Milwaukee

I'm butter off without you.

I’m in a city that has beguiled me in a way that shocks everyone I tell: Milwaukee.

As I think about why this may be, my answers feel complex and urbane in ways the city is not. That’s one of the charms of this small major city. And before I say more about the city and the allegory of domestic tourism, suffice it to say what I’ve learned in this prompt to write again because of Milwaukee, is that I am a good and positive person. I’m not saying that to assure myself of my virtues or to prove to you I’m working on myself. I’m saying that for months and then weeks between posts, I just could not, would not, write the sad mad shit in my head. And it was not some silencing posture of discretion (*fart noises* as if), but I didn’t really think I had anything of virtue to claim in being outraged. Basically, if I didn’t have anything nice to say I didn’t think I had to say it. Not here at least.

I finally have nice things to say, because I’m in a Milwaukee state of mind.

It begins with my cab ride to the airport in Philadelphia when the fantasy of being in Milwaukee begins. The driver’s name is Lekan, and I said it out loud—Hi, Lekan. And yes I’m sometimes the obnoxious fare who likes talking to drivers as much as passengers loathe being spoken to. Just sometimes like when I’m going to the Midwest. His face lit up like I’d confessed my love to him.

You said my name right. How did you know how to say it?

I actually don’t know how I “knew” except I thought maybe this is how my mom would say Raekwon. Or how Professor Wang at Columbia pronounced Lacan. And how many other ways would you say Lekan anyway. As we spoke about our cultural specificities, he remarked that I seemed tired, and I exploded in laughter. Aren’t YOU tired? Of course I’m tired! I was jovial in my response but why was I in a good mood? A stranger just called me ugly after I made his day saying his name out loud. I felt no entitlement to patronizing deference, but I really took his comment at face value.

When I arrive at Milwaukee Airport, I am hankering a steak but because I have a favorite Vietnamese spot not far from the airport, I train my will to abstain. I look up how to get to my pho spot and am shocked the public transit option is just four minutes longer than the car option for routes, so I look for the bus stop and find it just behind the taxi stand where there are zero taxis anyway. The bus driver of the route 80 I get on is completely unimpressed with my self-righteous embarkment (Bet ya didn’t expect a tourist to take the bus, did ya!!), and I take the bus as far as it gets me toward Pho Cali, before I have to switch to the 55 bus, except they don’t do free transfers and I don’t have dollar bills on me and it’s a lovely day, so instead of waiting for the next bus I decide to walk the remaining 30 minutes there.

I am at the bus stop and watch the bus drive away when like a scene in a bad movie, the bus-curtain is pulled to reveal a Carver’s across the street.

Butter ice cream

I said it out loud. Said it pretty loudly, in fact. And then I shook my head. I’ve been fighting like hell to lose 20 pounds and if I eat butter ice cream at 11am in Milwaukee I am fucked. So I walk toward Pho Cali like I promised myself, but now I’m thinking about allowing myself a sweet treat. I make it a couple blocks when I approach a gigantic strip mall and a gigantic restaurant called the Pita Palace at the driveway entrance of the mall. It is surrounded by a cinderblock wall and a garden hedge I can only assume was tended to freehand because it’s haphazard and not really thriving. In the parking lot, a large white SUV opened up and a family of boys exploded out and ran in. Their mother, a beautiful young woman wearing an ivory colored scarf with perfect makeup, yelled at them (gently), but took her time following them in. From outside looking in, I noticed a sign for Turkish coffee (which always means baklava is nearby), and a flyer for free English translations of the Quran. I changed my mind about pho and followed this family into the Pita Palace, where I ordered a kofta kebab platter, and as un-creepily as possible, watched the family and this beautiful mom in particular, eat while silently watching their respective devices. My eyes zoomed out focus to the decor of the overall restaurant, when finally I noticed Palestinian art—as in, the art was the shape of Palestine—covered in jewels and flowers. There is a Palestinian flag with a mashup emoji of a mad face covered in hearts. The activism kitsch moved me profoundly but the restraint it takes me not to advertise this on Instagram for my personal gloating, is monumental. I leave a substantial tip instead. Sorry.

To reward myself for taking the bus, I order a Lyft to take me back to my hotel. I wrote down names of things I passed on the drive that I’d like to return to later. A community garden, a taco stand, a vape shop with a funny name (whose sign I’d take a picture of but no, I wouldn’t start vaping). The driver asked if I was going to work and I said, “sort of. I’m here on business,” and I paused to consider the different implications of the phrases “going to work” versus “traveling for business.” He told me how much he likes Milwaukee and shared that his family moved here from the South. He asked what Philly was like, and I went on a very long rant about how the city always got in its own way. I might have said some mean things about city leadership. I realized I’d just gone on for about 8 minutes about Philadelphia when I paused to take a breath and he was dead silent the rest of the ride. I leave another substantial tip. Sorry.

The Great Lakes are profound. I have just to know of their presence behind me from the cardinal direction of my hotel room, to feel immense calm and intimidation. The last two times I visited Milwaukee I rented a car and made a speed run for Sheboygan to see the Kohler Art Preserve—possibly my favorite museum in the world. I drive down the coast, compelled by the quiet, not quite natural design of these beaches. I’m sure much of it is private to the waterfront wealthy, but I feel neither provoked to defy nor prevented from admiring it, and occasionally found myself parking by a driveway and stepping into private property to really get the landscape. (I know this is kind of nuts but I honestly did it like, twice and listen…I didn’t see anyone for miles.)

The meteorological atmosphere of Milwaukee is sincere. In is original use, the word climate referred not to weather systems but to land, because it used to be that a microclimate was so predictable it could dictate one’s physical location. I get a sense of that here. And I know the climate crisis has surely affected Wisconsin, but when it’s minus 20 I may assume it is late November and today I see late spring clouds that mirror the lake.

There are people here I really like. Some of you will know the Ruth Foundation for the Arts. That’s how I was first invited here. They are a really special group of people. I think it would embarrass too many people for me to go into who’s who, but the social politics of how arts administrators become friends and frenemies is so fascinating to me. I liken this dynamic to the fact that though I would never be caught dead running a marathon, all of my favorite women in the world have all done a version of one. And that’s how we become friends—through that difference. I think if I also ran marathons we’d actually be foes. Remarkably, I found a dream bicycle here and bought it. One should always value a place where one can walk up to a factory and ask to try a product. At the risk of sounding like a pre-capitalist curmudgeon (though in the interest of full disclosure, I grew up before band-aids had media partnerships with shows with names like Paw Patrol), I find genuine pleasure in the cottage industry, and if I say anything to any one of permanence, it might be: ignore the internet when you want something durable. It doesn’t have to be “Made in America” but it will change your relationship with objects to be able to talk to the people who broker them from the fabricator to your possession.

I have no idea what Milwaukee is known for. Someone said cheese curds once and aside from it being a repulsive sequence of words to say out loud, I don’t want it to be that. And this brings me to my last point about Milwaukee. I want it to be mine, and that has nothing to do with its hidden charms or open splendors.

Like many people, I find smells triggering. As I showered with a hotel soap advertised as “Geranium scented” I remembered how much I hate the Mrs. Meyers liquid soap of the same derivation. Ugh if you want to never see me again, put that shit in your bathroom. This soap smelled different; acceptable. I realized that the smell wasn’t inciting traumatic memories or anything. Like old perfumes we wore as early lovers, it was just embarrassing to admit we once liked them. The fatigue of parsing trends of our past is the bugaboo, not the scent itself. My pretentious Aesop bergamot-lavender is someone’s else’s Mrs. Meyers geranium, surely. In ten years all of this will be Bath and Body Works Vanilla Jizz. In ten years Milwaukee becomes Detroit. Milwaukee becomes New Orleans. If Milwaukee became a cheesesteak, an Erewohn, a lover. I am sure it would corrode the meaning of my relationship to it as a place of occasions if it became a place of memories. And that’s how I am learning to want something to be mine again—by refusing to let it belong to me.

Lunch at the Pita Palace. Free Palestine.