1,001 Chicago Afternoons

His name wasn’t Bhopal, couldn’t have been. That’s the name of the town in India where the pesticide gas leak killed all those people in the ’80s.

He told me his name when we first met, but his accent was so thick with West Africa that, whatever it was, I heard “Bhopal.” After that, for the month or two we knew each other, I would slightly mumble when I had to address him directly.

I met him on the street by Soi Ratchathewi near my apartment in Bangkok, Thailand. It was a sweat-hot night, as they all were. I’m built for bogs and ski resorts — I don’t know what I was thinking moving for four months to a city carved from jungle.

That’s a lie. I knew exactly what I was thinking. » Read the rest of this entry «

I have an idea. I want one of you to take it from me. » Read the rest of this entry «

I sipped from the little plastic cup as the bearded man with a skinny T-shirt that either advertised a band or a beer chattered on about ABVs and IBUs.

But I wanted RBIs. » Read the rest of this entry «

It’s a bright sort of darkness, the type city people confuse for the real thing.

Streetlamps and buses, trains and cars, glowing store signs and homes’ motion-activated security systems mean it will never get truly dark here.

No one’s going to stumble and cry out here, lost in an endless black. At worst they’ll look slightly up and a green sign off a lamppost will tell them if they’ve made it to Damen yet. » Read the rest of this entry «

It was a party. Friends and loved ones and a cake so heavily candled that it looks like wildfire in the photos popping up on Facebook this morning.

It was the first part of a weekend that’s taking me away from this city, this weird addictive city that can’t decide if it wants to treat us well or shoddy hour by hour.

I don’t know where I’m going. » Read the rest of this entry «

Bozo’s studio is full of barbecue grills, like five of them. » Read the rest of this entry «

He shuffled into the train, a thin, fussy old white man wearing New Balance sneakers over brown socks.

He wore light khakis. He wore a checked button-up shirt under a cardigan under another cardigan.

He looked around, his fine mustache twitching, and found a spot. From his canvas bag advertising the Environmental Law and Policy Center, he pulled a folded-over copy of the New York Times. He pushed his thin bifocals up on his nose, twitched the ‘stache a time or two more and proceeded to read the Times, article by article, in order. » Read the rest of this entry «

The white-throated sparrow is a migratory songbird that passes through Chicago in the spring and again in the fall. Its chirp sounds like “Oh sweet Canada, Canada, Canada,” according to the Chicago Botanic Garden website, so maybe that wasn’t the bird that greeted me in the morning.

But I like the bird all the same, the little tree-mice whose songs trickle from the skies, even in a city. » Read the rest of this entry «

It was our first time making risotto, and my first experience frying up a skillet of chicagos.

It’s ramp season in the Midwest, when the little onion-garlic goodies known as the ramp (Allium tricoccum) spring up for a few short weeks in forest preserves, gourmet restaurants and my girlfriend’s mom’s backyard.

It’s also the plant that named a city.

It starts with the word Chicag8. » Read the rest of this entry «

I recently came across several short pieces of fiction I wrote in my early 20s.

A few summaries:

• A time travel agency in Byzantium deals with fussy tourists.
• The Hamburglar gives a Scared Straight speech.
• Doctor Philo Morbulus and his race of atomic supermen run into Terry from high school.
• The punk rock detective love story of Parakeet and Mega Maude.
• A woman converts the entirety of her apartment into a Mold-A-Rama producing life-sized plastic gorillas. Also a love story. » Read the rest of this entry «