The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 1996. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

You... stand on the platform. You... watch the headlights approach. The doors open. You step on. The doors close.

(Drummer hits a hard note on the snare drum, then plays a pounding, rhythmical beat) And you are off with a lurch, a surge of energy that almost knocks you on your ass, makes you blindly grope for that pole, getting you dirty stares from your packed train companions, upright, uptight people who wear their sunglasses in the tunnels and poke you with their umbrella and their briefcase and their Wall Street Journal, as you rumble and jumble and jolt your way down the tracks, the stops and the starts upsetting your pretty little hungover stomach and wish for that orange juice the beautiful Lincoln Parker next to you is sipping. (Makes a sound like a train coming to a screeching halt) Fullerton! Whoa! (Makes a sound like a train coming to a screeching halt) North and Clybourne! Whoa! (Makes a sound like a train coming to a screeching halt) Clark and Division! (Makes a sound like a train coming to a screeching halt) Chicago! (Makes a sound like a train coming to a screeching halt) Grand! (Makes a sound like a train coming to a screeching halt)

(Drums stop, and a person from the audience yells out) Next stop, Washington! Washington will be the next stop.

(Drummer plays a straight-ahead rock beat) And you ride the escalator up and the panorama slowly fills your eyes like a slow tracking shot in a David Mamet movie. It is the City of the Century, the City on the Go, the City on the Make, the City that Works. And work it does, work, work, work, on every fucking streetcorner and down the middle of fucking State Street, fences and signs and cones and machines and jackhammers and hustlers, street hustlers on Wabash and Washington, "Sir, my car just broke down and I'm trying to get some money to get back home" but you are sidestepping them, gliding by them with the same ease you glide by the four hundred pound black women, waddling their way down Madison like they own the fucking road and you're weaving and bobbing, you're playing your Walkman as loud as it'll go, ignoring traffic cops like Michael Jordan ignoring opponents as he drives for the hoop...

(A person from the audience screams out) Hey, get outta the fucking street!

(Yelling back from the stage at the man) Hey, watch where the fuck you're driving! (Back to microphone) And all you want to do is act like a tourist, stare straight up in the air and gape at the buildings that scrape the sky, marvel and be in awe and reach your hand out, try to grasp heaven and stick it in your pocket. But you've lived here just exactly long enough to know not to do that, so you trudge on at ground level, and you're hungry, and you're thirsty, and...

(Drums stop) It's time to go.

(Loud snare hit from the drums, then the "train" rhythm again) And the train smells like piss and a sullen Mexican killer sits across the aisle from you, a kid, a kid who's never had the luxury like you of living anywhere but smack dab in the middle of this meat-grinder we call a city. And as the train bumps and jumps and wiggles, this kid doesn't get to have a childhood because he's too busy assessing the situation, sizing you up and sizing him up, and him and him and him, rating the threat, rating the opportunity, the danger, the thrill.

(Drums stop, and a person from the audience yells out) Next stop, Damen! Damen will be the next stop.

(Drummer plays a funky ass beat) Bohemia with a Visa card as you step into the tricorner with the yuppies and the students, the artistic and the autistic, the shamen and the shysters and the poets and the posers and no one anywhere is over thirty except for the cops and this Rastafarian who's trying to sell you poems for two bucks apiece and you say, "Why would I want to buy bad poems, I get an evening of free ones every week," and you buy a Tribune from a newsstand and it feels good, it feels heavy in your hands in a way that it couldn't if it was wrapped up in a plastic bag and waiting in your front yard. And you stop in a diner, order a three dollar slop and read through Royko and Greene and all the other losers, scan the Tempo section for mention of your friend's play, your friend's band, your friend's exhibit and watch the girls, the beautiful girls, the beautiful funky slacker ass girls with the haircuts and the glasses and the platitudes, coming in and out of your sight like waves in a giant ecstatic beautiful sea.

And then you're on the move, strolling down Guyville, down Algrenland, past the Turkish baths that are still fucking here and you see the lead singer of Smashing Pumpkins buy a U-Hu at the convenience store and you think of a line from your friend's poem, "I'm an artist, man, I never look back" and you push your way into a bar, a dive, a hole, table lamps in the corners and nothing but rockabilly on the jukebox and the bathroom painted like a Spanish bullfight black velvet painting. The bartenders act like they're doing you a favor by getting you a drink but you wouldn't have it any other way 'cause beers are a buck and if you can't have an attitude here, where can you? And this is the only place in the city where you can run into people you know on the sidewalk and you do and you have some drinks and they ask what time it is and you look and you go...

(Drums stop) Oh, shit. I gotta go.

(Loud snare hit from the drums, then the "train" rhythm again) Drunk frat boys on the train, with Cubs shirts and painted faces and backwards baseball caps, hootin' and hollerin' and you want to hate them and usually you do but tonight you can't, tonight your soul joins in the revelry and swells inside you and you desperately want to believe the rallying cry on the train- "Tonight we're not going to lose! I just know it!" and the Ravenswood pulls up next to you, tired junior executives clogging their way back to their mini-suburb and a woman with pantyhose and tennis shoes looks at you and you look back and you stare at each other, both wanting to swap lives with each other at that exact moment, and her train stops at Diversey and you rush on and for exactly the one millionth time since you moved here, you have fallen in love and then lost the girl.

(Drums stop, and a person from the audience yells out) Next stop, Belmont! Belmont will be the next stop.

(Drummer plays a country-swing waltz beat) Teenage punk rockers hustle you for change, homeless high schoolers with pink hair and baggy shorts down past their knees who have been in Lakeview so long they don't even know any more why their forefathers picked the corner of Belmont and Clark to hang out at, only that they did. You trudge your ass down the street, past the rollerbladers and the designer sunglasses and the corporate bagel shops and the used record stores and you look into the window of Scenes and all the hipsters stare back at you and you run past Wellington, scared that this is the day you finally get sideswiped but you live to tell the tale and you are at the coffeehouse now and there is your friend. And you smoke and you drink and you drink and you smoke and you talk about your latest book and talk about your apartments and talk about a party this weekend and talk turns, as it always, always does every time, with every friend you've ever had up here, to neighborhoods- "Jack's got a place in Edgewater and he likes it except for the gangsters of course," "Mary just moved into Ukrainian Village and her place is the size of a goddamned airplane hangar," "Well, I was just in Andersonville, in Chinatown, in Boystown, Bucktown, Old Towne, Uptown, Gold Coast, Wrigleyville, Wicker Park, Lincoln Park, Rogers Park, Irving Park, Jesus Christ I've had too much coffee, what should we go do?" "Let's go up to the Green Mill and get smashed."

(Drums stop) Hey, I'm there.

(Loud snare hit from the drums, then the "train" rhythm again) The train starts getting dark past Wilson, and you realize this ain't your father's CTA anymore. The shouting, singing, trash-talking brothers put you on edge, kick in a fear for your life that you learned when you were three and never quite got rid of. In this city, racism isn't just a slogan on a public service announcement on the side of a bus, it's a way of life, and as you stare at the ground and try not to call attention to yourself, you realize you cannot survive in the City of Big Shoulders without generalizing, stereotyping, rationalizing and justifying. This place is like a giant melting pot whose pilot light went out about 1890, letting the layers settle and coagulate, seek out their similar atoms and clump, never to break free, a place where getting lost can get you killed. You ingest this information, you process it, and you try not to let it get you down.

(Drums stop, and a person from the audience yells out) Next stop, Lawrence! Lawrence will be the next stop.

(Drummer plays a country-swing waltz beat) Teenage punk rockers hustle you for change, homeless high schoolers with pink hair and baggy shorts down past their knees

(Drummer plays an incredibly smooth jazz beat) A quick dash to the Green Mill and then you are in, hanging out in Al Capone's stomping grounds, the speakeasy, the jazz club, the poetry slaminator, the Green fucking Mill. You order a martini because, goddamnit, you can, and you sit back and look at the art deco buildings out the window, crumbling WPA projects patiently waiting for the day they'll get saved, you watch Patricia Barber sit in the middle of the circular bartop and tickle the keys, deliver the perfect combination of torch music and pop music and new age music and just damn good music, you watch the tough and beautiful dykes sitting in the corner, watching her in awe and each wishing to a fault that they were her girlfriend. You drink and relax, drink and relax, drink, drink, drink and rrrrrreeeeelllllllaaaaaaaaaaaax and you're about to fall asleep on the padded leather and you look at your watch and it's two in the morning and shit, you gotta work at eight in the morning, and...

(Drums stop) I better call it a night.

(Loud snare hit from the drums, then the "train" rhythm again. Reader sits on stage and acts like he's asleep on the train, for about ten seconds)

(Drums stop, and a person from the audience yells out) Next stop, Bryn Mawr! Bryn Mawr will be the next stop.

(Drummer plays ethereal, moody sounds, brushes and mallets on cymbals) You slog your way past the derelict passed out on the sidewalk. You pass your grocery store, you currency exchange, your diner. The giant pink hotel doesn't even give you a second thought tonight. You unlock your door. You check your mail- flyer, flyer, flyer, the products of a thousand local mailing lists you keep seeming to end up on. You walk up the stairs, unlock the door again. Go down the hall, unlock the door again. Drop your bag. Drop your shoes. Drop your pants.

(Drums stop) You climb into bed. You smoke a cigarette. You fall asleep. And you dream. You dream that one day, the hand of God reached down from heaven and touched the southwest tip of Lake Michigan, and from the ground grew a flower, a big beautiful red rose with glorious petals, a pollen filled stem, and blood dripping off its thorns.