too.... sick... to... write.
the last 4 days are coming soon. i promise.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Day 26
January 25
9 pm
Adi’s with us again tonight, and all we can talk about is the Saints. Over 24 hours later, the world’s still exploding, and all around the bar you can hear people telling their stories of last night:
“People were still running down our street at 5AM banging pots and pans!”
“We were pulling people out of cars and making them dance with us on the corner!”
“I hugged more strangers last night than I ever have in one day—even counting Mardi Gras!”
The adorable bartender’s got “WHO DAT” stenciled on his knuckles in Sharpie marker.
“How you doing,” we say, pulling into our empty seats in the center of the bar.
“Aw, you know. Recovering from victory.”
“Indeed.”
Adi’s asking the adorable bartender about his t-shirt, which was designed as a fundraiser for someone from the neighborhood who fell off his 2-story bike and punctured a kidney.
“Evidently, he hates the shirts,” the adorable bartender’s saying, “but I think that’s just for show. He’s been made kind of famous. How can you not be into that?”
I wonder.
I’m buying tonight, which is easy because Anne and Adi are on a PBR kick. We touch our glasses together and rib Adi about his love life. He’s got at least two potential love interests these days, and both are likely to be at the R bar later tonight. In fact, when he leaves us he’s getting a ride over with one of them, but really he’s kind of excited to see the other one there.
“Jeez, Adi,” we say.
“You know,” he muses, “I’m not even that worried about it. Because nothing ever really works out in the end.”
“Well, I wonder why. That’s basically being on a first date with two people at the same time.”
They were at Cosimo’s last night, where Anne befriended a man who showed her his fleur-de-lis tattoo. “I got this when I was fifteen!” he announced to her, pointing passionately toward his bicep. “I’m forty-one years old! I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!” Between plays he would kneel down on the floor, in prayer.
Black-clad people filter in lazily behind us. The smoke’s clouding up toward the ceiling, filling in the spaces between us. Last night’s still going on, but we’re tired and creeping now. Everything moves a little slower.
Anjali materializes behind us, Danielle in tow. Everybody hugs everybody and we pull some chairs behind us and make a little circle, our backs to the bar. Instantly we segue into a long conversation about life and love and the Saints and Katrina, all history and redemption at the drop of a hat, and I’m grateful, sometimes, not to have to go through pre-emptive smalltalk with some people, to get right down into the good parts.
The adorable bartender scoots in next to me.
“You done?” I ask.
“Basically.” He’s got a glass of wine in front of him and soon we’re talking about Mimi’s, the Saints, the gym, art. “I don’t usually think our life is that interesting, but sometimes I guess it is,” he says.
Sometimes I lean back in to the conversation the others are having, but I keep catching phrases like “foreskin tattoo,” and I kind of don’t want to know, so the adorable bartender and I keep talking, like a couple of cousins, like old men on a park bench. “Lemme show you something,” he says, and scootches off his stool and moves toward the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”
When he returns he’s got a couple of color copies of collages he’s made. My favorite is of a woman lying on a mirror, surrounded by butterflies, the words “I’m flying” stenciled into a pale sky.
He shrugs offhandedly. “You can have them if you want. They’re just color copies.”
“They’re awesome,” I say.
Adi’s getting antsy; it’s time for the next installation of our evening. We will head to the R Bar and, true to prediction, neither of his lovely ladies will be there.
“Oh well,” we’ll say.
“I was right!” Adi will say.
We’ll huddle our stools around each other, and watch a couple of people get haircuts, and listen to the bartender tell their version of The Night The Saints Won (involving confetti and effigies and pyrotechnics, apparently), and in the end it will be all right that it’s just us: in most cases, the reality of friends is better than the anticipation of romance.
9 pm
Adi’s with us again tonight, and all we can talk about is the Saints. Over 24 hours later, the world’s still exploding, and all around the bar you can hear people telling their stories of last night:
“People were still running down our street at 5AM banging pots and pans!”
“We were pulling people out of cars and making them dance with us on the corner!”
“I hugged more strangers last night than I ever have in one day—even counting Mardi Gras!”
The adorable bartender’s got “WHO DAT” stenciled on his knuckles in Sharpie marker.
“How you doing,” we say, pulling into our empty seats in the center of the bar.
“Aw, you know. Recovering from victory.”
“Indeed.”
Adi’s asking the adorable bartender about his t-shirt, which was designed as a fundraiser for someone from the neighborhood who fell off his 2-story bike and punctured a kidney.
“Evidently, he hates the shirts,” the adorable bartender’s saying, “but I think that’s just for show. He’s been made kind of famous. How can you not be into that?”
I wonder.
I’m buying tonight, which is easy because Anne and Adi are on a PBR kick. We touch our glasses together and rib Adi about his love life. He’s got at least two potential love interests these days, and both are likely to be at the R bar later tonight. In fact, when he leaves us he’s getting a ride over with one of them, but really he’s kind of excited to see the other one there.
“Jeez, Adi,” we say.
“You know,” he muses, “I’m not even that worried about it. Because nothing ever really works out in the end.”
“Well, I wonder why. That’s basically being on a first date with two people at the same time.”
They were at Cosimo’s last night, where Anne befriended a man who showed her his fleur-de-lis tattoo. “I got this when I was fifteen!” he announced to her, pointing passionately toward his bicep. “I’m forty-one years old! I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!” Between plays he would kneel down on the floor, in prayer.
Black-clad people filter in lazily behind us. The smoke’s clouding up toward the ceiling, filling in the spaces between us. Last night’s still going on, but we’re tired and creeping now. Everything moves a little slower.
Anjali materializes behind us, Danielle in tow. Everybody hugs everybody and we pull some chairs behind us and make a little circle, our backs to the bar. Instantly we segue into a long conversation about life and love and the Saints and Katrina, all history and redemption at the drop of a hat, and I’m grateful, sometimes, not to have to go through pre-emptive smalltalk with some people, to get right down into the good parts.
The adorable bartender scoots in next to me.
“You done?” I ask.
“Basically.” He’s got a glass of wine in front of him and soon we’re talking about Mimi’s, the Saints, the gym, art. “I don’t usually think our life is that interesting, but sometimes I guess it is,” he says.
Sometimes I lean back in to the conversation the others are having, but I keep catching phrases like “foreskin tattoo,” and I kind of don’t want to know, so the adorable bartender and I keep talking, like a couple of cousins, like old men on a park bench. “Lemme show you something,” he says, and scootches off his stool and moves toward the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”
When he returns he’s got a couple of color copies of collages he’s made. My favorite is of a woman lying on a mirror, surrounded by butterflies, the words “I’m flying” stenciled into a pale sky.
He shrugs offhandedly. “You can have them if you want. They’re just color copies.”
“They’re awesome,” I say.
Adi’s getting antsy; it’s time for the next installation of our evening. We will head to the R Bar and, true to prediction, neither of his lovely ladies will be there.
“Oh well,” we’ll say.
“I was right!” Adi will say.
We’ll huddle our stools around each other, and watch a couple of people get haircuts, and listen to the bartender tell their version of The Night The Saints Won (involving confetti and effigies and pyrotechnics, apparently), and in the end it will be all right that it’s just us: in most cases, the reality of friends is better than the anticipation of romance.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Day 25: Interlude from the hospital
jan 24
Ask any New Orleanian to tell you about the Saints, and they will probably begin by shaking their head and saying something like, “Well, baby, lemme tell ya this. It’s a little bit about football, but really it’s about magic.” Or love, or New Orleans, or the spirit of, say, Great Uncle Clarence, who religiously watched every single game the Saints ever played until he passed away in 2008, and you know he’s going crazy up in heaven right now. Best seats in the house. Everybody’s got that relative; everybody’s dedicating this season to their ghosts. It’s about football, but it’s also about so much more than football.
I’d intended, on these little call-night interludes, to write about the strange and beautiful things that happen in the hospital: the long thin nights, the jolly singing ladies from Environmental Services, my 82-year-old patient whose feeble creaky wife brings us collards from their garden in the mornings, carefully wrapped in Scott towels to help them stay crisp during the 2 bus rides in from the East.
But tonight’s not a normal night, not anywhere in the whole city. This is what happens in the hospital tonight: everything stops. Everything stops, and we all, every single one of us--the doctors and the nurses and the patients and the relatives and the x-ray techs and the security guards and the dietary services people—we all find a spot to sit, and we all watch The Game. Yes. For four hours time stands still, and the hospital might as well be somebody’s enormous fluorescent-lit living room, for all the medical care that’s going on, because suddenly nobody’s having chest pain or back pain or respiratory distress or diarrhea, and for just this little while nobody cares if sweet demented Mr Washington’s climbing out of his bed again, or you didn’t put the date and time on your orders, or the relatives are sneaking in with 12-piece boxes of Popeyes chicken, way after visiting hours are supposed to be over, because nothing—absolutely nothing—is more important, not even in a functioning hospital with a whole bunch of legitimately sick people in it, than That Game. And so, minus the alcohol, we do what you are doing: we cringe and pace and bite our nails, we have collective mini-strokes, we pray, we sing, we jump and holler, we eat nervously, we send anxious text messages to everyone we know, we hug strangers at every first down, we curse loud and long at the referees.
And then, when it’s over and the city begins to explode with a joy that even we New Orleanians, arguably the most celebrating people on the planet, have never before experienced, we burst outside onto the second-floor bridge to the parking garage, and we are surrounded by the cheering and honking, the flags and streamers and fireworks and, yes, gunfire, and it is about football, but it’s also about so much more than football as the long-suffering but always exuberant people of New Orleans stream out into our still-broken streets, overflowing with noise and victory, embracing loved ones and strangers all over the city, and the young girls perform dance routines in the middle of the street, and the RTA bus driver stops the bus and gets out and dances on the sidewalk with a couple of women who are going crazy on the corner, and everyone’s yelling “We’re going to the Superbowl! We’re going to the Superbowl!”
And I think it’s so perfect and adorable that we all keep saying “we.” Not “The Saints are going to the Superbowl,” or “Our team is going to the Superbowl,” or “My little cousin Juju might get tickets and take my Uncle Larry to the Superbowl.” Oh, no, baby. When we say we are going to the Superbowl, it is because, in some weird metaphysical way that each one of us somehow understands, we really are. Every last one of us. We, the people of New Orleans, have finally, finally made it. And it is about football but it’s also about so much more than football as we fill the world with our noise, the sounds of a people who create music even in the midst of utter, cataclysmic despair, the sounds of a people who’ve been crawling through a deep cave together and are finally seeing, for the first time in longer than you’d ever want to imagine, the light. Not forever but for this moment we have won something—we have won something!-- and in the streamers and the sequins and the shouting, the horns and the dancing and the fireworks, we all—the bus drivers, and the EKG techs, and the high school baton twirlers, and the mail carriers, and the chambermaids, and the homecare workers, and the oldtimers playing dominoes on the neutral ground, and the men selling shrimp out of the backs of their pickups, and the pastors, and the babies, and the go-go dancers, and the people riding around the Bywater on the tall bikes, and the wild-eyed hustlers under the Claiborne overpass, and the ladies making stuffed peppers in the back of the corner store, and the strippers, and the waiters, and the dockworkers, and the shut-ins, and the graffiti artists, and the nuns, and the grandmothers, and the outlaws and the yardbirds and the grifters, all of us—we are all, all, all going to the Superbowl.
We dance on cars, we shout long and joyously through the night, and when the sun rises we are still celebrating because we have done it; we are coming out the other side, and not only are we still alive after our long sad legacy of deep suffering, and not only are we still beautiful and shining, a people who dance at funerals and make the entire world fall in love with us, but this time we’ve also won! We won! Could you believe that? We’ve never won anything in our lives, the people of New Orleans, and as the night ends and the day dawns and we are still streaming gold and music all over this cracked decaying city, you can feel the world shift a bit beneath us. You can feel our hands unclench a little, and some of our deep gray sadness lifts off and leaves us, and the space behind fills up with our music and the sounds of our footsteps, and our people keep dancing, dancing, marching in.
Ask any New Orleanian to tell you about the Saints, and they will probably begin by shaking their head and saying something like, “Well, baby, lemme tell ya this. It’s a little bit about football, but really it’s about magic.” Or love, or New Orleans, or the spirit of, say, Great Uncle Clarence, who religiously watched every single game the Saints ever played until he passed away in 2008, and you know he’s going crazy up in heaven right now. Best seats in the house. Everybody’s got that relative; everybody’s dedicating this season to their ghosts. It’s about football, but it’s also about so much more than football.
I’d intended, on these little call-night interludes, to write about the strange and beautiful things that happen in the hospital: the long thin nights, the jolly singing ladies from Environmental Services, my 82-year-old patient whose feeble creaky wife brings us collards from their garden in the mornings, carefully wrapped in Scott towels to help them stay crisp during the 2 bus rides in from the East.
But tonight’s not a normal night, not anywhere in the whole city. This is what happens in the hospital tonight: everything stops. Everything stops, and we all, every single one of us--the doctors and the nurses and the patients and the relatives and the x-ray techs and the security guards and the dietary services people—we all find a spot to sit, and we all watch The Game. Yes. For four hours time stands still, and the hospital might as well be somebody’s enormous fluorescent-lit living room, for all the medical care that’s going on, because suddenly nobody’s having chest pain or back pain or respiratory distress or diarrhea, and for just this little while nobody cares if sweet demented Mr Washington’s climbing out of his bed again, or you didn’t put the date and time on your orders, or the relatives are sneaking in with 12-piece boxes of Popeyes chicken, way after visiting hours are supposed to be over, because nothing—absolutely nothing—is more important, not even in a functioning hospital with a whole bunch of legitimately sick people in it, than That Game. And so, minus the alcohol, we do what you are doing: we cringe and pace and bite our nails, we have collective mini-strokes, we pray, we sing, we jump and holler, we eat nervously, we send anxious text messages to everyone we know, we hug strangers at every first down, we curse loud and long at the referees.
And then, when it’s over and the city begins to explode with a joy that even we New Orleanians, arguably the most celebrating people on the planet, have never before experienced, we burst outside onto the second-floor bridge to the parking garage, and we are surrounded by the cheering and honking, the flags and streamers and fireworks and, yes, gunfire, and it is about football, but it’s also about so much more than football as the long-suffering but always exuberant people of New Orleans stream out into our still-broken streets, overflowing with noise and victory, embracing loved ones and strangers all over the city, and the young girls perform dance routines in the middle of the street, and the RTA bus driver stops the bus and gets out and dances on the sidewalk with a couple of women who are going crazy on the corner, and everyone’s yelling “We’re going to the Superbowl! We’re going to the Superbowl!”
And I think it’s so perfect and adorable that we all keep saying “we.” Not “The Saints are going to the Superbowl,” or “Our team is going to the Superbowl,” or “My little cousin Juju might get tickets and take my Uncle Larry to the Superbowl.” Oh, no, baby. When we say we are going to the Superbowl, it is because, in some weird metaphysical way that each one of us somehow understands, we really are. Every last one of us. We, the people of New Orleans, have finally, finally made it. And it is about football but it’s also about so much more than football as we fill the world with our noise, the sounds of a people who create music even in the midst of utter, cataclysmic despair, the sounds of a people who’ve been crawling through a deep cave together and are finally seeing, for the first time in longer than you’d ever want to imagine, the light. Not forever but for this moment we have won something—we have won something!-- and in the streamers and the sequins and the shouting, the horns and the dancing and the fireworks, we all—the bus drivers, and the EKG techs, and the high school baton twirlers, and the mail carriers, and the chambermaids, and the homecare workers, and the oldtimers playing dominoes on the neutral ground, and the men selling shrimp out of the backs of their pickups, and the pastors, and the babies, and the go-go dancers, and the people riding around the Bywater on the tall bikes, and the wild-eyed hustlers under the Claiborne overpass, and the ladies making stuffed peppers in the back of the corner store, and the strippers, and the waiters, and the dockworkers, and the shut-ins, and the graffiti artists, and the nuns, and the grandmothers, and the outlaws and the yardbirds and the grifters, all of us—we are all, all, all going to the Superbowl.
We dance on cars, we shout long and joyously through the night, and when the sun rises we are still celebrating because we have done it; we are coming out the other side, and not only are we still alive after our long sad legacy of deep suffering, and not only are we still beautiful and shining, a people who dance at funerals and make the entire world fall in love with us, but this time we’ve also won! We won! Could you believe that? We’ve never won anything in our lives, the people of New Orleans, and as the night ends and the day dawns and we are still streaming gold and music all over this cracked decaying city, you can feel the world shift a bit beneath us. You can feel our hands unclench a little, and some of our deep gray sadness lifts off and leaves us, and the space behind fills up with our music and the sounds of our footsteps, and our people keep dancing, dancing, marching in.
Day 24
Jan 23
9 pm
The neighborhood’s exploding tonight with people pre-emptively wearing black and gold. Everywhere you look, there’s just a little more happening than usual: the music’s a little louder, the parking spaces are a little tighter, and when I meet up with Anne and Anita on a corner on Frenchmen Street, we all give each other bewildered hugs and Anne says “Whew. There’s a lot going on out there.” The world’s gearing up; you can feel it.
It is still early, though, and when we roll in there’s just a thin crowd at the bar and the Saturday night people have yet to begin arriving in force. We ease into a table by a window. Anne and Anita argue about who’s going to buy our drinks tonight. I spot Christian at the bar and wander over to give him a hug. He introduces me to the person he’s with. “We’re talking books,” he says.
Anita’s visiting from New York and she and Anne tell me about their day, which consisted of food, music, haircuts, and gaping at beautiful buildings; they are smoking Parliaments and making fun of each other like people who’ve been in each other’s lives for a long time. I lean back in my stool and sit cross-legged; I’m happy just to settle in and listen tonight.
Two women in1940’s prom dresses cross the floor and move toward the stairs. Behind them trails a flock of men in light-colored linen sport jackets. Our smoke rises toward the ceiling. The enthusiastic bartender’s moving in and out behind the bar; he’s got on a sleeveless t-shirt and a red ski hat and it takes me a few times before I realize it’s him. A group of three men walks over to the open window beside us; they pass small glasses of whiskey back and forth through the window to another group of men standing outside. They’re rooted; they look like they’re not going anywhere for a while.
We’re having a long conversation about locker rooms and bodies and modesty and etiquette: do you look at people? Do you not? Do you keep your towel on? Or not? The voices around us get louder. The stylish people begin to trickle in. Christian and his friend look like they’re arguing, hands and words flying loud and fast between them. The prom dress girls rush back across the floor to the exit; they are walking dramatically, like something’s just happened, or something’s about to happen.
My wine’s gone before I know it. I’m on call tomorrow, and Anne and Anita are supporting my mission to get to bed before eleven. Nothing more’s happening tonight, and we haul ourselves wearily off our stools. We give quick goodbye hugs to Christian and the adorable bartender, who’s materialized by our table right as we’re picking up our jackets, and when we walk outside the dreadlocked bouncer is perched on his stool, and the prom dress girls are hugging, and one of them has deep streaks of mascara rolling down a cheek, and it’s still early and you can tell that for lots of people in New Orleans, tonight’s going to be one of Those Nights, but not us, not us, and I drag my worn body down the noisy street and home toward my soft bed, and for once I don’t feel sad to leave the night behind.
9 pm
The neighborhood’s exploding tonight with people pre-emptively wearing black and gold. Everywhere you look, there’s just a little more happening than usual: the music’s a little louder, the parking spaces are a little tighter, and when I meet up with Anne and Anita on a corner on Frenchmen Street, we all give each other bewildered hugs and Anne says “Whew. There’s a lot going on out there.” The world’s gearing up; you can feel it.
It is still early, though, and when we roll in there’s just a thin crowd at the bar and the Saturday night people have yet to begin arriving in force. We ease into a table by a window. Anne and Anita argue about who’s going to buy our drinks tonight. I spot Christian at the bar and wander over to give him a hug. He introduces me to the person he’s with. “We’re talking books,” he says.
Anita’s visiting from New York and she and Anne tell me about their day, which consisted of food, music, haircuts, and gaping at beautiful buildings; they are smoking Parliaments and making fun of each other like people who’ve been in each other’s lives for a long time. I lean back in my stool and sit cross-legged; I’m happy just to settle in and listen tonight.
Two women in1940’s prom dresses cross the floor and move toward the stairs. Behind them trails a flock of men in light-colored linen sport jackets. Our smoke rises toward the ceiling. The enthusiastic bartender’s moving in and out behind the bar; he’s got on a sleeveless t-shirt and a red ski hat and it takes me a few times before I realize it’s him. A group of three men walks over to the open window beside us; they pass small glasses of whiskey back and forth through the window to another group of men standing outside. They’re rooted; they look like they’re not going anywhere for a while.
We’re having a long conversation about locker rooms and bodies and modesty and etiquette: do you look at people? Do you not? Do you keep your towel on? Or not? The voices around us get louder. The stylish people begin to trickle in. Christian and his friend look like they’re arguing, hands and words flying loud and fast between them. The prom dress girls rush back across the floor to the exit; they are walking dramatically, like something’s just happened, or something’s about to happen.
My wine’s gone before I know it. I’m on call tomorrow, and Anne and Anita are supporting my mission to get to bed before eleven. Nothing more’s happening tonight, and we haul ourselves wearily off our stools. We give quick goodbye hugs to Christian and the adorable bartender, who’s materialized by our table right as we’re picking up our jackets, and when we walk outside the dreadlocked bouncer is perched on his stool, and the prom dress girls are hugging, and one of them has deep streaks of mascara rolling down a cheek, and it’s still early and you can tell that for lots of people in New Orleans, tonight’s going to be one of Those Nights, but not us, not us, and I drag my worn body down the noisy street and home toward my soft bed, and for once I don’t feel sad to leave the night behind.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Day 23
Jan 22
1030 pm
If ever there were a night where I’d be able to write:
We walk in.
We have a shot of Jameson.
We leave.
--it would be tonight.
I’ve come from a raucous night with my family, of wine and babies and Guitar Hero, and black-and-gold king cake, loud voices around a crowded table, the aunties holding court, the dads sitting back in bewildered amusement. Ultimately I decided not to go to the dance team tryouts tonight, not only because I didn’t want to tear myself away from all my mad loving relatives, but also because suddenly I felt daunted by the prospect of going to practices three to four times a week. I guard my free time fiercely, especially during Mardi Gras, and today I’d started feeling claustrophobic before the whole process even started. So—no. This year I’m retaining my free-agent ways, abandonment of my five-year-old dreams be damned.
Anne and I are bleary-eyed and zombielike. Despite my earnest pledge a few days ago, I’ve really not slept all week. We get carded at the door (!) by an earnest young white man in dreadlocks, who tells me my license looks fake.
“That’s ‘cause I’m old,” I say.
“Well, I mean, you can go in anyway,” he tells me.
“Thanks!” I say.
I squeeze into a space at the bar behind two tidy-looking shiny-eyed women, one of whom has words, such as “Rite-Aid” and “stoplight” written all over her arm in ball-point pen. Literally, all over her arm. Like, you can’t find a place on the whole arm that doesn’t have a word on it. “Never,” “Cross,” “look again.” She’s talking animatedly to the other woman, totally engrossed in her conversation, like she hasn’t even noticed there are all these words on her arm. I think she catches me staring, finally, because she gives me a sweet inquisitive look and I kind of point to her arm and say, “I’m totally fascinated.”
“Oh, that,” she says, and nods over toward her friend. “It’s her thirtieth birthday.”
I nod back, like this totally explains all those words on her arm. “Oh,” I say. “Awesome.”
The friend slides her gaze over to me. She’s got dollars pinned to her shirt, which is one of those things white people in New Orleans didn’t really do until after Katrina. “Are you Adele?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No, I was just amazed by all these words on your friend’s arm.”
The friend with the dollars starts cackling, like I’ve said something pretty hilarious. “We were trying to remember how to get to work!” she squeals.
Just in time, our whiskies arrive.
I say a quick happy birthday and scoot over to Eric’s seat at the corner of the bar, where Anne’s been standing.
Eric’s got on this incredible hat, which is off-white and has “New Orleans” written all over it in different fonts. He’s telling us about his plan to go to Miami during the Superbowl and cook food and sell it.
“But what if the Saints are in the Superbowl?” Anne asks.
“Yeah!” Eric says. “It’s gonna be awesome.”
We gaze around the bar for a second. “All the Uptown power people are here,” says Eric.
Anne and I decide to make a lap upstairs to see if there are couches.
“Whoa,” Anne says as we’re climbing the rickety steps. “We are totally breaking our routine.”
“We’ll probably go right back down,” I say.
Upstairs the light is red and low, and it feels polite tonight, and the one available couch is kind of too close to these dudes who are sitting on the other couches, and within seconds we’re heading back toward the stairs.
When we get back down there are two empty stools at the end of the bar, and we snag them and the enthusiastic bartender comes over and we all give each other bright-eyed greetings, like something exciting’s about to happen.
“Which one of y’all is Catherine Jones?” he asks.
“Me!” I say.
He keeps scrubbing the bar with his white towel. “I like that name,” he says. “It’s elegant.”
He tells us his name, which is probably the coolest name I’ve ever heard. It’s one of those names that’s so amazing you don’t even know if it can be true. “For real?” I ask, and the enthusiastic bartender nods exuberantly.
“Totally,” he says.
Wow.
And then, guess what, our drinks are done, and we leave.
“Just like that?” asks the enthusiastic bartender.
“Like lightning,” we say.
Outside the night’s cool and there are a zillion stars, like we’re in the country—which we kind of are, really: down the block there’s roosters crowing, and everybody knows everybody, and the old men on the porches wave as the cars pass by—and three oldish people stumble past us. They look like professors, like NPR people, like people who wake up at 7 and bring their canvas bags to the Farmers’ Market, and here they are, out on the streets knocking around with all the rest of us. One of them, perhaps the most sideways-walking of them all, announces, “I think I almost got that shit together,” and the other two cast off in bales of laughter.
Anne and I glance at each other and giggle. “That makes one of us,” we say.
1030 pm
If ever there were a night where I’d be able to write:
We walk in.
We have a shot of Jameson.
We leave.
--it would be tonight.
I’ve come from a raucous night with my family, of wine and babies and Guitar Hero, and black-and-gold king cake, loud voices around a crowded table, the aunties holding court, the dads sitting back in bewildered amusement. Ultimately I decided not to go to the dance team tryouts tonight, not only because I didn’t want to tear myself away from all my mad loving relatives, but also because suddenly I felt daunted by the prospect of going to practices three to four times a week. I guard my free time fiercely, especially during Mardi Gras, and today I’d started feeling claustrophobic before the whole process even started. So—no. This year I’m retaining my free-agent ways, abandonment of my five-year-old dreams be damned.
Anne and I are bleary-eyed and zombielike. Despite my earnest pledge a few days ago, I’ve really not slept all week. We get carded at the door (!) by an earnest young white man in dreadlocks, who tells me my license looks fake.
“That’s ‘cause I’m old,” I say.
“Well, I mean, you can go in anyway,” he tells me.
“Thanks!” I say.
I squeeze into a space at the bar behind two tidy-looking shiny-eyed women, one of whom has words, such as “Rite-Aid” and “stoplight” written all over her arm in ball-point pen. Literally, all over her arm. Like, you can’t find a place on the whole arm that doesn’t have a word on it. “Never,” “Cross,” “look again.” She’s talking animatedly to the other woman, totally engrossed in her conversation, like she hasn’t even noticed there are all these words on her arm. I think she catches me staring, finally, because she gives me a sweet inquisitive look and I kind of point to her arm and say, “I’m totally fascinated.”
“Oh, that,” she says, and nods over toward her friend. “It’s her thirtieth birthday.”
I nod back, like this totally explains all those words on her arm. “Oh,” I say. “Awesome.”
The friend slides her gaze over to me. She’s got dollars pinned to her shirt, which is one of those things white people in New Orleans didn’t really do until after Katrina. “Are you Adele?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No, I was just amazed by all these words on your friend’s arm.”
The friend with the dollars starts cackling, like I’ve said something pretty hilarious. “We were trying to remember how to get to work!” she squeals.
Just in time, our whiskies arrive.
I say a quick happy birthday and scoot over to Eric’s seat at the corner of the bar, where Anne’s been standing.
Eric’s got on this incredible hat, which is off-white and has “New Orleans” written all over it in different fonts. He’s telling us about his plan to go to Miami during the Superbowl and cook food and sell it.
“But what if the Saints are in the Superbowl?” Anne asks.
“Yeah!” Eric says. “It’s gonna be awesome.”
We gaze around the bar for a second. “All the Uptown power people are here,” says Eric.
Anne and I decide to make a lap upstairs to see if there are couches.
“Whoa,” Anne says as we’re climbing the rickety steps. “We are totally breaking our routine.”
“We’ll probably go right back down,” I say.
Upstairs the light is red and low, and it feels polite tonight, and the one available couch is kind of too close to these dudes who are sitting on the other couches, and within seconds we’re heading back toward the stairs.
When we get back down there are two empty stools at the end of the bar, and we snag them and the enthusiastic bartender comes over and we all give each other bright-eyed greetings, like something exciting’s about to happen.
“Which one of y’all is Catherine Jones?” he asks.
“Me!” I say.
He keeps scrubbing the bar with his white towel. “I like that name,” he says. “It’s elegant.”
He tells us his name, which is probably the coolest name I’ve ever heard. It’s one of those names that’s so amazing you don’t even know if it can be true. “For real?” I ask, and the enthusiastic bartender nods exuberantly.
“Totally,” he says.
Wow.
And then, guess what, our drinks are done, and we leave.
“Just like that?” asks the enthusiastic bartender.
“Like lightning,” we say.
Outside the night’s cool and there are a zillion stars, like we’re in the country—which we kind of are, really: down the block there’s roosters crowing, and everybody knows everybody, and the old men on the porches wave as the cars pass by—and three oldish people stumble past us. They look like professors, like NPR people, like people who wake up at 7 and bring their canvas bags to the Farmers’ Market, and here they are, out on the streets knocking around with all the rest of us. One of them, perhaps the most sideways-walking of them all, announces, “I think I almost got that shit together,” and the other two cast off in bales of laughter.
Anne and I glance at each other and giggle. “That makes one of us,” we say.
Day 22
January 21
9:30 pm
Tonight we have physically gone to Adi’s house to pick him up and take him with us, because if we go another night without spending time with him we will positively die. As we walk in we’re talking about the woman who yelled at us about our parking job the other night, and Anne’s like, “She’s from New York. She’s from Long Island. I can tell.” Anne’s from Long Island; she can spot her people a mile away.
Three young men in military-esque haircuts are standing by the door, and there’s a crowd at the bar. Our summer clothes are coming out: today it was almost 80 degrees, and people are running around in shorts and sandals, and you can tell we all feel a little more normal again, like we’ve just landed on solid ground.
I squeeze into the only empty space by the bar. I keep accidentally bumping against the person beside me, and when I finally look over to excuse myself or at least say hi, I realize it’s none other than the woman we were just talking about, the parking fanatic who may or may not be from Long Island. What are the chances, I think. I lean over to Anne and Adi and give them excited nudgy looks. It’s Her! I mouth.
More people are coming, so we find a table by the window, and Anne comes back with our drinks and soon she and Adi are dissecting the Jersey Shore—not the place, but the television show which, as I am sure you’re aware, has gripped our nation with epic intensity. I don’t own or watch TV, more out of laziness than any sense of moral righteousness, but I’m curious about the things that occupy the hearts and brains of my fellow people, and I’ve found over the years that I’ve been able to gauge the depth of a tv show’s effect on our popular imagination by my own level of familiarity with it. And so tonight, when Adi’s like, “I think Snookie’s supposed to get it on with the Situation in the next episode,” not only do I understand that both Snookie and the Situation are actually people, I’m even able to raise my eyebrows and say “Whoa,” and feel quite up on the times.
I see Joanna in my line of vision. I run over to give her a joyous crushing hug, and then I realize she’s sitting next to Suzanne, who’s just moved back home from Portland, and I hug Suzanne too.
“Both of y’all couldn’t take it when you tried to move away,” Joanna says.
“And we moved to such healthy functional places!” I say.
We talk for a second about how we both moved because we thought we needed to get out of New Orleans for a little while, and we both actually probably did, for at least a few months, but ultimately those times away just served to strengthen our ties to New Orleans even more, and now we both know that this is it: we never have to live anywhere else.
“I have to leave for two years,” Joanna says, and the reason is that she’s basically just been accepted to PA school, so I give her another exuberant hug and we’re off, in a flutter of conversation about gross anatomy lab and the operating room and standardized patients, and I’m so amazed and excited, not only because she’s been working so hard over so many years to be able to get to this place, but because we need people like Joanna in healthcare, who are strong and capable and committed not only to their patients but to building a healthcare system that’s responsible and just.
When I get back to our table, Elizabeth and Rahn have arrived, and then I look over and there’s Anjali sitting next to Adi, and we all start telling each other about our days, and Mardi Gras plans, and costumes, and someone suggests Anne should take up knitting. Anjali tells us this totally heartbreaking story about how, when she was ten, she went to India one summer and hand-knit—with the instruction of her grandmother—these tiny, beautiful coin purses for all her friends. “We were ten,” Anjali says. “It was so not cool.” The friends made fun of the little coin purses and never used them, and Anjali never knit again, and I have so much heart-hurt, hearing that story, that I need to squeeze my chest for a second to keep everything intact. Elizabeth, who’s been teaching special ed art classes lately, tells us that her only rule is that nobody makes fun of anybody’s art. “We open up our hearts when we create,” she says. “If somebody shoots you down in the midst of that process, they’re getting you in that raw tender place you’ve just opened up.”
On the way to the bathroom I spot a man shooting pool who is the exact image of Matthew Broderick. He accidentally nudges me with the cue and I look at him for a second because I’m trying to figure out if maybe he even actually is Matthew Broderick. I mean, he looks Exactly like him. But I think the guy’s thinking I’m giving him one of those Do-You-Mind kind of looks, because he did just hit me with the pool cue, and he’s like, “Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry!” and I’m like, “No, I’m sorry!” and he’s like, “No, I’m sorry!” and this goes on for a few cycles, and by the time I actually do walk away and go to the bathroom, I’m still not sure if it was or wasn’t Matthew Broderick. I mean, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. Almost totally sure. But on the way back from the bathroom I see something even more exciting, which is a flyer announcing tryouts for, can you believe it, a Mardi Gras dance team. Tomorrow night. I am totally there. Being in a Mardi Gras dance team has been my lifelong ambition since I was about five.
I come back to the table and everybody’s talking about Adi’s crush on a certain lady-about-town. “Do you know her?” he asks me.
“I know her, like, from being in the same world at the same time,” I say. “You know, like, we’ve had a couple of random conversations because our friends knew each other.”
Adi sighs. “She’s stunningly beautiful.”
“I know people who know her,” I tell him.
His face brightens.
“We can make it happen,” I say, because I have utter confidence in my beautiful friends’ abilities to attract more beautiful people into their orbits.
Elizabeth and Rahn are getting up to leave, and Rahn asks me the name of my tattoo artist, and I say, “Jessi, at Aart Accent on Rampart Street,” and everybody gives everybody warm loving hugs, even though they all just met.
Anne and I should go too: our drinks are long-gone and I’ve now had two nights with basically no sleep. But then Adi comes back with a few glasses of PBR, and before I realize it I start taking little sips from one, and then, the night really begins. We dive into a cavernous conversation that segues seamlessly between socially responsible disaster relief and outrageous breakup stories, and telling these stories, tonight, is like opening up our very veins. We argue, sometimes our voices get a bit choked up, we fall off our chairs with laughter, we shake our heads in disbelief and disillusion. And even though I am yawning as the hours roll by, I stay because these are stories that we need to tell. We watch the bar empty out, and the PBRs keep arriving and disappearing, and the night gets thin and old, and we keep telling stories about the things that have broken us, and the stories begin, word by word, to make us whole again.
9:30 pm
Tonight we have physically gone to Adi’s house to pick him up and take him with us, because if we go another night without spending time with him we will positively die. As we walk in we’re talking about the woman who yelled at us about our parking job the other night, and Anne’s like, “She’s from New York. She’s from Long Island. I can tell.” Anne’s from Long Island; she can spot her people a mile away.
Three young men in military-esque haircuts are standing by the door, and there’s a crowd at the bar. Our summer clothes are coming out: today it was almost 80 degrees, and people are running around in shorts and sandals, and you can tell we all feel a little more normal again, like we’ve just landed on solid ground.
I squeeze into the only empty space by the bar. I keep accidentally bumping against the person beside me, and when I finally look over to excuse myself or at least say hi, I realize it’s none other than the woman we were just talking about, the parking fanatic who may or may not be from Long Island. What are the chances, I think. I lean over to Anne and Adi and give them excited nudgy looks. It’s Her! I mouth.
More people are coming, so we find a table by the window, and Anne comes back with our drinks and soon she and Adi are dissecting the Jersey Shore—not the place, but the television show which, as I am sure you’re aware, has gripped our nation with epic intensity. I don’t own or watch TV, more out of laziness than any sense of moral righteousness, but I’m curious about the things that occupy the hearts and brains of my fellow people, and I’ve found over the years that I’ve been able to gauge the depth of a tv show’s effect on our popular imagination by my own level of familiarity with it. And so tonight, when Adi’s like, “I think Snookie’s supposed to get it on with the Situation in the next episode,” not only do I understand that both Snookie and the Situation are actually people, I’m even able to raise my eyebrows and say “Whoa,” and feel quite up on the times.
I see Joanna in my line of vision. I run over to give her a joyous crushing hug, and then I realize she’s sitting next to Suzanne, who’s just moved back home from Portland, and I hug Suzanne too.
“Both of y’all couldn’t take it when you tried to move away,” Joanna says.
“And we moved to such healthy functional places!” I say.
We talk for a second about how we both moved because we thought we needed to get out of New Orleans for a little while, and we both actually probably did, for at least a few months, but ultimately those times away just served to strengthen our ties to New Orleans even more, and now we both know that this is it: we never have to live anywhere else.
“I have to leave for two years,” Joanna says, and the reason is that she’s basically just been accepted to PA school, so I give her another exuberant hug and we’re off, in a flutter of conversation about gross anatomy lab and the operating room and standardized patients, and I’m so amazed and excited, not only because she’s been working so hard over so many years to be able to get to this place, but because we need people like Joanna in healthcare, who are strong and capable and committed not only to their patients but to building a healthcare system that’s responsible and just.
When I get back to our table, Elizabeth and Rahn have arrived, and then I look over and there’s Anjali sitting next to Adi, and we all start telling each other about our days, and Mardi Gras plans, and costumes, and someone suggests Anne should take up knitting. Anjali tells us this totally heartbreaking story about how, when she was ten, she went to India one summer and hand-knit—with the instruction of her grandmother—these tiny, beautiful coin purses for all her friends. “We were ten,” Anjali says. “It was so not cool.” The friends made fun of the little coin purses and never used them, and Anjali never knit again, and I have so much heart-hurt, hearing that story, that I need to squeeze my chest for a second to keep everything intact. Elizabeth, who’s been teaching special ed art classes lately, tells us that her only rule is that nobody makes fun of anybody’s art. “We open up our hearts when we create,” she says. “If somebody shoots you down in the midst of that process, they’re getting you in that raw tender place you’ve just opened up.”
On the way to the bathroom I spot a man shooting pool who is the exact image of Matthew Broderick. He accidentally nudges me with the cue and I look at him for a second because I’m trying to figure out if maybe he even actually is Matthew Broderick. I mean, he looks Exactly like him. But I think the guy’s thinking I’m giving him one of those Do-You-Mind kind of looks, because he did just hit me with the pool cue, and he’s like, “Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry!” and I’m like, “No, I’m sorry!” and he’s like, “No, I’m sorry!” and this goes on for a few cycles, and by the time I actually do walk away and go to the bathroom, I’m still not sure if it was or wasn’t Matthew Broderick. I mean, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. Almost totally sure. But on the way back from the bathroom I see something even more exciting, which is a flyer announcing tryouts for, can you believe it, a Mardi Gras dance team. Tomorrow night. I am totally there. Being in a Mardi Gras dance team has been my lifelong ambition since I was about five.
I come back to the table and everybody’s talking about Adi’s crush on a certain lady-about-town. “Do you know her?” he asks me.
“I know her, like, from being in the same world at the same time,” I say. “You know, like, we’ve had a couple of random conversations because our friends knew each other.”
Adi sighs. “She’s stunningly beautiful.”
“I know people who know her,” I tell him.
His face brightens.
“We can make it happen,” I say, because I have utter confidence in my beautiful friends’ abilities to attract more beautiful people into their orbits.
Elizabeth and Rahn are getting up to leave, and Rahn asks me the name of my tattoo artist, and I say, “Jessi, at Aart Accent on Rampart Street,” and everybody gives everybody warm loving hugs, even though they all just met.
Anne and I should go too: our drinks are long-gone and I’ve now had two nights with basically no sleep. But then Adi comes back with a few glasses of PBR, and before I realize it I start taking little sips from one, and then, the night really begins. We dive into a cavernous conversation that segues seamlessly between socially responsible disaster relief and outrageous breakup stories, and telling these stories, tonight, is like opening up our very veins. We argue, sometimes our voices get a bit choked up, we fall off our chairs with laughter, we shake our heads in disbelief and disillusion. And even though I am yawning as the hours roll by, I stay because these are stories that we need to tell. We watch the bar empty out, and the PBRs keep arriving and disappearing, and the night gets thin and old, and we keep telling stories about the things that have broken us, and the stories begin, word by word, to make us whole again.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Day 21
January 20
8:30 pm
It’s positively tropical out. Sheets of thick warm wind hurl the leaves down the block; our hair curls in the wet air. Our two weeks of winter have ended. To celebrate, I’m wearing not only flip-flops but also a thin skirt and a tank top. Anne’s still got layers on, though: boots, a wool sweater, the puffy insulated jacket that carried her through the worst of the freeze. We look incongruous together. I wonder which of us is the silly one.
For weeks we’ve been trying to get Adi to come with us and it looks like tonight’s the night. He’s hanging with some people down the block who have to be in bed at a ridiculously early hour, but they may stop in for a second on the way home.
We seep inside; the room’s humid. There’s people and music and a clot of voices but it’s all just noise, oozing lazily around us. We slide into barstools in the corner. Gray air crawls in through the window behind us. Even the wall drips.
The enthusiastic bartender bounces over to us and I order a Smithwicks even though it’s the last thing I want, and when I say something like, “Man, I totally didn’t need to drink beer tonight,” the youngish-looking blond boy beside me says, “Didn’t take a lot to twist your arm,” and I respond that it rarely does. The adorable bartender and his adorable girlfriend are on the other side of him, and we all smile and wave exuberantly at each other.
Anne and I are having an intense conversation about healthy lifestyle choices, which neither of us have been making in abundance lately. We feel all right about it. Sometimes you need to prioritize adventure over balance. At the same time, we’re feeling slow, like the air outside. We need vegetables in our systems, and water, and stillness; our skin’s gritted up with smoke and activity and noise. I make a pledge to sleep more this coming week. Anne’s going to restart her daily exercise routine this Friday.
The Mohawk guy's in the middle of the room, socializing joyously with a whole crew of folks. Applause rings out from the back corner, where a crew of men gathers, intently, around the pool table. Anne sees someone videotaping but I don’t. We plan to ask someone what’s going on, to walk over there, but for now we’re rooted to our seats.
A woman I barely know from my high school days is rocking, woozily, on a chair alone at the far end of the bar. We might’ve been friends back in the day if our moms hadn’t pressured us all to spend time together when her family moved to town. But that, for whatever reason, was the adolescent guarantee of social death in our little world, and so our interactions never made it beyond casual hellos at bars, nods across the dank gropy basements of friends’ parties. She disappeared for a little while during our junior year, and when she came back from wherever it was she’d gone, our moms didn’t want us to hang out with her anymore. “That girl’s trouble,” they said. Which of course meant that then she became interesting, and everyone suddenly knew who she was, and for about fifteen seconds she was the star of citywide gossip scandals ranging from the mundane to the supernatural, until the next big Pregnancy/Drugs/Teenage Vandalism event occurred and she was, largely, forgotten.
But I remember her, in the sad fascinated way I remember all the notorious luminaries of my youth, and when I see her tonight, clutching a wineglass and reeling thickly among strangers, I feel a surge of protective responsibility, the way you’d feel if you got called to bail an estranged second-cousin out of jail. I wonder who’s going to make sure she gets home all right.
Somebody will: this is New Orleans, and ultimately we’re all family, and for better or worse, people here rarely suffer tribulations alone. In my greater than thirty years of living in this city, I have never changed a tire or mourned a relative without friends and strangers standing by, passing wrenches and telling stories till they feel like I’ll be all right on my own. In my best days I like to think that this is how we are, that we stand with our people, whether we even really know them or not, until we see they’re on their slow stumbly way again. And so tonight it’s my turn, and I’m keeping an eye on this girl from afar for a second, while we sit back and drink and our words get lost in the ever-deepening crush of noise around us.
A man and a woman set purses and jackets and hats down at the table behind us and raise the window as high as it can go. In burst the gales and the leaves; it feels like we’re on the high seas. They order bloody marys, and the enthusiastic bartender’s like, “Watch out. They’re gonna be spicy.”
Adi sends us a text that begins with the word “Foiled!”
“I don’t even want to know the rest,” I say, and Anne’s like, “Yeah. The people he’s with don’t want to come to Mimis.”
Imagine that.
“Ladies,” the enthusiastic bartender comes up to us with two small glasses. “The gentleman and lady over here are requesting that you perform a shot with us.”
Yay, we say.
No longer is this a one-drink night. My willpower creeps out the window, on the tail of the mist.
What we are about to do, evidently, has been named a yoga-bomb by the adorable bartender and his girlfriend, who, upon downing her whiskey, shoots a leg into the air and, impossibly, wraps it around the adorable bartender’s neck.
Whoa.
More applause. If I were a gossip writer—and aren’t I, really?—they’d totally make my Top 9 Hottest Couples In New Orleans list.
I’m telling Anne about my patient today, who wanted give me a piece of his snot so I could look at it under the microscope. It’s too much for Anne; she hides her face under the puffy jacket. Across the room I see an older man in a button-down shirt place a protective arm around the girl from my past. Somebody’s looking out for her, I think. I hope he's her neighbor or something, and not a serial killer, but they're acting like they know each other, and anyway at some point you have to trust the world.
We’re thinking about leaving when I feel a hand scrunch on my shoulder, and I look back and it’s Annelies, her hair glinting burgundy in the low light. She scoots in next to us and orders a Hoegaarden, first in Belgian, because she is Belgian, and when the enthusiastic bartender’s like, “What?” she goes, “Ho- garden,” and he nods in recognition, and I feel unaccountably sad for a little moment. Annelies and Anne have met once before, in Washington Square Park during the heady and beautiful wedding of some friends, and they’re both saying “Oh, yeah! People keep telling me I should be friends with you!” They’re gushing about each other’s shoes, and each other’s work, and I’m sitting in the middle of it, soaking it all up. So many lovely people in the world; I love it when they find each other.
Then it’s time to go, and as we leave I say, “Cool, I’m so glad I’m gonna sleep tonight,” but as we know it’s not been a night for discipline, and when I’m heading home I will get a text from a friend that says, “Still up? Wanna get a drink?” and it'll only take me about nine seconds before I send one back that says, “Yes.”
8:30 pm
It’s positively tropical out. Sheets of thick warm wind hurl the leaves down the block; our hair curls in the wet air. Our two weeks of winter have ended. To celebrate, I’m wearing not only flip-flops but also a thin skirt and a tank top. Anne’s still got layers on, though: boots, a wool sweater, the puffy insulated jacket that carried her through the worst of the freeze. We look incongruous together. I wonder which of us is the silly one.
For weeks we’ve been trying to get Adi to come with us and it looks like tonight’s the night. He’s hanging with some people down the block who have to be in bed at a ridiculously early hour, but they may stop in for a second on the way home.
We seep inside; the room’s humid. There’s people and music and a clot of voices but it’s all just noise, oozing lazily around us. We slide into barstools in the corner. Gray air crawls in through the window behind us. Even the wall drips.
The enthusiastic bartender bounces over to us and I order a Smithwicks even though it’s the last thing I want, and when I say something like, “Man, I totally didn’t need to drink beer tonight,” the youngish-looking blond boy beside me says, “Didn’t take a lot to twist your arm,” and I respond that it rarely does. The adorable bartender and his adorable girlfriend are on the other side of him, and we all smile and wave exuberantly at each other.
Anne and I are having an intense conversation about healthy lifestyle choices, which neither of us have been making in abundance lately. We feel all right about it. Sometimes you need to prioritize adventure over balance. At the same time, we’re feeling slow, like the air outside. We need vegetables in our systems, and water, and stillness; our skin’s gritted up with smoke and activity and noise. I make a pledge to sleep more this coming week. Anne’s going to restart her daily exercise routine this Friday.
The Mohawk guy's in the middle of the room, socializing joyously with a whole crew of folks. Applause rings out from the back corner, where a crew of men gathers, intently, around the pool table. Anne sees someone videotaping but I don’t. We plan to ask someone what’s going on, to walk over there, but for now we’re rooted to our seats.
A woman I barely know from my high school days is rocking, woozily, on a chair alone at the far end of the bar. We might’ve been friends back in the day if our moms hadn’t pressured us all to spend time together when her family moved to town. But that, for whatever reason, was the adolescent guarantee of social death in our little world, and so our interactions never made it beyond casual hellos at bars, nods across the dank gropy basements of friends’ parties. She disappeared for a little while during our junior year, and when she came back from wherever it was she’d gone, our moms didn’t want us to hang out with her anymore. “That girl’s trouble,” they said. Which of course meant that then she became interesting, and everyone suddenly knew who she was, and for about fifteen seconds she was the star of citywide gossip scandals ranging from the mundane to the supernatural, until the next big Pregnancy/Drugs/Teenage Vandalism event occurred and she was, largely, forgotten.
But I remember her, in the sad fascinated way I remember all the notorious luminaries of my youth, and when I see her tonight, clutching a wineglass and reeling thickly among strangers, I feel a surge of protective responsibility, the way you’d feel if you got called to bail an estranged second-cousin out of jail. I wonder who’s going to make sure she gets home all right.
Somebody will: this is New Orleans, and ultimately we’re all family, and for better or worse, people here rarely suffer tribulations alone. In my greater than thirty years of living in this city, I have never changed a tire or mourned a relative without friends and strangers standing by, passing wrenches and telling stories till they feel like I’ll be all right on my own. In my best days I like to think that this is how we are, that we stand with our people, whether we even really know them or not, until we see they’re on their slow stumbly way again. And so tonight it’s my turn, and I’m keeping an eye on this girl from afar for a second, while we sit back and drink and our words get lost in the ever-deepening crush of noise around us.
A man and a woman set purses and jackets and hats down at the table behind us and raise the window as high as it can go. In burst the gales and the leaves; it feels like we’re on the high seas. They order bloody marys, and the enthusiastic bartender’s like, “Watch out. They’re gonna be spicy.”
Adi sends us a text that begins with the word “Foiled!”
“I don’t even want to know the rest,” I say, and Anne’s like, “Yeah. The people he’s with don’t want to come to Mimis.”
Imagine that.
“Ladies,” the enthusiastic bartender comes up to us with two small glasses. “The gentleman and lady over here are requesting that you perform a shot with us.”
Yay, we say.
No longer is this a one-drink night. My willpower creeps out the window, on the tail of the mist.
What we are about to do, evidently, has been named a yoga-bomb by the adorable bartender and his girlfriend, who, upon downing her whiskey, shoots a leg into the air and, impossibly, wraps it around the adorable bartender’s neck.
Whoa.
More applause. If I were a gossip writer—and aren’t I, really?—they’d totally make my Top 9 Hottest Couples In New Orleans list.
I’m telling Anne about my patient today, who wanted give me a piece of his snot so I could look at it under the microscope. It’s too much for Anne; she hides her face under the puffy jacket. Across the room I see an older man in a button-down shirt place a protective arm around the girl from my past. Somebody’s looking out for her, I think. I hope he's her neighbor or something, and not a serial killer, but they're acting like they know each other, and anyway at some point you have to trust the world.
We’re thinking about leaving when I feel a hand scrunch on my shoulder, and I look back and it’s Annelies, her hair glinting burgundy in the low light. She scoots in next to us and orders a Hoegaarden, first in Belgian, because she is Belgian, and when the enthusiastic bartender’s like, “What?” she goes, “Ho- garden,” and he nods in recognition, and I feel unaccountably sad for a little moment. Annelies and Anne have met once before, in Washington Square Park during the heady and beautiful wedding of some friends, and they’re both saying “Oh, yeah! People keep telling me I should be friends with you!” They’re gushing about each other’s shoes, and each other’s work, and I’m sitting in the middle of it, soaking it all up. So many lovely people in the world; I love it when they find each other.
Then it’s time to go, and as we leave I say, “Cool, I’m so glad I’m gonna sleep tonight,” but as we know it’s not been a night for discipline, and when I’m heading home I will get a text from a friend that says, “Still up? Wanna get a drink?” and it'll only take me about nine seconds before I send one back that says, “Yes.”
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