Midnight
in a Perfect World Holly
Coleman
Music is a time machine. All is have to do is hear
some of DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing.....”
My first apartment. The Bourbon Street-looking building. Our balcony, third
floor corner.
Sitting in the kitchen, on the booth we bought from St. Vincent de
Paul, bumping some DJ Shadow.
In the dark, the only light is the strobe that is set to SLOW.
Smoke swims through the light beams.
Steve shows us how to levitate, like David Blaine. It looks so
realistic in the flashing light. We make him levitate again and again. Johnny
spider-walks in the doorway. His hands are free to rest behind his head.
Looking like Huck Finn. Chilling in the doorframe. On a cloud.
Building steam with a grain of salt, a gas mask is being passed
around. The wearers all inhale and fly away to the land of red chili pepper
lights. The smell of Trojan Pizza carries up from the first floor on Lowrie Street, bleeding into the cushions of the couch. We
cancel the order saying, “We are going to be late for Midnight Mass.”
What does your soul look like at 1:30 in the morning? Sitting on
the papasan, spinning around and around. Don’t look
in the mirror when you are tripping. You will go crazy.
No cable TV, no internet, no text messages. Only cordless phones
and pagers. “I’m downstairs! Let me into
the party! I heard you had good drugs up there! I will scale this wall like
Spiderman!” We watch McDunna try to climb his way up from Uncle Bill’s Tavern
to the third floor.
It’s the money. Counting ‘shrooms on the
kitchen island. The drunk priest shows up and says he has to confiscate the
stems, before he grabs a mouthful.
Tell us the ghost stories of Troy Hill. Tell us about the spirits in the chapel, the dead saints who want released. We got a phone call from the old house. It was torn down a decade ago. I heard his dead voice on the answering machine. He is with you always.
Our dads want to stay all night and party. We find them passed out
in their cars, in the funeral parking lot, with their engines running,
listening to Metallica. Mutual Slump.
Beer run, to fill up the milk jug, $225. Ruthie will even seal it
for you. The bathtub fills with water and an empty 2-liter, gravity hitting.
Lightheaded floor splitting. King tightropes out the balcony, and hangs above Lowrie Street. Swinging above the buses doing their last
run. Organ donor.
Web sticks his head out of the window from across the street, and
tosses us Swedish Fish. Look at the trail!! Changeling/Transmission.
The rain comes to end the drought. We run outside and jump in the
puddles. The sky cracks. The steam rises from the concrete. Jimmerz brings out a bar of soap and bathes in the street. Terry sits on the balcony every night, following the 2am
parade. Fire escape to the roof for a North Side sunrise. How can we go to work
when there is life to live!?
Emily and Chico round the bend. They took a trip above the
hilltop. Back home for daybreak. My shift doesn’t start until noon. That’s
midnight in a perfect world.
Holly Coleman lives on Troy Hill in
Pittsburgh.