One year ago today, I accidentally discovered the defunct Bruce Mansfield plant in Shippingport, PA on a late night drive along the Ohio river while I was living in Coraopolis. Lights on the horizon from the bridge in Monaca led to “smoke” from cooling towers on the other side of the hill until I had followed the backroads all the way to what now sits in my mind as nothing short of a monument to God. I’ve always had a fascination with great brutalist structures, but something about the smokestacks, cooling towers, and other twisted entrails of the power plants of Pennsylvania truly changed the way I see the world and my place in it last year. I spent multiple nights a week parked on the side of the road outside that plant the entire 9 months I lived in Coraopolis; I’d drive up the river in the middle of the night and sit there for hours, admiring the sheer might of the towers and how beautiful and resolute they stood against the grey night sky. They became a beacon of religiosity, of sexual liberation and enjoyment, of contentedness. When I would drive home, I would masturbate in the dark and think about them and only them. I think I miss the power plants more than anything since leaving Pennsylvania. Perverts wouldn’t exist without Bruce Mansfield and neither would the person I am today. Happy 1 year anniversary to me and my giant concrete boyfriend ♡
