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Jun. 20th, 2005 12:30 amA friend of mine, Shannon, used to live in the most amazing loft apartment in the Philadelphia area. Right outside of Center City, in the psuedo-kind of warehouse district, it was probably the best living space I've had the fortune to step foot into.
Tall, tall ceilings. The creepiest elevator in the world. Hardwood floors. A bathroom whose walls didn't reach the ceiling (and while this made it uncomfortable to pee during a very crowded party, I was endlessly fascinated by it).
One night, I want to say it was winter but I don't think that's correct, I was standing on the cracked pavement outside the building with Miss Robin, waiting for something that I can't recall anymore. We had volunteered to help our friend, and at this point I had only met her once before at the aforementioned party, pack up her things for a very quick move out to California. Our volunteering was sweetened with the offer of going through a very large pile of free shit, ours for the taking. One item I took home was the very computer desk I am sitting at now. My former computer desk had been bought from Wal-Mart, all pressed board and missing pieces, and it had been beginning to develop a very distinct lean to the left, which worried me greatly when I remembered to worry about it. I had also scored a fantastic black silk skirt which billows sweetly around my legs when I walk and a complete paperback set of the Chronicles of Narnia.
I digress.
We're standing outside of this building and it's well into evening, on its way to full-on night. We're standing there, staring at the abandoned warehouse/factory/whatever it was across the street. It's all broken brick and hastily boarded windows, there's a thousand other places exactly like this one in the city and we really shouldn't have been as fascinated by it as we were. However, on what was most likely the third floor, there was an open window with a box fan sitting on the sill. The same kind of fan I would prop at the end of my bed on very hot nights in my windowless bedroom of the second apartment I lived in, in the city.
Metal blades, metal exterior. Large and square. It had three speeds: low to the point of basically being turned off; medium, which was actually pretty fucking powerful; and goddamn hurricane wind tunnel. I would make a fort with one of my bed sheets, heavy books keeping it in place on top of the fan, and completely unhindered on the other end. Turn the fan onto the blow-you-out-the-fucking-door setting and attempt to sleep through another sweltering night, cursing my decision to pick the bedroom with no windows. Cursing my roommates for having the only window unit air conditioner in the apartment. Cursing the summer. And cursing the misbegotten city I had chosen to live in.
I digress again.
This fan, which looked exactly like the one I had, sat in the window of this horribly decayed building. The interior beyond it was completely black and blind, no evidence of anything else in the room except for this fan. And as we stood there, it began to turn. Lazily, by some unfelt breeze blowing north, the fan's rusted metal blades croaked slow circles.
Watching this, a strange and irrational fear dances up my spine and onto the back of my head. All the closely shorn hairs of my undercut tried their damnedest to stand on end, to no avail and I suppressed a quick shudder. There is zero reason to be afraid of this anonymous inanimate object doing what it was built to do, but afraid is exactly what I was.
It was a hundred horror movies, the good kind that make you get up in the middle of the night to double-check that all the doors and windows are locked. It was a thousand bad nightmares, where you wake up in your bed panting and unable to move, paralyzed by fright.
It was the deepest primordial instinct telling me that something was bad and wrong and that I should stay as far the fuck away from it as humanly possible, if I wanted to continue wearing my skin on the outside, where it belonged, and my insides on the inside, where they belonged.
Miss Robin and I giggled nervously and made the very wise decision to go back inside, post haste. We finished our volunteering and went out to dinner in New Jersey, where I was would pick a ridiculous fight with my boyfriend which caused us to not speak to each other for the rest of the night.
Shannon still lives in California, where the sun shines, and I do miss her presence on the East coast. But, I am so very glad that she doesn't live in that loft anymore and that I don't have to ever set foot on that sidewalk again and see that dismal entrance into God-knows-what-Hell.
Although, after coming across this website while mucking around online this evening, I'm half-tempted to go back there to photograph it for submission to their archives.
However, that brief and fluttering temption has been very quickly tamped down into that box in my brain labelled, " BAD FUCKING IDEAS, NO REALLY". And I've spent the last half hour wondering if my apartment door is locked.
Tall, tall ceilings. The creepiest elevator in the world. Hardwood floors. A bathroom whose walls didn't reach the ceiling (and while this made it uncomfortable to pee during a very crowded party, I was endlessly fascinated by it).
One night, I want to say it was winter but I don't think that's correct, I was standing on the cracked pavement outside the building with Miss Robin, waiting for something that I can't recall anymore. We had volunteered to help our friend, and at this point I had only met her once before at the aforementioned party, pack up her things for a very quick move out to California. Our volunteering was sweetened with the offer of going through a very large pile of free shit, ours for the taking. One item I took home was the very computer desk I am sitting at now. My former computer desk had been bought from Wal-Mart, all pressed board and missing pieces, and it had been beginning to develop a very distinct lean to the left, which worried me greatly when I remembered to worry about it. I had also scored a fantastic black silk skirt which billows sweetly around my legs when I walk and a complete paperback set of the Chronicles of Narnia.
I digress.
We're standing outside of this building and it's well into evening, on its way to full-on night. We're standing there, staring at the abandoned warehouse/factory/whatever it was across the street. It's all broken brick and hastily boarded windows, there's a thousand other places exactly like this one in the city and we really shouldn't have been as fascinated by it as we were. However, on what was most likely the third floor, there was an open window with a box fan sitting on the sill. The same kind of fan I would prop at the end of my bed on very hot nights in my windowless bedroom of the second apartment I lived in, in the city.
Metal blades, metal exterior. Large and square. It had three speeds: low to the point of basically being turned off; medium, which was actually pretty fucking powerful; and goddamn hurricane wind tunnel. I would make a fort with one of my bed sheets, heavy books keeping it in place on top of the fan, and completely unhindered on the other end. Turn the fan onto the blow-you-out-the-fucking-door setting and attempt to sleep through another sweltering night, cursing my decision to pick the bedroom with no windows. Cursing my roommates for having the only window unit air conditioner in the apartment. Cursing the summer. And cursing the misbegotten city I had chosen to live in.
I digress again.
This fan, which looked exactly like the one I had, sat in the window of this horribly decayed building. The interior beyond it was completely black and blind, no evidence of anything else in the room except for this fan. And as we stood there, it began to turn. Lazily, by some unfelt breeze blowing north, the fan's rusted metal blades croaked slow circles.
Watching this, a strange and irrational fear dances up my spine and onto the back of my head. All the closely shorn hairs of my undercut tried their damnedest to stand on end, to no avail and I suppressed a quick shudder. There is zero reason to be afraid of this anonymous inanimate object doing what it was built to do, but afraid is exactly what I was.
It was a hundred horror movies, the good kind that make you get up in the middle of the night to double-check that all the doors and windows are locked. It was a thousand bad nightmares, where you wake up in your bed panting and unable to move, paralyzed by fright.
It was the deepest primordial instinct telling me that something was bad and wrong and that I should stay as far the fuck away from it as humanly possible, if I wanted to continue wearing my skin on the outside, where it belonged, and my insides on the inside, where they belonged.
Miss Robin and I giggled nervously and made the very wise decision to go back inside, post haste. We finished our volunteering and went out to dinner in New Jersey, where I was would pick a ridiculous fight with my boyfriend which caused us to not speak to each other for the rest of the night.
Shannon still lives in California, where the sun shines, and I do miss her presence on the East coast. But, I am so very glad that she doesn't live in that loft anymore and that I don't have to ever set foot on that sidewalk again and see that dismal entrance into God-knows-what-Hell.
Although, after coming across this website while mucking around online this evening, I'm half-tempted to go back there to photograph it for submission to their archives.
However, that brief and fluttering temption has been very quickly tamped down into that box in my brain labelled, " BAD FUCKING IDEAS, NO REALLY". And I've spent the last half hour wondering if my apartment door is locked.