Other People's Television
Today, I woke up from my evening nap around 6:15 and felt a familiar urge. The urge, located deep in my subconscious, caused me to wake up, get dressed, take the redline for twenty minutes and walk five minutes east to Nordstrom, wait for the elevator for about five minutes to take me up to the fourth floor of the shopping center food court and relieve myself in the public restroom. And, to prolong my stay even longer, I strolled through the menswear for a while, bought a coffee from the Nordstrom café, went to the Hugo Boss and Armani outlets, then returned to the restroom to do a different kind of business. I put the lid down and crouched on top with my Blackberry and checked my email while listening the Rogers and Hammerstein medleys playing from the speakers in the ceiling. I stayed there for thirty minutes fiddling around online and prolonging the inevitable. I knew that eventually I would have to go back home and I dreaded it. I knew that the urge I had was not to urinate, it was to be downtown.
I don’t think that I am pee-shy. Years of staying with boyfriends and growing up in households with three or more women present has broken me of any notion of bathroom privacy. Still, I can’t get comfortable doing everyday things in this new apartment. Partly because I know it’s not technically my apartment and I’m only subletting the room, but also because I’ve been single and living alone for more than a year now.
At first living alone with few friends and nobody to call at night was lonely. It got quiet. Then the quiet kind of grew and almost became like another person in the room. I started to enjoy the quiet of living alone. And because I lived downtown, it was never really all that quiet anyway. I’ve picked up the awful habit of peeing with the door open, as well as other biological tasks required to prepare oneself for anal sex. I’ve left sex toys out on the sink next to my tooth brush, sometimes left them suctioned to the shower wall or on some other wall in my room. My floor became a complex filing system of magazines and old drafts of stories I’ve workshopped, hospital bills, pay stubs, napkins from potbelly’s, receipts from Bloomingdales. I was not necessarily what one would call a happy gay bachelor (is there any other kind of single gay man), but I was comfortable. My life had controlled chaos. I had air conditioning, prime location on State street nestled between a Borders, Jamba Juice and Gene Siskel film center, I had just enough space in my closet to accommodate my winter clothes.
Even in high school I lived mostly separate from my family. We were in a split level house in the woods and my room was the only room on the bottom floor. I had my own bathroom and a lot of privacy. I haven’t shared a bathroom with women in all of my adult life. So, imagine my surprise to walk into a bathroom with a large stand alone tub, low water pressure, no detachable shower head, no shelf space for my soap, face wash, moisturizers shampoos, shaving balm, assorted Burts Bees products, several types of cologne and deodorant and grooming supplies. Not to mention my toy collection. Where were my “adult” toys going to go? This thought hadn’t crossed my mind until unpacking. My toys had nowhere to go. I threw them in a duffle bag and hid them in the sock drawer for now, but surely they can’t stay there all summer?
I continued unpacking, at first feeling the rush of the fabulous new place I’m subletting. Then, slowly a set of realizations settled in, discoveries of missing amenities (so much missing that a call to Cluesoe was in order) each with the self-assurance that such things were luxuries. I can live without the microwave. Air conditioning is just expensive. You don’t really need Ethernet hookups or wifi, or any kind of internet service. Television, I can do without. No laundry machines? No problem. No screens on my windows, that’s historic. But there was one absence that any well dressed urban dweller could simply not rationalize-
What community college design major failure of an interior architect designed my room without a closet? It was not hidden, it was not just small. I was simply not there. The window with no screens and view of the El train, acceptable. No closet space? Heinous. Was I to fold my clothing, not just clothing but dear woven friends, and stuff them into as drawer? All 56 of my summer button-up shirts were to be simply folded and condensed? I was to fold the Burberry, the Prada, the Kenneth Cole, the Calvin Klein, the Marc Jacobs, the Theory, the Boss, the Ralph Lauren, the G Star, and all of those vintage western shirts? Who could have possibly lived in this room before?
When I plugged the television into the cable socket in the wall I was only expecting to get maybe ten channels and two of them would be Spanish; I was surprised to find we get over 100 premium channels. Whatever illegitimate setup that had caused this was out of my mind, because we had fifty channels of HBO. And just when I thought the summer was going the be looking up the show started rewinding. There was no cable box, no digital cable remote, who was doing this? Then, after flipping through the channels I realized our television was picking up the cable that all of our neighbors had, and we had no control whatsoever of the content or execution of those movies. We were at the command of someone else’s remote. When the guy downstairs wanted to back up and replay the shower scene four times just for another boob shot there was nothing I could do. When the woman next door kept rewinding this one scene to figure out what a mumbling character said I had to go with it. When the people in the next set of apartment buildings pause the movie for fifteen minutes while they ate dinner I had to take the same time to fix my dinner. I was, in effect, becoming my neighbors. It takes a neighborhood to raise a child, and it takes neighbors with Comcast to entertain that child.
At night I looked out the window and Magic Johnson’s head rolled by several times. Covering each of the train cars was an advertisement for some medical center endorsed by him and his pockmarked chubby face must have been the ideal image they wanted to portray.
“What fresh hell is this,” I thought. I was in real estate hell.
Shortly after I moved into the third floor walk up a heat wave descended upon Chicago and brought with it thousands and thousands of little pollen puffs floating down like a summer snow. It was so fertile, and the little seeds and wisps clung to clothes got in your nose and mouth, stuck to your hair, flew into your eyes. Foreheads needed to be wiped every few steps I had sweat pools in every skin recess, the ceiling fans in the apartment only blew the hot air around, I tried to shower but I was sweating even as I was washing off. The damp muggy bathroom is the enemy of personal grooming. I put a towel down on my bedroom floor and let the ceiling fan dry my off. The internet wasn’t working, which meant no porn except for the same old same old that I have tucked away on my hard drive. No TV. No coffee. I felt lethargic, I wondered how long it would be before I could finally go back to work on Monday. The summer was not full of barbeques, new polo shirts, days at the beach and cool perspiring mojitos. I worked every day and spent my spare time in the restroom in Nordstrom looking up song lyrics on my Blackberry.
People who say that the worst season in Chicago is the winter don’t live in Chicago.
The days have been filled with a different kind of quiet now, the quiet of office monotony. I started working in student affairs every day and have gotten used to the pace of things. Advising slows down a lot in the summer, which means more time for busy work and other tasks. I decorated the conference room for an office party with a summer citrus theme, linking little pieces of orange green and yellow paper into long festive trains that slowly overcame my desk and flooded onto the floor and eventually into the hallway. The next day, after checking meeting maker Theresa informed me that is was one of the Advisor’s birthdays and we didn’t prepare anything for it so my task was to design and create a personalized birthday card from colored paper, staples and masking tape. Then there is the circulation of the card, surely a task for me, someone who has been working here two days and doesn’t know anyone’s name job title or office location. Then the flowers must be picked up from CVS and paid for with petty cash. Then the conference room must be decorated again. An “urgent meeting” is called, resulting in office cheer and laughter and happiness.
The next day I was to pick up 4,000 copies from the service bureau, the next day, pick up a check from Cathleen in the 116 building. Each day was full of dry minimally administrative tasks. My knowledge of Excel came in handy when making a spreadsheet to sign out office supplies from the cabinet. My design background has helped me to make signs to put around the office with enjoyable imagery and helpful reminders for people making more that 40 copies, important cell phone numbers, the payroll cycle, timesheet locations, what the acronym FERPA stands for.
The one perk about working in this new office is that I get to see Felice just about every day. Felice is the dean of student affairs and kind of like the queen of everything at the school. She knows everyone, she’s always the sweetest person when you’re talking to her, doesn’t just say hello, but makes it a point to actually have a conversation with the people she sees, she gives hugs. And she’s pretty much just the most fabulous old lady ever. Felice sightings were rare when I worked in Residence Life, limited to times when she only passed through on her way to Student Affairs. I used to take notes on the Felice sightings and brag to coworkers who could not have been less thrilled. Once, Felice gave me the roll left over from her lunch at Corner Bakery and told me I should eat more than just Starbursts while at work. Every once in a while if there was an executive birthday or some other kind of party with wonderful food Felice would bring me a plate. One time she scurried out of the office before I had a chance to say hello but as she passed my desk she dropped a few pieces of candy down. Basically, she’s my dream surrogate grandmother.
Working from the school and knowing Felice has resulted in invitations to things I would not ordinarily be invited to. They’re generally the kinds of things that you must spend money on. I received a free ticket to the SAIC fashion show from my boss and later found out that the ticket was provided by Felice and it came with a front row seat right next to her that said RESERVED: DUBLON on the back. The last time I sat in a reserved seat it was for the 2nd grade play version of Sleeping Beauty that my sister was in and she was one of the fairy god mothers, the blue one, and she got us seats in the front row. I seriously had a Devil Wears Prada Moment when I sat in that seat, and for a moment I swear Felice turned into Meryl Streep and turned to me and said, “Everyone wants to be us.” The fashion show was amazing and only one model fell on her face.
Then, just a few days ago Felice sees me working in Student Affairs and she tells me that she was going to give this to the first person she saw coming in today and she’s glad it’s me. And I said, give me what? And she tells me that there’s an extra seat still open at her table for the Gene Siskel Film Center Gala, and she’d like me to be there. Now, these Galas are not cheap. The SAIC fashion show Gala was five hundred dollars a ticket and was pretty much only for very wealthy contributors to the school and the board of governors, who spend like hundreds of thousands of dollars at the school. So, the fact that I get to go and mingle with these people is pretty fabulous. She sends me an email later with all the details about the even and I something hits me.
The dress for the event is cocktail attire/ Hollywood glamour. I just moved all of my suits into storage with my winter clothes, the only thing I have are dress shirts and a navy blazer, and there’s nothing Hollywood about a navy blazer.
I checked my bank account and it’s $0.47. I wasn’t getting paid for a while so I knew what had to be done. It was time to massively overcharge my account. This was a big event, hosted by the Sheraton on Delaware, and of course, the drinks would be free.
I don’t think that I am pee-shy. Years of staying with boyfriends and growing up in households with three or more women present has broken me of any notion of bathroom privacy. Still, I can’t get comfortable doing everyday things in this new apartment. Partly because I know it’s not technically my apartment and I’m only subletting the room, but also because I’ve been single and living alone for more than a year now.
At first living alone with few friends and nobody to call at night was lonely. It got quiet. Then the quiet kind of grew and almost became like another person in the room. I started to enjoy the quiet of living alone. And because I lived downtown, it was never really all that quiet anyway. I’ve picked up the awful habit of peeing with the door open, as well as other biological tasks required to prepare oneself for anal sex. I’ve left sex toys out on the sink next to my tooth brush, sometimes left them suctioned to the shower wall or on some other wall in my room. My floor became a complex filing system of magazines and old drafts of stories I’ve workshopped, hospital bills, pay stubs, napkins from potbelly’s, receipts from Bloomingdales. I was not necessarily what one would call a happy gay bachelor (is there any other kind of single gay man), but I was comfortable. My life had controlled chaos. I had air conditioning, prime location on State street nestled between a Borders, Jamba Juice and Gene Siskel film center, I had just enough space in my closet to accommodate my winter clothes.
Even in high school I lived mostly separate from my family. We were in a split level house in the woods and my room was the only room on the bottom floor. I had my own bathroom and a lot of privacy. I haven’t shared a bathroom with women in all of my adult life. So, imagine my surprise to walk into a bathroom with a large stand alone tub, low water pressure, no detachable shower head, no shelf space for my soap, face wash, moisturizers shampoos, shaving balm, assorted Burts Bees products, several types of cologne and deodorant and grooming supplies. Not to mention my toy collection. Where were my “adult” toys going to go? This thought hadn’t crossed my mind until unpacking. My toys had nowhere to go. I threw them in a duffle bag and hid them in the sock drawer for now, but surely they can’t stay there all summer?
I continued unpacking, at first feeling the rush of the fabulous new place I’m subletting. Then, slowly a set of realizations settled in, discoveries of missing amenities (so much missing that a call to Cluesoe was in order) each with the self-assurance that such things were luxuries. I can live without the microwave. Air conditioning is just expensive. You don’t really need Ethernet hookups or wifi, or any kind of internet service. Television, I can do without. No laundry machines? No problem. No screens on my windows, that’s historic. But there was one absence that any well dressed urban dweller could simply not rationalize-
What community college design major failure of an interior architect designed my room without a closet? It was not hidden, it was not just small. I was simply not there. The window with no screens and view of the El train, acceptable. No closet space? Heinous. Was I to fold my clothing, not just clothing but dear woven friends, and stuff them into as drawer? All 56 of my summer button-up shirts were to be simply folded and condensed? I was to fold the Burberry, the Prada, the Kenneth Cole, the Calvin Klein, the Marc Jacobs, the Theory, the Boss, the Ralph Lauren, the G Star, and all of those vintage western shirts? Who could have possibly lived in this room before?
When I plugged the television into the cable socket in the wall I was only expecting to get maybe ten channels and two of them would be Spanish; I was surprised to find we get over 100 premium channels. Whatever illegitimate setup that had caused this was out of my mind, because we had fifty channels of HBO. And just when I thought the summer was going the be looking up the show started rewinding. There was no cable box, no digital cable remote, who was doing this? Then, after flipping through the channels I realized our television was picking up the cable that all of our neighbors had, and we had no control whatsoever of the content or execution of those movies. We were at the command of someone else’s remote. When the guy downstairs wanted to back up and replay the shower scene four times just for another boob shot there was nothing I could do. When the woman next door kept rewinding this one scene to figure out what a mumbling character said I had to go with it. When the people in the next set of apartment buildings pause the movie for fifteen minutes while they ate dinner I had to take the same time to fix my dinner. I was, in effect, becoming my neighbors. It takes a neighborhood to raise a child, and it takes neighbors with Comcast to entertain that child.
At night I looked out the window and Magic Johnson’s head rolled by several times. Covering each of the train cars was an advertisement for some medical center endorsed by him and his pockmarked chubby face must have been the ideal image they wanted to portray.
“What fresh hell is this,” I thought. I was in real estate hell.
Shortly after I moved into the third floor walk up a heat wave descended upon Chicago and brought with it thousands and thousands of little pollen puffs floating down like a summer snow. It was so fertile, and the little seeds and wisps clung to clothes got in your nose and mouth, stuck to your hair, flew into your eyes. Foreheads needed to be wiped every few steps I had sweat pools in every skin recess, the ceiling fans in the apartment only blew the hot air around, I tried to shower but I was sweating even as I was washing off. The damp muggy bathroom is the enemy of personal grooming. I put a towel down on my bedroom floor and let the ceiling fan dry my off. The internet wasn’t working, which meant no porn except for the same old same old that I have tucked away on my hard drive. No TV. No coffee. I felt lethargic, I wondered how long it would be before I could finally go back to work on Monday. The summer was not full of barbeques, new polo shirts, days at the beach and cool perspiring mojitos. I worked every day and spent my spare time in the restroom in Nordstrom looking up song lyrics on my Blackberry.
People who say that the worst season in Chicago is the winter don’t live in Chicago.
The days have been filled with a different kind of quiet now, the quiet of office monotony. I started working in student affairs every day and have gotten used to the pace of things. Advising slows down a lot in the summer, which means more time for busy work and other tasks. I decorated the conference room for an office party with a summer citrus theme, linking little pieces of orange green and yellow paper into long festive trains that slowly overcame my desk and flooded onto the floor and eventually into the hallway. The next day, after checking meeting maker Theresa informed me that is was one of the Advisor’s birthdays and we didn’t prepare anything for it so my task was to design and create a personalized birthday card from colored paper, staples and masking tape. Then there is the circulation of the card, surely a task for me, someone who has been working here two days and doesn’t know anyone’s name job title or office location. Then the flowers must be picked up from CVS and paid for with petty cash. Then the conference room must be decorated again. An “urgent meeting” is called, resulting in office cheer and laughter and happiness.
The next day I was to pick up 4,000 copies from the service bureau, the next day, pick up a check from Cathleen in the 116 building. Each day was full of dry minimally administrative tasks. My knowledge of Excel came in handy when making a spreadsheet to sign out office supplies from the cabinet. My design background has helped me to make signs to put around the office with enjoyable imagery and helpful reminders for people making more that 40 copies, important cell phone numbers, the payroll cycle, timesheet locations, what the acronym FERPA stands for.
The one perk about working in this new office is that I get to see Felice just about every day. Felice is the dean of student affairs and kind of like the queen of everything at the school. She knows everyone, she’s always the sweetest person when you’re talking to her, doesn’t just say hello, but makes it a point to actually have a conversation with the people she sees, she gives hugs. And she’s pretty much just the most fabulous old lady ever. Felice sightings were rare when I worked in Residence Life, limited to times when she only passed through on her way to Student Affairs. I used to take notes on the Felice sightings and brag to coworkers who could not have been less thrilled. Once, Felice gave me the roll left over from her lunch at Corner Bakery and told me I should eat more than just Starbursts while at work. Every once in a while if there was an executive birthday or some other kind of party with wonderful food Felice would bring me a plate. One time she scurried out of the office before I had a chance to say hello but as she passed my desk she dropped a few pieces of candy down. Basically, she’s my dream surrogate grandmother.
Working from the school and knowing Felice has resulted in invitations to things I would not ordinarily be invited to. They’re generally the kinds of things that you must spend money on. I received a free ticket to the SAIC fashion show from my boss and later found out that the ticket was provided by Felice and it came with a front row seat right next to her that said RESERVED: DUBLON on the back. The last time I sat in a reserved seat it was for the 2nd grade play version of Sleeping Beauty that my sister was in and she was one of the fairy god mothers, the blue one, and she got us seats in the front row. I seriously had a Devil Wears Prada Moment when I sat in that seat, and for a moment I swear Felice turned into Meryl Streep and turned to me and said, “Everyone wants to be us.” The fashion show was amazing and only one model fell on her face.
Then, just a few days ago Felice sees me working in Student Affairs and she tells me that she was going to give this to the first person she saw coming in today and she’s glad it’s me. And I said, give me what? And she tells me that there’s an extra seat still open at her table for the Gene Siskel Film Center Gala, and she’d like me to be there. Now, these Galas are not cheap. The SAIC fashion show Gala was five hundred dollars a ticket and was pretty much only for very wealthy contributors to the school and the board of governors, who spend like hundreds of thousands of dollars at the school. So, the fact that I get to go and mingle with these people is pretty fabulous. She sends me an email later with all the details about the even and I something hits me.
The dress for the event is cocktail attire/ Hollywood glamour. I just moved all of my suits into storage with my winter clothes, the only thing I have are dress shirts and a navy blazer, and there’s nothing Hollywood about a navy blazer.
I checked my bank account and it’s $0.47. I wasn’t getting paid for a while so I knew what had to be done. It was time to massively overcharge my account. This was a big event, hosted by the Sheraton on Delaware, and of course, the drinks would be free.