Sliding Doors

The past is not always a foreign country -- sometimes, you write a book and then get on a plane.

Jeremy Gordon is the author of See Friendship, which was released in March by Harper Perennial. He's a senior editor on the culture desk at The Atlantic, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, GQ, Pitchfork, The Nation, and The Outline. He lives in Brooklyn.

CHICAGO — DAY ONE

My mother has a surprise, she informs me when we step into the house and I drop off my bags. Something special. I don’t ask questions. I am 36 years old, and an only child, and have not lived at home for nearly 13 years. Maintaining our relationship means occasionally cosplaying the past, I’ve learned. Several years ago, we were arguing about something—I can’t remember what—and I told her she had to stop treating me like a child. The heated and accusatory tone of our conversation abruptly sobered up. “You have to understand something,” she said, suddenly very serious. “You’re always going to be my little boy.” For the first time in my life, I grasped that she really meant it.

Ergo I follow her, as a little boy follows his mommy, into the kitchen, where she directs my attention toward the stovetop and pulls the lid off a pot. Savory steam punches me in the face; I look down to see a blob of clay-colored meat atop a bed of soggy greens. “Corned beef and cabbage,” she proudly announces. “For St. Patrick’s Day.”

I should note here that my mother is a 100% Chinese-American woman and the other side of my lineage is Russian-Jewish, traced back to the old country. The Gordons and Skebelskys and Goldbergs and Chins—branches along my family tree—are not, and have never been, genetically associated with the Irish. But we are in Chicago, where the river is annually dyed emerald-green and every mayor, even the gay and Black ones, abide by the insistent traditions of the local whites. So corned beef and cabbage it is.

I am ready to be immersed in Chicago, and reborn a Chicagoan. I’ve hit town to promote my debut novel, See Friendship, released in early March and received with encouraging warmth at several readings along the coasts. After accompanying me on the California leg, my wife Jen has headed back to New York to attend to our cat, who recently had a brick-sized poop removed via enema and shouldn’t be left to a sitter for too long. Thus I’m flying solo for the homecoming event, and my fantasies of fireworks, balloon floats, an exploding neon sign of my name above the event space are somewhat counterbalanced by my ability to also anticipate the reliably humbling experience of falling asleep alone in my teenage bedroom, beneath a poster of the Teen Titans I’ve left taped up since high school.

In interviews and conversations, I’ve coined a very technical term to describe the style of my book: “autofictional-ish.” While I suppose I’ve set myself up for this, I’m surprised by how the fabricated events of my novel have already commingled with the real life dynamics I’ve smudged for entertainment, creating Inception-style situations where I’ve lost track of what’s real and what’s fake. Old friends have hit me up to discuss the recollections that my book has triggered, and when responding I sometimes can’t tell if I’m pulling from my own memories, or from my semi-fictional narrator’s completely fictional memories. When writing I was very aware of how I personally differentiated from my character—and now I’m in the thick of it, and losing track. The thinness of nostalgia is one of my book’s recurring themes, but now that I’m physically present in Chicago I do not want to be let down by yesteryear.

The corned beef is savory, the cabbage nourishing. If she’s whipped this up before I can’t remember but my mother, in general, is an excellent cook. Once I asked why she didn’t make more Chinese food at home, and she told me: “Because I ate it three times a day for 18 years.” I think about this often, the act of saying no; a few years ago I went on a big Bartleby the Scrivener kick and the act of refusal began to feel like the basis of all human dignity.

The process of publishing a book is, I’m finding, a tug-of-war between indulgence and restraint. I’m sure there are things I should be doing, actions I should be undertaking, but I’m starting to think que sera, sera. I’ve spent 5.5 years and countless edits working on this thing, but nobody reads, anyway, and I’d rather nudge it into existence than send another false-chipper “just wanted to see how the book is treating you!” email to a galley recipient who’s also following the post-inauguration flurry of executive orders and fantasizing about the end of the world.

After eating we decide to mint my arrival with a movie, and somehow pick Godzilla Minus Zero. I pop a mild edible because we’re just hanging out, but within minutes I’m sliding into dream time. It feels like every switch in my body has been flipped off; I don’t think I’ve ever felt so tired while remaining technically awake. Forty-five minutes in, I excuse myself to trudge upstairs to my bedroom.

Psychologically, perhaps I become perfectly at ease when ensconced in the familiar and comforting setting of my adolescent home. More obviously, I’ve backfired by taking an edible around my mom. (This will be the last one I attempt on this trip.) Over in New York, Jen’s heavily delayed flight is finally landing, and while I’d normally wait for her to get back to our apartment before going to sleep, I say goodnight over text and stare at the Teen Titans poster until I pass out.

CHICAGO — DAY TWO

My second day in town is already a transitional one. My mother and her partner Don have their errands, I have my job and various book-related tasks. In about a month, I’ll be hosting a screening of Superbad at Nitehawk, and the yet-to-be-launched online ticket portal will bear my yet-unwritten promo copy. While the protagonists of Superbad are both white, and both alive, my novel also concerns male friendship in the Bush era, albeit considered through a modern lens. More importantly, the movie is still hysterical—Jen and I revisited it a few years ago, on an off day during an out-of-town wedding—and I want to get people in the door, where they will hopefully drink several beers and then purchase my book. I’m also interviewed by a smart young woman who is tickled to learn I am talking to her from my teenage bedroom, given how roughly 7% of my novel takes place in my protagonist’s teenage bedroom.

This is a new vantage point, observing how other people are observing me. Promoting my book has been an interesting perspective shift, given the many years I’ve spent on the other side of the aisle, interviewing and critiquing and theorizing like every other overeducated Brooklyn dweeb. I am not conditioned to be feted and applauded; my default register is thinking “look at that asshole” at someone who is being feted and applauded. But one of my ongoing life goals is to try something new. To push away from learned behaviors toward the uncomfortable and unknown. You don’t win any points for being stubborn, or spiritually Gen X.

A few years ago, my best friend Matthew—also a writer—was grousing about how embarrassing it was to “provide a head shot,” which he had been asked to do for a reading. “The thing is, there’s so many writers who are so stoked to provide a head shot,” I remember telling him. “And worse: Some of them are very talented.”

Dinner is homemade chili doused with a bottle of Louisiana hot sauce that I purchased at a Walgreen’s nearly 2 years ago, which my mother has finally opened. (Her kitchen, like the kitchen of many other mothers, is a repository of leftovers and pantry items.) As we eat, Tal welcomes me to Chicago over text—he’s seen the Instagram stories—and says he’ll be in my area for dinner. I propose that we should get a drink at a bar down the block called the Marquee Lounge. Tal is unfamiliar, and instead suggests an Irish bar that’s exactly as good and much further away. I hold the line; Marquee Lounge it is.

My mother lives in Lincoln Park, which was famously the site of the 1968 DNC riots, where hundreds of Chicago police officers beat the shit out of the antiwar protesters. She spent her thirties in an apartment about fifteen minutes from where we are now, and in the early 1980s was robbed at knife point by a burglar who climbed three flights of porch stairs and came in through the screen door. This is also where I spent my childhood.

But gentrification did its thing by the time I was potty trained. Lincoln Park is now categorically “nice,” filled with grotesquely modern town houses and doomed-to-fail boutique businesses. (A nearby corner building once hosted two separate macaroon bakeries that each opened and closed within 18 months.) Right now, the big local trend is coolsculpting spas; on my afternoon walk, I count about four on one three-block stretch.

Make a wrong turn in this area, and you’ll be squeezing through DePaul frat boys to get a $3 Old Style. Tal’s skepticism of the Marquee Lounge comes from his good taste, his up-to-date appraisal of every city’s culinary scene. He’s the type of person who will confidently say things like “Chicago has three good bagel places right now,” to which I archly reply: “Only three?” But the Marquee Lounge is, really, just a bar. Pool table in the back, sports on multiple TVs. A group of raucous and loaded old-timers right next to us. I have gotten pleasantly drunk here on multiple occasions, and tonight is no different.

Tal and I met about a decade ago at the Pitchfork Music Festival. There are people I’ve known for much longer, who I have not yet made plans to see, but I do not want to solely rely on well-worn routines. As we drink, he quizzes me about the book and I recite things I believe are true about it. He is a curious and thoughtful friend, and I appreciate that he’s reached out ahead of my event, which he will also be attending. This sort of proactive gesture is how adult men inch toward being one-on-one friends; I reject all predetermined conclusions about the male loneliness crisis, or how guys can’t seem to open up to each other. Just fucking try—try!

He tells me one piece of gossip that makes me laugh and another piece of gossip that makes me sad, both of which I will later tell my wife. He also informs me he recently had his gallbladder removed and proceeds to narrate what sounds like a truly nightmarish hospital experience. When the bill comes, we agree that I’m paying for drinks.

CHICAGO — DAY THREE

Norman Mailer (I think) once said that Chicago is like Brooklyn without the specter of Manhattan looming over it. I love the culinary diversity, the wide open spaces, the hyperlocal customs embedded within every neighborhood, the pro sports teams, the musical history: blues and hip-hop and alternative and emo and indie and also the Hood Internet. Earth Wind & Fire are a Chicago band, did you know that? (I bet you didn’t.)

I did not abandon my hometown out of distaste and embarrassment; there is very much a Sliding Doors reality in which I’m celebrating Jeremy Jr.’s fifth birthday at the Lakeview townhouse where I’ve just paid off my mortgage. I think everyone should be lucky enough to grow up in a city. I would happily abolish the suburbs to create a chain of yawning megacities, like Neo-Tokyo in Akira or the megalopolis in Megalopolis, across America.

Tonight, my mother and Don and I have a reservation at the Chicago Chop House, an old-school steakhouse located in scenic River North, one block away from what used to be the Rock n’ Roll McDonalds. It’s been open since 1986, which I suppose is not so old-school; I was born in 1988, which would make me… oh, no. Tal thinks there are better steak houses, which is probably true, but the ambience at Chop House is unmatched—it’s dark and cozy, with low ceilings and walls lined with sepia-toned portraits of all the great Chicago builders and businessmen and politicians.

We didn’t eat at places like this when I was growing up, but the older I get the more interested I am in traditions, especially the ones that are not mine. My mother has never been one of those Chinese mothers, quick to judge or negligent with her affection; still, I feel obligated to make sure she has a good time. When New York did that big cover story on the state of Asian America that climaxed with a defiant “fuck filial piety,” I remember thinking, Well… With respect to the lived experiences of my peers, I’m sticking to the straight and narrow on this one.

We order up a feast: shrimp cocktail, Caesar salad, French fries, a New York strip that is sliced and shared. The portions are generous; our prawns are plump, and possibly pumped with growth hormones. I order an ice cold martini, and then a second. The restaurant is loud, which stymies the flow of conversation. There is a slightly muted feeling to our dinner, not a jovial back-and-forth. Part of me regrets directing us here, even as the food is wonderful; I consider that it might be some ultimate poser shit to attempt impressing your mommy by taking her to a steakhouse. Maybe some traditions are not meant to be yours, even if you’re paying for it.

But the people watching is better than a movie. The Chop House is near corporate downtown, and we are surrounded by so many arrangements of businessmen in quarter-zips and fleece vests, so many beautiful young women on dates with leathery old fucks. We watch a long table of identically dressed men receive identically portioned filet mignons, each one looking like an expectant orphan boy in a soup line as the waiter sets down their plate. My mother and I discuss the possibility that by ordering their own steaks, rather than the higher-quality shareable cuts, these men are afraid of looking like homosexuals. Masculinity is a prison, we agree (in so many words), and dinner is saved.

CHICAGO — DAY FOUR

Fifteen years ago, in my senior year of college, I came down with a mysterious viral disease that nuked my motor and verbal functions for about a month, removing my participation from outdoor society. My mental faculties were somehow completely uninterrupted, though all I could think was: “My God, this fucking sucks.”

Everyday I’d fall asleep on my mother’s couch hoping I’d wake up back to normal. I’ll never forget the relief on the first morning when I felt my symptoms abate just slightly, and I realized I was well enough to stumble to the nearby Best Buy and purchase something, anything. (I ended up picking the new Weezer album, for reasons that are just too complicated to explain.) Whenever I’m hit with a bug, I retain the same faith in the restorative powers of sleep—that the right nap is all it takes to revert back to factory settings.

So I am trying not to think about the shiver in my spine and sour taste in my mouth that have nagged me since I woke up. My book event is less than 36 hours away, and the idea of being sick is so laughably timed that I just have to push it out of mind and call off work to hit the hay.

This sudden rush of maladies is part of an unfortunate pattern. My immune system is relatively teflon except for when I’m staying with my mom, where there’s a 50-50 shot that I will be waylaid at some point. Psychologically, perhaps my body yearns for a return to the past; I have had to postpone return flights because of illness, allowing me to soak up extra Chicago time and maternal care. More obviously, I’ve been on the road for nearly 2 weeks and gotten maybe three nights of good sleep.

Sadly, my nap is useless. Matthew and I have made loose plans for a one-on-one drink, during which we will talk freely as best friends and men. As the evening approaches, I concede it’s not happening. This will be the most disappointing part of my trip, this denial of alone time with my best bro, but sometimes you have to do what’s best for business and cancel. After dinner, I pop some aspirin and go to bed early.

CHICAGO — DAY FIVE

My plan is simple. I am going to get through this reading, shake some hands, then zip home and sleep forever. I can’t see anything else happening, not the way I feel right now—a combination of blech and ech that is not COVID, according to the test, but still has me feeling like a wrung-out dish towel. The book tour is possibly activating some subterranean tension that my brain cannot even consciously register. I want every event to go well, and the faint possibility that it will go bad activates some complex set of stress reactions in my body.

My mother, in heroic form, peels me three oranges, provides a Vitamin-C supplement, and picks up matzoh ball soup from a Jewish deli called The Bagel where I’ve been eating since childhood. I feel better for about an hour before collapsing back into bed. Thus I embrace the mantra of all stoics and depressives: “It is what it is.” You can go home again, but sometimes you’ll feel like shit.

As Don drives us to the bookstore, I’m slumped over in the backseat texting Jen and Matthew about how terrible I feel—50% would be a generous estimate. I’m a 2.5 on the Letterboxd scale, a Pitchfork 5.6. In an attempt to pump myself up I make several references to the Jordan flu game, how this will be my finest performance, though I’m not sure I believe it.

But as I step through the doors of City Lit, the bookstore that is hosting my reading, something happens.

I spot an old friend, Moira, in line at the register; I spot another old friend, Josh, standing near her. The mere sight of people I haven’t seen in awhile is like an airborne pick-me-up. Adrenaline, or something like it, surges through my body, and within seconds I feel totally fine. Possibly, I have never felt better in my life. As I walk through the store hugging people and shaking hands like Henry Hill at the Copacabana, all of my worry and stress melts away. It’s sort of unbelievable—just five minutes before, I was actively dreading the evening, and now it’s like a quack doctor has jabbed B12 and methamphetamine into my ass.

The event itself is a dream. Lots of people I know show up—faces from childhood, adulthood, and in-between—and as well as lots of people I don’t know. Susie, the first punk girl I ever befriended, materializes in the signing line, and I’m so happy to see her—it’s been at least a decade—that I broadcast a glossolalic stream of emotions that make her visibly tear up. The store sells out of every copy and I instruct a thousand people to meet us at the bar.

I have felt happier in my life, for sure—like my wedding day, or when the Cubs won the World Series. But this does feel specifically triumphant, in a way that is new and uncomplicated.

Matthew has done the local scouting, and settled on the Whirlaway Lounge as our afterparty. The Whirlaway is a true dive, with basement decor and a bartender who looks like she lives on-site. Inside, I am riding the high of whatever alchemic rejuvenation happened at the bookstore, and I flit between groups of people before smashing them together and insisting they meet. I feel free, delirious with good fortune. I tell Olivia I found her intimidating in high school. I cackle when Nausicaa describes a guy we disdain as a dilettante. I detail the vagaries of the publishing business to a member of the band Whitney. I insist that my conversation partner at the event, the novelist Peter C. Baker, describes the plot of the book he’s working on, nodding furiously in support.

By now, whatever illness was in my body has been replaced by vibes and vodka. The crowd peels off over the course of a few hours, but just as I think I’m ready to close out, my friend Wesley—who I have known since kindergarten—comes through the door. He is a true mensch, a computer engineer who does not even mind when people are blathering about writing—something he has weathered about 3,387 times in the presence of my friends. The last time we saw each other was at my bachelor party, nearly two years ago, where he made donuts from scratch at like 3 in the morning for all of the lads.

When I idly float the possibility that I will eat Taco Bell by myself once we leave, Wesley and Matthew mention they could also use a bite. We pile into Wesley’s car and make for Small Bar, a fake dive that allegedly sells delicious gourmet burgers, according to Matthew. My confession is that I think many burgers are “pretty good” and there are diminishing returns once you factor in cost and wait. But the burger at Small Bar, which arrives quickly and is moderately priced, is the perfect digestif to the festivities. We order too many French fries, and eat standing, and I hunch over my plate Fieri-style to avoid dripping anything onto my suit.

I take a moment to appreciate the configuration. Wesley was my teenage best friend, and Matthew is my adult best friend; they met at the bachelor party, but barely know each other. This is not a reunion of “back in the day” good time boys but a new social unit, seamlessly humming along and semi-drunkenly yapping in the bar. In the Sliding Doors version of my life where I never left Chicago, I could do this with Wesley and Matthew all of the time, growing fat and happy on an endless stream of cheap beer and bar burgers. But I’m flying back to New York in 36 hours, and must cherish the moment as it’s happening.

Wesley offers to drive us all home, and obviously we say yes. When it’s just the two of us, we catch up on each other’s families and wives before he pulls up to my mom’s house, as he did dozens of times in high school. I will permit myself this satisfying taste of nostalgia, and look at Zillow prices before passing out.

CHICAGO — DAY SIX

The end of the trip approaches. I text with Jen, who attended our friend Sophie’s informal novel launch party last night and fills me in on the hot goss. I text with Dan, who after attending the same party had an unpleasant confrontation with some pathetic downtown types, one of whom yelled “Jew!” at him over and over. Dan’s counter-insult was “obese rapist,” a factually correct claim that makes him the winner of this altercation. I do not like the thought of my friend being harassed on the street by a bunch of Twitter users, but I’m proud he fought fire with a bandolier of hand grenades.

Tonight, Olivia has offered to host a dinner in my honor—a small gathering that will allow us to catch up in an intimate setting, rather than scream at each other in an overstuffed bar. Usually during my trip I’ll squeeze in a trip to Alice’s, my favorite public karaoke bar, but this is a routine worth breaking for friendship. In the afternoon, I hoof it to Binny’s Beverage Depot, a regional liquor chain that is the preferred vendor of the discerning alcoholic—it’s as big as a Costco, and with similar variety—where I grab a couple of classy bottles of white wine as tribute.

I’m the first to arrive at Olivia’s. Ann-Derrick brings homemade apple cobbler; Laura brings homemade espresso martinis; Clayton brings homemade marinated cucumber salad; Matthew and Jessie and Helene all bring booze. Olivia, meanwhile, plates eight perfect bowls of khao soi topped with pickled vegetables and crunchy noodles. (She was a long-time Momofuku employee, and studied well.)

The mood is convivial, chatty. Laura’s espresso martinis are like liquid Adderall. Someone tells a story about a writer who wronged them and we forensically examine every detail of the interaction; we theorize about the inner life of a person we collectively dislike, and break down how it all goes back to junior year of high school. A coworker recently told me her go-to karaoke song is Eminem’s “Superman”—respectfully, Bethany, what the fuck—and when I mention this of course we start listening to Eminem’s “Superman.” At one point we are actually screaming over each other, and the music isn’t even that loud.

It is important to have a home, I think—a place where you can return, and feel loved. I do not take this for granted. I’ve considered that it’s the bedrock of my long-term mental health, the ability to hop on a plane and be welcomed by family and friends alike.

When the conversation drunkenly turns to the climate crisis, everyone agrees that the Midwest will be well-positioned to ride out the forthcoming shockwaves. I do wonder. Someone makes a dark joke about how they want to erect borders, but only around Illinois; another person starts talking seriously about how it’s time to buy a gun. We all believe in society and our fellow man, but two months into the new presidency, “the end” is in the air—especially after a bunch of drinks. “Your friends are fun,” Ann-Derrick tells me as we stand outside, waiting for our Ubers. She’d never met anyone before tonight; I invited her because emergent friendships are a force-multiplying part of life.

In about 12 hours, I’ll be hungover and sleepy, on a flight back to Jen. She’s currently at our friend Jeremy’s 40^th birthday party, and texting me updates—it sounds like a lovely time, one I’m sad to have missed. Tomorrow will be the first time I’ve stepped into my apartment in two weeks, and I am ready to be home.

Before all this began, Charlie—a friend who is also a publicist—told me I should think of my book as an excuse to celebrate with my community. I do not always have an easy time grasping what this means, “my community,” but the tour has been a lesson. When planning my itinerary, I had to choose between a long stint in Los Angeles and a long stint in Chicago. I think I made the correct decision, and that Charlie was exactly right.