There was my wife Lilly, a writer, with her long black curls and crazy angled cheekbones. She was from Chicago and favored wrap sweaters that accentuated her not so bountiful cleavage.

There was Bob, he of the big gap-toothed smile and awful crew cut. He was a banker and liked to eat Kobe beef burgers on his company expense account.

Kelly was a blonde from Texas who had come to Chicago to be something other than the former cheerleader, soon to be the trophy wife she was raised to be.

Frank was a lobbyist. He had grown-up in a small town downstate. He was so good-looking with his chiseled jaw and good hair, and so charismatic on top of that, the town couldn’t contain him.

Bonnie was a red haired marketing chick who spent all day ensuring that people Got Milk. She talked so much at work she barely said a word the rest of the time.

And then there was me, Jeff, an actuary with thinning, coarse hair and issues, according to Lilly anyway, with aggression, passive and otherwise.

We were all here, in Chicago at the dawn of a new decade, with a new president from our city. A president we had all watched march triumphantly into Grant Park after his victory was assured and briefly turn our second city into the center of the universe.

Obama was gone now though. Off to Washington to change the world. He hadn’t really ended any wars yet, however, and the economy was better, but what of the lack of real jobs, not to mention gay rights?

We didn’t talk about these things, he was gone, and we were all here, standing around the island in Frank and Bonnie’s kitchen.

Everyone was smiling, bantering, the kids running around the house, yelling, crazy, laughing, being kids and now old enough to entertain themselves so we could actually stand there and have some drinks, and talk, actually talk.

Not that Bonnie talked. She said this was because she was talking all day at work, pitching and hustling. But we also knew this was because of Frank and his endless need to take over every room, fill it up and suck the air out of it until it all belonged to him.

And people loved him for it, on the golf course and in Springfield where he held court like a young prince.

We loved him too, in the way you love attractive people and are hoping that by loving them, some of their beauty will rub off on you. Still, we were all here for Bonnie, and if, or more accurately, when they divorced we all knew she was welcome to claim us as part of her haul.

The question for me was whether I had a shot at Bonnie. Now, did this mean I wanted to cheat on Lilly? No. Not consciously, but did I wonder what it might be like, I did, just like I wondered if Lilly would sleep with Frank if she could, assuming she hadn’t already.

Did I really know what she was up to all day while I was at work and she claimed to be writing? Further, were you really a writer if you had never actually published anything, well, besides some early pedestrian stuff in student literary magazines?

Isn’t art in the transaction? This wasn’t clear to me, but did it even matter, no, not tonight, not when so much fun was being had and the kids were running around, and away, from us, full of joy, and frolic.

Still, we did have questions about Kelly and Bob. Kelly’s husband Joe had fucked the pre-school teacher. We all wanted to, if just so we could hear her yell our names in her thick, Serbian accent. Kelly had not been so understanding, and now Joe was out of the picture because Lilly and Bonnie had decided he was out and Frank and I had decided we weren’t going to fight with them.

We really liked Joe though, he was a funny, funny dude, a bad husband, but a funny dude. Further, Kelly had immediately taken-up with Bob. They were dating, and Bob had left his wife for Kelly, which we understood, because Bob’s ex-wife Molly was fucking crazy and we only stayed friends with them for the kids.

We had always hoped Bob and Molly would break-up, but that’s because we assumed they would go away if they did. Molly had gone away as hoped, which was great, but Bob had not, which was not so great, we were stuck with him, as was Kelly.

The fact was, Bob hadn’t been banking for awhile, we just didn’t know it. He was like one of those unemployed Japanese guys that get dressed for work every day because they’re too proud to tell anyone they’ve lost their job and then just sit in the park, suited-up with nowhere to go.

Except, Bob didn’t even do that, some days he sat in The 3rd Coast drinking coffee in his sweat pants, but most days he just sat in the Old Town Ale House drinking one Old Style after the next.

He had come clean to Kelly after he banged her and moved in; and she was making a go of it, but it wasn’t pretty, certainly not when he drank and raged about Obama and his inability to create jobs for honest, working Americans because Obama preferred to focus on Muslims and blacks and socialism and everything but the economy.

He wasn’t raging tonight though, because tonight we were all here, and we were happy, drinking, talking, getting high and thinking about getting laid.

The kids were still running around as well, laughing, crying, jumping and screaming, full of joy and frolic.

You wouldn’t have known that Kelly’s son Josh had Asperger’s, you couldn’t tell tonight, and she hadn’t mentioned immunizations even once, which was good, because one night after we had all been drinking for hours, she had said that her younger daughter Lucy would never be immunized like Josh had been and Bonnie had drunkenly called her a selfish parasite.

You also couldn’t tell that Bonnie and Frank’s daughter Sophie had cancer. She still had so much energy and spunk and vigor. She was beautiful and they coddled her, and if her illness maybe reminded Frank just a little too much of his brother dying when they were kids, he didn’t let on much, not often anyway.

It’s true that one night I had seen him crying on Lilly’s shoulder, heaving actually, all the usual bluster gone, his handsome face swollen and ugly. I had maybe even seen them kiss before Lilly ran off, and it was okay, really, I figured it might even come in handy if I ever had a chance to get some alone time with Bonnie.

But that was for another night, a night when we weren’t all so happy and full of glee, drinking and smoking, and hanging with friends, as our kids ran to and fro, darting about at our feet, all present, all in the moment, and all here.


Ben Tanzer is the author of the books 99 Problems (cclapcenter.com/99problems/) and You Can Make Him Like You (makehimlikeyou.com) among others, as well as, the forthcoming novella My Father’s House and humor collection This American Life. Ben also oversees day to day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life (thiszinewillchangeyourlife.blogspot.com) and can be found him online at This Blog Will Change Your Life (bentanzer.blogspot.com/) the center of his vast, albeit faux media empire.