Sitting outside the Half & Half cafe, just off the Damen stop in Chicago. Drinking a red-eye, coffee and espresso in one glorious cup of pick-me up, and its the first thing I've been able to buy myself for a week. Seeing this city without a pot to piss in, a window to throw it out, or a single dollar to pay the fine for improper disposal of waste has convinced never to move here.
As I sit contemplating the events that lead me here I look up from my cup to see a male to female transvestite walking by, designer from head to toe, the clothes and the body, heading toward the train stop. Some fixed-gear freaks sitting next to me, surrounded by mirror images of himself: chrome bags, tight shirts, and rolled pants, ventures to call out to him/her "What up, man?" I couldn't help but smile to myself at his impeccable execution, both consanants of his accusation drawn out by a fraction of a second and the slightest increase in pitch on the n made sure no one could miss the attack. His goony friends began to chuckle and without missing a beat, niether startling nor turning to face her attacker, she began to give a Vogue worthy strut down the strip of crumbling concrete that was her runway. As she reached the stairs leading up to the trainstop, she pirouetted in true supermodel fashion before continuing up the stairs. If it was an afterthought or the finale of her original master defense plan I couldn't say, but half through her ascent she stopped, turned the group as I observed from my cooling cup of coffee, and her hands grasped the sides of her skin-tight black shirt. The hands, still gripping, began to move toward the sky and the shirt followed, exposing a chiseled six-pack, ribs visible beneath the skin but not so much as to look unhealthy, and as we watched wondering when this display would have run its course, the shirt continued up until her too perfect breasts failed to drop from beneath the shirt but revealed themselves, too proud and too full of silicone, too big and too firm, to us and the laughter of the gear-heads stopped, jaws dropped, and she walked off to finish her day a winner.