This trip was a veritable blur, but I think it has more to do with my age than anything else. It used to be that I could handle these quickie trips where we are essentially at a destination for basically less than 48 hours, but man, I have reached a point where it just literally wipes me out. Granted, I swam drunk and stayed up until 3am on Saturday, but still, I'm old, right? :-D
To make the trip a little more extended and tenable, Blanch, Romeo, and myself went up earlier in the day, and HR, who could not get the whole day off, and Mom followed in the evening. Travel was pretty fun but uneventful, and when we got to the hotel,
which was nice except for the fact that it appeared that the smoke detector was wired into the light switch (see picture), we went ahead and explored the neighborhood and bought booze for the room, which is, of course, the most important part of any gay event preparation. After lounging in the room, we decided to get ready to head to Sidetracks, which is a video bar (no dance floor) that has a Broadway show tunes night on Friday and Sunday. I had not experienced this when we came up for Pride, but frankly, I think this is what Blanch was looking forward to the most out of the whole trip. That was the other reason for us heading up early, HR would rather poke himself in the eye with an Ethel Merman shaped dildo than sit through show tunes. Anyway, it was pretty hilarious to sit around with a bunch of gay men to watch and sing along with video of show tunes. The regulars have developed a give in take with the screen where they will wave napkins for the bon voyage in Titanic the Musical, wave and then throw napkins in the air during "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina," or just talk back to the screen (You're the Fat One!). It is pretty spectacular (spectacularly GAY!), and it is certainly something Blanch and myself would love to transplant to Indy.
Conveniently for HR, he and Mom met up with us after the show tunes portion of the
evening ended, and we proceeded to get trashed. It was a fun night, especially in light of us not having to drive back anywhere, which is why we got to get Mom drunk. Woo hoo! This is a rare treat. However, since HR and Mom had pretty much traveled and come straight out to meet us, they were pretty pooped and turned in early. So, it was back to Romeo, Blanch and myself to party some more, and eventually, stumble down to my favorite pizza place called Pie Hole Pizza. What a fantastic name! Just look at their ad! We need one of these in Indy.Saturday rolls around and it is finally time to get to the actual event of the trip - Market Days. I have been trying to figure out a good way to explain this to the uninitiated. It is basically a street fair in the Boystown area of Chicago, but it
really goes beyond that. With everything that has gone on this week, I almost have to equate it to the State Fair for gay boys and girls everywhere - where the chickens are replaced with twinks, the cows with hairy bears, the sleek thoroughbreds are cracked out circuit boys, the tractor parade is replaced with lesbians, and you can get an $8 piece of fried dough to go with some pre-condom porn and cock coloring books, which is actually something I bought Mom since she likes scrap booking. All of this is made even better because you can drink on the street! I will let some of the pictures speak for themselves. Though for some reason, there was a blow up of scary cats.After spending some fun filled time drinking not-so-great margaritas and hanging out with some Indy people, who oddly never really give us the time of day in Indy, we head back to the hotel room. HR and I decide to hit the gym, which is a Bally's right next door to the hotel, and everyone else takes a nap. Once I get to the gym and see they have a pool, I decide to go back and get my trunks and go for a swim. You see, I used to be a swimmer back in high school, and I actually do kind of miss it. After one lackluster attempt at swimming in the Olympic sized pool in Indy, I haven't been back. Seriously, I thought the lifeguards were going to have to come for me. This was a much more manageable 25 yarder, which I could just stand up if I felt like I was going to drown. Oh, did I mention I was drunk and didn't have goggles? I'm surprised I didn't just do the dead man's float. And lord, I was SORE after really only about 10 laps.
HR and I made it back to the hotel room in one piece, and then we all decided to get ready for dinner and another round of going out. We met up with Xena and her friend, whom I shall call Lydia because she looks like the last girl I ever dated, at a pizza joint near the hotel. Yeah, nothing like deep dish pizza AND fried food to make a
boy feel pretty before going out. After we gorged ourselves, we made our way down to Boystown, and it was pretty much an absolute zoo. We had to wait in line for well over 40 minutes to get into Sidetracks, and by that time, pretty much everyone was over it. I decided to stay out with Xena and Lydia, and we made our way to Charlie's, which is a bar much like Greg's in Indy. They have country line dancing before regular dancing, and it was pretty stifling hot. There was actually sweat dripping down my arms! The best part of the night was the ability to text message up to a big screen. I tried to get girls to hit on Xena, but I think it was mainly populated with "friends of the family." After trying to cause text messages fight, I stumbled back to the hotel via another round of Pie Hole pizza, and it was very weird to be in Boystown at 3am. It was even stranger because wind had whipped up that was basically blowing straight down Halsted. Here I was was, walking with my pizza, trying to get back to the hotel before it rained, and I was having to dodge tents as they get blown over. You would think that the God was trying to smite Market Days. It was fun. :)
Okay, time to wrap this up. There really isn't much to report about the trip home. I did get motion sickness on the El, which is pretty typical, but we sat at the train station long enough that I got to feeling better. I have to say I missed Tyler all weekend! Thankfully we were almost in constant text message contact the whole time. Thank god for unlimited texting through GayT&T!
I will close this out with some more pics from the trip. Mom has much better ones than I have, and I hope to get all the pics from her and upload them to my Flikr page.
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