The last sane bloke in Chicago

Unblemished Purity, Part I

Last night was a fun night. After writing this, I almost can't believe it is real, but it is.

I met up with Liz at 21:00 sharp, walking up as my cell phone clock informed me of the instantaneous switch from 8:59pm to 9:00pm. I like to be on-time, but watching it happen the second I walked in to the Empty Bottle was a little freaky.

Liz was there, and she was dolled up. She was wearing a dress, which is a first for me, and looked fantastic. I still haven't really seen her tits, though. When we fucked, she wore her sweatshirt, and when she gave me head, she wore a blue hoodie. Now that she's pushing her cleavage way up, I had second thoughts about not asking her back to my bedroom for our first non-cramped experience.

It made things worse that she has amazing legs which I didn't take note of in my car so many months ago. Wow.

She skipped up to me and planted a nice, friendly hello kiss on my lips. Very European, and also a hilariously friendly tease because she knew the minor state I'm in.

I ordered a whiskey-on-the-rocks, and bought Liz whatever draught beer she asked for. A fairly amazing violist (viola-ist?) Anni Rossi is playing her viola, which I really got into, albeit peripherally.

Sadly, it isn't hipster central, but enough doofii (doofuses?) abound for Liz and I to make up funny stories about them. One guy is wearing huge green glasses (not sunglasses) that are obviously no prescription. His girlfriend looks like my dad, dressed as he would've in the 70s. His girlfriend's belly is significantly bigger than her tits, and I think he called her Frank. They started noticing us too much, so we stopped watching them.

The music overall seemed decent, and the bands that followed weren't all that great. Liz and I chuckled about some of the lyrics we obviously misheard, and we were into our 3rd round when the night changed, maybe for the better.

Liz is talking to me about her upcoming week. "So I'm 99% sure that I'm going to blow off work on Tuesday because" -- SQUEEEEEEEAL. Nothing frightens me, ever. I don't get adrenalin rushes. I don't jump when someone tries to scare me from behind me. I think I jumped about 3 feet from ehr squeal. "Hold on, hold on, keep that thought!" she exclaimed, even though it was her sentence, and her thought, she interrupted. She took off behind me.

I turned to have another sip of my cocktail, basically ignoring wherever she ran off to. Not paying attention gives me ammo in case I see JUST ONE other cutie I can go say hi to in the bar. Fat chance (literally).

I feel a tap on my shoulder, and I turned to see Liz beaming a huge smile. With her is finally another good-looking girl in the bar, a redhead. "This is Kari." Oh, no, not another Kari. How do you spell that? "K-E-R-R-Y" the lithe girl says in a surprisingly low voice.

She puts her hand out to shake mine. My hands are grotesquely dirty, I mention, but she grabs it anyway. Firm shake, too.

"We've been friends since back home," says Liz, with Kerry nodding her head. "She's a bit younger, was first friends with my younger brother." Liz is 27, maybe 28 by now, so I tag Kerry at 24/25. Very pretty. Not cute, just pretty. I asked if she lived in the city.

"No, I'm maybe moving to town to go to school, though." I figured it was a Master's Degree, but I didn't ask. "Not art school," she said. I'm guessing Liz mentioned my bad attitude about all the people bundling on an additional $100,000 worth of debt to add another art degree.

Liz buys another round of drinks, but I sit this one out, accepting a Diet Coke or whatever it is that the Empty Bottle sells that is sans sucre. We all jump into a festive discussion about the scenesters, and how both girls are dressed in clothes that aren't expensive but still cost more than everyone else's outfits combined.

After the round, the music is getting worse, so we hit the road, grabbing a miracle cab on Western. The weather is chilly, rainy, dreary. I'm in the front seat with the ladies in the back. I catch Kerry's eyes on me constantly through the cab's rearview, which is defectively pointing straight back at enough of a warped angle that I can see her through her passenger window. She smiles, I smile back, then I turn to angle over my shoulder to inquire where we're going.

"Something on Western north of here," squealed Liz, who is obviously happy that two of her friends are out with her. Minor excitement ensues as we tell the cabbie to pull over to the first bar on the right we pass. It's a longwhile, but we end up at Underbar, a 4am bar near Western and Belmont. Fine with me.

We hop out, and the place is jammed with more scenesters. It's OK, I'm sure it's $2 PBR night. The bouncer spends 3 seconds looking at my ID, about 15 seconds on Liz's, and over a minute on Kerry's. He passes Kerry's ID to another guy, who nods, and he hands it back to her. We're in.

Read more in Part II.

Posted by ChicagoSane at 4:20 PM