I get a lot of it, only while outside of it, from those I run into outside of it: at work, distant family, old friends now more acquaintances. Why there? Downtown? Main Street?
     Immediately, I know, the latter conjures for them, if anything beyond images culled from rap videos, well then something akin to this: that I must live in a bar that they have been to once, planned to go to again, but got married instead. Or, if not a bar, well then certainly I must live in one of the precious little art galleries that dot the thoroughfare. In short, their idea of it is framed by the very same things, on good days, we avoid. Of course.
     But they have never stood on a sane, quiet Main Street, stood dead center on the yellow line in the early morning, looked South and noticed the pavement sloping towards and into the Ohio; they haven't witnessed the perfect symmetry of it, the way its complemented just so by the buildings framing the road.... They haven't walked beneath and thumbed their noses at the big, fat face of the marionette snuggled between adolescent skyscrapers.... They have yet to be schooled, from a distant window, in the art of street fighting: when in trouble, get thee to a trashcan, there ye shall find a beer bottle or two.... They haven’t, inexplicably, been called 'Kevin' by a throng of polite transvestites every day for seven years.... And, I'm willing to bet, they've never experienced the sad, 3 a.m. street sweeper that ushers me to sleep nightly.
     Nuances, all; my idiosyncrasies, to be sure.... But, in return, what do I recall of my time spent in the suburbs? Lights out after prime time? The perfect courtesy of neighbors? The creepy quiet bordering upon dead standing in stark contrast to the distant city lights, still lit? A restlessness beyond anything, and a sudden impulse to disturb the peace.... I tell you, the suburbs pushed me away with elbows and pulled shades.
     But what kind of answer is this, to such a direct question? To let it slide would be unjust. Is not poetry best left to the page?
     And gone is so much: that certain innocence spilt outside of Tommy's. The parking, to be sure. Gone are the bar flies I used to wile away my afternoons with at Rhino's; gone, really, any comfortable bar at all since Winterhalter found another way. And the poets no longer litter the sidewalk outside Kaldi's so much. And every weekend the tourists come. And come. And come. And just this summer we had a pig infestation that none of us thought we'd ever recover from. My car has been stolen, on Christmas Day. And someone has been cloning panhandlers so much that now they work in shifts....
     So why Main Street? Still?
     And the answer is this, or one of these: there was a night, not too long ago, a friend and I pulled an all-nighter, goofing on the poor Enquirer while playing Kiss and Joy Division songs on an unplugged electric guitar.
     And when it was light enough, we put our laughter down and ventured out onto Main Street in search of orange juice and cigarettes, nothing more, where we were greeted by another pair of men, giggling and similarly red-in-the-face, who had also been dumped into the street.... And, crossing it, one of them said: "Dudes, we've been watching you from the window, and you two are either tripping, or in love...."
     "Both," my friend answered coyly, without hesitation. "Both."
     While across the viaducts no such thing is happening. Their grass is indeed greener, but their water still tastes like shit. Pushed away by dim bulbs and pulled shades. Sunday morning lawn mowers. The self, exiled.... To/On Main Street.
     Enough said.