For some reason it always takes me a few days to figure out exactly what happened. Maybe, though, really my issue is that I have to more accurately remember what happened, only to be contradicted through lists upon lists of privately sent e-mails after I’ve said the wrong thing. I don’t know. I remember Friday night in spots, at least: I went to a film shoot with the hippie. We were—along with a pair of twins-cum-models, a film-school drop-out and a weird old man with a short brown beard, a black hat and matching bag and leather gloves—hired solely to walk across the street and stare venomously at the female lead of the movie, a Eurasian actress I’d never met before with a perfect little mouth and a perfect little hat to go with it. We were to do this, mind you, as she almost hit the film-school drop out, a very amiable sort of guy whose name totally escaped me the moment I heard it. As it turns out, not knowing the actress was quite all right as well—she was from Tennessee and had hated Los Angeles so much that she never wanted to go back there again, though she was perfectly willing to act in indies forever. Kudos to her for sticking it to the Man.

For what we were paid (food and credit) it was almost worth standing outside in the wet cold. Friday night was one of those typical Chicago early-spring nights: the fog out there in the loop chopped off all of the tops of the buildings so that, when I looked up and saw nothing but windows cut off by a sea of fog, I thought a few times that that was where the city actually might have ended, that somewhere above the sky just stopped and no one and nothing—even the stars that you never see downtown anyway—existed anymore and that, by the end of the shoot, we’d each be handed a release form and told, “Oh, by the way, while you were here we cut off the rest of humanity. You’ll have to walk around here in the wet cold forever. Blah.”

And being that the hippie had never been on a film set in the first place (I’m cruel like that sometimes—I send lots of people into places where they know nothing and are forced to adapt, though often they survive somehow.) the irony of the whole situation would have made for a great story, told to all those poor dupes who decide to go into film in any city, anywhere.

Luckily, the gods’ sense of humor didn’t got that far. The shoot lasted about three hours over all, so that, when we were wrapped and our release forms signed, we needed something to warm us up.

For better or worse, I’m most at home on sets or on stages. I knew what sorts of procedures we were going to have to follow for the shoot; that we were going to stand around until the director yelled “Back to one!” at us, that we were going to re-set, and re-set,, and re-set again until she and her cinematographer were happy at what we gophers were able to accomplish and, with a handshake and possibly a smile, send us on our merry ways. I had no idea what was to happen next. It was Friday and I had no other plans.

I am most out of my element when I walk into a place where I know no one at all, where I don’t know the staff, the procedures, or the specific vibe of a given place I’m going to. Since I made the mistake of failing to plan the next move, the decision was in the hippie’s hands. Where did we go?

She used to work at 10 pin (330 N. State, next to the House of Blues), a place where, when she and I tried this whole dating thing the FIRST time, I’d stupidly suggested that my sister, her boyfriend, and I go to the one weekend that they had come to town to see me. That night was a little awkward, not only because I hadn’t known my sister’s boyfriend for more than thirty hours and was, consequently, still trying to figure out how to intimidate him into kowtowing to my sister’s every whim but, on the other hand, it was also the first time my sister would be meeting the hippie—meaning that all sorts of crazy judgment were doing to be tossed about.

Tonight was supposed to be different though, right? My sister was now back in Boston, and the Hippie and I have just gotten off of a shoot and could use a few drinks. We go.

The thing here is simple: I don’t necessarily like not having control of the room and I knew that we were going not into my own element, but into hers. I figured someplace in the back of my mind, though, that after submitting the girl to the wet and the cold and what little screen time we were going to get, she deserved to go to a place where she could have some of the control that I normally hog all to my lonesome.

As it turns out I didn’t have to pay too dearly for my lack of influence at this particular place. She was offered a job as soon as we walked into the place: I stared at the huge screens and gawked at how every single song played (from “straight Up” to “never Gonna Give You Up” to “Tell it to My Heart”) made me incredibly happy that time had moved on from big hair and bright colors. We got drunk on fabulously strong vodka tonics and Jack-and-Cokes, bowled two games in such a marvelously horrid way that I was actually proud of our ability to smile at each other despite neither being able to break a hundred (though I blame the booze, thankyouverymuch.)

We talked about movies.

We talked about music.

We talked about the last time we’d been at the place this long; about how no one was around tossing judgment every which way. I’d tell you what else we talked about, but really most of it would only make sense if you, too, had been bowling with us and dancing badly to bad 80’s music, in the cool foggy Chicago springtime Friday night.

(for all you film buffs-- No, we weren't REALLY being shot with a Bolex; I just needed a damn title :-))

I met her at Delilah's, , a hipstery, dark, smoky little place in Lincoln park where i'd only been once before. The last time I went, my room-mate Brad had called me to go drink cheap beer and watch Twin Peaks with him. That's the thing about the place that first struck me, in fact: you wouldn't think that Lincoln Park-- famous now not only for its cutesy little shops and its cutesy little trixies-- would have room for a bunch of nostalgics and their bent towards quirky television. When Brad and I were there (i think this was in June), I couldn't help but notice that the lights had been a little too dark and that the mood too eclectic even for my tastes.

The place is half-lounge, half hipster-bar downstairs and too-cramped pool-hall upstairs. The cushiony seats and eyeball barstools feel like they should be in the middle of Wicker Park-- home to the hipsters and dark-haired goth-heads with an edge of urban chic-- and not, at least I thought the firtst time I was there-- for dear old Lincoln Park, home to the greatest theaters this city has known for thirty years (like, say Steppenwolf or Victory Gardens,). I just couldn't see the benefit of a place so dark, so Mod, so. . .I don't know. I just couldn't see the connection. It was as if the owners of the place had missed the memo when all of Lincoln Park decided to gentrify. Where Wicker (God Bless it) let some of its charactersitic grit hang on the walls, Lincoln Park had whitewashed all of theirs very cleanly away. The place should have been on Division and Ashland, not North Lincoln.

Luckily for us, though, times change. Luckily for me my own sense of what "should be"" versus what "is" have also changed. Hell, even Victory Gardens just moved into the Biograph and, let's face it, when they moved in to Lincooln Park that long ago, the neighborhood was more than a little sketchy. So delilah's-- mod-feeling though it is-- was a good fit after all.

And, of course, every place is a good fit on St. Patrick's. We're ALL Irish. at the very least, we're all drinking and hell. sometimes it's even all right if the beer is green.

That's all I have for right now, friends! Tonight I go to Celebrity where my friend Joe Vor-Tech will be spinning till about 2:00 in the morning. see y'all on the flip. Peace.

In the meantime Ruthie (the room-mate) and Lance (The Boyfriend) have gradually, within the context of their happy, loving, mutually respectful and ultimately satisfying love affair, have each gained about ten pouns apiece over the last few months.

I'm jealous. So jealous that I can envision them, many years from now, holding each other overlooking a farm someplace in ohio with their cat and their dog and their three children, Lance in his office typing away at some journal and making the world safe for the Internet revolutionaries, Ruthie on the phone with her poets and writers planning, undoubtedly, a kickass writing party out in the middle of that fied. The kids are as robust as he is and smile as warmly as she. in the meantime I'm a sallowed-out drunk who tries every day to re-enact the feat that Dylan Thomas died of, only I swear I'm incapable of having my liver explode. So jealous in fact that I have to wait for them to be together, in the living-room of the house, in front of the refrigerator framed like the red-headed Idols of American Gothic, to look Lance dead in the eye and say

"You know, when couples get along they get a little softer. it's funny: as you two have been together I think I've given you all the weight that I lost."

We're in the middle of the living-room, next to the refrigerator and I can see the wall-calendar. It's the tenth. One week till everybody's Irish..

Which, incidentally, Lance really is. not only is he Irish, but he's 6'3", 215 lbs. and apparently very, very touchy about his weight. I'm five-foot-six, 125 pounds soaking wet, and (again) I eat once a day.

Flash forward to the 17th. St. Patrick's Day. By this time I've forgotten the whole thing. i don't remember the conversation because I've spent most of the last week brooding over something else. i don't know-- the end of a relationship, building a show I probably won't see through to the end--- anything except my backhanded, unintentional insult. Lance and ruthie and I meet at the house at about seven and begin drinking right away. i have no idea where the girlfriend is, and frankly at the time I don't give a shit.

We go first to a place called the Dublin Pub. (http://www.dubpub.com/index2.htm) It's a big joint for Dayton-- lots of loud, laughing folk crowding the narrow, long bar where drinks are slung by big, burly Irish-looking men dressed in black. The guiness is discounted and the jameson flows out of their bottles like the Nile to ancient egyptians. Lance and ruth know something I don't. We drink-- Lance challenges me to match him.

After the third shot of Jameson and the fourth glass of Guiness Lance offers to pay. i lose count of what else we drink, but after a while even the Jameson starts to taste good.

Now it's midnight and we go back to the house. It's dark, yellow, misty. I think I'm carried inside, though All that I really remember is the burn of bile in my stomach and the lurch through the living-room, into the bathroom where all the guiness and Jameson paste the bathtub. I can hear lance chuckling outside and Ruthie's silent.

I'm hung over for three days. God damn it I'll never talk about an Irishman's weight again.

Before I go any further, let me tell you part of how Eric and I ended up living together. We were going to the same college in Dayton when the chair of my department—a kooky, lovable Mormon with a fat body that seemed to move like an Angel’s on a whim. When the school made him resign, I had to go somewhere. I picked Chicago, and lo! Eric was already going.

Eric sings show tunes. A lot. I used to, but have in recent years come to realize that you just can’t do that in good company.

So knowing the bonds of theatrical bliss that Eric and I have, I try a bit of persuasion on Eric. I say to him that we should compromise; that before he starts jumping into the gay Mecca of this city with a straight man in tow, maybe he’d better find someone who’d enjoy traveling it with someone more attuned to the life. Personally, I’m one of these folks at a gay club, I tell him, who sits back and lets the old men buy me drinks till I get tired of pretending their stories are interesting, find the one girl at the club who’s secretly looking for the one straight guy and leave with her. There’s no way I’d b a good wing man for these things; he, on the other hand, would be a perfect wing for me, I tell him.

“Say we go to Wicker Park,” I tell him. “There are bound to be plenty of boys there for you and at least half of them, if you talk to them long enough, will swing if you’re any good; I won’t have to sift through seas upon seas of lesbians to find the ONE girl who, like me, was dragged into a bar scene where no one I know is eligible to sleep with and you can go home happy that we ALL had a good time.”

But Eric has just gone through a break-up. He’s been single for a grand total of three days and wants to be able to get a taste of this new city on his own terms, in a turf where, even if he can’t call it his own yet, he can at least feel as if he’s getting into the sorts of places where he can find the next heart to break. He tells me that NEXT time he’ll be perfectly willing to go to whatever sort of skeezy, trashy, beer-slinging breeder bin I want just so long as tonight—please, tonight—we go out to Boys town and let him find something to distract himself with.

“Yeah? What about me?”

“Never mind that. You don’t need distraction, David. You’ll just need a few drinks and you’ll forget about it and have a good time.”

I’m a little suspicious, but I figure we can give this one a round or two. We go, tonight, to Boy’s Town. We get off of the Red Line at Belmont and walk towards Halsted. At Halsted and Roscoe is a bar with wooden awnings, wide open windows and show tunes blaring out of the sides. It’s missing most of what I’m avoiding: no boys on dance floors groping other boys, no drag queens at the door to greet us—in shrot, none of the things I was used to in Dayton (my home town in Ohio) where most of the gayboy population collides in the same three bars.

This place was actually nice.

As I finish the third drink (a strong Gin and tonic, thankyouverymuch) and realized I had to go to the washroom for the first time, a song comes on the loudspeaker: “All That Jazz”

Come on babe, why don’t we paint the town

And all that jazz

I’m gonna rouge my knees and let my stockings down

And all that jazz

Did I mention that I used to be a musical kid? I walk from the pool table to the bar to the bathroom I couldn’t help but mouth the words. As I looked around, I notice that everyone else is singing the song, too! And I get out of the bathroom and the songs still on. There’s not a whole lot of room in the place—the bar is crowded and everyone’s singing, laughing, smiling at each other

Oh, she’s gonna shimme till her garters break

And pretty soon I forget where I am. Eric comes over to me. He’s been flirting with this BIG, bald guy for the last twenty minutes.

“See?” He says. “I told you!”

I guess sometimes he was right.

Since I'm a creature of habit, I thought I'd start by introducing you to the place where I was first called a barfly: if Printer's Row has a Cheers, then Kasey's Tavern would definitely be it.

The sign outside says "established 1974," but the old guys tell me that Bill White, the ex-cop-cum bar-owner, bought the place in the early eighties. The neighborhood, they tell me, was a wreck in those days, and Kasey's fit right in. dirty sidewalks, lw-rent apartments. This place was perfecct,t hey tell me, for the sorts of street-stumbling drunks and starving artists that walked around.

Of course now the artists have all done their job: prettified the neighborhood and have gone to greener pastures to graze. Kasey's has remained and, for their part, I wouldn't have it any otther way: I first came in here in 2003, when the bar was within stumbling distance of my apartment and, for that matter, had what seemed to me to be one of the best jukeboxes in the city. It's remained so, and luckily it's less lovely parts-- like the TINY men's room with a sink outside and the total lack of a pool table-- have come to be one of it's more endearing qualities.

They run daily and monthly specials, so make sure to ask around for them. Oh! And one last thing: unless you're getting their $4 long Island Iced teas (every Thursday, thankyouverymuch,) stick to their beer selection. it's one of the broadest and, for that matter, they have fatTire on tap.