I’ve got meatloaf in the oven. It’s making the house smell nice.
The Chicago trip was crazy fun as anticipated. On Monday, I got in early and took one of those naps that divides one day into two. When I woke up, Blake was there and Zach took us to Mr. Pollo where we ate good chicken and two different types of plantains. We met Ally at No Coast and friends began to filter in, Angeline and Johnny and Jac and Mary and Lindsay among them. I met Kathryn Regina and Sam Pink, who each read funny and good words. It was a small room and a standing crowd, which gave it a party feel, like everyone just happened to stop talking to listen to someone tell a story. The mic was doing some reverb stuff the whole time, but my story was supposed to be kind of awkward and overloud so I tried to work with it. Blake read from “The Ruined Child,” one of my favorites from Scorch Atlas. A band played, a dance party broke out, a hole appeared in my jeans. We went to a late-night Mexican place that served a small plate of meat with a corn tortilla warm over top as an appetizer, and brought us a dish of limes when they saw we had beers. I leave Texas and eat nothing but Mexican food, go figure.
The next day, I went to H&M and Kyle Beachy‘s class at the Art Institute, where I read from AM/PM and a new story and his smart students asked me good questions. We talked about artists and the Internet, blogs, David Foster Wallace, Wittgenstein, and ritual. I could tell that Kyle is a smart teacher and a good one. Then I went back to H&M, then Angeline and Johnny took me to eat the greatest chicken pot pie made by human hands and then it was off to Quickies, where I read with a whole host of excellent folk and nearly all of the Dollar Store Tour roster, including Aaron and Caroline, plus Richard Thomas, who I had met the night before. Lindsay Hunter read a hilarious story and made everyone excited that Featherproof is doing her book next year. I read over the allotted five minutes and they whistled me off the stage but I fought hard and took Hunter’s whistle away and threw an elbow at Hamilton.
In the morning, I had brunch with Zach, Mary, Blake, and Aaron. I ate salmon and regretted it later when I sat on an airplane next to a man wearing a weightlifter’s tank top and shorts and smelling distinctly like a squat rack.
I’m glad to have an excuse to go to Chicago more often than once a year. I do think that if I lived there, I would spend all my money on good food and all my time at the gym, working it off. Speaking of, it turns out that cumin in the glaze is a nice touch for meatloaf.
A drum circle seems to have broken out under my window. I think it’s important for me to write some fiction tonight.
