love & absorption

Sophia was in town for a few weeks, which is cool as her presence inevitably inspires crazy, spinning, laughing conversations that are more like a Beat poet's re-mix of the English language than a coherent dialogue. (For her August visit I'll just go ahead and order black berets and turtlenecks for our entire cast, and we'll pick up the Bowers habit of snapping for what we appreciate.)

For the few months prior to Sophia's move to New Orleans, she was dating Andrew. They are still affectionate when she stops back through Chicago.

Standing in the kitchen, Sophia gave Andrew a broad but quick hug this morning and Andrew looked pensive.

"Does anyone else," he asked, "ever get confused all the time when you think someone is attracted to you but really they just need to dry their hands?"

bangled spangled tangled and spaghettied

Check out this rockin' photo of Corrigan (and his hair) back in October. Imagine another seven months without haircuts and you'll understand why even our Finance Officers look like dirty hippies. In fact at the board meeting last night when I was voted as the third check signer, it was also suggested I adopt the scraggly facial hair and wily-locked aesthetic of Corr and Mark Peopolis. Maybe... Glenn said I looked good in my Wild Thing whispy facial hair... or maybe not.

I work at the same office as Corrigan.

We support system tech administrators and users of a software that analyzes lifestyles and media consumption habits. Heard of Nielsen sweeps week or ratings? We assist people who want to use this in combo with qualitative research to target a certain demographic with particular viewing habits and a fat wallet.

Corrigan and I are good at our jobs, but we try really hard not to look at the reports cataloguing the number of minutes we've spent coaxing, coaching, getting cursed at, and empowering the commercial part of the media industry that is ugly to the sort of person who lives in a co-op & doesn't shave. We work on different floors and actually don't interact frequently. (During my interview I was told almost apologetically that I wouldn't be able to sit next to Corrigan. Gosh, it was almost a deal breaker.)

Although Corr and I work with different sets of people, folks generally know that we are roommates. So today Sandy said to me laughingly, "So the big discussion upstairs is all about Corrigan's hair. I didn't see it in person yet."

"Neither did I!" I exclaimed. "What about his hair?"

"He cut it all off," Sandy said. "Carrie is really upset because she loved it. Everyone at the desk in the lobby is discussing it."

I don't know if Corrigan will lose his strength to topple columns now, but I confirmed a few hours later that he was both clean shaven AND given what my mom would call a tennis ball cut. (Like my irish roommates used to give themselves - they all know offhand what number blade they use on the shears, and I was consistently shocked that during Rehoboth summers a hair cutter was second priority, above food and after beer.)

It might be a shocking aesthetic shift, definitely not top secret, but I was slightly surprised to think that my co-worker (who doesn't really even know Corrigan) more or less moved the monkey regarding a Haymarketeer. Huzzah!

PS Corrigan it makes you look more like a canteloupe than ever.

why he was chanting "ulan ude"

"I like to take country names and see if they fit in the Woody Woodpecker song."
-Floyd

rock stars

Eli: BJ is a rock star because he looks good.

April: I believe the words you're searching for are "striking good looks."

(BJ looks overwhelmingly confused.)

April: (fawning) So if that's the standard, tell me Eli why do you conclude I am a rock star?

Megan: Heroin chic...?

(pause. i acknowledge i set myself up.)

Eli: Congratulations Megan. That was one of the few times that you successfully balanced humour with meanness.

camp haymarket

This is one will be more of a journal entry than a story, so crank up your voyeurism and fade out your literary criticism.

Barbara organized a camping trip to the Dunes last weekend, and I was rubbing my palms in anticipation even when the forecast said that Saturday night would require eskimo-style pajamas or at the very least cuddling. We managed to gather a set of tents and sleeping bags for our crew, and Ed gallantly agreed to drive the cooler full of leftover birthday barbecue goodies for the foodies... plus a bit of cerveza (here's to Yazzan).

Ben, Megan, Sultan, Barbara, Lisa J, Gabi and I caught the early arvo South Shore Line. We didn't look quite like the swimsuit clad lighthearted woman looking over her shoulder in the old classic South Shore posters, since almost all of us wore rucksacks... but we were a fine-looking crew. We split up on the train to grab seats where we could, and the guy next to me asked where we were headed with so much gear. "We're going to camp," I said, and he thought I meant going to A CAMP. Like the summer variety. A troop of Dirty Hippie Scouts. (And what do we sell door to door?)

When we arrived at the campgrounds, we had a few priorities: set up the tents, look at all the awesome dogs, buy some marshmallows, and go for a walk. Yazzan and Ed arrived in the car after their tour of various exits mentioning the Dunes. The whole gang took a stroll before dinner - the woods were gorgeous but the wind off the lake was intense... we split up and I headed back to help build a beautiful wood fire. With a few intermediate emmm strategies (charcoal or wood? lighter fluid or rubbing sticks? pyramid or kindling cross-piles?) until we at last had a roaring grill. I honestly think that nothing hits the belly better than food when you're camping.



We had foraged the woods for kindling and extra fuel for the fire, and kept it burning past midnight. Megan played mandolin and everyone chilled, drinking from cans hidden inside of jacket sleeves... for a brief time we scrambled up the hill to a dunetop clearing and played tennis beneath the star speckled sky.



Over the weekend I dealt with the consequences of my personality with varying intensity, the most amusing moment of which might have been Ed at the campfire announcing the sponsor of Closed Captioning for the Subtext Impaired. (He is a spectacular sport about the shit I give him.) The more tragic moment personally was discovering, with great embarassment, that my pathological honesty and brash sense of humour have hampered someone's comfort. Renew my subscription to Closed Captioning for the Sensitivity Impaired.

Still, the overall atmosphere filled me with joy and energy (enough to keep me warm enough on a cold night, but also too much to really allow me to doze off). The next morning we stashed the bulk of our gear in Ed's car (you're a legend Waz!) which lightened up the remaining portion of our group to go for a hike through the woods then along the dramatic ridge of the dunes. I kept nearly falling on my face staring at the little aquilegia flowers along the woodlad path. Then you ascend, loop back and the dunes sweep down a soft sandy cliff to the beach on one side, and the view soars across springtime treetops on the other side.

Breathtaking.



And doubletaking, when we saw the evolving mirage of the city skyline, inverse and repeated side to side.



We checked with some old ladies to make sure the view was not the result of hippiness.



I heart Camp Haymarket. We're set for a reunion in mid-June.

a la peanut-butter and psychically-cut-banana-sandwiches!

(shout out to anyone who recalls the Amazing Mumford on Sesame Street)

It is difficult to sustain a bad mood in a co-op.

Monday evening, for example, I retired to my room after greek pasta salad and rhubarb pie (complete with perfect lattice). I had managed to stay moody even through the pie and ice cream... I intended to stay put in my room, arms crossed and lips pouting, but then Barbara came trotting down the hall.

"MAGIC SHOW! MAGIC SHOW!"

Shreeyash was delivering on our requirement that he perform a magic show for us if he came back to stay for a week. Having just finished the revisions to his dissertation (following his defense last week) he was in fine form. Most of our conversations having consisted of cultural analyses and articulate explanations, it was delightful and strange to see him slip into a magician's persona complete with bumbling "I don't know if this will work" comments strategically placed before the fantastic breathless shock of a delivery. What a talent it must take to blend unruffled confidence with the joy of apparent surprise at your own tricks!

(Gracias a Glenn's influence about musical theories of the written word, I studied the rhythm of the magic show as a musical structure... generating modest insight only, probably of most interest to you, dear readers, when you're under the influence.)


(shreeyash celebrates his doctorate with dignified magic... & a foil blindfold)

Shreeyash performed card magic, thought predictions, and the psychic cutting of an unpeeled banana (quite a sight). He threw cards through a piece of newspaper held up by two lovely talented assistants in mini-skirts. He juggled a bottle, hammer and knife. He pushed a glass through the table (or did Kate?!). His pen kept ending up behind people's ears. He ended up performing a good hour long show, all improvised with some of the objects around the house... what a Monday night event for one's living room.

What impressed me most was his ability to command our attention and awe, even in the midst of a group of VERY antsy, smartass people. Kudos to, errrr, The Great Shreeyashini! Nay, DR Shreeyash. Congratulations.

kate's story

When I was in sixth grade I had this really good-looking boyfriend. He was Italian, named Rafael, and for our age he had really amazing dress sense.

We had been going out for three weeks - which was an incredibly long time of course - when I approached him before play rehearsal and asked him to go to the deli. That was what we did, we always went to the deli.

He leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, and said, "I hereby dumpeth you."

Then with no explanation, he walked away. Almost immediately we had play rehearsal, so then he had his arm around me in character and all I could think was that the jerk had just DUMPED me.

My best friend told me that he had PLANNED to come up to me, give me a long full kiss and then ask, "Did you like that?" And when I said yes, he'd say, "Well it was your last one. I hereby dumpeth you" but my friend heard and had convinced him that was too mean.

So I got, "I hereby dumpeth you." Awesome.

By high school I found out that stylish good-looking Rafael had come out of the closet -- and that made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.

never discuss masturbation with a woman

I explored downtown festivities solo, and during the bus ride home after midnight, I endured a loud, obnoxious and sexist conversation by several university students about masturbation and how women would never understand it because of crazy female insecurity. Two young kids were sitting right there the whole time, which made this conversation inappropriately timed, as well as sexist and generally idiotic. Plus their specific complaint about "One must never broach the question of masturbation with one's girlfriend" was pretty ludicrous, considering with fair certainty these particular guys had a high ratio of handjive compared to breathing female dates.

As I left the bus, one of the group stepped off to the side to allow me to squeeze out of the back bus door. I thanked him, then said, "Hey..." and delivered my insight.

"Here is your enlightenment for the day. Not all women are insecure, and not all women are averse to masturbation - we just don't discuss it in front of community children. In fact I had it on the agenda tonight until a sexist conversation completely dampened my desire to touch myself. (pause, smile, touch the brim of my hat in farewell salute) Spread the word."

And as he stuttered "O-o-okay," I sashayed off on the midnight winds of the cheap-but-effective rhetorical approach of getting in the last word.

first impressions

When Cat told her mother back in merry old England that she was seeing someone in Chicago, namely our housemate BJ, her mother was quiet for a minute.

Finally, she spoke.

"Does... does it mean the same thing over there?"

dressing room

So Andrew has been appearing at our house in the mornings. He slips into our basement boiler room, changes into a clean set of the clothes stashed therein, and heads off to the bio lab where he does programming.

"This is what is rumoured," Megan said of the odd closet choice.

"No. He told me this," Beej said.

Andrew's reasoning behind this is that he can't get the fresh clothes back to his apartment after washing them in our machine.

Which begs a certain question, considering the laundry had to arrive AT our house somehow.

hells angels fart pot

Another appetizing story and infamous dish from the annals (insert gastrointestinal joke here) of Haymarket History would be the attempted dish that dear german Lisa intended to conjure up for our Heaven & Hell potluck. Alas, it went "in the pants" (insert another gastrointestinal joke), a German expression that doesn't have an exquivalent in English but you probably get the basic idea from those gastrointestinal jokes so generously inserted by our audience members.

Fortunately or un-, the beans Lisa had soaked in advance were not in particularly delicious shape by the time she tied her apron strings. Peruse the email that Lisa sent the house just prior to the potluck.



Dear Friends and Neighbors,

When I just got to the kitchen, anticipating to prepare the brilliant dish "Hell's Angels Fart Pot" for the "Heaven and Hell" potluck tonight, I realized the beans had started fermenting, due to the weather... Now, I was told this is a delicacy in some areas of the globe, but unfortunatly I am not familiar with the recipe and am weary whether it would carry a name poetic enough to contribute to something to crucial to our life as "Heaven and Hell".

Ergo: My dish went in the pants. Mighty in the pants. Or should I say in the trash. And an overfilled trash bag in combination with my practical sense, left a long slug trail over the driveway... I tried cleaning it as good as possible, but just in case the neighbor can't find the art in this ...well work of art, you can refer him to me...

Lisa

if only our convos were as savory as our menus

I cooked last night: pasta alfredo, grilled cheese, carrot & cilantro soup, tomato slices with basil, and a nice salad with strawberrys, pears, radish and mozzarella.

Cooking for Haymarket is always a pleasure as it becomes more of an event than a chore, and the rotation allows me to be extravagant when I do make meals. My last brunch: paella, quiche, tomato with sage, garlic mushrooms, citrus & spinach salad.

Informal press conferences answering questions about our lifestyle for mystified co-workers have given must of us a lineup of regular suspects, question-wise, and some of the greatest curiousity surrounds our feeding set-up. Who cooks and how often? Who chooses the grocery list? And a reliable "VEGETARIAN food? I couldn't do it." Although generally once I rattle off the last meal I had cooked then even the meat-eaters of the bloodiest variety acknowledge that they might be able to survive a proper vegetarian meal.

Kate takes the title for absolute culinary royalty, and in the old days I'd say Craig rocked the refection as well, although his withdrawal over the last lonely months in the house resulted in some dishes along the lines of "lentil casserole" or some such chaw and glutch. (Craig, I desperately miss your dicing prowess.) One of the most vivid memories I have of Floyd's application was the mouthwatering bit about earning his voyage on a boat off Africa by cooking for an international crew.

Don't get me wrong, there are some bummers of meals. I recently "roasted" a tray of veggies that looked more like ashes then asparagus by the time I remembered to take them out. Or Ed's infamous gumbo prepared with 4 CUPS of butter that only enhanced the naturally slimey qualities of okra.




Sue me - the texture of body fluids is just not a turn-on to my taste buds.




Plus we all have our lazy cooking nights. And in fairness spaghetti and stir fry are valid, delicious dishes. I even crave macaroni and cheese sometimes - may deities forgive tastes developed during the nutritional indiscretions of my youth - which means I lick my lips at Megan's "Tex Mex Macaroni Surprise" that looks like a school cafeteria lunch but turns out to be quite tasty.

My true test will be when Glenn visits, whether I can serve up tofu in a tasty form that doesn't make his eyes cross - or whether he'll ask the omnivores in the house to smuggle him out to Ribs n' Bibs.

corrigan's retirement plan

"When I become feeble and senile, I think I will write headlines for the Red Eye."

(above: playing Scrabble with Zoe, Corr, Sam - Corrigan's dad)

the haunting of the wooden mexican

Moving into my room entailed all of a 6-foot trek into what was, prior to my move-in, Andrew's abode. I'd been subletting while Eli spent the summer in France, and with his impending return mid-September I left my room change to the latest date possible to accomodate Andrew's impulsive move-out that hovered according to fluctuating availability of the apartment he'd chosen. (This was a place for which he made the down payment, literally, in cash to some men who drove by an appointed spot in their pick-up truck and had no id on them to prove that they were, in fact, who they claimed.)

Drew planned to move in with two other programmers, Trevor and Mr. Purdy, who had more or less lived on our couches for the past few weeks despite both having addresses where they received mail, owned beds and so forth. The living room was littered with family size jars scraped almost-clean of peanut butter, empty diet pepsi bottles, and hand-rolled cigarettes as they worked round the clock on a program to beat the stock market. ("No, this one is different.") The Mountain Goats played on loop over our stereo, a retro appliance demanding the occasional bitch-slap to calm the buzz when the wires might loosen, and housemates snuck in once or twice to febreeze the orange couch which had begun to adopt an ever-ripening eau d' purdy.

Although these weeks hearkened the return of a girlfriend for Trevor, who headed the project and sketched hyper scratches across the common room blackboard, he found time to move. And Mr. Purdy, whose intense concentration reduced movement to a speed generally requiring stop-motion to record efficiently, also managed to shift his belongings to the new place they'd call home.

But Andrew was having some difficulty extracting more than a box or two of belongings from his room. Considering the modest square footage of the place one would assume that moving out would take one trip. But Andrew planned to move by bike, which meant more trips regardless, and somehow his room proved a clown car of junk. So I began packing his shit into boxes while he spent the last 48 hours before Eli's return and my eviction... well... in the front yard building a bike attachment. This contstruction job took more concentration (not to mention petty theft) than actually moving his stuff would have.

He and Mr. Purdy spread the materials across the front yard. They first stole a cart to use, but deciding that it had too much wiggle to its wheels, elected to hacksaw off the wheels and attach them to a new structure. (My parents were visiting this weekend, and of all moments to connect to someone of my generation, my Dad elected this as his opportunity, donating engineering advice as Drew proceeded to disassemble the purloined trolley and connect it to scraps of wood from our shop to build a cart-like device.)

Mr. Purdy has been described by some as a mathematical genius. Below witness him sawing over his own legs and crotch. (This is a sort of self-selective evolutionary step, right?)


The sum result of the weekend was a cart Andrew called the Wooden Mexican "because it will haul stuff for cheap all day long." (Although it did not pack Drew's belongings, load itself, or clean the mold and dust from his room.) Andrew holds the peculiar and stubborn belief that as an ethnic member of a once-persecuted people, he is granted the right to make politically incorrect comments against the metaphorical "new jews," any marginalized folk, namely, in this case Mexicans.

Most of us rolled our eyes and left Andrew to his politically incorrect business, seeing as despite his racist humour he was the one who washed the laundry for and nursed several of the neighbourhood homeless men, most of whom happen to be black men in this neck of the woods.

No one was treated for shock when the Wooden Mexican was broken/abandoned/disassembled not long into its scandalous lifetime of hauling laundry and a week of groceries.

However one poor woman who was visiting at the time, Ben's girlfriend Lisa, absorbed Andrew's influence a bit more than the rest of us. She had several key circumstances: speaking German as her first language, having the US American half of her family residing in the colour-conscious land of Kentucky, and perhaps not knowing quite how full of shit Andrew can be at times.

Time progressed, Lisa returned to Berlin. But in the winter she returned to stay in the co-op, and this time for a lengthier residence instead of a brief visit. She was folded into the cook cycle, assigned a chore, and quickly assumed a comfortable and beloved role in the co-op as "crazy Lisa." She amused us with wacky plans to make lots of money, observations about people in fridges being super funny, and outlines for musicals about psychedelic cats. And when she referenced using "a wooden mexican" in an email to the house listhost, we figured it was simply wild and crazy Lisa joking around if a little colourfully.

But she wasn't it turns out.

That night at dinner she was very rosy-cheeked, but not of joy. I somehow convinced her to discuss what was on her mind, and it turned out that she had used the term "wooden mexican" thinking that, while it was clearly racist, it was an accepted term in American English, which sweeps so many other bigoted terms under the rug. And how did she learn of her mistake? A helpful email from Ed.

Ed, who is so earnest it hurts -- particularly those of us whose veins run with sarcasm -- had taken it upon himself to send Lisa an email letting her know that she'd used a racist word, unique as the expression might be. This edification was a thoughtful, if stilted, slap on the wrist... but the email also included a list of ethnically booby trapped terms to avoid, such as that hot button term "paddy wagon."

Lisa of course was mortified that she'd made the gaffe, embarassed that she'd been called out on it in such a pedantic way, and likely surprised that only one person had spoken up.

This story is usually mentioned in reference to Ed's complete straight-laced reading of everything around him, his blindness to subtext, subtlety and irony. But really, about whom does it speak the most?

luxury

sinking ships

"Didn't you say you had a blog?" asked Eli.

"Um. I. Wha - whydoyouask?" Eloquent and unsuspicious as always.

"Well," Eli answered with one eyebrow raised, "you mentioned it last night."

I still insist I did not. Certainly I would not have mentioned it, after struggling at such length regarding to decide whether to share its presence and concluding that alerting the house to these pages might curb my written honesty. So I cut the publicity budget and went about my business recording everyone else's business.

But last night I stood transfixed in Eli's doorway, wondering how the hell he could coincidentally know about my nascent project. His explanation was simple enough: there was no coincidence, I referenced its existence on Walpurgis Nacht.

So I betrayed my own secret? Was a few beers on a Monday night all it took? I can't even trust myself?

(Since Eli basically deduced I had this thing I allowed him to read it... and in 4am pensiveness that followed already found my enthusiasm for the project curiously dampened. The significance there is enigmatic.)

Henceforth: I shall type this blog blindfolded so I won't spill the contents herein to others.

she's a girl and she's my friend, but...

Hyungkoo makes extremely clever observations and comments when he speaks in English, but he is still shy in his conversation. There are occasional slips in his vocabulary - such as the time he thought I called myself the Treasure of the House rather than the In-house Treasurer, or when he mixes up whether to call his relative his cousin or his sister. (She is his cousin, but specification of gender can be confoundingly absent in English for neutral words.)

So when he has referred to the young woman visiting him interchangeably as his "friend" or his "girlfriend," no one's questions could quite ascertain whether Sol is his romantic partner or a female buddy.

I thought I had my answer this morning when I heard the sounds of sex eminating from Hyungkoo's room as I passed through the second floor hallway. The masses shall be enlightened! The monkey shall be moved! I thought, thinking of the stuffed monkey in the kitchen that housemates are obligated to move when a secret is spilled around the cutting boards and tea kettles.

Which is approximately when I realized that the sounds I heard were simply the dips and rises of conversational Korean being spoken in woman's vocal register.

Stay monkey, stay.