This is what happened last time this happened, the last time I trekked through the frozen city and saw everyone, lifted from a September 6th, 2006 post, titled "Chicago and Crew good Times"...
My high school and college baseball coaches used to say that nothing good happens past midnight. And I get it, okay. I always did, it’s just that...let’s compromise and settle on 2, just as the lights at the first bar come up. I should have listened, but then again...
I wouldn’t have hopped to another bar that night, one that stayed open until 4.
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I wouldn’t have had my face smashed into the sidewalk by a member of our country’s elite armed forces.
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I wouldn’t have bled all over Chad’s white? shirt.
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I wouldn’t have spent a half hour combing the city with the rapid response South Side brawlers Flynn called in.
Things have changed. A few months ago, I got a call from this guy named Chad Frk. He's this guy from Ohio who doesn't have a vowel in his last name. Fucking weird. He's also a guy that was part of my recruiting class at Illinois. We lived in the same dorm building freshman year, then broke ground on the infamous 908. S. Lincoln House in Urbana for the next 3 years. We lived together on the third floor, shared walls...among other things. Countless other things...
Anyway, a few months ago, I get this phone call. It's Chad, my Midwest right hand. He tells me he's got cancer. I remember being in some serious shit before I got the phone call, remember being in something much worse after.
So I'm going to skim here because my emotional state/how I deal with friends/how I deal with death can be described in any number of ways ranging from childish to detached to abandoning. The short story is that he caught it early, had surgery, did chemo and his girlfriend decided to throw him a surprise party at this place called Duffy's in Chicago on Friday. The long story I can't even get into because I wasn't there, I didn't live it. And the thing about Chad is that he'll ALWAYS give the long story. Get him on the phone and that's what you'll get. About his spirits and his fight and how he's always ahead of the game and is doing better than anyone in the history of man in his fight with this global killer. I got a lot of that over the past few months. But it wasn't the LONG story. I didn't hear a lick of the million and one things I would have been CONSTANTLY thinking as they were removing parts of my body and I was hoping, hoping that it hadn't spread, hoping that cancer wasn't going to be the thing that ended me. Never got that. And believe me, I tried, in case that's where he wanted to go with it -- either because I'm a good friend or a sick fucker...one or the other.
So I fly in for the weekend, so that I could make an appearance, because to me, this was as big of a deal as big deal gets. In Chicago, drinking is a sport. I walked in and the guy at the door was literally selling off 8 different wristbands - each serving as a key to unlock some form of blackout. I bought one for 30$, some of the money they said was going to be heading off to fund cancer research. I laughed, moved inside, proceeded to see what was in the ballpark of a combined 100 apart years, my best friends from a different life, standing at the bottom of a ramp. Remarkable.
I grabbed a bottle of beer and floated, and tried to take it all in. Marriages, break-ups, jobs, city, suburbs, old times, lots of old times. It was so much, nearly too much to handle and the night hadn't even begun...
I saw Chad when he walked in. He said he saw me first, shit his pants that I flew in from LA. It was the least I could do. Aside from the encyclopedia of tales I could tell of Chad Frk, and he could tell and encyclopedia of me...going back to that above "elite armed forces ref," Chad is the reason I still have a working face, literally.
When I finally got to him, he said his legs were shaking. By the next morning, when I talked to him on the phone, he would tell me it was probably the best night of his life...
Fucking cherry.
I floated for the rest of the night...as the place got so packed I couldn't move...as Chicago kids started to pick Chicago fights... as the Chicago joint started to smell like Chicago vomit. I maybe had two beers and began to think the obvious...so much has changed, nothing has changed. I began looking for an exit, for a side door slip out because saying proper goodbye has never really been my style. But I needed something, a sign before I could...
I saw Chad across the room, leaning on the bar, waiting to order a drink. He had a double Jack Coke in one hand, a scotch rocks in the other...and he was talking to the bartender. Seriously, only Frk. And to you, that might sound anything but comforting. To me, it was something else. To me, it felt like everything was right in the world. This image, my friend...he was gonna survive.
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I was on Sheridan road, getting close to home around 2 in the AM. Snow had begun falling at the beginning of the night and it still accompanied me on my drive. The streets were empty, deserted. The world here, was asleep. And there's a feeling behind it or a series of I hadn't felt in a long time - a feeling I can hardly explain. Winter. Cold. Empty. Lonely. Beauty. This road, this image made me. For 3-5 months every year for the first 22 years of my life, this image was carved inside of me.
I can't put into words the gravity of what I'm saying, nor will I even try. I'm not a fan of failure. All I can do is show you, hope that you look closely before moving on with your life...
