And Babyface. Ginuwine. Jodeci.
Their music made those candlelit basements
a kind of flickering jungle we eagerly entered,
our first forays into the unknown,
thrilling odysseys fueled by nineties R&B
pumping through Panasonic speakers.
We sipped backpack beers in our socks while,
upstairs, house parents pretended to read Grisham novels
or play Solitaire hands dealt by blocky IBM computers.
But, really, they spent the hours until eleven
being unnerved by the avalanche of shoes heaped by the door,
Nikes and Doc Martens, enormous out of nowhere.
What happened to pillow-placed dollars traded for teeth
and fuzzy mittens clipped to coat cuffs?
When did their child become someone who knew a brute
with a size thirteen shoe?
These parents sat in their recliners flummoxed
by the evaporation of youth and told themselves
the children in their basement probably weren’t
huddled in a corner blowing cigarette smoke out egress windows
in the unfinished part of the basement before
pairing up and making out to the sounds
of four black guys from Philadelphia singing about sex.
But boy were we ever.
Sure, Magellan mastered the Atlantic and de Gama
dominated the Cape of Good Hope
but no one explored uncharted water like us.
Fifteen-years-old on freshman year Friday nights,
merchants of discovery swapping cigarette spit
inside sleeping bag cocoons adorned
with the Care Bears and ThunderCats of our youth.
The miracle. The magic. Motown Philly (take me) back again.
Brendan J. O'Brien is a writer in Wisconsin. His poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous publications including W.W. Norton's Hint Fiction Anthology, Had, Hobart, Akashic Books, and more.
