Chicago.

"When you live in the heart of it, the city easily loses its romantic edge." Tamara said while bunching up her face at me. Tamara was a short thin Midwestern girl who’d been traveling all over the country for three years before settling down and making Chicago her home. She was a pretty punky looking girl with a Subhumans tattoo on her left shoulder. She sat beside me on Craig’s stinky couch with so many cigarette burns on it that it resembled a package of swiss cheese. Tamara was playing around with an orange and struggling to peel back the skin of the plump and juicy citrus fruit.
"Here! Give me the fucking thing! You’re driving me up the wall!" I said before yanking the orange out of her hand and peeling the orange quickly, violently even, before tossing it back to her.
"Thanks, crabby."
"Crabby? Whatever. Now what’s this you say about the city losing its romantic edge?"
"Yeah. It does lose its romantic edge," she said "I mean once you’ve lived in the heart of it for so long there are just no more surprises left and you become jaded."
This was a problem many of my friends were experiencing. We had all moved to the city to find something we had lacked in our collective hometowns. We all thought moving here would automatically fix our problems. We were going to leave everything behind and start anew and everything would be great.
Unfortunately though, that’s just not how things happen. Many of us ended up broke, disgruntled, jaded, brokenhearted, beaten down, and ultimately very unhappy. We had forgotten that a city can’t cure a disease, only we could cure our diseases and we had to just make the best of everything.
"What? That’s because you’re just not trying. Get up off this goddamn couch and lets go out and make something happen! Hey! I have an idea..." I hollered. My eyes were growing more maniacal and intense by the millisecond and my heart was bursting with excitement.
"Uh oh. You have that look in your eyes. I don’t like that look. All your ideas end up blowing up in our faces, Matt. Sometimes even literally. Remember the time you showed us all how to make a Works bomb and you nearly blinded yourself and three others?"
"Yeah, but this is different!" I screamed in Tamara’s direction.
"You always say that... and it never is..."
"Tamara, listen to me for fuck’s sake! What day is it today? Tuesday? Thursday? Oh fuck it, who cares!" I barked out while spinning in circles and pumping my fists in the air. "Here. Come with me..." I said while grabbing Tamara’s skinny wrist in my hand.
I took her out onto the front porch and a bus whizzed by. A man was standing on the corner with a cart selling assorted fruits and vegetables. The train was crawling up in the distance. The spring air was wildly blowing Tamara’s dark hair all about. This was a beautiful moment. This was romance. This was what it was all about. This was the beauty we first saw when moving to this city so many months and years ago. This was what made this place unique. I pointed this out to Tamara but she wouldn’t budge. She was clearly bored.
"Matt, it’s a bus. A fucking bus! There’s nothing romantic or even intriguing about busses. If you’re able to find romance on a city bus littered with old men who stink like piss you’ve clearly lost your mind."
"Okay. Good point. If you’re so bored then why don’t we go out and do something?"
"Okay, but I’ve run out of ideas and I’m broke. What do you have in mind? I hope not just walking down to the Whirlaway to get wasted..."
"No! We’ll go get a bundle of grapes and sit in the sun and make fun of everybody at Navy Pier. We’ll get drunk and ride go-carts. We’ll have a triple X excursion in the grass behind the museum. We’ll have a picnic. We’ll make out in the dumpster behind the liquor store. I’ll ride my bike to the library and you can ride on my handlebars. We’ll go to the carnival. We’ll buy a big watermelon and spit the seeds at each other. We’ll race on foot to the park and play on the swings. We’ll grill out in my back yard and invite all our friends. We’ll drink 40's at the beach. We’ll play board games we don’t know how to play. We’ll make a new zine. We’ll do ‘shrooms and stare at the ceiling fan. We’ll sit on the front porch and count all the red cars that ride by. We’ll go in to your roommate’s bedroom and fuck like little rabbits. We’ll listen to This Bike Is a Pipebomb as loud as the volume will allow and dance one-legged. Come on! We can start right now!" I yelled loudly, excitedly.
"Oh, Matt. That all sounds so great, but are you crazy? That masturbation episode of Seinfeld is on in forty-five minutes."