West Philadelphia Porch Sitting

Seattle isn’t familiar with this concept. It is HOT in Philadelphia in the summer. You wear the bare minimum. I have a green dress which is form fitting but manages to avoid HUGGING me in the wrong places if you know what I mean, under it, I wear nothing. In Philadelphia, you want to wear the least amount of clothing possible. I would wear this green dress daily, all day and all night long. My hair tucked up on my head in little pin curls, little wisps failing out here and there. Studying in my hot hot room. It was the next best thing to naked.

It was hot the summer Lee and I decided to find an apartment together in West Philadelphia. When I moved back to Philadelphia from DC, I lived in West Philadelphia but I got it wrong. I really didn’t appreciate it until Lee coaxed me into visits. Ok ok, I’ll get on the 13 trolley. We would go for runs, stopping at the 409 house to use the bathroom. Our athletic pursuits a glaring juxtaposition to the activities taking place around us.

Then I met my Rittenhouse girl Alex. We lived blocks from Grace’s Tavern where we would find ourselves regularly for beers and burgers. We’d traipse about the city, consuming citywide specials, dancing into the late hours of the night only to drag ourselves up the next day to resume professional life.

The summer Lee and I moved into our apartment on Farragut St, it was hot. Perhaps nothing matches the current heat wave, but it wasn’t temperate. I grew up in the area without air conditioning. I don’t believe in air conditioning. Did I mention? It was hot. Lee stated that, as a South African, he could certainly withstand the heat… better than I could. Hey what? That sounds like a challenge. We duked it out. No air conditioning for us. Nope.

Then I started dating someone with air conditioning… I had no intention of spending the night…

It was HOT.

It is 3am in Philadelphia right now and 87 degrees. You know what people do in West Philadelphia. They sit on their porches. There’s a good chance that if I were there right now, I would be sitting on a porch, in my green dress, drinking a PBR.