when you have so many stories to tell it’s hard to know exactly where to start. there’s a compulsion to tell a story in chronological order, but that always ends up in some sort of weird ‘and then and then and then’ form. then there’s the journalist who wants to tell the story inverted pyramid style, with the most important thing first and then go on from there. but that’s sort of cold and boring.

so i’m going to start with the Lodge, because above all else this chicago adventure would have been nothing if not for the Chicago Lodge. the lodge is where a handful of the westernerds landed for our chicago adventure. it was a place we quickly dubbed the dorm because two of our rooms were separated by a small landing at the top of a steep flight of stairs and we just kept both doors open, allowing for easier flow from one to the other.

i thought my stay the night before at the Executive Inn in Milwaukee with it’s elevator the size of a small broom closet and nice view of the Scrub-a-Dub was the worst hotel i’d ever stayed in. but the Executive Inn had nothing on the Chicago Lodge.

the Lodge dubs itself a hotel, but it’s more of mohotel in my opinion. technically we could not reach our rooms from outside, but the hotel was U-shaped with the parking lot in the center of the U. all the rooms faced the parking lot.

when we rolled into the Lodge at about 3 p.m. friday, we immeditately headed to the lobby to check in. in line ahead of us were two asian college-aged boys. one of them was on the phone with someone.

“should i book a room for the eight girls?” he asked repeatedly.

apparently there was some question about the lodgings for the girls. eventually it came out that no, another room or two was not going to be necessary for the eight girls. then, when the man behind the counter gave the asian college boy his total for the rooms, $1200, the boy next to the one on the phone took out a thick, white envelope and paid with cash.

we checked in next and immediately headed to the dorm.

“i wonder when the asian hookers are going to get here,” i said. asian hooker jokes were abundant. giddy with the prospects of having hookers in the adjoining rooms. turned out i was wrong, because they weren’t asian hookers at all, but a collective of students from somewhere, members of some fraternity. i know the next morning many of the members of the $1200 worth of hotel rooms were wearing shirts that said, and i’m not kidding, “Lambda Pimpology 101.”

but that is the only the tip of the Chicago Lodge’s iceberg o’charm.

we entered our rather dingy rooms to discover a pink toilet and pink shower stall. the beds looked like the linens had never been changed. the furniture was circa 1963 KMart and there was a nice dip in the middle of our floor. i wish i had taken more photos of the inside of the dorm. because my words will never do justice to the peeling paint and the chipped furniture.

you’ll just have to take my word for it. in fact, when we told the security lady at The Riviera where we were staying she made a weird sort of face of “yep the lodge.” it was reassuring in some way.

the lodge is where our story takes place. a lodge filled with 40 lambda pimps, at least 8 of their pimpettes, and us eight westernerds from a land that is not chicago.