Teddy sat across from me in Càphê Roasters only two Fridays ago. I was a little surprised he chose to take me to a spot in Kensington. Despite the posh referencing of British Aristocracy name of this near Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood is named for, it really is anything but. Theo had long, alongside Fishtown (alongside “Nicetown is not nice” and “ain’t no strawberries or mansions in ‘Strawberry Mansion’”) warned me to not consider it as a neighborhood once I got down to the brass tacks of figuring where the fuck I should live in the city.
Before I walked into the restaurant, I parked directly on Kensington Avenue after circling the block twice. I tried to determine whether it made more sense to park on a side street or the main drag. I was a little south of the Tioga SEPTA stop, with the sunroof of the rented Sonata open. It seemed pretty not all that wild at 12:18pm on a sunny 70 degree Friday. I wondered what all the fuss was about.
Then someone clearly in a zone of crisis in between mental and substance abuse none unlike what I used to do intakes at a decade ago in the Tenderloin walked by. The rapid fire expletives and slurs just made me mindful to see if the soul tortured by existence in the world was gonna keep it pushing down the street or focus on me as a target. When the storm passed, I closed the sunroof, put sunglasses on my eyes and went on with my plans for a much anticipated good sandwich.
Teddy had indirectly recommended in our text planning I’d go for the Fried Chicken Banh Mi. He chose another pathway knowing that the menu had delights beyond the comforts of some deep fried bird placed in a setting no one was wise enough (to my knowledge) place said savory delights in a baguette in the Bay so far. I deviated once again, going for a Strawberry laced ‘Thai Tea Sunset’ instead of the Vietnamese Iced Coffee with Egg Cream he decided to go for. Perhaps I just wanted something fruiter, sweeter, to take the slight edge off the ‘vibes.’
“Kensington to me reminds me a lot of the Tenderloin”
Ted mused as we took our seats at the counter. I bartered with which direction we should sit; facing the door or facing the coffee machines with the kitchen to our left, register to our right. The light was that warm type that reflects off of the light wood staining that seemed to really start to peak around 2018 in restaurants gleefully moving away from the harshness of all metal stools and filament lighting.
I was surprised how old I felt noting that I’ve been of a certain class station of access to ‘3rd spaces’ to note a certain trajectory of non-chain restaurant design had evolved quite a bit since I used to sit at Barrone’s on my $20 a week allowance almost 30 years ago. I should not inflation calculate that. I’ve probably been a class privileged little bitch all my life despite my performance to the contrary.
“I was wondering what all the hoopla was about Kensington being ‘bad’ until I parked right into someone clearly in crisis”
I said that knowingly that I can navigate the world with some degree of suburban obliviousness still. At the same time, there’s so much I’ve seen in my life that does not phase me at this moment, other than a perplexed rarely actually said out loud “….why?” Teddy’s range of knowing me comes from the part of my life a decade ago that was working for a Arts Education Non Profit founded and still stewarded by white ladies with master’s degrees obliviousness. This demographic didn’t, still doesn’t understand that ‘the needy’ (i.e. Negroes in particular) had their own culture and class to cultivate and preserve.
I had transitioned out of the program coordinator role in the org. I had been passed over for a 3rd time for a promotion. The job was given to a Jewish dude with his own private publishing press that had a Masters from Columbia but no work relevant work experience. It was his first time supervising teaching artists or networking with capacity stretched principals in the Bayview approaching retirement. There might have been some underlying resentment from upper management that I told the teaching artists to unionize. The hapless new hire smiled in my face and asked me constantly to explain his job, one I had been doing for 5 years at that point without the manager title or $55,000 a year salary he could clearly make due without.
After cashing out my PTO and laying low in a similar zone I find myself in a decade later, I pivoted hardcore into a disability services non profit that focused on winning disability awards for those with mental health issues. Often the clients migrated to the small nearly windowless 4th floor office in crisis. The headquarters were directly on Polk Street in the heart of the Tenderloin. As we sat for our numbers to come up, Ted echoed what had been irritatingly been gnawing at me from my inbox for about two weeks.
It cemented something he had said what seems long ago but was only 2 and half years ago. It was a little gossipy. It was not yet solidified in context of hoping I’d choose Philadelphia as a potential place to call home. In comparison to another Bay Area Queer he knows well enough, I was someone he’d ordain with the internal courage and toughness to handle a city like Philadelphia.
He’s seen proof over the years. I’ll add enough ego to it that it’s a quality that he admires that I can flex when need be with ease. I can claim I’m nobody’s fool. It’s stronger cause it’s not the type of toughness that comes from mother always knowing what’s right. There’s a whole lot of cunning and navigating the world by my solo means that makes me ‘tough.’ It’s extra strength responses to a very violent world.
It’s a very particular type of survival that a certain type of queer has developed. It’s a level of mirroring that I’m surprised doesn’t make either of us flinch and turn away. It’s only made me break and cry once. He swept in immediately to comfort as I frighteningly clawed my way back to composure in perhaps a minute flat. We both will openly say that this has been painfully earned strength and companionship. I’ve got $5 on that. There’s probably some of this well worn James Baldwin quote within the both of us that explains plainly what we’ve fought against embracing:
“I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, into a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly. Their reaction seems to me in direct proportion to the sense of feeling cheated of the advantages which accrue to white people in a white society. There’s an element, it has always seemed to me, of bewilderment and complaint.
Now that may sound very harsh, but the gay world as such is no more prepared to accept black people than anywhere else in society. It’s a very hermetically sealed world with very unattractive features, including racism.” – James Baldwin, 1984
“I think you’re probably one of the best survivors I know when it comes to approaching different life and work situations.”
I’m throwing up the literal words said to me in correspondence that preceded the conversation over well-lit, briny and sweet contrast between coffee and chicken sandwiches for visibility twice for emphasis. It haunts me. There’s a durability that those that have observed me for a long long time know is possible. I know Teddy’s assessment is far wiser because of his own worldliness that I consciously admire and reckon there’s a bit of envy escaping the basement of my inner world. It informed the joyful hope that I’d be making this choice.
There’s a lot he knows internally, and perhaps over parallel experience that would gut those I’m gonna arrogantly say are ‘lesser’ than us. Our bodies have literally been forced to change and adapt thru life changes before actual middle age tho. I’m more than happy to brag about us still being standing and able to laugh really, really hard at a range of subjects and always giving each other the tenderest of hugs until ‘next time.’
There’s space held for the tenderness I’m still, in my mid 40’s, trying to protect. The kid that never got to be a ‘kid.’ The wild eyed dreamer that realistically hasn’t been allowed to make passion based decisions with ease. Somehow I’ve always had to pay some kinda price. I’ve been happy quite often to rather pay the price for an existence that I wanted, and have proven to a degree is possible, rather than succumbing to settling for what this really fucking stupid society says should be enough.
Some would say moving to Philadelphia is me paying a price for not complying by caving to some inherent weakness that is a lot of what I see not only in compulsory heterosexuality. It is decidedly a hallmark of the HRC to Marriage Equality spectrum version of LGBT identity that’s decidedly not queer as well. There’s a few of these pieces as I sorted through versions where clearly the siren call in my life was “resistance is futile.”
That’s the part of me that looks in my rearview mirror of Gracie, happy she doesn’t have one that says “objects may be closer than they appear” as I go on about my journeys in life. That’s the also petty side of me that recognizes one particular parallel universe life. I would have had to manage the ego of someone that failed to score being Mayor of Sacramento. He ignored my advice about who his true audience was once upon a time. All he can muster these days is being a ‘consultant’ to carry the mortgage.
That version of being ‘different’ respects binaries and polarities. It has no questions for the status quo that was literally invented to serve colonial extraction restrictions surrounding the natural rhythms of life. It is very much like the tribalism of coliseum sports culture of performance of brute force than anything based in a model of shared culture. It costs a lot of money, time and resources and returns very little based on those significant investments. There’s a lot of unnatural detachment from natural resources built within it too. I see people looking at me with befuddled curiosity. I return the stare perhaps with a joker curl of my lips. There’s no ‘love’ that I recognize as enduring in that. It’s seen me, extracted what value it can take from my being, and moved on just like The Borg.
I’d be inclined to agree to a quotient about me moving to Philadelphia. I’d rather bravely try again somewhere new that’s gonna challenge me to dig a bit deeper. It’s better than adhering to whatever the fuck kinda chaos is the game of money and manipulation that move bodies around as if they’re corpses before they’re dead in San Francisco. I’m really saddened by how lifeless and sterile, repeating the same cycles over and over again I’m seeing so clearly from those I still love in the Bay Area.
Most, if not all of them can’t find a way to be honest about their own queerness. They lie to themselves that queerness isn’t the underlying reason why they seek time with me. I’ve felt the same tenderness, even sometimes heat, that I’ve found in Philadelphia in that shared time. They stop their launch codes and adhere to staying earthbound to actually quite unstable soil. They all have greater resources at hand to join me if they were willing to actually stop hoarding for a future that compliance is never going to reward them with. I find myself having to slowly slip out the backdoor of the ‘Barbary Coast’ and get keys to somewhere sweet in the City of Brotherly Love.
I’d rather put my heart on the line in front of someone that recognizes that there’s someone still trying to make things hurt a little less. I do this despite all the reasons in this society to distract myself with flotsam selling the lie that they’re pain killers. It takes more than turning off notifications on social media platforms. I’m softening that realistically the person that knows this best about me has quite a few surface differences others have weaponized against the both of us to try to keep us in line. They’re also putting a note to themselves to make sure to go get some propane to fire up the grill.
I’m trying a different format of quotes to let them break up the story, to highlight the visual impact of the words. Some words said to me need that ‘neon marquee’ emphasis to really hit home. There’s areas of repetition that annoy the hell out of me these days. I’m trying to escape before I’m enclosed in the sticky amber of Bay Area life. I’m disappointed that the tick of every 24 hours feels absolutely dreadful.
I wish I could have made it to whatever stage this is in the spectrum between transition or transformation, ask the guru or AI, who knows, without having cascades of emotions. I have the feeling that despite all the desire to flee and leave others behind, my work is not ‘done.’ There’s a pizza box on a lawn telling me where I belong already. There’s others that are happy about the reality I’ll be watching the world burn and be reborn together. I wish I were in Philadelphia already. There’s a sense of freedom I feel about being there. My apartment felt immediately like a prison with all of my failed dreams on the wall. Somehow my plants didn’t die.
I don’t have a Grandfather clock in my living room. There’s just a reproduction Starburst style mid-century one. Yet even when powered by a AAA battery, if I turn off the music when the neighborhood quiets down as the fridge stops cycling to keep the bare minimum of groceries cold? I can hear every tick. There’s not enough love and relating here to keep me from going slightly insane. I’m watching those here that bother to reach out quickly implode as it becomes clear I’m getting out of here on sheer will alone. Sometimes you gotta bite the bullet and take temp work with Robert Half.
Certain words need to hit home for me. They need to slap some others in the face at the same time. I want it to be seen when those statements aren’t laced with the nuance or understanding of the factors that have forced me to be ‘tough’ in the first place. Teddy understands clearly and cleanly as what I’ll reclaim as a descriptor that has bonded us over many trials over the years. I’ve slapped others with a copy of Hand Me The Limits.Some have caught on for themselves and picked up their own copy. I think I need to give a few copies of The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutionsto really drive home where I am. Where I want to be.
Teddy said what he said with vote of confidence and a smile. There is a humble excited exhalation underneath it too. It’s so close to not being a temporal anomaly. I’ll eventually sail to another part of this universe for a life that feels somewhat like Oz minus being ruled by a singular wizard. There’s a hint of ‘homecoming’ excitement that humbles that I’m wanted somewhere. There’s a sense of wonder about me being in a place where I’m easily accessible not only by the digital means but those satisfying hallmarks of physical proximity. I send a love note to the online commons that has kept us somewhat ‘together’ for quickly approaching 15 years while welcoming that they’ll be far less necessary in the soon times.
It sincerely feels like Faggot Prom Season.
There’s relief that I’m gonna be less than half a gallon of gas away, if that. That the burden of shared time together isn’t going to require cross country flights or drives. It’ll go from maybe once or twice a year in concentrate to something we negotiate how many times a week it is a necessity for a happy life. We have no clue how long it’s gonna be before the chaotic choices of heterosexual dick measuring contests that rule this land will make such closeness impossible anyways. I’ve cringed at paying $6.50 plus adding an octane booster to Gracie’s tank knowing this might just be the ‘beginning’ of the ‘end.’ Somehow, OKRs and deliverables are all that matter to those I’m still in communication about my old life with.
Teddy doesn’t respond to me with a sneer of indifference that I’ve detected elsewhere. As always I may have blushed a level of rose that underlies the more rich wooden tone of my skin at his excitement. It became clear that it was a mutual sense of relief that I’d feel like there’s no place like home either in Germantown, Mt. Airy or some secret 3rd neighborhood, perhaps West Oak Lane? There’s joy that I know that this is where my people are.
There’s a bit of anger that each time I try to get a portrait in that yellow mesh tank of my greatest cheerleader that the roll of film doesn’t comply. This time, the hastily purchased off of Amazon (I know I know) respooled roll of Kodak 200 was loose, leading to light leaks. The portraits of Theo came out better. Regardless, I love that after this frame the consistent close is more a double hug with a grace of a kiss sometimes on my right cheek rather than a fratty fist or chest bump than anything. I’m proud we aren’t ashamed to admit we’re this close. It’s a delight to claim that there’s more happy days ahead despite, well, how fucking dark everything else seems to be right now.
Mochi at IndiePhoto already knows me by name as if I was Rose to his Sandra Clark on 227. I detailed that the move wasn’t purely displacement of an economic sort as we let other customers pile up behind me. I explained that I’ve long been tough and could tough it out some more. I don’t want to tho. The longer I perform a level of toughness to this sick world the more sick I’ll make myself. I’ve already got a host of chronic conditions to manage. I’d long figured out how to survive the Bay Area on what are below ‘poverty line’ wages. I want more time to smile and shoot the shit with more people that have overlapping interests with my own. I keep carving out my own space only to find it remarkably empty where I was raised.
I have no clue who any of the current clerks at PhotoLab are. I can tell you for sure they’re constantly grumpy as hell. I kinda don’t want to know them. This extends to the tone I’ve taken in the few conversations I’ve had with people in the Bay Area. I’ve returned to having a propensity for being antagonistic in under two weeks. Teddy remarked he was tired of being angry in the way only the Bay Area could seemingly provoke. I’m a more graceful person in Philadelphia. I can love myself a bit more in a place where people are taking a little more time to breathe and let causal conversation build into something significant.
Tellingly, another correspondence went like this:
Funny you sent this as I’ve been separating from SF and getting misty for Philly. The difference for me is that SF turns itself over for the next big thing every decade or so.
By contrast, Philly has a strong cultural core that moves slower but exemplifies the value of building something together over time.
The relationship here actually tried to convince me in the throes of intimacy a decade ago to ‘meet the in-laws’ post coitus although we weren’t dating. I had politely refused out of my commitments elsewhere. I knew that certain exchanges of the biblical type, taken further, would lock me into a relationship not healthy because for one it wouldn’t have allowed for breathing room between the fading one and the blossoming one.
Honestly, the bonding that happened was me coping with the realities of the intersections of sex as a therapeutic activity. I was looking for a place that happened to be the mutual relief and pleasure. The shared penetration was an attempt to escape the commitments I made in loyalty towards a partner’s mental health issues in an ass backwards fashion. I was making a mess while trying to tend to my own physical needs. Too often I’ve been left cold where I love feeling warmth.
I was unfair in my toughness to ignore that call of tenderness to continue. Sometimes you do give a man head because you don’t know how else to soothe his tears. I was horrified by the vulnerability I found there. I backed away in the tenderest possible way while protecting myself as securely as possible from the tidal waves of possibility had I pursued pleasure hedonistically further. Sometimes the most intense, vulnerable physical connections that arise out of deep friendships are the ones that change you like clay. I was too concerned then, perhaps a little too concerned now about being a finished sculpture.
I’m a prettier work of art these days. There’s still more beauty I want to see out of myself. I’m keen to see what beautiful traits that aren’t quite yet visible are possible out of everyone I know. It’s more about seeing what people are willing to share as I turn my eyes in their direction. I’m still open to being surprised, but Philadelphia promises to allow me to put the negatives in print more often than not.
I can see how reflecting back as we all might see the falsehoods and mirages that San Francisco holds within the fog, what had been possible had I submitted to some sort of commitment then. Teddy never understood my logic for detouring to Portland as 2017 became 2018. I wish we knew each other better then, I wish I knew the care had run that deep. It just got deeper over the intervening time. There’s a richness not unlike the lil taste of egg cream that I got. I want more sips. The goal for this inning is that I’ll feel like this is a last battle of toughness alone. I want to bask in the joys of tenderness this world can provide.
Don’t you?
