The Gayest Show on Earth

So Sunday was a little blah. Blah with a rainbow, I guess. I drove back to Chicago, despite a cranky bandaged-up knee and a dangerously persistent sleepiness that set in somewhere near mile 170 or so, and then spent the better part of the afternoon dealing with the new parking situation created by the rampant partying and homosexuality to strike my part of town (gay pride parade). Actually, one could say that rampant homosexuality struck my part of town some time ago, and may have resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs. Anyway, it was a clusterfuck in every conceivable way, including some ways I did not realize the human imagination had access to.

That was all well and good, but what concerned me the most were the police barricades blocking off portions of streets I wished to drive and park on, including large sections of Halsted and Broadway (GayStreet USA and its gay little sister) , even hours after the parade had finished. This led to some cursing on my part, some angry faces, some threatening gestures towards other motorists, street hooligans, and officers of the law, but ultimately it led me two miles from home, to the corner of Irving Park and Sheffield, which is where I ended up parking.

Normally I wouldn't mind parking out there in a pinch, but that's because I usually haven't quite so nearly hyperextended my knee in half the previous day playing ultimate frisbee. The details of the attempted rearranging of my knee's connective tissue, such as the anterior crucial ligament, go more or less as follows: Brian runs as fast as he can and jumps as high in the air as he can to try and block a scoring pass, misses said pass, attempts to hit the ground running but instead lodges his heel firmly in a small depression, thus straightening his leg out in the direction from which it came as the rest of his 160 lbs try to keep going the direction they were going, an endeavor in which his knee attempts to assist them by bending ever so slightly the wrong way before realizing how painful and stupid that is. Brian then crumpled to ground and gnashed and wept and rent the grass about him like 5 year old for about 45 sec, then got up and hobbled away, covered with abbarasions and shame, and with grass in his teeth.

Anyway, there art thy pissed at the prospect of a 2 mile walk with an ace bandage around my gimpy knee. Yes, I could have taken a cab, but 500,000 people in Chicago could have also decided to be less excited about being gay and not ruined parking for everyone else. There, I said it.

It was on the second half of my gimpy journey that I met Igud. Idug was the man walking behind me for a while, who apparently fancied me, and eventually caught up to me and struck up a conversation. It started out in the usual fashion, which has been summarized for your reading enjoyment:
"Hi."
"Hi."
"How you doing?"
"Fine, thanks."
"Are you from around here?"
"Kind of..."
"Where do you live?"
"Actually, I live with my girfriend."

Idag was very apologetic, saying in his quietly feminine way that he didn't mean to imply that I "looked gay" which, given some of the things I had seen that day was pretty good news I guess. I didn't think that he "looked gay" either (I mean, aside from trying to pick up a dude on the street), though I was clearly mistaken. Anyway, I kind of thought that would be the end of it, but he just kept walking next to me, shyly chatting. So I just kept awkwardly chatting back. We did the "Where ya from?" and all that bullshit. Apparently Ibug was from "the former USSR" as he put it, specifically Ukraine. He had lived here for 17 years, which I guess is why he didn't have an accent. I don't remember much of what was said, though he did encouraged me to not feel like a drain on society or, more aptly, Heather, just because I was unemployed and not contributing anything to the betterment of mankind, or at least the betterment of the economy. I tried to steer conversation towards the World Cup, as Ukraine was set to play Switzerland in the round of 16 the next day, but he wasn't super interested in football. Finally, after what seemed to be 5 months of awkward rambling sine I offically ran out of polite conversation fodder, we reached Roscoe and parted ways. I'm sure there's some sort of lesson to be had here, like don't live in Boystown if you're straight and have a penis, or something like that, but it's lost on me.

Anyway...

Farewell, Idig, we will always have Broadway!

.