iii. Slippery Slope

Slippery Slope is a bar located in Logan Square. It is a fitting name. They have three skeeball machines. They have a photo booth. They have a dance floor. And the entire bar is filled with red lights so that everything has an eerie glow, like when you mess with the hue and saturation on an old television. Everyone is radioactive. Everyone is fuzzy.

Slippery Slope is, for lack of a better term, a shit show. It is also my favorite bar in Chicago.

I've gone to the Slope, as my friends and I call it, a number of times since it opened last year. My maiden voyage happened over the summer, the Saturday after Brazil imploded against Germany in the World Cup semifinals (I mean total self-destruction. 7-1? Come on, Brazil!). I was wearing a starfish shirt and jorts. The Slope had a special on Four Roses so Four Roses is what I drank and, girl, did I drank. I drank a lot.

I've danced all over this city and, while it's usually fun, something always feels off. The floor is too sticky to dougie (Holiday Club) or the DJ is only playing industrial goth music (Neo) or dudes keep grabbing my waist and trying to dance with me because it is Halloween and I am dressed as Elsa from the movie Frozen and they don't realize I am a man until I turn around and they see my beard (Big City Tap). A couple of dudes didn't care and still tried to grind.

A combination of the music, the red lights and the Four Roses is part of what makes the Slope so intoxicating. It's the only place where I truly feel like I can "dance like no is watching." That might be because it's also the only place where I regularly drink whiskey. Double. Neat. Many.

That first night, I met up with a friend from Rice. She saw me dancing/sweating all over the stage, motioned for me to come closer, then asked with a worried expression on her face: "Are you on drugs?" (For the record, I was not)

The Slope is, in one word, freedom.

I would say it's a memorable experience, but every time I go, my memories become smudged. My recollection is crystal clear until 11PM, at which point my brain skips around like a scratched record. If I focus hard enough, I catch glimpses of myself dancing on stage or yelling "Watermelon" whenever I don't know the lyrics to a song. My memories become less hazy around the 3AM mark. Closing my tab. The Mexican food we eat to sober up. The (stupid and ill-advised) wobbly bike ride home. At 5AM, the sun is rising and I am pulling the covers over my head.

Sunday is pain.

The following Monday, I ride into work, remove my helmet and sit at my desk. I open my laptop and begin checking emails.

"Dude." Conor will say to me, shaking his head.

"What?" I ask.

"Dude." Matt will say, also shaking his head.

"What?" I repeat, a little louder, a little frantic.

"You were misbehavin' at the Slope the other night." Johnross will say with a grin, sipping his iced coffee, also shaking his head.

It is at this point that the missing chunks of memory are revealed to me.

You kept shouting "HEY, RED SHIRT. RED SHIRT. YEAH, YOU, RED SHIRT." at a guy wearing a red shirt.
You grabbed a Santa decoration hanging from the wall and wore it as a mask while dancing.
You tried to unlock a bike that wasn't yours, then when we took you to your bike, you looked around and said "This… This isn't mine…"

In another word, the Slope is escape.

Blackouts are fascinating. How your memories and recollection perish with the brain cells you drown in alcohol. How one second you're dancing, the next eating a taco. It's like time travel. Only you still have to deal with any repercussions from the fallout of the night before (i.e. hangovers).

Is drinking to that point excessive and unnecessary? Maybe. It's definitely unhealthy. Every time I go to the Slope, I do irreparable damage to my poor liver and brain just for the sake of "having fun" or "letting loose" or "cutting a rug."

And yet, every time I Slope it (we've even managed to turn 'going to the Slope' into a verb), that is what happens.

You tried to gas pedal in the middle of the dance floor.

A creative director we worked with once sent us a video of his two-year-old son spinning around in circles, stopping suddenly and then stumbling around the kitchen aimlessly. "He's been doing this for an hour," he told us. "I appreciate his desire to get out of his head."

Likewise. I want to get out of my head. It's a bad place to be in for an extended period of time. Filled with self-loathing and worry and guilt. I'm anxious about the future. Regretful of the past. It's difficult for me to "be in the moment," as they say.

The Slope provides that. A release from myself, an escape into simply being instead of constant thinking. By letting the id take over, I focus on the here and now. I indulge every whim and impulse ("NO, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, I HAVE TO TAKE MY SHIRT OFF"). You need to really trust yourself to make sure you don't do anything regretful or stupid in that state. I do not have that much faith in myself. But I do have wonderful friends to keep me in line. A stern look and an "ALF, BEHAVE" from Johnross usually brings me back a bit.

You tried to grind on a lesbian couple.

Usually.

It might seem pointless to drink to the point that I can't even remember anything. I respectfully disagree. Although I don't recall the night's specifics, I know I enjoy myself. It's a way to shut the brain down for a few hours. It's a release, a much needed catharsis. Pent up frustrations burst through in the form of gyrating hips and wavy arms and two-step shuffles.

Is it sad? Maybe. Probably.

But it's so, so liberating. Sometimes, you need to drink whiskey and dance to Rihanna's "We Found Love (In A Hopeless Place)" under red lights. To escape yourself. Sometimes, this is necessary.

Or maybe this is a clever ruse to rationalize and disguise the fact that I might have a serious drinking problem.

When it comes to drunkenness, there is a thin line between "debauchery" and "debilitating."

You fell off the stage and landed on your head.
You kept climbing stop signs and doing chin-ups.
You flicked off the bartender when he told you to get off the stage and he kicked you out. That's why we were all outside, Alfonso. That's why we were all outside.

Slippery Slope is my favorite bar in Chicago. It is escape, it is relief, it is freedom. It is distilled fun and it is a genuine shit show. Most of all, it is a fitting, fitting name.