Prompt: "The song that plays over the end credits of the 2024 remake of Dr. Strangelove"
Selected by Joe
"Strangers"
Langhorne Slim & the Law
The Spirit Moves, 2015
I had an hour to kill. The police said it was a priority but we both knew it wasn't. So we stood out there, on a clear and cool autumn afternoon. I leaned my left foot against the faded brick wall of the health center. In a different lifetime I would've pulled out a cigarette and let it dangle from my lips, this being the perfect time for a smoke. In the lifetime I was born into, 35 years later, I find myself standing with a sixteen-year-old with a black eye and nowhere to go. I am responsible for her well-being in this moment, but not in a legal sense, and thus, the police, needed for transport, and obviously not caring enough to make that transport prompt.
She asks me if every part of Philadelphia is as bad as this. She's only been here for four weeks, and hasn't really had the time for the grand tour. I tell her no. I tell her that Philadelphia is diverse, that it varies block-to-block. This is rich, coming from some asshole from the Northeast. She tells me she's heard about Fox Chase. I feel shame about being born in that neighborhood and having the privilege to stick around and only visiting Strawberry Mansion for work and knowing how big the distance is between the two and not really knowing how to traverse that gap in a way that actually means anything. I don't tell her any of this. I just tell her that a Maryland social worker is going to have to pick her up at some point.
We're out there long enough that the in-house social worker joins us, wondering what the hell we're doing. I imagine him pulling out a cigarette too, in that other life, back when it was common to step outside of the public health center to smoke something unhealthy. I imagine him offering the sixteen-year-old a smoke. I imagine her gently declining because she is pregnant. Instead of sharing cigs, we share stories. Who's still working at the office that he used to work at, my office, and his office too but many years ago. He tells us that this is why he does this work. He says that he hates his bosses but he loves his job when he gets to help someone in some small way. I wonder if we're actually helping this kid but I also empathize with the sentiment. This is what me and him and people like us need to tell ourselves to survive. There was a devil in me, I had to set him free.
I think about the Cold War. I don't really, but imagine that I did. Pretend that I'm out there, just around the time I'd normally be getting home and hearing my three kids yell "daddy!" as I walk in the front door, pretend that at 5 PM I'm instead standing on a cracked sidewalk on a mostly bombed-out street and I'm thinking, hypothetically, about the time in our country's history when kids were told to hide from the nuclear weapons by crawling under their desks. I am thinking about the absurdity of that situation, and then think about how old my daughters will be when their teachers tell them to practice locking the door of the classroom to stop the scary man with the gun. I am thinking about how there are probably some kids out here, maybe the kid standing next to me but maybe not, who are already normalized to that fear before their teachers even attempt to instill it within them. Just due to life's circumstances. The circumstances that brought us here, her a runaway by default, me knowing that there isn't anywhere that she has to run away to.
Later that night, I'm at home, finally, and the first thing I do is put my youngest to bed (didn't eat dinner yet, but if I don't do this, that would mean I won't have seen that youngest daughter at all the entire day, and I'll withstand the hunger to avoid that absence). I'm in between books so I read her the Puke on Your Birthday Dr. Strangelove write-up from four summers ago. I had forgotten that the comedy film was adapted from a very serious nonfiction book. This somehow feels more important now, this little factoid. It's not so much making light of a heavy situation, but more so choosing to view dire circumstances with a dash of hope. Either that, or building a protective barrier between the reality of the situation and the adaptation of that situation. For example, writing a blog post about something that actually happened in real life, using that incident to write a blog post that is supposed to be about a movie, twisting lyrics and themes to fit in the same way that one might use a hammer to bash a square peg through a round hole.
I'm home two and a half hours late but I still got the big triumphant "daddy!" from the noticeably non-tired children, and I wonder what it would take for me to send one of these kids to a different state to live with a cousin who's going to punch them in the face multiple times and leave them out on the street and refuse to take them back even when a noticeably tired social worker calls you as he's standing in the gnat-infested rear hallway of a public health center in a city far away. I can't imagine there would be anything. I can't imagine that many parents would feel differently than I would. I'm standing outside with my left foot leaning against the wall with no cigarette on my lips and waiting for the dead-eyed cops to arrive because this kid's mom is an exception to the rule. That rule is that you'd do anything for your kids, no matter what. The rule is that you want to save them from the nuclear blast. The rule is that you get through the tough shit together and adapt those stories later on and turn them from tragedy to comedy. Forget the exceptions. I can see this in the eyes of most parents I meet. I can hear it in their voices. There is immense pain and struggle at the heart of this fucking city, but these families fucking care. And for the exceptions, there is me, waiting past when my shift is over, waiting and not doing anything really except waiting with, and hoping that that's enough to make up even slightly for raw deal that society gave this kid. I'm waiting because I'm hoping that, when her own kid is born in six months, that maybe she'll wait there with them too.
The actor Slim Pickens did not know that Dr. Strangelove was a comedy, even as he was acting in Dr. Strangelove, even when he hopped on top of the nuclear bomb and rode it like a cowboy rides a horse, hat whipping through the air, to his imminent demise. I'm trying to imagine the audience watching me as I stand on the sidewalk and wait. This isn't a comedy. But maybe it actually is. Maybe I just don't know it. "For what it's worth / we're strangers." I don't know this kid, not really, and more likely than not, I'll never see her again. But I know her, too. The stranger is myself. I'm riding the bomb and I'm making that long descent toward the earth and when I finally land, I won't have known how many people were laughing the whole time. But I know I'll be whooping and hollering as I fall.
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