A Short Note on the Aliveness of the South Philly Night

The South Philly night is slightly muggy. There's somewhat of a soft breeze blowing downwind from the Comcast tower. And trucks are meandering eastbound on Washington Ave., and it echoes throughout the darkness. My AC unit in the window is ON and I'm listening to a 24-hour classical radio station, drinking a Flying Fish IPA straight from the bottle. I know I'll soon be cooking a dinner for myself with the groceries I'd earlier purchased at the Whole Foods on South St., sweating from the heat, carrying around my neck my laptop bag, four or five books under my arm.

Reluctance is part of the diatribe of this writer. (Don't you hate when writers write that way?) But I'd needed the groceries.

What I'm trying to say is that I've come up with a hypothesis regarding the Crowd.

When they are coming home from work, I head downtown. And when the Eagles win their one o'clock game on a Sunday, I'm heading southbound on the subway -- when the rest of the city is traversing northbound. It's a little gimmick that I've turned into a routine.

Avoid the Crowd. At all costs.

Until the sun goes down.

On this South Philly night, with the AC unit on in my bedroom, the bottle of beer beside me (South Jersey beer, that is), and this cancer metastasizing -- that is, the U.S. in all its un-glory -- I'm continually wondering what it means to live in the Greatest Country the Earth Has Ever Known, when there are too many problems to name. And even the NFL is politicized now. Hell, the ice cream guy -- Mister Softie. He's gone political, too. With his Palestinian flag dangling in the dashboard of his daydreams. FREE PALESTINE!

Like I was saying, the South Philly night is unencumbered with fallacy. There are no softies, here. Only there are stray cats, unabashed when I walk toward them on the sidewalk, white people walking their dog and coming home from the gym, Mexicans sitting out on their stoop, hammered and at the edge of being indecipherable and attuned to their own charm, which I adore upon locking eyes with their exotic blunderings, a bottle clasped in their hands, snuggly apportioned between their thighs -- there's the glowing aliveness of the city that brings me back to life. That's what I crave, more than anything.

Human interaction with people who don't put up any walls. There is no foolish camaraderie with my compatriots, down in the dirges of circumspection. No, wait. I mean introspection. It's nice to reflect on the outside world, around me, when so much of my time is spent staring at a screen, editing copy.

Last night, I'd walked past one of my neighbors while carrying a bottle of whiskey in a plastic bag.

"Man!" one of my neighbors had shouted, a black girl with cornrows jetting out from her head, seemingly defying gravity.

"You got a bottle and didn't ask any of us if we wanted one?"

I laughed, smiling on impulse. I knew she was right.

"Sorry," was all I could muster. "Maybe next time."

I got into my apartment, went into the shower and I thought immediately about myself being an asshole.

When I got out of the shower, I quickly got dressed and then I went into my kitchen with my dark and beautiful writer's locks wet and shiny and meticulously bedraggled, even after being rinsed with hot, steamy South Philly water, and I reached for one of the glasses my mother had bought me specifically for drinking liquor. I figured I'd offer up some whiskey. As a sign of my peaceful ways. I'm nice to everybody. All the time. Everything I do and say is acutely correct. Never in the wrong.

I passed through the dimly lit vestibule.

Out into the night, I approached my neighbors. The girl, though, was missing. There were two other girls there. Women, actually.

"Where'd she go?" I asked. I held up the glass and bottle. "I was going to offer her some of this whiskey."

"AWWWWWWWWWWWW!"

"Do you ladies want any?"

"Sure..."

I went to pour them some, and as I did, one of the ladies (who calls me "Baby" nearly on a daily basis) told me that she'd get a plastic cup.

"You don't need to pour it in your glass."

My mother would've been serenely proud of me. I was such a shining example, a beacon of hope and liberty. For all the rest.

"Where you headed?" the one lady asked me. I'm not sure of her name because I'm not sure I've ever asked her what it was. But she constantly inquires about where I'm going, what I'm doing and how I'm feeling. Truly, a day without a woman around is a day with my own head up my ass...

"Heading to my friend's place, he's having trouble with his baby's momma."

"Ohhhh shit. You know what they gonna do."

"They gonna drink all night and smoke cigarettes, chain-smoking and then they gonna order a pizza."

That's when I walked away feeling entirely vulnerable, coming to terms with myself and my own behavior. I routinely buy beer and pizza. And my neighbors know it. A simpleton. That's what I am.

And then tonight. I saw them again.

One of the ladies had on an Eagles jersey.

"I'm going to get a few beers," I raised my hands in utter resignation, "so if you want anything, now's your chance."

"We goin' out to 3rd and South Street, you wanna come?"

"Nah," I responded tersely, "I'm going to get some beer and work on writing stuff."

"Oh."

"How 'bout that game, huh?"

One of the ladies' eyes lit up. She began yammering and jabbing with a fastidious passion, apace with the turmoil of the contest.

"Were you watching?" she finally asked me.

"Well, no."

"What were you doing?" she almost couldn't believe it.

"I was at the library, working."

"Chh..."

"What about you, do you watch football?" I asked the other woman, the one who always calls me by my real name, Baby.

"No, I don't watch it. I get too..." She paused, trying to search her soul for the right verbiage. "Into it. It makes me upset..."

I laughed. "I know what you mean. My dad gets that way, he grew up in Philly. He was always like that when I was younger."

"By the way," the other girl began as I was pivoting to my Chinese buddy around the corner, the hard-working business owner who stays open every night until 2 AM, serving bottles and cans of beer and other alcoholic beverages to his constituents, "what's your name?"

"My name's Bryan."

"'Bryan'. My name's Lateesha." She held out her hand. I shook it. Her eyes were alive.

And that was everything.

Baby.

I walked home with my booty. The AC units of the five-story school half-a-block from my apartment were humming in tune with the melody I'd made up, bewitching to my own whistling fancy.

When I turned the corner, I saw that the women were gone. Although another one, a white lady with dark hair, wearing a long blue dress, was slowly moving toward me on the sidewalk. Her silhouette was pure. And she seemed to be gravely out-of-touch with her surroundings, in the sense that nothing and none of it mattered. She was staring at a cell phone, I noticed, once I got closer to her.

As I reached my apartment, I slackened my steps. I wanted to look her in the face and say Hello.

But she was a ghost.

Headed northbound.