There’s something sad about coming home. When you’ve been gone so long, the unfamiliar becomes familiar and the former familiar becomes stuffy and alien. That’s what it felt like to come home from college. Everything was still there, neatly preserved as though it were all in a museum. A museum the size of home, something that is both familiar but sad, like it’ll never change. All the stores, the restaurants, they may as well be encased in glass with a bronze plaque in front of them. “This is the McDonald’s on 91st and Cicero. Founded in the 1950s, it is exactly like the McDonald’s on 103rd and Cicero.”
Jim told me, “Not everything is the same. A couple of places closed down. We got that new place called Andy’s, but I’m not even sure what they sell there. Ice cream maybe.” Jim was my connection to home while I was away. Instead of going to school like I did, Jim stayed back and continued to work on cars. He did some roofing on the side. They all told us we should both go to college, but only I listened to them. Because of that, Jim was earning a living with respectable jobs and I, well, I had a piece of paper and over $40,000 in debt. It happens. I don’t regret my choices; I just think it’s kind of funny.
There is meaning to that old phrase “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Other than being a catch-all phrase that can’t possibly be proved wrong, it more or less describes everything that I’m experiencing on my homecoming. Jim is still the same, and he’s eager to start up our band again. But he seems aged somehow. World-worn even though he never left. His eyes appear deeper set, a small shadow beneath them. His hair is receding. We’re getting older. The impossible is finally happening.
In our band, Jim played guitar and I played bass. That didn’t change. We got together one afternoon on a Tuesday for a small jam session in my parents’ garage, just like four years ago in high school. We had to use my parent’s garage. Jim’s apartment was too small; the noise would bother his neighbors. Plus, being inside his apartment made me self-conscious about the fact that I was 22 and still lived with my parents. People told me there was nothing wrong with that, it was normal. I’d find a job soon enough. Until then, I’d cut the grass, wash the dishes, and clean the gutters not for a pittance, but for room and board. Not a bad deal I guess. Until you meet new people at a club or bar in Wicker Park and you have to tiptoe around the subject. “Oh, I live on the South Side,” I’d say. “No, I rent. One roommate. We get along pretty well.” Just don’t ask to come and visit. Or one of my favorites, “Hey, you’re pretty cute. Wanna go back to your place?”
After a while of jamming by ourselves, we called Kyle who used to be our drummer. When Jim and I quit the band (mainly because of me leaving), Kyle went on to play drums for a local band called Meth Lab Explosion. After playing with them for a few months, Kyle Stanford changed his name to Kyle St. James, and I don’t know why, but I grew very jealous of him for this. He agreed to come over just for old-times-sake, so we bought a twelve pack of Heineken, finished that between the three of us before we even started playing, then went out and bought a thirty pack of Busch Light. By the time any of us even picked an instrument up, we were pretty drunk. We started haphazardly playing the one original song we ever came up with. It was a ballad, styled after and reminiscent of the greatest rock ballads of the 80s, and we called it “Bitch, I Wanna Lick Your Tits.” Our explanation for the name is always some variation of, “We were 17. Sue us.” But when “Bitch, I Wanna Lick Your Tits” is one of the only things you have to call your own, you find a way to think of it as your very own Stairway to Heaven. And then you play it in your parents’ garage, drunk off your ass five years later and you love every goddamn second of it.
Back in high school, our band played only one show at a battle of the bands sponsored by the Oak Lawn Park District. We didn’t win, but we received some praise for our name: Oedipus and the Momma’s Boys. “That’s pretty clever,” some people said. And we’d sit there with our “yeah we’re so smart” smiles on our faces while not letting on to the fact that we stole that name from a friend who moved to California. When he left, all of us agreed that his intellectual properties were up for grabs.
We finished our one-garage reunion tour about the same time we finished the thirty pack. Cans of Busch Light were pyramid stacked on the table that we had set up for beer pong and we were finishing a conversation on how fucking stupid it is when people play beer pong with six cups instead of ten and call it “Beirut” because we’re from the Midwest and we’re entitled to that, and what the fuck is up with the Bears’ offensive line because as Bears fans in Chicago, we’re entitled to that, and fuck the Cubs because as South Siders who don’t really care about baseball, we’re entitled to that, and the fucking Blackhawks are fucking awesome because they won the Stanley Cup recently, so we’re entitled to that. It’s amazing how many things alcohol makes me realize I’m entitled to.
On the South Side, it’s pretty normal to be drunk on a weekday, and everyone knows when you’re drunk late at night, there are only four options for food. They are: White Castle which is mercifully open 24/7, Rosie’s whose hours are never set in stone, but mostly based on how stoned the guys are who run the place. Then there’s Huck Finn’s, though you’re more likely to run into savagely drunken teenagers there. Finally there’s the fan favorite El Gallo, the only one of the four that I can say with confidence I’ve never eaten at sober before.
When you’re back home after a long time, these places take on a bizarre nostalgic quality. As a child, I’d go to Huck Finn’s with my grandparents after church on Sundays. Now I’d go there with a few friends, my speech slurred, just craving the greasiest food I can get my hands on. A childhood memory becomes warped. The glass housing all of these museum displays becomes a little dirtier every time. There’s no one there to keep them clean. I keep throwing dirt on them, but no one is stopping me.
Being home right now is weird for sure. It’s like purgatory, but it’s not. There’s the looming feeling that things could change for the better any minute. But it can be a tease too. The three of us are stuck there, each in our own way, but for now we’re on our way back to Jim’s apartment with greasy Rosie’s deliciousness. We would eat it, fall asleep splayed randomly about Jim’s living room and in the morning we’d drive back to my house to pick up our instruments. Then on Thursday, we’d meet up and do it all again. Rinse and repeat. For now.
And now my thoughts on this story. I like it. I think it speaks to my thoughts on when I first got home from college. First and foremost, I am NOT the main character in this story. It is fiction created by weaving some experiences I've had with experiences of people I know. Some things in the story have happened to people I know. Somethings are entirely fabricated. There is no band called Oedipus and the Momma's Boys that I know of, but there should be. There is a band called Meth Lab Explosion, though I can't say whether or not they're talented because I've never heard them. Perhaps you can look them up on youtube and let me know. Also, to the best of my knowledge, no one I know has changed their last name to St. James.
This story was meant to describe the feeling of stillness that I felt after college. Everything becomes a museum exhibit. But I think the feeling is temporary.
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