Homecoming (a selection, a remembering)
My two weeks of solid travel begin at 5 AM on the train platform to Chicago. The sun is only just rising and it makes the world seem full and soft around the edges. The train pulls up, the conductor steadies me as I get into the car, and the seats fill with people all temporarily traveling in the same direction.
As I scroll through my music, I’m reminded of just how much I’ve never enjoyed in between spaces. Wherever they are, they’re always filled with the dim chatter of people and the relentless, whirring occupation of machine parts. My mother asks me if I’d like cream in my coffee. I take out one earbud and respond with, “Yeah, two creams. Thanks.” The conductor scans my ticket, and the beep of the ticket reader barely registers before I bring Mac Demarco back up to my ear:
How’s your heart been beating? How’s your skin been keeping? How’s your dream been going?
I pick music just quiet enough to make it halfway through my book, my mind trying to find the space to breathe as we head to Kalamazoo. I pick up the phone and text Braden. I know enough to identify the anxiety, but I have no idea what to do with it. What if she doesn’t like me? What if everything goes wrong?
Both this trip and the next revolve around my insane work schedule. I manage to take only one day off to fit in the four days I’m planning to spend in Chicago with my girlfriend, who’s visiting from outside the country. The music isn’t quite soft or close enough to ease the building tension that tells me everything is about to go sideways.
Eventually I relinquish control of the music selection and let Spotify pick what songs come next. Braden asks me exactly why I’m afraid and I have no good answers. I explain everything: my wild irrationality, my reluctance, my fear that in an instant we’ll both decide everything has changed in some inexplicable new development that really stems from the fear I cannot be loved and this girl who has always seen right through me will finally see through me one last time.
By the time we move onto other topics—“Are you going to that show in July? Be sure to tell me everything when you get back.” “I miss my dogs already.” “You can borrow mine.”—we’ve arrived in Chicago. I get frustrated with my mother for being a horrible traveler. We drop our bags off at the Palmer House hotel and make our way north to where my girlfriend and her mother are waiting outside of their hotel. We get coffee and wander around the city, starting off by posing as a married couple and window shopping at Crate & Barrel.
I learn that she doesn’t like glass top tables. She’s a furniture traditionalist. A literary historicist (ugh). We both like the couch with long tendrils of fake fur because it reminds us of the dogs we’ve left in other people’s care. We hold hands on the Magnificent Mile and take photos of each other outside of the shops displaying Pride promotions. I’m constantly worried that I haven’t eaten enough. She knows this already. We have lunch. We talk for hours. I return to my hotel room thoroughly exhausted but ready to start all over again the next day.
On our last day together I realize how radically soft, how whole and complete, I’ve come to feel. I watch a video my friend Liam posted on Twitter of him playing the guitar and I can’t help feel like maybe home and all the good things that come with it aren’t that far away.
A push notification from her pops up on my phone that last morning: “Have you listened to the new Marika Hackman yet?” I pull up the album on Spotify so I can give an informed opinion. Once again I’m remind that while I am a punk-raised, hip-hop-listening, give-me-something-with-a-guitar-and-a-good-beat enthusiast, my girlfriend is an indie-loving, soothed-with-a-soft-voice type of gal. There’s plenty of incriminating evidence that we use to tease each other mercilessly, from the playlists we’ve named after each other to the periodic listening updates. I decide that her description of the album as “wonderfully sapphic” is wildly appropriate and fall in love with the songs that bridge this odd gap in the spaces between where I am and where she is.
Heaven knows we’re meant to be, but it’s turned into a mess— No one takes us seriously just because I wear a dress
As I listen, I realize that a lot of what we have consists of trying to find little ways to feel closer to one another. The guitar distorts itself into a wild, woman-like scream. Marika’s voice is soft, refreshing. In that moment, in that city, sitting in Millennium Park, I feel like what we have is working.
But sometimes “working” means saying goodbye. I say goodbye to Chicago, she says goodbye to me, and I return home briefly before setting off again. This time I end up in New York City, and this time I am utterly alone in a sea of rough, fast-paced people. In the beginning, anonymity is always a comfort. I go where I want, I cook breakfast for myself, weave my way through crowds, eat good, cheap food, and visit all of the beautiful things New York has to offer, but as the end nears I feel myself longing for familiarity. After two long weeks of traveling, I begin to think about my house. I text my coworker Gary relentlessly. I find pockets of time my girlfriend and I use to become reacclimated with long distance communication, but this time our methods feel immaterial and sorely lacking.
My phone runs out of data, so at night and in between wanderings I listen to the albums saved on my phone. It’s a lot of Drake, the newest SZA album, some Frankie Cosmos, and a playlist I’ve simply titled with the rainbow, rose, and snowflake emojis. The softness I found in Chicago dims a little bit, receding into the background as I become another person, readier to combat loudness with loudness. Simply put: I begin to demand more from my body. I need it to be okay. I need it to be something I’m okay with having.
Do you believe you’re missing out? That everything good is happening somewhere else? With nobody in your bed, the night is hard to get through...
On the way home I listen to Liam’s band Legume. Thinking about seeing them perform when I get back helps to shore up my defenses against the loneliness, the resurgent depressive episode I’ve been trying desperately to hold off. I listen to their albums and find myself humming their work in the backs of cabs and the lonely aisles of a late night Duane Reade. I think anonymity is not always a blessing. I think maybe it’s time to go home.
The night they play I drive to Braden’s house. We talk about Chicago—“Yeah, it was beautiful, I don’t think I’m ever going to get over it.”—and trade clothes, laughing at each other in his bedroom mirror.
The bar where Legume will be playing is around the corner from his house. Security collects our cover charge and swipes the back of our hands with Sharpie. Emma and Braden grin at each other, attached at the hip even as the dancing starts. Emma lets her limbs go wherever they want to and looks killer doing it, so I begin to dance like that too. Liam plays guitar in a way I’ve never seen him do and cuts his hair on stage, flinging it into the crowd. Braden collects most of it and fits it into his pocket.
Just as we’re talking about leaving, Liam convinces us to stay until the end, when the headliner plays. It’s another local band named Brother Son, but none of us have ever listened to them before. He looks so earnest, the way he always does: “Stay for one song. If you don’t vibe with them then you can leave, but at least stay for one song.”
We end up staying all the way until the end. The energy is electric and familiar and freeing. Here I am in my hometown, wearing Braden’s clothes, side by side with Melisa and Emma as their shaved heads bang back and forth in the changing light. Just like in Chicago, I can feel that softness creeping back in, the one that compels me to remind Melisa I love her in the middle of a set, the one that finds me arm-in-arm with Emma and Braden in another.
I’m headed for the city, trouble on my mind I’m way too young and pretty for things to be unkind Time is all we have now, so let’s make something while we can I’m headed for the city to make me start again...
I’m in a gritty neighborhood dive bar. I feel so young and alive that it’s overwhelming. This is the thing I was raised on and I have never been more in love with a place for being somewhere I can call home. At the end of the night, Emma drives me back to the house. It’s so late that everyone is asleep and has been for hours. I can’t think of any place I’d rather be.
A song for the slackers alike, pokemon cards on the back of your bike Mike & Ikes and Good & Plenty’s, cavities—yeah, Mom, I’ve got plenty I like movies that end with “fin”, I root for the bad guys ‘cause they never win…
/
(A selection of travel songs: Mac Demarco, “The Way You’d Love Her”; Marika Hackman, “Boyfriend” ; Brand New, “Jesus Christ”; Brother Son, “Confidence”; Legume, “Fuck Ham”)