The next time I came to Chicago...

I was in 8th grade. Going shopping in downtown Chicago for my birthday, with one of my friends and my mom and my mom’s gay best friend, Terry.

My birthday is in February.

We went to State Street—Old Navy. I wanted to go to Urban Outfitters so bad, it was new and I could only go to it in Chicago.

For some reason Terry didn’t like cabs, and didn’t seem to know about how the CTA worked. Or, maybe, he was like I am now, and thought that walking from 55 S State to 700 N Rush wasn’t very far.

But for small town kids, we thought we were dying, walking all that way in the cold. The wind fucking burning our faces raw. We didn’t own scarves. Who needs a scarf when you spend winter going from car to house to house to car to school to car to house? Terry kept saying: “it’s just up here.” “I think one more block”

Then we ate at Ed Debevic’s. It’s the only time I ate there, I wasn’t impressed, I thought it would be more fun. They were supposed to cuss at us and throw food and be rude. Really they were in bad 50’s outfits and chewed a lot of gum. The food was just like Steak n Shake.

It was cold and we were tired and we walked too much and didn’t find many clothes, but something inside of me was addicted.