RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

Me: the prostitute

It’s 3AM, my arm is bruised, my hair is wet and my shoes are soaked with mud and beer. This isn’t a noble event, but I haven’t ended a night like this in a while.

—

On my drive home a young man standing in the rain at 15th and Walnut Streets tried to flag me down so that I could pay him for a blowjob. He saw me, a man alone in a car cruising the streets after the bars closed and just assumed. Not being gay and otherwise uninterested in his services, I looked at him curiously as I passed through the intersection. He looked cold and wet.

—

Years ago, at that same intersection about an hour later into the night, I was mistaken for a prostitute myself. It’s an event that’s stuck with me; so I mine as well write it out.

Me: the prostitute

In 2001, I dated a girl who never slept over. That meant that most nights I saw her, I’d end up walking her from my apartment at 23rd and Sansom to hers 13th and Chestnut. Even though she didn’t sleep over, she stayed with me late, usually until 3 or 4 in the morning. My walks home alone were strange and magical. When Philadelphia is quiet, you can feel it breathe. The city itself is like an enormous weight built on top of some strange mineral composite full of powerful magnetic properties. The city scrambles those signals into the bizarre thing that is Philadelphia.

—

If you don’t understand my fascination with Toynbee tiles, imagine standing at Chestnut and Juniper at 3:30 in the morning – in the intense quiet of the city – and staring down at one. If somehow the city could grow eyes and look into a mirror, the reflection would be a Toynbee tile. That’s my fascination.

—

It was a Saturday night at 4 in the morning and I was walking west on Walnut Street at 15th. I walked on the north side of the street heading towards my apartment at 23rd. I remember noticing the Philadelphia Weekly box, but I don’t remember what the cover story was. I was looking at it, when a small man approached from my blind side.

The shirt I was wearing was from the original I-Goldberg. I bought it for 90 cents years before. It was a faded bluish/turquoise button-up, with a large bleach stain and a faint stenciled 10-digit number emblazoned above the left breast pocket. I still have it in my closet, but I never wear it anymore. That night I had picked it up off the floor before walking my then-girlfriend home.

The man who approached me was very small. He was Asian – probably Vietnamese – and his English was bad. He walked with me step for step, an intense look in his eyes. He was fearful and eager. He said something that I didn’t understand.

“What?” I asked.

“Where do you want to go?” This time I heard him clearly. I didn’t understand what he meant.

“Do you have place to go?” He asked. I understood the eagerness in his eyes.

“No, no.” I said, shaking my head and putting up a barrier with my own eyes and body. “No.”

“I’m sorry.” He said in rushed breath. “I’m gay.”

He appeared deeply embarrassed and abruptly broke off. I continued on without pausing. That moment has been with me for years. When people talk about morality, these situations never enter into the debate.

At the moment he apologized for his desires and for his reason for walking the streets at 4AM, I wished that I actually was a prostitute. I wished that the family that he likely had didn’t have to pretend that he wasn’t who he was. I wished that he could have existed somewhere else. Nothing was as it should have been.