thingstodoinchicago

Antarctica has hit a record high temperature. Sixty thousand known cases of the new coronavirus are causing global panic. Australia is still on fire. And the U.S. is gearing up for elections. The Times Are Racing, the title of the Joffrey Ballet’s winter mixed repertory program, captures a sense of the urgency we surely all feel. Yet few guiding principles–not even escapism–bring order to the presentation. The oldest pieces, Mono Lisa (2003) and The Sofa (1995) by Itzik Galili of Israel, account for two of the three Joffrey premieres–the third being the 2017 ballet by New York City Ballet resident choreographer Justin Peck that closes and titles this show. The other two works, British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Commedia (2008) and Bliss! created on commission by Chicago’s Stephanie Martinez in 2019, offer a nod to modernism with Stravinsky scores. Though the company’s dancers looked in fine form, the program does not cohere into a discernible vision, nor is it truly a study in contrasts.

The evening opens with Commedia, an episodic, deconstructed vision of harlequins set to Stravinsky’s Pulcinella suite under the gaze of a painted set of masked faces. Center stage, a ballerina splats in second position onto the lap of her partner, her legs hooked behind him. It doesn’t have a prelude or a follow-through; it merely exists as an interjection. Commedia is like this–all disjointed steps and scenes that reference the imagery of commedia dell’arte without any of the purpose. Dancers wear incomplete assortments of masks, capes, and ruffs and occasionally execute a stylized gesture amid the technical display, but, in the absence of context, can drama or humor exist? One solution was presented opening night when Gayeon Jung and Edson Barbosa took the stage for the Gavotta con due variazioni. Bright with unpretentious verve, their evident delight in each other made a moment as simple as Barbosa’s head popping up behind Jung’s arm more charming to watch than the pinwheeling lifts that punctuate the work.

While Wheeldon’s work uses scenario as a framework for cerebral technical exploration, Galili’s contributions showcase explosive intensity. Mono Lisa starts with the lights lowered to the floor and a haze of fog. A pair of bare legs (Victoria Jaiani) comes into view. Enter a man (Stefan Goncalvez). A duet of aggressive strutting and fiendishly difficult partnering, sort of like William-Forsythe-meets-voguing, proceeds without a resolution beyond the fatigue of its performers.

The Sofa, which artistic director Ashley Wheater (recently knighted by the British Empire) describes in his program note as “a light look at romance in the modern world,” is easily the most disturbing piece in the program. Viewed as a rapid-fire series of pratfalls on a sofa that doubles as trampoline, it could be humorous and rather dazzling. And yet, The Sofa simply can’t be viewed in the abstract. A single duet repeats, once with a man and a woman (Temur Suluashvili and Anna Gerberich) and once with two men (Suluashvili and Fernando Duarte), the first time a cartoonish rendition of domestic violence, the second time defusing the tension of the first with the consent that presumably underlies a sadomasochistic relationship. She elbows him in the chest. He picks her up and throws her. She smacks his face and rides him sidesaddle. Etc.–all as Tom Waits croons, “Nobody, nobody will ever love you / The way I could love you / Because nobody is that strong.” The punchline of the piece, that the abusive man becomes the submissive partner in the second duet, is, despite Wheater’s program note, particularly problematic in a moment that exactly coincides with the end of Harvey Weinstein’s trial–or haven’t we learned anything about consent yet?

Communal masculinity forms the centerpiece of Bliss! where a shirtless set of machos dance in unison, classical steps interspersed with a shoulder roll here, a hip thrust there–a strangely idyllic picture that is interrupted by the intrusion of two women in rhinestone-encrusted figure skater costumes, who distract and fracture the group. With a presence that matches his command of technique, Barbosa gives a standout performance that carries him right into Peck’s work, seen for the first time with a company other than NYCB. Danced by a cast of 20 in sneakers and street clothes, The Times Are Racing is Jerome Robbins’s Glass Pieces with Twyla Tharp’s energy to the relentless pulse of Dan Deacon’s 2012 America album, with lots of patterned pacing, carefully coordinated breaks to the upright order of classicism, and some fabulous male duets. Barbosa’s electric charisma blazes, visualized by the glistening corona of sweat that radiates from his hair as he whips his head, as if youth really were eternal. v

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In the dicey business of bringing historic opera to contemporary audiences, Lyric Opera’s current production of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is a winner. Three hours and 45 minutes long? Sung in Russian? No problem; deal me in. This exploration of obsession is compulsively watchable.

Said to have been composed in a 44-day frenzy, the opera is based on an Alexander Pushkin story about an obsessive gambler–a subject Pushkin knew firsthand. The opera (with a libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, the composer’s brother), expanding on this theme, is about obsessive ideation that fixes on romance as well as gambling, before moving on to guilt.

The central character, Gherman (tenor Brandon Jovanovich), is hell-bent on possessing both Lisa (soprano Sondra Radvanovsky), a woman he’s fallen in love with at first sight, and a dangerous secret her grandmother happens to possess that will allow him to win at cards. Lisa’s a stretch for this impoverished outsider–she’s engaged to marry a prince (baritone Lucas Meachem). Against the odds, Gherman succeeds in winning her heart, but–and this is the crux of the story–driven as he is, he can’t stop there. He persists in his quest for her grandmother’s secret, leading to a devastating final loss.

This is psychodrama powered by the sweep and emotional acuity of Tchaikovsky’s Russian romantic score. The 20-year-old production, originally directed by Richard Jones, with sets and costumes by John Macfarlane (directed here by Benjamin Davis), moves the action up to the tense grey 1930s. It makes use of puppets, graveyard humor, and surreal shifts in perspective to weave an increasingly claustrophobic and ominous spell. Radvanovsky and Jovanovich powerfully, wrenchingly, give voice to their characters, and everyone in the huge cast–including the Lyric Opera Chorus and members of the Chicago Children’s Choir–plays up to their game.

Musically, it’s an embarrassment of riches, starting with the trio of men who launch the action: tenor Kyle van Schoonhoven and bass-baritone David Weigel as Gherman’s associates, and bass-baritone Samuel Youn–Alberich in Lyric’s Ring–in another neatly executed nasty turn as Gherman’s pernicious friend Count Tomsky. Then there’s a trio of mighty mezzo sopranos: Jill Grove as a governess; Elizabeth DeShong as Lisa’s friend Pauline; and spot-on veteran Jane Henschel making her Lyric debut as Lisa’s grandmother, the Countess, once known as the Venus of Moscow.

Also, of course, the Lyric Opera Orchestra. A more traditional Queen of Spades was the first opera Andrew Davis conducted as Lyric’s music director. As he heads into his final season in that job (he’ll depart in 2021), this production is an apropos bookend to his 20-year tenure. v

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The Des McAnuff-directed Summer: The Donna Summer Musical begins with a seasoned Donna Summer, or Diva Donna (Dan’yelle Williamson), recounting how in her early days, a colleague asked her what people will be doing years from then. She responded she didn’t know, but one thing’s for sure: they’d be dancing.

Though the “The Queen is Back” opening number was crowded with several dancers and somewhat blinding outfits on stage, what follows is a fascinating exploration of a life well lived. This touring musical (book by Colman Domingo, Robert Cary, and McAnuff, featuring hits created by Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Paul Jabara, and others) breezes through the stages of Summer’s life, from childhood as Duckling Donna (Olivia Elease Hardy) growing up in Boston to Disco Donna (Alex Hairston) who becomes the queen of 1970s disco, to Diva Donna, who wants to slow down and enjoy family life.

Throughout the production Diva Donna provides context to what’s happening in her life and in her head. Moments of joyous relief, angry thought, and everything else in between is expressed by older Donna, who now has the wisdom to understand the sometimes-reckless decisions of others and herself and breaks it all down for the audience.

From top to bottom, the production is all glitter, sparkle, afros, leather and animal print: a testament to the glamorous life of the legendary singer. (Paul Tazewell created the costumes, with wig design by Charles G. LaPointe.) Yet the glamour was not without difficulties.

In every stage of life, she has loved and lost, in one way or the other. As a child, she lost friends in church who said her voice sounded like a police siren. Donna of the disco era fired (and sued) her manager Neil Bogart (John Gardiner) when she learned he was misappropriating her money, and Diva Donna suffered an ultimate loss, laying her parents to rest. Yet still, the groovy performer persisted.

Messages of independence and equal pay loom large when Donna’s lawsuit against Casablanca Records comes up, accompanied by an energetic and profound performance of “She Works Hard for the Money” that’s enough to make every member of the audience as angry as the singer must have been upon learning that she hadn’t been receiving the fair fruits of her labor.

A standout moment from this number is when an unnamed lawyer (Brooke Lacy) reveals that Donna is in an exploitative contract and says, “This may be disingenuous coming from a middle-aged white guy like me.” Though played for laughs, it’s hard to miss the sheer amount of women playing people presumed to be men throughout the production. From top hats and suits to short wigs and canes, a subtle, yet forthright, statement is made about how in the high point of Donna’s career, gender lines were blurred within the disco (and often queer) community, as they are now.

Summer’s struggle with the antidepressant Marplan and suicidal thoughts are stepping-stones to her recovery from the pressures of a fast-paced career, showing how the disco queen dealt with her own depression and anxiety offstage.

The final scenes of the musical end before her demise; she and her daughters sing “Stamp your Feet” from 2008’s Crayons (her last studio album), when she discloses she has cancer. And “Friends Unknown” honors friends who died of HIV/AIDs years prior, offering possible hope of redemption for her rumored past hurtful remarks about a community who adored her. (Summer reportedly said “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” at a 1983 concert, though she denied ever calling AIDS “divine retribution.”) From there, up-tempo “Hot Stuff” and “Last Dance” close the production.

At the end of it all, Donna Summer proved herself to be more than just the “disco queen” of the 70s. But even if she’s only remembered for disco music, Summer reminds us that that’s A-OK, too. v

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Whether you want to feel the love or not this weekend, there’s plenty of recommended things to do.

Through 2/28: Bonny Nahmias’s first solo exhibition, “To Hold Space,” presents a project that she began in 2017. Stretching a tin can telephone over areas that are broken by geography, modernity, and politics, she has surpassed barriers and blockades. The project is accompanied by a book, The Orchestra Of Space Holders. Opening reception is Fri 2/14, 6-10 PM. Ground Level Platform, 2001 S. Halsted, groundlevelplatform.org, free.

2/14-2/16: Violet Surprise Theatre presents Lez Beaus, a festival of 10-minute plays celebrating lesbian love through the ages. The dozen pieces, selected by artistic directors Iris Sowlat and Allison Fradkin, include stories about romance in an all-girls baseball league of the past and a “girl gets boi” love story set in contemporary times. Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Martin, 2515 W. North, themartinchicago.com, $12.

Fri 2/14: Anti-Valentine’s Day is celebrating National Condom Week and has partnered with sexual health organizations to provide free condoms and sexual health education to teenagers. There will be music, dancing, crafts, pizza, cheese, games, and, of course, condoms. 6-9 PM, National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th, nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org, free.

Fri 2/14: Odd Pleasures: A Queer Valentine’s Day Event features a queer variety show hosted by Aunty Chan that includes live ASMR, drag, comedy, and short films. 6-9 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago, mcachicago.org, $10, $8 students.

Fri 2/14: Love is Stronger than the State: a Migrant Solidarity Benefit is a fundraiser for a family seeking asylum as well as a trans person who recently migrated to Chicago. Featuring food, drink, activities for children, nail art by Sharon, a Cupid Photo Booth, and a raffle with art by Rebel Betty and Audra Jacot. No one turned away for lack of funds. 7 PM-midnight, the #LetUsBreathe Collective, 1434 W. 51st, facebook.com/ChicagoIWOC, $5-$10 suggested donation.

Sat 2/15: The Marz Record Fair, organized by Marz Brewing and Mississippi Records, features vendors and DJs from International Anthem, Sonorama, Electric Jungle, Shady Rest Vintage & Vinyl, Black Pegasus, 606 Records, Delmark, Orindal Records, Tone Deaf Records, South Rhodes Records, Atlantic Posters, Maximum Pelt, DJ Leslie Deckard, and Mississippi Records. Noon-8 PM, Marz Community Brewing Taproom, 3630 S. Iron, marz.beer, free.

Sat 2/15: Author Angela Kenyatta shares her knowledge of journaling and writing during a workshop at the library for Black History Month. 2 PM, Sulzer Regional Library, 4455 N. Lincoln, chipublib.org, free.

Sat 2/15: The one-night-only show The Witch Project looks at witches and queer icons through spoken word, live music, and drag. 7:30 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, thedentheatre.com, $15.

Sat 2/15: The Half-Court Classic 3v3 Invitational is a celebration of basketball culture with a three on three tournament and complimentary food and beverages, hosted by Kyle O’Quinn and organized by Lululemon Chicago and Mob Rep with Cool Kids, Femdot, Qari, DJ Evie the Cool, DJ Cash Era, DJ Selah Say. 8 PM-1 AM, 454 N. Armour, bit.ly/lululemon-and-mob-rep-present-the-half-court-classic-tickets, $20.

Sat 2/15: Super Tasty is an inclusive, sex-positive talk show that is poppin’ off for a special Valentine’s Day weekend edition. Performers include Clitora Leigh and Lavender Vyxn, and interviews with Dr. Pia Holec about sexpectations. There will be a sensual massage demo and a panel with sex coach Tazima Parris and therapists Matthew Amador and Peter Navarro. Stay for the AfterGlow where the stage opens up for a shopping experience from local vendors. 8 PM, Constellation 3111 N. Western, supertastyshow.com, $25.

Sun 2/16: The Fox Club has joined with GMan Tavern to sell handmade and vintage goods at the Winter Sucks Market. Drink specials and vendors will be present with a free admission. Noon-5 PM, GMan Tavern, 3740 N. Clark, gmantavern.com, free.

Sun 2/16: The two-person event “The landscape reels back” features, curator, arts organizer, and Chicago artist Alexis Brocchi, who looks at how to search for information through nontraditional methods, and Tracie Hayes, an artist and ecologist. 4-7 PM, Roman Susan, 1224 W. Loyola, romansusan.org, free.

Sun 2/16: Stand-up Marty DeRosa hosts the Second Annual Davefest, a fundraiser for the David Carl Guastella Scholarship Foundation featuring comedy from Blake Burkhart, Cameron Gillette, Nate Burrows, and more plus music by Natalie Grace Alford and Sammy Arechar. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, emptybottle.com, $10. vRead More

Clear Filters

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Dan Shore started working on his one-act opera, Freedom Ride, nine years ago. It was the 50th anniversary of the Congress of Racial Equality-organized protests that actually integrated public transportation in the United States, after the Supreme Court had ruled that segregation violated the constitution. Shore, a composer who also writes his own librettos, was teaching at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans and had been asked to create something that would celebrate both that city and the civil rights movement. When he saw the 2011 PBS Freedom Riders documentary (based on Raymond Arsenault’s 2007 book of the same title), and also learned that Xavier had provided housing for some of the riders, he had found his subject. Research, writing, and workshopping followed.

Freedom Ride’s world premiere production, commissioned by Chicago Opera Theater, opened Saturday at the Studebaker. Under Tazewell Thompson’s direction, it’s a fast-paced 90-minute account of how a fictional New Orleans woman, Sylvie Davenport, decided to sign on for the risky ride to Jackson, Mississippi. We see her motivation grow, from a hoped-for personal relationship with the recruiter at the start, to something broader and more deeply principled. Ultimately she makes the trip in spite of his rejection of her and over her family’s well-grounded fears. In real life, freedom riders were beaten, fire-bombed, arrested, and imprisoned.

There’s a large cast of characters, including Sylvie’s mother, brother, and best friend, Ruby; preachers and organizers; assorted volunteers, and two sizeable choruses, one of which is made up of children. It’s a lot of people and story to process in a one-act, and the result, on opening night, was arguably more successful as a song cycle than a fully-developed opera. It might not have helped that the announced lead, soprano Lauren Michelle, was missing (for personal reasons, according to COT), though her understudy, Dara Rahming, stepped smoothly into the role of Sylvie. In fact, Rahming has sung this role before, and, Shore said in a pre-performance talk, he created it with her in mind.

The switch also allowed us to see soprano Kimberly E. Jones, a Chicago favorite, in Rahming’s place as Ruby. Among the rest of this talented cast: baritone Robert Sims, hitting the right dramatic and vocal notes as the organizer, Clayton Thomas; recent Ryan Opera Center alum Whitney Morrison in a bitter protest against rocking the boat; and a winning performance by tenor Tyrone Chambers II as Sylvie’s brother, Russell. The music–which Shore says was inspired by everything he was hearing in the Big Easy–ranges from gospel, blues, and spirituals to a “barbershop” quartet. It’s not nuanced: when a Jewish character thinks of his past, for example, the audience is flashed a hora. But Shore has produced an often rousing score that brings an important chapter of American history to life. COT Music Director Lidiya Yankovskaya conducts the Chicago Sinfonietta. v

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After years of reading the women-seeking-women Reader Matches ads and never seeing any I felt called to respond to, I just could not get hers out of my mind: “kick-boxing babe,” “Xena-lover,” “giver of tender back rubs,” “looking for articulate romance with a queer cutie.” She didn’t mention a size or shape of body that she was looking for. She didn’t talk about anything I found boring or stupid. The ad stuck with me all week, but I didn’t act. I was fat. I had almost zero dating experience. Calling a stranger was SCARY.

My roommate locked me in my room on the last night that the ad’s voice mail was active and refused to let me out until I left a message. So after wasting hours alone in my room, I finally left a voice message: “I’m fat and swear like a sailor,” “I grew tomatoes for the first time this year,” “I’m an art student.”

I could not believe it when she called me back! I was so nervous when the phone rang, but we had a long and easy conversation touching on things like the fact that her brother and I had the same pinup girl mobile, why marriage is stupid, and all the ways that monogamy is fraught. Then we set a time to meet in person the next week for our first date.

That was in October 1998. She gave me a tender kiss as I was getting out of her car. I gave her a tiny box of the tomatoes I grew in my garden. Twenty-one years later, we have a ten-year-old kid, a solid, loving relationship, and a yard with too much shade to grow tomatoes. –Searah Deysach

Josh: We were both recent divorcees looking for love.

Sheri: A friend asked me to help her write a personal ad in the Reader, and I decided to create one for myself too.

J: This was back in the days when online dating was shameful. I complimented her on her book choices, except for Ayn Rand.

S: Rand is great dark fiction. I waited a month until Christmas to respond.

J: After some e-mails back and forth, we talked on the phone and met for pizza.

S: I was training for the marathon and had just run ten miles, so I almost cancelled.

J: We both had friends call us as backup plans to bail just in case things went south.

S: Or in case he was a psychopath. We immediately connected on books, cats, and all things nerdy. It was love at first sight.

J: After dinner we went to the Green Dolphin ballroom with friends. The band started playing “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire.

S: He asked me to dance and that sealed the deal. The conversation turned to architecture. I was curious about the Baha’i Temple.

J: My friends suggested we go on a tour. Our second date was set for the next morning!

S: Before the tour he took me to breakfast at Walker Brothers for pancakes. We started hanging out every day and the rest is history!

J: Fast-forward six years to our wedding.

S: Fast-forward again to 2019 when we both had articles published in the Reader side-by-side!

J: That’s what I call a full-circle Reader Romance! –Josh and Sheri Flanders v

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With Autumn de Wilde’s new film version of Jane Austen’s Emma being released next week (the seventh time it’s been adapted for film or TV, not counting Amy Heckerling’s Clueless), it seems propitious that Chicago Shakespeare has Paul Gordon’s musical adaptation currently on the boards. I missed Gordon’s world-premiere musical of Sense and Sensibility on Navy Pier in 2015. But with Emma, Gordon and director Barbara Gaines create a world that, while charming, doesn’t really do much to expand the dramatic universe of Highwood, the bucolic country estate where self-involved Emma (Lora Lee Gayer) plots the romantic futures of others–with unforeseen results.

Part of the problem is that the songs and narration, while tidy and efficient at streamlining the story, lack deeper resonance. There’s a distinct sense that we’re being steered along, rather as if we’re on a Regency-era reenactment, chuckling at the social faux pas unleashed by Emma’s meddling. But the actual stakes here feel too low. The social distinctions among Emma, the self-assured poor-but-clever Jane Fairfax (Erica Stephan), and “natural child” Harriet Smith (Ephie Aardema)–an orphan of uncertain parentage and limited worldly awareness–are glossed over, despite the fact that marriage means something quite different to all of them.

Emma’s conscience and foil, Mr. Knightley (Brad Standley), sings the title song with emotion and fire. But as the spark to this flame, Gayer remains too much on the surface. Strong supporting comic turns from Bri Sudia’s affected Mrs. Elton (an Austenian take on Moira from Schitt’s Creek) and Larry Yando’s hypochrondriacal Mr. Woodhouse deserve note, and it all looks and sounds quite handsome. But it never makes the case for why we need to hear this story told in song. v

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It reached almost 100 degrees in Minnesota on the day that Erica and Adam got married. Frank cried. I did, too, but it was because I was happy.

I reached for his hand and he jumped in his seat. I scared him. After the ceremony, I asked Frank if he was crying because he was emotional, perhaps thinking about us getting married one day?

“No, that’s not why I was crying,” he said.

I stopped on the dirt path we were following to the reception. The air was humid and the ground felt like cake beneath our feet; the block of my suede heel sank into its sponge as beads of sweat chased each other down my back.

I waited for Frank to realize I had stopped walking.

“Do you still want to marry me one day?”

“Jesus Christ, Kaylen.”

“Is that a yes . . .?” I was wearing all white.

Exactly three weeks later, Frank broke up with me over FaceTime. It was a Saturday morning, and I’d propped my phone against a sturdy candle on the coffee table in our living room.

Wearing a sweater over my favorite nightie, I savored the comfort of our couch and held a mug that once held a bouquet of flowers he’d sent to work on my birthday.

Frank held his phone in front of his face while he spat dip juice into a Gatorade bottle and told me he was unhappy. His lip fat; his voice flat.

“I put ice cream in my coffee this morning,” I said.

I needed him to know what was in my cup. It was like when I discovered the value a garlic press could lend to guacamole. Who else was I going to tell?

“Nice. Was it good?” he asked.

Sipping my drink, by now a curdled combination of oily caffeine and clotted cream, I was by no means in denial of our relationship’s dissolution.

“I have to go to work,” I said. We hung up and I dumped the remnants of my affogato in the kitchen sink.

WIthin an hour, I arrived at the bridal boutique where I was a stylist, having just been dumped by the boy I thought I was going to marry. After dating for five years, it was not an unsafe assumption.

I found my coworkers in a circle at the center of a sales floor that was vacant of customers. It was one of those perfect Gold Coast mornings, and sunlight poured in through the boutique’s second-floor windows. I wished it would rain.

“I have an announcement,” I said.

It was too early in the day for me to have lost my keys to the store, and my hair was already up, so I wasn’t in need of a ponytail holder. The girls were intrigued.

“Frank and I are done.”

Their faces fell, but their eyes sparkled. In a setting where relationship success stories were our livelihood, this was definitely going to spice up the day. I had dressed up to tell people my news–I wore an asymmetrical, one-shouldered crop top over Frank’s white button-down with a fitted pencil skirt. I planned to look the part of a well-adjusted, stylish woman while relaying the details of how my life was going up in flames.

Frank left for a business trip two weeks before the breakup, just a few days after the wedding in Minnesota. What was supposed to be a routine, five-day trip turned into weeks of him all but ignoring my texts and calls. The girls and I knew something was up, and I had left work the day before promising I’d have answers by the time I returned.

“Frank and I are done.”

My delivery was crisp, but the words were chewy in my mouth. I swished the sounds around with my tongue and tried to determine, “Is it too salty? Undercooked? Please, tell me what I need.”

My store is staffed by a rotating roster of women who range in age from 20 to 60 years old, and who mostly all check the “in a relationship box” at the OB-GYN. My breakup officially made me a single woman employed by a brand that caters exclusively to the newly engaged, by default and design.

Frank and I moved to Chicago two years prior, and I started working at the bridal boutique almost immediately. As a self-imposed and societally sanctioned pressure to solidify our romantic history steadily crept in during our first year in the city, our underlying incompatibility emerged in step. We held our breath while our relationship treaded water. We had the perfunctory air any long-term couple perfects over the years: Is the dishwasher clean or dirty? How are we splitting time on Christmas Eve? Did you buy garbage bags? Are we having sex tonight?

But as I spent my days with a revolving door of brides-to-be, the professionality of our interactions reinforced a healthy barrier between me and them–the engaged girls–that masked the more meaningful disconnect of my own relationship. They wanted to marry their partners, and I was getting mad at mine for putting olive oil in his hair when he ran out of pomade.

I’m good at my job. I have helped many women say yes to the dress. The journalist in me knows the right questions to ask, and my oldest-sister mentality makes it easy for me to convey that “I’ll be the one in charge here today.”

It wasn’t until I had one foot stuck in the Minnesota mud, curls limp, back sweaty, that I snapped. We’d attended five weddings in a year and a half. I kept thinking ours would be next without pausing to consider whether that was even what I wanted.

“Frank and I are done,” I told the girls at the boutique.

Ana told me to step down from the chair I’d climbed to make my announcement and go sit in the gown gallery, so I did. Someone fed me a dry bagel, and I don’t really remember the rest of that afternoon, the first day I began healing my heart in the most unlikely of places.

It was only a few days later that I stood behind my morning appointment as she looked at me in the three-way mirror.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“No, I’m not,” I shot back. “And I’m going through a nasty breakup with the guy that was supposed to propose.”

My brain returned to my body just in time for me to witness my meltdown. This was not the place. Frank was not my future. The bride was a woman my age who was just trying to make conversation. She was a bridechilla and I’d totally zapped her zen.

“No, I’m not,” I said, with a regained calm, a tacitly implied chance for a redo–all we can really ask from each other and ourselves.

In the aftermath of my breakup, what had always felt like a benevolent, underlying “me versus them” dynamic of stylist versus client became suddenly personal. A bride-to-be’s very presence in my store necessitated she have something I did not, something I assumed I should–and would–have by now.

My workplace surroundings could have served as a constant reminder of what I thought I’d lost. The revolving door never stopped spinning, and for awhile, neither did I.

But the world kept spinning, too. Shipment of new product arrived each day a little after 3 PM. We maintained our standing champagne order with Sofia Coppola, and I alphabetized order forms before locking up the store and hopping in an Uber to meet my friends at the bar.

I packed up Frank’s things, starting with the contents of the second bedroom that we’d made his office. It’s my office now. I dropped notes in strangers’ pockets, fell in (and out) of love approximately 24 times and went for long runs on the lakefront after work each night. My morning announcements at the boutique kept getting juicier.

I styled 365 days worth of brides and attended several weddings with my friends and my family. The passage of time, which was all I really needed, marked itself subtly–in the dip of a deeper neckline, the curve of a shortened train, and the evolution of my friends’ own relationships. The ease with which I slept each night in my own apartment. Nothing changed, except for everything.

“Are you married?” the 24-year-old blonde from Texas asked me. She stepped into the center of the gown I held open for her in my hands, low to the ground.

She was in Chicago to shop for gowns with her mom and sisters over the holidays. I pulled the fitted, beaded gown up the length of her body. The zipper caught on its way up the showroom sample as she waited for my response.

“No, I’m not,” I said, with a smile she couldn’t see.

I knew where to apply the right amount of pressure to pull the zipper through its track of warped teeth. I put my hand on her shoulder.

“Are you ready to open your eyes?”

“Is this the dress?”

“Have you ever put a scoop of ice cream in your coffee?” v

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Let’s face it, only a few of us have relationships that call for a complete stranger installing a plaque at the site where we had our first kiss a la Barack and Michelle’s monument at 53rd and Dorchester, the former site of a Baskin-Robbins that they reportedly visited on their first date. But plenty of us can point directly to venues, restaurants, and perhaps even neighborhoods that are forever tainted in our minds by memories of love gone very wrong. Here are four Chicago spots that unfortunately resulted in heartbreak.

The Big Show
Musicians are creative, emotional creatures, and what better way to express their experience than delivering performances to the public infused with a spectrum of feelings: good, bad, and vengeful. The Replacements chose to give the audience the real deal on July 4, 1991, during their legendary “breakup” show in Grant Park during the Taste of Chicago. It was the last show of what was already announced as the Replacements’ final tour, in the last years of a band that hadn’t been getting along for a while. Shouting and arguing onstage during the last half of the show ended with the entire band handing over their instruments to roadies and walking off stage during the final number.

Swiping left in Lincoln Park Zoo
Lincoln Park Zoo’s last male lion resident, Sahar, unfortunately passed away last September, but he was a popular attraction during his stay in Chicago. Sahar was originally brought to Lincoln Park from the Bronx Zoo in 2012 to serve in part as a younger male companion to the zoo’s then 16-year-old lioness Myra. After Myra died in 2014, Sahar needed a friend and Lincoln Park Zoo brought two two-year-old female lions from Oregon, Zalika and Kamali, to attempt socialization. Sahar, whether still missing Myra or just being a stubborn male, wasn’t having it. As the Chicago Tribune reported in 2015, “The clever boy plopped down right in front of the doorway where the new cats . . . would ideally enter the outdoor exhibit and start engaging with him. But he is foiling the plan, blocking their potential path while enjoying the shade and happily flicking his tail.”

Walking through Wicker Park
Nelson Algren’s biographers know for sure that he lived at 1958 W. Evergreen for most of the 1950s, but we’re not sure exactly where he might have been when he received a letter from writer Simone de Beauvoir, putting an end to their deepening long-distance affair. It’s readable in Hell Hath No Fury, an anthology of women’s letters edited by Anna Holmes. Algren had grown weary of the distance between them and acted distant during de Beauvoir’s visit, which resulted in her painful decision to end the romance. She writes with heartbreaking honesty, “As for me, it is baffling to say so and I feel ashamed, but it is the only true truth: I just love as much as I did when I landed into your disappointed arms, that means with my whole self and all my dirty heart; I cannot do less.”

The Wiener’s Circle
Dawn doesn’t want me to tell you her real name, but I was present for this incident (roughly 20 years ago) and can concur: breaking up with someone sometimes takes a village. We’ll call Dawn’s ex-boyfriend Rahm. Rahm was a cad from the get-go, and insisted that Dawn pay for most of their outings as well as wear only outfits that he had chosen. For the record, Rahm was not a professional stylist. When Dawn finally found her self-esteem, she decided to break up with Rahm at the Wiener’s Circle, the infamous hot dog stand at Wrightwood and Clark. Dawn insisted upon doing this at 7 PM on a Friday so we could all get food afterward and miss the loudmouth crowd, but a small group of Chads overheard her telling Rahm that she was done. A debate over Dawn’s worthiness as a girlfriend was ignited, resulting in one of the employees of the restaurant coming out to the picnic benches and shouting at everyone, “She dumped your white ass; get the fuck out!” v

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