Philadelphia Windows
by Dennis DiClaudioThe things one sees through the streaked windows of a Philadelphia tenement building are not to be discussed; they are to be glanced at, noted and forgotten, perhaps to "pop up" at some odd moment while taking the train in to work. People ask, Why Philadelphia of all places? The answer is simple: because here is where you come to engage in what you will. There is an unwritten law that we Philadelphians do not speak of what we see other Philadelphians doing in the privacy of their own homes, regardless of how unnatural that may be. However, I, not feeling beholden to any law, written or otherwise, have decided to have it out.
I have seen the people coupled in the most unlikely and dangerous of positions, their limbs flayed out like the tendrils of some sinister undersea thing. Mutual pleasure cannot be their concern. But what then? To push themselves forward onto untramped paths of anguish and sadness, to contort even this blessed event between two people into a statement against...against...against what? I do not know.
I have witnessed the strange events unfold each night between the man and wife; he returning from work in business attire, and she entering from the unseen bedroom, naked, climbing onto the dining table and setting herself and the table ablaze with the dropping of a match. When the flames flicker away, the husband, the provider provided for, will pick up fork and knife and cut into the charred remains of his wife, eating, chewing and chawing until there is not a morsel left. And then off to bed, only to come home the next night, the wife returned to health and flesh, so that the entire scene can be replayed again. And again, it will be replayed.
I have watched as the female cellist has sat down with her instrument and wrested out of it the most moving and heavenly of sounds, strains that have reached across the divide in our stone buildings and penetrated into my own room. I have listened to the cellist's song as tears rolled down my cheeks, blinding me (almost) to the truth about her instrument, that it is not an instrument at all, but something wholey else; for, though it has the general appearance of a cello, it seems to breath, to expand and contract in cadence with the music. Did I witness it scurry away after the song? I think I did.
And I have beheld, perhaps most disturbingly of all, the two children, brother and sister, who sit on kitchen chairs at either end of the room and do nothing but stare across the space at one another for hours upon hours. I cannot express precisely what it is in their exercise which disheartens me, fills me with a peculiar sense of dread for our common future, but I can say that when it happened that both children turned their gaze from themselves, sitting, to me, watching from my darkened room, simultaneously, I felt my heart stop. I huddled and cried.
All of this, I have viewed from behind my own window, in my own building, and it all occurs in the building across the alleyway from my own. But these are not the events for which I truly write this confession. These are only examples of what is seen. What is far more frightening is what is not seen, what is not viewable from my window, what is happening on the other side of my own walls and floor and ceiling. That is for which I am most concerned.
Dennis DiClaudio drinks gin at (parenthetical note) and studies philology at Ducky Magazine.