Archive for the 'Philadelphia' Category

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17
Jun
11

Two cheeseburgers to go

By Eric 4 Comments
Categories: Bar Stories, Gay, Me and Philadelphia

“I don’t care if you’re taken or not, because you probably are, but I’m going to ask you a question anyway.”

She said it without punctuation, and it came at me by surprise, the sort of introduction that makes you assume you’re not going to want to answer the question.

I was sipping a beer, waiting for a couple of cheeseburgers to bring home for me and my husband. She was the person nearest to me at the bar, two stools away, and was also waiting for her brunch. My order was to go. She had silverware.

She looked about 50 — maybe late 40s. It was hard to tell. She had brown hair that looked natural enough to me. The skin around her eyes was mostly unwrinkled. She was small, not unattractive, but not fit. She wore glasses and had a little nose that turned up at the end. Mousy, I would call her. Librarian-esque. IT, maybe. She wore minimal make-up; just some eyeliner, some powder. Just a neighborhood gal out for brunch on a Sunday by herself.

I didn’t want to talk to her, but my need to not be rude trumped my need to be left alone. “Uh, sure …” I said. Continue reading ‘Two cheeseburgers to go’

01
Jun
11

The Boy in the Bubble Emerges

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Gay, People We Like, Philadelphia and Work

Of the salient differences between my new job and my old job, I must say one of the most intriguing is the number of gay people. At a gay cable network, I was naturally surrounded by gays. At a public radio station, the demographics of the audience, and the people who serve that audience, widen considerably.

Delightfully, the reason this is intriguing is that it doesn’t seem to matter. Of course I never expected it to. It’s just a notable change for me. After four years of being surrounded by rainbows and unicorns — and a lot of straight women — every blessed day, one gets used to certain ways of comportment. There are certain facts about one’s life that don’t need explaining, a common way of looking at the world. It’s not so much that I now need to change my behavior. I wouldn’t. It’s more that I need to open myself up to new things, new people, different life experiences.

30
May
11

Movin’ Out

By Eric 1 Comment
Categories: Philadelphia and The People in Your Neighborhood

It’s always amusing to me when someone else tells me how gay people behave. I can never decide if I should congratulate them on their acute powers of observation, or if I should point out that, being gay myself, I have some familiarity with the subject.

I was fussing with the window boxes in front of our house on a recent Saturday, when a neighbor approached me on the sidewalk.

“Hey, I gotta ask you something,” she said.

I rolled my eyes, dropped my moss roses and turned to her attention.

Several times a week, we can hear this woman slamming doors and yelling at her teenage son from five houses down. She calls him a piece of shit. She threatens to throw him out of the house. She curses like a sailor and carries on like she’s on the edge of a mental breakdown. Continue reading ‘Movin’ Out’

22
Mar
11

It’s About Chime

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Life the Universe and Everything, Me, Philadelphia and Toilet Humor
Tags: , , ,

Every hour, on the hour, a church in my neighborhood plays the Westminster chimes. I gave up wearing a watch years ago in favor of the time on my cell phone. Checking the time is almost more of an obsession now that it’s not literally on me, so I always know what time it is — usually because I am running late for something. The time-worn chime of those bells is totally superfluous, but there is some comfort in its regularity. It has not given up on us, if we care to listen.

I love those moments when I accidentally catch them. Usually I’m too busy, or I’m just not paying attention. Granted, the last time I heard them, I was sitting on the toilet. I find that shitting rivals showers and mowing the lawn for the moment I am most alone, in my own head. But hearing those bells reminds me to be quiet, to listen. Those chimes remind me it’s ok to pause for as many seconds as it takes to sound out 9, 10, 11 rings, and to count along, even though I already know exactly what time it is. (Apparently the church’s clock runs two minutes behind the time kept by AT&T.) Sometimes it’s just good to count along. Then you take a breath. Then you get back to work.

30
Jan
11

Here, kitty, kitty…

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Animals, Dumb, My Cat, Philadelphia, Strangers Observed and The People in Your Neighborhood
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Thursday afternoon, on my way to the post office, I passed the fenced-in front grounds of a Catholic school in my neighborhood. The school day was over, so I was surprised to hear a woman’s voice inside the fence over the sound of my headphones.

She held the leashes of two dogs with one hand and her phone with the other. The dogs seemed agitated and restless, but she ignored them, carrying on as if she were talking to a girlfriend about her date last weekend or a sale at the Acme.

Ten paces further I saw a group of people clustered around a tree, each of them looking upward. None of them was wearing a coat, despite the snow and the cold. Glancing upward myself, I saw a cat, totally exposed in the leafless upper branches.

Two teenage girls were calling up to the cat, who seemed to be in no mood to come down. They held something up to it. It was white. It looked like a snowball, but I assumed it must be something else. Surely they were trying to coax it down with with something that would actually attract it.

“She’s scared. She senses the dogs nearby,” someone said.

No kidding. The dogs are as plain as day, and no more than 30 feet away. I guess it’s good that the woman is holding her dogs back, I thought, but as long as they’re there, whining and yipping, that cat is going to stay put. Doesn’t anyone watch cartoons?

Continue reading ‘Here, kitty, kitty…’

29
Jan
11

The Long Winter

By Eric 1 Comment
Categories: Philadelphia and Weather

Philadelphia got dumped on again Wednesday night. Mounds of blackened snow were covered with yet another thick, white coat, giving the city once again a suede-like sheen in the dampened gray daylight.

Honestly, I love the snow. And I love the response. Everyone emerges from their houses like worms after a rainstorm. It’s funny how similar the behavior looks between such dissimilar species. Up and down the main streets, dark shapes move against the whitewash, coated and bundled neighbors doing their best to push back the weather, dig out their cars, clear their sidewalks. Cars get stuck, and within minutes there are two or three men (always men, it seems) gathered around offering advice, pushing, pulling, calculating the mechanics of a spinning tire in a frictionless ditch — get a brick, get a board, get some rope. It always ends in a complaint about the bad plow job done by city trucks.

In the climate of negativity toward the response of northeastern cities to recent winter weather emergencies, it’s nice to see some happy news. Here’s something from the Associated Press about random kindness and senseless acts of shoveling.

Between storms, a builder in Connecticut uses his skid loader to plow his neighbors’ driveways. In Maryland, a good Samaritan hands out water and M&Ms to stranded drivers. The mayor of Philadelphia urges residents to “be kind” and help one another out — and they respond by doing just that.

Across the Northeast, full of large cities where people wear their brusqueness like a badge of honor, neighbors and even strangers are banding together to beat back what’s shaping up to be one of the most brutal winters in years — and it appears to be contagious. [MORE]

I witnessed the storm grow from a gentle snowfall to maximum-strength blizzard during my weekly Bolt Bus trip from New York to Philadelphia. All across New Jersey, traffic moved steadily on I-95, at about 3/4 speed, but periodic curbside clusters of red flares and occasional 16-wheelers, like dead whales, breathless, dark and still, on the wrong side of the median, were unsubtle reminders to me and my fellow passengers that Bad News could happen at any moment.

We applauded the driver when we arrived safely at 30th Street Station. We were an hour and 10 minutes late, but we were there, and I love that no one complained.

When I saw three cars stuck on the open streets nearby, one of them a cab, I decided to take the subway to my neighborhood and walk home.

Later, stumbling down unshoveled sidewalks (sometimes it’s easier to walk in the street), I heard a mechanical crescendo behind me and turned to see an approaching brigade of half a dozen yellow-and-black loading shovels led by a brave little pickup truck. With their top-mounted headlights shining through the thick haze of flurries, they reminded me of machines in post-apocalyptic science fiction movies. But these were the good guys in the conflict between man and nature. They passed me to seek out needier streets.

The next day, we had to clear out our sidewalks. I forced myself out of bed and sleepily pulled on my boots to go shovel at 6 a.m. My neighbor had already cleared out half of the block on his side of the street. Someone on my side had us taken care of us from the corner up to my house. With so much good-samaritan activity around me, there was no way my conscience would allow me to shovel only one house worth of sidewalk. I paid the path forward about five houses down and went back inside to make coffee.

03
Nov
10

Of Coffee and Donuts and Half-Eaten Hoagies

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Ain't That America, Philadelphia, Politics, Strangers Observed and The People in Your Neighborhood
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On Election Day, I always have a soft spot in my heart for the volunteers working the polls. Every polling station has some variation of the same thing: a half dozen retirees, sitting on folding chairs, stationed at folding tables, a box of a dozen donuts on one side, a slowly cooling polystyrene cup of coffee on the other. They look over the rims of their glasses at you. They squint in the dull fluorescent, sometimes gently flickering, light.

Whatcha last name, hon?

Continue reading ‘Of Coffee and Donuts and Half-Eaten Hoagies’

12
Oct
10

Telling Tales

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Funny, Me, Other People's Stories and Philadelphia

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine was recorded for a radio series reading a story he wrote about his exile from southern Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

He’s good at telling stories. Some kind of southern thing, I guess. And he’s earned some renown in the local story slam circuit. In fact, he was on the radio because he was one of a sextet of story slam audience favorites.

My friends and I like to support that sort of thing, so a bunch of us joined him at his apartment on the night of the broadcast.

It was delightfully Golden Age, each of us taking a silent seat wherever we could to listen to a radio in real time. Table lamps cast an amber glow on our expectant faces. There was an old, gray dog curled up on the couch, and it was raining outside. All we were missing was a roaring fireplace and the faint haze of smoldering pipe tobacco. We could have been a pack of kids staying up past our bedtime to catch Gunsmoke on the wireless or to hear what happened last to Little Orphan Annie.

Actually, it was nothing at all like that. We all checked in on Foursquare, and I tweeted throughout the evening. And there was plenty of smoking, but it was all done just outside of the front door. But we did listen to the show on an ancient, crackly radio. The antenna was completely broken off. It leaned against a lamp for vertical support, and naught but gravity held it on its base with the most tenuous of connections. Sharp “s” and “f” sounds came through harsh and distorted. If someone stood too near the radio, we’d lose the signal for a moment. If a footfall shook the floor, the antenna would slip off its perch and the radio would go altogether silent.

It was right near the liquor, so we lost the signal a lot.

Continue reading ‘Telling Tales’

28
Sep
10

Hitting the Bowl, Missing the Point

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Gay, Gross, People We Don't Like, Philadelphia, Strangers Observed and Toilet Humor
Tags: ,

At the Scissor Sisters show in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago, some guy spent the entire night trying to hook up in the men’s room.

urinalsAbout half a dozen friends of mine were there, and we were all drinking, so we all made frequent trips to the loo. He wasn’t in there every time, but without exception, each of us had some kind of story about this guy.

He stood a little too close.

He washed his hands a little too long.

He kept trying to catch my eye in the mirror.

He leaned over and watched me pee.

Continue reading ‘Hitting the Bowl, Missing the Point’

26
Sep
10

My Tomatoes Ride the Short Bus

By Eric 1 Comment
Categories: Food, My Favorite Things and Philadelphia
Tags: ,

We said good-bye to summer last week, and I’ve all but given up my dreams of garden-fresh tomatoes.

We started from seed back in February in little clay pots on the kitchen window sill. It was like a terra cotta maternity ward. I thought we were so clever to get heirloom varieties: a yellow one, a red one with stripes, and a purple one. I wouldn’t remember their funny names, but they would be so colorful! My plan was to choose the strongest, fastest growers, eliminate the rest, and plant a few of them outside.

I built a huge planter box as big as a coffin and transferred five plants around Memorial Day, when they were finally big enough to be moved. In the sunniest section of our garden, they probably got about 7 hours of direct light a day. But even with daily watering, fastidious care and trimming, fighting off slugs, chasing away bugs and alley cats — folding chicken poop into the soil — they didn’t take off until July.

We mixed up the labels on accident, and I forgot which was which, but I figured we’d be able to identify them when the tomatoes ripened into full color. The first little fruit, a lonely green globe of pure joy, came budding out a full two months later.

I was a little embarrassed to tell anyone, because August was so late, but I was proud of my little trooper anyway. His tardiness was surely my fault, not his.

Soon every plant had tomatoes growing, but we didn’t actually eat one until last night. It was that first one. Turned out to be yellow, bright and beautiful as a lemon. It tasted awesome in a salad.

One awesome salad after six months of energy and expense.

Now the plants are ready to give out. They’re starting to self-destruct, cutting off energy to their leaves and turning brown. We should be sick of tomatoes by now, but instead I’m just grateful for whatever I can scrape up.

A few months ago, I thought I might have too many. I had visions of cooking huge pots of sauce to freeze for the winter, sending some home to my mom, leaving little paper bags of tomatoes on neighbors’ doorsteps. Now I’ll be lucky to get a dozen.

So I have accepted it as my personal mission, my calling, to see those green tomatoes through to the end. This garden will not be a failure. I will see them on my dinner plate if it kills me. (At least I’m not likely to die while choking on a tomato.)

Maybe before the frost comes, we’ll see some color out there, and I’ll finally know what I planted.

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the untallied hours