feel it with the hot mind on

I’m wenchy this morning, don’t cross me. The rest of the summer and fall stretches ahead, long and dull and eventless. It’s Monday, I’m back at work, and I kind of feel like I’m wearing a hoop skirt. WTF with fashion trends, people, WTF.

Good things from Chicago:

When you get married at a nature center, you get to have a polar bear watching over you, a guardian of your nuptials. I’m Lutheran. There was no polar bear at MY nuptials. I’m jealous.

Other thing(s) from Chicago:

Scenes from the El:

At Logan Square, a white-mesh-n-gold-foil tank-topped meth chick (let’s call her "Shaky") and her equally haggard balding-yet-curiously-spiky-haired lover ("Joe?") got on to regale the car with volleys of "fuck, dudes" and too-loud tales of woesome drug addiction. The couple counseled a third guy who seemed to know them casually, telling him he had a good job and to keep clean; Joe telling him "I just got out man, you don’t want to go in. I can’t get any job NOWHERE." The friend got off the train a few stops later, telling Joe and Shaky to hang tough.

The couple sitting in front of us, blondes carrying a set of matching red luggage, started to whisper.*

Joe was skeletal and over-tanned. Dusty black tear-away track pants and a beaded bracelet; a bicep tattoo of a jackrabbit holding the Mexican flag, underneath in fancy script: "Donna." Shaky, an over-dyed redhead with olive skin stretched tight over bone, started to freshen her makeup, putting on layers and layers of black eyeliner as the El rumbled along. She opened up a magnum-variety-case of lip glosses and squinted, Joe took the case from her and wiped off the gummy color-streaked mirror on his pant leg, and then held it out for her as she slathered some orangey-pink goop across her lips.

It was the most weirdly tender act I’ve seen in a long time.

The two got off at Cumberland, briefly touching hands, and as the train pulled away I saw Joe pause on the platform, and pull out an enormous bottle of pills from his pants pocket,

The couple sitting in front of us started to laugh quietly. The blonde wife pulled out an eyeliner stick and waved it at her husbands face. She made a comment about how "these are the people having children that shouldn’t be" and then turned and asked us where we were from. When I said DC, she said "You must be used to seeing things like that all the time."

A few minutes later, she talked about how unfriendly people were on the DC Metro, with their books and their newspapers and their IPods.

She bothered me more than I cared to admit it, and on the way to work this morning I figured it out- This was a woman relatively my age and income bracket. In less then ten minutes, we learned that she was a Democrat, had a good job, two children, and lived in an upwardly-mobile part of the country.*

It’s scary to see a part of yourself in such a holier-than-thou, unrepentant bitch.

For all she knew, I’m a former drug addict who’s barely keeping my life together.

Actually, maybe that's her past, too - her secret past; her contempt used as a disguise, hiding her former self from her golf-shirted husband, her towheaded spawn. Maybe. Looks are deceiving.

It was hard to think of a reaction - is it worth it to tell a complete a total stranger to fuck off, when you'll only be in their presence for five minutes?

Whatever. I kind of regret not saying anything, and maybe more than anything, that's why I'm in a bad mood this morning. Walk a mile/moccasins, babydoll. You know the drill.

* not chicago natives