City, Chapter One

Morning. Olde City, Philadelphia. Another fucking day.











The actual view from the top of Liberty One, I’m sure, lets you see the whole city, from Olde City to the Greater Northeast, and everywhere else in between. The people and places, much like the view from an airplane, wouldn’t look real. They’d be like funny little dots, or like ants, their homes and cars like Matchbox and Legos. And the silence of being so high up, so far removed from the barrage of harsh noises that reverberate from building to building and street to street would be, or is for all I know, peacefully serene.

         And then you’d jump. Or at least I would.

         That first moment of hesitation, stunted by the inevitable onset of vertigo. And then… beautiful release. Swift silence as I float out. Out into heaven. Then fall into a loud, rushing waterfall. Heavy waters pounding at my face. Deafening roar of the tide and splash. Instantly over. The chaos and the anarchy are gone. The terror that’s been tearing at my heart, the black void that’s been burning at my chest. All of it gone. Over. Beautiful rainbow life, marred by a beautiful, black death. And the procession to follow would be a parade.

         Your years, or, rather, my years, of wondering and waiting and thinking I might do it would be over. It would be done. Distant relatives would then wonder at the parade just how fucked up their family over on the East Coast really was, while immediate family would ask themselves, ‘Why? What have we done to deserve this?’ and then the girls I knew way back when would do their best to play the part of the ‘Inconsolable Loved One,’ tortured by the tragic, yet inevitable, death of the only man they thought they would ever really love. And all the while I’d be in the corner of the room, secretly laughing to myself. Smiling that this is what it’s like in the end, not so bad after all, rather entertaining actually, and damn it sure sucks that I’m not actually around to catch the show. Maybe they’ll be playing reruns later on, though.

         

         Sirens. Loud. My head is filled with an explosion of sound. It’s torture.

         The alarm clock says 5:30. I hate this thing – the Morning Beast. It’s only use is to rip apart any sense of peace a man would have. I fucking hate waking up in the morning.

         Being a slave to my current disposition of employee of the sometime famous magazine TARGETED, a liberal rag bent on exposing the darker sides of the city, while highlighting the brighter, yet terribly worse, living of the lower class and outcast, I wretch every morning at the very idea of anyone, especially myself, having “bright eyes” or “bushy tails.” My job, despite my own childhood being reflective of its cause, is only mildly fulfilling. It’s a living. A tenant in an otherwise vacant hotel room. Without it, the room is empty and will never be used. Things in it will sit, and eventually fade away. And ultimately will die away.

         My job keeps me anchored here, for now. My lone excuse why not to.

         The job isn’t even as passionate as it sounds. My editor, Jamie Randall, is more like a Femi-Nazi bitch, resonant of Civil Rights era leaders sporting black wool caps and coats, fighting it out in the streets with The Man for a cause they’ll forget about after toking up later that night. I hate her. The magazine, because of her, doesn’t go in the direction it is meant to go. And ultimately, where it fails at gaining the support of the people it’s supposed to fight for, it instead gains the hate of everyone. I care enough about people other than myself to recognize this, which is why I stick around this shit hole – hope.

         And all at once I am again reverted back to the world of the torture that is the Morning Beast. 5:35.

         Fucking Hell.



         Warm shit. Fresh Shave. Hot shower. And the morning despair slowly washes away.

         Crisp clothes, not fancy, but fresh and clean. Good fabric softener smell.

         Antiperspirant, cologne. The morning clears up some more.

         Coffee, three sugars, cream, and a cigarette. I’m ready to face the day.

         Another fucking day.

         I check my brown leather carry bag, making sure the paperwork and tools I need to do my job are straight, and then make my way for the door. Pens, notepads, a small digital camera – because record of what you write is important. Caring in the moment – that’s what makes a great read.

I’m out. The door shuts. It’s locked. Decked out in my Tuesday morning finest of brown Chukkas and blue slacks, tucked in brown button down and sleeves rolled, and the all-important light black rain coat, I am still not in the least (shit, shave, shower, coffee, smoke, and all) fucking ready to face the day.

I am still here. I am still in my bed. Still on top of Liberty One, swaying at the edge.

Tossing my smoke over the side, into the whirlwind of freedom. And tossing myself over with it.



         It’s an electric blue morning. My shiny fancy Timex reads 6:30. Brisk. October weather. Philadelphia. Add that together and you get freezing fucking cold mornings that I’ll hate even more two months from now.

         The sun is coming up over the river. Camden casts its shadows over the Waterfront, as the mergence of several neighborhoods – Society Hill, Queen Village, Olde City, Chinatown, and Rittenhouse – which create almost the sum total of Center City, come alive. Steam rises from the sewers’ fresh morning flow. Vendors and shop owners open their trucks and stores along the 14 block length of Market Street from Broad to Front. Runners stretch along Penn’s Landing, either finishing or starting their daily routine. Traffic builds. Kids and busy workers push around in bulk crowds to the bus or the subway. And the first thing I smell this morning, so fucking early in the morning, is paint thinner. A wall outside my apartment. Sickening.

         Liberty One. And a sigh.

         A quick walk to the nearest pastry shop with doors open, two blocks away. Gena’s Deli, it’s called. Soft-baked sweetness with chocolate and Boston Cream. Another coffee.

         To work.

         My apartment sits a few blocks away from my office in Olde City. My office, meanwhile, sits just off of Market Street, near 2nd and Arch Streets. In the middle of everything enough for me to never miss a thing and right in the center of everything that’s important not to miss. The way I’ve always lived. The 6:40 rumbles beneath Market stopping at 2nd Street Station as I head the last block up to the TARGET building, often referred to as the “Target Building,” so named for the anticipation of some superficial city government attack that’s expected to hit the place any superficial city minute. Coffee still in hand, I enter the building, thinking that three floors above me, Fem-Dyke awaits, for something I’m sure. Anything to tear me up about, so fucking early in the morning, as she does to everyone in the office. Not for a fun reason like trying to win the award for Best Female Portrayal of Perry White or J. Jonah Jameson, but for the inane, arbitrary thought that she’s the boss and has to be “forceful” to get the point across. Word vomit comes to mind in this particular instant. ‘This city needs a voice and we’re it,’ she tells us.

         Bullshit, I say. I’m taking the stairs.

         It’s easy to hate yourself and hard to love yourself. This thought crosses my mind as I take my time making my way up. Loving yourself takes a concentrated effort and will to put aside everything you feel you’ve ever ruined or done wrong in order to maintain a peaceful interior. Hating yourself. Now that’s electric. Shocking to the system everyday. And easy to do. All the guilt you carry, weighing down on you like an anchor cast onto your chest – there with you everyday, but up front, outside, always present, leaving you room to always face it. And continue to face it. Until you actually make an effort and get up enough balls to care about something other than your own misery. But that takes too much work. And misery’s easy. No effort. You just exist.

         All this crosses my mind as I go up and pass the dark, bannered walls of the inside of the building. Past magazine covers, feature stories, posters for now lost causes the magazine once fought for and refuses to forget.

         ‘MAYOR PUTS FALSE HOPE IN SAFE STREETS,’ one cover reads, with a picture of the big man himself at a meeting somewhere in the city. SAFE STREETS was the city’s somewhat newest hope years ago for answering the question of how to lower an extremely high crime rate and climbing murder rate. The idea was to take the city’s worst neighborhoods and fill them with the department’s most willing, overworked, and underpaid of the Thin Blue Line, putting Policemen undercover, over cover, and everywhere else in sight and out, to both actively and passively ensure our fair city begins to turn around.

         Another banner reads ‘YOUR TAX DOLLARS AND YOUR VOTE IN THEIR POCKETS,’ and then in subtext, ‘WHAT WILL CITY COUNCIL DO NEXT?’ This one stems from some writer’s research about the race control of Blacks primarily in City Council, and their voter rigging based on classism.

         Philadelphia? Classism? Man – racism I believe. This city’s awful for it. But classism? Please – we’re all broke here.

         Ridiculous. What the hell were we thinking?

         Well, it is an election year. Egos are way the hell out of line come election time, to include all of ours here at the ‘zine. The banners are spot on for nuts like us.

         At the top of the stairs I can smell her. Petulli.

         Paint thinner. Sickening.

         I continue up and she’s waiting there at the top, eyes zeroed in on me taking my good old time. Fuck her if she can’t relax. Hell, I did once.

         Fuck her, that is. What was I thinking? Oh, yeah, right – whiskey, and a girl. Eh, is what it is.

         “So, you having a good morning? Coffee good?” she said as sarcastically and annoyingly as possible. I stopped just below her. “Well I’m not. I got the mayor and the chief doing a press conference at City Hall at eight and my best reporter, whose job it is to actually cover quality stories for the good of this magazine instead of just the good of the people, hasn’t even shown up yet when he was supposed to meet me here at six, which leaves me to wonder, since he’s never late like some people, whether or not he’s even going to show up. So, guess what?”

         The way she spoke made my stomach hurt even more. Her precious reporter was my counterpart and only real social acquaintance, Jordan Donnelly.  Jordan, unlike most determined writers, always got in early and always had a fresh brief in the a.m. with Jamie. A little too motivated for my taste, it certainly wasn’t like Jordan to ever miss a morning with She-Bitch – that is, miss a morning bit of head or whatever else went on during their a.m. sessions. Though, since I pawned her off on him, he may have finally gotten the full effect and said fuck it, heading downtown himself.

         That aside, I still wanted to choke her. Do something, anything.

         “You’re going instead.”

         At this point in my morning, my mind is zapped into numb mode already by the words of this ridiculous bitch that I hate but once had a go at, and now I am ready to stab myself in the eye with anything I find, or her eye. The stream of ooze would be sensational. Slowly – very slowly – I acknowledge the Pink Power Ranger.

         “So I’m doing what?”

         “Going to City Hall. Like, now” she said, amazed by my obvious distaste for the ‘a.m.’ and for her, and probably pissed I’m ignoring her.

         “Oh. That’s what I thought you said.” I kept going up the stairs to my office, or cubicle, rather. I really wanted to get started on something to take my mind off of this morning, Randall, and the fact that I remember what it’s like down in her ‘never-never’ land – though, that wasn’t too bad of a flight. Second star on the right and straight through to the morning. Not too bad a trip. 

         Take a breather. Relax. I’m feeling suffocated this morning already. Last thing I need to think about is getting suffocated between them power legs again.

         “Hey, you miss what I’m telling you? You’re going down to –

         She fades out completely as I rock back and forth at the top of the stairs, remembering that glorious feeling from this morning. Splash, all over. Sweet release. Throw my cigarette over, and throw myself over with it. This is it. It was a sign. The climactic moment comes at last, when all things fade away and I receive my severance pay from life; paid in full, all debts forgiven. And I could even take crazy Moaning Morning Bitch with me. It’d be a terrific way to go. ‘Oops, I fell, reached out, and next thing you know, I’m doing the world a favor.’

         – to City Hall,” she finished. I just stared at her blankly, accepting that there was no escape from either bright eyes or bushy tails in this life. Or this Crazy Bitch. I do have a thing for green eyes, though.

         “Hello? You hearing me?”

         “Yes,” I said, allowing her nothing more to say, turning quickly enough to piss off in a new direction from here. Time to go say hello to The Man and most likely run into Jordan while I’m there. And if he is there, I’m bailing. I’ve got other things on my mind today. Like praying for something terrible to happen along the way to City Hall.