#’you were in wicker park?’ ‘yeah by Monroe’

[we-re-always-alright]

I’ve been watching the Shining Girls on and off because a) takes place in Chicago and b) do enjoy an Elizabeth Moss performance but. you can tell they got like some parts of Chicago right. but then other parts…. oof. painful for a local

[manicpixxiedreambitch]

Come on man, let me take you to my grandparents house. No, not THAT one. The house down the street from the public park. The brick house with the porch swing. Yeah no the one where you always hear wind chimes when you’re in the yard. The one with the old creaky floorboards that somehow always sound friendly. The house that feels like the personification of being a little kid falling asleep while you hear people laughing in another room. The one that smells faintly of cigarettes and aromatherapy and a hint of weed. Bro I’m talking about the one where you always hear some sort of old music playing in another room, and it’s such a tangy and savory and lively beat that you can feel it faintly shaking in the walls and the floorboards and the very air you are breathing. The one with the beautiful stained wood staircase. With all the abstract art? Yes, the one with all those cactuses and flowers in the flowerbed in the back yard, the backyard that’s surrounded by a wooden fence? The one with the lawn that’s always perfectly manicured. Yeah with the screen door on the back snaps shut loudly but somehow the sound feels like a hug. The one with the big basement, that had a small shrine to Marilyn Monroe and a big leather couch and a table for playing cards? The one that has the bathroom with the pink tiled walls and the black tiled floors with the big bathtub. Yeah you know how that bathroom has the mini vinyl records hanging on the wall? With the air conditioning that seems to be working perfectly all the time. I love how grandma has those cut glass ornaments hanging in the kitchen window. Remember when grandpa went up to those and spun them and we tried to catch the rainbows they flashed on the walls thinking they were fairies? I miss that. The kitchen was beautiful, with the multicolored tiles on the wall and the woven rugs. Grandma was always keeping that kitchen so clean. Yeah the one with the cement patio in the back yard that grandma kept so clean that she could bring out that popcorn machine and pop popcorn with the lid off and we’d try to catch it in our mouths and whatever ones we missed we could pick up off the ground and eat because we trusted that it was clean. Grandpa was always the best with the grill. Whenever you are in the kitchen or the back yard you can hear ice clinking up against the edges of a cup of iced green tea. The one with the grand piano that was almost never used. Yeah we could stay in my aunts old room, the light green one, with the big bed and the quilts, and the vanity desk that had the pretty beaded lamp. When we stay in that one you can crack the window and hear the outside evening while we get our pajamas on. Or if you prefer we could stay in my uncles old room, the beige-yellow one with the sports art on the wall. You can crack the window and hear the outside with that one, too, and you might have a better view, but for some reason I’ve never been able to sleep all that well in that room. The house where there is always at least one light on. The one with the red dining room that has that one silly Coney Island poster on the wall. Yeah with that big stained wood dining table? Though no matter how big that table was grandma and grandpa always had to put out another folding table in the living room. Yeah the living room, with the big windows that showed the street? And the fireplace, and the couch with the crochet blankets. And the wicker rocking chair that I was forbidden to sit in after a certain age. Yes, my grandparents house. The one that the whole family loves. Let’s go there.

[jerepars]

The Con Extended Chapter Notes

Hyperlinks appear in blue (underlined on mobile). The story is posted here. Direct link to this chapter is here.

> Air conditioning wasn’t all great in humidity. On the blue line, the mixed smell of sweat and air conditioning on the last day of August was an unpleasant smell that couldn’t be escaped. In theory, it could be ignored, but it lingered and it was always there until the humid heat went away. It was something I’d gotten used to quickly though. The combination of Chicago’s effective public transit system and location of the apartment I shared with my brother made me a nearly daily “L” train rider. After a whole day of ballet rehearsal, it was very convenient that the distance between the station at Jefferson Park and the door to our building was a mere seven-minute bus ride plus four-minute walk away.

If you've ever wondered why the rapid transit system in Chicago is called the "L" train, it is in reference to the parts of the rail that are elevated. It's also a bit of a misnomer because there are major portions underground (subway) and at grade.

Here's a simplified diagram of the CTA blue line (the real thing is not at all in a straight line):

Betty and Chic's apartment is in between the stations at Jefferson Park and Harlem, but using only transit, with a bus ride home after taking the L, Jefferson Park would be the closest. Betty is traveling downtown to any of the Loop stations: Jackson, Monroe, Washington. Probably Washington, which I think is closest to Joffrey Tower. It's about a 30 minute commute.

Shoot, is this how out of hand my notes have become? I'm using visual aids? Jeez. Somebody stop me.

> Now granted, Norwood Park didn’t exactly have the same allure or price tag as Wicker Park or Lakeview, but living where we did meant my corps de ballet salary didn’t need to be stretched thin. Besides, I liked the simple honesty of our neighborhood. It wasn’t a hipster community trying to be something it wasn’t, it wasn’t under process of gentrification, and it wasn’t millennials living beyond their means. It was a blue-collar neighborhood of the middle class, immigrants, and firemen. It was within city limits but bordered the sprawling forests of the suburbs. I liked that our local supermarket sold fresh pierogi and kolaczki. I liked the selection at the Italian deli and the Irish pub that always had Blackhawks games on under the hum of workweek drinking, from October through the playoffs in the spring.

I actually looked up corps de ballet salaries and found an article from Pointe Magazine from 2013 that gave average salary for corps members in their first year. Betty isn't a first year corps member, so I would hope she makes a little more. But even so, there are bills to pay. I lived in Chicago for a little bit, and from doing apartment hunting myself when I got there, I know getting further away from downtown does make a difference in rental cost. My favorite neighborhood in Chicago is Wicker Park but there's just no way they could afford to live there with the disparity in income between Betty and Chic. And not to take a shot at Logan Square talking about hipsters and gentrification and millennials, because I do like Logan Square, but there was no way I was going to have them live there, either.

> Chic and I had lived in our apartment since I got out of the Joffrey Academy dorms. Our current digs had always felt like an upgrade to me. Sure, the dorms had been right downtown in The Loop, and at the time I’d appreciated the quick jog to class during the months of the stalking Chicago winter, but it hadn’t been that fun to live there when I was underage. Anyway, the heart of Chicago was in its neighborhoods, each with their own hidden spots, their history, their culture. I much preferred living in a real neighborhood over one surrounded by high-rise office buildings and the tourist fare of State Street.

Technically, "The Loop" is a community in Chicago and technically there are neighborhoods within the Loop. But to only ever see the Loop doesn't give a realistic impression of the rich culture that the neighborhoods around the city boast.

> I quickly went from feeling bad that I potentially smelled like the piss and vinegar of the L to wanting to kick him in the shin. It was one thing for him to not notice me. It was another for him to say, in kinder terms, that I looked like shit. That was so much worse.

I figured I would mention this now, because I'm sure it will come up at some point in the notes for the coming chapters, the title of the previous version of this story was Shell Games. I think it's better for me to just call it by its title rather than always saying "the previous version of this story". Anyway, Shell Games was named after the song "Shell Games" by Bright Eyes. I know there's an idiom, "full of piss and vinegar," meaning (in Google's terms) aggressive energy. I think it works with a double meaning here, because the blue line can be spunky in both smell and passenger attitude. But back to the song: there's a line in the song that goes sold my tortured youth, piss and vinegar, I'm still angry with no reason to be. So I guess I'm alluding to both the song and the old story in this instance.

> It had been a while since the last time I’d seen Jughead’s sister. The last time I’d seen him was at my parents’ Fourth of July barbeque. I’d been so busy ogling him from afar and avoiding being around him that I hadn’t even thought to ask him about her academic future with their financial situation.

> “Well, technically I have to take a bus from the airport to the campus. I’m going to Miami of Ohio.” Jellybean clarified. “And classes started this week already. I’m on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday-only schedule. Four day weekend every weekend! Jug helped me pick my classes.”

This is now the second time Betty's made mention of Jughead's financial situation without specifying exactly what it is. I have my reasons. A lot is revealed about Jughead, and what she knows about Jughead, in the third chapter.

Jellybean's college is Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. It's often referred to as Miami of Ohio. It's about 40 miles from the Cincinnati airport. The reason I know anything about this school is because I'm hockey obsessed and I know they have an NCAA Division I men's hockey team. I hear the name, Miami of Ohio, a lot in June around NHL draft time. Notable NHL alumni: Dan Boyle, Alec Martinez, Reilly Smith, Tommy Wingels.

So yeah, I figured why not put that useless knowledge to use.

> Funny, by looking at him, I hadn’t thought he was disheveled or unnerved in any way from the trip. But she was right. I did know Jughead very well from over the years. I knew he hadn’t even been on a plane until after his sophomore year of college, when he’d had a six-week summer internship in California. I knew he had a fear of heights. One time, the same year he met Chic, he’d climbed to the top of the monkey bars on an empty playground and sat there reading for hours. At first it was because it was the only quiet spot he could find, but in the end, he stayed up there because he was scared once he saw the distance to the ground. The only exception to his fear had been his boyhood tree house; solid wood and made just for him, a fortress fit for a prince with a crowned hat on his head.

This is just like the financial situation. There's a reason I introduced this fact about Jughead here. It will matter later on in the story. Can I just go ahead and say there's always a reason for the content I put into the story? I don't believe in filler so if I put something in there, it has a purpose.

> Fred owned a construction company and Jughead’s dad, FP, worked with him when we were all younger. Fred and FP had been friends and, as luck would have it, their sons became friends. I remembered seeing Archie hanging around with Jughead when he came to visit Fred. Their friendship was different than the infamous Cooper and Jones duo, and not just because Jughead was a few years older. The camaraderie was more in the vein of brotherhood than close friendship. Cooper and Jones were best friends, yin and yang, light and dark, but never the same. The Andrews had always treated Jughead like an extension of their family.

There's a distinction between brothers and friends. Brothers can be friends. Friends can be brothers. Friends can become brothers. But they aren't the same thing.

> Archie had preceded all of us in Chicago, even me, the early adopter. I’d run into him around town a few times over the years, but it was a big enough city that our paths rarely crossed. I’d never gotten to know him in Riverdale since he was so young when he moved away, and even when he would visit, I only knew of him because of Jughead. When we crossed paths in Chicago it was always a casual hello but nothing like friends catching up. So we didn’t really know anything about each other’s current lives.

In 1x02, there's a scene where Archie walks Veronica home and tells her about his friendship with Betty from age 4. I think it's very telling as to why in the pilot episode Betty felt she was in love with Archie. And I was thinking that if that held true in this story, if Archie had been there all along, it would still be him that she thought she had a crush on when she left Riverdale for ballet. So the necessary change, for the premise of her crushing on Chic's best friend, Jughead, was to take Archie out of the equation in the elementary years. It's from canon that we know Mary Andrews lives in Chicago, so if Archie was a little kid when the Andrews had their marital troubles, and if Mary and Fred had gotten divorced when he was at that age, then yeah, I think he would have stayed and grown up in Chicago.

By taking Archie out of the equation when they're children, it means Betty wouldn't have made an effort to stay friends with him and in fact, she probably couldn't have. I don't think many kids aged 4-6 have long distance friendships to the point where they'd consider that person their best friend (not trying to make a blanket statement, of course, if you know a 4-year-old with a very meaningful long distance friendship, that's fantastic). I think it makes sense for Archie to still have been Jughead's friend, because of Fred and FP when he visited Fred.

In the notes for the prologue I mentioned that Archie would have an important role in this story. The kind of role he plays will be revealed in the next chapter. This unfamiliarity Betty and Archie have with each other has significance to his role.

> But I didn’t correct Jughead this time. I was more distracted by his implication that Archie might want to hit on me. It wasn’t often he did it, since I hesitated to be around him, but it always bummed me out when Jughead went into protective older brother mode for me, like Jellybean and I were the same to him. The thought of him using some machismo I swear to God, I’ll end you defense of my honor only appealed to me in the context of jealousy. Except Jughead didn’t have machismo tendencies. He certainly wasn’t jealous of anyone hitting on me, either. And I didn’t care about his friends hitting on me. I wanted him to hit on me.

I don't really know how this happened but I was thinking about parallels between Jughead and Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights (the show, not the movie), because there are some. My favorite episode of FNL is 2x10, "There Goes The Neighborhood", because Tim's heart always seems to be in the right place, the execution just seems to always goes awry for him.

So I watched that episode again for a chunk of my editing and it just made me want to make reference to it in this chapter somehow. "I swear to God, I'll end you" is what Tim says to the kid trying to score with Julie at the party they go to. Here's a gifset of the scene. And here's the specific frame:

> Back in July, at the Cooper barbeque on Independence Day, Jughead confirmed he would be starting his Writing MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall. Chic had told me about Jughead’s acceptance to SAIC last spring, and that he’d paid the deposit to hold his spot, but it didn’t really, truly settle with me that he’d be invading our lives until they were talking about scouting out places for him to live and the ins and outs of the Chicago Transit Authority as they ate their grilled hot dogs.

And now we know what school Jughead is going to. FYI, SAIC is in no way affiliated with the for-profit colleges called The Art Institutes. SAIC is a legit private art school associated with The Art Institute of Chicago, which is a museum, not a for-profit college. An art school with an MFA in Writing. So Jughead is technically going to art grad school? HA.

(Again, I didn't just pull this out of a hat. I chose this for him for a reason to be revealed later.)

I said I wasn't going to jump the gun and answer unanswered questions because the first chapter would take care of it. Um. Have I actually just sprinkled more questions into the mix? Oops.

Maybe it's because I know this story so well, but I feel like things need to be revealed and questions about the characters need to be answered at certain, specific points in the story (isn't that what's supposed to happen in a good story in general?) (not that I'm saying this is a good story). So I'll just stay tight-lipped. All in good time.

[theliterateape]

Why Worry When You can Sail or do Whatever Makes You Happy

By David Himmel

If we had asked for a better day, the gods would have descended from the heavens and risen from the seas to pimp slap the teeth out of our mouths. We’d have deserved it. We’d have been greedy.

We bought a 28-foot Benetau Oceanis sailboat. Used. Old. Built in 1995. It's a beauty. The previous owner stored it in Kenosha, and Dad and I were bringing it home to Monroe Harbor via an estimated 10-hour trip straight south along the shoreline. (We made it in just under 10 hours. Neat.) The sky was cloudless. The water was without swells. The wind, however, was blowing northeast, which was the opposite direction of where we were headed. So we motored most of the way. I’d have preferred to tack up to Muskegon then head straight into the harbor but Dad was right in suggesting we use our time to get our new boat home. Tacking would have filled our Memorial Day Weekend, and I have a wife and an infant, and Dad has a wife who loves having him around. Oh well. 

“If you don’t have a destination, sailing is the way to go,” he said.

“Tell that to Christopher Columbus,” I argued.

“Columbus missed his destination point,” Dad countered successfully.

"And then he ruined everything," I said rightfully like a smug SJW.

Though I would have preferred to be under sail rather than motor, it was 10 hours of the most incredible hours of my life.

I’m made for the water. Made for a life at sea. It runs contrary to my decade living in the desert, and a life resigned to typing on a plugged in MacBook Pro in Wicker Park instead of eeking by as the captain of a chartered schooner in the Caribbean. But I grew up on boats. We had a small outboard speed boat when I was a little kid. At summer camp, I preferred lakefront activities like canoeing, skiing and sailing to the land-based fun like golf and basketball. I taught sailing at that same summer camp and was waterfront director for two seasons. Sailing is me at my most Zen.

It calms me. The quiet noise of the wind filling the main and jib. The creak of the hull as it heels. The splashing of the water against the hull as you cut through on a broad, beam or close reach. And my god… if you can run with the wind… I have a wooden sign that has hung in every home I’ve had since 2003 that says, “Why Worry When I can Sail.” That’s the truth. Even when things go awry, I’m calm. Problem solving at sea is my forte. To be one with the elements, to be among the waters and sun and my own thoughts is to be happy.

Cue Christopher Cross, or N’Sync, if you prefer that jam.

We named the boat Knot Write. Because boat names are best when they’re puns. It’s not the only boat we own. Dad’s got a 38-foot Carver cruiser he keeps in Hammond Marina. It’s a beautiful beast and one could easily live on it, if one is OK to forgo all the crap landlubbers tend to collect and hold on to. Dad finds calm and happiness in boating, too.

Lucky us. Because everyone should have something that makes them happy. Something that brings them joy. Something that calms their nerves and pushes out the constraints of the anxiety and depression that haunts daily life. For me, that’s sailing. And I’m fortunate that my daddy earned enough money in his career as an attorney and slum lord to purchase such pleasure. Yeah, I’m one foreskin away from being a rich WASP.

Dad and I always had an unspoken agreement that he would buy the power boat and I’d buy the sailboat. When we purchased Knot Write, I was gainfully employed at a company that paid me enough to be Boat Rich. The layoff that occurred a month after we signed the papers put a damper on that agreement—as if my father would let me pay for anything anyway. Just as I won’t let my son, Harry, pay for anything as long as I can afford it. Providing joy, monetarily or otherwise, to a child is a father’s job.

And I realize that not everyone is as fortunate or privileged as I am. Not everyone has a Boat Rich daddy. But everyone should find the thing that gives them the kind of calm joy sailing gives me. It doesn’t matter what it is.

If you’re unemployed or underpaid, maybe you scrounge together 50 bucks for a bit of weed, get stoned and read the work of Lewis Carroll. If you’re trapped on Chicago’s Westside, maybe reporting Chicago Police squad cars parked illegally while the officers eat lunch at Chipotle is your thing. I don’t know. I can’t speak for you. I don’t know your situation, and frankly, I don’t care. All I want is for you to have something, anything, that you can do that takes you away from your troubles and brings you a grin wide enough to make you look like a stupid idiot. Because when we’re really, really happy, we all look like stupid idiots. Want to see Don Hall look like a stupid idiot? Go on a road trip with him.

Granted, I might sound like a spoiled, entitled white boy with a rich daddy. But I’m not. Spoiled, entitled, rich kids don’t appreciate their fortune or luck. And all that fortune and luck I have is not lost on me. I'm ever grateful for all I have and has been provided for me. Boats, summer camp, college, good health, a hot wife, a kid better looking than yours, a mom hotter than yours... We use our boats for good when we can. Both the power boat—Son Spot, Too—and, already, Knot Write are offered up as auction items at charitable organizations' events. Four-hour cruises on Lake Michigan tend to bring in lots of money for good causes that help those who cannot help themselves. And we invite friends and family out for Navy Pier fireworks and the Air and Water Show, and beautiful, summer days on the water with nothing to do but kick back, relax and coast along the Third Coast.

If you’ve read this and are thinking, “David Himmel is a prick. Rich, Jew prick,” well, OK. But fuck you. Because you’re missing the point. I’m simply telling you about my thing that gives me an escape and brings me happiness, and I am encouraging you to do the same. You want a sailboat but can’t afford it, OK. Set a goal. Be my dad. Be me, I guess. Every dollar I earn and try to earn is so I can pay for a boat, and house and feed my family. Be the person who wants something and gets it. It doesn’t have to be a 28-foot 1995 sailboat. It can be a Sunfish. Those are much more affordable, though we did get a killer deal on Knot Write. Or, and here’s where shit gets real exciting, ask me for a boat ride. What good is a boat if you can’t sail with friends? No good, that’s what.

Otherwise, or in addition to, find your thing. Do your thing. Escape. Make yourself happy.

And now that I’ve come clean about this whole Boating is Life thing, perhaps you’ll understand why I’m such a miserable cunt during the winter. And that’s why I tell myself, “Why worry when I can sail.” You should tell yourself, “Why worry when I can do whatever it is that makes me happy.” There’s always something. There’s always a way. You need to be fortunate or wily enough to find it, and when you do, you’ll find your way to true joy.

BONUS CHRISTOPHER CROSS FEATURING MICHAEL MCDONALD!