Nobody Goes Home Anymore

by Patti

Since we are taking off the next few days to be with our families, I am re-posting one of my old favorites.

The Wednesday night before Thanksgiving has always been one of the "Biggest Party Nights of the Year". I remember when my husband and I used to own that night, sleeping in until well past noon on Thanksgiving day, and then moseying on over to my parents' for the Thanksgiving feast. These days, the moseying is done by others to my house, and the only thing I'm doing on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is hoisting frozen turkeys into my cart.  But once in a while, I can try to relive it -- even if it's just any ol' Wednesday. 

Happy Thanksgiving!
.......

I am still on this glorious stretch of freedom with the kid and M out of the country, so when a friend of mine invited me to join her and a few of her other friends at this supposedly totally hot and happening place in a hip part of town (is “hip” even a word anymore?) for after-work drinks, how could I not go? And when Cathy, who is beginning her descent into the end of her own Glory Days of Freedom, heard where we were going, she was all “I’m in like Flynn!” (And if you think I’m kidding that she actually said that you are wrong. She actually said that.)

So we met up at Cathy's house for a little strategic pre-champagne champagne. Cathy's sister, Sophia, also met us there, and as we sipped our pre-champagne champagne, she suggested we might want to hit the road, as it would probably be impossible to get a table.

I, in my charmingly innocent oblivion, reminded her that it was Wednesday night and nobody goes out on Wednesday nights, so we didn’t need to rush.

But Sophia, a semi-newlywed and kid-less, is still in that sweet spot where every day has the potential to be a total spur-of-the-moment “let’s go to ___________ (fill in the blank with whatever the hell you want because YOU CAN).” And because she is still in the sweet spot, her dates with her husband do not consist of $1 Redbox movie rentals and a trying-to-be-fancy frozen pizza. No, her dates are the real kind, the kind where you put on hooch heels and perfume and actually try new restaurants that don’t have the word “pancake” or “house” in its name. This means Sophia knows things I apparently no longer know.

“Nobody goes home anymore”, she told us. “The place will be packed!”

I still didn’t believe her, but since we were meeting people there, we took our Sex and the City’d asses off of the comfortable kitchen chairs and headed out.

Once there, we parked and started our 2 block walk to the restaurant. It was a beautiful evening, the kind that totally makes the 7 months of hell that is a Chicago winter totally worth sticking it out. Along the way, I realized I was all wide-eyed, my neck craning to take in the skyline and the buildings around me as if I had just stepped off my very first plane ride from my farm in Iowa, brushing hay off of my denim overalls. I had lived in the city for 15 years, WHY DID IT ALL LOOK SO NEW TO ME?

Because it was new. Seemingly overnight, a whole new slew of hot spots had sprung up from the concrete; the sidewalks were teeming with after-work evening revelers, club doors were crowded with people hoping to be lucky enough to be let in.

This is crazy, I thought, it’s Wednesday night!

We reached our destination, and I already knew we were in trouble, because there were zillions of people waiting outside the door for their turn at a table. We found our party inside, and as we shouted over the din to each other, I looked around. Oh, it was a scene alright, a total See and Be Seen scene, and I realized that Sophia was right: Nobody goes home anymore.

Cathy jabbed me in the ribs and asked me if I smelled the pee. The PEE? Yes, the PEE.
Sophia smelled it, too, and the slide from totally excited to completely and totally disillusioned began.

We decided to leave the restaurant, the one we had anticipated for days, and headed down the street to a quieter, less crowded spot.

And we had a great time, we did. We ate things like bacon-wrapped dates and fancy pizza that went by a different name, and drank crisp, bubbly Prosecco, and felt happy and blessed to be out on such a beautiful night in such a beautiful city.

And when the night ended, we considered cramming another hotspot into our night because, really, when would we get the chance again? After all, it was Wednesday night!

But you know what? We were tired. And suddenly Cathy’s back deck seemed like the place to see and be seen. The line to get in was short, there was no cover charge, and we didn’t have to yell over music or Happy Hour Drunks to be heard. And once we got there, as I sipped on a sweet glass of velvety red wine and breathed in the air and the stars and the night, I realized: Yeah I’m getting old and I’m married and I’m a mother, and I certainly don’t know what the hot spots are anymore, and I say words like “hip” and “happening”, and I had no idea that Wednesday was the new Saturday….. but I liked going home, and this, right here, is exactly where I wanted to be.