A question by the lake

Near Montrose Harbor, past the bird sanctuary where all the twitter twitters go, there is a small pier that curls out like a question mark.

Old men and fat women fish off there, laughing and spilling guts and bait along the wind-lapped concrete. The spray paint on the ground crosses out diving in, no no no, don't do that. As you slowly ride your red bicycle along the questioning curl, the wind spits at you, making you want to close your eyes but you can't, for fear of riding your bike comically off the edge. You reach the end of the question mark and hop off your bike, propping it near the center rail, a rained-on metal divider like velvet ropes letting you know one side is VIP, the other is just plain P.

On Labor Day weekend, I took a four-hour bike ride. On that ride, somewhere between the question mark pier and the black gate in Olive Park, my Chicago finally made a bit more sense.

This blog - half a study about how people choose to divide, half me bragging about the cool shit I do on weekends - finally had a real-life version of a thesis statement. Labor Day brought it all together, from tattooed punks to nudity to just being on a bike. And this is a good place to go out on.

I started my trip pedaling down North Avenue, dodging cars and hopping hills and generally wondering if the sleeveless, beer-advertising muscle shirt I made for the Communist theme party (I was Communist ideology: no class) would make my farmer's tan go away or just move it north.

North Avenue Beach is a delight for the senses on Labor Day. A spread full of lovely half-nudity, like the first time a girl is in her underwear in your room and you realize you don't have to worry about your parents barging in. There are the people you want to touch and wonder at, gender determined what your predilection is. There are also the people you don't want to touch, wonder at or even inhabit the same plane of existence as.

They are all the people you see on the street, share the city with, know and love, like, hate or are completely indifferent to. They are your neighbors and co-Chicagoans and you can't help but look to see what their clothes have been hiding this whole time. A strange tattoo. Pastiness or great tans. Big rolls of fat or ponderous breasts. Abs.

As the rocking 80s this-is-the-music-people-listen-to-on-the-beach-in-movies music blared into the sun, I parked and walked around a bit. I sat under the shade of a tree, wondering how creepy it would be to talk to the pretty girl sitting and reading under the shade of a different tree. Pretty creepy, I decided, letting the sand run through my fingers. I retrieved my bike and pedaled south.

And here's where it started to make sense.

Everyone was there. And I mean everyone. There were families and lone walkers of every race, class, creed. There were Mohawks there and military buzz-cuts. There were sunbathers covered in tattoos and bicyclists covered by chadors.

There were punks there and drunks there, stoners and loners. There were old smelly hippies and Lincoln Park chippies. There were hip-hopping rappers and cock-teasing slappers. Trixies and Chads. Suburbanite dads. An old 80s rocker. A kid playing soccer. There were total geek-nerds and absolute turds. There were people who like rhyming descriptions of the crowds on the bike path along Lake Michigan on Labor Day weekend and people who ... don't. They think it's a little too "Goodnight Moon."

A selection of every self-imposed social group I would ever meet was at the beach that day. And it all seemed so damn silly.

We spend our lives defining ourselves in meaningless groups. I'm a hippie. I'm an emo. I'm a Sheboygan Synod Presbo-Luthero-Catholitarian. Meaningless. Useless. No good. "Granfalloons," Kurt Vonnegut called them.

But we all like a sunny day at the beach. Muslim and Jew and rockabilly guy and everybody except for those people who get their kicks dressing as vampires, I guess.

With my grand revelation of "People have a lot in common" in mind, I pedaled on, wondering if I really wanted ice cream or if the dairy would just make me phlegmy (it wasn't all deep, pretentious musing.) I had to pay attention to where I was going so I didn't run into anybody. I had to re-apply some sunscreen. I smiled at a girl and she smiled back. That was nice.

I'm leaving Chicago.

I have a three-month internship writing for a wire service in Thailand, then I'm off to wherever the job search takes me. I might come back. I might not. I just don't know.

The Windy Citizen publisher and I have discussed the possibility of changing this blog's focus to more of a Chicagoan's view of southeast Asia during my internship. That is to be determined. My new bosses might not like it.

I wrote this entry weeks ago and plan to post it Sept. 18, the day I leave. [Author's note: The plane leaves in less than 12 hours from the time I'm posting this.] It's remained the same during that time, save only a few minor edits, such as the addition of this sentence.

I want to leave this beautiful, bizarre city thinking about that curvy pier near Montrose Harbor, past the bird sanctuary where all the twitter twitters go. I want to fly out of O'Hare [1] thinking about the water and the wind and the moment when, back on land, I looked out at the pier and smiled, realizing finally what it looked like.

Chicago is punctuated for me. Punctuated with memories and emotions and friends and lovers and, more literally, with a giant question mark curling out into Lake Michigan.

I don't know where I'm heading. I don't know what I'm doing. I won't know how much I left behind until I'm gone.

I'm excited to find out.

This is going to get strange.