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.”
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Day 20
January 19
8:30 pm
Last night's still with us, tussled in our hair, rubbed into the gray beneath our eyes. We're still feeling winded from our epic tattoo experience and the long workdays we’ve both just come from, and we're determined to sleep tonight. I’ve got flip-flops on, because it’s spring, or at least it was for a few hours this afternoon, and I’m hoping the summery footwear will give me energy.
"I'm drinking water," Anne declares as we approach the doorway.
“Totally,” I say.
We plan to walk out the door in less than an hour.
“Noah said he was gonna bike over,” Anne says, “but I told him we weren’t waiting around for anybody tonight.”
“I love that idea,” I say. “I hope he gets here before we leave.”
The adorable bartender’s sitting with his adorable girlfriend at the far end of the bar, in seats I have come to recognize as theirs. They wave at us, then go back to their conversation. Before we even realize it, I’m ordering red wine and Anne gets a Blue Moon. So much for the water idea, I’ll think later as I’m falling into bed.
The Mohawk guy’s engaged in a deep conversation with a woman I feel like I’ve met before. They’re just a little too far away for me to see her properly, and I squint a couple of times, which never helps. I really need to get some glasses.
Anne fills me in on the clinic day today, which was a big one because it was the first time they’ve ever taken appointments, and I’m telling stories about my VA patients (“Hey Doc! If I’m still alive when you turn 60, wanna get married?”), and the wine and the Blue Moon disappear epically.
Men in black coats haul hulking instruments toward the stairs behind us. A muscly guy in a paint-splattered t-shirt shoots pool in the corner. I look over at the Mohawk guy, who’s now talking to a bunch of other people, and wonder if I’ll get up the nerve to say hi to him tonight.
The intense-looking beret-clad darts man from the other night is sitting next to me, I realize. Tonight he’s smiling and socializing normally, and I feel like I’ve misjudged him. I’m reminded that sometimes it takes a few tries to get someone right, that we miss so much when all we have are glimpses of people.
The adorable bartender and his adorable girlfriend walk over toward us on their way out. We introduce ourselves to the adorable girlfriend, and the adorable bartender’s like, “What? Y’all don’t know each other? I feel like a terrible host!” We know each other now, we say, and we all kind of smile at each other and I feel a little fluttery and excited.
The adorable bartender’s got a bottle of champagne under his arm, because they’re on the way to have oysters “and I figure if they’re supplying the oysters, we better bring the champagne.” Which sounds like an amazingly fair trade to me.
Anne and I are yawning. The Mohawk guy walks by and I think, Now’s my chance! But the moment passes and we don’t make eye contact and I remind myself that there’s time. There’s time, there’s always time, until there isn’t anymore. But tonight’s not the night.
We slide off our barstools, wave goodbye to Sean at the bar, and as we’re walking out we almost run right smack into Noah, who’s biking speedily down Franklin Avenue.
“You just missed us,” we call out to him.
“That’s cool,” he says, hopping off his bike and leaning it against a lamppost. “I’m gonna go across the street and get coffee.”
Tomorrow, we say. Bet we’ll see you tomorrow.
8:30 pm
Last night's still with us, tussled in our hair, rubbed into the gray beneath our eyes. We're still feeling winded from our epic tattoo experience and the long workdays we’ve both just come from, and we're determined to sleep tonight. I’ve got flip-flops on, because it’s spring, or at least it was for a few hours this afternoon, and I’m hoping the summery footwear will give me energy.
"I'm drinking water," Anne declares as we approach the doorway.
“Totally,” I say.
We plan to walk out the door in less than an hour.
“Noah said he was gonna bike over,” Anne says, “but I told him we weren’t waiting around for anybody tonight.”
“I love that idea,” I say. “I hope he gets here before we leave.”
The adorable bartender’s sitting with his adorable girlfriend at the far end of the bar, in seats I have come to recognize as theirs. They wave at us, then go back to their conversation. Before we even realize it, I’m ordering red wine and Anne gets a Blue Moon. So much for the water idea, I’ll think later as I’m falling into bed.
The Mohawk guy’s engaged in a deep conversation with a woman I feel like I’ve met before. They’re just a little too far away for me to see her properly, and I squint a couple of times, which never helps. I really need to get some glasses.
Anne fills me in on the clinic day today, which was a big one because it was the first time they’ve ever taken appointments, and I’m telling stories about my VA patients (“Hey Doc! If I’m still alive when you turn 60, wanna get married?”), and the wine and the Blue Moon disappear epically.
Men in black coats haul hulking instruments toward the stairs behind us. A muscly guy in a paint-splattered t-shirt shoots pool in the corner. I look over at the Mohawk guy, who’s now talking to a bunch of other people, and wonder if I’ll get up the nerve to say hi to him tonight.
The intense-looking beret-clad darts man from the other night is sitting next to me, I realize. Tonight he’s smiling and socializing normally, and I feel like I’ve misjudged him. I’m reminded that sometimes it takes a few tries to get someone right, that we miss so much when all we have are glimpses of people.
The adorable bartender and his adorable girlfriend walk over toward us on their way out. We introduce ourselves to the adorable girlfriend, and the adorable bartender’s like, “What? Y’all don’t know each other? I feel like a terrible host!” We know each other now, we say, and we all kind of smile at each other and I feel a little fluttery and excited.
The adorable bartender’s got a bottle of champagne under his arm, because they’re on the way to have oysters “and I figure if they’re supplying the oysters, we better bring the champagne.” Which sounds like an amazingly fair trade to me.
Anne and I are yawning. The Mohawk guy walks by and I think, Now’s my chance! But the moment passes and we don’t make eye contact and I remind myself that there’s time. There’s time, there’s always time, until there isn’t anymore. But tonight’s not the night.
We slide off our barstools, wave goodbye to Sean at the bar, and as we’re walking out we almost run right smack into Noah, who’s biking speedily down Franklin Avenue.
“You just missed us,” we call out to him.
“That’s cool,” he says, hopping off his bike and leaning it against a lamppost. “I’m gonna go across the street and get coffee.”
Tomorrow, we say. Bet we’ll see you tomorrow.
Day 19
January 18
8:30 pm
We spot David and Aneeta when we get here, raucously leaning back in their chairs at the center of the bar. The room fills with their laugh. The adorable bartender, luminous in a lime green workshirt and That Belt Buckle, smiles hello and I say something like, “Wow! I’m so excited about your outfit!” and he says “It’s spring!”—it is, almost--and before I know it I’m ordering a glass of red wine and asking what Anne should have.
“She should have the Vinho Verde,” says the man next to me, who is sitting alone and wearing a starchy-looking navy and white gingham shirt. “It’s amaaaazing.”
“Awesome,” I say.
“It sparkles. You know, subtly. Just a little.” He holds up his glass to show me.
“Cool,” I say. “It could be a night for sparkles.”
“Honey, it’s always a night for sparkles,” says the man. “I’m a sparkler! Well, who among us isn’t, really?”
Indeed.
We’ve already had a bit of an evening, which included an hour at NOAC, involving a little bit of working out and a lot of bumping into people we knew; a fruitless and, ultimately, slightly demoralizing quest for tattoos; and a consolatory dinner at Adolfo’s, up in the window seat overlooking Frenchmen Street: the room cluttered and companionably noisy, the food decadent and perfect. Now, sad as we are about the tattoos, we’re content and satisfied, and we’re expecting a little crew of our people to show up tonight.
I’m giggling with David and Aneeta about friends from residency, their odyssey today through the bars of lower Decatur Street, and David’s slightly scandalous love life. Anne’s doing this ritual where she flutters around our chairs for a second or two, then says, “Oh, I have to go outside for a second,” then leaves for a bit, then returns, looking slightly dejected. Ordinarily I’d be wondering what this is all about, but David and I, who even in serious working environments only have to look in each other’s direction before falling into gales of laughter, are currently cracking each other up merely by raising our eyebrows at each other, and we’re therefore blind to our surroundings.
After about her third venture outside, Anne returns to us, breathless, and says, “Okay. I just talked to Boobie. They’re on Rampart Street, they’re open all night, they can do what we want, and it’s gonna be 60 bucks.”
We stare for a second.
“Who’s Boobie?” Aneeta finally asks.
“The guy at the tattoo place on Rampart Street!” Anne says triumphantly.
I guess we’re getting them after all.
Devin arrives and squeezes into the seat next to me with a High Life. “I broke my promise,” he says. “I never made you a Ramos gin fizz.”
“There’s time,” I say.
Suddenly everyone’s texting us: Elizabeth and Rahn aren’t coming after all, and Adi and Anjali are getting haircuts at the R Bar (“A night of grooming!” says David), but may want to catch up with us later, post-tattoo. DrewChristopher and a group of folks may be coming by for a goodbye drink before he heads back to the Bay Area tomorrow. Anne and Devin are talking on one side of me, and I’m still giggling with David and Aneeta, about the hospital and awkward dating situations, and then Anne leans over and says, “Devin’s coming with us!”
I clap my arm around his shoulder. “Yay!”
“I’m not coming!” Devin protests. “Whoa. No. I was just drawing out what my tattoo would look like if I got one.”
“That’s half the journey, love!” I take a sip of wine. “You’re totally coming.”
Devin kind of shakes his head.
I’m about to say it again, but then I get that Don’t Corrupt The Youngsters feeling and I squeeze his shoulder and say, “You should do whatever you want,” and go back to making faces with David.
In walk Lydia and Evan, who are one of those couples who look exactly alike. We give each other wide hugs and Lydia says, “Yay! Are you here to see Drew?”
I hope so, I explain, but we’re about to get tattoos.
“Yay!” says Lydia.
We’re talking about how Lydia and Evan get mistaken for brother and sister, when Devin leans over to me and says, “Ok, I’m ready. If we’re gonna go, let’s go.”
Whoa!
In about seven seconds I’ve drained my glass and start settling my tab. “We’re taking Devin to get a tattoo,” I announce to the adorable bartender. He starts asking all the responsible questions, like Who’s the Artist, to which I respond, “I think it’s somebody named Boobie.” The adorable bartender raises an eyebrow, and I say, “It’s just gonna be a word. I think it’ll be okay. But we have to go quick before Devin changes his mind!” And we give rushed hugs to everyone and scuttle out of there, and really this is only the beginning of the story. I could tell you a whole lot about the rest of the night: the glorious multicolored walls and how the place was packed with kids and grown-ups; the flock of girls giggling in the booth next to us; the swaggering fifteen-year-old, who’d just gotten an enormous “Senora” across his chest; the incredible Jessi, who was everything you’d want your tattoo artist to be; the way Devin marched up to the chair, rolled up a sleeve, said “I want it in purple,” and didn’t even blink the whole time; and Boobie himself, who kept checking in with Anne all night like an older brother, and who’s in the business with his whole family, including his mom, who’s been running the place for about 35 years. I could fill you in about our tattoos themselves, their significance and beauty and meaning, and how it felt to get them, and our celebratory drinks at the R Bar, the way we stayed up all night afterward, wired, like we’d all undergone an important transformation; but in the end I’m just supposed to tell you about Mimis, and all the rest is another story for another time.
8:30 pm
We spot David and Aneeta when we get here, raucously leaning back in their chairs at the center of the bar. The room fills with their laugh. The adorable bartender, luminous in a lime green workshirt and That Belt Buckle, smiles hello and I say something like, “Wow! I’m so excited about your outfit!” and he says “It’s spring!”—it is, almost--and before I know it I’m ordering a glass of red wine and asking what Anne should have.
“She should have the Vinho Verde,” says the man next to me, who is sitting alone and wearing a starchy-looking navy and white gingham shirt. “It’s amaaaazing.”
“Awesome,” I say.
“It sparkles. You know, subtly. Just a little.” He holds up his glass to show me.
“Cool,” I say. “It could be a night for sparkles.”
“Honey, it’s always a night for sparkles,” says the man. “I’m a sparkler! Well, who among us isn’t, really?”
Indeed.
We’ve already had a bit of an evening, which included an hour at NOAC, involving a little bit of working out and a lot of bumping into people we knew; a fruitless and, ultimately, slightly demoralizing quest for tattoos; and a consolatory dinner at Adolfo’s, up in the window seat overlooking Frenchmen Street: the room cluttered and companionably noisy, the food decadent and perfect. Now, sad as we are about the tattoos, we’re content and satisfied, and we’re expecting a little crew of our people to show up tonight.
I’m giggling with David and Aneeta about friends from residency, their odyssey today through the bars of lower Decatur Street, and David’s slightly scandalous love life. Anne’s doing this ritual where she flutters around our chairs for a second or two, then says, “Oh, I have to go outside for a second,” then leaves for a bit, then returns, looking slightly dejected. Ordinarily I’d be wondering what this is all about, but David and I, who even in serious working environments only have to look in each other’s direction before falling into gales of laughter, are currently cracking each other up merely by raising our eyebrows at each other, and we’re therefore blind to our surroundings.
After about her third venture outside, Anne returns to us, breathless, and says, “Okay. I just talked to Boobie. They’re on Rampart Street, they’re open all night, they can do what we want, and it’s gonna be 60 bucks.”
We stare for a second.
“Who’s Boobie?” Aneeta finally asks.
“The guy at the tattoo place on Rampart Street!” Anne says triumphantly.
I guess we’re getting them after all.
Devin arrives and squeezes into the seat next to me with a High Life. “I broke my promise,” he says. “I never made you a Ramos gin fizz.”
“There’s time,” I say.
Suddenly everyone’s texting us: Elizabeth and Rahn aren’t coming after all, and Adi and Anjali are getting haircuts at the R Bar (“A night of grooming!” says David), but may want to catch up with us later, post-tattoo. DrewChristopher and a group of folks may be coming by for a goodbye drink before he heads back to the Bay Area tomorrow. Anne and Devin are talking on one side of me, and I’m still giggling with David and Aneeta, about the hospital and awkward dating situations, and then Anne leans over and says, “Devin’s coming with us!”
I clap my arm around his shoulder. “Yay!”
“I’m not coming!” Devin protests. “Whoa. No. I was just drawing out what my tattoo would look like if I got one.”
“That’s half the journey, love!” I take a sip of wine. “You’re totally coming.”
Devin kind of shakes his head.
I’m about to say it again, but then I get that Don’t Corrupt The Youngsters feeling and I squeeze his shoulder and say, “You should do whatever you want,” and go back to making faces with David.
In walk Lydia and Evan, who are one of those couples who look exactly alike. We give each other wide hugs and Lydia says, “Yay! Are you here to see Drew?”
I hope so, I explain, but we’re about to get tattoos.
“Yay!” says Lydia.
We’re talking about how Lydia and Evan get mistaken for brother and sister, when Devin leans over to me and says, “Ok, I’m ready. If we’re gonna go, let’s go.”
Whoa!
In about seven seconds I’ve drained my glass and start settling my tab. “We’re taking Devin to get a tattoo,” I announce to the adorable bartender. He starts asking all the responsible questions, like Who’s the Artist, to which I respond, “I think it’s somebody named Boobie.” The adorable bartender raises an eyebrow, and I say, “It’s just gonna be a word. I think it’ll be okay. But we have to go quick before Devin changes his mind!” And we give rushed hugs to everyone and scuttle out of there, and really this is only the beginning of the story. I could tell you a whole lot about the rest of the night: the glorious multicolored walls and how the place was packed with kids and grown-ups; the flock of girls giggling in the booth next to us; the swaggering fifteen-year-old, who’d just gotten an enormous “Senora” across his chest; the incredible Jessi, who was everything you’d want your tattoo artist to be; the way Devin marched up to the chair, rolled up a sleeve, said “I want it in purple,” and didn’t even blink the whole time; and Boobie himself, who kept checking in with Anne all night like an older brother, and who’s in the business with his whole family, including his mom, who’s been running the place for about 35 years. I could fill you in about our tattoos themselves, their significance and beauty and meaning, and how it felt to get them, and our celebratory drinks at the R Bar, the way we stayed up all night afterward, wired, like we’d all undergone an important transformation; but in the end I’m just supposed to tell you about Mimis, and all the rest is another story for another time.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Day 18
January 17
10 pm
One of the side effects of having a full and vibrant love life is that sometimes, when you’re entirely unprepared, the heart takes a tumble. Tonight I’ve got some wounds to nurse, and Anne’s still hoarse and congested, and we shamble up to the bar and order our whiskeys like a couple of oldish men who’ve finally made it out of the mines.
I’m coming from a potluck at Alex’s, where we all curled up with each other and told stories and ate steamed pork buns from the Hong Kong Market while our friend John performed spellbinding magic tricks. It was cuddly and perfect and hard to leave, but now I’m happy to be here with Anne: this nightly drinking ritual has begun to feel like a gritty natural order for me. It’s gonna be hard when it’s over.
Maybe it’s the gray in my heart, or maybe I got it wrong the first time, but even the enthusiastic bartender looks subdued tonight. “Evening, ladies,” he says. “It must be Sunday again.” I wish it was the kind of night where I’d lean over and say, “Guess what! I’ve been here eighteen days in a row!” but I think we’re all a little too sluggish tonight to be exuberant, so I just smile and say “Must be,” and touch Anne’s glass with mine.
“We have to text Elizabeth,” I’m reminding myself out loud. A few nights ago she lost a favorite earring here and didn’t realize it until she was already home. We all looked around for it and no one saw it, and then all of us except Meenakshi left, and when Meenakshi was here alone, someone came up to her with the earring and said, “Is this yours?” Meenakshi took it and gave it to me a few days later to give to Elizabeth, neither of us aware that this whole time Elizabeth’s been retracing her steps all through the Bywater, hopefully mining the curbs for any glint of gold, not knowing that we had it, safe, all along.
Finally tonight, before we came here, Anne and I called Elizabeth to see if we could go find her anywhere in the city and give it to her, but she didn’t answer, and since Rahn’s just moved here we didn’t really want to go surprising her at home in case we’d be Interrupting Something, so finally we decided to stealthily sneak it into her mailbox under the cover of darkness. Which we did, tiptoeing through the creaky green gate like a couple of glorious bandidas.
Now I’m sending Elizabeth a message that says “Nothing’s ever lost in divine time. Go check your mailbox.” And then Anne and I feel victorious and jubilant, even if just for a moment, and I’m thinking about all of us and the things we’ve already lost and then found again, in these brilliant heady beginning days of 2010.
The door’s been opening and closing all night, spitting out adorable people in cozy-looking clothes who are coming in to play pool, socialize with the bartenders, and snuggle up in the corner and read the Gambit together. One time the door opens and through it walks a short-haired girl in an amazing coat, and I think Yep, there’s another one, but then I do a double-take and I realize it’s my old roommate Alison, stunningly beautiful as always, and I jump off my chair, and she jumps up and down a little bit too, and we give each other long, woolly hugs.
“Yay!” I say.
“Yay!” Alison says.
She’s meeting a friend who’s been waiting upstairs, but for about five minutes we tell rapid-fire stories about work, roommates, the general angst and brilliance of life, and before she heads upstairs Alison says, “You doing good?”
“Rough and tumble,” I say, “but beautiful; yeah.”
She grins and squeezes me again and says “Yeah. Me too,” and heads upstairs.
“Alison’s like a ray of light,” I tell Anne, as we watch her weave her shining glorious way to the doorway.
We’re getting tattoos tomorrow, and while we slowly sip our whiskey we also strategize about words and language, the geographies of our bodies. The enthusiastic bartender pulls his jacket on and hoists a bag over his shoulder, and when he walks past us on the way out we tell him goodbye and he says, “Have a beautiful evening, ladies,” and I drain my whiskey and answer, “Indeed.”
As I settle my tab I feel my phone vibrating on my hip, and my little heart creaks, just slightly, with both hope and dread. It’s a message, not from the person I was expecting, but it says, simply, “By the way, I adore you,” and my heart swells with sad gratefulness, and this, for now, is enough to get me out of my chair and out into the world again. Our options for the rest of the night are limitless and could include a poetry extravaganza, a roving musical birthday party, a Haiti relief housewarming dance party, or maybe none of the above. When we step out into the strange dark night I don’t know where we will end up, but that’s all right. There are stars out, along with the multicolored holiday lights that are morphing, with all the rest of us, from Christmas to Mardi Gras, and somehow, at some slow fumbling time not too far off, I bet we'll find our way.
10 pm
One of the side effects of having a full and vibrant love life is that sometimes, when you’re entirely unprepared, the heart takes a tumble. Tonight I’ve got some wounds to nurse, and Anne’s still hoarse and congested, and we shamble up to the bar and order our whiskeys like a couple of oldish men who’ve finally made it out of the mines.
I’m coming from a potluck at Alex’s, where we all curled up with each other and told stories and ate steamed pork buns from the Hong Kong Market while our friend John performed spellbinding magic tricks. It was cuddly and perfect and hard to leave, but now I’m happy to be here with Anne: this nightly drinking ritual has begun to feel like a gritty natural order for me. It’s gonna be hard when it’s over.
Maybe it’s the gray in my heart, or maybe I got it wrong the first time, but even the enthusiastic bartender looks subdued tonight. “Evening, ladies,” he says. “It must be Sunday again.” I wish it was the kind of night where I’d lean over and say, “Guess what! I’ve been here eighteen days in a row!” but I think we’re all a little too sluggish tonight to be exuberant, so I just smile and say “Must be,” and touch Anne’s glass with mine.
“We have to text Elizabeth,” I’m reminding myself out loud. A few nights ago she lost a favorite earring here and didn’t realize it until she was already home. We all looked around for it and no one saw it, and then all of us except Meenakshi left, and when Meenakshi was here alone, someone came up to her with the earring and said, “Is this yours?” Meenakshi took it and gave it to me a few days later to give to Elizabeth, neither of us aware that this whole time Elizabeth’s been retracing her steps all through the Bywater, hopefully mining the curbs for any glint of gold, not knowing that we had it, safe, all along.
Finally tonight, before we came here, Anne and I called Elizabeth to see if we could go find her anywhere in the city and give it to her, but she didn’t answer, and since Rahn’s just moved here we didn’t really want to go surprising her at home in case we’d be Interrupting Something, so finally we decided to stealthily sneak it into her mailbox under the cover of darkness. Which we did, tiptoeing through the creaky green gate like a couple of glorious bandidas.
Now I’m sending Elizabeth a message that says “Nothing’s ever lost in divine time. Go check your mailbox.” And then Anne and I feel victorious and jubilant, even if just for a moment, and I’m thinking about all of us and the things we’ve already lost and then found again, in these brilliant heady beginning days of 2010.
The door’s been opening and closing all night, spitting out adorable people in cozy-looking clothes who are coming in to play pool, socialize with the bartenders, and snuggle up in the corner and read the Gambit together. One time the door opens and through it walks a short-haired girl in an amazing coat, and I think Yep, there’s another one, but then I do a double-take and I realize it’s my old roommate Alison, stunningly beautiful as always, and I jump off my chair, and she jumps up and down a little bit too, and we give each other long, woolly hugs.
“Yay!” I say.
“Yay!” Alison says.
She’s meeting a friend who’s been waiting upstairs, but for about five minutes we tell rapid-fire stories about work, roommates, the general angst and brilliance of life, and before she heads upstairs Alison says, “You doing good?”
“Rough and tumble,” I say, “but beautiful; yeah.”
She grins and squeezes me again and says “Yeah. Me too,” and heads upstairs.
“Alison’s like a ray of light,” I tell Anne, as we watch her weave her shining glorious way to the doorway.
We’re getting tattoos tomorrow, and while we slowly sip our whiskey we also strategize about words and language, the geographies of our bodies. The enthusiastic bartender pulls his jacket on and hoists a bag over his shoulder, and when he walks past us on the way out we tell him goodbye and he says, “Have a beautiful evening, ladies,” and I drain my whiskey and answer, “Indeed.”
As I settle my tab I feel my phone vibrating on my hip, and my little heart creaks, just slightly, with both hope and dread. It’s a message, not from the person I was expecting, but it says, simply, “By the way, I adore you,” and my heart swells with sad gratefulness, and this, for now, is enough to get me out of my chair and out into the world again. Our options for the rest of the night are limitless and could include a poetry extravaganza, a roving musical birthday party, a Haiti relief housewarming dance party, or maybe none of the above. When we step out into the strange dark night I don’t know where we will end up, but that’s all right. There are stars out, along with the multicolored holiday lights that are morphing, with all the rest of us, from Christmas to Mardi Gras, and somehow, at some slow fumbling time not too far off, I bet we'll find our way.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Day 17
January 16
9:20 pm
Tonight Anne’s got other plans, which have the potential to be infinitely more scandalous and eventful than mine, and I feel a little amputated as I walk in without her. The Saints have just beaten the Cardinals in the playoffs and the world's exploding with black and gold, and sequins and streamers, and flags flying off the roofs of cars, and horns and fireworks, and women in golden body paint dancing on the neutral ground.
DrewChristopher and Lydia will be coming soon, to take me to something that may or may not be a party, but they haven't gotten here yet and I scan the crowd for an empty seat or a familiar face. I find neither. It’s Saturday, and the fashionable weekend people, who Anne has dubbed The Mimi’s Crew, are already beginning to filter in. I squeeze through the crush and order a Smithwicks from a beautiful gothy woman in an intricate top and ridiculously blue eyes.
Next to me, a lithe woman with a complicated hairstyle is being caressed by a man in a gray sweatshirt and a scrubbly beard. I’m briefly amazed that a straight man of average attractiveness can come out to a bar—a kind of scene-y bar, too--on a Saturday night, in sweats, a still get a little bit of action but clearly I don’t know the whole story. Maybe they’ve been dating forever. Maybe he’s vaguely famous, and therefore allowed to wear whatever he wants. Maybe the woman’s been in love with him for years and this is her opportunity and she’s taking it, sweats be damned. This is New Orleans and Mardi Gras is around the corner and the Saints might even make it to the Superbowl this year: anything’s possible.
Noah—not our precious little friend Noah who’s been coming out with us most nights, but another Noah, for whom I also have unbridled, but different, tenderness—spots me from across the bar, and in about two seconds he’s bounded through the entire crowd and I’m being embraced in a bear hug and lifted off the floor. People around us step back to give us some room.
“How you doing, buddy?” I ask.
“Inebriated!” says Noah.
“Cool.”
Noah’s a talker even when multiple Miller High Lifes are not involved, and tonight I am treated to an exuberant stream-of-consciousness ramble that includes, among other things: the board of the Common Ground Health Clinic; speculation upon who among us is an FBI informant; Noah’s plans for rocking nursing school; a crew of people we know who, for better or worse, are going to Haiti; friends and enemies in city politics; and the corruption inherent in working for the federal government. Every now and then I’ll say things like “Really, Noah?” or “Wow!” but I’m also watching the Colts game, texting DrewChristopher, and thinking Oh, Noah. You are truly one-of-a-kind.
Eric’s behind us, buzzing from table to table in a puffy down vest that glistens with rain. He nods over to us from across the crowd; he’s gone before I even have the chance to nod back.
The adorable bartender materializes behind my chair and says, “So, um, Facebook has decided we should be friends.” Even though in this situation I totally agree with Facebook and say “Yay! I’m so excited,” I’m starting to realize—aren’t you?-- that Facebook is actually the devil. It sucks people’s time, consumes people’s brain cells, creates uncertainty and drama in even the most stable of relationships, and has now become the social micromanager of an entire generation. Be friends with this person! Reconnect with this person! You haven’t talked to that person in a while: Drop them a line!
Who needs it?
And, at the same time I’m totally like, Aww, that’s so cute, the adorable bartender and I are gonna be friends on Facebook.
Sheesh.
Lydia and DrewChristopher are here! I jump off my chair, I’m that excited to see them, and DrewChristopher’s like, “We’re gonna be late,” and I say “I know!” and we all give rushed hugs to Noah, who’s still grinning and drinking High Life, and in seconds we’re out the door and another night at Mimi’s is over. We’ll go to the is-it-even-a-party? situation, at which (besides an impressively-dressed couple in matching Mohawks making out enthusiastically in a corner) the most exciting thing will be our conversation with each other, and then we will decide we can all use a relatively early night, and we will leave, and I won’t tell you about whether or not I’ll get on the internet when I get home, but I bet you can guess.
9:20 pm
Tonight Anne’s got other plans, which have the potential to be infinitely more scandalous and eventful than mine, and I feel a little amputated as I walk in without her. The Saints have just beaten the Cardinals in the playoffs and the world's exploding with black and gold, and sequins and streamers, and flags flying off the roofs of cars, and horns and fireworks, and women in golden body paint dancing on the neutral ground.
DrewChristopher and Lydia will be coming soon, to take me to something that may or may not be a party, but they haven't gotten here yet and I scan the crowd for an empty seat or a familiar face. I find neither. It’s Saturday, and the fashionable weekend people, who Anne has dubbed The Mimi’s Crew, are already beginning to filter in. I squeeze through the crush and order a Smithwicks from a beautiful gothy woman in an intricate top and ridiculously blue eyes.
Next to me, a lithe woman with a complicated hairstyle is being caressed by a man in a gray sweatshirt and a scrubbly beard. I’m briefly amazed that a straight man of average attractiveness can come out to a bar—a kind of scene-y bar, too--on a Saturday night, in sweats, a still get a little bit of action but clearly I don’t know the whole story. Maybe they’ve been dating forever. Maybe he’s vaguely famous, and therefore allowed to wear whatever he wants. Maybe the woman’s been in love with him for years and this is her opportunity and she’s taking it, sweats be damned. This is New Orleans and Mardi Gras is around the corner and the Saints might even make it to the Superbowl this year: anything’s possible.
Noah—not our precious little friend Noah who’s been coming out with us most nights, but another Noah, for whom I also have unbridled, but different, tenderness—spots me from across the bar, and in about two seconds he’s bounded through the entire crowd and I’m being embraced in a bear hug and lifted off the floor. People around us step back to give us some room.
“How you doing, buddy?” I ask.
“Inebriated!” says Noah.
“Cool.”
Noah’s a talker even when multiple Miller High Lifes are not involved, and tonight I am treated to an exuberant stream-of-consciousness ramble that includes, among other things: the board of the Common Ground Health Clinic; speculation upon who among us is an FBI informant; Noah’s plans for rocking nursing school; a crew of people we know who, for better or worse, are going to Haiti; friends and enemies in city politics; and the corruption inherent in working for the federal government. Every now and then I’ll say things like “Really, Noah?” or “Wow!” but I’m also watching the Colts game, texting DrewChristopher, and thinking Oh, Noah. You are truly one-of-a-kind.
Eric’s behind us, buzzing from table to table in a puffy down vest that glistens with rain. He nods over to us from across the crowd; he’s gone before I even have the chance to nod back.
The adorable bartender materializes behind my chair and says, “So, um, Facebook has decided we should be friends.” Even though in this situation I totally agree with Facebook and say “Yay! I’m so excited,” I’m starting to realize—aren’t you?-- that Facebook is actually the devil. It sucks people’s time, consumes people’s brain cells, creates uncertainty and drama in even the most stable of relationships, and has now become the social micromanager of an entire generation. Be friends with this person! Reconnect with this person! You haven’t talked to that person in a while: Drop them a line!
Who needs it?
And, at the same time I’m totally like, Aww, that’s so cute, the adorable bartender and I are gonna be friends on Facebook.
Sheesh.
Lydia and DrewChristopher are here! I jump off my chair, I’m that excited to see them, and DrewChristopher’s like, “We’re gonna be late,” and I say “I know!” and we all give rushed hugs to Noah, who’s still grinning and drinking High Life, and in seconds we’re out the door and another night at Mimi’s is over. We’ll go to the is-it-even-a-party? situation, at which (besides an impressively-dressed couple in matching Mohawks making out enthusiastically in a corner) the most exciting thing will be our conversation with each other, and then we will decide we can all use a relatively early night, and we will leave, and I won’t tell you about whether or not I’ll get on the internet when I get home, but I bet you can guess.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Day 16
January 15
7:46 pm
This is what I want tonight’s entry to look like:
We walk in.
We each down a shot of Jameson.
We leave.
But, always, there’s more to the story.
Tonight starts before we even walk in the door. It’s raining, and neither Anne nor I have brought an umbrella, so I squeeze my car into a minuscule spot close to the door, and as we walk out onto the street I say something like, “I’m pretty far away from the curb, huh?” and Anne shrugs sheepishly but knowingly and says, “Well… yes.” I look back and I really am, like, two feet away from the curb, but my car’s so little that it really isn’t poking out into the street that much, and anyway we’re only planning on coming in, drinking one shot of Jameson, and leaving, so I kind of shrug and walk about one step before a woman on her cell phone by the front door yells out, “Oh my God! That is the worst parking job I have ever seen!”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I say. “It is. But---“
“I mean, it’s terrible!” She’s shaking her head repeatedly, mouth open, hands widespread in a what-am-I-gonna-do-with-you gesture. “Really!” She’s still shaking her head.
“Well, yeah, I mean, it is,” I say, “But---“
“Hang on a minute,” she tells us, then starts speaking into the cell phone again. “Ma. Ma! I’m right here. Jeez. Hold on, Ma, these girls just totally messed up the parking. Oh, man.”
“Aw, you’re talking to your mom?” I ask, walking past her toward the door. “That’s awesome. Tell her hi.”
“Ma, they say hi. Oh, whoa. Whoa.” We can still hear her shaking her head and exclaiming, even after the door closes and we are dark and dry, like the bar inside.
“She’s from the North,” Anne says.
There are two empty barstools between the Mohawk guy and a lonely-looking blond dude with a very impressive mustache. After we slide in, the Mohawk guy moves over a space.
Anne and I are both fighting colds and I am convinced that Irish whiskey is exactly what we need. It’s kind of a big occasion, because Anne has never had whiskey before. We ask for two shots of Jameson and the adorable bartender says, “Are you committed to Jameson? May I suggest Tullamore Dew? It’s smoother.” That sounds fine, we say, and the three of us drink together like pals. Next to me, the blond dude is fingering the ends of his mustache.
Anne and I are telling salacious stories of love affairs old and new. We are not talking about Haiti, or post-Katrina New Orleans, or at least we are able to avoid these topics for significant stretches of time, and I am grateful. People in New Orleans are talking a lot about both Katrina and Haiti these days. We’re connected. Our old wounds aren’t as scarred up as we might think. Still and all, as the grandmothers say, I’m happy for gossip and drink, the light feathery clothes of strangers.
Behind us, the Mohawk guy is watching Spiderman on the tv above the door. Eventually he gets up and moves to sit at a table of animated, glittery people. Their conversation sparkles around them, like flecks of silver. I’m totally going to say hi to him tomorrow, I think.
We sip our whiskey slowly. We let the night stretch out. I notice the blond man beside me. If I had a mustache, I think, I’d probably play with it a lot too.
"It's a lot," Anne says, motioning to her glass.
I can see that. "Is it all right?" I ask.
Anne says, "Oh, it's amazing!" which is one of the gazillion reasons I love her so much.
We rib the adorable bartender about his jazzy fashion last night. “Jazzy fashion?” he asks. “What do you mean?”
“That belt buckle,” I say. “Man! It was like a disco ball.”
He grins impishly and pulls up the edges of his t-shirt and Oh My Gosh, he’s wearing it again! “I wear this, like, almost every day,” he tells us. “You’d just never notice because my shirts are always over it.”
Wow! Who knew this whole time we’d been in the midst of such an impressive shiny accessory? I’m reminded of someone I know—you probably know her too; she gets around—who wears a spangly golden corset under her clothes every single day. To work, the grocery, yoga class; there she is, all the time, in an outrageous bustier, moving in and out amongst the rest of us, no one the wiser. Oh, New Orleans. This is a town where you actually can wear a golden bustier to the grocery store and no one bats an eye, but the amazing thing is that beneath that, there’s the whole legion of the rest of us, bringing sparkly-ness to the world in all these other subtle ways, which you have to be a little more observant to notice.
We don’t need to go straight home anymore. We decide we’ll make a stop a Devin’s birthday party, but first we have to go buy some candy at Walgreens because his latest art project, evidently, involves building a chandelier out of Ring Pops. Which, you know, is amazing.
We tell the adorable bartender we’re leaving and he says, “Okey-doke” (“Okey-doke!” says Anne. “Wow, I didn’t know anybody said that anymore!”), and he blows us a little kiss as we ease out the door, and out on the street in the rain Anne says, “You never look back, but I always do.”
7:46 pm
This is what I want tonight’s entry to look like:
We walk in.
We each down a shot of Jameson.
We leave.
But, always, there’s more to the story.
Tonight starts before we even walk in the door. It’s raining, and neither Anne nor I have brought an umbrella, so I squeeze my car into a minuscule spot close to the door, and as we walk out onto the street I say something like, “I’m pretty far away from the curb, huh?” and Anne shrugs sheepishly but knowingly and says, “Well… yes.” I look back and I really am, like, two feet away from the curb, but my car’s so little that it really isn’t poking out into the street that much, and anyway we’re only planning on coming in, drinking one shot of Jameson, and leaving, so I kind of shrug and walk about one step before a woman on her cell phone by the front door yells out, “Oh my God! That is the worst parking job I have ever seen!”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I say. “It is. But---“
“I mean, it’s terrible!” She’s shaking her head repeatedly, mouth open, hands widespread in a what-am-I-gonna-do-with-you gesture. “Really!” She’s still shaking her head.
“Well, yeah, I mean, it is,” I say, “But---“
“Hang on a minute,” she tells us, then starts speaking into the cell phone again. “Ma. Ma! I’m right here. Jeez. Hold on, Ma, these girls just totally messed up the parking. Oh, man.”
“Aw, you’re talking to your mom?” I ask, walking past her toward the door. “That’s awesome. Tell her hi.”
“Ma, they say hi. Oh, whoa. Whoa.” We can still hear her shaking her head and exclaiming, even after the door closes and we are dark and dry, like the bar inside.
“She’s from the North,” Anne says.
There are two empty barstools between the Mohawk guy and a lonely-looking blond dude with a very impressive mustache. After we slide in, the Mohawk guy moves over a space.
Anne and I are both fighting colds and I am convinced that Irish whiskey is exactly what we need. It’s kind of a big occasion, because Anne has never had whiskey before. We ask for two shots of Jameson and the adorable bartender says, “Are you committed to Jameson? May I suggest Tullamore Dew? It’s smoother.” That sounds fine, we say, and the three of us drink together like pals. Next to me, the blond dude is fingering the ends of his mustache.
Anne and I are telling salacious stories of love affairs old and new. We are not talking about Haiti, or post-Katrina New Orleans, or at least we are able to avoid these topics for significant stretches of time, and I am grateful. People in New Orleans are talking a lot about both Katrina and Haiti these days. We’re connected. Our old wounds aren’t as scarred up as we might think. Still and all, as the grandmothers say, I’m happy for gossip and drink, the light feathery clothes of strangers.
Behind us, the Mohawk guy is watching Spiderman on the tv above the door. Eventually he gets up and moves to sit at a table of animated, glittery people. Their conversation sparkles around them, like flecks of silver. I’m totally going to say hi to him tomorrow, I think.
We sip our whiskey slowly. We let the night stretch out. I notice the blond man beside me. If I had a mustache, I think, I’d probably play with it a lot too.
"It's a lot," Anne says, motioning to her glass.
I can see that. "Is it all right?" I ask.
Anne says, "Oh, it's amazing!" which is one of the gazillion reasons I love her so much.
We rib the adorable bartender about his jazzy fashion last night. “Jazzy fashion?” he asks. “What do you mean?”
“That belt buckle,” I say. “Man! It was like a disco ball.”
He grins impishly and pulls up the edges of his t-shirt and Oh My Gosh, he’s wearing it again! “I wear this, like, almost every day,” he tells us. “You’d just never notice because my shirts are always over it.”
Wow! Who knew this whole time we’d been in the midst of such an impressive shiny accessory? I’m reminded of someone I know—you probably know her too; she gets around—who wears a spangly golden corset under her clothes every single day. To work, the grocery, yoga class; there she is, all the time, in an outrageous bustier, moving in and out amongst the rest of us, no one the wiser. Oh, New Orleans. This is a town where you actually can wear a golden bustier to the grocery store and no one bats an eye, but the amazing thing is that beneath that, there’s the whole legion of the rest of us, bringing sparkly-ness to the world in all these other subtle ways, which you have to be a little more observant to notice.
We don’t need to go straight home anymore. We decide we’ll make a stop a Devin’s birthday party, but first we have to go buy some candy at Walgreens because his latest art project, evidently, involves building a chandelier out of Ring Pops. Which, you know, is amazing.
We tell the adorable bartender we’re leaving and he says, “Okey-doke” (“Okey-doke!” says Anne. “Wow, I didn’t know anybody said that anymore!”), and he blows us a little kiss as we ease out the door, and out on the street in the rain Anne says, “You never look back, but I always do.”
Friday, January 15, 2010
Day 15
January 14
830 pm
Meenakshi’s sitting at the bar when we get here, drinking Abita Amber and socializing with people I’ve never seen before. They wave at me and I wave back, and I spend a second trying to remember if I actually do know them after all, but then we scoop up Meenakshi in our thick winter hugs and take her over with us to a table by the window. “They’re friends of somebody,” Meenakshi’s explaining, but I forget the story as soon as it’s over.
The adorable bartender nods at us from across the room. His shirt tonight is fire-truck red, a lone jolt of color in this grey room. His adorable girlfriend is smoking cigarettes in the corner with the Mohawk guy. I like her jacket. I kind of smile over at them but I don’t think they see me.
Tonight, in an attempt to add some healthy things to my nightly regimen, I’ve got hot tea and an armful of satsumas that Adi bought out of the back of a pickup truck this afternoon. Magically, they’ve survived the freeze. The last of the season, they taste like candy.
Meenakshi’s drinking Amber so that the Saints will win. She and Anne haven’t seen each other in a long time, so Meenakshi’s filling Anne in on her residency and her boyfriend, who also happens to be my cousin. Anne thinks the Amber strategy is a good one, and she ends up getting one too.
Elizabeth and Rahn come in, and you can see the cold air they’ve brought in with them. It wraps around them like grainy clouds. Their cheeks and jackets are still chilly from the walk over, and we find extra chairs and pull them close, and within seconds Elizabeth’s telling Meenakshi an exuberant story about an expedition we took to the hot springs one day in New Mexico. You'd think they've known each other forever.
A man and a woman walk in like they’re here to accomplish something. They are wearing identical black suits, and the woman’s has a round sticker or button on the lapel. I bet she’s running in an election. The man is about a foot shorter than she is, and he’s got an ill-fitting black fedora on with coarse wiry grayish hair tufting out of the bottom, toward his shoulders. His grin is wide. I wonder if they’re going to come over and start campaigning but they find a table in an out-of-the way corner and I realize they’re just people, just like all the rest of us, and soon I forget about them.
Today, Rahn went to visit a creative exciting innovative school Uptown where he may be getting a job, and we start having the phoenix-from-the-ashes conversation about all the beautiful things that have risen up in our city since Katrina, and people start getting excited and animated because conversations like these remind us that we are still living in a moment of hope and possibility. Which is true, and I feel those things too, but I also have a sense of responsibility to the past and our context, and I say something like, “yeah, but all those beautiful things came at great cost. And I wonder if, sometimes, the reason we hold up those things is because there’s so much desolation around them still; because they stand out even stronger against all the things we’ve lost.” And people are kind of quiet for a minute, and I feel bad, like I’ve dropped a dark depressing curtain over everybody, but then Elizabeth starts telling a funny story and it’s another moment: we’re moving again.
We eat the satsumas like they’re going out of style. Soon, everyone’s telling epic tales of my addiction to citrus:
“She eats thirty satsumas a day!”
“She turned orange when we were in med school and everyone thought she had yellow fever!”
“And not only citrus: once I saw her eat eight peaches in a single car ride!”
The adorable bartender comes over to our table to pick up our empty pint glasses and Whoa! Not only is he wearing the reddest shirt I’ve ever seen, but he’s got on this enormous silver belt buckle that’s sending spangles of light all across the room! Wow. I wish you could see it.
Rahn and Elizabeth are yawning and getting up to leave as Noah comes in. Everybody gives everybody a hug, and Meenakshi and Noah introduce themselves to each other, and Noah says her name a few times to make sure he’s got the pronunciation right. Which is cool. I keep waiting for him to jump off his barstool and say, “I’m going upstairs,” but he doesn’t, and we end up getting into a long conversation about whether or not it would be a good thing if a bunch of Americans went to Haiti, and across the table Anne and Meenakshi are smoking Marlboro reds and laughing about something, I am sure, that is altogether different from what we’re talking about.
When we start to go, Meenakshi says she’s sticking around for a while. She needs some thinking time. We hug like family; we basically are family. Then it’s time to say goodbye and I give Noah a hug and tell him I’m glad he came out tonight, and he says, “Yeah, well, I’ll probably see y’all tomorrow if we keep doing this,” and Anne looks over at him with a knowing grin and says, “I think you’re having fun, Noah.”
830 pm
Meenakshi’s sitting at the bar when we get here, drinking Abita Amber and socializing with people I’ve never seen before. They wave at me and I wave back, and I spend a second trying to remember if I actually do know them after all, but then we scoop up Meenakshi in our thick winter hugs and take her over with us to a table by the window. “They’re friends of somebody,” Meenakshi’s explaining, but I forget the story as soon as it’s over.
The adorable bartender nods at us from across the room. His shirt tonight is fire-truck red, a lone jolt of color in this grey room. His adorable girlfriend is smoking cigarettes in the corner with the Mohawk guy. I like her jacket. I kind of smile over at them but I don’t think they see me.
Tonight, in an attempt to add some healthy things to my nightly regimen, I’ve got hot tea and an armful of satsumas that Adi bought out of the back of a pickup truck this afternoon. Magically, they’ve survived the freeze. The last of the season, they taste like candy.
Meenakshi’s drinking Amber so that the Saints will win. She and Anne haven’t seen each other in a long time, so Meenakshi’s filling Anne in on her residency and her boyfriend, who also happens to be my cousin. Anne thinks the Amber strategy is a good one, and she ends up getting one too.
Elizabeth and Rahn come in, and you can see the cold air they’ve brought in with them. It wraps around them like grainy clouds. Their cheeks and jackets are still chilly from the walk over, and we find extra chairs and pull them close, and within seconds Elizabeth’s telling Meenakshi an exuberant story about an expedition we took to the hot springs one day in New Mexico. You'd think they've known each other forever.
A man and a woman walk in like they’re here to accomplish something. They are wearing identical black suits, and the woman’s has a round sticker or button on the lapel. I bet she’s running in an election. The man is about a foot shorter than she is, and he’s got an ill-fitting black fedora on with coarse wiry grayish hair tufting out of the bottom, toward his shoulders. His grin is wide. I wonder if they’re going to come over and start campaigning but they find a table in an out-of-the way corner and I realize they’re just people, just like all the rest of us, and soon I forget about them.
Today, Rahn went to visit a creative exciting innovative school Uptown where he may be getting a job, and we start having the phoenix-from-the-ashes conversation about all the beautiful things that have risen up in our city since Katrina, and people start getting excited and animated because conversations like these remind us that we are still living in a moment of hope and possibility. Which is true, and I feel those things too, but I also have a sense of responsibility to the past and our context, and I say something like, “yeah, but all those beautiful things came at great cost. And I wonder if, sometimes, the reason we hold up those things is because there’s so much desolation around them still; because they stand out even stronger against all the things we’ve lost.” And people are kind of quiet for a minute, and I feel bad, like I’ve dropped a dark depressing curtain over everybody, but then Elizabeth starts telling a funny story and it’s another moment: we’re moving again.
We eat the satsumas like they’re going out of style. Soon, everyone’s telling epic tales of my addiction to citrus:
“She eats thirty satsumas a day!”
“She turned orange when we were in med school and everyone thought she had yellow fever!”
“And not only citrus: once I saw her eat eight peaches in a single car ride!”
The adorable bartender comes over to our table to pick up our empty pint glasses and Whoa! Not only is he wearing the reddest shirt I’ve ever seen, but he’s got on this enormous silver belt buckle that’s sending spangles of light all across the room! Wow. I wish you could see it.
Rahn and Elizabeth are yawning and getting up to leave as Noah comes in. Everybody gives everybody a hug, and Meenakshi and Noah introduce themselves to each other, and Noah says her name a few times to make sure he’s got the pronunciation right. Which is cool. I keep waiting for him to jump off his barstool and say, “I’m going upstairs,” but he doesn’t, and we end up getting into a long conversation about whether or not it would be a good thing if a bunch of Americans went to Haiti, and across the table Anne and Meenakshi are smoking Marlboro reds and laughing about something, I am sure, that is altogether different from what we’re talking about.
When we start to go, Meenakshi says she’s sticking around for a while. She needs some thinking time. We hug like family; we basically are family. Then it’s time to say goodbye and I give Noah a hug and tell him I’m glad he came out tonight, and he says, “Yeah, well, I’ll probably see y’all tomorrow if we keep doing this,” and Anne looks over at him with a knowing grin and says, “I think you’re having fun, Noah.”
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Day 14
January 13
9 pm
When we walk in it’s already a little crowded. For maybe the first night ever, the adorable bartender's nowhere to be found, but the enthusiastic one from the other day is here, holding court with a group of precious rugged-looking boys who are wearing fleece and drinking shots of Jameson in the corner.
“I think we came here last time,” says Rosalinda, who is in town from Arizona and whose last and only visit to New Orleans was in the dark crumbling days of November 2005. We probably did come here last time. This bar was a lifeline for so many of us back then.
“It’s warm!” the enthusiastic bartender greets us as we scoop up the last three barstools.
“Hm,” I say. “I wouldn’t necessarily say Warm. It’s better than before, but--”
“You’ll see.” He nods knowingly. “You’ll see. It’s warm in here tonight.”
Haiti’s on our minds this evening. All day long Anne was keeping it together, and then the last patient of the day was from Port-Au-Prince, no news from family or home, and just hearing her tell the story I feel my heart move into the gray shocked zombie territory it occupied for so long after Katrina, and once more I feel, in a physical part of my soul, how as New Orleanians we have been marked indelibly by our experience of deep tragedy, how this is a part of our identities we can’t change or choose. For the rest of our lives it will continue to shape us and we will be bound up, whether we want to be or not, with all people who have suffered collective life-altering devastation; this is just another part of our lives, like work or family, like our daily joys and sorrows.
Maybe it’s because of Haiti, or maybe it’s because New Orleans really has done a good bit of resurrecting since the last time Rosalinda was here, but soon we’re telling Katrina stories and Anne’s talking about the time she and Marianne were in Lafitte’s and a cop, on horseback, came in one door, sauntered around the bar a little bit—still on horseback-- and went out the other door, like everything was normal, like cops ride horses into bars every day. “I didn’t even think about it until days later, how weird that was,” Anne says, and we sigh the deep long sighs of veterans. Oh, that time. Everything so unearthly, we didn’t know what normal was.
Justin zips in behind us and keeps on walking, but we recognize him from the profile and the hat he’s been wearing constantly for the past week, and we wave him over. “What time is it?’ he asks. “I’m supposed to meet Renee and Nicky here.” His eyes dart around the bar. We say we haven’t seen them, and after a bit of cajoling we get Justin to be still for a bit, to squeeze into our little corner of the world and chill for a while.
People and smoke and noises are swirling around us: women with knee-high boots tucked into skinny jeans; the energetic punkish music bouncing out of the speakers. A cute blond girl in an amazing dress is reading a book on the stool next to Anne, and I feel a surge of friendship. “Whatcha reading!” the enthusiastic bartender says. I lean in closer because I want to know too, but I can’t hear what she says.
Renee and Nicky come in and give us warm fluffy hugs, and then Noah arrives, and our little circle in the middle of the room feels like an anchor. Renee tells us about her first day of grad school, which evidently consisted of watching a DVD of Eyes on the Prize, and then Justin’s talking about the amazingly precocious ten-year-old child of one of our friends, who on the drive home from swimming recently, declared: “We need to stop! We need to stop now! I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m cold, and I need to un-suction-cup my swimsuit from my ass!”
The enthusiastic bartender’s right, I realize. I take off my sweater and then I’m wearing just a tank top, for the first time all winter.
Across the bar the Mohawk guy’s grinning at me and I kind of smile back shyly and then look away. He’s wearing the green shirt again; it still looks a little stiff and shiny, like he’s breaking it in.
I move to the bathroom through the thick swirl of people, and on the way back I run into Maura from the hospital, and we give each other bright eyed hugs, and then I realize she’s sitting next to someone I met at a party a few days ago.
“Y’all know each other?” I ask.
“We’re roommates,” they giggle.
This is life in New Orleans: you start to introduce people to each other, and then you realize they’re, like, cousins.
I settle back into my barstool, surrounded by this crush of people I’m so happy to see, next to Anne and Rosalinda, deep friends of my heart, and Rosalinda and I pick up where we left off, that same conversation we've been having since nine years ago when we first met; we start back in mid-sentence, like no time, really, has gone by.
9 pm
When we walk in it’s already a little crowded. For maybe the first night ever, the adorable bartender's nowhere to be found, but the enthusiastic one from the other day is here, holding court with a group of precious rugged-looking boys who are wearing fleece and drinking shots of Jameson in the corner.
“I think we came here last time,” says Rosalinda, who is in town from Arizona and whose last and only visit to New Orleans was in the dark crumbling days of November 2005. We probably did come here last time. This bar was a lifeline for so many of us back then.
“It’s warm!” the enthusiastic bartender greets us as we scoop up the last three barstools.
“Hm,” I say. “I wouldn’t necessarily say Warm. It’s better than before, but--”
“You’ll see.” He nods knowingly. “You’ll see. It’s warm in here tonight.”
Haiti’s on our minds this evening. All day long Anne was keeping it together, and then the last patient of the day was from Port-Au-Prince, no news from family or home, and just hearing her tell the story I feel my heart move into the gray shocked zombie territory it occupied for so long after Katrina, and once more I feel, in a physical part of my soul, how as New Orleanians we have been marked indelibly by our experience of deep tragedy, how this is a part of our identities we can’t change or choose. For the rest of our lives it will continue to shape us and we will be bound up, whether we want to be or not, with all people who have suffered collective life-altering devastation; this is just another part of our lives, like work or family, like our daily joys and sorrows.
Maybe it’s because of Haiti, or maybe it’s because New Orleans really has done a good bit of resurrecting since the last time Rosalinda was here, but soon we’re telling Katrina stories and Anne’s talking about the time she and Marianne were in Lafitte’s and a cop, on horseback, came in one door, sauntered around the bar a little bit—still on horseback-- and went out the other door, like everything was normal, like cops ride horses into bars every day. “I didn’t even think about it until days later, how weird that was,” Anne says, and we sigh the deep long sighs of veterans. Oh, that time. Everything so unearthly, we didn’t know what normal was.
Justin zips in behind us and keeps on walking, but we recognize him from the profile and the hat he’s been wearing constantly for the past week, and we wave him over. “What time is it?’ he asks. “I’m supposed to meet Renee and Nicky here.” His eyes dart around the bar. We say we haven’t seen them, and after a bit of cajoling we get Justin to be still for a bit, to squeeze into our little corner of the world and chill for a while.
People and smoke and noises are swirling around us: women with knee-high boots tucked into skinny jeans; the energetic punkish music bouncing out of the speakers. A cute blond girl in an amazing dress is reading a book on the stool next to Anne, and I feel a surge of friendship. “Whatcha reading!” the enthusiastic bartender says. I lean in closer because I want to know too, but I can’t hear what she says.
Renee and Nicky come in and give us warm fluffy hugs, and then Noah arrives, and our little circle in the middle of the room feels like an anchor. Renee tells us about her first day of grad school, which evidently consisted of watching a DVD of Eyes on the Prize, and then Justin’s talking about the amazingly precocious ten-year-old child of one of our friends, who on the drive home from swimming recently, declared: “We need to stop! We need to stop now! I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m cold, and I need to un-suction-cup my swimsuit from my ass!”
The enthusiastic bartender’s right, I realize. I take off my sweater and then I’m wearing just a tank top, for the first time all winter.
Across the bar the Mohawk guy’s grinning at me and I kind of smile back shyly and then look away. He’s wearing the green shirt again; it still looks a little stiff and shiny, like he’s breaking it in.
I move to the bathroom through the thick swirl of people, and on the way back I run into Maura from the hospital, and we give each other bright eyed hugs, and then I realize she’s sitting next to someone I met at a party a few days ago.
“Y’all know each other?” I ask.
“We’re roommates,” they giggle.
This is life in New Orleans: you start to introduce people to each other, and then you realize they’re, like, cousins.
I settle back into my barstool, surrounded by this crush of people I’m so happy to see, next to Anne and Rosalinda, deep friends of my heart, and Rosalinda and I pick up where we left off, that same conversation we've been having since nine years ago when we first met; we start back in mid-sentence, like no time, really, has gone by.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Day 13
January 12
4:30 pm
Even though it’s still daytime, I’ve just dragged myself out of bed to come meet Annelies. She’s actually gotten out of the Fast Track on time, for once, and I got out of the Urgent Care even earlier, and we are feeling jubilant. Annelies and I are big proponents of afternoon drinking and nothing says celebration to either of us like a workday that ends when it’s supposed to.
But I’m beginning to realize, in that slow-on-the-uptake way in which it usually happens in my life, that I may actually be getting sick. After my afternoon meeting I came home and crawled into bed, which I never do in the daytime, setting my alarm clock for about eight minutes before we’d agreed to meet up. Jubilant or not, I’m feeling a bit like I’ve gotten mauled by an 18-wheeler as I walk inside.
Annelies is perched on a barstool close to the door, drinking Chimay and reading the Offbeat, and the dusty yellow sunrays pour in through the high windows behind her and bounce off the little pieces of silverish thread in her scarf. Beneath the lustrous glittery textured aqua scarf, which is wrapped around her shoulders as though she’s a queen, Annelies is wearing a black hoodie, nondescript jeans, and these motorcycle-y boots that I’m pretty sure she’s had since we first met, about six years ago. On her, this combination looks not only beautiful but natural, as though clothes like these were always meant to be worn together.
My head is pounding. I order a Jameson but there isn’t any, and even though I feel strongly that whiskey will make me feel better, I’m not thinking straight and I end up with a Smithwicks in front of me, which is perfect in some ways but terrible in others, like the way eating chocolate feels when you’re nauseated.
Annelies and I are telling the beautiful and hilarious and random and heartbreaking stories of our patients: the sweet sad old man who came to the ER because he’s been fainting every day—literally fainting, every single day—for the past year; the guy who said “the Holy Spirit” when I asked him what brought him in today; the tall, strikingly beautiful manic woman who came in asking for Vicodin refills and then jumped off the bed, gave me a cheerful hug, and said “That’s okay! Thank you so much, baby,” when I told her we didn’t really refill narcotics in the Urgent Care.
A man who looks like Santa Claus walks in and sits right next to me, opening up his Macbook on the counter. He orders a Budweiser and keeps it in his hand, underneath the bar by his knees, like he doesn’t want anyone to see it.
Daylight’s disappearing, and the bar’s getting shadowy. Another Chimay appears in front of Annelies. There’s bouncy Irish jig music on overhead, and I massage my temples and try to concentrate on what we’re talking about. We strategize about whether or not Annelies should go to Haiti for a little while. Halfway into my Smithwicks I can’t drink any more, and I switch to club soda with lime. I rest my head on the cool surface of the bar.
Annelies gets up to go the bathroom. The Santa Claus man turns in my direction, and I nod and look somewhere else. Usually, I love talking to strangers, but today I feel completely incapable of doing anything other than sitting, right here, and maybe breathing every now and then.
“I can’t check my email!” the man declares.
“Really,” I say.
I’m starting to hallucinate, which tells me a full-on migraine isn’t far off. What am I doing here, I ask myself.
“My daughter’s getting married.” He shakes his head, like this is a lot to take in. “Oh, Lord. I just love her so much.” He sighs, puts his forehead into his palm.
I feel my heart soften a little. “That’s awesome that she’s getting married,” I say.
He nods sadly. “I hope I get to go.”
Now I’ve got a ton of questions to ask, migraine or no, but then Annelies comes back from the bathroom and we start talking about other stuff, which, ultimately, I’m glad about. I’m too nonfunctional to be making new friends today.
I’m supposed to leave for journal club in a few minutes. It’s in Metairie, a trek I dread under the best circumstances, but tonight, with a migraine, the drive will be utter torture.
“Don’t go,” Annelies suggests.
“Okay,” I say.
I will end up going to her house where she will feed me a delicious perfect comforting dinner, and between that and the medicine I will begin to feel better, and I’ll end up home early, in sweatpants, surrounded by stacks of novels and drinking fire cider. In the morning I’ll wake up to news of the devastation of Haiti, and between the cracks in my little heart I’ll also think, “Weird-we were just talking about Haiti,” and somehow, strangely, this will remind me again how we are all ultimately much more connected to each other than we realize.
But for now that’s all yet to happen, and now we’re settling our tab and getting ready to go, and the music’s too much, and even the lights on the tips of people’s cigarettes are too much, and as we get up to leave I barely avoid running straight head-on into the Mohawk guy, who’s walking in the door as we’re walking out.
“Whoa! Sorry,” he says, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to say back.
“How you doing,” I reply.
I need to get out of here.
4:30 pm
Even though it’s still daytime, I’ve just dragged myself out of bed to come meet Annelies. She’s actually gotten out of the Fast Track on time, for once, and I got out of the Urgent Care even earlier, and we are feeling jubilant. Annelies and I are big proponents of afternoon drinking and nothing says celebration to either of us like a workday that ends when it’s supposed to.
But I’m beginning to realize, in that slow-on-the-uptake way in which it usually happens in my life, that I may actually be getting sick. After my afternoon meeting I came home and crawled into bed, which I never do in the daytime, setting my alarm clock for about eight minutes before we’d agreed to meet up. Jubilant or not, I’m feeling a bit like I’ve gotten mauled by an 18-wheeler as I walk inside.
Annelies is perched on a barstool close to the door, drinking Chimay and reading the Offbeat, and the dusty yellow sunrays pour in through the high windows behind her and bounce off the little pieces of silverish thread in her scarf. Beneath the lustrous glittery textured aqua scarf, which is wrapped around her shoulders as though she’s a queen, Annelies is wearing a black hoodie, nondescript jeans, and these motorcycle-y boots that I’m pretty sure she’s had since we first met, about six years ago. On her, this combination looks not only beautiful but natural, as though clothes like these were always meant to be worn together.
My head is pounding. I order a Jameson but there isn’t any, and even though I feel strongly that whiskey will make me feel better, I’m not thinking straight and I end up with a Smithwicks in front of me, which is perfect in some ways but terrible in others, like the way eating chocolate feels when you’re nauseated.
Annelies and I are telling the beautiful and hilarious and random and heartbreaking stories of our patients: the sweet sad old man who came to the ER because he’s been fainting every day—literally fainting, every single day—for the past year; the guy who said “the Holy Spirit” when I asked him what brought him in today; the tall, strikingly beautiful manic woman who came in asking for Vicodin refills and then jumped off the bed, gave me a cheerful hug, and said “That’s okay! Thank you so much, baby,” when I told her we didn’t really refill narcotics in the Urgent Care.
A man who looks like Santa Claus walks in and sits right next to me, opening up his Macbook on the counter. He orders a Budweiser and keeps it in his hand, underneath the bar by his knees, like he doesn’t want anyone to see it.
Daylight’s disappearing, and the bar’s getting shadowy. Another Chimay appears in front of Annelies. There’s bouncy Irish jig music on overhead, and I massage my temples and try to concentrate on what we’re talking about. We strategize about whether or not Annelies should go to Haiti for a little while. Halfway into my Smithwicks I can’t drink any more, and I switch to club soda with lime. I rest my head on the cool surface of the bar.
Annelies gets up to go the bathroom. The Santa Claus man turns in my direction, and I nod and look somewhere else. Usually, I love talking to strangers, but today I feel completely incapable of doing anything other than sitting, right here, and maybe breathing every now and then.
“I can’t check my email!” the man declares.
“Really,” I say.
I’m starting to hallucinate, which tells me a full-on migraine isn’t far off. What am I doing here, I ask myself.
“My daughter’s getting married.” He shakes his head, like this is a lot to take in. “Oh, Lord. I just love her so much.” He sighs, puts his forehead into his palm.
I feel my heart soften a little. “That’s awesome that she’s getting married,” I say.
He nods sadly. “I hope I get to go.”
Now I’ve got a ton of questions to ask, migraine or no, but then Annelies comes back from the bathroom and we start talking about other stuff, which, ultimately, I’m glad about. I’m too nonfunctional to be making new friends today.
I’m supposed to leave for journal club in a few minutes. It’s in Metairie, a trek I dread under the best circumstances, but tonight, with a migraine, the drive will be utter torture.
“Don’t go,” Annelies suggests.
“Okay,” I say.
I will end up going to her house where she will feed me a delicious perfect comforting dinner, and between that and the medicine I will begin to feel better, and I’ll end up home early, in sweatpants, surrounded by stacks of novels and drinking fire cider. In the morning I’ll wake up to news of the devastation of Haiti, and between the cracks in my little heart I’ll also think, “Weird-we were just talking about Haiti,” and somehow, strangely, this will remind me again how we are all ultimately much more connected to each other than we realize.
But for now that’s all yet to happen, and now we’re settling our tab and getting ready to go, and the music’s too much, and even the lights on the tips of people’s cigarettes are too much, and as we get up to leave I barely avoid running straight head-on into the Mohawk guy, who’s walking in the door as we’re walking out.
“Whoa! Sorry,” he says, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to say back.
“How you doing,” I reply.
I need to get out of here.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Day 12
January 11
9pm
When we walk in, the place is empty except people we know and a girl reading a book at the far side of the bar. She’s wearing clear-framed glasses and her hair’s in a messy ponytail but still, she looks stylish in the way almost anyone in New Orleans can look stylish if we just have the right attitude. I love people who read alone at bars, and I smile for a second and think, She’s one of us.
Noah’s sitting with Lisa and a girl I don’t recognize at a table by the window. We give them short hugs, and I meet the other girl, whose name is Maya and who is Noah’s brother’s girlfriend. She’s from New Orleans too, and I remember Anne telling me about her and how nice and smart and pretty she is, and we have the Who’s Your Mama and Where’d You Go To High School conversation, and we establish that maybe she knows one of my cousins, and then we move on and talk about other things.
The adorable bartender asks if I’m still hooked on Smithwicks and I hesitate for about one second before I say, “Totally.” It’s just a little too good to pass up. Anne, however, really is done with beer for a while, but she doesn’t know what to get instead, and the adorable bartender and I strategize for a bit and in the end he pours pinot noir into a tall Spanish glass, and it’s perfect. “Let’s go back and sit with the youngsters,” we say.
A man in a red fleece pullover and a ski cap walks in and kind of looks around for a minute before walking over the girl who’s reading. He sits down and they begin having a polite conversation, and I hear the girl say things like “I’m the kind of person who…,” which makes me think they don’t know each other very well. “Blind date, you think?” I ask Anne, motioning in their direction.
“I don’t know,” Anne says. “She looks so comfortable.”
That’s ‘cause she’s awesome, I think.
Maya and I are telling stories about how, on different occasions, both of us have cut off our ponytails with the intention of giving them away to Locks of Love, but instead we’ve lost the ponytails only to find them years later, crouching like forlorn and decrepit animals in the unused corners of our closets and drawers.
“One time,” Maya says, “My friend and I were looking for something in the freezer, and we were digging and digging around, and then finally we pulled something out ‘cause we thought it was what we were looking for, and we unwrapped it but then we realized it was our pet bird. He’d died a few years before that, and my dad had wrapped him up and put him in the freezer.”
“Whoa,” someone says. “I have so many questions to ask about that.”
Out of the window I see a white car pull up, and a beautiful couple gets out and starts heading our way.
The youngsters are making motions to leave. They are planning on crashing a party, but first they have to stop by the Mardi Gras Zone and get something to bring. This is so New Orleans, I think, how it’s totally okay to go to a party you haven’t been invited to, but how you’d never, never, never show up without bringing food for everybody.
The beautiful couple walks up to our table, and I realize it’s not a couple at all but two people I know from entirely different contexts and who are, it turns out, very good friends with each other. I talk with one of them about my cousin, who he was best friends with in high school, and then the other one gives me a long warm hug and I ask how she’s doing and she says, “Well, actually, I’m kind of in crisis,” and we talk about how she’s just broken up with her boyfriend, who I know and respect and who is brilliant and beautiful and a good person, because he was cheating on her and lying about it for a very long time. We talk about how people can be good people and make terrible mistakes with no malicious intent, but still cause such deep devastating hurt, and I feel my own heart break a little bit under the weight of her dark consuming sadness, all that betrayal and disillusionment.
All around us the bar’s filling up and we start melting in with everybody else; tonight it’s just regular people in their Monday-night clothes, smoking and playing pool and heading upstairs with instruments, and we are just two more regular people in the ever-deepening crowd.
We end the night with Anne’s precious friend Devin, who I’ve loved for years even though this is the first time I've ever actually met him. Devin’s one of those people who’s been a New Orleanian his whole life, before he ever even came here; before he ever even knew what New Orleans was. We talk about how, after his first visit here a few years ago, every week or so he’d drive fourteen hours from Charleston, South Carolina, just for a night or two of sleeping on Anne’s couch and breathing this air, which makes some of us feel more alive than we’d ever feel, anywhere else in the world. And now he’s here, and that’s it; he’s never going anywhere else, and at twenty-five he can say this with utter certainty, which I also understand, because when it comes to true love, you just know. I talk about how, when I was living in New Mexico last year, I spent the whole year carrying on what felt like a long-distance relationship with New Orleans, spending all this money on plane tickets just for thirty or so hours in this lush broken land, and finally I realized that I’d become one of those people who’d be a shadow of myself if I ever lived anywhere else, and I moved back.
Ultimately even after years of thinking about it I’m still not sure what it is that keeps so many of us pulled in so tight to this place. It’s more than family, and home, and the deep sad complicated history we’re all still living out together; and more than the food and the music and the culture and the way we talk to each other, and more than the joy and celebration even in the midst of utter tragedy, and the costumes and sequins and feathers and craziness, and the honest basic beautiful living we all do here; I think in the end it’s something simple and physical, like roots or gravity, like the way at night our arms reach, in sleepy darkness, for the imperfect arms of our beloved, before we allow ourselves, finally, to rest.
9pm
When we walk in, the place is empty except people we know and a girl reading a book at the far side of the bar. She’s wearing clear-framed glasses and her hair’s in a messy ponytail but still, she looks stylish in the way almost anyone in New Orleans can look stylish if we just have the right attitude. I love people who read alone at bars, and I smile for a second and think, She’s one of us.
Noah’s sitting with Lisa and a girl I don’t recognize at a table by the window. We give them short hugs, and I meet the other girl, whose name is Maya and who is Noah’s brother’s girlfriend. She’s from New Orleans too, and I remember Anne telling me about her and how nice and smart and pretty she is, and we have the Who’s Your Mama and Where’d You Go To High School conversation, and we establish that maybe she knows one of my cousins, and then we move on and talk about other things.
The adorable bartender asks if I’m still hooked on Smithwicks and I hesitate for about one second before I say, “Totally.” It’s just a little too good to pass up. Anne, however, really is done with beer for a while, but she doesn’t know what to get instead, and the adorable bartender and I strategize for a bit and in the end he pours pinot noir into a tall Spanish glass, and it’s perfect. “Let’s go back and sit with the youngsters,” we say.
A man in a red fleece pullover and a ski cap walks in and kind of looks around for a minute before walking over the girl who’s reading. He sits down and they begin having a polite conversation, and I hear the girl say things like “I’m the kind of person who…,” which makes me think they don’t know each other very well. “Blind date, you think?” I ask Anne, motioning in their direction.
“I don’t know,” Anne says. “She looks so comfortable.”
That’s ‘cause she’s awesome, I think.
Maya and I are telling stories about how, on different occasions, both of us have cut off our ponytails with the intention of giving them away to Locks of Love, but instead we’ve lost the ponytails only to find them years later, crouching like forlorn and decrepit animals in the unused corners of our closets and drawers.
“One time,” Maya says, “My friend and I were looking for something in the freezer, and we were digging and digging around, and then finally we pulled something out ‘cause we thought it was what we were looking for, and we unwrapped it but then we realized it was our pet bird. He’d died a few years before that, and my dad had wrapped him up and put him in the freezer.”
“Whoa,” someone says. “I have so many questions to ask about that.”
Out of the window I see a white car pull up, and a beautiful couple gets out and starts heading our way.
The youngsters are making motions to leave. They are planning on crashing a party, but first they have to stop by the Mardi Gras Zone and get something to bring. This is so New Orleans, I think, how it’s totally okay to go to a party you haven’t been invited to, but how you’d never, never, never show up without bringing food for everybody.
The beautiful couple walks up to our table, and I realize it’s not a couple at all but two people I know from entirely different contexts and who are, it turns out, very good friends with each other. I talk with one of them about my cousin, who he was best friends with in high school, and then the other one gives me a long warm hug and I ask how she’s doing and she says, “Well, actually, I’m kind of in crisis,” and we talk about how she’s just broken up with her boyfriend, who I know and respect and who is brilliant and beautiful and a good person, because he was cheating on her and lying about it for a very long time. We talk about how people can be good people and make terrible mistakes with no malicious intent, but still cause such deep devastating hurt, and I feel my own heart break a little bit under the weight of her dark consuming sadness, all that betrayal and disillusionment.
All around us the bar’s filling up and we start melting in with everybody else; tonight it’s just regular people in their Monday-night clothes, smoking and playing pool and heading upstairs with instruments, and we are just two more regular people in the ever-deepening crowd.
We end the night with Anne’s precious friend Devin, who I’ve loved for years even though this is the first time I've ever actually met him. Devin’s one of those people who’s been a New Orleanian his whole life, before he ever even came here; before he ever even knew what New Orleans was. We talk about how, after his first visit here a few years ago, every week or so he’d drive fourteen hours from Charleston, South Carolina, just for a night or two of sleeping on Anne’s couch and breathing this air, which makes some of us feel more alive than we’d ever feel, anywhere else in the world. And now he’s here, and that’s it; he’s never going anywhere else, and at twenty-five he can say this with utter certainty, which I also understand, because when it comes to true love, you just know. I talk about how, when I was living in New Mexico last year, I spent the whole year carrying on what felt like a long-distance relationship with New Orleans, spending all this money on plane tickets just for thirty or so hours in this lush broken land, and finally I realized that I’d become one of those people who’d be a shadow of myself if I ever lived anywhere else, and I moved back.
Ultimately even after years of thinking about it I’m still not sure what it is that keeps so many of us pulled in so tight to this place. It’s more than family, and home, and the deep sad complicated history we’re all still living out together; and more than the food and the music and the culture and the way we talk to each other, and more than the joy and celebration even in the midst of utter tragedy, and the costumes and sequins and feathers and craziness, and the honest basic beautiful living we all do here; I think in the end it’s something simple and physical, like roots or gravity, like the way at night our arms reach, in sleepy darkness, for the imperfect arms of our beloved, before we allow ourselves, finally, to rest.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Day 11
January 10
5:30 PM
It’s still daylight. As we’re walking up to the front door a man on a bike calls out to us from the street and says, “Hey ladies, do you have 75 cents?” I dig in my pocket but there’s nothing there and we tell him good luck, and as we’re ducking into the bar he clasps his hands over his heart and says, “Maybe one day, if I’m lucky, I could have a date with one of you two ladies!” We grin and nod and move inside, where it’s warmer.
I’m stifling a yawn and hoping to drink fast and get home and go to bed early. I don’t know if it’s this project or the general decadence of my life these days, but I feel like I’m hitting a wall tonight. The adorable bartender is sitting in the corner next to the adorable girl I usually see him with when he’s not working, and they are smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and whiskey and gazing into each other’s eyes, and it’s all I can do not to reach over and pinch both of their cheeks, it’s all so precious.
“Hi!” says the man behind the bar, with over-the-top enthusiasm. “How y’all doing!”
“Amazing,” we say, plunking down our gloves and bags on the counter.
“Whoa. It’s pretty cold to be amazing.” He moves off to get our drinks, shaking his head in wonder.
But we actually are amazing today: I’ve just come from exuberant expeditions all over New Orleans with Molly, and Anne—believe it—has found her ring. Early this morning she went back to the garden with Noah and his Ohio friend Lisa in tow, and Elizabeth and Rahn were making their way over, and our friend Bay was working on borrowing some metal detectors from a neighbor named Swamp Rat Jack, when Lisa calmly walked over to one of the holes, looked down, pulled out something tiny, and said, “Is this it?” Anne took everyone to Bennachin to celebrate and now here she is in front of me looking whole again, our world just a little more intact than it was yesterday.
I’m drinking a bloody mary instead of Smithwicks, which feels vaguely sacreligious, and not only because soon it will be night-time. But I’m starting to feel a little puffy and bloated from drinking beer every day, and although I’m prepared to make quite a few sacrifices in the name of this daily Mimi’s project, I’m not sure if weight gain is one of them. Morgan Spurlock I am not. And besides, the bloody mary has vegetables in it, and vegetables are healthy.
Aside from the adorable bartender and his adorable companion we are basically the only people in here. The long low remnants of daylight filter in and make yellow shadows across the bar. My stiff wooden chair feels thick and soft and warm, like I’m in an old friend’s living room.
And then the Mohawk guy walks in! He’s wearing a new-looking green Dirty Coast t-shirt and he comes over to sit next to the adorable bartender. Where you been, I feel like asking him, but I don’t.
Through the window we see a hearse pass by, every available surface festooned in silver buttons and bottlecaps, three plastic flamingos perched on the hood as though at any second they will lift off in flight.
The bloody is giving me energy, and when Meenakshi sends me a text to see if I want to have dinner tonight, I abandon my plans to go to bed early. Soon I will drive Anne home and on the way an enormous supernatural-looking animal will cross our path, and when we get closer we will realize it is a raccoon, a huge one, standing right in the middle of Pauger Street, and for a long second it will make eye contact with us from behind those deep black-ringed eyes, and then it will turn around and scoot off through the iron fenceposts into a neighbor’s yard.
It’s getting dark out, and the cold’s seeping in, and so are the night people. Anne and I drain our glasses, and as we prepare to head out the adorable bartender and the man who actually is bartending both tell us goodbye. “See you tomorrow,” we say, before heading back out into our thin grey world, where impossible things happen and where, not always but sometimes, with help, the things we’ve lost make their slow fumbly way back to us.
5:30 PM
It’s still daylight. As we’re walking up to the front door a man on a bike calls out to us from the street and says, “Hey ladies, do you have 75 cents?” I dig in my pocket but there’s nothing there and we tell him good luck, and as we’re ducking into the bar he clasps his hands over his heart and says, “Maybe one day, if I’m lucky, I could have a date with one of you two ladies!” We grin and nod and move inside, where it’s warmer.
I’m stifling a yawn and hoping to drink fast and get home and go to bed early. I don’t know if it’s this project or the general decadence of my life these days, but I feel like I’m hitting a wall tonight. The adorable bartender is sitting in the corner next to the adorable girl I usually see him with when he’s not working, and they are smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and whiskey and gazing into each other’s eyes, and it’s all I can do not to reach over and pinch both of their cheeks, it’s all so precious.
“Hi!” says the man behind the bar, with over-the-top enthusiasm. “How y’all doing!”
“Amazing,” we say, plunking down our gloves and bags on the counter.
“Whoa. It’s pretty cold to be amazing.” He moves off to get our drinks, shaking his head in wonder.
But we actually are amazing today: I’ve just come from exuberant expeditions all over New Orleans with Molly, and Anne—believe it—has found her ring. Early this morning she went back to the garden with Noah and his Ohio friend Lisa in tow, and Elizabeth and Rahn were making their way over, and our friend Bay was working on borrowing some metal detectors from a neighbor named Swamp Rat Jack, when Lisa calmly walked over to one of the holes, looked down, pulled out something tiny, and said, “Is this it?” Anne took everyone to Bennachin to celebrate and now here she is in front of me looking whole again, our world just a little more intact than it was yesterday.
I’m drinking a bloody mary instead of Smithwicks, which feels vaguely sacreligious, and not only because soon it will be night-time. But I’m starting to feel a little puffy and bloated from drinking beer every day, and although I’m prepared to make quite a few sacrifices in the name of this daily Mimi’s project, I’m not sure if weight gain is one of them. Morgan Spurlock I am not. And besides, the bloody mary has vegetables in it, and vegetables are healthy.
Aside from the adorable bartender and his adorable companion we are basically the only people in here. The long low remnants of daylight filter in and make yellow shadows across the bar. My stiff wooden chair feels thick and soft and warm, like I’m in an old friend’s living room.
And then the Mohawk guy walks in! He’s wearing a new-looking green Dirty Coast t-shirt and he comes over to sit next to the adorable bartender. Where you been, I feel like asking him, but I don’t.
Through the window we see a hearse pass by, every available surface festooned in silver buttons and bottlecaps, three plastic flamingos perched on the hood as though at any second they will lift off in flight.
The bloody is giving me energy, and when Meenakshi sends me a text to see if I want to have dinner tonight, I abandon my plans to go to bed early. Soon I will drive Anne home and on the way an enormous supernatural-looking animal will cross our path, and when we get closer we will realize it is a raccoon, a huge one, standing right in the middle of Pauger Street, and for a long second it will make eye contact with us from behind those deep black-ringed eyes, and then it will turn around and scoot off through the iron fenceposts into a neighbor’s yard.
It’s getting dark out, and the cold’s seeping in, and so are the night people. Anne and I drain our glasses, and as we prepare to head out the adorable bartender and the man who actually is bartending both tell us goodbye. “See you tomorrow,” we say, before heading back out into our thin grey world, where impossible things happen and where, not always but sometimes, with help, the things we’ve lost make their slow fumbly way back to us.
Day 10
January 9
9 PM
I’m antsy. Tonight, the whole world is here. There’s a crowd three-deep by the bar, and we end up sitting on the church pews by the pool table, and a man in a plaid shirt keeps coming up to us and asking us if we want to play pool, but we don’t. Noah and his cute friend from Ohio are sitting next to us but they’re having their own conversation and they look kind of freezing and miserable and finally Noah jumps up and says, “We’re going to Floras to get coffee,” and off they go, into the swarm of people and, eventually, out into the cold, cold night.
We’ve come from Lanetta’s herbal dinner in Algiers, where we passed around the babies and ate ridiculous amounts of food and came away with little jars of fire cider that just got dug up earlier this afternoon after being buried in the ground for 30 days. Digging up the fire cider, Anne lost her grandmother’s ancient ring, which she’s had on her little finger for over ten years, and since then people have been praying to St Anthony and offering to bring metal detectors back to the garden tomorrow, and asking her those questions people ask you whenever you lose something: “Did you have it on when you got into the car? Could it be in one of your gloves?” And all day Anne’s been saying, “Thanks, okay, we can try the metal detectors, no, I didn’t have my gloves on, yes, okay, we can pray to St Anthony again,” but still the ring’s nowhere to be found and you can tell that Anne feels like a part of her has been cut away and flung, forever, into the deep sad universe. All night in the kitchen Lanetta kept saying, “Baby, nothing’s ever lost in divine time,” and Anne would nod back, in miserable resignation, and clutch at her little finger which, even to me, looked littler and out of place without that ring on it.
And now we’re here and it’s cold and there’s too many people around, and we run into this journalist who we both barely know, and he says to me, “I read some article you wrote a few years ago. It was, you know, all right,” and I feel worse than if he hadn’t said anything at all. “It’s good to give people props,” he informs Anne, and I kind of nod and smile and start talking to somebody else.
But then the easy chair next to the church pews opens up, and we both sit back into the corner, and we have space and time to talk, and then Jordan walks in, wearing a thick coat and an amazing blue plaid Catcher-In-The-Rye hat, and I’m kind of shocked because it takes a lot for Jordan to venture out into the world when it’s this freezing outside. (“Wearing lots of layers,” he will patiently explain to people who insist that surviving the cold is all about having the right clothes, “is not the same thing as having warm air around you.”)
“I kind of have to leave early,” I say, and Jordan’s like, “That’s perfect,” and settles down into the chair with me, and two seconds later we’re giggling and gossiping and saying things like, “You’re amazing!” to each other.
And then Elizabeth and Rahn come over, and they both look giddy and exuberant because Rahn’s just moved to New Orleans—as in, he just pulled into town, with all his stuff in the back of a clattering Volvo station wagon, less than 24 hours ago--and he and Elizabeth are in love and, finally, together in the same place, and you can tell they’re in that time in their lives, right in this minute, right now, where one odyssey is ending and another one’s about to start. We give them enormous hugs, and Anne and Elizabeth are laughing and embracing each other, and even on this sad weird cold night we’re still managing to dig some joy up from somewhere.
Jordan and I are talking about our eventful and well-populated love lives, and Jordan’s saying something like, “I have a lot of sex, but I wouldn’t really call it a Lot of sex. It’s just more than most people, which is sad because, you know, most people really don’t have a lot of sex at all.”
I nod resignedly. “It’s true,” I say.
“Are you going to write that?” he asks, and I laugh. “Probably,” I say.
Janine and Monica walk up, and it turns out that a whole crew of pals from residency is upstairs. I didn’t even see them. “I’m so sad, ‘cause I have to leave early,” I say. They are smiley and beautiful and they give me big squishy hugs. “Next time,” they say.
Even though things are better and more fun I’m still looking at my watch, because I really do have to leave early, and finally I say goodbye to everyone and peel myself away from Jordan in the fluffy armchair and head out to start the long hike over to the Irish Channel, where, I’m hoping, my night will finally become cozy, and warm.
9 PM
I’m antsy. Tonight, the whole world is here. There’s a crowd three-deep by the bar, and we end up sitting on the church pews by the pool table, and a man in a plaid shirt keeps coming up to us and asking us if we want to play pool, but we don’t. Noah and his cute friend from Ohio are sitting next to us but they’re having their own conversation and they look kind of freezing and miserable and finally Noah jumps up and says, “We’re going to Floras to get coffee,” and off they go, into the swarm of people and, eventually, out into the cold, cold night.
We’ve come from Lanetta’s herbal dinner in Algiers, where we passed around the babies and ate ridiculous amounts of food and came away with little jars of fire cider that just got dug up earlier this afternoon after being buried in the ground for 30 days. Digging up the fire cider, Anne lost her grandmother’s ancient ring, which she’s had on her little finger for over ten years, and since then people have been praying to St Anthony and offering to bring metal detectors back to the garden tomorrow, and asking her those questions people ask you whenever you lose something: “Did you have it on when you got into the car? Could it be in one of your gloves?” And all day Anne’s been saying, “Thanks, okay, we can try the metal detectors, no, I didn’t have my gloves on, yes, okay, we can pray to St Anthony again,” but still the ring’s nowhere to be found and you can tell that Anne feels like a part of her has been cut away and flung, forever, into the deep sad universe. All night in the kitchen Lanetta kept saying, “Baby, nothing’s ever lost in divine time,” and Anne would nod back, in miserable resignation, and clutch at her little finger which, even to me, looked littler and out of place without that ring on it.
And now we’re here and it’s cold and there’s too many people around, and we run into this journalist who we both barely know, and he says to me, “I read some article you wrote a few years ago. It was, you know, all right,” and I feel worse than if he hadn’t said anything at all. “It’s good to give people props,” he informs Anne, and I kind of nod and smile and start talking to somebody else.
But then the easy chair next to the church pews opens up, and we both sit back into the corner, and we have space and time to talk, and then Jordan walks in, wearing a thick coat and an amazing blue plaid Catcher-In-The-Rye hat, and I’m kind of shocked because it takes a lot for Jordan to venture out into the world when it’s this freezing outside. (“Wearing lots of layers,” he will patiently explain to people who insist that surviving the cold is all about having the right clothes, “is not the same thing as having warm air around you.”)
“I kind of have to leave early,” I say, and Jordan’s like, “That’s perfect,” and settles down into the chair with me, and two seconds later we’re giggling and gossiping and saying things like, “You’re amazing!” to each other.
And then Elizabeth and Rahn come over, and they both look giddy and exuberant because Rahn’s just moved to New Orleans—as in, he just pulled into town, with all his stuff in the back of a clattering Volvo station wagon, less than 24 hours ago--and he and Elizabeth are in love and, finally, together in the same place, and you can tell they’re in that time in their lives, right in this minute, right now, where one odyssey is ending and another one’s about to start. We give them enormous hugs, and Anne and Elizabeth are laughing and embracing each other, and even on this sad weird cold night we’re still managing to dig some joy up from somewhere.
Jordan and I are talking about our eventful and well-populated love lives, and Jordan’s saying something like, “I have a lot of sex, but I wouldn’t really call it a Lot of sex. It’s just more than most people, which is sad because, you know, most people really don’t have a lot of sex at all.”
I nod resignedly. “It’s true,” I say.
“Are you going to write that?” he asks, and I laugh. “Probably,” I say.
Janine and Monica walk up, and it turns out that a whole crew of pals from residency is upstairs. I didn’t even see them. “I’m so sad, ‘cause I have to leave early,” I say. They are smiley and beautiful and they give me big squishy hugs. “Next time,” they say.
Even though things are better and more fun I’m still looking at my watch, because I really do have to leave early, and finally I say goodbye to everyone and peel myself away from Jordan in the fluffy armchair and head out to start the long hike over to the Irish Channel, where, I’m hoping, my night will finally become cozy, and warm.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Day 9
January 8
8:30 pm
The beautiful people are here. There are entire flocks of them, people I’ve never laid eyes upon before tonight, with narrow waists and storklike legs and sultry eyes; they are wearing things like high-heeled ankle boots, and see-through blackish tunics, and feathers. Not New Orleans–style feathers, which are bright and spangly and, usually, the main attraction: these feathers are subtle, tucked behind an ear or amassed in a curly arrangement of black hair.
“Where did they all come from?” Anne asks.
I know. Do they live here? It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like they have been teleported here, from their exotic homelands, to take a collective field trip in our sinking, gritty world.
The adorable bartender greets me with a formal nod. “What can I get for you,” he asks.
My heart cracks a little bit, and I ask for a Smithwicks.
He nods again, and moves down the bar.
Over the past couple of days I’ve begun a small love affair with an artist, who is now sending me a text message which says, “I may try and come find you tonight." I’m intrigued but not sure if I’m up for anything more than this: my full pint, the drafty barstool, looking at people with Anne for a minute and then going home soon, early, and alone.
Eric breezes behind us, a minuscule party hat perched incongruously on his head. He hugs us both at the same time, says, “I’m super-busy,” and weaves back through the crowd.
I think I see my New Years lover standing by the pool table, but I can’t tell if it’s really him because it’s far away and my long-distance vision sucks and I lost my glasses in Katrina and still haven’t gotten new ones. (I know. Four and a half years ago. I know. I definitely could’ve gotten new glasses by now. I know.)
The beautiful people are lounging; they take languid sips from clear glasses; they rest lazy elbows upon the bar; they speak to each other, unexcitedly, in slow soft sentences. They do not care who else is here, or who is looking at them, so we look at them, but they are not looking at us.
I forget this sometimes, that there are whole elements of culture out there in the rest of the universe where practiced, detached apathy is the norm. There are entire worlds of people, just like all these stylish beautiful people, lazily drinking and studiously not observing their surroundings, but I don’t run into them on a regular basis. One of the things I love most about living in New Orleans is our unbridled enthusiasm for even the tiny incidental aspects of life most people barely notice: The weather’s cold! The mail came today! Look, I’m wearing my silver cowboy boots!
When I was living in New Mexico, I had troubles every now and then with people who thought I was secretly pining away for them just because I’d tell them things like, “Ohmygosh, you are totally beautiful and amazing!” People would be like, “Um, well, I mean, um. Well.” Here, you say that to the guy at the corner store, and he just nods and goes, “You too, baby,” while ringing up your hot sausage po-boy.
Noah walks in with this cute person from Ohio who’s in New Orleans for the first time, and he’s got the Zapatista thing going on again, and they’re both antsy, skittering around like little birds. “I’m gonna go see Eric,” Noah says, and they scoot upstairs through the crowd.
I settle into my chair and pull my scarf around me. It’s drafty. I fight off a yawn.
A woman in a floppy black hat, alone at a table in my line of vision, looks right into my eyes and gives me a significant nod. I kind of nod back and look around. People are talking to Anne, and the adorable bartender is way way down on the other side of the bar, and the beautiful people are swirling around us, and for just a fleeting second I notice that it feels kind of empty, here in the middle of everything, sometimes.
I guess it was my New Years’ lover after all over there by the pool table, because now he’s coming up behind Anne and giving us hugs and squeezing a stool in between us, and now his hand is on my knee and I’m feeling for his shoulderblades beneath his scratchy gray overcoat. We talk about fiction and the military and community organizing, and he gives me shit a little bit for having done Palestine work because there’s so much going on right here in New Orleans (which, you know, I’ve kind of noticed), but that’s cool; I can take it; and he’s distracted and looking around and I wonder who he’s hiding from, or searching for. But it’s still fun, anyway, leaning up against him in this moment right now, and I love being with people who launch right into the important stuff without fanfare or preemptive smalltalking, and when he finally gets up to leave I take his hand in both of mine and give it one of those courtly Renaissance-style kisses.
8:30 pm
The beautiful people are here. There are entire flocks of them, people I’ve never laid eyes upon before tonight, with narrow waists and storklike legs and sultry eyes; they are wearing things like high-heeled ankle boots, and see-through blackish tunics, and feathers. Not New Orleans–style feathers, which are bright and spangly and, usually, the main attraction: these feathers are subtle, tucked behind an ear or amassed in a curly arrangement of black hair.
“Where did they all come from?” Anne asks.
I know. Do they live here? It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like they have been teleported here, from their exotic homelands, to take a collective field trip in our sinking, gritty world.
The adorable bartender greets me with a formal nod. “What can I get for you,” he asks.
My heart cracks a little bit, and I ask for a Smithwicks.
He nods again, and moves down the bar.
Over the past couple of days I’ve begun a small love affair with an artist, who is now sending me a text message which says, “I may try and come find you tonight." I’m intrigued but not sure if I’m up for anything more than this: my full pint, the drafty barstool, looking at people with Anne for a minute and then going home soon, early, and alone.
Eric breezes behind us, a minuscule party hat perched incongruously on his head. He hugs us both at the same time, says, “I’m super-busy,” and weaves back through the crowd.
I think I see my New Years lover standing by the pool table, but I can’t tell if it’s really him because it’s far away and my long-distance vision sucks and I lost my glasses in Katrina and still haven’t gotten new ones. (I know. Four and a half years ago. I know. I definitely could’ve gotten new glasses by now. I know.)
The beautiful people are lounging; they take languid sips from clear glasses; they rest lazy elbows upon the bar; they speak to each other, unexcitedly, in slow soft sentences. They do not care who else is here, or who is looking at them, so we look at them, but they are not looking at us.
I forget this sometimes, that there are whole elements of culture out there in the rest of the universe where practiced, detached apathy is the norm. There are entire worlds of people, just like all these stylish beautiful people, lazily drinking and studiously not observing their surroundings, but I don’t run into them on a regular basis. One of the things I love most about living in New Orleans is our unbridled enthusiasm for even the tiny incidental aspects of life most people barely notice: The weather’s cold! The mail came today! Look, I’m wearing my silver cowboy boots!
When I was living in New Mexico, I had troubles every now and then with people who thought I was secretly pining away for them just because I’d tell them things like, “Ohmygosh, you are totally beautiful and amazing!” People would be like, “Um, well, I mean, um. Well.” Here, you say that to the guy at the corner store, and he just nods and goes, “You too, baby,” while ringing up your hot sausage po-boy.
Noah walks in with this cute person from Ohio who’s in New Orleans for the first time, and he’s got the Zapatista thing going on again, and they’re both antsy, skittering around like little birds. “I’m gonna go see Eric,” Noah says, and they scoot upstairs through the crowd.
I settle into my chair and pull my scarf around me. It’s drafty. I fight off a yawn.
A woman in a floppy black hat, alone at a table in my line of vision, looks right into my eyes and gives me a significant nod. I kind of nod back and look around. People are talking to Anne, and the adorable bartender is way way down on the other side of the bar, and the beautiful people are swirling around us, and for just a fleeting second I notice that it feels kind of empty, here in the middle of everything, sometimes.
I guess it was my New Years’ lover after all over there by the pool table, because now he’s coming up behind Anne and giving us hugs and squeezing a stool in between us, and now his hand is on my knee and I’m feeling for his shoulderblades beneath his scratchy gray overcoat. We talk about fiction and the military and community organizing, and he gives me shit a little bit for having done Palestine work because there’s so much going on right here in New Orleans (which, you know, I’ve kind of noticed), but that’s cool; I can take it; and he’s distracted and looking around and I wonder who he’s hiding from, or searching for. But it’s still fun, anyway, leaning up against him in this moment right now, and I love being with people who launch right into the important stuff without fanfare or preemptive smalltalking, and when he finally gets up to leave I take his hand in both of mine and give it one of those courtly Renaissance-style kisses.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Day 8
January 7
10PM
It’s cold. Everyone’s talking about it. In other parts of the world, people treat weather as a mundane topic that you cover when you really have nothing else to say to people, but in New Orleans the weather, like most other things, is epic: it’s normal to find groups of people discussing it with the same intensity they’d give to politics, love affairs, and the Saints. We are born storytellers, New Orleanians, and weather is fair game.
“It’s so cold my dog froze!” A woman is saying as I walk up to the bar.
“Um, really?” Her companion asks. He is wearing one of those furry Russian hats with a lot of extra fabric on the top part, and confusing-looking flaps sticking out at weird tentlike angles. Where do you even get a hat like that in New Orleans, I wonder. And then I look around and I realize I’m practically the only person in the whole bar who’s not wearing one. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I definitely see at least ten puffy furry hats here, so huge they obscure the faces of their owners, with earmuffs and chin flaps and heavy insulating fabric underneath everything. You’d think we were all about to go to Antarctica together.
“Yes.” The woman sips her vodka emphatically. “I walked outside and there he was. Frozen. It took me, like, ten minutes to get his legs to work again.”
“Oh,” says the man in the hat.
The adorable bartender has my Smithwicks ready. I feel exultant.
“I’m Catherine,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says. “We’ve done this already.”
Really? Wow! How could I have missed it?
“Oh,” I smile sheepishly. “Well. You know. It’s good to see you.”
I roll my eyes at myself and walk over to the other side of the bar.
In walks Molly, who you can barely see underneath the woolly knit hat, the huge intensely striped scarf, the puffy down jacket, the sweaters, the button-down shirt, the long-sleeve shirt, and not one but two Catalyst Project t-shirts (one short-sleeved, one a tank top; both super-cute and just a sample of what’s on sale right here in New Orleans for a limited time only, just in case you were wondering).
I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been walking around naked all day.
And then Rosana comes, and Anne, and they are bright and beautiful and triumphant, and then Noah, who kind of looks like a Zapatista but with skinny jeans. All you can see are his eyes underneath all the winter-weather gear. He leaves us instantly to go socialize with Eric in the kitchen upstairs and watch the unfortunately-named but sometimes decent-to-listen-to band, the White Bitch, play, and then it’s just the four of us, and it’s just a night. We talk politics and kids and, yes, weather, and tattoo strategy, and I’m laughing so hard I can’t see straight, and I have one of those misty alcohol-induced moments where I look around and think, “Wow! Look how beautiful y’all are!” Between the four of us we have survived death and divorce and cancer and heartbreak, not to mention the cataclysmic devastation of our magical community, and we are all continuing to fiercely make things happen in our broken world. I am amazed and inspired and grateful, and in the end it gets so warm that I take off my scarf, and Rosana’s just in a tank top, and even Molly’s down to the last 2 t-shirts, and we settle in, and stay awhile.
10PM
It’s cold. Everyone’s talking about it. In other parts of the world, people treat weather as a mundane topic that you cover when you really have nothing else to say to people, but in New Orleans the weather, like most other things, is epic: it’s normal to find groups of people discussing it with the same intensity they’d give to politics, love affairs, and the Saints. We are born storytellers, New Orleanians, and weather is fair game.
“It’s so cold my dog froze!” A woman is saying as I walk up to the bar.
“Um, really?” Her companion asks. He is wearing one of those furry Russian hats with a lot of extra fabric on the top part, and confusing-looking flaps sticking out at weird tentlike angles. Where do you even get a hat like that in New Orleans, I wonder. And then I look around and I realize I’m practically the only person in the whole bar who’s not wearing one. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I definitely see at least ten puffy furry hats here, so huge they obscure the faces of their owners, with earmuffs and chin flaps and heavy insulating fabric underneath everything. You’d think we were all about to go to Antarctica together.
“Yes.” The woman sips her vodka emphatically. “I walked outside and there he was. Frozen. It took me, like, ten minutes to get his legs to work again.”
“Oh,” says the man in the hat.
The adorable bartender has my Smithwicks ready. I feel exultant.
“I’m Catherine,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says. “We’ve done this already.”
Really? Wow! How could I have missed it?
“Oh,” I smile sheepishly. “Well. You know. It’s good to see you.”
I roll my eyes at myself and walk over to the other side of the bar.
In walks Molly, who you can barely see underneath the woolly knit hat, the huge intensely striped scarf, the puffy down jacket, the sweaters, the button-down shirt, the long-sleeve shirt, and not one but two Catalyst Project t-shirts (one short-sleeved, one a tank top; both super-cute and just a sample of what’s on sale right here in New Orleans for a limited time only, just in case you were wondering).
I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been walking around naked all day.
And then Rosana comes, and Anne, and they are bright and beautiful and triumphant, and then Noah, who kind of looks like a Zapatista but with skinny jeans. All you can see are his eyes underneath all the winter-weather gear. He leaves us instantly to go socialize with Eric in the kitchen upstairs and watch the unfortunately-named but sometimes decent-to-listen-to band, the White Bitch, play, and then it’s just the four of us, and it’s just a night. We talk politics and kids and, yes, weather, and tattoo strategy, and I’m laughing so hard I can’t see straight, and I have one of those misty alcohol-induced moments where I look around and think, “Wow! Look how beautiful y’all are!” Between the four of us we have survived death and divorce and cancer and heartbreak, not to mention the cataclysmic devastation of our magical community, and we are all continuing to fiercely make things happen in our broken world. I am amazed and inspired and grateful, and in the end it gets so warm that I take off my scarf, and Rosana’s just in a tank top, and even Molly’s down to the last 2 t-shirts, and we settle in, and stay awhile.
Day 7
Jan 6
10:30 pm
When we walk up, the two-story bikes are stacked up against each other on a lamppost, and Gal Holiday’s raspy voice is hurtling old-school country music out of the upstairs windows and all the way down Franklin Avenue. It’s Twelfth Night, the official beginning of Carnival season, and we’ve been wandering through the Marigny eating King cake, drinking whisky, and battening ourselves down against the ridiculous cold.
Our original intention for the evening was to put on shiny sparkly outfits and run around the neighborhood with bells and harmonicas and whistles and noisemakers, making our own parade. But it’s cold and we’re tired, so instead here we are in hats and scarves, in scrubbly sweaters and woolly mittens. (Except Aneeta, who dazzles us all in a Joan Jetson dress and swirling purple headband.) This Mardi Gras does not begin with a bang; it seeps into our lives and we huddle around it like warm wrinkly relatives. Which is all right. Sometimes you need to start off slow.
Mardi Gras is the closest most New Orleanians ever get to running a marathon, and we all have heaps of advice on how to do it right. The common refrain is, usually, “Pace yourself, baby,” and this applies to everything: costumes, dancing, eating, drinking, staying awake all night, handling multiple lovers. Ultimately Mardi Gras is about doing whatever you want, in excessive amounts, for weeks on end, while not getting completely destroyed in the process. And so if tonight our Carnival starts off cozy, we are most likely all the better for it. The future is wide. There will be time, oh, yes, for sparkles.
When we walk upstairs the only sign of life, except the band and a few solo boys on barstools, is a table of women in impossible makeup and sultry dresses. They are looking around the room with radar eyes, as though at any moment a celebrity, or an evil ex-lover, will pop in. For a moment we stop in the doorway and they all perk up, at attention, but then it’s just us, and once we settle in behind them they sigh, disappointed, and return to their distracted conversation, necks long and searching, like egrets.
“I could dance to this music,” Elizabeth says, and she is right because she can dance to any music: there have been multiple nights where Elizabeth and I have walked into subdued rooms just like this one and she begins dancing, and then I begin dancing, and when it’s finally time to leave we can barely make it out of the crowd, wending our way through all the twisting writhing limbs of all those people who were just waiting, waiting for someone to start something.
And so she takes our little friend Noah out onto the dancefloor, and it’s kind of adorable to watch because Noah, who gets carded everywhere he goes, and who has been consuming Jordan Almonds and Coke all night but also telling us graceful and intelligent stories about art, can actually dance, and well. And soon others are dancing, and soon a troupe of pirates and robots and Renaissance courtesans rolls in, and then the pirates are dancing with the courtesans and everyone starts telling everyone they are beautiful, in they way you do when anyone can be anyone, and the music starts sounding just a little more raucous, and then the people move their bodies just a little closer to the other people’s bodies, and it’s starting, Mardi Gras is starting, you can feel it, seeping in around us like a mist, like a web, like gravity, like it’s only a matter of time and eventuality before we all get entangled in something that’s bigger, and more magic, than we are.
10:30 pm
When we walk up, the two-story bikes are stacked up against each other on a lamppost, and Gal Holiday’s raspy voice is hurtling old-school country music out of the upstairs windows and all the way down Franklin Avenue. It’s Twelfth Night, the official beginning of Carnival season, and we’ve been wandering through the Marigny eating King cake, drinking whisky, and battening ourselves down against the ridiculous cold.
Our original intention for the evening was to put on shiny sparkly outfits and run around the neighborhood with bells and harmonicas and whistles and noisemakers, making our own parade. But it’s cold and we’re tired, so instead here we are in hats and scarves, in scrubbly sweaters and woolly mittens. (Except Aneeta, who dazzles us all in a Joan Jetson dress and swirling purple headband.) This Mardi Gras does not begin with a bang; it seeps into our lives and we huddle around it like warm wrinkly relatives. Which is all right. Sometimes you need to start off slow.
Mardi Gras is the closest most New Orleanians ever get to running a marathon, and we all have heaps of advice on how to do it right. The common refrain is, usually, “Pace yourself, baby,” and this applies to everything: costumes, dancing, eating, drinking, staying awake all night, handling multiple lovers. Ultimately Mardi Gras is about doing whatever you want, in excessive amounts, for weeks on end, while not getting completely destroyed in the process. And so if tonight our Carnival starts off cozy, we are most likely all the better for it. The future is wide. There will be time, oh, yes, for sparkles.
When we walk upstairs the only sign of life, except the band and a few solo boys on barstools, is a table of women in impossible makeup and sultry dresses. They are looking around the room with radar eyes, as though at any moment a celebrity, or an evil ex-lover, will pop in. For a moment we stop in the doorway and they all perk up, at attention, but then it’s just us, and once we settle in behind them they sigh, disappointed, and return to their distracted conversation, necks long and searching, like egrets.
“I could dance to this music,” Elizabeth says, and she is right because she can dance to any music: there have been multiple nights where Elizabeth and I have walked into subdued rooms just like this one and she begins dancing, and then I begin dancing, and when it’s finally time to leave we can barely make it out of the crowd, wending our way through all the twisting writhing limbs of all those people who were just waiting, waiting for someone to start something.
And so she takes our little friend Noah out onto the dancefloor, and it’s kind of adorable to watch because Noah, who gets carded everywhere he goes, and who has been consuming Jordan Almonds and Coke all night but also telling us graceful and intelligent stories about art, can actually dance, and well. And soon others are dancing, and soon a troupe of pirates and robots and Renaissance courtesans rolls in, and then the pirates are dancing with the courtesans and everyone starts telling everyone they are beautiful, in they way you do when anyone can be anyone, and the music starts sounding just a little more raucous, and then the people move their bodies just a little closer to the other people’s bodies, and it’s starting, Mardi Gras is starting, you can feel it, seeping in around us like a mist, like a web, like gravity, like it’s only a matter of time and eventuality before we all get entangled in something that’s bigger, and more magic, than we are.
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