RATING PG-13: Despite the ominous title, this website blog is rated PG-13 only for strong language. No nudity. There is one furious drag queen involved, so yes, adult situations.

I spent this afternoon wandering up and down Halsted St., Chicago, lost reminiscing.

I remembered dining at that place, when it was an Italian restaurant and not a French/Vietnamese café. I hung out in that bar over there a few times. I remembered some first dates, some last dates. A couple landmarks have changed, but The Alley and that excellent comic book shop remain, as well as the Belmont Dunkin Doughnuts.

Whew.

I was sad to see that the Manhole, a leather bar, has been gentrified into something new and pastel-sounding: a bar called ‘Hydrate.’

I miss the Manhole. I had the most wonderful, physically-abusive, domestic fight outside that bar.

Ah, memories.

Years ago, I dwelt in a Chicago ‘burb and did volunteer work for a Boystown group called the The Pink Angels. In response to that late 80’s take-back-the-cities energy, they copied NYC’s Guardian Angels premise and decided to patrol Chicago’s gay neighborhood. We never really engaged in fisticuffs (which is good - some of us were probably imagining West Side Story), but we jogged down dark alleys reporting drug deals to cops, helped drunks find cabs, and ran like hell towards any cry that sounded like ‘help!’

We patrolled from about 10:30 until 4:00 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

We had to wear pink T-shirt and matching pink berets. I thank Hercules this was pre-camera phone, pre-digital cameras.

One Saturday afternoon we were conducting training for ‘the new guys.’ Some of us more experienced folks were supposed to go out and create a little controlled chaos so that a practice patrol could engage in realistic simulations.

I was assigned (with another man) to stage a domestic argument in front of the leather bar, The Manhole. No fist fight…just shoving. We looked at each other, shrugged, and said, “Sure thing.”

As we walked together, we exchanged names and the short bio. He was smaller than me, so we created our scenario along the way: I was going to shove him into an entry way and stand menacingly close as he unconvincingly told the on-patrol team that everything was, “Okay. Not a problem.”

In the Manhole entryway, I practiced pushing him in a way that didn’t really hurt him but still looked realistic. During one of the faux shovings, about 3 minutes before our patrol team was scheduled to happen upon us, we both heard a rich baritone voice about three feet behind me bellow out:

“OH BITCH, YOU DID NOT JUST SHOVE THAT MAN.”

We turned to find a 6’2 African-American drag queen with her hands on her hips. She wore a leopard print mini skirt and had big Ru Paul hair.

I was about to get my ass kicked.

“It’s okay,” I protested. “We’re just practicing.”

Apparently, this was not a compelling explanation.

My training partner hit his line flawlessly and was completely unconvincing: “It’s okay…not a problem.”

Nervously, we did our best to persuade her that this shoving was part of the plan, that we absolutely needed to do this, could she PLEASE just stand on the other side of the street because our team was about to come by and it was not part of the plan to find me spread eagle on the sidewalk with a black stiletto heel against my soft and pulpy neck.

PLEASE.

She crossed her arms and skewered her face. She reluctantly agreed, but let me know that she was RIGHT over there, BITCH.

She skulked away, but not far. The Pink Angels showed up almost immediately and I shoved my faux-boyfriend with faux-rage. If anyone on the patrol team were paying attention, they would have seen that I was probably the more rattled of the two of us.

This is what I love about Chicago, the city where I learned to say ‘fuck you.’

You’re in a shop and you hear part of a conversation that’s not meant for your ears, chime in! It’s still your fuckin’ business. In Chicago I took a free class in how to walk down the street without looking vulnerable. Here’s where learned to tell drunks, ‘Get out of my face!’ and how to get seen when howling for a cab.

Boundaries.

Strong ones, soft ones, blurry boundaries and tough stranger love. Here I learned to create some useful boundaries, a pink and tender skill for me. There’s an odd undercurrent of tenderness in the ‘what da fuck is wrong wi’ you?’ Listen.

If you’re gonna knock the teeth out of your boyfriend, well then, you answer to a self-policing pack of homos in matching T’s or an African-American goddess who is NOT going to stand for THIS SHIT.

It’s enough to make me want to stand on Belmont & N. Clark and ala Mary Tyler Moore throw my pink beret into the air screaming, “FUCK YOU, CHICAGO!”

I have no doubt that someone – whether in a brownstone, at the Dunkin Doughnuts, or from the back seat of a cab – would yell back, “No, fuck YOU! What’s your fuckin’ problem?”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Gratitude. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.