Driving on I-10 a little after 11pm, on the way to pick up a friend at the airport, I tune into Q-93, the local hip-hop and R&B station. The DJ—either Wild Wayne or AD Berry--opened the phone lines to callers with thoughts on a recent news story: in a New York Times profile, Recovery Czar Edward Blakely gave a bruising account of his tenure in New Orleans, including money lines on the racial divide:
'It's a culture of domination rather than participation. So whatever group gets something they try to dominate the whole turf”
and the one that caught most people’s un-fancy:
‘(People who move to the city from elsewhere are) going to come here without the same attitudes of the locals. 'I think, if we create the right signals, they're going to come here, and they're going to say 'Who are these buffoons?'
One woman who calls into Q93 said her message to Blakely is:
'If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re part of a problem.'
Hey, that’s just it: Blakely’s the recovery czar: he is THE part of the solution. If he’s bent like this, it’s not because things are better than he’s saying or because he's out to condescend all of us. Things are fucked.
My question for the many citizens who shook their heads with the gasface: had you read his plan? Can we talk about that? Would seem worthy of radio and watercooler chats, no? More important than what he told the Times, right?
Look, I wrote about meeting Blakely a few months ago. He was pissed then, so I can only imagine how pissed he is now. That night, the entire crowd of the mayor’s fur-cloaked supporters lived it up on 3 floors. Blakely struck me as highly disgusted. His latests comments sound no different.
I’m supposed to say, “What buffoons? Are you talking about me?” Really? I think we all know which ones he’s talking about. We see a city government in a shambled caricature of its past self. We hear the clicking from the continued death of street lights, the early-1990’s murder rate, the fumbled posturing of the leadership when out-of-town congressional delegations arrive.
We know who is selling us short. Have we become so sensitive that we’ll even defend our saboteurs?
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Brought to her beloved knees by brake failure, the LTD is, as they say down here, about to go home. We’re going to miss that car. Since the wheels must continue to turn, Kim and I decided to purchase a new used car immediately to forestall emergency. Just a few blocks down Camp Street, I checked around in Bridge House car lot. Bridge House is a rehabilitation home for men that sells donated used-vehicles.
The first time through, I spoke with two dudes who had shopped there before. The lot was closed for the evening, but these guys said the deals were real good, you could beat ‘em down, and that the one guy had picked up like 5 cars there over the years, never had a problem.
The 2nd time, Mr. Millions and I stopped in on a Saturday morning and spoke with a salesman, Billy, who is originally from North Carolina. He lives in Bridge House now after living the last 5 years in Key West. Millions and I took a Chevy Lumina out for a test drive with Billy in the back, up to Dat’s Grocery and back, the long way, with Billy complaining that I drove too wildy. I was test-driving, though, you know?
In subsequent conversations with Kim (Mr. Millions of course contributing his testimony), a consensus arose: Bridge House has good deals, is a legit and charitable enterprise; we have to get something, the LTD is a mess; we need to be sure the price is right.
Well, on the 3rd trip, we ended up with a 1998 Ford Windstar Van. It resided in Slidell for the last 8 years, seats 7, is a deep aqua blue. Make what you will of this decision.
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The French Quarter festival sure is crowded nowadays, alright. I remember my first one as a surprise—I didn’t even know it was happening, but had taken my mother on a tour of the Quarter and there it was, people playing all over the street. A few times this year, we had to force our way through crowds along the river. At least for a moment, though, it was worth it.
On the second day of the festival, Saturday, Kim and I witnessed the wedding of Kermit Ruffins. Along with thousands of others, we celebrated the vows and matrimony of the best-dude-you-know and his blushing fine lady. We truly felt honored, and stood awestruck yet again in a fragile epiphany of New Orleans. There’s the enternal twist: if visions are what you need, our city has them in abundance.
Kermit played his bride onto the stage, trumpet pointed to the stage stairs as the wedding party entered. All took their places and waved, and in one video, you can hear the riverboat Natchez blow its whistle.
As the vows rang in the microphone, Kermit held his trumpet in hand.
When the bride had received her kiss and the applause began in full throat, Kermit resumed blowing. The world on a string…
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After the purchase of the Windstar, I drop Kim off at a T-Mobile building in Metairie, where she does work for the Red Cross. On the way back to the house, I screw up a little bit when I get off the Earhart Expressway. Then, trying to cut around to hit Claiborne Avenue, I drive through Gert Town.
Gert Town is in between Uptown and Mid City, near to Xavier University, by the entrance to a major highway. I remember it as a depressed area, but populated, a place people would tell you they were from, though back then I think I got it confused with Pigeon town.
At a planning meeting a few months ago, I heard an enraged man demand the recognition and protection of Gert Town. By all sights completely mad, an African-American man in his fifties, he lambasted the committee and all who forgot about Gert Town. He proclaimed Gert Town the true birthplace of jazz, a bastion against (and target of) Anglo-Saxonism, a proud fortress, the primary concern of any righteous council. He spoke of the ancient days and conspiracy, and we watched him in the monitors of the chamber. The committee members slumped and the public muttered laughs, looked at their watches or the ceiling.
To punctuate his speech, the man warned angrily,
I’m not gonna let you forget about Gert Town, I’m gonna be here everyday. SO CHECK ME!
With that, he surrendered the podium.
As I slowly maneuver the van through the rutted streets of Gert Town, I survey that man’s Valhalla. There are people rebuilding there, but there are also abandoned blocks. Squat grocery stores wear shells of board and are swallowed slowly by weeds. There are people rebuilding there, but a whole lot of Gert Town is ghostly at 3 in the afternoon.
I go slower, gazing once again at all the people not there, at the non-handshakes and absent blown receipts, the missing very old and very young. I feel why that man went mad, then I silently tell the van that we need to get around more.
Sunday, April 1 The plan today is to attend a panel discussion at the Tennessee Williams Festival, for which I have free passes from work and cross the river to Algiers Point for the 4th annual Riverfest. A solid overcast sky greets us when we wake up, with the chance of rain seemingly the only threat to our day.
Muriel's Restaurant, Jackson Square: Uptown ladies listen to general homage to Faulkner's difficulty.
Algiers: As we walk along the levee's spine back from the Old Point Bar, I think I hear Irvin Mayfield's quartet doin...yep, that is... yes: the well-known bassline of A Love Supreme. Dah da Dah da, Dah da Dah da.
Descent of the Indians, stealing the show.
I excuse myself to visit the port-a-john, and stop at the side of the stage to watch the slow exit stage right.
We stand against the barriers after our friends leave, listen to the great Dr. Michael White.
In the darkest shades of dusk, we board the ferry and lean against the rail on the first level near the cars. A barge crosses in front of us just after we leave port, and when we cut against its wake, a wave runs over the deck and soaks my feet and shins. I have Mississippi in my shoes for the walk across the Quarter.
The Hornets played their last game in New Orleans for this season and alter ego DJ Toney Blare covered the game--including Kobe Bryant's 4th straight 50+ points performance--for SLAM Magazine. Check it out HERE.And here's what it looks like after the game...
“Yeah, lemme get a Corona, man.” I straddle my bike in front of a cooler chest. One of two salesmen digs into the ice and water and pulls out a bottle.
“That cold enough for you?”
“I hope so. I’m gonna need it today.”
I give him $3 but he can’t open the bottle with his lighter, so his partner does it, and then scoffs at the other’s ineptitude. I thank them both and pedal slowly into the intersection of Washington and LaSalle. The block is full of people, with a large crowd at one end gathered in front of a line of cops on horses. Feathered headdresses are visible above the fray, the sky is bright, and the air is warm but dry, perfect March weather in New Orleans.
Today is Super Sunday, the traditional parading day for the Mardi Gras Indian tribes held the Sunday before St. Joseph’s Day. Back when the Indians were violent and illegal, this was the day of the year when they could come out and show their colors. Now we’re standing in one of the most violent neighborhoods in the city and the tail of the parade is beginning to move.
I ride down LaSalle to check out the spy boys, braves, and chiefs preparing. The street has a neutral ground in the middle and various pieces of costumes rest in the grass. At a break in the neutral ground, I u-turn and ride back up the street towards Washington Avenue. Lone Indians stand stone-faced in full “mask,” clusters of onlookers surrounding them.
The crowd: young men with the practiced thousand-yard stare; older guys who get in the face of the Indians, alternately trying to crack them up or boost their egos into full whoop as the maskers stay intense and serious; the wives and mothers of the Indians, who help them put on their costumes and straighten their headdresses; children in and out of costume; white hipsters young and old, cameras at the ready.
What I notice immediately (and start to record with my own camera) is the prevalence of cameras. Any immobile Indian has a phalanx of cameras around him, held in white and black hands, snapping away. Some are huge video cameras with long lenses, others just the camera phone. The Indians are such wildly vivid figures, it’s hard to stop snapping, and indeed there are dudes who walk backwards in front of the marchers as they begin to move down LaSalle.
It’s weird to watch people squint and focus so intently on capturing the exotic, like we’re all on a safari rather than in a neighborhood. I don’t know if that’s always been the case on Super Sunday, but it’s safe to say that more people own cameras these days, and have them always on-hand in phones or in handy digital models. What do we get from photographing something? What do we lose by pausing to record, rather than allowing the experience to unfold? Can you have any sort of epiphany with one eye in on a screen?
Aside from these questions, I wonder about the younger white kids like me. Are we simply voyeur witnesses to the last embers of a culture, or will we help lay the groundwork for a more equitable city, one where the Indians and their neighbors survive and prosper, every day of the year? Obviously, we have some interest; some love of this side of New Orleans, but how many of us ever walk these blocks the other 364 days of the year?
That’s what struck me over and over again today—how rare it was for any white person to be in this neighborhood. That’s an old fact, but, again, what do we do in this new landscape? What does it mean that one race simply doesn’t cross into a certain space? How does that affect all of us?
I stand with my bike in front of me as the crowd grows thick and begins to follow the last tribe and brass band. When a space opens up, I join in behind another beer salesman. He tows his cooler on a battered hand-truck, wears a gray-black-white camouflaged suit, and seems nervous, not stopping as people place orders. Instead, he’ll pull out the beers, then the customer takes over and drives the hand-truck while the beer man makes change.
It’s not a fluid operation, but it works, and I keep wondering what’s the rush. Then I hear a snort, and turn to see that the line of police horses is only 5 paces behind us. I pick up the pace, order a Budweiser. Another white dude is doing the same, and he ends up just buying my bottle for me, saying, “Happy Sunday,” so that all of us can keep moving.
LaSalle turns into Simon Bolivar and an Indian runs by whooping, feathered tomahawks slicing the air. Another group of Indians in white skull faces menaces the crowd. Down here people loll in the shade on the neutral ground, drinking and lighting blunts. I stand between some cars to watch the parade pass. A beat-up old lady comes to talk to me, and we walk together for a minute.
“Enjoying yourself today mmm, hmmm, mmm,” she says with a vacant smile. Her voice is low and she seems lost.
“Oh, yeah, it’s a fine day,” I tell her.
“Hmmmm. Since Katrina, my head still ain't right….” She says it like a question, like she’s in disbelief. “Hmmmm…..19 feet of water…..walk on water…..”
I tell her to take her time, then cross to a boarded up seafood store and lock up my bike. It’s getting hard to hold a bottle in one hand and walk the bike with the other. The parade turns onto Jackson Avenue and I let it pass me so I can buy another beer. The guys I ask aren’t selling, but they point me across the street to another pick-up truck.
When I get there, a couple stands in the bed of the truck with a full bar’s worth of liquor sitting on the roof of the cab. They have gin, whiskey, schnapps, vodka, everything. I try to order a 7 and 7, but the woman asks me to explain what that is. As I do, a cop walks up.
“I got no problem with your operation,” he says, “but can you move it to the side a little, you’re blocking the street.”
So the truck backs up as the lady makes my 7 and 7, which turns out to be just gin and some flat seltzer water, no ice, in a small plastic cup. And as I hand up the money, it turns out she’s not a lady, but a man in some very basic drag, with long sideburns and a mustache and trucker’s cap.
“Thanks, baby,” I say.
I’ll admit, the last thing I need is gin, but I dug that operation, too. Anyway, things get a little hazy for the remainder of the day. The Indians and I move at about the same pace, so I see the same few tribes and band again and again, followed by the line of police horses. We walk in the street, the Indians vibrant and pulsating, many of the buildings windowless and weather-beaten. Chants rise up and braves dash about, regroup, strut, squat in wait.
At one point, I’m watching an Indian in all red feathers approach, and can hear only a tambourine. As he passes me, I hear a burst of sound from an un-costumed brass band; they look like one family, mother and 4 children, almost hidden behind the Indian’s headdress. Everywhere along the street, people whoop and call out, take photos and drink and smoke, take it easy in the holiday afternoon. Along with Mardi Gray Day, and maybe New Year’s Eve, this hour of walking feels as close as it can get to the pre-Katrina city I knew.
The funny thing is, it’s only in the extraordinary moments that things feel normal, like nothing happened.
On one stretch of Martin Luther King Drive, I stop to take in a very strange sight on the neutral ground. Someone has tricked out a convertible Mercedes coupe in ridiculous fashion. Not only is the light gray interior done up in what appears to be fake alligator, including the cup holder, but the gearshift is a fake pistol.
Yep, what looks to be a glock is mounted nose-down on the console. The doors of the coupe are vertical, ala the DeLorean, and in a true stroke of genius, three Chucky dolls stand in the back seat. The top is down and kids take turns jumping in the front seat for pictures. I start taking close-range self-portraits in various ill poses, arms crossed or cup of gin held up to my lips. I guess I’m causing a scene, because a few white kids come up and remark to me on how crazy the car is, alright.
“It’s the dumbest car ever,” I tell one.
“I love it!” he says. I move on.
At the corner of South Claiborne and MLK, a very ingenious person opened a large convenience store and gas station, with hip-hop clothing for sale on one side of the building. Most days, this is where day laborers, Latino and black, gather to wait for work. Today, the parking lot is full of speed bikes and their riders. Maybe 60 bikes are out there, taking up one whole corner of the parking lot.
I stand under the shade of the island and take them all in, then give Kim a call and give her my coordinates. I walk into the store to get more beer and water, and she meets me in there a few minutes later. Once again, I’m sure glad to see my woman. She can see I’m a little loopy and hands me the water, takes the beer.
We continue down MLK. The parade is thinning out as we go, the space between groups of Indians growing. Occasionally, we sit down and watch it pass, then get up and catch the tail. At one point we’re right next to the horses when we notice two white chicks wearing identical fluorescent green hats and armbands. The armbands read “ACLU,” and the girls carry clipboards.
“Say, what are y’all up to?” I ask.
“We’re here to monitor the police,” one tells me.
Apparently they accompany the cops at many parades, noting when they get out of line.
“What kind of stuff do you write down?”
“Well, like this right here.” She points to another line of horse cops who cross in front of a group of parade goers, almost running them over. I wish them luck and move on.
When we get to Jackson Avenue, I see a group of cops handcuffing a guy. It’s the beer man in the camouflage from before. A burned nub of blunt sits on his cooler. He isn’t resisting. That man probably made 700 bucks today, all right in front of that line of horse cops. If he hit that blunt, it must’ve been more than once. But now that we’re near the end of the parade, he’s under arrest. Seems like a convenient time for someone to pick up an easy $700, right?
“Fuck,” I say. I walk up fast and slip my card in his pocket, which is a stupid, futile thing to do. Kim gets the attention of the ACLU. We stand on the corner and swear. What a bunch of bullshit.
Across the street, a group of Indians in pink and brown feathers attempts to join the parade. A meeting of sorts ensues between what looks to be several chiefs of different tribes. There’s some posturing, the ritual plays out, and the new tribe joins the march.
If this was the beginning of the 20th century, this is the kind of run-in that could result in violence. Today, the argument is probably about the proper show of respect and order. Indians are serious about this and the disputes they have concern precedence and honoring past “maskers” and their teachings. The fierce defense of heritage might just save this whole place, and that’s why I follow the Indians. Of course, this stops the parade and causes the police cruisers to honk.
We reach Marcus Garvey Park at Washington and S. Claiborne and push our way through one small gate in the fence. Inside, the whole parade—Indians and followers—fills in the lawn, drinking, inspecting costumes, lounging in the sun. On a stage at one edge of the park, a speaker informs us of a march on City Hall. I think about Ed Blakely, how he might have the right idea but how he should be here today if he’s really going to solve things.
After awhile, Kim and I agree we’re hungry and ought to be getting out of there. It takes long waits at two different, over-matched food trucks, but I get us an order of some pretty damn good fries. We walk down Claiborne to Jackson and head towards the river. In the middle of Jackson, a single Indian in royal blue and orange feathers marches in the early dusk.
“He’s like the King of Jackson Avenue,” I say.
A car with its flashers on follows him slowly and soon a line of cars trails lazily down the avenue behind them. Kim and I are talking, not paying attention, then we see the line of traffic has stopped. Some dude with short dreads and a bright orange shirt has stopped his Saturn behind the Indian, gotten out of the car, and challenged the driver of the car guarding the Indian. The driver keeps telling the dude to chill as the Indian looks on.
“Are you ready? Are you ready, bitch?” the dude in orange asks, fists now held up. The two of them are 10 feet from us. On the corner behind us, a group of men and children watches as the fight starts. Some punches are thrown, they lock up in a bear hug, the Indian’s driver down lower around the dude’s torso. Eventually they work their way to a telephone pole where the Indian comes up behind the dude and tries to pry him off.
“We oughta steal his car,” I joke, nodding at the idling Saturn.
The people on the corner continue to tell the dude to step away, as it’s now a stalemate. Kim and I start to walk away, but I turn once more to look back and see the dude’s head banging over and over against a parked car. The Indian’s driver really whips the dude’s ass, leaving him lying on the curb, struggling to get up. The Indian sits down on the hood of his friend’s car and they pull away, charioteer and chariot, disappearing down Jackson Avenue.
On the next block, a group of old ladies sits on a porch. They ask us what happened and we tell them. We all shake our heads.
“He should’ve known not to mess with that Indian,” I say to general assent.
I hurry past the French Market, scanning the crowd. Tourists drift by in healthy number, a good sign two weeks after Mardi Gras on a cool, overcast Sunday. Kim waits in the car outside Café Du Monde and when I reach her, she is still alone. Dr. Love is a no-show.
Which isn’t much of a surprise. The first time we told him of our plan, he protested the dangers involved.
“You know what an anaconda can do to you?”
Our second meeting took place Friday night, but Kim had to remind me on Saturday morning that we’d made a promise; I did remember Dr. Love and I talking in drunk-sincere tones. Now it’s Sunday, and Dr. Love hasn’t held up his end. Oh, well, he only had one club, anyway, and his fear of snakes seemed quite real.
Our plan: play a few holes at the golf course in City Park. We figured no one had swung a club there since the storm, so we’d likely be the first hackers to walk what now resembles the African Savannah. Dr. Love entered the picture when we met him at the Apple Barrel on Frenchman Street a few months ago and noticed him using two golf clubs as crutches. He was a slender black guy, looked to be around 65, and said he’d fought in Vietnam, the origin of his anaconda phobia. We were mostly interested in the clubs, though by Friday we’d already enlisted my friend, Tom, who had his own set, so now Dr. Love was the last member of our prospective foursome. But since he’d missed the meeting time, we continued on to Tom’s house in Lakeview.
Lakeview, as its name suggests, abuts Lake Ponchatrain. One of the city’s most exclusive neighborhoods, it was also among the hardest hit by the storm. And though Lakeview’s relative affluence means it’s recovering faster than similarly devastated areas, it’s still a mess, with blocks of gutted homes, restored homes, and muddy front yards. A decorated Vietnam veteran himself, and a lifelong pal of my father, Tom suffered heavy losses from the storm, with ten feet of floodwater completely destroying the first floor of his home. After being rescued from the second floor and spending time in Pittsburgh and in a friend’s house on the Riverbend, he moved back into his place about a month ago.
When we arrived, the golf clubs rested on the front porch. The set of Ping Zings had sat in the floodwater for 2 weeks and the bag still had some mildew on it, the heads and shafts of the clubs muddy and slightly rusted. A couple dozen Titleist balls were still in the pocket where Tom had stashed them prior to the storm, the head covers still sheathed the woods, and the grips were surprisingly intact. For this return to City Park, these were just the clubs we needed.
Before we left, Tom walked us down the block to show us “Desolation Row,” as he called it. Several identical shotgun houses stood in a line along an overgrown alleyway, all gutted, or so it appeared. We walked into the third house. It wasn’t gutted; in fact, it was barely touched.
Two playpens sat in the front room, along with a couch and coffee table, everything covered in mud and mold. A collection of men’s shirts still hung in the closet in the bedroom, and the bed still had sheets on it. In the next room, a wall of shelves heaved with warped books and dusty CD cases. A stereo, a desk, a bed, more CD’s, a poster of Charlie Parker, a map of Spain---all untouched. The kitchen was full of stacked dishes and all the markings of a busy life. We guessed that a young couple with two children had lived there.
The things they left behind, particularly the volumes of history and selection of jazz recordings, especially chilled me. This looks like my shit, I thought. I have that book; I own that CD. Whoever they were, these people never came back to get a thing; everything was as it was left before the storm. I’ve walked through a lot of freaky shit in the last few months, but this house of petrified life felt particularly creepy, like a nightmare where you recognize things you’ve never seen before in real life.
We left and walked back to Tom’s, put the clubs in the trunk of the LTD, and followed Tom’s directions to City Park.
The park’s driving range is open now, and when we pulled into the parking lot, we could see men hitting balls along the concrete porch. I took a towel from the car to wear under the bag strap to protect my sweater from the mildew, but soon found the strap’s velour more than clean enough.
As we walked to the first tee, Tom reminded me that this was the first hole I ever played in New Orleans, back in the late summer of 1995 when he and I and my father came out for nine. Now the tee markers were gone and the first fairway spread out before us in ruin. The grass looked burned, hay-colored with pockets of green weeds and mud hills. The oaks on either side of the fairway stood leafless and weathered, almost frazzled.
Tom unsheathed his driver for the first time since the storm, I pulled out a dusty three iron, and we handed Kim a sand wedge, as it was the shortest club in the bag. I dropped three balls onto the wiry grass and proceeded to stretch out a little and take practice swings. A non-golfer, Kim struck the first ball of the afternoon, and won a bet with Tom that she’d make contact on her first try, though the ball traveled only a few yards.
As Tom stepped up to make his first swing, a National Guard Humvee appeared at the end of the cart path. It proceeded slowly towards us, its tan body a perfect camouflage against the devastated landscape. Undeterred by the approaching patrol, Tom hit two balls in a row in the Humvee’s direction and we laughed about our “journalists” alibi. It was my turn and as I took a practice swing, the Humvee reached us.
“How y’all doing?” I called over my shoulder to the two soldiers. I heard no response and took my swing. The ball cut a bit to the right but the distance wasn’t bad at all. After watching the ball land, I turned to see the Humvee continuing down the cart path and into the parking lot. I felt like a phantom, like the soldiers didn’t even see us out there, like we were just ghosts of golfers past. Kim whacked her ball a few more yards, I picked up the bag, and the three of us made our way down the fairway.
The first thing we noticed was that this hole had been mowed at least once since the storm. Neighboring holes appeared more unkempt, but the grass on No. 1 was relatively low, though pocked with anthills. Every few yards we came upon another anthill, and though they looked dormant, a whack with a 3 iron revealed each to be populated by a swarm of fire ants. Those bastards are having a field day out at City Park and I was careful to avoid them for the rest of the afternoon.
Tire tracks ran down the middle of No. 1, though they appeared too narrow for a Humvee. Clusters of weeds and musk thistle hugged the edges of the fairway and sprouted here and there in the middle. The swamp is coming back. The centuries-old trees looked ghoulish and untamed. All over the fairway, insidiously and aimless, the spiky dandelions and soft clovers will take back this entire course in another year or two. The dead grass felt spongy and sprayed up each time one of us took a swing. We knew where the green was supposed to be and marched steadily towards it, knocking our Titleists as we went.
I hadn’t golfed in probably 4 years, but when I was a teenager I played semi-regularly for a few summers, mostly with my father. The game always struck me as too frustrating to enjoy, though I liked walking the freshly combed fairways and the feeling of striking the ball with the sweet spot of my club. My swing is decent enough, and I have a fair understanding of iron play and the proper velocity for certain shots.
Today, of course, this was all fairly pointless, and I took few practice swings, instead walking up to the ball, lining myself up, and hacking away. On No. 1, this worked fine, because the dead grass propped the ball up a bit off the ground, in effect teeing it up for each shot. Tom reached the green first, and when the three of us made it there, I pulled out the putter. The green was just as rough as the fairway, but the originally finer grass there had matted in different fashion, making it bumpy but fast enough to putt on. Tom selected a cropping of weeds in the center of the green as the hole, and we knocked our balls towards it. On the first hole, I’m guessing we took a total of 30-40 shots between us, and lost maybe 3 balls out of bounds. There was no pin to replace, and we made our way over to the ninth tee.
The ninth appeared completely untouched since the storm. The tee was thick with weeds separated by dried mud. We gave Kim the 3-iron and I took the sand wedge, skying up my first shot. As we began to walk, it quickly became evident that No. 9 was a total ball trap. The dried grass was a few inches thick, and walking was akin to trudging through fresh snow.
In the first 40 yards, we lost countless balls, as the grass swallowed them up. Several times, one of us would barely hit the ball, sending it two or three yards, then spend another 2 minutes trying to dig the ball out of the grass, into which it had settled like an egg in a nest. Large clumps of hay came up each time I swung, and several times I banged my club on the ground in faux-golfer fury, cutting a swath in the earth. No greenskeeper was there to catch me.
“Hey,” Tom reminded me. “A bad day on the golf course is better than a good day at the office.” Throughout the afternoon we made comments like that, complaining of slick greens, absent rangers, and thick rough, and citing “winter rules” when we made friendly drops or dug balls out of the grass. We joked a lot during the “round.”
On a deserted stretch of a park that 18 months ago sat under a few feet of water, I felt at times like we were at the bottom of the ocean, or on the surface of another planet. I’m almost certain that ours were the first clubs swung through that grass since the storm, and likely ours were the first feet to tread some stretches of that land. Yet our footsteps were light, we laughed at our location, the pace of play was dreamlike and unburdened by time or score.
The course may never come back, but we played on it this afternoon. To employ golf terms, we live in a city of hazards, of gaping wounds in the landscape and destruction that trivializes idyllic games and the idea of “par.” With so much of the city’s space crumbled and disfigured, it’s very hard to tell what’s off limits or out of bounds. At City Park, I felt like a humble pilgrim, ambling through a routine ritual that bore no resemblance to my soiled surroundings.
This happens now and again in New Orleans these days, a sensation that you’re uncovering a secret that sits in public view, or that you’re sneaking around in someone else’s house. More and more people return, but still there are vast expanses like City Park where nothing’s happened, and no one is around. The great thing about the golf course is that it’s public—anyone can go there, it belongs to all of us, it isn’t dangerous or up for grabs. So to swing a golf club there felt comforting, or rather, it felt like we were comforting the course, forgotten by a public with too much to worry about right now. And in a city where the rules are a source of frustration these days, we reveled in the freedom to make up the rules as we went along, to make believe we were out for a quick round of 3.
Eventually we reached a stretch of fairway that was slightly mowed and finished out No. 9. We decided to walk back to the car, stopping at the ranger’s station to inspect the empty hut. There was no door and Kim went in and looked out at us through the dirty glass like she was working a summer job. Inside, we found everything gone save for a lone plaque dedicated to the winner of some tournament’s “Flight D.”
IDEA FOR A TOURNAMENT: Nike or Titleist or some company should sponsor an “Extreme Golf Challenge,” bringing Tiger Woods and other golfers to play a few holes on the City Park course. The proceeds could go to restoring the park and the course and golf lessons for children. And I wonder how the pros would fare in conditions like this, which make Scotland look like a country club in Florida. Who wouldn’t pay to see that?
We drove to another section of the course, closer to the art museum, and teed off in front of a grove of immense oaks. As we set up for our second shots, a Siberian Husky or possibly a Malamute came running onto the fairway. It circled Kim and me, then crossed the road that runs through the course, and disappeared into the wilds.
“Look out for that wolf!’ I yelled at Tom, who was searching in vain for his ball under a tree. A minute later, the dog’s owner appeared, smoking a cigar and wearing all black. We directed him up the road, and after awhile he sauntered back across, wolf in tow.
On the green, we made our final shots into a cluster of clover and shook hands. “Good game.” Later at lunch, we promised to play on the first Sunday of every month, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to stick to that. As I said, golf never was my game, but this afternoon was different, something between golf and hiking, trespassing and reclamation. And I’m sure we’ll play better next round, knowing the lay of the land and all. Like a lot of things lately, we’ll just have to bring a lot of balls.
“Can you tell me what page that’s on?” This lawyer-like prick sits behind the City Council table and gazes at the woman at the podium. “I just want to follow along with you.”
Since she’s pointed out a flaw in the plan under review, he’s decided to use an old trick to fluster her and quell the momentum. His implied point: she probably hasn’t even read the plan, and thus shouldn’t be bitching. The problem is, she’s reading off of a print-out from planners themselves; she has her facts straight. A member of the UNOP team speaks up.
“It’s in Appendix B.”
So who’s read the plan after all?
The plan in question: the Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP), the supposedly-central document in the recovery process. Once (if) completed and approved by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the UNOP will serve as the blueprint for the distribution of funds and efforts to restructure and rebuild this city. The plan is the result of meetings at the neighborhood and city-wide level between citizens and the urban planners hired by the city. The two meetings we attended were scarily hopeful; the city-wide in particular was a dazzling exercise in democracy, with people voting through laptops and hand-held devices provided by the consultants. Votes were instantly shown on a large screen and then discussed again and then narrowed down and made final. Or so we thought.
Because regardless of what the good people at round tables in the Convention Center voted on a month ago, this all must pass through the City Planning Commission. And let me tell you what: that’s a sad-sack, grayish group of people who seem anything but alert, much less eager to help.
Before them sat several of the consultants who helped run the earlier congresses and sew together the plan. These UNOP folks seemed quite comfortable at those meetings, but a little reluctant at this one. Behind the consultants: the public, or at least those of us who go to such things. I’m a little new to City Council meetings, so perhaps I’m not used to the treatment one receives as a member of the public.
We heard several citizens from the Lower 9th Ward complain about a proposed replacement bridge at Florida Avenue. The response from consultants and commission: that’s a federal project, outside our purview, ask the Army Corps of Engineers. Ask the Corps? Do you know how that sounds to a resident of that neighborhood? Ask the Corps? And if this is supposed to be our plan, how much of it is outside the purview? This is the whole city, right?
Another tactic of the Commission, which, unlike the consultants and the public, seems very unfamiliar with this whole process, was the stress on talking about what was in the plan. This meant they’d give an impatient sight when people told them, “THIS is not in the plan and it should be.” It took three tries before they’d admit the Florida Avenue bridge ought to be in the plan if all these folks were pissed off.
The Commission slouched and tolerated the commentary of the sensible and unstable alike, and did little to question comments or the consultants. Occasionally they pointed out that the neighborhood, or "district," plans would also be reviewed, even though we were told that these were the building blocks of the current plan. Sound confusing?
They also noted that they'd only recently received the district plans, so they couldn't comment on that, though some of them said they hadn't received those, and the woman who distributed the plans admitted she did not follow up to see if the they had been delivered or not, and the gap here provided a good way to elude responsibility while admitting stupidity and helplessness. Sound maddening?
Worst of all, no one--not consultants, nor commissioners--wanted to provide timelines or start dates for anything, and any question of time was greeted with silence or buck-passing. Fittingly, there were no hands on the clock above the chamber door (literally), and there seemed to be no urgency to translate plan into action, only to stutter and scoff and dick around until another year has passed and we’ll have no idea what comes next.
“Man, fuck you, I told you already I’m not taking you up there. We’re half-way to Alabama, bra.”
It is not dawn, it is dusk; we are not in an argument, we are in-between jags of laughter.
“Man, you’re treating me like Changeman over here.” Flavius Josephushas grapefruit all over his burned red face and I’m wearing a straw hat that belongs to our host, Miyako, who sits between us on the back steps. She holds her poodle and keeps telling us we can’t stay all night, she just wants us off the property. The property is a grand old affair of shaggy grass and banana trees, the corpses of an old Mercedes van and a Cadillac in the carport, numerous stray cats, and a pool full of green water. The house is all paint chips and cork board and windows, with a fully-stocked fridge, and a wide brick patio. This is the end of MardiGras day and the gentle peace of the Bywater is a good place for the last burning off of vapors. If we could wish for anyplace to bring this thing to an end, we couldn’t have picked a better spot. Of course, FJ and I can’t do much of anything at this point, but he’d better damn well take me home.
“What, you’re gonna leave me all the way out here?”
What follows is an assortment of events, over-heards, sightings, and comments for which I have little in the way of chronological memory. It became evident early on in the run that I’m not one for note-taking, and that old MardiGras instincts kick in and unhinge many a responsibility. There was simply no way to be a recorder when you’re busy being a walker, dancer, screamer, and guzzler. From the contents of my suit pockets, I shake out the following…
The Prepared Warriors
The pirate holds court in the Chart Room, just where his wife told me I’d find him. His long, leather-sheathed arms dangle on the shoulders of visitors as they all pose for a photo. I sidle up to him after the shot and see that he’s wearing the cat-eye contacts and prosthetic elf-ears. All 6’6” of him is ready for anything, be it battling warlocks or surprising tourists. “I got the orange juice, a shitload of rum, some herbal tea…..” Like any veteran of hardcore drinking during MardiGras, the pirate carries his own thermos with his own special concoction. And like all in his ilk, he’s only too eager to tell you the ingredients. An anecdote from a past carnival, as related to me by this swashbuckler:
“So I had the six pack in my coat pockets, coat just like yours, a flack jacket, and the guy had some scotch. I said, ok, dude, cool, here’s some beers. Pull that out, he gives me some scotch, like niiiice. Another guy says, hey, anyone have any whiskey? I’m like, wham, here you go, pull that out. So they’re like, let’s fuck with the Pirate, you know, test him. Guy’s like, you have anything to eat in there, Pirate? I pull out the chili dogs, say, take that, bro. Oh yeah.”
I get Bloody Mary #1 of the day and tell him I’m gonna have to take a walk.
In Jackson Square, the true, radical, misfit soldiers of the Religious Right have set up camp at the uptown side of Chartres Street. They are not new to MardiGras, but my memory of them is usually isolated to Bourbon Street, where they’d march periodically. I’ve never seen them in the Square. But whatever, that’s their dance, better to ignore them. I take a seat on a bench next to a tarot card reader. She and I talk for a minute about face painters and the general business this year, then I lean back and close my eyes awhile. The sun is strong, the sky bright, and I need a rest. But here come these “Christians,” making their move in front of the benches, chanting their hateful slogans. As they begin to pass me, I stand up on the bench.
“How many of y’all think these guys have gone a little too far?” I call out. The square is somewhat busy, and there’s a smattering of applause. “You know what really pisses these guys off?” I ask. “You know what makes them realllly angry?”
One of these fools calls out, “You do!” and I smile.
“What you can do to make ‘em mad is get your palm read! Get yourself a tarot card reading right now!” People cheer some more. A small guy walks up to me.
“Hey,” he says. “We’re trying to run a business here.”
“What business?”
He looks confused. “Are you for or against the tarot card readers?”
“For.”
“Carry on, then.”
“Get your palms read! It’s the best thing for you, for New Orleans, and for Jesus Christ!”
I sit back down, sip my drink, close my eyes. The “Christians” are down in front of the cathedral now, but their rants are interrupted by a gutter-punk acrobat show. After awhile, I get up and walk down Pirate’s Alley.
Review of the Troops
The Tucks parade rolls in full glory down St. Charles Avenue and passes us at Erato Street around 1:30pm. The sun has finally broken through after a cold morning and FJ and I are feeling alright. I know a couple riding in the parade, so we wait for the expected windfall. When they do float past, it takes my fullest screams to get their attention. They both see me and scoop up clusters of beads and cock their arms. The crowd is too thick to get a direct shot at me, so I run alongside the float, dodging children and lawn chairs. Finally, my friend's wife drops two great medallions to me, then my friend hurls an enormous tangle down at me. It lands right in my Bloody Mary. Instantly I'm covered in tomato juice and vodka, with a motherload of beads in my hands. But what a score.
FJ and I go home to get bikes so we can ride up to Tulane for my radio show at 6pm. Because of the evening parades, barriers block Napoleon Avenue, so we ride down to Tchoupitoulas to get uptown. As we cross Napoleon, we pass by a sea of marching bands. One after another, uniformed high school students wait for their turn to enter the parade. Down past the big supermarket, the bands take up both lanes as they stand in varying stages of attention. Majorettes twirl batons lazily while horn sections blow riffs and the drumlines goof off. We coast past them as the dusk ends, their hats and tightly tied braids and crew-cuts lit from behind by the setting sun. For all the noise and assorted vehicles, the bands emit a gentle innocence, with line after line of kids taking steps into the foray.
At the Spotted Cat
My friend Bill yells into my ear, “That’s my boss!” He points to the large bass player who’s leading the band on the corner stage and absolutely killing it. Bill is grinning his brains out and laughs, tells me he fucking loves this city. Like me, Bill moved down here from New York after the storm, but unlike me, he’s never lived here before, never seen a MardiGras.
He’s a bassist with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and he’s now going through a revelation, both of the city’s elements of chance and connection, and of the buried roots of jazz. Bill can pick out individual solos in Ellington recordings, but now he’s up to his neck in the living primordial and he’s falling in love it. It’s great to see this feeling on someone’s face, the glow that only comes from New Orleans and consecutive days of booze and the knowledge that you’re not leaving.
I’m feeling happy, too, because I just got my wallet back. Thought I’d totally blown it, noticing its absence only at the next bar down when I went to pay for some food. I took one trip back to the Spotted Cat, but no one had seen my wallet. Back at the restroom in the other bar, I looked in the mirror and said, “Nah. Fuck that.” I told my friend Barbara that we were going back and finding the damn wallet.
Sure enough, when we walked in, Bill comes up and tells us us someone found it. A nattily dressed older black gentleman hands it over to me at the bar.
“I owe you for life,” I told him. “Anytime I see you, now on, I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I’d rather have $10 and buy my own,” he said. I laughed, but had no more money, so I went and got him a $20. After awhile, now old friends, he keeps telling me he never steals and occasionally holds my hand extra long. Kinda weird, but I got my damn wallet back.
Castaway (Note: I know this happened Monday afternoon)
Sirens blow in the distance as the cops use Tchoupitoulas Street to circumvent the parade. After colder than usual days, the weather verges on perfection, just in time for LundiGras. Flavius and I stand in front of an ancient brick building, watching a boy break the window on a detached door. The door leans along the dividing wall that blocks the view of the train tracks and docks that run down the river. My car is parked behind us at the entrance to the old service road and a massive, rusted-out factory sits beyond the brick building.
I brought FJ here to show him the building, which Kim and I found a few weeks ago. This building looks to be from the 19th century, possibly an old tavern or hotel for sailors. The first floor, which had water and garbage in it the last time I visited, now holds a small fortress of doors and sheet metal. The boy looks to be Hispanic, maybe around 14 or 15. FJ and I greet him and he says “Hi,” then continues to break the window, until it’s ready, I guess, and then he carries it down into the first floor.
“You living in here?” I ask him.
He doesn’t seem to understand English, but does nod and say, “Me.” We watch him go about his construction, then leave him, get back in the car.
“You think he was living in there?”
“Hard to tell. He looked pretty clean and all.”
“Might just be a kid playing in the woods.”
As I start the car and u-turn off the rocky service road, we can still see the boy, hammering on an old kerosene canister on the edge of the Mississippi. Just then, a train passes, gives us a long honk.
Return to Gallier Hall
Sean Payton, coach of the NFC West Champion New Orleans Saints, stands atop a float with a microphone in his hand. The crowd in the bleachers on either side of St. Charles cries his name and howls their homage, FJ and I included. While promising an even better season next year, Payton keeps saying, “You tell the mayor I was here. Just let him know.”
He says it with a mischievous tone, almost like he’s winking. What, did Sean Payton fuck the mayor or something? I wonder. He makes a toast, then asks to have the doors to the hall opened. We are on the front steps of the hall, the doors are behind us, probably 20 feet above Payton and 30 feet across. He picks up a football and we start cheering. The first try banks off one of the monumental pillars of the hall. On the next try, the ex-quarterback threads the needle, and soon the float moves on.
Once again, I’m in this place via free tickets to the grandstand from Heather. The crowd tonight is all staffers and friends of the mayor, a pretty respectable looking, mixed crowd. FJ and I stand out pretty bad. We were already at the Krewe of Orpheus parade further uptown on the route, so we have a ton of beads. I’m wearing a red sash around my head and FJ looks like a Starsky & Hutch extra with his leather jacket and long hair. At one point, I jump for some beads and splash beer over a whole family. Man, I’m that guy. I apologize and everyone’s pretty nice about it. FJ is pretty impressed with my grandstand connections. I take his picture as he smiles lasciviously at a bronze statue of a nymph. The parade ends, and we follow in its trash-choked wake.
Mr. Jimmy
On Sunday morning, Kim and I wake up around 11 and drive to Tulane University Medical Center, where Mr. Jimmy sits out MardiGras with what appears to be a stroke. Mr. Jimmy is an elderly Greek man who helps out at the restaurant where Kim works. He’s an old friend of the owner, as well as a former merchant marine, a one-time inhabitant of Pittsburgh, and a sweet guy, who buses tables and keeps the waitresses company. Everyone at the restaurant talked last night about how pissed Jimmy must be to be missing the MardiGras, knowing how much they need him.
Fortunately, I’d never been to the Tulane hospital. We find it pretty easily, but can’t walk right in. With parts of the hospital closed and no visible security or directions, we end up riding an elevator to a pedestrian walkway on the 2nd floor, crossing to another building, then riding back down to check in on the 1st floor, riding back up to the 7th, and finally find Mr. Jimmy sharing a room with another senior citizen.
Mr. Jimmy seems small, his beard is grown-in a little, but he’s in pretty good spirits. His doctor shows up and explains that he needs to start eating better, which is tough for an old guy who’s lived inside restaurants for half a century. I want to tell the doctor that even though Jimmy’s accent is really strong, he can understand every word of English, but the doctor seems patient enough. He leaves, and the nurse shows up with a meal, so we let Jimmy eat in peace.
Outside we retrace our steps, down and up and across and down again. In this part of town, nothing’s going on. The adjacent hospitals are closed up and the sidewalks are vacant, and you’d barely know Mr. Jimmy or anyone else was there. MardiGras feels light years away, when in fact, it’s less than a mile.
What a toll MardiGras takes on service workers. I had to break up a hilariously pathetic fight on Saturday night at Kim’s restaurant, between a pretty jacked dude who pushed an old man who’d tried to cut past him in line. The last customers Kim had on Fat Tuesday were a very fat young guy and his father, both horribly drunk. The fat kid puked all over the table, and his father didn’t understand what the big deal was. They locked themselves in the bathroom for an hour. When we walked out of the hospital, we agreed that it was OK if Mr. Jimmy got a little rest instead of dealing with the bullshit.
Because the bullshit did not quit.
Homestrrrrrrrrretch
Early Tuesday morning, Kim forced Flavius and I to eat sandwiches from a food truck on Frenchman Street. This is the last I eat until I arrive back at the same truck 12 hours later. In between, we dance all up and down the street, then drag our asses all the way home. Kim goes straight to bed and FJ and I stand in the living room debating our next move. We’d been talking for days about rolling down Jackson Avenue to see the MardiGras Indiansat their traditional early morning starting grounds. But I’m exhausted and decide to cash in at 6am. When I wake at 10:30am on MardiGras Day, all of Flavius’s shit was gone and the room cleaned up, so I figured he got a jump on the trip back to Atlanta.
Kim and I hustle down to the Quarter so we’ll have time to walk around and get our faces painted before she has to work. At Iberville and Decatur Street, we watch the legendary Pete Fountain walking krewe pass, and catch a lot of beads. Kim has on her giant sunglasses and boa, and I’m wearing my suit with a big rip in the ass. As we turn away from parade, a guy calls out to me, “Hey, Ferris Bueller!”
We get identical crescents of purple-gold-green and glitter rings painted around our left eyes, and an older tarot reader with long dreadlocks tells me he "likes my style, loverboy.” With my girl and the bright sky, I feel like I just won the lottery. I take Kim back to work and walk off with the boa around my shoulders.
The Quarter is full of people in all states of costume. Countless small krewes march up and down Royal Street, in costumes ranging from Victorian to blackened gothic to walking penis to strippers to Saints fan to geisha girls. For blocks after block, people gather along the street to compare costumes and wish each other a fine MardiGras day. The vivid jumble of it all makes me stand against a metal police barrier for a long time, watching the ethereal and the grotesque drift by in equal numbers. A chubby girl with pink hair sings "Amazing Grace" on one corner while a group of frat boys and girls howl in the intersection and a healer tries to remove sin from a whole family on the opposite corner.
At this point, my feet feel like I have rocks in my shoes, no surprise after almost 5 days of aimless walking. My voice is totally shot and I keep thinking I sound like I’m from Treme. The boa is shedding all over the place, the hole in my pants is only getting bigger, revealing half my ass (underwear: on), I’m slightly sunburned, and I know my eyes must be slits because my contacts are worn out. This is my first MardiGras in 8 years, I’m older now, but all in all, I feel like I’ve held up ok.
Hell, I’m on the way to Frenchman Street again, to see what I can see. Down there, the street is full of even wilder groups in more psychedelic costumes. Soca music blares from a portable sound system and a “wrestling match” rages between several masked combatants in a roped off “ring.” Feathers and plumes of confetti fill the air, along with several types of smoke. The whole mood feels like a show of force, a demonstration that the weirdos and kids are still here, still sewing together neon blues and lifting their flags. I dance around and run into old acquaintances, but I’m missing something, a group of my own, even just one companion. And just about then, I run into ol’ Flavius. He’s still in town, hasn’t slept, and has Miyako in tow.
“HaaHAaaa!” It’s like we haven’t seen each other in ages. “Where you been, male?”
“Shit, I still haven’t slept, bra. I tried to wake you up, but you were out, man. I was like, ‘come on!’”
That crazy bastard had left my house, driven over to Treme, pulled out his bike from the back seat, and rode around checking out the Indians. Then he made Miyako let him in and cook him some bacon. Now here he is, and it’s 2pm and he doesn’t look to be any closer to Atlanta. We eat from the food truck and talk to some real funny friends of his, people I sorta recognize from the past. But just seeing FJ again restarts my lunacy and pretty soon he and I are weaving around making all kinds of trouble.
For some reason, people attempt to drive down Frenchman Street. A few of these are delivery drivers, but most of them are just lost. When we get back to the group, we watch a brand new Mercedes pull up next to CaféBrasil. Three young, well-dressed black dudes get out. They may have even been test driving the thing, because they left the sheet with the model number and year in the rear window.
“Man, are you crazy?” we say. “I can’t even believe that.”
Every vehicle on the curb has people leaning on it, their asses on the windows, the roofs acting as bars for empty cans and cups. But these guys leave the Benz there anyway, walk into the club.
“Look how new it is, bra,” FJ says to me.
“They must want a beer shower or something." Then everyone goes back to what they were doing, with some people resting on the hood and trunk of the Benz. When the dudes come back out, they’re like, “Everyone, can y'all please move?” People start to disperse but Flavius and I are still standing next to the car.
“Say, man, why don’t you give us a ride in that thing?”
The driver, who’s probably around 20, thinks for a minute, then says, “Yeah, you know what? I’ll take y’all around the block.”
We get in and it’s like we’re in a space ship on HDTV. There’s a tint to the windows that changes the light inside to a metallic blue, and every inch of the interior leather is new. I make FJ sit his big frame in the middle seat. The dudes pull out and I’m joking about my boa being caught in the door. People in the street go to look in the window and they see these 3 black kids and me and FJ, both looking extra freaky.
The kids are from Hammond, LA, and seem to be on a joyride. At one point, the driver guns it on a side street, and scares a pedestrian and himself, unfamiliar with the car’s power. We all crack up and he decides to do a few laps on Elysian Fields. When it’s over, we tell them thanks and get out, looking at people on the sidewalk and saying, “Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. New Benz. Ye-ah!”
Understanding that this was a suitably high point to end on, we decide to leave Frenchman Street. I guess FJ does say that he won't take me back Uptown, but I go along to the Bywater anyway. We spend probably 2 hours at Miyako’s crumbling mansion, inspecting the old cars and grapefruit tree.
“This is where I’m moving next, man,” I tell FJ.
As we depart, Miyako stands behind the wrought-iron fence holding the poodle.
"Check it out, man. She wants to make sure we're really leaving."
The ride back uptown includes a lot of verbal jousting, a good deal of traffic, a weird scene at a convenience store, and more yelling. I keep telling FJ that he oughta eat some Popeye’s with me and take a nap, but he’s not having it. Finally he agrees to go back to my place and have a drink, but when we get there, Terpsichore Street is closed, a line of yellow police tape across the Camp Street side.
We get out and ask what’s going on. The two guys standing there watching the cops tell us that someone was stabbed. One of them asks if I want to walk around with him and try to get through on Magazine Street. At this point, FJ and I say a quick goodbye and away he goes.
I walk with this guy John, who says he’s a writer living in a flophouse a block down from me, where Magazine is currently blocked by Jersey dividers and cyclone fence. We part ways there and I talk to the cops, who wave me through the tape. When I walk into my front yard, my neighbors are on the porch.
“What happened?” I ask them.
Apparently, one man stabbed another man on Terpsichore, supposedly because the latter was trying to light his car on fire and then pulled a knife when accosted. The owner of the car claims he wrestled the knife away and stabbed the guy. He stayed at the scene of the crime, where my neighbor found the both of them after hearing the ruckus. The stabbed man is dead, my neighbor says. You can still see him. So I get up on the porch and look over and sure enough, there’s a dead body on the curb, cops walking around it.
“Was he still alive when you got there?” I ask.
“I saw him die,” my neighbor says.
Then they realize who I am, that I’m their neighbor but have face paint and beads covering my identity. They just moved from the back apartment to the front, and were in the midst of a BBQ with friends when the attack happened.
“Do you want some food?” asks my neighbor’s wife.
I go in and sit in their dining room with them. They’re a black couple around my age, down here as missionaries for the Presbyterian Church, she from Harrisburg, he from Atlanta. Apparently the church sent organizers to help the existent local groups on the ground in pulling together their resources for ministry and rebuilding. They’ve been in town a little while and seem stunned by what just happened. They also have a ton of food, sausages and chicken and pasta salad, enough for 10 or 15 people. I eat some wings and we talk about the city and how we got here.
“How long do you think y’all will stay?” I ask. And as soon as I ask I realize our context.
“That’s really the question, man,” my neighbor says.
We talk for awhile more and even joke some about this incident as I’m on the way out. But after I get back upstairs and take a nap, I wake up to that same question. Not so much if I’ll stay, but if enough good people will stick it out. These two seemed like nice, well-meaning people, with the right reason for coming down here. And still my neighbor, a minister who’s here to coordinate restoration and prayer, ends up watching a man die behind a storage pod on his own block.
I meant to get Kim some Popeye’s for when she got off work, so I drive uptown and along Carrollton and back down Claiborne, but none of the Popeye’s are open. The neighborhoods were quiet, the streets wet, everything seemed tired like me. Another Mardi Gras, I think.
These are only some of the things I recall about the last 5 days, but I’m exhausted and recounting all of this is exhausting me even more. I did remember a lot of things as Mardi Gras played out, like how it feels to have another 3 days to go, and how it feels when you know there’s only one left. I remembered the superhuman feeling when you walk with a parade of people in an aimless celebration, feeling like you’re best friends with total strangers. I remembered the sad, weird details, like a lonely beggar in the aftermath of the Orpheus parade. I remembered that a suit looks great but suffers from wear, and that sunglasses are a protective in many ways, and that you can only drink so long until it doesn’t matter. I remembered that, when it’s brimming with people, locals and visitors, the city takes on a new madness, a euphoria that can lead to surreal coincidences, the greatest fortune, and the most idiotic violence. People say it all the time: this is the city of paradox. The body of New Orleans trembles in a different rhythm during Mardi Gras, and even if that body is out of shape, bullet-ridden, and bleeding on the inside, that does not mean it can’t get up and dance.
But now we pause and look around at new beads in the trees and kick bottles into the gutter. Life returns to the irregular rhythm of the wounded, with both foreign and familiar shapes dancing along the horizon. The Super Sunday Mardi Gras Indians Showdownhappens March 18th and maybe Flavius comes back in town and the weather will be even better and maybe the streets will be cleaned up and maybe the streets won’t be so bloody and maybe we’ll all feel good as new. But right now, I’m going to bed.
