I forgot to tell anybody that I was going to Chicago and Dayton this past weekend. Chicago: Land of Carbs. Dayton: Land of . . . Something. Something or nothing.
The occasion was Rob’s shows. He had one running in each town, and one in Nashville, although I can’t imagine going to Nashville. At least Chicago is a blue state. At least Chicago is where I used to live. I wandered around as if I invented Chicago, noting all the things that have changed since I left. Chicago forgot to file the appropriate forms to secure my permission to make these changes. It would serve Chicago right if I slapped it with a heavy fine.
The show, Macabaret, was fabulous, of course. Rob and I met his family there, which is always a delight. I got to talk with Rindy about whether the Italian language had been invented in Caesar’s time, appropriate uses for old bridesmaid dresses, and what would happen if Goblin Foo Uvula stole Rindy’s doctoral dissertation. But then they all left—his family back to Wisconsin and Rob back to Dayton one day ahead of me—and I was alone in my old Chicago neighborhood, in much the same state of mind as when I last haunted those streets: lonely, anxious, and stressed out beyond comprehension. To while away the hours, I bought a new shirt and went to see Capote, which was brilliant and terribly affecting (the film, not the shirt, although the fact that I look damned good in the shirt did much to lighten my mood). Capote is about the brutality of an artist and his art; perhaps, indirectly, it is about the brutality of realizing any vision. In the movie, the destruction that comes from creation is given almost equal weight with the destruction that comes from destruction, which is jarring to me as I negotiate on different levels the treacherous waters of art and entrepreneurship.
The trip to Dayton was on a tiny jet with seats narrower than my hips. At first it felt cozy, like a hug, but claustrophobia set in even before we took off. The weather was terrible, the flight was not smooth, other passengers were pressed against me on all sides, and my last hope of sanity died when the flight attendant announced that, since it was a short flight, there would be no drink service . . . the last thing I needed to hear, as I desperately needed alcohol to calm my nerves.
But I made it. Rob’s show in Dayton is another version of his seminal classic Vanishing Point, the changes to which (since I last saw it) I haven’t yet quite absorbed. I was going to leave this morning on a little prop plane, but the remnants of the hurricane over my flight path wreaked havoc with my plans. Not quite in the mood for a replay my terrifying experience flying in a tiny plane in a Costa Rican thunderstorm a couple of years ago, plunging from the sky as lightning flashed all around, I intentionally missed my flight (I heard later that it was delayed by several hours, and I would have missed my connecting flight anyway). Instead, I will get back to Baltimore the way god intended: I’m renting a car from Avis.
Avis is the company that ran over my father a few years ago, but I don’t hold a grudge. Ask Chicago.
