After Work

Justin, Chris and I stayed late to finish up some things. Chris headed home to get rested up for tomorrow (horrible day for us), and I went downstairs for a drink or two.

I ended up meeting Tena again, on her way out, and she said she’d give me a call. I ended up watching part of a Cubs game, met up with Justin and the two of us took a cab to Danny’s for a change of scene.

Hung out there a while, and I stayed there for an hour or so before taking off for home (a girl had been calling him the whole night, and showed up to have a drink with him).

On the way home, I was listening to Tom Waits on my iPod and it started to rain.

For some reason, this house caught my eye. The one window, lit against the dark, made me a bit wistful.

A tipped barricade, overturned and sitting in a vacant lot overrun with grass and weeds. Yeah… I’m not sure why I took a picture of this either.

This is right up the street from me, on the corner of Wood and Wabansia. It’s a funeral home called “Trogleinksy Trufflemuk,” or some such thing. Chelsea and I used to make fun of the name all the time.

Passing by, I walked by a side door that looked into a small office area. Seeing the coat on the chair made me think of someone who should have been there, but wasn’t. And that triggered a greater definition of funeral homes in general: places where people should be, but ultimately aren’t.

On the way back to my place, I was overtaken with a pretty shitty feeling. It could have been any number of things. But for the briefest of moments, I felt like a nameless face: just another random, lonely drunk who was walking in the rain, stumbling home. It shook me, momentarily, to think of myself in this way.

I’ve been out in storms without a care to the world before, and gotten completely soaked. There are some nights where walking home in the rain is a good thing, where it’s a playful, even slightly romantic thing to do. Tonight was not one of those nights. Tonight was an evening where the rain was cold, everyone else in the world seemed to be inside a house, or driving away in a car.

Meh. I’m home now, and slowly drying off. Drunk people shouln’t have access to public means of communication.