chicago swallows me in whenever i return. it's the town that i always hesitate to admit is my favorite city (next to oakland, of course) because it doesn't have the same romantic ring to it as new york or paris. doesn't sound quite like i'm keeping it as real as if i spent my evenings reminiscing constantly on hong kong. there are no giant clock towers, or neon lights that make the late nights still look like day. i love chicago like i love secrets, inside jokes, the hidden whim i get from referencing sunday morning cartoons like karate kat that no one else seems to recall. i love chicago because within its borders i've experienced heartbreak. and longing. and curiosity fulfilled. in 2004, sipping sangria on a porch off argyle, i decided that these words were what i wanted to do. and maybe it was the buzz, but i've been running with heels hardly touching the floor since.

***

and so at 4 in the morning olivia gives me that look, that illuminated smile where the corners of her lips hide into her cheeks and her eyes take the shape of moons doing bellyflops. "you have to play me something!" she tiptoes into her room as to not awaken ruby and engulfs her gigantic yamaha keyboard in her arms in an atlas-like fashion. i hold onto the end with one hand to make myself think i'm helping as i dodge getting smashed between the piano and the hallway. as she heaves it onto the kitchen countertop, i muster something along the lines of "i haven't played in so long."

if this were a movie, i would proceed to dim the lights, crack my knuckles, and become suddenly entranced in an angelic musical genius that summons birds to soar and at the very least make heads poke out of the apartment doors down the hall. but this is real life, and i instead wince over harsh notes and chords that should never exist, letting my fingers stumble the keys like a drunk town crier. after deciding that the new age song that i was going to play is corny anyway, i fall into my default. linus and lucy, yeah, the charlie brown song. i only get through enough measures for the both of us to recognize the song. we look at each other and giggle softly, as if playing piano in the dark (sorry, cheap andre bite). "what makes this song hard," says i, "is that one hand is supposed to follow a different rhythm than the second." and of course, when i quote myself in blogs, i sound a lot deeper than when i actually said it.

***

and so it was past 4 in the morning when you went to sleep, and you wake up to o-dub making breakfast (you don't know why you call her o-dub, there are no w's in her name). you wonder how long she's been awake, and standing there, and hope you didn't fart loudly in your sleep like you tend to do when you've had ethiopian food for dinner. throughout the entire day, all you can think of are two things: that veggie korean spot that had that bomb-ass veggie beef stew the last time you were in chitown, and dancing to chicago house music. by sunset you're riding the red line with ruby, olivia, allison and kay, and there's potatoes and carrots and gluton in your stomach. mission one complete. "i'm telling you, chicago house music sounds like perculator," says o as she thumbs through her itunes to the cajmere song. finally, you settle on boom boom room. wicker park would've been the more logical choice, since there's clubs lining the streets, but boom boom room had brown and orange on its website (more neo-soulish, yadidaimean?) and so it's debatably before midnight and the walls of the green dolphin are sweating. it takes you a second to get used to the cigarette smoke (you sheltered bay area hippie, you...). there are people, lots of beautiful people and you feel beautiful too because you know you're grinning wide like you often do in chicago. ruby's hair bounces off her neck as she turns to you (grinning too) "okay, i'm in love with chicago!" you widen your already completely-widened smile. ooh yeah. watching someone experience chitown for the first time is like watching someone eat their first creme brulee (or some other delicious dessert if you don't like creme brulee, in which case i don't know what's wrong with you because creme brulee is hella good). you love dancing to house music because you don't know enough house music to know how to dance to it exactly. you just know that it makes you snap your head back, and your toes glide, and your elbows flail. the best word is probably possessed. see, with house music it's all about the build up. you approach it like a reunion, with the steps in the beginning of the night like smalltalk with your own body. then the percussion notices you. you begin relying on the ground less and less to hold you up. in every cliche way possible, people feed off of each other's energies, and within a few minutes bodies are swaying like flame. you think of 33degrees, the beloved house parties that used to exist in your humble oakland loft, how movement never existed so fertile within a 1,200 square foot building. and how chinaka says to dance to the end of your fingers. you nod at olivia in that "perculator my ASS" sort of way. in a room of over five hundred, each person somehow manages to move in their own rhythm. yeah, sort of like in that charlie brown song. and you smile so wide you swear your cheeks will be the sorest thing about you in the morning.