Something Solid: Aughts Philly: Genius Loci

West Philly swung, night by night, around all of us.
I couldn’t not notice— Diana was delicately gorgeous.
She spent lots of time in the room next door.
One night, deep into the wee hours, & as
the entire house tripped (taken off, it
seemed, into distant universes, sucked into
black holes, or even flipped the switch into
primordial ooze & chaos), I swung dumbly
into Kevin’s open door, found Diana tripping
on the bed, in tee & panties. As I sat down
on the bed, all that occurred to me was to
follow my instincts. The genius loci of that
place & time was all about nothing else, &
the sense that Diana, whose elegant lashes

& sculpted cheekbones belied her wildness,
existed as an archetype I came to worship
at the shrine of, even as music roared from
down the wood-floored hall, Mary & Abby
slept on the other side. Diana’s appearance
was an operation of sorts; how could I resist?
Everything swings, she seemed to say, around
me first— who was I to ignore her? Aroused
or not, I wouldn’t dare. Not then. In that house.
Did the harvest moon call us cheats? Now,
in the moment, it didn’t matter. We were too
young then, there, too stoned, too on fire to care.
Outside, the after-hours idiots sitting in Clark
Park’s grass-bowl toasted us, with bottles & stubs.