A walking tour of magickal places
A walking tour of magickal places I've never had sex in but would like to***
I'm talking about the neighborhood I grew up in, and you probably don't live there, so you'll have to start on the Red Line.
I don't know how many trains the CTA keeps in circulation, or for how long. I know that the cars are made in a way that they can be removed, switched and exchanged but I don't know if they are, so perhaps the concept of individual trains is null. No matter, lets assume that the trains they're using now are the same ones they were using twelve years ago. Get in the car. Head north. Look around.
I've spent more time in that car than I have in my current apartment, and probably my last apartment and the one before that, and experienced the full range of human emotion. I've cried there, and slept. I've eaten, I've laughed, I've fought, I've gotten high. Extreme hate, extreme lust. I've been dumped on the train to Howard, but I've never screwed there.
Get off at the Jarvis stop. Ignore the pun. Embark, due East. Past the comic book store that doesn't exist anymore, the seedy gay bar that is now a shiny Irish pub, Honest Don's, the Elf Man's cobblery and the only 7-Eleven I've ever seen fail and shut down. Past the first house I ever did get naked with a girl.
Stop when you hit water.
The Jarvis beach is the neighborhood's only secret. At night it belongs to witches and gangbangers, but never at the same time. _____ taught me how to cast a circle there, a week before we fucked for the first time. ___ and I would go there to smoke Phillies and hide from our Moms. You may still find small rounds of stones there, and you may find stray bullet casings.
In the 1980s, dead fish would wash up on the shore and pile up. Hundreds of em, midway through summer. The city has since released a predator into the water that eats them before they get a chance to die on their own. The beach is clean now, and it would be a great place to fuck.
If you've never had sex on a beach before, the only bit of advice I can give you is, bring a towel to lie down on. What it lacks in spontanaeity, it makes up for in not having grains of sand grit into places they can't get out of. If you're adventurous, bring it to the rock island. Leave your drawers on the flagpole, they belong to the ages. Don't throw your condom into the water, it'll only come back, unwanted, like all those empty fish.
Head back west, to Glenwood. East Glenwood. Hook a left.You will pass a number of amazing places. Turtle Island. The Independent Video Alliance. Eagles Aerie Shamanic Counseling. Phantom Limb. Some still exist, some are just ghosts now. Swing a right on Lunt.
The Heartland Cafe may be the very soul of East Rogers. The scumbags, the artists, the yuppies, the dealers, Loyola students and dirty old men have all made their home there. The waitresses all have dreadlocks, the waiters are all on heroin, and none of the bartenders know how to mix a drink. I've been told that my number used to be scrawled across the stall in the women's room but no one ever called it. That's fine. I'm not interested in the women's room, I'm interested in the roof.
You may have noticed it from the train. An unused patio, and a replica atom bomb cracked over the Heartland sign. As an ultimate tribute to the 'make love, not war' ideals that both the restaurant and I espouse to, I wanna bend someone over that bomb. Think of it as the sheer force of lovemaking overpowering the threat of nuclear holocaust, that has made equal parts slave and rebel out of us all for the last sixty years, or something...as viewed from a train.
Head South. Glenwood West. A street that is still paved with brick, that is half street and half alley, a block of jazz, revolution and voodoo, courtesy of the artist Dzine, who has since sold out. Hop the wall that splits Glenwood and you'll find the city's thinnest forest. A surprisingly dense row of trees that seperates the street from the train. Kizer died here when he fell onto the tracks. Fuck in memorial, fuck as a testament to life.
When I was dating ______, she told me I was the second best fuck she'd ever had. It ranks among the highest compliments I've ever been paid. She didn't know who number one was, only that he was white and pinned her up against a dumpster in an alley outside of a bar. When you're done with the mural, the train, and the forest, hit the alleys. South. East. Back towards the beach (you're walking in a rhombus).
Along the shore of Loyola Beach, you'll find the art wall. Every year, local residents repaint a half-mile of bench, in three-foot by two-foot rectangular increments. You'll find mysticism here, callouts of the government, pleas for environmental action, inside jokes, and obscure gangster folk art. There's nothing sexy about the art wall, it's just something cool to look at as you head to your last stop.
The beach heads into a park, where a statue sits, a giant white loop with a big white lumpy thing off to the side. When I was little, the loop was the biggest thing in the world, and climbing it was the tallest I would ever be. My first best friend, JJ, and I spent the day there before he moved off to Hawaii in first grade. It was a sad day, and a fun one, and I've revisited the statues many times in the years since. I can climb it in a couple bounds now, but it'd still be taller than the tallest bed, and whether sunk into the concave or arched over the convex, I think it would be a good spot to get laid out.
I would be on the bottom, watching the stars, following her curves, following the curves of the statue.
That's it.
I'm done. You're spent.Or perhaps you're not, perhaps you're Spartacus, and still full of vigor. But you've exhausted the neighborhood. So go home.
***This is actually the verbatim route that I walked day in, day out when I was really depressed. Some of the memories had already been forged by then and some were still waiting for me. I'm trying to reclaim it, turn it into a a list to be checked off, a place to look forward to, a den of ill repute, a secret couples destination. I'm doing it in an attempt to combat my writer's block, which is as bad as any kind of impotence.
[currently watching: Mystery Train]
I'm talking about the neighborhood I grew up in, and you probably don't live there, so you'll have to start on the Red Line.
I don't know how many trains the CTA keeps in circulation, or for how long. I know that the cars are made in a way that they can be removed, switched and exchanged but I don't know if they are, so perhaps the concept of individual trains is null. No matter, lets assume that the trains they're using now are the same ones they were using twelve years ago. Get in the car. Head north. Look around.
I've spent more time in that car than I have in my current apartment, and probably my last apartment and the one before that, and experienced the full range of human emotion. I've cried there, and slept. I've eaten, I've laughed, I've fought, I've gotten high. Extreme hate, extreme lust. I've been dumped on the train to Howard, but I've never screwed there.
Get off at the Jarvis stop. Ignore the pun. Embark, due East. Past the comic book store that doesn't exist anymore, the seedy gay bar that is now a shiny Irish pub, Honest Don's, the Elf Man's cobblery and the only 7-Eleven I've ever seen fail and shut down. Past the first house I ever did get naked with a girl.
Stop when you hit water.
The Jarvis beach is the neighborhood's only secret. At night it belongs to witches and gangbangers, but never at the same time. _____ taught me how to cast a circle there, a week before we fucked for the first time. ___ and I would go there to smoke Phillies and hide from our Moms. You may still find small rounds of stones there, and you may find stray bullet casings.
In the 1980s, dead fish would wash up on the shore and pile up. Hundreds of em, midway through summer. The city has since released a predator into the water that eats them before they get a chance to die on their own. The beach is clean now, and it would be a great place to fuck.
If you've never had sex on a beach before, the only bit of advice I can give you is, bring a towel to lie down on. What it lacks in spontanaeity, it makes up for in not having grains of sand grit into places they can't get out of. If you're adventurous, bring it to the rock island. Leave your drawers on the flagpole, they belong to the ages. Don't throw your condom into the water, it'll only come back, unwanted, like all those empty fish.
Head back west, to Glenwood. East Glenwood. Hook a left.You will pass a number of amazing places. Turtle Island. The Independent Video Alliance. Eagles Aerie Shamanic Counseling. Phantom Limb. Some still exist, some are just ghosts now. Swing a right on Lunt.
The Heartland Cafe may be the very soul of East Rogers. The scumbags, the artists, the yuppies, the dealers, Loyola students and dirty old men have all made their home there. The waitresses all have dreadlocks, the waiters are all on heroin, and none of the bartenders know how to mix a drink. I've been told that my number used to be scrawled across the stall in the women's room but no one ever called it. That's fine. I'm not interested in the women's room, I'm interested in the roof.
You may have noticed it from the train. An unused patio, and a replica atom bomb cracked over the Heartland sign. As an ultimate tribute to the 'make love, not war' ideals that both the restaurant and I espouse to, I wanna bend someone over that bomb. Think of it as the sheer force of lovemaking overpowering the threat of nuclear holocaust, that has made equal parts slave and rebel out of us all for the last sixty years, or something...as viewed from a train.
Head South. Glenwood West. A street that is still paved with brick, that is half street and half alley, a block of jazz, revolution and voodoo, courtesy of the artist Dzine, who has since sold out. Hop the wall that splits Glenwood and you'll find the city's thinnest forest. A surprisingly dense row of trees that seperates the street from the train. Kizer died here when he fell onto the tracks. Fuck in memorial, fuck as a testament to life.
When I was dating ______, she told me I was the second best fuck she'd ever had. It ranks among the highest compliments I've ever been paid. She didn't know who number one was, only that he was white and pinned her up against a dumpster in an alley outside of a bar. When you're done with the mural, the train, and the forest, hit the alleys. South. East. Back towards the beach (you're walking in a rhombus).
Along the shore of Loyola Beach, you'll find the art wall. Every year, local residents repaint a half-mile of bench, in three-foot by two-foot rectangular increments. You'll find mysticism here, callouts of the government, pleas for environmental action, inside jokes, and obscure gangster folk art. There's nothing sexy about the art wall, it's just something cool to look at as you head to your last stop.
The beach heads into a park, where a statue sits, a giant white loop with a big white lumpy thing off to the side. When I was little, the loop was the biggest thing in the world, and climbing it was the tallest I would ever be. My first best friend, JJ, and I spent the day there before he moved off to Hawaii in first grade. It was a sad day, and a fun one, and I've revisited the statues many times in the years since. I can climb it in a couple bounds now, but it'd still be taller than the tallest bed, and whether sunk into the concave or arched over the convex, I think it would be a good spot to get laid out.
I would be on the bottom, watching the stars, following her curves, following the curves of the statue.
That's it.
I'm done. You're spent.Or perhaps you're not, perhaps you're Spartacus, and still full of vigor. But you've exhausted the neighborhood. So go home.
***This is actually the verbatim route that I walked day in, day out when I was really depressed. Some of the memories had already been forged by then and some were still waiting for me. I'm trying to reclaim it, turn it into a a list to be checked off, a place to look forward to, a den of ill repute, a secret couples destination. I'm doing it in an attempt to combat my writer's block, which is as bad as any kind of impotence.
[currently watching: Mystery Train]
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