There's a a trope in fiction of the middle-aged single woman going on a trip somewhere after the death of her parents and "finding" herself or having a sexual or spiritual awakening of some kind. It's based in the idea that when we are removed from our familiar surroundings we can and often do reinvent ourselves, and that life-changing events can serve as a catalyst of that reinvention.
I've never been very fond of this particular plot; it always seemed contrived and stereotypical to me, maybe because I've struggled through my adult life to be as authentically myself as I can be. It also annoys me that it's almost always a woman's story. This is probably so because women are so often caretakers and find themselves sacrificing their lives for others, and that's another fact that I find troublesome. But there's no denying that travel to unfamiliar or even just different places can being freeing, and that this is especially so during times of emotional upheaval.
I went to Chicago last weekend to hang out with my life-long friend Paul, to meet his new boyfriend Myron and revisit the good time I had the last time I was in Chicago almost twenty years ago when Paul had first moved there. He's gone away and come back himself since then, moving out to San Francisco with one boyfriend and company and then coming back here to be with another. The last time Paul and I hung out together for any extended period of time, I was in my first year of grad school and he was finishing up his last year of undergrad studies. He stayed at my apartment for about six weeks before moving into the frat house at start of term and then we saw each other pretty frequently throughout the year. I vividly remember him studying on the floor of my apartment, and throwing up on one of my heirloom quilts with the flu one weekend while I was away.
But that was twenty-four years ago (yipes!) and we've both changed since then, so I was a little nervous about spending a weekend with him. I needn't have worried. When you've been friends for 37 years, there's always a core in there somewhere that holds the reason you've remained friends for so long. In short, I had a great time. I met Myron and a host of Paul's other friends, visited his haunts, saw Chicago through his eyes. He was gracious enough to lend me his apartment for the weekend while he stayed with Myron, so I had exquisitely appointed accommodations, with some fabulous Asian antiques, wacky antique portraits, a Chinese red bathroom, a grand piano, a balcony, lovely furniture to curl up in, a flat-screen TV, a cute pooch named Sydney for company, and a really comfortable bed. All of which almost made up for the lack of a tea kettle. Just kidding.
But I didn't just go to visit Paul, though that was at least half the reason for the trip. I went to cut loose a little. To get out of New York, where I have obligations and ties and, worst of all, a routine. It's been a very long time since I got out of New York to go anywhere but Michigan or DC or Canada or South Carolina, where I also have ties and obligations and routines, and I needed a fresh but somewhat familiar place to explore, to give me a new perspective. Upon arriving, I announced that I intended to not be completely sober more than 50 percent of the time, and when asked what I particularly wanted to do that weekend, announced, "get a tattoo." I was only half joking.
It was something of a relief to slip into someone else's routine instead of my own, to go to Paul's usual Friday night restaurant and bar, to his favorite stores (he knows, I think at least one sales associate in every pricey store in the city), to wander around his neighborhood with him while he ran errands, to meet his friends for drinks. I bought a pair of silver Moroccan bangles and a big ceramic jug from a beautiful store (Guava) run by two of his friends, and we purchased a present for our missing third, Mel, but that was all I actually bought apart from food. And the food was great too: dinner and fabulous martinis (twice!) at Firefly, fantastic tapas at Arco, wonderful Italian food at Scoozi. I found one exhibit I wanted to see at the Garfield Park Conservatory (and if I'd known about the Pompeii exhibit at the Field Museum, I'd have gone to that too), but the rest of the time we basically just hung out: shopped a little, went out to eat, yakked, went for drinks.
In sum, I went to Chicago not to find myself, but to lose myself a little. And I did. Chicago is a beautiful city with great architecture, a vibrant arts scene, and great bars and restaurants. I think I'd be happy living in Chicago, but it has an entirely different kind of energy than New York, and I lost myself enough there that when I came back, New York seemed almost too much. I had a day or so of wondering how I managed to live here. I felt buffeted by the speed at which everything moves here and startled by the noise. Chicago's a city with alleys and vacant lots, which seems to buffer a lot of the noise, and it actually does seem to sleep sometimes. Here, you're right on top of everything that's going on, and it goes on all the time. The first night in Paul's apartment, I had to open the window to let a little street noise in, and there was very little of it—just a hum of white noise from Lake Shore Drive.
Now I'm back again, and have fallen back into the rhythm and routine, but I feel a little changed, a little refreshed, at least, though that hangover hasn't quite gone away yet and I'm still suffering from the effects of smoke in the bars. And it's good to know there's somewhere else out there I can take myself off to, when I feel like it. Actually, I have to go back sometime soon because I didn't get to everything I wanted to—the Pompeii exhibit, which runs until March, and the tattoo parlor Paul goes to.
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