From The Diary of Chicagoian Dan Milo

                                                                                                                12-14-02

        So here it is, Saturday night and I'm mildly drunk. It's been a year. So much has happened. I've moved across the city. I've changed jobs. I almost killed myself. One year and six million people apart, and it's still not enough space. I saw her last night. Went to the Music Box with Brian & Marcie. They drove in to see Marcies parents so we had dinner and went to go see "The Royal Tenenbaums" at the box. After that they wanted to go to the cheese cake factory. We hailed a cab and went downtown. Then, we went to an Irish pub on addison Brian had reccomended to him. I had never heard of it. After that Brian wanted to scout out Ghostbar for a future visit. Marcie patronized me on the way there. We got out, and I saw her. She still looked gorgeous. She was holding the hand of a guy who looked at least 10 years older, a wannabe metro with no taste in style. I could smell his bad hair cut. She was wearing a cute blue dress, slender, clingy in all the right places. She had cut her hair pretty short, but she didn't look like a dyke. Brian and Marcie saw her too. They cut out their newly wed chit chat long enough to make an awkward silence and then hopped back in the cab suggesting we go back to my place. We did.
    It infuriates me. Some asshole who works on the exhange, some uninteresting rich jet setter. His side bussiness is to fuck girls like her. And she knows it, and does it anyways. She left me to fuck around with a bunch of one dimensonal geeks who have something to prove. She isn't fucking them, she's fucking everything they represent; Succuess, money, elitism, stauts. When we made love, it was actually making love, not screwing. There was initmacy, and emtion, and feeling that transcended the physical. Our souls melted. And now she caloussly and casually sexs up rich older men for fun. She doesn't make love to them, she merely gratifes the physical, wins the game, whatever. She's too talented, too beautiful, to intelligent and fun to make it in that crowd...but none the less, that's where she is going to go. It's funny how you can live with someone for months, make love to them, take care of them, and then one day you wake up and they are a different person. Or you see them the way they really are, and you don't like it. Either way, it sucks. She was happy managing the coffee shop. I was happy...period. Working at the store, working on my book in the evenings, spending time with her, talking about marriage and the future. And then the whole shit house came down. Suddenly I wasn't going anywhere in life, suddenly I didn't care for her, suddenly I was a jerk. And then she left to become a secondrate semi-star fucker. So I here I sit, a year later with very little to show for in the way of progress of any kind. Christmas is around the corner, and my Mom called me the other night to see if I was going to come home. I told her I'd see, which was just a ploy for me to buy time to scrape together some cash. I don't have enough money for a Greyhound ticket to Springfield. My mom would pay, but when are the rents going to to stop helping me out? Maybe she was right, maybe I am going no where. Now anyways. At the time, I didn't really feel like there was or is anyplace to go. I liked life just the way it was. But now...I'd really like a change. I'd like to move, and actually have a job, and get published, and have health insurance, and have a car that can make it more then 4 fucking blocks before it dies, and make some friends who aren't married and aloof, and maybe meet another woman. But here I sit, mildly drunk,  a year later, with very little to show for in the way of progress, and Christmas is around the corner. Maybe Santa can leave me a nice new life under my shitty christmas tree.