The Windy City..

If this blog had been a plant or a pet it would have died along time ago, so if you would please my patient and loyal readers, do this blog a favor and clap! Clap and bring it back to life, for you see, this blog is written by a fairy, therefore it is a fairy. Repeat after me, "I do believe in Fairies, I do! I do!" Aaaah, there, all better. And on with the show.
I was in Chicago over the weekend to see one of my best friends in the whole world get married. Hee Hee was the first person that I met when I moved to Chicago back in '01. I was working at tacky beauty store and I was made to sell useless paraffin wax dippers for people to use in their homes. I was stationed by the hair salon with a table and the unit, and I was supposed to make these people think that I was expert at what I was selling. This was the only job that I could at that time so I pretended that I was playing a role in a play and this was acting. So I read the directions in 10 minutes and off I went, at first reading the directions verbatim and dipping peoples hands into the hot and aromatic rose, lavender or raspberry scented paraffin. It was very therapeutic and I noticed that people loved that I was also massaging their hands. Also at that time I was a hot little number, I was thin and looked like a million bucks. A tall Latin boy from California in the middle of a Chicago winter was like seeing a Monarch butterfly in the snow. I was well groomed and did not belong in January in the Midwest, so I used displacement to my advantage. I was great at improve and started making up shit that sounded good!
" With the magic of the non-stick heat ring you not only melt the wax but you also release the aroma therapy benefits of the fragrant oils that are trapped inside, do you smell that?"
I would then grab her hand and gently bring her towards the melted candle and brush my hand towards her nose, fanning the ersatz aroma therapy towards her nose.
"I think, I think I do feel calmer?!" The middle-aged mother with the white sweatshirt and the puff-painted red nosed reindeer would look at me. I in turn would flash her my west coast smile that was movie star all the way, one of the many smiles that I posses in my arsenal of looks and glances. She was caught off guard by my dimples and the way I playfully rubbed her other arm and told her, " In Hollywood all the celebrities keep their hands soft and beautiful using a unit just like this one, it would also help you too. It would help take off dead skin cells and make your hands look younger, also making your hands appear as if you've never done a honest day of work in your whole life! You can kiss dish pan hands goodbye!" I would then throw my head back and laugh a little wicked laugh, like I was letting her in a movie star secret, ringing up the box I would walk her over and tell her that if she had any problems with it she could always bring it back, no questions asked. I sold over 15 in a matter of a days. I later found out that they had ordered a lot of these machines but couldn't sell them, so they had sat in the stockroom for more than a month until I came along, it was sort of my test. To see what this pretty boy was made of, I proved my self to all of them. Enter my friend Hee Hee, I noticed this cute lady walk in and stand at the edge of the crowd that would gather as I would melt unscented wax and then use our own essential oils that the store carried to mix and customize my own aroma therapy. This was actually out of necessity than imagination, we had run out of the scented wax and they wouldn't let me open any more of it for the demos, so I started using the other oils that also weren't selling and also started upselling. She walked up and wanted her hand massaged, I wasn't going to give her the sermon because I had learned that some people just wanted me to touch them and not want to buy this contraption. I started by lightly massaging her hand in silence and then went to dip her hand in the melted wax.
" You're not gonna give me your speech?" She asked a little bit disappointed.
" I thought that you've already heard it a couple of times, so I thought that you just wanted your hand touched." I was a little wary of her by now.
" No, I like when you smile, where are you from anyway? You have an accent."
"An accent?" I cocked my head to one side and continued prepping her for the dip. She touched upon a very sensitive thing that not many people know about, my voice. I've always been very aware that I had a higher voice than most men, always teased growing up about how fast I talk. You see my first language was Spanish and in my culture we speak very fast, but I had to go to speech therapy for years and I worked very hard to get rid of my stutter and accent that most kids from the area that I grew up in had. To me it showed no education and lack of sophistication to point to a chair and sound like you were saying "Pleeze, seet in dee share" I hated that I had to tell the teacher the difference between that chair and share. I sit in the chair and I share the chair. Very hard to manage when you are in the second grade and scared of adults.
"You don't sound like you're from around here." She had noticed that I was thrown off by her question.
"Like where? Like what country?" All I was thinking was that here I am in Chicago and I'm rubbing on some bigot that was probably about to tell me to go back where I came from. I had to quickly think about what how would I handle the situation, would I be composed and educate her? Or would I yell and talk shit, or my personal favorite, throw the wax on her head and walk out into the snow and cause a huge scene and telling the store to shove this job up their asses.
" No silly, what state." Her turn to laugh, " You don't have a Midwestern accent."
"OH! I'm from California, from San Diego born and raised." I blushed a little.
" What are you doing here?" I went on to tell her that I ran away from home to try and make in Chicago and that I eventually want to move to New York, but thought that this was far enough away from home but close enough to New York to make on my own. I found that we instantly bonded and I could tell her anything. She stood at my stand for another 40 minutes and I ignored all the rest of customers so we could get to know each other.
" You're gay right?" Great, here it comes! We were just hitting it off and now I've to try and come up with another scenario to make a statement, if she is a homophobe how can I let her know not to fuck with a queen from the westside? By being honest.
" Yes I am." And I smiled at her the most sincere smile that I could muster without looking like I was in a showchoir or pissed of at her.
"GOOD! Are you dating anyone? If not there is someone that you have to meet."
And that's how Hee Hee and I became best friends in Chicago, the guy that she had in mind ended up being the first guy that I dated there as well. That's another story for another time. Her wedding to her guy was beautiful, it was an Asian theme and I wore a Kimono that I bought in Japan. I stood on her side and was her man of honor. She was radiant that day, even though outside the wind and water off the lake battered the window, she with her happiness made everything and everyone feel safe around her. She is like an older sister to me and I was so happy to have shared that with her and her now husband. I will write more later, as it is almost 1:30 in the morning and I haven't really slept. I don't know where I was going with this story, but I'm glad where it went. It was awesome to go back to Chicago where it all started and see how far I've come from being a scared little Mexican in the cold and not knowing where my next meal was coming from. I've got a ton of stories to tell ya'll, night..df