Broad Street

I don't follow baseball, and haven't since my age crossed the double digits, no longer the kid who pretended to care so it might impress his mother who could in turn impress her father, once almost a pro ball player himself. Those days are long past and I have no shame in admitting that I just don't care, and never will care. So in the days leading up to my Philadelphia visit, I had only the most peripheral knowledge that the Phillies were in, and were leading, the World Series, but when I arrived here, I discovered, or was reminded, that sports are a big deal here, big in a way that exceeds my capacity for understanding. The night before I arrived one of the games, potentially the series-ender had been called due to rain with three innings to go and a tied score, and the first day I was here it rained all day so there was no baseball, and there was a tension present, palapable, electrifying and taut, as strangers would talk to me about it, just assuming as strangers sometimes do, that I shared their interest.

Last night, out of curiosity, the same curiosity that might catch me watching the finale of American Idol even though I'd never watched one episode all season, I watched the game, from the top of the eighth inning on, and in the broadcast I found myself getting excited as well, and found out a few things that made the city's shared anticipation more understandable. No major Philadelphia team has won a pennant since 1983. Around that time, the gentleman's rule in the city that no structure should rise higher than the hat of the William Penn statue on top of City Hall was broken, and since then, Philadelphia has lost, lost, lost. Until last night. I could see the stadium from the window where I watched the game, and I saw the fireworks erupting simultaneously on the horizon and on my television, and immediately I could hear the sounds of neighbors screaming with joy. People poured out of their houses and headed to Broad Street, and Peter and I went too, to check it out.

Cars honking and honking and honking. People screaming and screaming, people of all ages, all sizes, and some variation in color, out on the street and drinking at eleven p.m., on a Wednesday, riding on their cars, shouting "Go Phillies" and "We did it," and most strikingly, moving up the street or down it as if making a pilgrimage to both the stadium and to City Hall, slapping hands and bumping chests with everyone who passed, friends and strangers alike. My immediate reaction to the mob scene was fear, with all that yelling and running and jumping it seemed like someone was going to get hurt, but then I relaxed as I realized that, at least for the moment, the mob had no enemy, and the mood was not bloodthirsty but self-congratulatory. It was very cold out but it was impossible to feel it as we walked south for about twenty minutes, impossible not to get swept, at least a bit, into the enthusiasm until we turned around just past Wolf Street and headed back home.

Later it would get ugly, after we were safe in our warm haven, with vandalism and fires in the street and inevitably, I'm sure, someone got hurt somewhere. But for a minute there it appeared that Philadelphia had earned its nickname, as strangers filled the pavement and the roadway on a night cold enough to keep anyone indoors, congregating in a massive impromptu celebration, and for that minute there, treating strangers as friends, it felt like I had actually found the city of brotherly love.

Car 6448

It's 6:30 and I'm on the train, the Hudson line from Poughkeepsie to Manhattan, the first of two legs on my journey to Philadelphia this morning. The train is full when I board at Beacon, already full though there's only been two prior stops, and I wonder who these people are, commuting so far so early in the morning and I think: this could have been me. There's such a routine and ritual here, of sleeping travelers and carefully folded newspapers, that I feel like a spoiler, unshaven in my flannel shirt, with my bright red backpack. There's such a routine here that the handsome conductor has to do complex math to tell me the price of my ticket, when every conductor I've ever seen before, working at more human hours, could rattle off peak and off peak prices without reference materials. No one buys tickets on this train, it's all monthly passes flashed quickly, and then there's me, a strange beast lurching through the darkness, stumbling towards sunrise. How many times have I taken this trip, I wonder, and think: I'll always be a stranger here. I settle into my foreignness, and I wait. The sun will be up soon.

Before Twilight

It's Sunday afternoon and we are driving home from a joyless shopping trip, my mother, my brother, and me. On the drive there, my mother and brother, who was driving, debated whether all or any of the following were overrated: Renaissance Faires, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Beatles, Elvis. I kept mostly quiet, and then my brother dropped us off and headed to his place of work, while my mother and I went into the store, and I manned the cart while my mother moved sluggishly. I did my best to keep her cheerful but it wasn't an easy task, and then we finished and Noel had not yet returned. My dad called from England. "It's a beautiful day," my mother said to him, as we stood waiting at the front of the store. "But there's no other good news." It's like this, sometimes.

As we drive home, I look out the window. I haven't managed to be here for the changing of the leaves in many years, maybe ever since I moved to California. My mother says, "Well, boys, I don't think I'm long for this earth." I don't know what she's feeling but I know what she means; as each day passes her battles seem less likely to end in victory, and these battles have been going on so long I wonder how much longer, really, this can go on. I see a particularly stunning Maple tree passing out the window, a Sugar Maple I believe, its leaves a gradient of green to yellow to fiery red, and I wonder if this is the last year my mother will get to see autumn, and I wonder, a moment later, if this might be, less expectedly, my last year too. We never really know, do we?

Wappingers Falls

I'm standing outside of the Borders that used to be a Shop Rite next to the Kohl's that used to be the Caldor where I worked, and I'm smoking in the parking lot, that same parking lot, two decades later, after so much has changed and not changed at all. It's raining and cars whir past.

Proposition Crazy 8

I am just going to say this once. I'm really, really tired of hearing about Proposition 8.

For those of you who do not live in California, or live in California under a large rock, Proposition 8 is a proposed amendment to the California Constitution that will, if passed, remove the rights of gay people to marry in this state. As much as I vehemently oppose such a notion, I almost have a hard time getting worked up about it, perhaps due to its sheer lunacy.

A few months ago, the California Supreme Court declared that denying gay people the right to marry is an outmoded form of discrimination, drawing an analogy to the now-absurd but once-held belief that it was somehow wrong for interracial couples to marry, and demanded that gays be afforded, gasp, equal rights. Yay. Well, here's where it gets fun. A group of concerned California citizens said to themselves, "Hey! No fair! I want to keep discriminating!" and they hatched a plan to amend the California constitution to allow said discrimination, operating under the logic "well, if I have such a strong desire to deny other people rights that don't harm me in any way, maybe at least fifty percent of the California electorate will agree!" And thus, Proposition 8 was born. California is truly a magical place, where we allow our citizens to demand that hate be etched into the very fabric of our legal system, trusting the good people of this great state to do the right thing. To hate or not to hate. Hmmm. God bless.

Gays began marrying here in the middle of June. Since then, the sky did rain blood a few days and there have been reports of infant males who reject their mothers' breasts for the opportunity to suck on nice fat cock instead. Homosexuality is rampant among our youth now, and as the fundamentalists feared, it leads directly to drug use, necrophilia, and an epidemic of jaywalkers. Church-goers fear for their safety, huddled in their places of worship, while lawless bands of leather clad queens linger outside smoking cigarettes and discussing Project Runway, menacingly. The very fabric of society has been shred and only Proposition 8 can save us.

Or... no. Just like in Massachusetts four years ago, nothing changed, except a great number of gay guys and women were allowed to have the happiest days of their lives, finally. Give it time, the proponents of Prop 8 say, ignoring, again, the example of Massachusetts. When polls revealed that maybe less than 50% of the voting population was as eager to engrave outright discrimination into the constitution, they started making stuff up to scare people. Mormons, world-renowned for their traditional marriage values, donated heaps of cash. People insisted they were doing all this "for the children," never quite answering the question: what are you so afraid the children will see? A man wearing a wedding ring nicer than Mommy's?

I served as the witness for the marriage of two of my friends in June. It was one of the most surprisingly magical moments for me in recent years, to witness, in a legal capacity, the official union of a couple who had been together for fourteen years, and I get angry when I think that there are people out there that would have denied me that experience, and more importantly, denied my friends the opportunity to symbolically and legally declare their union the same way heterosexual people do every minute of every day. Angry and cranky.

But you know what else makes me cranky? Being constantly hounded to contribute my time or money to the campaign to defeat this ridiculous and vile amendment, being constantly asked what I'm doing to prevent its passage. Here's the thing: I have no money. I suppose I could skip meals for a day and donate $9 to the campaign and I would feel better about myself after the psychotic low-blood-sugar crankiness subsided. Or I could volunteer at a phone bank even though I'm the guy who has panic attacks about the thought of talking to strangers on the phone. Or I could get one of those NO ON 8 posters to put in my window, even though my window faces... nowhere. Or I could just feel guilty because I'm not doing enough when there really is nothing I can do. Or I could write an angry essay about it, and well ... I guess I just did.