For my graduate school party at the 95th in 2002, the chefs went above and beyond to meet my preferences. They prepared plates of vegetables and legumes arranged in colorful complex patterns. I received special dispensation to bring my own dessert. Of course I chose one of Karyn’s delectable pecan pies, sweetened with dates. The crust was made from soaked and sprouted nuts that were ground down into a flour.
She opened Karyn’s Cooked in River North in 2003 and I was thrilled. It’s not easy to get highly palatable, fresh vegan food and she had it down. (Sadly, they closed in 2016 but I recently found out that Karyn began a pop-up vegan spot at Jam on Kedzie last year).
When The Dark Knight came out in 2012 my then-boyfriend and I took the Brown Line to the Chicago stop and took the short walk to Karyn’s Cooked around the corner. It was a hot night and the air conditioning welcomed us.
After we had ordered our enchiladas and polenta, and shot a couple of immune boosting potions, we chatted and drank pink hibiscus tea. Suddenly the whole place stood still. I watched as my boyfriend and everyone else who was facing the door stared, frozen; their eyes popped out of their heads and their jaws dropped.
I turned and understood. Two women were walking in, one more tall, elegant and beautiful than the next. Each of them wore platform shoes that gave them five or six more inches of height. I wondered how they could balance?
They strutted over to a small bar I had not noticed earlier. It had two bar stools and was facing a mirrored wall. The best seat in the house. A handsome dark haired man wearing salmon colored skinny pants was their chaperone, and this was before skinny pants had really hit Chicago. I decided he must be Italian.
A man ran over with a third stool and placed it under the bottom of the woman who had not yet been seated at the bar. I thought “it must be nice to look like that.” I said to my boyfriend, “I am sorry but I will be staring at them for a while.”
I drank them in. One of the women had long flaxen gold hair with thick braids creating a frame around her face. She was wearing a black bra top, à la Madonna, and a pleated silk skirt the color of butter. A gold medallion of a lion’s face casually hung down from the waist line on a piece of black ribbon. The other woman’s hair was equally impossibly blonde. She wore a dark green and burgundy damask mini skirt with pine trees and deer, the type of material you might see used as upholstery in a log cabin upstate New York. Her top was a black concert midriff tee shirt tailored carefully to look ripped just so. Chanel?
I whispered to my boyfriend: “do you think they are dominatrixes?”
When we got up to leave something took over me, like a cartoon character floating through the air towards the aroma of freshly baked pie. I beelined to the bar. Up close I could see that the women were wearing so much makeup that it seemed they were unable to make any expressions with their faces. When they laughed I heard tinkling sounds come out and their mouths moved a little and their eyes shone, but everything else was fixed in place.
I said “I just wanted to say how beautiful you are.” The man slapped his salmon thigh and guffawed, looking incredulous for some reason. I did not miss a beat— this was not about him. and I just had to know more.
“I’ve never seen anyone dressed like this in Chicago. Maybe in Milan or Vienna, but not here.” They thanked me and giggled. The medallion lady was wearing black shoes with white polkadots and miles of a platformed sole underneath. She said “thank you. They are Jeffrey Campbell,” whatever that meant.
I had a couple more questions. “So I know you don’t live here, and I know you both must do something interesting in your careers. Am I right?” Braided blonde looked at her friend and now both were laughing in a pleasant way. “You’re right. She lives in LA and I live in New York. I’m a singer and she’s a musician.” I said “well, thank you for making my night,” and headed towards the door.
I noticed that a very large bald man and my boyfriend were talking and the bald man looked unhappy. When we got outside into the sultry night air my boyfriend looked at me and said “well. While you chatted up Lady Gaga, her bodyguard was trying to get me to go over there to get my ‘wife’ to leave.”