My return to Chicago; VI

There is this running joke in my family involving vacations and sickness. My sister and I were only ill once a year, and sure enough, it colluded with family vacation time. Every year, no fail, we would pack up our Subaru wagon, head somewhere touristy and just wait for my sister and I to come down with flu, diareah, pink eye, swimmer's ear, IBS you name it. This trip is no exception to the rule: Tyler on vacation--Tyler sick.

At 3am on Sunday night, I climb out of bed with a burning in my belly and unleash hell into the building's septic tanks. I mean, sheer hell. At 3:30 my sister does the same. We then roll in agony, she on her bed and me on her couch, which is unfortunate for me because that's the place her yeti goes to shed. Each time I rock, white cat fur sticks to the sweat on my skin more and more until I resemble a mountain goat or abominable snowman. We had eaten something real bad of course, probably the eggy remoulade that came with the grilled artichoke appetizer at dinner. The sickness continues throughout the night until I mercifully fall to sleep at around 8am at the computer while looking at an anti dairy web site. I'll never eat eggs again, I vow. Another empty promise?

I wake at noon, feeling a little queasy, but no worse for the wear. My sister is still a mess, which was how it always used to be on family vacations. We'd both get sick and I'd recover almost immediately. Poor BunnySis would remain a convalescent for several days. Whether it was or wasn't an attempt to milk more ice cream out of my health conscious folks isn't truly apparent.

"Could you go to the store and get me some ginger ale?" she more whines than asks, hunched over on the toilet, spurts of gas and bad remoulade popping sporadically. How she can think of food at this time is beyond me.

"Of course."

"And maybe some ice cream?" And when will she ever be cognizant of dairy's evilness?

"Okay."

I do a hunched limp to her little SUV in the cold rain that pours in from the North. The bushes around me are waxy and coated in beady droplets. I remember how Murph used to try to eat their leaves, but never kept them in her mouth very long, for they weren't tasty. She found plaster tasty, but not those waxy leaves. The day we arrived in California I took her for her first walk, and elated by the edible nature of California flora, she dove head first into a bush. She came up grinning with a felled avocado in her mouth. She was just wild about the place from the very beginning, its sun, its smells, the way the pavement tastes like cherry popsicles in certain places.

I suddenly need California. I need it this fucking instant, for it is the only thing that will make me feel better about this infernal trip. But where can I get California in Chicago?

Sheena's. Oh how I love Sheena's raw vegan restaurant and health supply store on Sheffield. It's like a little island of California-ness in the middle of Lincoln Park. When I lived there, I would go to Sheena's all the time for some green juice (the only thing on the menu I could afford). I'd also go because the place was full of artsy fartsies. I keep hearing that Chicago is an artsy place, with artsy people, but I lived in Wicker Park/Bucktown, "art central" and I don't believe it. Everywhere I went in Chicago, I felt too artsy. No one I spoke to--whether they were dressed in low-slung hipster jeans and vintage Ramones t-shirts or not--completely understood me. I felt lonely and isolated. Conversely, everyone in LA (non West siders, that is) gets me. Even people in Gucci.

The loneliness is setting back in. I need to be understood. I need some California, so I pop down Sheffield to Sheena's raw vegan restaurant where I snack on raw corn chips and organic guacamole while my new friend, Beatrice, an irascible raw vegan advocate in a cropped cut and trendy blue jeans, lectures me about the miracle nectar that is coconut oil. She had diagnosed me as a thyroid case on site, swollen gray face a telltale sign, and was now flipping through a book called "Coconut Cures" which asserted that the oil was capable of curing everything from Asthma to Zoonosis. I tell her that I'll put anything in my mouth if it will make me feel better. She says not to say such things around Sam, the attractive Rastafarian behind the counter. Sam laughs.

Beatrice says an oxygen bath will make me feel much better, will "...leave [me] feeling refreshed and radiant," and I agree with her because I'm feeling so understood and Californian. She takes me back to the spa area. A lovely gentleman in Elvis Costello glasses escorts me to the oxygen bath room, in which is a sadistic looking white pod and other spa accoutrements, robes, towels, zen decorations. I am instructed to get naked and sit within in the pod for twenty minutes as hot steamy air and something called "Ozonate" detox me at a "cellular level." It sounds positively wonderful.

I undress and sit my exposed bottom on an interesting maze of white cotton towels. I close the pod around my neck, my head popping out the top of the contraption, and wait for the "Ozonate" to start detoxing me. I must look like a chick half-hatched. The pod gets hotter and hotter until I hear a beeping from the box of electronics on the floor next to the pod, and then bursts of steam shoot out toward me and sear my flesh in four different places. I scream and escape from the devil pod. There are burns on both my buttcheeks and ankles.

The man in the glasses apologizes. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. We still had it set to 'cleaning mode.'"

Beatrice tells me to treat the burns with Coconut oil.

Comments

Posted by: colin san at October 21, 2006 06:37 PM

Posted by: M at October 21, 2006 07:20 PM

Posted by: CausticCayla at October 22, 2006 01:08 PM

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