9:49 p.m. - November 14, 2001
absorbed
For one week, I stopped speaking completely. And for that one week, I did it because I was so sick of my own pretension. After all, how much can you confess about yourself, your room, your music, your past, especially your past, before it becomes somewhat of an overload? Someone told me I was self-absorbed, and I looked back at what I�d said, and realized they were right. So I stopped. It was midsummer, blazing hot, scorching silent days, just like me. A scorching silent daze.
During that week, I looked in the mirror a lot, to see if I looked any different with all these words bottled up inside me. I went down to the beach and sat down on the ridge of the sand, pretending I lived there. I drove to far north suburbia and back down Sheridan Road, thinking the whole time about how when I was about six, my mother said Sheridan Road never ended and I said it did, so she and I went driving for at least five hours down the road and, true to her word, it didn�t end. We came back and I was carsick. This time I wasn�t carsick, because I had music blasting the whole way, just a teenager and her knock-about car and her rock music. People did glare. I felt malevolent towards them, that people would dare to glare at me when I was on such a selfless mission as to try and stop being self-absorbed by not speaking for a week, and instead driving through their little town with my music. I think I got to Wisconsin.
Also, I wrote music. Music is a safe area because although it�s a way of self-expression, it�s a way of self-expression that doesn�t involve directly talking about yourself, so I figured it was all right if I wrote music, so long as I didn�t write lyrics. I didn�t write lyrics. I wrote drumbeats, mostly. I was lonely.
So towards the end of the week, Saturday, I think it was, I hopped in my car again, this time heading south, to the city. My throat hurt. I needed people. People who wouldn�t look at me and wonder why I was blasting music out of car windows, who wouldn�t wonder why I communicated through wild gestures, who had seen things much worse, like police raids, like muggings, like gang warfare, like car accidents right outside their window and more than their share of blood. Besides, in my quest to free myself of self-absorption, I was just hiding it, turning it inward. There is no interaction in playing music in a car, or in walking a beach, or in looking in a mirror. What should I have done in Chicago, continuing this pattern? Stayed glued to Lake Shore Drive and its high-rises like a flea to a dog? What good would that do? It wasn�t the time to be philosophical and stare at the rippling waves, writing insipid poetry. It was a time for interaction.
It was about 7:00 when I stepped into the small concert venue on N. Clark St. I�d parked nearby to get something from Subway, and saw it in the distance, kids lingering outside, smoking cigarettes, laughing, fixing their hair. It was only $6, and although I didn�t know any of the bands playing, I went in anyway. Despite the black floors and walls, and the smoky air and the ripped up floorboards and the makeshift first riser, when I closed my eyes I could see the operahouse it once was, many many years back. I liked it better now, its floors hollow and decrepit from years of dancing, the stout wall around the lightboard forming a square cutout in the dance floor. I sat back against the wall and watched the wild moshing, the crowd surfing. I wish I remembered who played that night. But I don�t.
A girl came up to me sometime in the rush, asked me if I would watch her boyfriend. What? Watch her what? She held him out in front of her, pushing him by the shoulders, an offering. I started to laugh, caught myself, smiled. Shrugged. He sat down, and she went back to dancing. �I�m not supposed to leave her while she�s dancing,� he said. �I mean, I can sit here, but I�m not supposed to leave the room.�
I nodded, imagining a ghost leash around his neck, the other end, somewhere, attached to the dancing girl. Come, Rover. He didn�t look like the doggy type.
�I mean, I know it sounds so weird,� he continued, self-consciously smoothing his hair. �I think she�s scared she�ll fall, or some drunk guy will come on to her. Or something. I�m supposed to play the hero and always be on watch to rescue. I guess.�
After I simply nodded, he fell silent and watched the crowd with me for awhile. He got stepped on, but I never did. I swear, an hour must have gone by because people were leaving and coming and leaving and the band switched, twice actually, but I was content just sitting there and watching the crowd move like a huge multilegged animal in front of the stage. The girl hadn�t returned. Presumably she was still inside the animal.
I was getting up to leave when the guy turned to me. �Um, can I go with you? I�m a little... trapped.�
I looked hard at him. My age. Crinkly blond hair, brown eyes, blue jeans. The messy look of an artist. And I shook my head, shrugged apologetically, and turned to go. I didn�t look back. I didn�t see his girlfriend, and by the time I got to my car, I still hadn�t sorted out why I would have come all the way to Chicago to.. I�d almost forgotten the reason... help lose my self-centeredness, and then, fittingly, refuse help to the only person who asked for it. Can I go with you. What was that supposed to mean? With you, away from my controlling girlfriend? A ride home? A proposition? Maybe he just wanted me to get him a glass of water. I�m so stupid. I should have asked.
I drove home down Lake Shore Drive, the flea attached to the dog again. What was the point? High-rises blinked their blank window eyes at me as I drove, mocking my earlier mockery of high-rises right back. Accordingly. Just to complete the picture, I drove a little too far, stopped in Wilmette, and sat on the beach,writing insipid poetry and self-reflecting. And the next morning, went to my best friend�s house to commiserate over life in general. Myself. Himself. I am self-absorbed, I am pretentious. Like always. If I can�t even offer help on a specific mission, then what is the point?

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