Jamaica is one of those places which remained under foreign rule much longer than anyone probably realized; it didn’t gain its independence until 1962, before which it spent a little over three centuries as a British colony. Though its previous European tenants, the Spanish, had gifted it the uninspired name of Santiago (St. James), the British managed a hairsbreadth more historical sensitivity by opting for Jamaica, an Anglicization of the Arawak Xaymaca, meaning “land of wood and water”.

Though slightly better-known than other well-touristed locales of the West Indies, Jamaica’s status in popular knowledge is limited to its notoriety in the transatlantic slave trade, in which slaves from West Africa were rather unhappily exported to the Caribbean, where they were sold to sugar plantations, the sugar of which was used to make rum and other goods, which were then shipped to Europe and New England, where the proceeds from their sale allowed for the further purchase of involuntary labor from Africa. Jamaica’s other crowning achievement is the cultural institution of Bob Marley, whose musical contributions were immense, but whose legacy in the form of pot popularization and Rastafari I could do without.

Though notorious for its production of marijuana (“Jamaica Red” is one popular variety) and duly famous for its Blue Mountain coffee, tourism is Jamaica’s most lucrative and important industry, comprising about half of its national income. This past week, my new wife and I, by way of a honeymoon, became one of approximately 1.3 million people to visit Jamaica every year.

On your mark, get set, obscure!

If becoming .0001% of the country’s annual influx of pasty gawkers makes one feel less than unique, the feeling pales in comparison to visiting a couples resort—Sandals Grande Ocho Rios, in our case—where you go from being the center of attention at your wedding to being one of hundreds of couples, most of them newlyweds, and many of them sharing your same wedding date. Thankfully, these kinds of resorts are not generally populated by the same taut, coiffed, half-naked demigods that populate Sandals’ brochures, so one did not need to add insecurity to the list of emergent problems. No, we were alongside a lot of Middle America’s workaday schmucks, which was comforting, considering my own swimsuited body resembles a phasmid in floral shorts.

All things being equal, I would have preferred someplace cold and rainy: Seattle, maybe, or England. Then again, my idea of a good time consists of drinking coffee, reading books, and programming, all of which I can do perfectly well from my home office, so nobody much cares about my opinion of honeymoon destinations. My wife, who is beautiful and wise and one of those strange people who enjoys ultraviolet radiation, promised me a shady spot and all the reading I cared to do; I am not a brilliant man, but I am smart enough to recognize arguments I can’t win. I booked the trip.

Allison and I got married on Saturday, got about 4 hours of sleep, and arose at eight in order to send off our out-of-town family. Sunday night provided perhaps another two and a half hours: a 3:30am limo pickup necessitated waking at an hour whose very existence was heretofore apocryphal in my mind. I don’t sleep in any meaningful way in cars or planes, so one may begin to understand my mental state by the time we arrived at our resort at approximately 5pm; a photograph from our arrival shows my eyes looking darker than a drag queen’s. The two-hour bus ride from the airport to our resort was peopled with a lot of similarly-exhausted and perspiring newlyweds, but many of the males especially had already launched into bravado about the duration and volume of that evening’s expected libations. Though Allison and I immediately went to one of the resort’s many restaurants for dinner—Tex Mex food, and very forgettable—I don’t think I exaggerate when I see we were in bed and asleep by 9.

Jamaica… no problem

Sandals Resorts International operates no fewer than fifteen couples-only resorts in the Caribbean, eight of which are in Jamaica, though it also serves as an umbrella corporation for other family-oriented resorts. A Jamaican company founded in 1981, it until very recently garnered worldwide opprobrium for its ban of homosexual couples, a policy which wasn’t rescinded until 2004. It purports to be a company known for two things: luxury and service. It’s the milieu of Jamaican resorts: the customer is king, and Jamaica especially cultivates the image with catchphrases like “Jamaica no problem!”

There’s a strange line drawn in the sand at Sandals. Most of the male employees were cast from that mould; the young man responsible for our orientation the next day (which found me significantly brighter-eyed and bushier-tailed) even joked that if anybody told us “No” on the resort, we should sue them. While the entertainment crew, groundskeepers, and bartenders seemed to take this to heart (except for the bartender who told me they didn’t serve mojitos for some strange reason), it seems as though the deskworkers, mostly female, weren’t having nearly as much fun, and generally acted as though good service were the last thing on their minds.

Allison and I were originally supposed to stay at Sandals Negril; two days before the wedding, our travel agent informed us that they closed the resort, and were instead moving us to an “upgraded” room at the Grande Ocho Rios; in addition, she said, we should speak with the front desk when we arrived, as there was hint of additional compensation or freebies for our troubles. I approached the desk when we arrived, explaining the situation and inquiring as suggested. Was there anything else we would get? No.

Allison had bought a spa treatment in Negril. The Sandals website offered a free $250 spa credit if you went to Ocho Rios. Could we get it? No.

We bought internet access at a pay-to-play kiosk and needed a pen to write down our access code. Could we borrow one for just a minute. I only have one and I’m using it.

We didn’t receive a schedule of events one day. Did the front desk have any copies? No. Is there any other place in the resort that might have one? No.

Such was the nature of these resorts. Officially, they are all-inclusive: the meals are free, and in theory one could eat as frequently as desired. The booze is gratis, even though some of it is of the terrible, bottom-shelf variety (blended Scotch? really?). But there’s still an internal culture of upselling no different from the trinket-sellers that plague every destination outside the resort. In our room, we had access to a liquor cabinet and a fridge full of wine, beer and soda, and it was ours for the taking. A bag of cashews from the tray on the table, however, would set us back $9. Signs around the resort prompted couples to schedule a “complementary” photo shoot; I knew, of course, that acquiring the resulting photos would be exorbitant, but Allison underestimated the avarice and suggested we do it anyway. Afterwards, the staff didn’t bother asking if we were interested in purchasing any photos; they simply asked to cull any photos we didn’t like from the resulting set, and then read us a total equivalent to $16 per photograph. I politely demurred to purchase the entire set, which, it must be said, were rather uninspired anyway.

Minimizing Jamaica for non-Jamaicans

This isn’t to say that I consider an “all-inclusive” resort to be a mistake. Far from it, despite the cost. The general rule of thumb about Jamaica is that it’s lovely so long as you don’t leave your resort—or, if you do, only in the company of resort guides, on resort transportation. The lone tourist in Jamaica’s notorious slums will quickly find himself in dire straits.

I can’t square the disparate images of Jamaica I saw when I was there. On the one hand, it was littered with billboards for cell phone networks; I routinely saw commercials for On-Demand cable service; I saw, among the many run-down Hondas and Toyotas, and a number of German luxury cars. On the other hand, we drove by shanty town after shanty town, whole families in rags on the roadside with tables for salable fruit, waiting for customers that never appeared to come. There is grinding poverty in Jamaica, perhaps made worse to my ridiculous Midwestern sensibilities by how hot and squalid everything seemed in the thick, wet Jamaican heat.

To both pleasant and disturbing ends, resorts give you a smiling, sanitized Jamaica, where nothing is ever a problem (unless you want something from the front desk) and you can have a Red Stripe beer while you wait. Whereas one might expect a lot of reggae and steel drum, there was very little to be heard within the confines of Sandals’ Grande Ocho Rios; in its place was a constant loop of easy listening, including Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” and one or more songs by Kenny G, though it’s hard to tell specifically since everything he makes is indistinguishably terrible. It seemed engineered for a dorky white clientele by somebody who doesn’t actually know what dorky white Americans listen to.

Food, too, seemed to include very little Jamaican influence: aside from the proliferation of pumpkin, and the occasional availability of jerk chicken and pork, the apparent aim of the cuisine was to replicate, poorly, the sorts of things we might eat in the states: a mediocre Italian restaurant with an average 90-minute wait; a Tex-Mex restaurant whose location on a pier included so little light it was impossible to see your food when eating it; an Asian-fusion place that was, it must be said, quite good; an “international” eatery which served up bacon, eggs, and french toast every morning. Even the Caribbean restaurant went light on the spice, though admittedly my steak and cassava was still quite good.

So it was that while the gift shops peddled almost exclusively Jamaican-themed trinkets and overpriced t-shirts, the resort experience was designed to minimize the tourist’s interaction with Jamaican culture, save for its most superficial, smiling bits. I suppose I could say that I never really visited Jamaica at all, but an elaborate Potemkin Jamaica, trussed up for my honeymoon. I still have no idea what Jamaica is really like, other than the pearly-white resort experience, the dire warnings from other Americans about going off-resort, and a few excursions to well-traveled tourist traps. I realize that my purpose in visiting Jamaica was not to, well, go native, but there’s still something about the experience that bothers me in that same way that “complementary photo shoot” involves more and costs more than the signs would ever admit.

Despite the implication of the title, it was a stylish marriage; more importantly, it was my marriage, long in coming and sweet in arrival. It was an eight-year courtship, longer than this blog’s relatively short life (during which she was occasionally featured); it becomes easy—discouragingly easy—in a relationship of such length and regularity to lose sight of its uniqueness. Perhaps that is why, even as the appointed day (October 9th) drew closer, I felt little anxiety. The wedding was, in terms of dedication of time, about as involved as washing my windows.

There’s no wedding-day drama to make this interesting; no near-death escapes, no near-misses, no scandals. A groomsman came close to passing out (but didn’t); my palms sweated; immediately prior to beginning, I felt a strange lightness in my stomach which, it occurs to me, I think I first felt eight years ago, when I picked Allison up for our first major date. Actually, I showed up to the house an hour early, and her brother (who was slightly my junior, and also my subordinate in the marching band) regaled me with stories and photos from his recent trip to Europe.

Allison’s father, in his speech, joked that he wasn’t sure what would have happened if Allison and I had broken up: her brothers, after all, seem in all appearances to prefer me to her. I happen to know this isn’t true: were I ever to mistreat their sister, I don’t think they would hesitate to crush me into a wet, bony lump.

It’s good that they like me, however; were it not for their testimonials (Allison’s eldest brother is my age), our 3-year age difference (I was a high school senior, she a freshman, which in that context basically constitutes a May-December romance) may very well have precluded our relationship entirely. However improbably, but with a minimum of fuss and bother, she and I dated for eight years, from October 28, 2002, until October 9, 2010, when we finally got to stop “going steady” and start something more reified.

Those who know me know my habits: I am not a creature of spontaneity or caprice. Imagine those old yellowed daguerrotypes you sometimes see of great-great-grandfamilies, turtlenecked and collared in modeless black and white and white, staring into the camera as though its operator just shat on their dinner table. Well, as a metaphor for fun and excitement, that’s me: not the stern progenitors, mind you, but the dusty photograph itself, as two-dimensional and flat of affect as old varnish. There was not much by way of surprise or giddiness on the awaited day, but by mutual agreement between Allison and myself, I had no idea what the dress looked like, nor had I seen her since the night before, when we wrapped up our rehearsal dinner and headed to our disparate locations for the night.

Allison’s dress, purchased more than a year in advance of the wedding, spent most of its life incubating in my mother’s closet, which had empty space. In recent weeks, however, it had migrated to our townhome, where it hung, brazenly unsheathed, in the spare bathroom, the door of which was kept firmly closed. I was forbidden entrance; Allison stopped short of telling me that gazing upon it would melt my face like the Ark of the Covenant, but I believe the Wrath of God would be on her side. Imagine my consternation, then, when the day before the wedding arrives, Allison spends the afternoon with her ladies, and I set out to clean the two remaining bathrooms…. only to realize that our entire stock of cleaning supplies is squirreled away underneath the sink in her dress’ lair. Ever the gallant fiancé, I tightly shut my eyes, retired to all fours, and blindly felt my way into the bathroom; I retrieved the cleaning supplies without so much as a glimpse, but only at the cost of discovering the edge of the bathtub with my nose.

So this is the only real secret that awaited me on my wedding day: what would Allison look like? Certainly nothing else was in question: we knew the where? and when? and who?; we knew all too well the how much?, which all couples know is invariably much too much. I knew the why?, as I had told our officiant a year earlier; perhaps more accurately, I didn’t know the why: Allison defies my ability to explain or quantify, except to say that I want to be around her and take care of her and be loved by her. I think that’s what love is, anyway.

There’s a particular sensation associated with seeing your bride walk down the aisle. I can’t say for certain if it is a monolithic phenomenon or some synthesis of individual, discrete phenomena, but I can say the feeling was new to me. It had the air of a fever dream, in which white apparitions come down hallways as heat creeps at the neck. My palms sweated.

Truth be told, I don’t remember much about either the ceremony or the reception, and it’s not because I was was drinking heavily. Every old sage had told me that my reception would go fast; I believed them, but I had no idea that the entire night would vanish before my eyes like a darting insect. It’s not the blur of a cataract; it’s the quantum time of an amnesiac.

Now we’re back from our honeymoon (I was not quite crass even to turn to her in the airport and quip in my best noir male, “Honeymoon’s over, sweetheart!”) and face a life not terribly unlike the one we had before, and so I feel a little like Dustin Hoffman in the back of a bus. Still, it’s unfair to make that comparison: Allison and I aren’t confused and separate lovers fleeing a scene; it seems to me, anyway, that we’re seasoned and faithful companions walking hand-in-hand. Even if mine is always sweaty.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

On the 28^th of October, my girlfriend, Allison, and I celebrated our fourth year together (see writeups for our third and second; the first predates this blog). What began sixth months ago as the vague intentions of going to see something on Broadway eventually morphed into a weekend-long celebration that involved a lot of driving.

Friday, October 27^th

My planned time of departure is 12:30—the plan is to drive to WIU and be there by 4pm. My intention was to work until about noon, and then come home, throw my bag in the car, and leave. My alarm, though, had other plans, since it was set not for 7:45am, but 7:45pm, which makes a considerable difference, when you think about it. Having woken up late, I simply phoned it in and used the extra time to brew some coffee and make sure I had everything that I needed.

Only once I got on the road did I realize that I had entirely forgotten to eat. Anything. And wouldn’t have another chance to eat until later in the evening. Later, I would also be forcefully reminded that I had forgotten an article of clothing that Allison had very clearly asked me to bring. I stopped at a store to buy a card and flowers (given that they’d need to survive a 3-hour trip in a warm car, the flowers were a bit of a gamble), and got some trail mix to tide me over.

The drive from Joliet to Macomb is about three hours (less, the way I drive) and brutally boring. Luckily, it was a rather overcast day, so I didn’t have any glare to deal with, and with the exception of irritating truckers, it’s a smooth and uneventful drive. Going to Macomb is always infinitely better than coming home, because I have Allison to look forward to. A few notes about the trip:

• To the person who almost ran me off the road because you were gawking at the blazing semitruck on the far shoulder of the oncoming lane: eat shit and die.
• To the semitrucks who insist on getting in the left lane to pass other semitrucks, but take five minutes to do so because you’re not going any faster: eat shit and die.
• Boy, do I like having a V6 engine. I can do 80mph without breaking 3k RPM.

Despite a somewhat late start, I got to Western with time to spare, spending about 15 minutes waiting for Allison to get out of her rehearsal. This was fine, as it gave me time to use the restroom, again—drinking a large beer stein of coffee before embarking on a road trip is an exceptionally bad idea. Seeing Allison was, as always, wonderful: she even liked the flowers, though they were at this point somewhat worse for the wear.

The festivities for Friday evening actually had little to do with the anniversary, unless you include our countdown to midnight, when we exchanged small gifts. Actually, the reason I had driven down on Friday had more to do with driving arrangements than anything. But Allison had to take part in the orchestra’s annual Halloween concert, an event which probably draws every child in Macomb. It’s a fanciful romp through crowd-pleasing tunes like excerpts from the Pirates of the Caribbean score, its distinguishing feature being a parade of costumed children parading across the stage before the final song, to the applause and cooes of the audience. I’m extraordinarily uncomfortable around children, but I couldn’t help but be amused by the exceedingly young Spiderman sitting (sort of) in front of me, who was so very excited by the whole situation that he couldn’t help but beat the living tar out of an inexhaustible supply of invisible villains.

Afterwards, Allison and I hung out in her room, watching a movie and eating a late dinner. I should point out here that she gave me a copy of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, so my Bryson collection remains blissfully complete.

I won’t go into details about dorm life or any of those specifics. For that, see my earlier post about visiting Allison.

Saturday, October 28^th

In the morning we slept in slightly, needing to leave only by about 9am. I ate leftover pizza for breakfast, put on a different shirt, and we climbed into Allison’s Buick (affectionately known as “Big Bertha”) and hit the road, heading back to Joliet. As we are talking about I-80, I-74, and I-34 here, there’s very little to say, except for the following:

• It’s a much nicer trip with someone to talk to.
• There are a surprising amount of roadkill, especially on I-80. Including cows.
• About 20 miles outside of Joliet, traffic clumped together into a 55mph mass. A truck was hauling an enormously oversized load that apparently required two pickup trucks with flashing lights and a police cruiser as an escort. Because people are apparently paranoid of police, no one wanted to pass him up, even though it was perfectly legal to do so. Idiots.

I went home, had a light lunch, and then showered, trying to spiff up as much as possible. The 28^th was, after all, our actual anniversary, and the day with the most exciting activities.

At 4pm, Allison and I set off in Big Bertha (my car, if you’re following carefully, was three hours away, in Macomb) for Chicago. It was Allison’s first time driving in Chicago, and she was probably nervous. I was nervous for her, despite my sheets of directions and maps. I’d only driven there once, to see A Silver Mt. Zion, and it didn’t even require me driving downtown, but I was still scared of it.

We actually got to the parking garage on Randolph St. without incident, which was a difficult task since our route sent out through the heart of downtown—premium gawking territory. The Self-Park is a large structure a block away from the Oriental Theatre. It required that we drive up a steep, narrow, twisting path until we were several floors up. Imagine for a moment how difficult this is in a Buick LeSabre.

Once parked, we took the elevator to the bottom floor and hailed a cab after a few minutes of trying. The man was actually very pleasant, and wasn’t a maniac by the standards of most Chicago cab drivers. A $4.65 fare later, we arrived at Maggiano’s, on Grand St. At 5:30 on a Saturday, it was understandably packed. We had reservations, but they were still running behind and didn’t seat us until 5:45. The wait for those without reservations was well over an hour—while we waited, a steady stream of people entered and asked the hostess about approximate times, and then seemed both shocked and crestfallen when she gave them an estimate. What did they expect? This is an immensely popular restaurant in downtown Chicago at dinnertime, not Big Billy Bob’s All U Can Eat Ribs in Scratchyerass, Illinois. I remember when Allison and I went to the Maggiano’s in Oak Brook for Valentine’s Day several years ago. I wasn’t smart enough to make reservations, and so she and I had to endure a 3+ hour wait by wandering around the mall. 3+ hours.

We ended up with a primo table in the corner of a section otherwise full of larger parties. It gave us some measure of privacy and quiet. Allison encouraged me to get booze (she was paying), and as I was unimpressed with their choices of beers, I went fruity and got a pomegranate martini, which was delicious if not particularly strong. For our meal, Allison got Rigatoni and “D” (her favorite) and I tried some newer chicken dish (chicken something al forno—I don’t see it on their online menu), which was delicious. Since it’s Maggiano’s, I shouldn’t need to tell you that the quantities were far too abundant for our poor stomachs. For dessert, we shared a large slice of some of the creamiest cheesecake I’ve ever had, drizzled with blueberry sauce and fresh blueberries. Sinful.

Done with dinner, we hailed another cab to take us back to the theatre. This time, we didn’t luck out with a mild-mannered driver. This one, a man of few words, dodged and weaved through traffic as though he was a character in Grand Theft Auto. I quickly engaged my seat belt and gave Allison a look that said, “In case we don’t make it…. I love you.”

But we did make it (and without killing any pedestrians, either!), though visibly shaken, and returned our leftovers to our car. Outside the theatre, Allison took pictures of the marquee and of us. She tried also to capture some of the surrounding sights while we waited to get it, with mixed success. Once inside, we had some time to kill before the 8pm show, so Allison bought me beer. In a brilliant promotional ploy, the theatre was stocking Pete’s Wicked Ale, appropriate because we were in fact seeing Wicked. After tasting it, I thought perhaps it was a rebranded version of Goose Island’s Honker’s Ale, because it tasted very similar, and Goose Island, being a Chicago microbrewery, is good at forming deals with places and events inside of the city and surrounding suburbs.

Since I’m not a theatre critic, I won’t bother reviewing Wicked except to say that it was good. Some of the performers were different than when we saw it last January—Glinda was even bubblier than before, if that’s even possible—but the whole performance was as solid, funny, and exciting as ever. My one complaint is that the Oriental Theatre was not built for people with long legs: I had to sort of fold up by lower half in order to fit in my seat.

Afterward, we stopped in the tea shop (Argo Tea) next door. Not only was it easier to use the bathroom there than wait in line at the theatre, but we got some hot drinks to warm us up. A good thing, too, because there ended up being a substantial line at the Self-Park (the theatre is also smart enough to ally itself with the owners of the parking garage, who offer discounts to customers with ticket stubs). Much of the line was just waiting for elevators, but we still had to pay at the automated machines.

“I wonder if there are stairs,” I thought. Not a minute later, a woman and her significant other pushed their way through to crowd to the corpulent attendant sitting behind a desk and watching the chaos with disinterest. “Excuse me,” she began, “but where are your stairs?”

“Stairs are closed,” the attendant answered, without looking up.

“Closed?” the woman repeated, exasperated. “What if there’s a fire?”

“Then the police will open them.” Still not looking up.

It really does boggle the mind.

When we exited the parking garage (in the car, that is), we ended up on a different street than we had intended, and after a moment of panic, we simply took a trip around the block and got back on Randolph, which led to 90/94E, which led to I-55, and it was a skate from there.

All in all, it was a pretty smooth experience and a great anniversary.

Sunday, October 29^th

On Sunday morning, I slept in with the benefit of an extra hour from the end of Daylight Savings Time. Allison and I ended up getting together at about 1pm, had a light lunch, got our stuff together, said goodbye to her family and dogs, and then hit the road at about 3pm, armed with coffee.

Again, I needn’t bore you with the details of the drive, except to note these few things:

• The large black cow lying dead in a ditch on I-80 was still there.
• Have I mentioned how much I hate driving on I-80?
• Despite the relative remoteness of this stretch of interstate, Sunday afternoons are apparently the times for speed traps on I-80 (we avoided all of them).

We arrived after dark, in time to grab some food from the cafeteria, before going to that night’s activity: Western hosted a one-night-only performance of Rent. It was an off-Broadway performance, so there were obviously no big names, and the production values weren’t as high, but I was impressed nonetheless. Not only was the vocal talent still fantastic, but the choreography was surgically precise: the stage was small and packed to the rafters with scenery, but the characters still managed to dance, jump, and go crazy without tripping and breaking their necks.

There was quite a turnout to see it, including a lot of older people probably not related to the University. This surprised me, considering that Macomb is a kind of conservative farming town, excepting perhaps, the more left-leaning academics who staff its university, and Rent is a pretty damn liberal musical, unabashedly featuring (and defending) homosexuality, drag queens, and poverty. Allison pointed out to me, though, that it’s Macomb: there’s nothing else to do.

This version of Rent, which I’m guessing is largely unchanged from the Broadway version except for staging changes, was a bit surprising after seeing the movie. While the film opens with “Seasons of Love,” the stage show waits until the second act. One must also infer a lot more from the stage show, because it hasn’t the benefit of flashbacks and descriptive visuals. For those unfamiliar with the story (such as the elderly gentleman sitting next to me, who also complained about the excessive volume), it might have been difficult to follow. Also, because it was staged in a converted gymnasium, the quality of the audio was less than ideal. Still, it was a very enjoyable (and relatively cheap) experience.

Afterward, we drove to the area by WIU’s President’s house, where one can see the campus lit up against the starry sky—a remote analog of the Chicago skyline we left just the previous day. We then worked on some things that Allison needed done for the next day—we painted a wooden paddle for her sorority, and I proofread a paper that was due on Monday. At 1am, we crawled into bed and fell asleep in each other’s arms, dreading the coming of morning.

Monday, October 30^th

We awoke the next day before 8, bleary-eyed. I just threw on my jeans and put in my contacts, waiting to shower until I returned home. We breakfasted on cereal; Allison made coffee. At 9am, we walked out to my car, parked outside since Friday, and sadly said goodbye. As Allison said, it’s a good thing she wore waterproof makeup. This would be out last meeting until she comes home for Thanksgiving, and neither of us wanted to part.

I filled up on gas in Good Hope, a tiny town of 400 a few miles north of Macomb, and then settled in for a long, long drive. A few notes:

• Driving away from Allison really sucks.
• They were finally picking up that dead cow when I passed it.
• At the exact same point as on Saturday—about 20 miles out from Joliet—there was once again a slowdown because, yes, another truck was hauling another large piece of metal, with a police escort. This sort of experience makes me never want to drive on I-80 again.

Conclusion

It’s been a short four years for me: being with Allison has been a blissful time for me, and it just flies by. I feel like it was only a few months ago that were in Chicago celebrating three years, and now here we are, stronger than ever, starting our fifth. It’s been amazing. She’s amazing.

I love you, Allison.

The Rising Action

I spent the past weekend in Macomb, Illinois, a little bucolic ‘burb in the middle of a vast stretch of corn and grass. In any other circumstance, this sleepy little town of about 20’000 people would be entirely unexceptional—it is quintessentially Midwestern, by which I mean that it is quintessentially dull. Officially founded in 1830, it didn’t gain its famous feature—Western Illinois University—until 1899. It enjoyed a brief relationship with the St. Louis Rams, who used WIU’s athletic facilities for summer training from 1996-2004.

I made the 3-hour drive west to see my girlfriend, Allison, who began her undergraduate studies there this fall, as you may recall if you read this rag regularly. We’d planned it for close to a month—I knew that visiting was a categorical imperative for me, but it was just difficult enough to remain an occasional thing. Sadly, no surprise visits or unexpected trips.

I arrived on Friday afternoon. The trip was long and lonely, the sky overcast but the air humid enough to require me to keep my air conditioning on. At 80mph, opening the windows is a practical impossibility. My back and ass hurt from sitting for so long, my bladder was slightly distended from the large coffee and the bottle of water that I imbibed along the way, but by the time I was navigating Macomb, I no longer really cared. In part, this was because I was busy navigating (I missed my turn anyway and had to circle around to a secondary parking option), but it was also because I was so excited about finally seeing my girlfriend—I had not seen her, after all, since Labor Day weekend, admittedly not an eternity, but close enough when one is madly in love. After navigating across a street and between some buildings, I saw her just as she exited her orchestra rehearsal, and my heart leaped as she came skipping toward me. Neither pictures nor memory do her justice—I was thrilled. My journey was over.

Once we got back to her dormitory, I had to meet all of her friends. Allison makes a lot of friends, and being on an all-girl floor (more on that later) means that she’s surrounded constantly by mostly friendly girls of similar age. I’ve seen this before—when Allison was in colorguard, for instance, or the dance team—and it always ends in bubbly friendship. Sure enough, Allison had a whole cadre of extroverts, with whom we ate dinner in the cafeteria. Nice, certainly, but a bit overwhelming to a quiet, understated, and severely car-lagged person such as myself. I immediately set out to memorizing all their names (most of which seemed to begin with a |k| sound), with some success. It being Friday, most of them were going out drinking.

WIU and Drinking

Drinking is big at Western. Really big. Naturally, there are well-known party schools that probably eclipse it, but I personally have never experienced an on-campus culture as heavily predicated upon alcohol as I did during my 2.5 days in Macomb. Western is home to 28 sororities and fraternities. I am unaware how intrinsic the Greek system is to the drinking culture on campus, but I can say that the most drinking we saw was on Adams St., home to a number of frat houses, overflowing with herds of beer-gulping partygoers.

My immediate theory is that Macomb offers little other recreation besides intoxication. The location is remote from any urban center (the nearest shopping mall is ≈30 miles away), and while Western it has the standard college amenities, the usual sort of commercialization that follows the college demographic—coffee houses, hookah bars, bookstores, specialty restaurants—just isn’t there. Macomb is lucky to have a Wal-Mart and some fast-food franchises. So, despite the Macomb police’s harsh stance on underage drinking, it’s stubbornly prevalent, to the degree that you are statistically likely to be doing only one of two things on a weekend night: sitting in your dorm room, or drinking somewhere. According to a 2000 College Alcohol Study by the Harvard School of Public Health entitled “Binge Drinking On America’s College Campuses,” Greek system membership and collegiate athletics participation are the two important correlating factors for the likelihood of binge drinking, but anecdotally I can assure you that it’s by no means limited to these criteria alone.

Saturday morning, Allison and I attended a charity softball tournament, sponsored by her sorority, which was held for charity. It began at 10 a.m., which struck me as odd, since I figured most of the participants would be miserably hung over at that point. And to no great surprise, I heard a number of the female spectators mumble things like “I drank so much last night,” and the otherwise-fit male participants stumbling and groaning like overtaxed fat men, bemoaning their sorry state. True to form, however, one winning team, when faced with three empty hours until their next match, began to loudly suggest they all head to a local bar for some celebratory beers.

Accommodations

Allison and I didn’t tarry too long at the event—we were tired from staying up late the night before, as Allison wanted to finish the last few episodes of the second season of Grey’s Anatomy before we watched the inaugural episode of season 3 that I had brought with me on my pen drive. Also, were hungry, having basically missed breakfast. Our first night of sleep was a little turbulent, too: Allison lofts her bed, which is a twin-sized unit, and this leaves maybe two vertical feet from mattress to ceiling. So there we were, having both squeezed into that little cave of a space, and we fell asleep almost immediately, only to wake up from the incredible heat that I had managed to generate underneath the covers. Also, the bed had a bit of a droop in the middle, and so we both rolled toward each other, fighting for space. I know, I know—how romantic. By Sunday night, though, we had managed to find our groove, sleeping more comfortably and more soundly in each other’s embrace.

I’ve never lived in a dorm before—the closest I’ve come was bunking in a dorm at Case Western for three days (see blogged bits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), or maybe staying at a hotel. Allison’s dorm is an X when viewed aerially, and each L (half of the X) on each level is reserved for a specific sex. Each half of a floor is isolated from the other—for a male to go from his side of Floor 10 to the other, for instance, he has to travel down to the first or second floor, walk around, and take a different set of elevators up to the female side of Floor 10, and he must be accompanied by a female from that point on. As a male guest residing in a female area, I had to be accompanied by Allison for every trip to the bathroom (I wash my hands just often enough to be irritating), and when I showered, she stood guard to make sure that no other girls came in looking to bathe—I was, after all, about an entire head taller than the shower stall (the showerhead rose to a point level with my chest). Had someone been starkers in a neighboring stall, I couldn’t have seen her goods without a purposeful effort on my part (which I am smart enough not to do), but it still would have been a bad scene. None of the girls seemed to particularly care about a guy on their floor, which made things considerably easier.

I lived mostly out of a suitcase, a selection of clothes that were mostly too warm, as I underestimated the warmth of the weekend (rain was forecast—we received almost none). I am a creature of habit and familiarity, so living in a foreign environment, with travel-sized and microwaveable versions of my stuff and my diet, respectively, was unsettling. Or at least it would be—in Ohio, I was uncomfortable for much of the time, bunking with coworkers—but being with Allison was comforting. I didn’t feel out of place or at odds with my environment: to the contrary, I felt more comfortable with Allison than ever before.

Saturday: He drinks a whisky drink, he drinks a vodka drink, he drinks a lager drink, he drinks a cider drink

Saturday afternoon, after returning from the charity event, Allison and I availed ourselves of the local Pizza Hut, and absolutely smashed a large pepperoni pizza and order of breadsticks. Maybe I was just hungry, but we both agreed that it was especially satisfying at that point. After we had digested, we went out to the library, which is one of WIU’s points of pride. It’s a massive structure (six stories and 200’000ft²), a mixture of a college library and a botanical gardens, overflowing with decorative plant life and topped by a triangular glass ceiling. It was deathly quiet that afternoon, and we hiked up to the top floor, found two chairs, and read, but the early rising and the smothering silence eventually got to us. I found my eyes crossing in fatigue as I tried to read. Eventually, we gave up and headed back to the dorm for a nap. By this point, the rest of Allison’s floor (with some notable, sober exceptions) was just beginning to stir, nursing headaches. It was still quiet enough for a nap, and we woke sometime shortly after five, somewhat refreshed but groggy all over again.

The major event of the night was a fall concert held by the various musical groups of WIU’s Fine Arts program, namely the Chorus, the Jazz Band, the Orchestra, and the Wind Ensemble, the latter two of which Allison is principal bassoonist. After getting ready, Allison, myself, and two of Allison’s friends piled into her car and headed out in a bit of a hurry. In the end, I had to drive Allison’s car a block or so to a parking lot while she rushed to get her instrument and high-tail it to the performance hall.

The concert, while nice, was nothing to gush about. That is to say, each ensemble performed a short, illustrative set that introduced itself without really showing off what each was capable of (it is early in the semester, after all). The orchestra played the final movement of Dvorák’s 9^th Symphony, which was excellent, and the highlight of the wind ensemble’s performance was Frank Ticheli’s Blue Shades, a jazz/swing-inspired piece that featured an outlandish clarinet solo, which was performed with such pizazz that the male clarinetist was treated to a feminine chorus of cheers as he stood up after the conclusion of the piece. Allison had a few short exposed parts (she has more solos in the full Dvorák symphony, which they will naturally be playing next weekend when I am not there), and needless to say she was wonderful, as she always is.

The post-concert festivities, unrelated to the Fine Arts program, was a Fall Party for Allison’s sorority. Allison was invited, but not even sure how to get to the venue until perhaps 10:30pm, when she was finally able to get ahold of someone who knew. The “venue” was really just the backyard of a farmhouse in rural Macomb, and by the time we got there, it had been a “wet” event for a couple of hours, which is to say that everyone was drinking by that point. You might think that a couple of hours isn’t even long enough for a proper drunk, but even before 11, some of the same people who were hung over like death at the charity event that morning were already so stupendously inebriated that they were having trouble standing. Some seemed to be taking it more easy with the drinking. One very nice girl who came up to talk to Allison and I admitted immediately that she was basically shitfaced, but managed to talk to us for a good ten or fifteen minutes, coherently, about the sorority and about her career plans. My FLAC hoodie sparked a discussion about computer science majors and the Java programming language. So, I can at least say that this group, while very drunk, was at least comprised of friendly drunks, who were also prescient enough to sleep on-site, in tents set up for that very purpose.

Unimpressed with the choice of recreational activity (e.g. drinking, and then peeing on the corn), Allison and I left after a short stay there and headed back to the dorm, where we cuddled, finished watching Laws of Attraction, and went to bed around 1:30pm, aware that we had the luxury of sleeping in the next morning.

Falling Action

Sunday doesn’t lend itself well to narrative. Allison and I arose at about 11am, cleaned up around the dorm, and hung out until 4pm, when she had to go practice for a talent show that her sorority is participating in. I sat on the sidelines and read my book, sometimes smirking at the hangover-related groans being offered up by the participating fraternity members. I never cease to be amazed that the behavior of the previous evening fails to change, regardless of the events of the subsequent day. It’s a pervasive and pernicious sort of culture.

After the practice, Allison and I stopped at K-Mart for some supplies, got dinner at a Wendy’s, and ate quickly before she needed to leave for her sorority’s new member ceremony (an actual ceremony, though, and not a hazing). I stayed at the dorm, confined to the room, and read my book, snacking all the while. I spent most of the time wrapped up in the enormous blanket that Allison had made me (I’d offer pictures if my camera wasn’t shit), and she finally got back around nine, along with most of the girls who had left for the weekend.

We did some laundry, and I painted her nails while she studied for a test. Neither of us really wanted to go to bed, since the morning would be a harbinger of my inevitable departure. I had decided to stay the extra night, rather than leave Sunday afternoon, in order to squeeze all of the time possible out of my visit, but it still didn’t seem like enough time. I didn’t want to leave; Allison didn’t want me to either, but come Monday morning, I needed to leave by 8:30 in order to make it to my afternoon classes. Tears were shed—Allison and I felt extremely close to each other this weekend, and leaving felt like losing her to college all over again. The ride home was smooth and uneventful, but I was in a dour mood, eschewing music for the first 40 or so miles, unable to get into it.

In a little over a month, she and I will celebrate four years together. It continues to amaze me how she and I seem to be a living breathing thing capable of autonomous growth. It never feels to me as though we weaken, despite any fights or ruts, and my love for her is continuously renewed by some means or other. I had a great weekend with Allison. I love her, with all my heart.

I don’t know how people did it before cell phones and digital photos. For all the asking people did about how we were going to manage, I admit that we seem to be doing just swimmingly so far. Long distances change the dynamics of a relationship, but it’s not always a deficiency: when she comes home for a family reunion on Labor Day weekend, or when I go down to visit her in late September, or when we celebrate our 4-year anniversary in October, the meetings will be that much sweeter. What’s more, Allison isn’t the sort of person who goes to college to drink and wash out her first year, so instead I get the supreme pleasure of seeing her grow as a person, and it makes me love her even more.

I know you’re out there reading this, Allison: I love you. You mean the world to me.

She is a holocaustic heat
which flares my dampened match,
and births a heaving heliotrope
with seceding burn of forge,
alight in writhing fire.
She is a conflagrating ring
that traces further aureoles
with bits of blinding white;
and mantle—pushing solemnly the breath—
beneath the bloodred spire.

She is an answer
to many things that never
deigned a question mark;
and pale halos of twilight
that flay pink strips from the stretch of sky;
that swear recidivistic stars
will touch the treeline once again.
but neither ray nor shade bely us:
whether argentine or aureate arcs above,
We will Love, She and i.

We began in downtown Joliet, boarding a 10:24am train northbound to Chicago. We picked up donuts and coffee on the way there, though during the trainride, I managed to spill a sizable amount of coffee on myself, though it simply rolled off my leather jacket and onto the floor. That’s why you never see any soggy cows, I guess. It’s amazing how big some of the train station parking lots are in New Lenox and Mokena, and how there aren’t any stations in places like Blue Island: people just board in the middle of the street. During the trip, we reviewed our plans for the day, which were carefully researched on the CTA’s trip planner. We had 1-day unlimited passes for the subway and busses, and sheets that said which bus to board at which location in order to get where we needed to be. I also had a shitload of cash for various tickets and for emergency taxi purposes (more on this later).

We arrived at the LaSalle street station at 11:45, where we happened to see an old high school friend, Erica (Allison knows her better than I), who goes to DePaul and was meeting her boyfriend. A few brief pleasantries later, Allison and I walked the less-than-one block to the L station, which was to take us within spitting distance of the Sears Tower. While waiting for the train, we mused about the bravery of the pidgeons that were pecking about for food. For being such filthy creatures, they’re actually quite pretty, with iridescent neck feathers.

Sure, enough, the train came, and within a few minutes we were standing at a street corner outside our destination. I checked the map to reorient myself and figure out what direction we needed to walk. As I scowled at the little fold-out CTA map, Allison interrupted. “Um,” she said, “I think it’s that way?”

“Oh?” I said, looking up…. and up, and up, and up, since Allison was pointing at one of the tallest buildings in the world, less than a block a way, a its telltale white antennas poking into the welkin. “Oh,” I said. “Let’s go this way.”

Soon thereafter, we were hit up by a very nice conman. A middle-aged black man with grizzly stubble handed us several postcards and launched into a preface about our troops and the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Oh brother, I thought. What’s this going to turn into? Then he informed us that he and his “kids” were homeless and living in a shelter. He was given postcards every week to go out and sell, and could we please support him?

My brain worked a mile a minute. There’s no way a homeless shelter would have its constituents peddle postcards on the streets of Chicago. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean he’s not genuinely homeless. Faced with a decision, I fished some money out of my wallet (too much, really) and gave it to him, which prompted a hug for both Allison and I. Feeling somewhat cheated, we continued on to the Skydeck. Where there was almost no queue for the elevators. “Great,” we said. “No wait.”

The elevators took us into a bright yellow room with royal blue accoutrement—the Sear’s Tower’s new branding—that was filled from wall to far wall with a serpentine line of people culminating in a metal detector. Still, it seemed to be moving pretty quickly, so we joined the queue and listened to all the different languages being spoken. There was a middle eastern family ahead of us with annoying kids (I profess to being completely ignorant of what exact nationality they were); a duo of dark-haired Russian men we passed on occasion; at least one Hispanic family. I may have heard more foreign languages than English, but I suppose that’s no surprise. The Sears Tower constitutes one of the main tourist attractions in the city (in the country, even), drawing in over 1.3 million people a year, according to their promo materials. We also met up—unplanned—with Erica and her boyfriend.

After getting through the metal detector (Allison’s belt buckle, of all things, set it off), we got to wait in another long queue for tickets. I thought maybe we could both pass off as 11 years old and save a few bucks, but later decided against it. After shelling out $23 bucks, we hurried up and waited in yet another long queue, this time to pack into a room and watch a promotional film about Chicago. By this time, I gathered that the intent was to stagger the flow of incoming people so that the skydeck itself wasn’t shoulder to shoulder. I remembered the video from the last time I was at the Tower (it was made in 1996), but it was horribly out of date, since Comiskey Park is now US Cellular Field (and what a shame) and the Sears Tower is no longer the tallest building in the world.

Once the movie was over, we shuffled out and waited, again, in one last queue for the super-powered elevators that would take us to the top (at 1600 feet per minute). At one point, the machinations of the line forced me to wait inside a revolving door. I made the customary physical gags about being trapped inside, but stopped short of miming a self-induced asphysxiation (a la Peter Griffin).

Finally, we made it up to the Skydeck, which was much different than I remembered it. Or I’m much different. Either way, it was a great day for visibility, even with a bit of haze marring the horizon. We did the requisite Oohing and Ahhing, attempted to take some pictures, and took the elevators down. Luckily, there were no long waits this time.

On the way out, we had to walk through a gift shop, and Allison pointed out racks of suspiciously familiar postcards selling for 40¢ each. “Yeah yeah,” I said, “but maybe he was homeless anyway.” That’s what I’d tell myself, at least.

Our next stop was Marshall Fields, which involved boarding a bus (my first time) and enduring the manic drive through construction. Once there, I was awed at the store. Mind you, we have a Marshall Fields here in Joliet, which is two floors and fancy enough, I suppose. But this thing was nine floors, and basically a mall in and off itself. And it was crawling with people. And had a ceiling like a cathedral. Allison drooled at the mammoth selection of shoes, somewhat put out that she had no money to treat herself. I marvelled at how such a monstrosity could exist in a place where real estate is at such a premium. The store was an entire city block and 9 stories tall: what a testament to opulence. I would find that at least in downtown Chicago, this will be a theme.

We took the red line subway to Grand, hungry for lunch. We walked for a while, not seeing the giant frog that marked out desination, and realized that we were walking in the opposite direction. We executed an about-face, walked a little faster, and arrived at the Rainforest Café (again, my first time) at about 3. And good timing, too, since we seemed to miss both lunch and dinner rushes. Within 5 minutes, we were seated and ordering, our conversation interrupted only by the howls of frightened/angry animatronic pachyderms and the squeals of the children seated in the area. Oh, and by mouthfuls of food, since we both tore into our meals with gusto. I noticed that they served alcoholic drinks in clear plastic classes with multicolored LEDs blinking at the bottom. I was instantly even more angry that I am not yet 21.

Our next stop was Michigan Ave., the “Miracle Mile” and the home of the most opulent (and yet depressing) sights of the city. We first stopped at Nordstrom’s, which had some sort of famous people there, I guess, involved with the Heatherette fashion line. There were three very skinny models in strange dresses and stage makeup dancing, while two very gay men (really, their loafers were so light they were floating) signed shirts or something. Everyone seemed fascinated or excited or something, but I was instantly struck with the urge to punch the pompous autographers in the face and make the models eat something.

By this point, it was about 5, and Michigan Ave. was awash in pedestrians, moving from store to store. What struck me the most, I suppose, was the juxtaposition of opulence and decay. Sure, there was Saks Fifth Ave., sitting proudly and richly, but in front of it were droopy-eyed transients, holding out cups for spare change; blind men sleeping against walls; busking the likes of which I’ve never seen. We made our way down several blocks, stopping at a crowded and surprisingly run-down Walgreens for gum, avoiding the Apple Store at all costs, perusing the Disney Store at Allison’s request, and finally finding The Cheesecake Factory. Instead of order there, though, we stopped at Jamba Juice, which Allison loves to pieces. She got her usual Razzmatazz and I got a red tea, though I confessed that I considered ordering a wheatgrass enema.

Then the fun started. By means a bus screwup—the details of which are not worth specifying, except to say that CTA can kiss my rump—we ended up taking the wrong bus up Lake Shore Drive, getting off at Belmont. We needed to be at Navy Pier. Our precisely laid plans didn’t account for this. Desperate, we decided to bite the bullet and hailed a passing taxi (again, my first time). We were at Navy Pier lickity split, and it only cost $11 (though I tipped handsomely).

Navy Pier was overrun with children dressed up in Halloween costumes. It was also much bigger than I remembered, and looming over all of it was the Ferris Wheel, which I had earlier agreed to ride on. Allison loves things like Ferris Wheels and roller coasters, and I—needless to say—do not. Still and all, if I can’t pee myself out of fear for the woman I love, what good am I, right? We both used the bathrooms, watched a juggler in bemusement for a few seconds, and headed up. While I still profess my fear of being suspended in baskets 150 feet above the ground, we managed to snap some nice pictures, including one of us.

We killed some more time by walking along the pier’s edge, bought some food, wandered around the “stained glass museum,” and then found the right bus to take us near the La Salle St. train station. It was a long bus ride, made longer by the fact that we were sitting next to a somewhat drunk black man nursing a beer can in a paper bag, and soulfully but ineptly crooning spirituals at the top of his voice.

We departed at State & Congress, bought some coffee at a 7-11, and trekked back to the train station. I was in familiar territory now, having come this way when ffanatic and I saw the Red Sparowes. It took a while for the train to open up, but eventually were were boarded and on our way back to Joliet, having only to avoid the car filled with sugar-crazed trick-or-treaters and their unfortunate parents. Once in Joliet, I plucked a $3 parking fine out of my windshield wiper (I thought they didn’t enforce the meter on weekends, but either way, it’s cheaper than filling it) and we called it a night.

I could wax grandiloquent here about the juxtaposition of social classes in Chicago or something like that, but I won’t because it’s late and I’m already sick of writing. Let’s just say that I don’t think I’d like to live and work in Chicago unless I was making a sufficiently high salary (six figures, minimum) to justify the traffic, noise, and urban sprawl. It’s a beautiful place to be a tourist, but it’s a city with its own problems nonetheless. It’s that toddlin’ town.