Sunshine and Orchid

As so often happened during my early years, I needed a place to stay for a few days. Apparently my roommate had not been taking my half of the rent to the owner. He had just been taking it. I'll say for him I don't think he ever meant to, like all of us he had some expensive habits and a low paying job, and it's easy to make a poor decision or two in those situations and get behind. The landlord gave us an option, we could just leave, and he wouldn't report it credit wise or give us bad rental references, or he could evict us. At that point in life I didn't care about either of those things, but clearly my roommate couldn't keep up with rent and I had no intention of paying his past due amount to stay in the place (although my bedroom window looked out into the back of a dunkin donuts and a popeyes chicken, which ended up presenting some opportunities). So, being that I didn't have any furniture, leaving seemed like the way to go, and away I went.

The place I found to crash was interesting. I knew this girl Sunshine (party kid alter ego, I never knew nor cared who she really was), and Sunshine was staying with this guy Andy I had met once. Andy had a true loft, maybe the only one I have ever seen. Most people who say they have a loft in Chicago are in a building of condos for half a mil a piece and a couple walls that don't touch the 16 foot ceiling. Andy, on the other hand, had either bought or leased square footage on a vacant floor of what was basically a five floor factory building. It was on the west edge of Chinatown in an industrial area. There were train tracks (unused at that time) leading to the front door of the building. There weren't any actual factories there at that time. The first floor was the offices for 1000 Words Magazine, which I think has long since shut down, and now there is an online unrelated magazine of the same name. Other offices on floors two and three. Andy was I think on four, don't remember the other. What was cool was that the offices on the first three floors had no doors, you walked in the front door or got off the elevator (no lockout) and you could walk through these relatively large offices, and go through peoples desk drawers. Which is what I did on the one occasion I had a good experience on Special K. Two friends of mine with a Blazer helped me drive some of my stuff over, and when we got there we just parked right in front of the building, since it was night and at night there was NO ONE in that area. Before getting out of the car we each did a bump (not much) of Special K, and then got buzzed in the front door of the building. And found ourselves in the middle of the 1000 Words Magazine office. At the time it was a trendy magazine that we were all familiar with, so it was neat finding ourselves unexpectedly there. And almost instantly, in mild k-holes. We hadn't done much so we weren't incapacitated, we just wandered through the office looking through peoples desks and things. Didn't take anything, we were just curious. Then we went up to the second floor and did the same. Then the third. Judging by the reaction we got when we got to Andy's we roamed around a very long time. It was engrossing, this little peek into peoples work lives (sober we would have realized how dull these people were, I don't remember finding anything unusual. Course I probably wouldn't remember.)

When you got off the elevator at Andy's floor, you stepped out onto a vast open area, old beat up floors, exposed ductwork and beams, factory type windows that were opaque. Immediately to your left was a new looking wall and door, and inside here was a bathroom (with small hottub) and a washer and dryer. At the other end of the floor, far, far, away, you could see where someone had basically built a couple walls to make an enclosed space out of the corner of the floor, and it looked tiny. It wasn't, it was just that far away. I have no concept for square footage, but you could just about smoke a cigarette going from the elevator to Andy's enclosure.

When you got close you could see that though he had built the walls himself he knew what he was doing, and the same inside. The ceiling of the floor of this building was tall enough that Andy's place had two bedrooms upstairs. To get to these bedrooms you went up a spiral staircase in the middle of the apartment. That had no hand rails. Just the little steps going up and around the pole. Going up that thing sober was nerve wracking. Going down when you weren't was....actually it was much easier, or at least not scary. Go figure. Now.....remember where the bathroom is? By the elevator. Far. And it was late fall, and obviously only Andys place and the bathroom itself were heated, the walk to and fro was not. Wake up at two in the morning having to pee and that staircase, the walk, and the cold really made you search for other options.

It was Sunshine that I was staying with, in her room, of course she was just mooching off Andy temporarily, so whatever. Sunshine was....well....fierce, in a way. She was cute, but she was kinda of broderline mean/aggressive. Or at least always had that kind of look on her face even if she never said or did anything mean. And she wasn't nearly attractive enough to have looks related attitude, so it was all very mysterious. Hey, place to stay for a bit. And as it happened, I would discover the root of her 'tude.

Like myself, and really most other Chicago party kids, Sunshine loved meth. When I started going to parties Ecstasy and LSD were the main drugs, and I had watched as tweak took over. And I watched the scene take a decidedly harder edge. The music switched more to harder breakbeats than the disco like (and Chicago original) house sound, the clothing got more serious and less candy (less bright and colorful) and the drug dealers were a lot more like drug dealers, not a guy on Ecstasy who sells you a pill and hugs and thanks you twelve times. Some of these new type lived in Hammond,Indiana (and seemed like Indiana tweekers instead of Chicago Ecstasy vendors, not a change for the better) and one night Sunshine and I scraped up a bunch of cash and headed to Hammond to make a moderately large purchase (for us, anyway). Sunshine drove us in her Honda Accord, which she had named Orchid.

I quickly learned that Sunshine was originally from Kenosha, Wisconsin. She explained this when I asked her how she couldn't find the highway that was one turn and about three minutes from our door. It was late fall, cold, raining, and between nine and ten at night. When we got on 94 traffic was still pretty heavy (it was a weeknight as well) though not stop and go. And Sunshine was driving way too fast, especially considering that it was raining. I tried to explain to her that city traffic would move then totally stop very abruptly, but my warning had no effect. I think she thought I was implying that she couldn't drive because she was from Wisconsin, which to a degree I probably was. And she was, probably still is, female. Two strikes. And she was driving too fast.

This was not a situation that I wanted to be able to say I told you so in. But not five minutes down the road brake lights flash on all in front of us, and I knew instantly that traffic was dead stopped. I doubt it would have mattered if she had slammed the brakes instantly, but she didn't. She started to slow, and we actually had enough time for me to gesture to the car ahead of us (rapidly getting larger) and say, "Well, you're gonna hit him." A car ahead of us had used the left shoulder and was stopped there, and the middle lane was solid with cars, so there was no where to go, but into this dude's trunk.

Now we are in a crash in the left lane of bumper to bumper traffic on the Dan Ryan expressway. Her car won't run (she hit this dude for real) and neither of us are really dressed for the cold, much less the rain. But that was a small immediate issue. We both were thinking of what we were going to get, and the fact that that clearly was not going to happen, at least not anytime even close to soon. Again, before widespread cell phone use. Eventually an IDOT truck came and towed her off to the right shoulder and called a tow company. Getting to the right shoulder was actually a huge relief. Traffic was bad before we caused a shut down of a lane, and we had been getting murderous looks from drivers for the previous hour or however long we sat there. And not looks as they cruised by. Traffic was so slowed that one driver could swear at us for a good 6 or 7 minutes before he was passed.

The tow truck came and hauled us, and Orchid, to their yard, which was in Calumet Park. Great. Now we are even further from home, and in Calumet Park. Sunshine called her parents from there, the legal owners of the car, and they had triple A so at least there was no bill problem. Getting home was a problem. Again, no cell phones, we tried a few peoples home phones, but not a lot of our friends had them, or the stability they would imply. We had a fair amount of cash, but that money had a purpose, and not all was ours. It would have been an expensive cab. So there we sit, talking a bit with the one guy there, the dispatcher, who somehow was a hick. I never understood how this happens, Calumet Park is south suburban Chicago, but it's hickish, at least some of it. Weird. Anyway, somehow we got talking about parties with this guy, I don't remember if he asked about our fat pants or what (would've been a far question, wearing pants that were over 32" around each cuff at the bottom). He tells us, oh yeah, one of the driver's is into those, always talking about them. He would be in pretty soon, depending on where his next call was, maybe he could give us a ride. A party kid tow truck driver? What luck! We never even considered how bizarre that sounded, especially in Calumet Park. There were not a lot of people in our scene over 22 or 23 (and that was pushing it) other than the DJ's and people who produced some of the big ones.

Finally this guy gets back, the dispatch points out his truck as it pulls in. We jump up and go to the window, and see a 45 year old Joe Dirt with a bald spot on top hop out. He was indeed into parties, followed info on them online (we didn't really know what that meant, this was 96 or 97). His next call was North, and he would be driving right past Cermak, our street more or less, so he could drop us. We pile in the cab of the truck and head out, back up the Dan Ryan. At least the traffic was light at this point. I idly noticed the sign for the Cermak exit coming up. Then the dude was pulling onto the shoulder of the highway. When he said drop you on the way, he meant right on the side of the highway, which as I remember was above Cermak, a bridge (but I may be embellishing that). Either way, we got out and started our walk down Cermak. We probably had a mile and a couple blocks to get to our building.

We had been slightly damp earlier but had dried out waiting for the ride. It had rained steadily all night, but now was just a light drizzle. There were, however, significant puddles and no real nice place to walk down the road, and at this time we got a little science review. Do you remember what capillary action is? When a solid-ish object comes into contact with the surface tension of water, the water will absorb and rise up the object (my definition, blow me if that's not exactly right).

Our pants were enormous around the cuffs, and came into contact with huge amounts of water. Fat pants produce a capillary action like nothing else. About five minutes of walking and we were soaked, soaked, to the knees, and it was rising fast. And dear God was it cold! We were basically wearing long almost knee length sweaters and fat pants. Maybe shirts underneath, but that's it. Chicago, late fall, nearing midnight, windy, soaked. And I swear those pants held so much water the weight slowed us down.

It seemed like forever, but finally the doors of the elevator were opening to our floor, and we both walked immediately to the bathroom/laundry room, took off our pants, and threw them in the machines. We then made the pilgrammage to the apartment. We walked in wearing long sweaters, no pants, no shoes, but socks (wet or not we werent walking barefoot across that floor). Andy and one or two other people were watching tv as we walked in and they looked at us incredulously. Sunshine mumbled car accident and we went up those freaky stairs into her room, got dry clothes and they only drugs we had, a little bit of special K and marched back to the bathroom. We started the hot tub, took off the rest of our wet stuff, did some K, and hopped in. I know me and Sunshine did it a few times but I don't think we had at that point, so that would have been the first time we had seen each other naked. I don't think we even noticed, we were that dead (and empty handed, an accident on the way back would have been much easier to take).

I mentioned earlier that I found out why Sunshine had that mean look to her so much of the time. I found a picture of her that was only a year or two old buried in some of her stuff. And she was fat. I don't mean chubby, I mean fat. Probably 16 or 17 in the picture, but shit, we were only like 19, so it was pretty easy to figure out what happened. She somehow found the party scene from Kenosha, not hard to believe, not that far, and she found meth. When she did, she figured out how to be rid of her weight problem in a hurry, and moved away from Kenosha to be with her new crowd, who never knew her before. I didn't stay there too long, and we didn't make a huge effort to hang out after, just bumped into each other out and about, like before I lived there. I never told her I found that picture, and she never looked mean to me again.