DIARY
The summer of 1999 remains one of the most intense times in my life. It ranks alongside spring 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004-2005 in this regard. It’s almost frightening how incedentally shaped apertures are so consistantly cyclical. Anyway…
There’s not enough space or time here for all of the adventures of August, 1999, but I’ll tell one that occurred near the beginning.
By August, many elements of the summer were coming to a head. The first defining moment of the month was a summer trip to Chicago. Sarah had recently returned from her art camp and staying with her family.
I had just concluded performances of Where the Lilies Bloom at Flint Youth Theatre. Bree was cast in the lead of The Skriker which I was at that time directing for the Black Box Underground. Mitch was working, as was Sam, also playing a part in Skriker and essentially serving as Technical Director. The Skriker imposed an unusual bond in-and-of-itself. I don’t know how to describe the actual production (though I’m sure I will attempt to in a later post), but I’ll just say that it was plagued by a startlingly uncomfortable rift within the cast, a whole list of conventional dressing problems, and still had some brilliant and illuminatory moments. Finally, several of us were easing into or out of new romances, which imposed its own sting of tension.
And because of our nested relationships and our personalities, and the fact that we were easing down the other side of summer, instead of asking for a break from intensity we decided to take a break in another side of intensity. Which, at that time, meant a trip to Chicago.
I’d already made one trip to Chicago that summer, between performances of Lilies… Sam and Josh and I had driven down, leaving Flint at around eight, and getting back after midnight. This trip was to be more ambitious. We were to pile into Sarah’s giant rusty Buick all prickly with sewing pins stuck in the cloth covering above and cards lning the dash. We were to go as emmisarries of the Black Box Underground, and go to see University Theater’s production of Macbeth. I had secured Zannah’s permission for us to sleep in the UT lounge, or rather her promise to look the other way.
It was myself, Sarah, Bree, Mitch, and Sam.
We roared out of Flint on a Saturday morning with the Beastie Boys thumping through that ancient car. By nine we’d passed Kalamazoo and were laughing over Amy Arena’s caustic screeching. We probably got into Chicago around eleven, blasting over the Skyway and sinking into the concrete intestines of the Dan Ryan, of Stony Island Drive, of the South Side.
For some reason a priority was visiting Kersten and going up to the roof… I was able to accomplish this because I remembered the passwords and punched them in, and this was our moment of glory about the Hyde Park skyline. For the life of me, I cannot remember what else we did during our first several hours in the big city. Most likely we tooled around Hyde Park and the South Side, since I know we expanded our wanderings the next day, but besides maybe grabbing Thai at the Snail, the rest of that morning and afternoon escapes me.
I do know that around seven in the evening (and it was quite a steamy evening) we made out way to Hutch Court where UT had draped rigging and pine all over the fountain and flagstone. The crowd of a little over a hundred converged around the space. It was so hot that the dampness seemed to soak in the trees, saturate, and drip off the leaves. I mean it seemed that way. People sprawled out on the grass and watched the show. I don’t want to go too much into the show itself. I think (and most of the people I’ve spoken with have agreed) that it wasn’t one of UT or Curt’s most polished or dynamic pieces. But there were moments that wer absolutely resonant to me. For example, the second time Macbeth confronts the Weird Sisters, he is assaulted by a battery of spirits; these were represented as conflagrations of color and costume that flew together and stood to make rippling and monstrous faces. Those moments were electric and exciting. The heat and humidity didn’t help the experience, however, and it was clear some of the actors were on the verge of losing their voices.
After the show, we managed to tag along with some friends to a mini cast-party (it was really six Macbethians and my group drinking 40s in a tenement apartment for several hours), and a moment of embarassment when someone from my group was deriding the show as we left… walking under the open window. I don’t think anyone noticed. If someone noticed, I don’t think anyone cared.
We walked back to campus. In the clouded air (it wasn’t going to rain that night) we heard the sprinklers tick-tick-tick. To the right they ticked around upon shadowed walls of Snell-Hitchcock with its stone posts and Germanic window. To the left, some weedy grass around botany pond, the arch through the zoology building, and it was a bit more unkempt nearer to the Reynolds Club.
I had told Zannah I was able to get into the building, though I don’t think I made the details of this part clear. Getting into the building involved (involves?) someone small wedging himself into the space where the C shop is projected from the much taller Hutch commons. By stepping onto the base of the building, it is easy for him to grab onto the fire escape from beneath and hoist himself up and onto the roof (one can get to the roof of Ryerson using the same trick). From there, he just walks along the roof of the C-Shop past the Commons, shimmies up the fire escape to the UT lounge and squeezes through the windows. When coming down he blocks open the door so that it doesn’t shut behind him. But I get the impression that security is much tighter these days.
At one point during the evening (which did become a morbidly fascinating slumber party — we were all about running back and forth on the parapet and proclaiming in the 3rd Floor theater), Bree and Sam ran into a security guard, who demanded to know why we were in the Reynolds Club at eleven PM. “It’s okay,” Bree said. “We have permission.” Because we did.
Sarah and Mitch climbed up on the roof; not the flat part, but the steep flagstones that rise above the parapet towards the actual tower. I was afraid they would fall the whole distance to the street, but they did not.
* * * * *
We devoted Sunday to seeing the city. We drove up to the Loop and walked around the Big Buildings and the Magnificent Mile. I still have pictures of us perched on construction sites and in public art works, posing to look like a rock band or just being obnoxious art kids from Flint. My moment of glory was in the middle of the blazing sunlight in River North, with dozens of possible witnesses. I saw a Guinness sign with some catchy slogan. Of course, the rungs weren’t accessible from the street, but I was able to climb a telephone pole until I was about fifteen feet up, then jump over and grab onto the billboard pole. From there I climbed the last fifteen feet and posed, four stories up, with all of Chicago blazing behind me and a Guinness bigger than I was.
I have a picture of that, too.
After these antics, we continued onto the North Side, where I forget what we did. We went to a Mexican restaurant in Andersonville, then walked south to see the Neo-Futurists and TMLMTBGB. With so much theater packed in (and surreptitious Chicago-exploration), I think the trip could safely be called an “educational excursion.”
It was already dark when we started heading back, and I had work at FYT the next morning. The trip back was surreal. We were hot and sticky, exhausted and limp, lying across each other in the front and back seats. Sam used to be a bit of a dictator when it came to driving, and once he started his term he refused to budge from behind the wheel. First Sarah and then Mitch sat up front. I sat in the back with Bree the whole time, and tried to sleep. But I was too restless. Or caffeinated. Or frightened. In many important ways, that summer was also the most terrifying time of my life. Skriker suggests this. Macbeth suggests this. Even Bjork suggested this… we were thirty or forty miles out of Chicago, with twilight reduced to a localized punch, the smallest of wed welt bruises… when I evidently woke up just to say “I love this song,” and fell back asleep. The song was Hunter.
Sam forgot to watch the gas, and while we had gotten a full tank in Indiana that thing wasn’t able to get us all the way back to Flint. We emptied out just past Lansing of all places, and spent forty-five minutes along the shoulder while Sam, swearing and apologetic, walked up to the next exit and got us enough gas to go on.
The sky was getting light when we finally curved up 69, passed Southwestern and took the ramp onto 475. I was a pain-in-the-ass… I asked to go home first, since I had to work that morning. Of course, so did Sam and Mitch, but they were gracious enough not to mention it. The sky had clouds but they were low gray clouds, meaning this would be another day of heat. Kearsley Park and Nebraska Avenue were both dim and gray with predawn, and I finally got out of the car and went up to my apartment.
I’d fallen asleep five minutes later, and was probably thinking of Amanda as I did.
END OF POST.