CHICAGO CARLESS

-Posted in ADD & Me | Backstory

(Photo: Sometimes the roof has to cave in before you can finally see blue sky. The Igreja do Carmo, Lisbon, Portugal.)

When is a neurological disorder a gift? The answer to that depends on whom you ask. If you asked me a few weeks ago, I'd have said never--and why are you asking me such a silly question, anyway?

If you asked Dr. Edward Hallowell, the country's leading author on Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), you'd get a different answer. For Hallowell, ADD (well, technically ADHD ever since the DSM-IV threw hyperactivity into the acronym) is better off seen as a gift for those who have it. I'm not entirely sure if that’s comforting, especially for those who don't learn they have ADD until long into adulthood.

Like me, for example.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. A lot of people write off ADD as a mythical disorder, or one that only afflicts children and somehow magically disappears in adulthood. Neither is true, of course (as Hallowell would say, there is no "adult-onset" ADD). Trouble is, the differences that mark an ADDer's brain and behaviors can be hard to fathom for those unfamiliar with the condition.

ADDitude Magazine, a great ADD resource, offers a lot of detailed information about what ADD is, including a FAQ, a checklist of symptoms, and answers to common misperceptions about the condition.

But the simple gist of ADD is a brain that is "hardwired" differently than normal. Due to specific physical differences in an ADDer's brain that affect the way dopamine and other neurotransmitters are used, when someone with ADD tries to perform tasks involving attention, prioritization, or judgment, the parts of their brain that govern such tasks shut down from the overload--tune out, if you will. As a result, inattentiveness, hyperactivity (or fidgeting and restlessness in adults), and impulsive behavior take over.

Among the things ADDers find it hard to do without some form of external assistance: pay attention to uninteresting tasks; fight distraction; fight forgetfulness; correctly understand and manage time; assign priorities; follow through on tasks; fight procrastination; and censor their initial impulses to speak or act.

That takes a toll on happiness and success. It's a common mantra in ADD circles (and I've certainly heard it throughout my life) that those with the disorder are always told to "try harder" because they're not fulfilling their potential. And they aren't, of course.

But it's not a lack of effort that keeps many ADDers from getting ahead in life, it's actual inability to perform specific tasks due to the way their brains work, especially if, like most people with ADD, they don't know they even have the condition. Telling someone with ADD to "try harder" is like telling a nearsighted person to "squint harder": it's not only ignorant advice, it's also completely unhelpful.

It was the sheer stress of living unaware with Adult ADD that let me to explore my symptoms. Saddled this year with the most complex, time-sensitive project management job I'd ever had, I began to blow it big time. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why. As hard as I tried, I couldn't pull my act together enough to set priorities, manage deadlines, or follow-through. I just kept becoming overwhelmed and mentally dropping out.

I had felt a similar way many times before. Never as intensely, but throughout my life my problems with time, prioritizing, and procrastinating are the stuff of legend. So are the many failures in academics, work, and love that have resulted from them.

But this time, I was completely falling apart. I looked to my friends for clues. Two among them happen to have ADD. On a lark, I Googled the disorder. The first site I found was the Attention Deficit Disorder Association. I read their FAQ. It all sounded a little too familiar. Especially the symptoms and the toll ADD takes on those who have it.

Unnerved, I wanted to read more. I spent hours exploring through leading ADD websites (the best of which I've listed at the end of this article) and perusing bookstore and library psychology sections (the currently definitive work being Hallowell and Ratey's life-affirming Delivered from Distraction).

But it was those damned online self-tests that really made my jaw drop. All the disclaimers suggested you seek a professional evaluation if your score was over a certain number. None of the small print offered any consolation, however, when I found myself uncomfortable acing every single screening I took. Among the self-tests whose scores I maxed:

--The World Health Organization ADD symptom checklist;
--The Dr. Daniel Amen self test;
--The Jasper/Goldberg ADD screening; and
--The ADDittude Magazine self test.

Before I was convinced enough to make an appointment with a mental-health professional, though, I figured I'd take a peek first in the DSM-IV, the bible of the American Psychiatric Association, for the official symptom checklist.

Symptoms for more than six months, appearing in childhood, and disturbing your life in more than one domain (work, home, school, etc.)? Check.

At least six symptoms of inattention. Check…for all nine.

Or at least six symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsivity. Check…for all of them. All of them? Again? Every single symptom??

WTF??

So I made an appointment. And thoroughly freaked out. Who wouldn't be disturbed to discover that the problems which they fought everyday, and which they thought everyone fought everyday, exactly matched the symptoms of a lifelong chronic neurological disorder?

Given the number of therapists--not to mention neurologists--I was sent to as a kid to try to overcome the "emotional problems" of growing up in a dysfunctional family, I couldn't believe they never caught that my problems were more likely brain based.

I mean, little kids don't yelp and yodel until they're checked for Tourette Syndrome (an occasionally associated disorder for children with ADD) solely due to emotional problems. Neither do bigger kids in gifted-and-talented middle schools and, eventually, selective high schools get left behind repeatedly only because of a difficult family life. (Let's not even go into that third semester as an undergrad). But they do because of ADD.

Yet, because my childhood therapists labeled my problems as "emotional", it took me half of my life to even suspect that they weren't. And not finding out about my ADD until adulthood robbed me of the chance to spend my life learning how to managing the condition.

So for the moment, life sucked.

On the other hand, at least I knew what I was up against, and knowledge is power. According to Hallowell and many other ADD commentators, those with the disorder also tend to be highly creative and interesting, easily able to grasp the "big picture" and solve problems intutively. It's kind of a happy side-effect of being highly distractable.

They also tend to have an uncanny ability to hyperfocus on favorite subjects and tasks. That can be a liability if ADDers focus on Internet surfing until 3 a.m. (note the time of this post). But harnessed well, it can be a powerful asset to keep them almost insanely on task and productive for hours on end.

For newly aware ADDers like me, hyperfocus is a little like waking up and finding out you have a super power--but one that you have to struggle to use for good. That got me wondering maybe Hallowell was onto something by concentrating on the strengths of ADDers.

And that brings me to last weekend. It was in a south-suburban Red Robin where I had the fortune to dine with my hip suburban friend Val and her sister, Bridget. Now, Bridget has multiple sclerosis, a really heavy duty neurological disorder, and she's very open about it. I had to ask.

"What's the best part about having M.S.? How has having M.S. made your life better?"

Bridget's answer astounded me. She thought for a long while, and said, "It's taught me what's important in life, what to concentrate on. My family, my daughter, the things that really matter. I don't think other people my age really know what to value in life. But M.S. showed my how to do that."

And then it was my turn. "What about you?" she asked. "What's the best part about learning you have ADD?"

I, too, thought awhile before I answered. I considered all the research I'd read, my week-long freakout, the sense of peace that followed it. And then I saw the gift.

"I get to know who I am now," I said. "I get to know why I'm good at the things I'm good at, and why I'm not at the things I'm not. I get to stop blaming myself for my past and for the state my life's in. I get to learn how I can manage my symptoms and improve my life. Now I can concentrate on my strengths, get help for my weak areas, and stop trying to be something I'm not. For the first time in my life, now I get to live up to my potential."

Finally.

Not that it's gonna come easy. For example, a few weeks ago you couldn't pay me to go near fish oil or to correctly spell the amino acid, L-tyrosine, or the phospholipid, phosphatidylserene. And now a morning just isn't a morning unless my B-3, B-6, and Zinc-laden multivitamin, Ginkgo, and St. Johns Wort have the aforementioned triple chasers. (It works for me).

And it certainly feels weird to now schedule my life and every single task, appointment, and allegedly mental note that I want to (or, let's be real, have any hope to) remember, through iCal (your personal daily planner flavor may vary).

It's like downloading your brain to paper, but a very useful effort for brains like mine that don't want to be bothered with remembering such mundane activities as feeding the cat or paying the electric bill on a regular basis. And as long as it works, I'll keep at it, too.

While I continue to learn about life with ADD, I want to thank my friends and readers who have offered to write their stories here on CHICAGO CARLESS in the wake of my earlier, course-changing post. I owe you all a drink. And if I blank on your name while we're out lifting a Guinness or show up half an hour late, please don't take it personally.

I probably just got distracted.

Below are some of my favorite ADD/ADHD resources...

--ADDitude Magazine;
--Tara McGillicuddy's My ADD / ADHD Blog;
--Edward Hallowell and Melissa Orlov's ADHD & Marriage;
--Erin Moore's So I Married an ADDer;
--Jennifer Koretsky's The ADD Business Owner;
--"Jeff"'s thought-provoking Jeff's A.D.D. Mind;
--The ADD public forums ADHD Message Boards and ADD Forums; and
--The membership organization, Children & Adults with ADD (CHADD).

Posted by Mike at 02:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | Daily Grind

(Photo: Desculpe, pode me dizer onde fica o Bean?)

It had to happen sometime. Last weekend, after five years of my Chicago life--and for the first time ever in his--Jose visited me in Chicago. That's "joe-ZAY", so pronounce it right in your head when you read it. My best friend from my adult years in New York. My Portuguese connection.

It was a little bit of a dream come true.

Any Midwest-living former New Yorker knows how hard it can be to get Gotham friends to visit you in alleged flyover territory. And if there is anything I regret from my own flight from New York, it's having turned my back on the Portuguese language and culture that had been so dear to me and is so prevalent on the east coast. (Apologies to the Second City's non-Lusitanian Lusophones, but an abundance of Brazilian steakhouses just doesn't cut it).

When we were both in Gotahm, Jose and I used to trip together. We've bummed around Portugal, Paris, and London and with the greatest of ease. That's likely because we tend to "trip" to the same things: art; museums; churches; and eating like local pigs (we qualify all vacation meals that involve only one course as snacks--and you know you want to adopt this policy, too).

Zay and I have seen each other every now and then since I left New York. But he, too, has long since departed the Big Apple for New Jersey's greener and suburban pastures. He's managed to get me to explore his new stomping grounds. Last weekend, finally, was my chance to show him where I've been for the past half-decade, and why.

Jose was here for a conference, so we only had Sunday, one day, and a rainy one at that, to see it all--and on top of that, my boyfriend, Chris, was under the weather and couldn't come out to meet Zay. (The gods of fado surely got a kick out of those annoying twists of fate).

It was a whirlwind tour of the Loop with umbrellas and wet shoes. It was a familiar setup, our rainy first day in Paris was like that in April 2000. At least this time the locals were nicer. We started with the 61st-floor roofdeck at my Marina City abode. To Zay's credit, the words, "It's so small," never emerged from his mouth in reference to the skyline. He was amazed by the quality and variety of Chitown's architecture. Being Portuguese, a man with seafaring in his DNA, he was in love with the lake. Or at least the sliver of it he could see through the mist.

Back on terra firma, I dragged him through the Loop to see that architecture up close, then plopped him on the 'L' for a slow train to Randolph to see the Art Institute. Ah, the good old days. Our three hours there recalled every hour we ever spent together at Janelas Verdes, the Gulbenkian, the Louvre. It was nice to know that Chicago art had European credibility for Jose. Those Lusitanians can be tough critics.

OK, art down. But what to do for churches in the Loop? First United Methodist's skyscraper-tall church is impressive from the outside, but the sanctuary is under renovation at the moment. The former Marshall Field's Tiffany dome and atrium and the dripping opulence of the Chicago Cultural Center served as wonderful stand-ins. (And the former provided a wonderful opportunity to introduce Zay to the Frango!)

Of all the things we did, though, most of all Jose wanted his picture taken in front of Millennium Park's most popular reflective giant glob of metal. I obliged, thankful he didn't say Navy Pier. We walked through the park talking about the funny contradictions that make up Chicago: an overly friendly big city; an international city where every local citizen feels ownership of downtown and inclusion in the city's cultural life. A city unlike our common former home.

As the day went on, I could tell Zay was getting it, starting to touch what Chicago is all about and why I found it so seductive that I gave up New York in almost record time to relocate here when I did.

But no one understands this town without deep dish, and no town makes deep dish like Chicago does. As any local who's ever been anywhere knows, supposed "Chicago pizza" outside of the Second City is nothing more than a dry, stale mess. So we ended our day at Due, after an uneventful walk up the inaptly named half-mile long Magnificent Mile ("That's it? I expected it to be longer").

Zay tore into the soupy, tomato-sauce drowned topping of our everything pizza. It brought back memories of every vacation meal we had ever shared. But times have changed.

"It's not the same as mussels and clams."

No argument there. I would have preferred to be supping with Zay on Mocambicano giant spicy shrimp at Baleal in the heart of Lisboa's Baixa, myself. But wise men take what life gives them and find the fulfilling in it if they can. I smiled and agreed. We both continued to attack the pizza.

Chicago dogs will have to be saved for the next visit. Knowing how long it took for Jose to visit this time, I may have to import them--and Chris--to New Jersey if Zay is ever to become familiar with either one. I hope he does. It would mean a lot to me if someday my New York and Chicago lives didn't feel so firewalled away from each other.

I said the same to Chris as I cried in his arms that night. Trying to find a way to help my heart reconcile what used to be with what is, saudade had come to find me. Another old Lusitanian friend, she's one I don't have to show around town. Like Jose and me, we go way back. She's the longing of Portuguese blues, and the only way out of her wily grasp is to resolve yourself to look forward.

So Chris and I resolved ourselves to take Jose up on his offer and visit him and his boyfriend, Anthony, in New Jersey. Eventually. I do have a boyfriend's mother to meet in California first (not to mention a trip to my non-Portuguese center of the universe, Disneyland). But we'll make it there.

And so will the Chicago dogs.

Posted by Mike at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

-Posted in ADD & Me | Backstory

(Photo: Never let the vehicle deter you from the road you want to follow.)

Last night during Community Media Workshop's 2008 Studs Terkel Awards at the Chicago Cultural Center, one of the winners, Sylvia Rivera, the general manager of bilingual public radio station Radio Arte, shared this comment from the stage:

"You write the story of your life. You create your own legend."

In two sentences, Rivera described my dilemma.

I recently learned I may have a chronic neurological disorder that has been with me since birth. It's a not uncommon problem for which there are several very effective treatment and management options, but no cure. Assuming I have it, the condition affects every moment of my day and will require me to rethink the way I manage my life. Based on my symptoms--which, as it turns out, have been lifelong--I don't expect any surprises to come from the evaluation I'm scheduled to have later this month.

Eh, at least it won't kill me. But what do you do when you find out the person you've chronicled for so long may not be who you really are? How does one surf that kind of segue in the story?

Having my selfish, mundane identity crisis mirrored back to me at an award ceremony named for a storyteller famed for keeping things real was almost painfully ironic, but in a weird way, somehow inspirational.

I have Chicago Sun-Times opinion page editor Tom McNamee to thank for that. Another of the evening's awardees, during his comments he disclosed the deeply selfish, mundane roots of his writing: to feel a connection with the world. The mundane world of common people with problems so ordinary that they cannot help but speak to everyone, reader and storyteller included.

McNamee could just as easily have been speaking about bloggers. It's no secret we're a selfish lot, and if we weren't interested in identifying with those we share this world with, our journals would be of the private pen and paper sort, not the public post and publish variety.

And we're nothing if not ordinary. I find myself lately ending my evenings wondering when I'm finally going to cry over a looming but still only potential diagnosis. I can't decide whether that kind of inanity in a world that, as the evening's third award winner, Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice, noted has far more perilous problems that need tending to, makes me boring or laughable.

Or maybe it just makes me human. Anyone who knows me will tell you how hard-pressed it is for me to admit that particular diagnosis.

Here's my segue. I'm tired of living by the tyranny of a self-imposed editorial calendar that I never get around to. At this moment in time, I really couldn’t care less about opining on the Children's Museum move, ranting about some perceived civic slight, or Photoshopping a graphic of Brendan Reilly in a caving helmet.

Rivera's right. We are responsible for our own stories, and leaving behind such a cynical legend is not a legacy I'm interested in. There are far more ordinary and important tales to tell.

CHICAGO CARLESS is officially changing gears. I want to know more about the people with whom I share my beloved adopted hometown. It's a connection I need right now, to put my own problems in perspective. Along with my own story, I want to share the stories of other ordinary Chicagoans on these pages, too. I'll be writing about some of them and others will tell you their stories in their own words.

I may suck at what I'm about to try here. I may not. Heck, given what I've learned about myself lately, I may very well have no idea where my true strengths lie.

And it's comforting to know that's about as ordinary as it gets.

Posted by Mike at 05:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

-Posted in Backstory

(Photo: How long does it take to admit what you no longer are...and what you've become?)

Lately I've been wondering about my place in the world. Maybe it's the New Yorker in me that keeps bringing that question up. New York has long history of considering itself the center of the universe. Take a New Yorker out of Gotham and he's bound to feel disoriented.

On the other hand, maybe it's what I've become that's truly at the heart of the matter. Five years in Chicago is enough to change anyone. I'm long past the point of going local, and just beyond the bend of settling in. Most likely, I'll be on these Lake Michigan shores for a long time to come.

Exhibit: nail. And I think I've just hit it on the head. When do you become a Chicagoan? At what point can you say--and will native citizens let you say--that you have become an adopted son of this first-rate Second City? What trials by fire are necessary? What oaths of fealty are required?

Why is it so important to me to have an answer?

The Buddhist in me hates me for saying so, but we all want something to cling to. Some bedrock piece of identity to point to and say, "This is who I am." Something about ourselves, our pasts, and our futures that we can rely on if we can rely on nothing else. Terra firma.

In New York, say you're a New Yorker and no one questions you. Hell, you become a New Yorker just by showing up. Natives know the city is most folk's idea of a nice place to visit that you wouldn't want to live in. They know the difficulty of dealing every day with the cost, and the stress, and the neuroticism of the city. Anyone who wants to join in that struggle gets to wear the badge of honor of being a bona fide New Yorker the day that moving van arrives in Astoria.

Chicago is another story. Living in the shadow of bigger urban brethren to the east and west, it's more common for Second Citizens to circle the civic wagons and draw a distinction between native sons and daughters and those who aren't. Maybe it's a natural reaction to being upstaged in the national consciousness by cities that to my mind just don't measure up to the one I call home.

On the other hand, drawing a distinction between Chicagoans by birth and Chicagoans by choice could just be the result of surprise. Let's face it, how sane can anyone be who adopts as his home a place with a six-month winter? (I always say, Chicago taught me what cold is: in New York, 20 degrees keeps us indoors; in Chicago, 20 degrees opens our coats to the heat wave).

Yet so many are drawn to Chicago and stay. Generations of families, tens of thousands of families, began here with the arrival of immigrant parents from Italy and Ireland and Poland and Mexico. When innumerable Midwestern farm kids and children from teeny, tiny prairie towns go to sleep at night and dream of someday finding fame and fortune in the big city, it's the Windy City that billows through many young minds.

And very occasionally a New Yorker finds his way here, too.

How long does it take for them all to become Chicagoans? Years? Lifetimes? Generations?

Perhaps time is not the best litmus test of a new Chicagoan. Maybe it's something deeper. I confess, 32 years in New York City never instilled in me a sense of civic pride. I loved the bigness of it all, and being able to get my proverbial bagel at three in the morning. But I could stand in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and gaze for hours back at the Manhattan skyline and feel impressed. But not moved.

And the heart of the matter is, Chicago moves me. I've pondered why on this blog for years. But that's not the point. What matters is I can stand on the roof of Marina City after sunset on a warm summer night, gaze out across the great, flat sweep of Chicagoland, trace the twinkle of streetlights extending in straight lines for miles from skyscrapers to the horizon, and feel very grateful that this is the place to which my life has led me.

Five years since my arrival and by now I can make one hell of a Chicago dog, debate citywide ward politics, navigate the CTA with my eyes closed (kids, don't try this at home), tell you the life stories of Sullivan, Burnham, and Wright, and pepper Chicagoisms into conversation with the best of them (I'm telling you that).

And I can sit and think about the quality of life afforded by this place, an urban existence of moderate cost with maximum amenities, and a gentler way of being together with each other in the same city than behavior in any burg on either coast would ever allow to happen.

Five years on and I don't hesitate to defend Chicago when I feel she's been slighted, speak of her in glowing terms to those who've never seen her in person, and have the good sense to feel rotten about the thought of ever leaving.

Sometimes I'm simply brought to tears by the wonder of it all, here in the former Fort Dearborn. I'm not ashamed to admit it, I'm a big softie when it comes to this place. For whatever reason, I've come to love Chicago deeply.

For an ex-Gothamite, that's no surprise. They say the only thing harder than getting a New Yorker to move to Chicago is getting him to leave. But now that I'm staying put, how much more mileage can I really get out of this whole ex-New Yorker thing? God knows, the thought of a New Yorker in Chicago just bugs me to fits.

I suppose it must be the Chicagoan in me.

Posted by Mike at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory

(Photo: Sometimes you just have to jump in the fountain and dance. Nikki in the Garden at the Garfield Park Conservatory. Credit: Kudzu Planet.)

Sometimes in life we don't learn our lessons until a little too late. Last weekend, my boyfriend brought me back to reality. This weekend, I'm afraid we're saying good-bye, and I wonder how much of that is my fault and how much is simply to do with a love that went faster than maybe it should have.

Regular readers won't be surprised to learn I think the blame is mostly mine.

It all started with the job of my recent lifetime. When you're looking for hourly gig work and instead you're hired to manage a public-affairs firm, it's hard not to take your job too seriously. Not that I don't write a fabulous press release or know how to manage a staff, but it's scary to go from working for yourself as a consultant back to a big-time 9-to-5 office environment. And as management, yet (the fools!)

So of course I overcompensated. Ask anyone who knows me, it's one of my worst fortes. Email at 6 in the morning, work calls at 7 at night. Writing documents all weekend. And carrying around the totally self-imposed stress of same 24/7, letting it take every opportunity to rear its ugly head, especially in the quiet moments. Mostly when I was with Chris.

When we meet in November and right through the holidays, it was bliss between us--a bliss carried further aloft by the fact that both of us spent much of the holidays on holiday from work. It came as quite a shock when, by mid-January, workaday reality started really kicking my ass.

Most shocked of all, though, was Chris, who could see the change. Feel it in every interaction of ours. We talked it through but never really hit the nail on the head. I was grumpy and sliding into unhappiness, and we both wanted to know why.

Chris got there first. Ten days ago, he sat me down and begged me to relax. Let go of work--keep work in the office, during work hours, on work days, and let myself be me again otherwise. Anyone who's wondered where my blog has been for the past few months, now you know. It was eaten, chewed up, spit out, and its bloody remains stomped upon by the Clovervield-esque monster of the work stress I had created for myself.

Of course, Chris was right. That was it, exactly. And what a relief to him--and to my boss and coworkers who had been watching the whole stress-drama play out, as well--when I let go. For a week, I felt myself come back. My inner spring unwound, I started planning a blogging calendar, my ability to manage at work increased.

Best of all, Chris and I laughed again. Goofy, adolescent, silly things that make us both laugh began to be shared again. Chris smiled again and his big blue eyes twinkled. He told me, "The Michael I met is back". And for a week, I knew we were moving out of the danger zone.

But last night, at Chris' 37th-birthday dinner, we ended up right back there, no matter how hard we tried. A difference of opinion and a fear of getting hurt made sure we both got hurt, on an evening that began with us thrilled to be with each other and ended with Chris walking out of his own birthday dinner and driving me home.

It's so easy to let fear get the better of you. The greatest way to be and stay single in this life is to be afraid of every move you make while you're living it. There's a time and place for fear, surely. But the room made for joy and abandon, dancing and merriment, should always be larger. More sturdily built and with a door that's never locked.

Last night, Chris and I should have danced when we had the chance. Instead, I cried deep into the night and went through much of today the same way. I don't understand why that is an outcome of being as in love as I am, but then again who ever does?

We'll be together or we won't be. I can't change what will be. I'm sitting and writing this in an Oak Park Caribou, hoping my Scooter Moose shows up to talk and resigned to the fact that he probably won't. Maybe he will--only time and my laptop battery will tell.

But next time, I won't forget to be there, in the moment, with my boyfriend. I will be there and I promise I'll let go. And dance.

Five minutes after I posted this entry, Chris walked into Caribou. And as it turns out, no matter what we're letting go of, we're not letting go of each other :-)

Posted by Mike at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | Recovery

(Photo: What a difference a year makes...)

A little more than a year ago, when I wondered where my writing--and my life--would take me, I couldn't have guessed what the following twelve months would have in store. Today, I return to Chicago Carless from a self-imposed month-long hiatus awed by the changes 365 days can bring.

Like being unexpectedly hired as the Assistant Director of a leading political strategy public affairs firm that works exclusively on social-justice issues across Chicago.

Did ya get all that?

Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Yet 2006 seems so long ago, now. My life was a bundle of contradictions same time last year. My communications consultancy hit the big time in Washington, while I withered and dithered away at a dead-end nonprofit day job here at home. I re-discovered the spiritual element of my life, as I continued to live a life based around fear of loss and failure.

I remained deeply devoted to my then-partner of two years, while refusing to admit his severe emotional limitations that were utterly apparent to everyone else in my life.

It was a shell of a life, a smelly, rotten egg of apparent happiness and palpable woe. And as time would tell, 2007 was about cracking all hell out of it.

As a new year dawned, it was up with the consultancy, but out of the day job. Reunited with long-lost New York friends, but potentially leaving my beloved Chicago.

About to move across country with the man I thought I'd spend my life with, then suddenly told, in May, that in 30 minutes time Devyn and I would never speak to each other again.

There is little new dialogue ever spoken when a relationship ends like a car crash. "It's not you, it's me," came as no surprise. Neither did, "it's killing me to end this." "I just need to learn more about my relationship to the world around me"? Who comes up with lines like that?

However, I do have to say being told, "My friend from Phoenix is waiting downstairs, so would you please let go and get out so we can spend the rest of the day together or I'll have someone remove you," while I'm sitting there, stunned, my possessions dumped into shopping bags, and doing an involuntary impression of Jennifer Hudson's hysterical meltdown from Dreamgirls, really did add to the genre.

How do you follow up an act like that? In my case, by spending a summer trying to leave behind Second City heartache, relocate to New York, and return to my old friends.

But when was the last time trying to escape into the past worked for you?

That's how well it worked for me, too. Sure, I got a good job offer from a prominent Gotham nonprofit (in some other universe, right now I'm the communications director for West Harlem Environmental Action). But as the summer wore on, all the old, bad dynamics started to reassert themselves into my re-forged 1980s-era friendships. New York City didn't feel like home anymore. And I was damned if I was going to pay $1,400 for a basement studio in Queens.

And, suddenly, somehow, spontaneously, I did what Devyn had told me to do in the first place. I let go.

One of my favorite Buddhist authors, Pema Chodron, would tell anyone trying to wend their way out of a difficult emotional situation to "hold your seat", avoid running. Start where you are (as she counseled in her book of the same name).

Really, what more did I have to lose?

So I mixed together equal parts of mea culpishness, bravery, remembrance of things present, and St. Johns Wort, and took Devyn up on his advice. (Adding in a healthy dose of the best emotional releasing technique I've ever learned, the Sedona Method, a tool whose worth has proven itself to me over and over again in the past few months).

I let go of fear, faced squarely into my life with an open, if broken, heart, and committed to a future where I was--in Chicago. And in a very short while I came to a stunning realization.

I was happier than I'd ever been in my life.

Getting fear and the limiting expectations of limited others out of your way, it's amazing the joy that exists in the middle of the mundane. And it's astounding how much easier it is to attract more of it.

As 2007 ends, I recognize the substantial, if at first painful, gifts that this year has brought. A transformation from the discontented life I led 12 months before, allowing many new and wonderful things, finally, to come my way.

This holiday season, I am grateful for a lot. That I got through the year without jumping off my balcony for one. That I finally found my self-worth, my center, and my groove, for another.

I'm grateful for a bountiful universe that I have finally come to work with instead of at cross purposes to.

I'm grateful for a supportive network of friends, including several wonderful Chicagoans whose acquaintances I have been blessed to make this year (and to host for Thanksgiving!).

I'm grateful for a dynamic network of business colleagues whose advice, tutelage, and recommendations helped me make the best career change of my life.

I'm overwhelmed at the belief shown in me by the leadership and staff of Thinkinc., a leading, social justice-minded public affairs firm in Chicago (not to mention by our incredible clients).

And I can't stop smiling about one very special acquaintance who, against all odds, has managed to show me in no uncertain that there is, indeed, life beyond Devyn.

This is not where I expected my life to be a year ago. Instead, it's better than I could have imagined. I'm happy, engaged with my everyday, and entrenched in Chicago. I have great friends, the job of my dreams, and a guy to be bashful with.

To be quite clear, I'm not happy because of any of that. I was able to allow all of that into my life because, first, I finally let myself be happy. It's an important distinction and one it took me 37 years to discern.

Happy as a cause, not a symptom. It's a world gone mad, I tell you. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with all the changes. But if all else fails, Goddammit, at least I'm management now.

So if the roof falls in again, this time I'll delegate on the cleanup.

Posted by Mike at 01:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

-Posted in Backstory | Chicago Children's Museum Controversy | Podcasts

(Photo: A dangerous drug is GarageBand...)

Given me and my big mouth, it had to happen sometime. Today debuts "Downtown Local", my (most likely allegedly) weekly podcast look at life, love, and folly from the heart of downtown Chicago. I'll use "Downtown Local" to expand on issues I cover in my regular blogposts, as well as to share new stories--and, of course, rants.

For anyone who's been wondering what I sound like (and except primarily for those of you who recognize me on the elevator at Marina City from time to time, that's just about everyone) here's your chance to find out. Take a listen to the podcast, I'd love to get your feedback.

This week's "Downtown Local" topics: Blair Kamin and the Chicago Children's Museum; the "Stranded in the Loop, Please Help" brigade; and how to have an oversexed summer in one easy lesson.

And if that last one's not reason enough to listen in, I don't know what is.

___

"Downtown Local" for October 9, 2007:

Posted by Mike at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | Daily Grind | Personalities

(Photo: Got what he got the hard way, and he'll make it better each and every day.)

"Remember people that no matter who you are and what you do to live, thrive and survive, there's still some things that make us all the same. You, me, them, everybody, everybody..."

"HELP!"

The Friday evening IM was as unexpected as it was emphatic. Fifteen hours til the movers were coming, and he wasn't done boxing yet. Good thing he was only moving next door. They say you learn a lot about a person when you help them move. Mostly, things you never expected to find out.

But after a summer of couch surfing with friends in my never-again Gotham hometown, I knew I was too perilously deep in karmic debt to say no. So last Saturday morning, with a short break to turn off my alarm early and wake back up again late, I set off from downtown on an express 147 pointed at the far end of Rogers Park. My new friend, Don, needed help.

Now, how I would have explained Don before the move bears little resemblance to the actual Don of pathos, sweat, and hyperactivity whose house I spent the weekend packing. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I arrived up on Jonquil to find the frazzled forty-something repeatedly self-medicating with mumbled words of encouragement.

"I'm so screwed. I shouldn’t have waited for the painters to finish. I'm so screwed."

He wasn't kidding. Eleven-thirty, and the movers were coming at one. He directed me to his guest bedroom and with a pleading look asked if I'd mind boxing it up. Being a hard-nosed HR attorney who in a less desperate mood would otherwise likely be smiling over a recent termination or stealing the souls of small children, I knew he was up against it.

I set to the task at hand while Don began prying the legs off an upturned sofa. I couldn't help wondering if he was fantasizing they were the legs of some unlucky insect. "You know," I told him, "I'm really sorry for blowing you off this summer. Trying to move to New York, I couldn't deal with looking back."

I met Don shortly after my ex-partner Devyn took a hall pass to the bathroom and never came back. I needed a diversion. Don needed someone to take him seriously. Two shy men with different agendas. It was a well-seasoned, pre-heated recipe for disaster. Two dates later and I was already ready to take a new number in the unending waiting line of suitors that I scraped up on the Internet to get me through the worst of the break-up shock.

Two more weeks later and I was job-hunting New York City. Not easily dissuaded, Don called almost every day--to remind me to keep up my Chicago job hunt, too (and in this he must have been prescient). And to make sure I was OK.

"I knew you'd figure things out," he responded. "We had a rough spot, but I forgave you for it. I'm glad we stayed friends."

"So am I." And I meant it, too, until I finished packing the office and Don led me to the shoe closet. With not a little awe I gazed at row upon row of Pradas, Coles, Ferragamos, a veritable smorgasbord of high-end designer goodness piled in multitudes so high that any apparent fashion sense was overshadowed by the sheer morass of it all. I knew in one Filipino grave, a former despot was surely smiling.

Don knew exactly what I was thinking. "This is going on your blog, isn't it?" I looked him dead in the eye. "We're gonna need more boxes."

"You see, it all started when my mom promised me a pair of shoes if I did well on an exam in junior high. Who offers an adolescent shoes as a bribe? I guess after that I learned to feel good about myself when I bought them. I know you must think I'm a little crazy."

I didn't know Don felt bad about himself in the first place. I began to pack and ponder. Fifty-six pairs of shoes, boots, sneakers, and slippers packed into any box that would have them. And me pondering how often it's the case that an outwardly confident person turns inwardly apologetic when you start to expose the layers of their onion of privacy.

At around the 40th pair of footwear, I heard, "You wanna take a break and see some stuff out here?" Um, yes. (And could I get a wet wipe with that to clean your soles off of my palms?)

Upending the box spring for the movers, Don had uncovered a small mountain of framed photos from 20 years past. "I can't believe that's you! You're so-"

"Thin, I know. I don't want to get into it. It's a bad subject for me."

"I was gonna say clean-shaven." Having spent two years of my life with a partner almost half-again my weight, my merely zaftig friend is not someone whose alleged overweight even registers with me. Anyhow, I've long given up the baseless belief that I'm not an inveterate flirt. "Frankly, I think you've gotten better with age."

And age is just what we did as Don's movers were stuck on a job in Waukegan until late in the afternoon. It was enough time to hit Wendy's, make a Home Depot run, and take a passing glance at packing the kitchen. But mostly we just talked. I sat and talked. Don talked and walked.

"You know, Don, I don't think you've sat down for hours. I know you're ADD, but you're gonna give yourself a heart attack."

He paused from pushing a giant swiffer for the second time around the living-room baseboards of the new apartment. "I know, I know. I'll sit for a bit." Watching Don sit is like watching a cat being hugged. No one's happy about it and you know it's not going to happen for long.

It didn't. "Did you hear that? Yay! The movers are here!" And with that, like a maniacal jack-in-the-box, up popped Don and down the stairs he bounded. I needed to exit back to River North to welcome hip-suburban-chick Val and her niece to Marina City for a special roofdeck visit, but I offered to come back and help Don finish up on Sunday.

So I did. The highlight of Sunday was not the deja shoe of watching Don unpack all 56 pairs into a new closet, nor was it riding shotgun while he enlisted additional moving help from two itinerant workers who ended up rooking him out of an extra $100. It was, finally, figuring out the backstory.

"Did you ever see a picture of Victor?" I hadn't. Don's personal Devyn, the man whom he loved, and who left him earlier this year. "I'm still in love with him. Can you bring another box in here." I knew by the time I made it into the room, there would be a fleeting glimpse of a photo before Don would be off and running again.

And then it struck me. "You've spent a lot of your life getting fucked over by other people, haven't you?" And I finally knew why I felt so comfortable around him. "Victor didn't deserve you, you know. He was a fool to leave you." The moment the words came out of my mouth, I remembered Don telling me the same things about Devyn, months before. Ah, grasshopper, the circular path of life.

Now, issue-laden as I can be, I'm the last person to criticize someone else's baggage. But two days with Don and I got the distinct impression that he has absolutely no idea about the measure of himself--although it is great. That touched me. I was like that before Devyn left. Now I know how fabulous I am--and I know I was like that, deep inside, all along. But I also know the fear Devyn left me with, that I may never feel brave enough to let anyone in again.

I see both of those things in Don. He's spectacular, at arm's length. In our own ways, me with my newfound gigolo nature, Don with his fear of sitting still with himself, we're both the sole stars of our currently necessarily solitary lives. Similar, if somewhat lonely paths, I think that's why we get along.

Late on Sunday, with everything moved to new digs except the beers in the old refrigerator, Don paused, finally. "I bet things make a lot more sense about me now." Indeed. Suddenly I was being hugged. "Thank you so much for being here. I couldn't have done this on my own. You don’t know how much having a friend here meant to me this weekend."

Lawyer or not, now that's a man with soul.

Posted by Mike at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | Daily Grind | Daily Grind

(Photo: It's all about the lamp.)

I finally have a grown-up bathroom and I'm proud to say it. Four-and-a-half months is a long time to live in a cave, which is as much as I did this year. Separating in the middle of a move, as did I and my ex-partner in May, much was already boxed up, thrown out, or otherwise inaccessible when the deed went down.

In retrospect, there were signs that deed was on its way prior to my apartment prepping:

"Are you sure you want to throw away all your old picture frames now?"

"I changed the lock."

Hmm. My relationship myopia aside, I didn't mind living with bare walls and boxes while I searched for a new life in New York City over the summer. But when I finally decided to stay in the city I really love (you know, the one with the colder winters), boy did my gun-jumping undecorating come back to haunt me. When you decide to dig in your heels and settle into home, it helps to actually have a home to settle in to.

It also helps first impressions with potential suitors to have books on your shelves and not bankers' bins.

It took a friend with a car and a good sense of humor, a 20-mile trip to Ikea Schaumburg, a 10-minute bus ride to Target on Roosevelt, and a couple of days of a very confused Camoes (my Portuguese danger cat). But I finally have my home back.

Really, I have my home for the first time. There's no denying I spent most of my two years and change downtown living vicariously through Devyn's apartment and not my own. After all, I wouldn't need all my fingers to count the number of times my cat- (and commitment-) allergic ex-partner ever visited my Marina City studio during our entire time together.

But my life and neighborhood finally being mine now, like it or not, I figured it was time to like it. So my color printouts of world metro maps are back on my walls in freshly stained frames, new Ikea tchotchke goodness graces my surfaces, and for the first time ever (I know, it's a little pathetic), I have comfy, color-coordinated towels and a kick-ass cloth shower curtain.

And the hanging lamp that languished on the carpet for so many months finally hovers over my table. It's kludged up there (you try drilling into a concrete ceiling), but it's there. It's the nifty new centerpiece of my fabulousified, ghetto-tastic, high-rise, low-rent, downtown Chicago bachelor pad. (Though until I get my butt out on the balcony with a bucket and a squeegee, please ignore the window wall.)

It ain't much, mind you. And God knows, I certainly don't own it. But for the first time since I've been in Marina City--or in Chicago for that matter--my Second City apartment finally feels like home. I haven't had that feeling since I lived in Brooklyn.

A new acquaintance of mine (for those in the know, oddly enough a California Central Valley native first- and middle-named Kenneth Wayne and I am so not going there) reminded me of a quote from the end of The Wizard of Oz:

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with."

In my backyard, home is where the balcony is.

Posted by Mike at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | In NYC

(Photo: And I am led once again to the same conclusion...but not the one I expected. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.)

Last month, I accepted the job offer of my life in New York City. Today, I turned it down. At long last, I admit it. I am hopelessly in love with Chicago. I'm staying right here.

In some alternate reality, I could be the communications director for a very groovy environmental nonprofit in Manhattan. I could be living and working back in my Gotham hometown, hanging with my old friends, and rediscovering the New Yorker in me. As I've recently chronicled, I was on the verge.

The unexpected offer came in the first half of August. But with the second half of August came my apartment search. I was standing in the living room of a $1,450-a-month, erroneously allegedly non-basement apartment in Astoria, Queens, when doubt crept in. I told my apartment broker I wasn't interested, at which point the irked landlady leaned in to him and whispered, "You need to show him some more apartments around here so he gains some perspective."

Prescient words they were. My job offer would have afforded me the apartment. But, as I realized with each passing day I spent in my hometown, my heart simply wouldn't afford me New York. Not anymore.

You can't fill up the present with the past. Don't get me wrong, I love my old east-coast friends. But while I remembered the New Yorker in me for a glorious month spent along non-Lake Michigan shores, I also remembered the myriad reasons why I don't live along those shores, anymore. All the things I formerly took for granted, factored into the cost of living in the Big Apple, I now found weighing heavily on me (primarily because of their lack in America's Second City): dirty sidewalks; potholed streets; 110-degree summer subway stations; perilously crowded everything; rifle-toting National Guardsmen at every commuter rail terminal; NYPD S.W.A.T. teams in Times Square.

Worse, for the privilege of living in such a--compared to Chicago, anyway--squalid environment, the finagling and financing to be done in order to secure an NYC apartment is worse than ever. As the gap between haves and have-nots grows ever wider in the five boroughs, the ability of common folk to find, afford, and be approved for the smallest of apartments in the most marginal of neighborhoods has waned beyond my ability to comprehend (six- to 12-month security deposit, anyone?).

My New York City friends find all of this to be absolutely normal, part and parcel of being able to live in the self-described capital of the world. I used to agree with them. But after four-and-a-half years in Chicago, I had the terrifying feeling that the day after my potential move I would wake up in sweat-stained sheets screaming names of Chicago neighborhoods into the east-coast darkness.

Because I have gained perspective. I live in a city that, although imperfect, affords to most of its citizens the ability to have a quality of life that only the wealthy and lucky can touch in New York. Care to live in the heart of downtown Chicago on the 38th floor of a historic tower? Have a panoramic view from your pillow? Walk to four supermarkets, three department stores, dozens of restaurants, every rapid-transit, bus, and commuter rail line in town, the Art Institute of Chicago, the financial district, and river and lake--within five to 10 minutes from your front door? What would you pay? In New York City, my rent on that would be about $3,000.

In Chicago, I pay $835. (Have I mentioned the balcony you could park a car on and the 360-degree, 61st floor roofdeck?) Any questions?

Well hold off on them, because there's more. In four weeks in New York, I also failed to encounter a neighborhood with the same friendliness or finesse as the Hogtown nabes that I've come to haunt and covet in my years here. Andersonville? Lakeview? Pilsen? Printers Row? It's a long list without equal outside Chicago. Boy, has this town spoiled me.

Ultimately, Chicago is without equal outside Chicago, and I am too deeply in love with this city to give it up--obviously even if you paid me. Such has been my lesson this year. So why have I been trying so hard to leave? I believe I was so lonely in my former, now-failed relationship that when my old New York friends came back into my life last spring, I saw them--and New York--as an antidote for my emptiness. Once Devyn left (and moved on his own to NYC), the feeling only worsened, stiffening my resolve to go through with my own moving plans.

But it's four months later now. My dance card in Chicago, both platonic and romantic, is (astoundingly for me) more full than ever before in my life. Life has returned in a big way, and that's a blessing I don't take lightly. I no longer feel lonely, and I'm far better able to appreciate all that I've got in Chicago. Not the least of which, as I've said many times before, is the ability to live among Chicagoans, the friendliest, most upstanding, and, indeed, most loving people I've ever encountered anywhere.

I expected this post to be about coming to the same conclusion that I came to four months ago: that I still want to move to New York. Instead, I've come, happily, to the same conclusion I came to four years ago: that I would much prefer to be a (carpet-bagging) Chicagoan. And so it is.

I will always be grateful for a history spent in America's biggest city. But I continue to look forward to a future to be spent in America's best city. Chicago, what the hell was I thinking? I love you. I like you. I get you. I'm staying.

Um, buckle your seatbelt, folks.

Posted by Mike at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (5)

-Posted in Backstory | In NYC

(Photo: Where I'm from, the more things change, the more they stay the same.)

[This entry is one in a series of dispatches from my recent trips to Gotham.]

I don't remember being here, yet nothing ever changes here. I've spent almost four weeks staying with friends in New York City; it's almost as if I've already moved and settled in (even without a job offer and apartment lease yet). So much has changed in the four-and-a-half years that I've been away. Residential and commercial development is sweeping the Big Apple the likes of which I've never in my life seen. Housing costs have become even more astronomical than ever. Funky neighborhoods have become sadly Eastablishment (good-bye, Park Slope), while former slums have become exclusive enclaves (hello, DUMBO). It's hard to realize that this is my home.

What's curious, even with all that's new, the fundamental remains. The dirt, and noise, and crowding are overpowering (while Chicago resembles an orderly northern European city, New York resembles a crazily ebulliently southern European city all the way). But they mask this city's century-long status as the crucible of immigrant American beginnings. Everyone comes to New York, and everyone who comes here belongs here, simply by dint of having the courage to stay here.

But if you stay here, it's purely on Gotham's terms, not your own. Qualities of life and standards of living considered overwhelmingly normal in other cities are unrealized fantasies for millions of New Yorkers. A sub-$1,000 rent? Renting an apartment at all without having to pay a broker fee equal to 15 percent of your yearly rent? (Honestly, reread the last sentence). A clean and pee-free sidewalk? A line shorter than an hour at the Trader Joe's cashier? An afternoon seat on the subway? You must be dreaming.

None of that has changed. I wonder why exactly I want to leave my downtown Chicago idyll when I think about it. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I left these stomping grounds of mine for a reason. The pressure, the struggle just to exist in the five boroughs...it simply doesn't exist in Chicago (much as some Chicagoans would beg to differ). Is moving home really worth putting up with a downward lurch in my everyday quality of life? I don't have an answer to that. Maybe I never will.

But sitting in a Rego Park pizza joint a couple of weeks ago and hearing four pungent New York accents animatedly announcing the trials and tribulations of living here from the next table, I was humbled. Four years ago, I considered those classic New Yawk accents base, and droll, and uneducated. In that pizzeria, I suddenly realized how powerfully that accent now brings me home and makes me feel welcome. I've heard it all around me for weeks, now. I find, muchly in spite of myself, that I actually crave to be around it. My own accent, layered in its own way with four years of Chicagoisms, has been swinging like a loose gate between Midwest and New York for weeks. Friends in Chicago have already asked me to slow down when I call them.

One of those friends, suburban hip-chick Val, tells me that the measure of a city should be the people whom you have there, not the places or things. I wish I could import Val to New York--she's right. I crave the people back home as much as I crave the wonderful way they express themselves. I don't know how that intersects with the coming changes in my day-to-day life.

I want an answer. I wish I had one. I wish I had an apartment, yet, for that matter. Because I have to decide. This is it, one of those life-changing junctures. A fork in the road. Which one do I take? How do I move forward knowing all that I will leave behind in either city?

And what do I do if I make the wrong decision? The shadow knows. God knows.

I wish I knew, too, for the window of opportunity is growing short. I feel like I've found myself again in my old stomping grounds this month. And yet, I have the perilous feeling that I have no idea at all who it is that I've really found. I am not coming out of this experience the same. That's all I know for sure.

Posted by Mike at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | GLYNY AGAIN | In NYC

(Photo: An honest look of shock as I sit amidst one-third of my surprise 37th birthday party.)

[This entry is one in a series of dispatches from my recent trips to Gotham.]

I turned 37 this month in my hometown. And while August continues to merge into seemingly one exceptionally and unexpectedly long trip to Gotham to interview and apartment hunt, it was turning 37 that I found most informative. Purely for narcissistic reasons. Essentially I was smoked.

Shortly before my birthday, I flew in to begin my interviewing process and attend a GLYNY Alumni Group Board of Directors meeting. The meeting, taking place on the eve of my birthday, was uneventful. We came, we saw, we argued. I bitched. A lesbian expressed anger. Someone hummed a showtune. It was what you'd expect from your average LGBT working meeting. The plan was that the nine of us would all go have dinner after the meeting and I'd have a quiet birthday the next day, probably spent with my best friend of 20 years, the very "Juicy" Peter Morley.

The birthday with Peter happened as expected. The birthday eve, however, had other plans. While we were walking to our regular food joint, Sammy's Noodle Shop at Sixth and 11th, I stopped the gang for a quick drink at our regular hooch joint, the estimable old-man bar, Julius at West 10th and Waverly. I should have known by the way half the group didn't come in to imbibe that something was afoot. I should really have known when everyone argued that we shouldn't bag our plans and go have Mexican, instead.

Now before I go on, let me explain one thing. I haven't had a birthday party in 20 years. I've wanted one, sure. Who wouldn't want a cake, several (hopefully too few) candles, and the warmth of your close friends to share same with you. But as my teen years morphed into adulthood, my eventual circle of friends (not to mention my highly estranged family) never again was conducive to the potential for such festivities. I am not ashamed to admit that for many years, I've mourned that fact. An adult birthday dinner with your boyfriend of the moment is nice. But every year, come August, I became painfully aware that I would never, ever in my life be guest of honor at a surprise birthday party.

i was wrong.

I finally clued in to that fact when we reached Sammy's. As I stood there, speechless for fear of crying if I dared open my mouth, one by one, a steady stream of my old friends emerged from the after-dusk shadows of Sixth Avenue. Twenty-six of them. Each one feigned surprise to find me there. Each one came to celebrate my birthday. And for the next two hours raucously, we did just that.

I won't belabor the obvious. Yes, yes, now I've had my surprise party, dream come true, my friends totally got me--but good. You get that part. What thoroughly blew me away, though, is that, once again, it was my old-is-new-again GLYNY friends filling my heart with joy. It was also the largest reunion event we've had since we began to come together again last March.

The job and apartment searches continue apace. I have good friends in Chicago who want me to stay. But on the subject of returning to New York City, I'm finding it very hard to argue with 26 opinions in favor of my doing so.

And I love each and every one of the 26 people holding those opinions.

Posted by Mike at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | GLYNY AGAIN | In NYC

(Photo: As a matter of fact, we have been posing on this corner for 21 years.)

[This entry is one in a series of dispatches from my recent trips to Gotham.]

So I'm GLYNYing again. This past spring, I chronicled the sudden and miraculous Internet reunion of my 1980s cohort of Gay and Lesbian Youth of New York (GLYNY, pronounced "GLIH-nee"). The nation's first-ever gay youth peer support group, GLYNY was founded in New York City in 1969 as a splinter cell of the historic Gay Liberation Front.

I attended the group's Saturday meetings religiously from 1986 through 1990--right through my formative teen years. More than that, with my newly close old friends, I served on the group's Steering Committee for most of that time, rewriting bylaws, organizing a bevy of events, and otherwise making sure our nonprofit I's were dotted and T's crossed.

Very unexpectedly, here we go again. As of this month (and as of this trip of mine to NYC), GLYNY AGAIN, the Gay and Lesbian Youth of New York Alumni Group, achieved not-for-profit status and chose its initial Board of Directors. And almost every single 1980s Steering Committee member--myself included--finds themselves at the helm of the group, once more. I'm honored to serve as the group's communications officer and the administrator of our official discussion board.

Still, I sure hope history doesn't repeat itself. Back in the day, it often felt like the only reason we were committee members was because no one else wanted to be bothered with helping to run the organization. That was, from time to time, galling, because we had well over 100 members all with ideas they wanted put into action but few with the actual desire to make them happen. Much got unnecessarily deferred to the Steering Committee, and the resulting stress and resentment eventually led to the dissolution of the 1980s committee membership.

We'll see how it goes this time. I'd like to attribute our previous troubles to teenage angst, but at the age of 37, I know well the lengths adults will go to avoid acting their age. For now, I'm giving us all the benefit of the doubt.

If all continues to go well, however, in November, we're hosting a first-ever alumni reunion meeting at New York City's Gay Community Center in Greenwich Village, to be followed by a swank Midtown reception (sponsored by John Greco, chef of Phillip Marie, home of the best fried green tomatoes in Gotham). That meeting will culminate a summer of ad-hoc reunion dinners and get-togethers that have taken place among GLYNY alumni across the country (no surprise, we already have 112 alumni participating on our reunion forum, with more GLYNYites finding us every day).

Best of all, our reunion has extended far beyond our 1980s cohort. Actively participating in GLYNY AGAIN are several founding members of the group (originally Gay Youth of New York) from 1969, as well as alumni from the 1970s, early 1980s, and 1990s. So November's accidentally triggered reunion is quickly turning into a once-in-38-years celebration of America's gay youth movement.

Who expected that? In the 1980s, we certainly had no idea the historic role our group was playing in that movement. We always thought the hard work was done by our 1970s antecedents, GLYNY's founding members. But as Mark Horn, one of those founding members, observed recently, "You were the guys who had to deal with AIDS--in some ways, you had it a lot harder than we did."

In retrospect, I see the truth in that. I guess you never know what you're really in the middle of until you move on. That's certainly true about the bonds that persist in linking us all together. Four months since the beginning of our mass reunion, most of us remain in abject and happy shock that we still all, frankly, love and unconditionally accept each other. We've stopped trying to explain it. Our friends and loved ones have stopped trying to convince us that it's a temporary state of affairs.

It is what it is. I mean, there's not exactly a model of behavior to follow when you're the alumni of a first-of-its-kind organization. Our emotions ran high then and continue to do so--especially the good feelings. I remain as perpetually thrilled as the rest of us, and that's enough for me. So for better or worse, and very officially, I'm GLYNYing again. I couldn't be prouder about my continued association with this amazing group of people.

And at least this time around, we don't have to constantly worry about being carded.

Posted by Mike at 04:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | GLYNY AGAIN | In NYC

(Photo: And every connotation that goes with it. Credit: Mildred's House of Signage.)

[This entry is one in a series of dispatches from my recent trips to Gotham.]

So I'm in New York job hunting. And as usual when I'm here, I am the unofficial ringleader of the ongoing GLYNY AGAIN reunion. No surprise, then, to find me and the gang hanging out on my first evening in town at Astoria, Queens' sloshily seminal Bohemian Beer Garden. Picture it: one outdoor acre; 100 picnic tables; unlimited hooch; and half a dozen gay New Yorkers. Somebody's secrets were coming out that night or no one was going home happy.

Least of all me. I blame it on my iPhone. Or more properly, my fellow-alum Jimmy's crackberry. It won't last long, but for the moment anyone with an iPhone tends to be the center of attention, even in technology-forward Gotham. So there we were, me and Jimmy, taking a tour of each other's devices, when I innocently accessed his calendar and ran smack into Dr. Piglet.

Now, of course, that's not his real name. But for reasons that will become obvious, that was his term of endearment of choice. I should have handed the 'berry back right then and there.

Instead I found myself querying Jimmy with a barrage of questions. Innocent ones, like: "Is this your family doctor?"; "What's his full name?"; 'Is he from the southwest?"; "Is he a redhead?"; Does he still wear all those earrings?". And in a flash, the most emotionally screwed up man I ever dated in my life came back oinking after a 13-year absence.

I didn't ask about the tattoos or the other piercings. I couldn't fathom how any self-respecting patient would manage to see them. Well, unless they were having sex with each other. Ah, the things we put up with for love.

"Use the harness as a handle, Pooh Bear! a handle!"

Not to mention the nicknames. As it turned out, Dr. Piglet was, indeed, the general practitioner for Jimmy and his lover. Jimmy said Piglet has a thriving practice now. I had met the swine (you had to see that coming) when he was a first-year resident. I have no idea how he made it to year two. I remember a closet full of in-your-face gay pride tee-shirts that he used to wear to the hospital to goad the administrators (not to mention his patients). I remember a series of injudicious questions no aspiring doctor should ever ask his boyfriend.

"Would you mind if I practice catheterizing on you? You look to have such good veins."

Let's not, if it's all the same with you. Which, if nothing else, men definitely were to Piglet. We dated for almost a year. We had each other's keys. I came over one day after work and found another doctor he was working with making a house call.

"Can you come back in a few minutes so we can get dressed? This harness doesn't just snap off, you know."

As I later found out, the porkster had left a veritable support group of broken hearts back in the southwest before he moved to New York for med school. His M.O.: beginning his next usurious relationship before ending the previous one so that he never had to be alone. It was with some glee that I informed Jimmy about Piglet's tendency to drop to his knees to lick leather boots on daddy bears.

Mark, our old attendance-taker extraordinaire, was more succinct. "I think you should pepper Piglet casually into your conversation the next time you see him and tell him Pooh Bear says hi."

Staggering to the N train at evening's end, I thought I had heard the last of the Piglet, er, tail--and for his sake, so did Jimmy. Jimmy was so lucky; I was not. The next evening, as I helped our much-loved alumni outreach obsessive-compulsive, Adam, ring-lead a dozen people into dinner at the Village Den on Greenwich Avenue, I made the mistake of recounting the porcine particulars of the previous evening.

We were sitting at Julius, the hoary old, old man's dive on West 10th Street, having before-dinner drinks at the back tables. I had just begun my story, when Adam's eyes grew wide. "No kidding? I dated him, too, sometime in 1995. He had just broken up with a doctor he was working with...well actually, they were still dating."

Indeed. To Adam's credit, he said he eventually dumped Dr. Piglet (perhaps the first time the errant bacon had even been on the receiving end of that particular shove). "I thought he had too many personal problems to be my boyfriend."

That's generally the outcome, my friend, when love and livestock intersect. Too much information all of this, but it was ultimately my own fault. After 20 years apart, I had forgotten the iron-clad adage to live by among the GLYNY crowd: assume everyone has slept with everyone.

It just saves time in the telling.

Posted by Mike at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | Daily Grind | Recovery

(Photo: Chicago Carless has NOT left the building.)

No exit just yet, anyway. As I continue to sort through the potential to move back home to Gotham or remain here on the shores of Lake Mich. as an unexpectedly newly singleton, the best decision may be not to decide for the moment. More immediate is the fact that I missed the two-year anniversary of Chicago Carless, and a lot more than the fall of my relationship has happened in the past 12 months. So in celebration of the (belated) two-year anniversary of my life being an open blog, I give you a look at the past 12 months of Chicago Carless. And, boy, has it been a helluva time.

When we last checked in with our hero on the first aniversary of Chicago Carless in June 2006, Yours Truly was in the middle of admitting falling madly back in love with Hogtown after three grueling but glorious years here. Part and parcel of that Chicagoan happiness was beginning the second year of my relationship with my then-partner, Devyn, who had just re-launched his noted Chicago photoblog, Looper (now defunct as Devyn has moved on to New York City, himself).

But also part of the fun were the numerous local gaffes and gotchas that I managed to find myself in the middle of last year, including my August 2006 interview in Chicago Magazine's expose of Marina City's alleged pimp dentist, Garry Kimmel, and my scooping of Chicagoland media on erroneous signage inside the new Macy's-cum-Marshall Field's (earning me page one in the Chicago Tribune business section and being called a "newsmaker of the week" in the Trib's Sunday edition).

In fact, summer 2006 brimmed full of action here at Carless. From leading the seminally cool NYC out-of-towners Adam and Vicki on a two-day tour of Hogtown (oh, the high of it), to suffering through the dismal opening ceremonies of the Gay Gaymes (oh, the low of it), to battling it out on the Chicago blogosphere during the infamous big-box living-wage debate.

In Autumn 2006, all the drama finally took me by storm--literally--as the tornado sirens in downtown Chicago were sounded for the first time in more than four decades while I stood on my 38th-floor balcony. Summer's end also saw the return of my much-beloved Portuguese culture into my life...and the creeping suspicion that I might, one day, actually choose to return to my native New York City.

There was little time to sit and ponder that, though, as corporate public-relations silliness returned with a vengeance, first with a Macy's advertising campaign that completely snubbed Chicago, then with the Chicago Transit Authority--never one to be outdone in the race for lowest common PR denominator--which installed 4,800 typo-laden maps in every single Chicago 'L' car.

In December, Carless helped highlight even more public-affairs silliness by joining forces with my ex to get the city to remove injudiciously installed security cameras from atop Millennium Park's famous Crown Fountain, earning another Tribune page one for Carless, this time in the metro section (and an interview for Devyn in the New York Times).

But without a doubt, the biggest star of all, last year, was Jessica, the underdog mom who testified before America on the hardship of raising a family on minimum wage in a searing, heart-wrenching interview that I was lucky enough to film for the centerpiece of the AFL-CIO/ACORN-sponsored 7 Days at Minimum Wage videoblog campaign. The stories told by Jessica and her fellow wage earners helped raise the minimum wage in six states during Election 2006!

And then it was 2007, and little would I have suspected the transitions in store for downtown Chicago…or for me. For beginners, longstanding downtown residential noise battles were finally won (kind of). And, of course, at long last, the dinosaur of the Chicago City Council, Burt Natarus, was put out to pasture by far more clued-in pretender Brendan Reilly (hurray!).

But far more surprising to me was the miraculous and unexpected mass reunion, via the Internet, of 140 members of Gay and Lesbian Youth of New York, the nation's first gay-youth peer support group (founded in 1969), that kept me out of trouble in the 1980s and brought me the closest (and as it turns out most enduring) friendships I have even known in my life. And with my entire childhood knocking on my door to come out and play again, another unexpected thing happened: after four years as an adopted Chicagoan, I decided to return to my hometown of New York City.

I know, I was shocked, too. But I was even more shocked when, shortly before Memorial Day, my dearly loved partner of more than two years, Devyn, called it quits, walked out of our relationship, and moved to New York City without me. Without ever looking back. And very conveniently (for him) allowing me to take the blame for everything.

Which I did, until common sense, the love of my friends, and a healthy daily dose of St. Johns Wort finally allowed me to see the reality of my formerly rosily interpreted relationship. With rationality returned, I resolved to continue with my move back home to Gotham. But I felt that decision needed to be made anew--this time as an individual decision made by a suddenly single Yours Truly.

And that's a decision I felt needed to be made in New York City. Among my long-lost/newly found friends. On a job hunt. In August 2007. Which, as it turns out, catches you up on our hero right to this very minute.

More to follow…

Posted by Mike at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Posted in Backstory | Daily Grind | Recovery

(Photo: Chicago's famous Ukranian Village "Shit Fountain". For obvious reasons.)

For weeks now I've wanted to go there, against the better counsel of friends not the least of whom is Damned-to-the-Suburbs hip chick Val ("really, Michael, it's not really necessary"). Hmm...what to do, then, when you're still angry over your break-up, and you're an opinionated native New Yorker, to boot?

In this case, take your advice elsewhere. Stick me in the Pema Chodron school: it's permissible to be pissed when you're pissed.

And I'm still pissed.

So with that in mind, the bitchy Buddhist in me presents the top-10 favorite phrases of the emotionally constipated--and their translation into truer terms.

These phrases were repeated to me many times in the past couple of years, and not just by the one person who you may think uttered them all (I prefer to think of this post as an homage in pastiche, myself). Should you hear these phrases from friends or loved ones, my considered advice is to run. Fast.

Though of course, if you have a blog, take notes, first...

The Top-10 Favorite Phrases of the Emotionally Constipated

10. Best friend? I don't like to think in those terms.
(Translation: I am secretly in love with my best friend).

9. I like to compartmentalize people, doesn't everyone?
(Translation: I will never, ever, ever let you in).

8. Don't you think you should reconsider whether it really isn't all your fault?
(Translation: I blame myself for other people's neuroses).

7. Once I got over him five years ago, I never thought of him again, the fucker...
(Translation: I have no clue about my own neuroses).

6. No, really, I'm over it.
(Translation: I am so not over it).

5. I love separate vacations.
(Translation: Well, from you).

4. I'll deal with it in my own time.
(Translation: I will be dragged to my grave with fingernails clawing into the earth just so that I don't ever have to deal with it).

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