I've never had a relationship as dysfunctional as the one I have with Chicago. I love Chicago in a way I'm not sure I've ever loved another person. I always have, even as a kid.
I grew up in a racially diverse working class neighborhood in an inner-ring suburb about a block outside the west side city limits. I grew up in a place where half the people were renters, where folks lived in apartments and two flats, where we had a newspaper stand on the corner where you could buy gum, where we played kick the can in the alley and walked to the corner store to buy a bottle of pop for a quarter. I grew up in a place where no one was pretentious enough to give a damn if you called it pop, or soda, or coke, but would gladly give you half as long as he could keep the bottlecap. I grew up walking everywhere and taking the el on dates. Those dates involved the el, first and foremost. Then maybe walking around State street when it was closed to traffic and buying churros y chocolate from a street vendor, but maybe not, because we didn't have money. I grew up bored as a teenager because teenagers are all either bored or saddled with too much adult suffering or sometimes both, but I went to clubs on the north side at 15 and hung out in coffee shops in old converted loft buildings in Wicker Park before it was a hot place to live and made out in cars parked at North Avenue beach after is was closed. I had some limited opportunities to visit museums on field trips but that isn't what I loved about Chicago. I grew up in a place where everybody's momma made sure you knew how to act. I grew up with hopskotch and double dutch and busy streets where a neighbor kid died in an accident while riding her bike, where I almost died when I got hit by a car, where the cops didn't necessarily care about you, where things weren't easy or rosy so that's not where I'm coming from in case you were wondering.
I left, and went to Minnesota for college, which might has well have been Mars, and that's how it is for kids who can't imagine a different station in life than the one they've always known. I wrote a poem once about how beautiful Minnesota was, how quiet and organized, and how I would never go back. I work for a company that is based in Minnesota. I still live in Chicago. Minnesota was many things I couldn't understand, it was whiter and more passive aggressive than any world I knew, it was patchouli and never saying what you mean. I've been to a lot of places, mostly in the U.S., because people who grow up in working class neighborhoods rarely travel the world even when they can because we weren't brought up for it to occur to us. I never got on a plane until I was 22. But since then I have been in many different cities, and I have never been to a place where I feel at home with the people the way I do here. How many places would accept a perpetually angry little woman who swears too much and makes wild hand gestures all the time and has been giving the side eye since 87 but would give you her left arm, albeit after giving you crap about it? That's what Chicago is to me.
I came back after college and lived in my old neighborhood for a time. It wasn't the same. I know someone famous warned me it wouldn't be, but I'm stubborn and I didn't listen. There was more money, more homeownership, less of a Sesame Street feel. Folks were worried about kids "hanging out" in the streets. I left a condo association meeting after saying those kids were just doing what I used to do, and if you are worried there's a problem, why don't you walk up and say something? I was the 23 year old confronting white suburban kids shooting up heroin in our alleys because they thought it didn't matter if you did that in what they considered to be a "black" neighborhood. I was the one yelling about take your shit back to your daddy's basement in Schaumburg. I was the one confronting the kids other people were afraid of to see what they were doing only if it seemed like they were doing something stupid, and that's what it was, every time, just some stupid harmless crap, because the real problems and the real violence that everyone who had never dealt with was afraid of was happening somewhere else, even if only a few blocks away.
In Chicago, blocks matter. Blocks matter in a life or death sense. Neighborhoods matter, and we romanticize that, though we shouldn't. Neighborhoods matter in large part because of the deeply entrenched segregation of this city, which is emblematic of the deeply entrenched racism of this country. Parochialism is a legacy of our city's history, and we are proud of it, though maybe we shouldn't be.
Neighborhoods matter because everyone wants to own a piece of something, when we should be willing to give that up, but what we're left with isn't anything or at least it seems like loss. We have fiefdoms here, we have more councilmembers than New York, we have wars that play out in the streets as surely as wars play out in the streets around the world. But the things that happen here happen here SPECIFICALLY, on this block, in that ward, and we have some kind of false pride if it doesn't happen to us, some of us suffer and others simply look away. And instead of realizing the damage we are doing, we've fooled ourselves into believing that being tight knit is better than being equal.
I live in a place in Chicago, this place I am trying so hard not to leave, where I have lived for eleven years. I live on the far south side of the city; I have two homes here and my kids were born and raised here and we have wonderful friends here. But we are still not "from" here. I'm not sure we ever will be. People were born here and they die here. It's very...Chicago. And here in the neighborhood I call home, we suffer from the same tyranny of low expectations that all Chicagoans suffer from to some degree. A new restaurant opens up and they don't even answer the phone or set up voicemail. I try to support a neighborhood restaurant but they charge me for three lunches when there are only two people there and then try to argue the point. The schools are stripped of their resources and people just go to Catholic schools instead. We have an opportunity to elect a progressive Mayor and we don't do it because people here love a bully. We elected one for Governor too; the main argument against the old one being that he was too "soft." People get jobs they might be good at but that they only got because they know someone. Everyone does a little something on the side. Everyone knows a guy, and wants you to use that guy not because he's the best, but because they know him. I'm reading a book called City of Scoundrels that describes Chicago's politics in the 1800s and damn, nothing has changed. Nothing, in over 100 years.
So why do we stay? We stay because there is something about Chicago, and the people from Chicago. I've never met people anywhere else like the people I've known here. And I am no romantic, I am not into this second city complex. I don't give two damns what New York or some other place thinks, I don't feel this way because of some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. If you are reading this and thinking "See? I told you so!" I didn't write this for you.
And while I love my bad boy, I know he doesn't treat me right. He is violent, and flashy, he throws our money down the toilet or spends it on his friends. He lies and he loves a grand gesture. He isolates me and tries to hold me down. He tells me that this is all I deserve, and I believe him. He will tear down an airport at midnight and when the world can't believe he did it he will give the millionaires who are stranded in their private planes the finger. And we will love him for it, even when he was, at the same time, making deals in order to keep the peace that would ruin us later. He only cared about us when he was with us. But man do we love him, this bad boy Chicago. He is handsome, and strong. His butt looks great in those jeans. We've seen things with him we couldn't see with anyone else. He's hilarious, he's great in bed, we know him for five minutes and we've known him all our lives. And we know what he is, and we damn him for it, but you know what we don't want to hear?
We don't want to hear about him from the other woman. Look, distant suburbs and places where you say you've gone to "get away." You can talk trash about him, but you are sneaking into his bed at night. Chicago is your gigolo, your dirty little secret. You talk about how good it is where you are, and we agree with you. Because he has made that possible. No one hates Chicago's world class universities, museums, restaurants, transit, skyline, or job opportunities. No one hates the amenities that exist in neighboring towns simply because of their proximity to this powerful, complicated mess. When the proverbial stuff hits the fan, you show up at Northwestern or University of Chicago hospital to take care of business. (As an aside, this is a very real truth for me. As I sat there in my numbness and confusion and grief back in 2010, I was asked to choose oncologists and surgeons, and so I did, though somewhat randomly. And I ended up with one of the top breast oncologists in the world and a few of the top surgeons, because that's how it is when you have access to services other people travel hundreds of miles to receive). You love him because he's a jock, even if he's bound to perpetually lose, and jocks are mostly fun on the weekends, right? You love him for his money. Without him, your position in the swamps and corn of old would be nothing. This is the economic engine that drives the region, and we know it pisses you off, but it's true. The region is strong because there's a reason to have a region here and that reason is Chicago. When you complain about him, it's like when Ann Arbor complains about the University. When you say he will go the way of Detroit, we wonder what part you mean: the white flight, the abrupt abandonment? The loss of the single industry, when we have so many? We know that part of your issue arises from how much you depend on him too. We agree with everything you say, but we would rather be the ones to say it. Because we are with him, all the time, we come home to him. And we know he is as much at fault as you when he lets you use him for his charms and give nothing in return.
For me, love and Chicago are forever intertwined. I've been in love four times, three by age 18, once at age 27, and I kept that one. Each time, my memories of falling in love are directly tied to my memories of loving Chicago in a specific way in a specific place and time. Even when it wasn't love, Chicago has come to bed with me all my life. I gave a guy a second chance after he was insanely late to a first blind date because he was sheepish when he got there, didn't make fun of me for drinking a Rolling Rock, and didn't say a word when I told him I'd already wolfed my cheeseburger by myself but if he wanted, we could stay and watch the game. I've never had a successful relationship with someone from a wealthy neighborhood or background. I once dated a man who said he admired me because of my conviction about Chicago. He had just moved back to the city after leaving it, said he couldn't suffer the place he had been, and he needed to get back. And where was this Godforsaken place? San Francisco. I dated another man who hailed from Indianapolis, who had been involved in the streets in Chicago and not in a romantic way. He explained that he got into that life because "It was thrilling. Everyone knew your name. It was like being a celebrity." He was 28, handsome, fit, getting a PhD, working two jobs and coaching soccer when I met him. He died when he was 30. They found his body in Lake Michigan. It's like that here.
I've been reading a wonderful mystery series that is the closest thing to my city affair I could imagine. In this place where the novels are set, people are lusty and irrational. They swear, the phone rings and their first thought is "why are you busting my balls?" They insult each other, they become friends within a moment's meeting, they love food and sex and the water that surrounds them. The corruption and violence, the fact that people do what they want and no one ever expects anything to change, are part of what makes their love real. I read these books and I think, you understand, don't you? This place sounds like home. I hear you Andrea Camilleri. I see my love in yours, and I don't know what that says about me, since your love is...Sicily.
I was going to write an essay about our tyranny of low expectations, our acceptance of corruption and cronyism, the record tax hike coming our way, our failing school system, the crime, our seeming paralysis. But I've written this instead. Chicago, everything I know about you tells me I should leave you. You are trying to break my heart. People who aren't in love with you will never understand; they will think I'm a fool. I don't know how to quit you, and I don't know how to explain that.
But let me try, with just one scene.
Chicago is that: a city of scenes, specific people and places. I grew up here and I cut my professional teeth here too, in the true Chicago style, as an activist working with a Coalition of like-minded activists to combat economic inequality in our city and country. Chicago made that activism; it was born here. I can't for the life of me figure out why we cannot use that legacy to fix our own back yard. The best people I've known in my life were those people I met when I did that work, and that's the truth. And the best way I can explain why it breaks my heart to leave or think about leaving is to tell you this story.
It must have been the year 2000, or 2001. The economy was booming here, and elsewhere. Liberal politicians who would later bemoan the banking system were right there in bed with banks at the time and loving it. But there's always a shadow, even on the loveliest day. Times weren't good everywhere, the boom time wasn't booming for everyone. We were fighting predatory lending practices before anyone else had heard of them or cared, a full ten years before the economy's official fall. In this specific scene, we were fighting usurious payday lending practices, which were completely unchecked by regulation in most states at the time, and in our City were similar to the gangster loan shark shops of old. We went looking for people who cared, who would help. Congress wasn't important to us, because this was a state regulation issue, not a federal one. We planned a meeting with our numerous community organizations, and a single State Senator agreed to meet with us.
We worked in one of the landmark skyscrapers of the city, the Old Colony building on Dearborn and VanBuren. We had a frosted glass window on our office door, we had real fire escapes behind windows that actually opened, and the elevators often didn't work. It was like something out of a noir film from the 50s. Today, that building has been renovated and turned into dorms for college kids. But at the time, we worked there, and we held our meeting in a conference room on the top floor of the building. It was dusty and the furniture was ancient. It was almost embarrassing, that space, and us being in it. This Senator sat on a folding chair with his elbows on his knees, listening intently to us. He represented Chicago, the south side of Chicago. He had the most honest handshake I could remember from a politician, and I spent a lot of time with politicians then, from locals to the Speaker of the House in Congress. He didn't flinch when we had to pause every six or so minutes as the el sped past, practically inside the room itself, the roaring and shaking and rumbling making it impossible to speak. He sat there as if this was as real and important a meeting as any. We shook hands once more and left, and how could we know? How could we know that years later, that man would be elected, fairly and irrefutably, no matter what his detractors would say, to the highest office in the land...twice?
That is the Chicago I know, that I love and think of and will one day miss: the dust and decay, the noise and the broken infrastructure, the history, the gorgeous expanse available just outside the window, the architecture unparalleled in the world, the knowledge that someone made a living off of others' suffering, the people who made it their life's work to fight that injustice, the way that the future President Obama looked each of us in the eye and nodded his head. Oh Chicago, my Chicago, look what you leave us with: the beauty, the horror. The struggle. The promise.
