The Leanover.

It's 3AM and I'm over it.

It began earlier in the night, midnight ti be precise (the time in which I venture out of my cave and purchase vodka tonics).

I took a ridiculously expensive cab to a club downtown where the doorman didn't care that I had a terrible fake id so much as he cared about the length of my dress, which was short, and the height of my heels, which were high. It was the sort of place where guys who own more hair products than girls sport faux-haws and trashy, pseudo hookers wear scraps of fabric that, unfortunately, let their fish lips out greet the entire room.

BUT.

It was my best friend's birthday.

So, I didn't really care.

And there she was, Christy, a best friend from junior high and high school who I hadn't spoken to in three years. It's amazing how easy it is to slip back into "Girrrrl", "Nuh-uh", and "Shit, are you for real?" when you are around the right person. 

"I didn't want to leave," Christy said about her time in Paris.

Other things that she said:
That they "love us" over there
That race is less of an issue than in the U.S.
That men are forward in their feelings (and in my mind, won't call you a slut *ahem* for wanting affection)
That she felt like she could be herself

"I think every female owes it to herself to go!" she exclaimed and I thought about my false starts abroad and how I've grown to resent the city for which I'm born and bred.

And so I'm done with it.

I loathe it all.

I hate the hyper-segregation that people pretends doesn't exist. I hate white girls calling me ugly and black girls calling me an "oreo". I hate black guys calling me a traitor and white guys calling me fat. I hate the hipster scene. I hate the club head scene. I hate the bro scene. I hate racist frat boys from the Midwest. I hate pretentious art students from the suburbs. I hate the winter. I hate the racism. I hate feeling like shit because I'm treated like shit. I hate that we act like we are truly a second city. I hate the lack of culture, of fashion, of creativity. I hate the entitled drivers and the reckless bikers. I hate the CTA. I hate the gentrification and displacement and racial hierarchies. I hate the pet owners who won't clean up their dogs shit and the Lincoln Park old money. I hate the Cubs. I hate the Sox. I hate the rivalry. I hate the North Side and the South Side and the fact that people completely omit the West Side and pretend like the rivalry is not about race...when it is. I hate people staring at me. I hate feeling like an outsider. I hate people not knowing where I'm coming from or what I'm feeling. I hate dumb questions about my hair or my skin or idiotic assumptions about my background. I hate that we pretend and ignore and act immature, childish and naive. I hate it all and I hate that it affects me so, makes me resentful. I hate that I can't be myself, that I don't know myself and that, the longer I stay here, the more that will be true.