excerpt from "In Sanguine Blue Rooms: A Novel” by Chekwube Danladi
excerpt from In Sanguine Blue Rooms: A Novel ::
:: from “Part I: Fractal Palace, Alone in the World”
Two weeks passed—hazy, slow—before I was able to pick myself up enough to go out, do something. Fun. Be around humans. Eeee Aaaaaaa was having a birthday party and invited me to come. Not lowkey, I was excited because we’d shared this big-hearted crush back in college, so potent that we had been afraid to ever act on it. The extent of shown desire was her coming over to watch Martin, us making really long eye contact, and maybe there had been some restrained kissing, or sometimes randomly touching each other’s erogenous zones. We had been barely out of 21 then, when naïve hesitation made sense.
It was unreasonably warm for April, creepy sun making everybody happy. The cold would bite back, but for now, it was short term summer. Eeee was living at her parents’ house out in Humboldt Park. Their address was near this youth shelter where I used to work. I got all excited when the bus I was on hit North Avenue after Western. Oh, nostalgia. Roeser’s Bakery, where my coworkers and I used to sometimes buy cookies for the kids who came in off the street to drop-in. Moving past the part of the park where this old man used to sell champurrado, which I bought for breakfast every time I worked the overnight shifts for the kids who needed emergency beds. The corner store off Laflin where my old boss and I would go buy gross snacks halfway through our shifts.
I got off near Karlov Avenue and found their house, a bungalow with a big clean Mexican flag flying from the front window, and saw Dddddd Zzzzzzz walking up towards the house too. This bitch, I hadn’t seen her in years, but she still looked as tough and unfuckwithable as she always had, already a grey streak in her hair. We all knew each other from college, me, Dddddd, Zzzzzzz, and most of the people there. There was one person who had been coordinator at the POC food coop a lot of us had been part of. There were some rugby dykes, a couple of whom Eeee had dated or slept with in college. Eeee and I used to go to the rugby practices together to just watch them move the wind out of their way and get sweaty.
Eeee parents loved her like she was still a kid, wanting her to have a fun party. There was a spit for tacos al pastor that they’d rented out which was releasing this amazing, greasy pork smell throughout the backyard. Three coolers full of beer under a foldout table. Yuengling, Pacifico, Old Style, Stroh’s, Miller Highlife, Corona, Tecaté, Guinness, Heinies, plus all the local craft beer sixers that the brewery queers brought. Eeee's dad was really present at the party because he was ok with her being a dyke, and he wanted her friends to know he was cool. He was getting drunk off Patrón and telling embarrassing poop stories about Eeee. He had this reformed cholo vibe going on and was wearing as much flannel—and had as many neck tattoos—as all the other hot bois in the yard.
We shook to some pretty active banda and ranchera recordings, and Eeee’s dad even let us put on rap music for a little while. ‘Cuz he’s down with it, rocks with it. When the sun got low enough, Eeee asked me to dance with her. Then folks did drunk karaoke in the garage until 10 or 11. But then Eeee’s mom stuck her head out after that to politely kick us out because we were all still too rowdy and she wanted to sleep. She gave Eeee a kiss and told her to take us somewhere else.
I was feeling it, the crowd-buzz and the warm fuzzies, couldn’t even think about sleep. I was celebrating the birth of a life I adored. I wanted to keep dancing and keep talking with folks, wanted to laugh really loudly with other people out in public. The group of us—maybe six people—decided to travel out to Logan Square to find a bar solid enough to hold our noise. We found this place on Armitage and Kedzie, built with glass and wood frames, dim inside like all the best places.
When we got inside, somebody ordered a round of whiskey shots for us in honor of Eeee’s birthday. Cheers! Then, as a prank, Eeee ordered a round of Jeppson’s Malört shots for everyone. Being made to drink Malört is how Chicago hazes its transplants. It’s awful; tastes like really bitter grapefruit juice mixed with rubbing alcohol, but drinking it gets you a scout’s badge towards being a real Chicagoan. Eeee only pretended to drink hers before reaching over the bar to pour it down the little sink back there. Gross, but we were having fun. That crowd-buzz, the shared high, it kept rising in pitch, and our voices were loud, rising, enough for White people to start shooting passive aggressive stares our way, which only made our pleasure better.
Dddddd and I kept buying more shots to share, then just for ourselves. We’d found a quieter corner and had started swapping poor-kid stories. About having to steal underwear from Walmart. Or standing out in the cold with your mom and siblings waiting in line for free food. Or digging through your things in the street after getting evicted. The type of shit that made you just wanna drink more. I should’ve known to stop drinking as the conversation was asking for lower tones. But I didn’t stop. I had another shot with her. Then another. Then another. My head started spinning after that, and I don’t know if I had another, then another.
I remember smoking a really long cigarette out on the street while someone was calling for a cab. I remember Eeee driving too fast south on Lake Shore Drive, the shadow of someone else in the passenger seat. I remember my eyes getting dizzy looking up at the stars from the backseat. Then I remember black. Then throwing up out of the window of Eeee’s car on a side street she’d pulled onto. Then black. Then Eeee walking me up the stairs to my apartment. Then Eeee leaving really quickly because Mmm was waiting inside, and there was this quiet masculine jealousy thing between them that I secretly loved. Then Mmm keeping my hair out of the toilet for me. Then black. Then waking up in bed next to Mmm, who was asleep. But I remember his body. But Black again. Then waking up next to my tertiary vomit in the bathtub with the lights off. Small streetlight brutalizing me through the window. Mmm must have still been in bed, probably hadn’t noticed me leave. Feeling too weak to get up, I closed my eyes again, waiting for another spin back to black, hoping I would stay there and not have to come back.
When I woke up, I was in bed alone, and I could hear Mmm in the kitchen, making noon breakfast. He smiled at me when I moved out of my room, waved. It was a love for taboo, what we were always doing together. Him: White boy, me: Black femme. We’d broken up years before, but there was still way too strong a bond moving between us for us to be able to leave each other alone. We were still always saying “love,” and just sort of waiting for a good time to maybe, possibly, potentially, consider getting back together again. Or maybe not. At least, we could have an affair. At most, he was here, taking care of me. I went to piss and saw that the vomit was gone, Mmm’s help again. I brushed my teeth, and just sat there on the toilet, my underwear down, still dizzy.
This life, there’s a uselessness to it. To hunt too hard for purpose, for meaning, is to sustain the myth of control. I was feeling mad at the city outside. Upset about how much fun I was having here and how it always seemed to punish me for it. It was so cold, so cold. I’d had lunch once with another poet who’d grown up in Chicago but who—since leaving—had refused to return to the cold for any period longer than two days. “That’s all I can stomach of the place,” he’d said, then, “It’s a cold, cold place. Chicagoans are cold to each other.”
I got it now. I was caught in it, the frozen patterns of its makeup, stuck to its harsh, its sticky ice grip. I’d thought so often about escaping to other places, somewhere new to run and hide. But how could I ever leave? Look at this water, all this big water. Once when I was really itching to skip town, my bags packed and in the trunk, my Honda soaring down Lake Shore Drive, I saw a gleaming gold Mercedes being eaten by swelling orange fire right past Navy Pier. On fire, just blazing, in the middle of LSD. It was a threat. My intuition knew that from any distance, Chicago would throw its lasso around my throat and tug, tug, tug. Don’t leave me, the city cried all the while, right in my ear, I’m having a hard time and I need you. Meanwhile I had my own Problems. And I needed to get away.
Hangovers humble. My mission was to slump over my couch, trying to focus my vision on the scrambled eggs and toast, fresh fruit and orange-strawberry-banana juice that Mmm brought out to me. I wanted to cry so that Mmm would stay with me, drink my tears, but he had to leave for work. It was embarrassing: my needing, his need of my need. He walked me back to bed, laid down next to me for a minute and gave me a hug, kissed my forehead. The warmth of touch faded before he was out of the door, and I was sad for him for loving me when I was in such a pathetic state. I was thinking, oh god, maybe he’ll start regretting it, the foolish long love, and one day would decide to stop coming over. What would be left? Just need, my own without an end.
CHEKWUBE DANLADI
Chekwube Danladi is the author of Semiotics (Georgia, 2020), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She has received support from Kimbilio Fiction, the Lambda Literary Foundation, Hedgebrook, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Wisconsin Institute from Creative Writing. She is the 2022-25 Writer-in-Residence at Occidental College and lives in Los Angeles.
Headshot: Onyinye Alheri
Photo Credit: Staff