In East Coast cities, you can travel a century in a matter of blocks, adopt a street kitten who unearths crud from primordial crannies you wish remained uncharted, choose between an absentee property management company incorporated offshore and a first-time homeowner who does not relinquish a key. Instead, a ragtag pile of ungainly hopefuls stuffing themselves into the lock like Anastasia and Drizella into Cinderella’s Barbie doll slipper. The shutter clicks of an SLR and flood beams of a Pink Floyd laser light show whenever somebody approaches, I’m relocating from a stacked skybox in an Art Deco high-rise to the ground-floor of a Victorian era twin, curtains parting onto a communal porch and preoccupied passersby. Installed prophetically for the convenience of contact-free, the property moonlighting as an Airbnb, a backlit keypad is where I’ll punch my four-digit open-sesame, as if extracting crisp twenties from an ATM of opportunity. Feeling like a twenty-something nothing antsy to enter an early aughts speakeasy—prisms as ice cubes, apothecary potions as drinks, cocktail glasses bathtub-watered in egg whites, locally scavenged twigs and petals, set aflame. Guessing and re-guessing the password, to enter the realm of novelty mustache and dignified suspenders. My daily ouroboros from the 1920s to 1830s to 1920s, passing Lego shitboxes snapped together for college transients, I hoist my roller bag up a wave of wooden platforms, striking each like a dissonant xylophone mallet. Peel the plastic seal from a pint of sorbet, mango numbing the nubs of my tongue, building up in the gorges of my cheeks. To carry me through the next round, saltwater leaking out of rolls and settling upon rotundities, transferring form onto fabric. Smear a layer of sunscreen separated like peanut butter across my forehead, and I’m off again… rumbling down the bristle-treaded concrete, fractals of tree branches sweeping at my shoulders, latching on as if an unremarkable man groping into an amorphous crowd. Shaking off a pinata of leaves, the tingle of touch lingers, a defunct strand of hair that just won’t let go. Nearer to the ‘20s, a middle-aged lady off-ramps onto a random lawn, giving way to the single-lane sidewalk. Offers, After you. Only, she’s taken aback by an ecological oddity. Impressive, her hands sashay toward a nondescript tree trunk. Vanna White-ing a pitiful dildo propped up on nature’s pedestal. Somehow, I’ve missed out on the West Philly tradition of sighting street dils in the wild. Misplaced, discarded, or secondhanded in the spirit of socialism. Posting their portraits to our local Facebook group, exotic cats sidling up to be rehomed or reunited. Perhaps a first spur-of-the-moment safari for us both, I want to honor this sweet moment with a neighbor I don’t yet know. Very, I concur and am on my way back to the previous century.
davisuko