My parents were visiting me in The City. Where I was staying
was the upper decks of the Art Institute of Chicago, which had been changed,
basically, into a suburban mall run by back-biting hate-mongers trying to
change the institution into someplace Sbarro would feel welcome.
They arrived, feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the
place.
“This isn’t what I expected,” my mom exclaimed.
There was my traditional central visitors center, surrounded
by a huge atrium with dozens of traditionally mall type stores and food venders
surrounding it.
Above, as if in the heavens, stood the traditional glass
view of “Paris Street, Rainy Day”.
My parents asked the front attendant to call me down from
where I was.
“Could the faggot guy we have behind the scenes come down to
meet his parents,” he announced.
20 of us came down, looking for someone we knew.
I saw my parents who smiled, happy to have seen me at last.
They wanted to taste that “good pizza” they had heard about. How they had to be
quick because they had tickets to “Wicked” and so had better have a move on.
We ate some pizza, both of my parents saying how it was true
that they had “better pizza here”.
I wanted to die.
They told me we better get going, as it was still a long
walk “down to 51st street”.
I told them we had to walk “up to 51st street”.
They didn’t buy it.
I was out on the sidewalk with burnishing skyscrapers
blinding my eyes from the glare of a water-soaked sunset. My father, looking at
a map, pointed to the street in front of us and told my mother and I we could catch
a cab there.
I told them both that if we wanted to catch a quick shuttle,
we should head the opposite direction, in the direction of “the bay”.
My father crumpled up his map and shrugged. My mother
wondered how I had figured out the city at all.
We headed East, where the Bay Bridge was, but I found that
the route I had figured we could take had been flooded.
I told them I would swim out to see how far the flood went,
and they agreed to stay and study the map while I was gone.
I was swimming, stroking really, along the gates of what
seemed to be a flooded Marina, with others on speedboats plowing past me
gesturing that I was being stupid in no uncertain terms.
I looked back behind me, seeing my parents look up from the
map my parents held and wave.
I woke up with the sound of three knocks on the door,
feeling embarrassed for my parents and really alone. When I went to see if
anything was knocking, no one was there, no trace of a knock at all.
