knows me like you do.
I fell twice tonight. Twice. Once in the bar and once in the street. Both times could have been humiliating and embarassing, and terrible, and a sign to some that maybe that last drink was unnecessary, but really, really, it was so perfect, and so fantastic that I ripped my tights and that I scraped my knee all to shit. I bleed red blood, not glitter latex lipgloss.
Tonight. I present to you, B'for real. Sans photos(except the AWESOME pic of my exquisite ambulatory FAIL!) and snarky bullshit ramblings about the world. I bring you, live from my bedroom, something truly real and spectacular. It was a movie montage from some hipster self-discovery thing, and it was a thing of beauty, it really was. The lights, the see-through glass buildings in the dark, the broke-off el tracks, vacant lots, expressway exits, the passing of some cheap, beater hipster-mobile, the music between my ears. Everything was perfect, and I was happy to be alone until I wished that there was someone sitting next to me, whose hand I could hold. Someone who, for those few precious minutes could feel exactly what I felt. In the next episode perhaps.
I love all of you more than you will ever know.
XOXO
Betsy
No comments:
Post a Comment