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Peewee And Ken
I can't yet tell my good friend and financier of Rocheblave this but the 30K he loaned me to purchase and begin renovations on the property that struck my fancy is uninsured. I do not possess an over abundance of good sense or perhaps I have a fair amount but have real trouble accessing it. I took possession of the property on Leap Day of this year and as we speak (me and me, that is), I am only within a very real proximity (bottom line, uninsured), of having the property insured.
Insurance, however necessary, is not only boring, but in my mind almost sinister, I'm a freak, and living with it.
That being said, I am to be true to you my dear reader confessing that I do have an ongoing relationship with an insurance salesman. It is not at this point a sexual relationship but if things with Barbie don't work out, who knows(?). We have never met, me and this salesman, but we have traded voices and emails. And I say this with all the passion of indecision--I do not dislike this insurance salesman.
He wants--relative to my budgetary constraints--a huge sum of money to insure just pretty much the exact sum of money, including renovations, that I will be spending on Rocheblave. My response to his emailed figure was--"ouch."
(And then the phone rings which I'm not ignoring, temporarily, because I must deal I mean deal with the business of humanity and it's KK calling for Shelton and me reeking of benevolence take the phone to Shelton on the porch playing dominoes with Jermaine and a dude I've never seen before with shaved head and abundant gold teeth and an undeniable charisma I profile as (I'm not ashamed of that, I can't get fired for it, I'm not running for office, and I never wish to be on anyone's list of most politically correct), a medium/high level drug dealer, God bless him, or fuck him, I am ambivalence).).
I'm going to insure the property though, probably during this first week of July, because it has to be done, and also because I just got back a call from a plumber (who also subs out the central A/H work) and for both the major plumbing and central air he quoted a price which was a couple of thousand less than I imagined (I was working with nothing more substantial than "imagine the worst" scenarios) just the plumbing would cost, although I did agree to break out the concrete in the driveway myself. The truck is falling apart and I left it with Del Cid on Broad and there's some hundreds involved but all in all I'm feelng pretty perky, fiscally speaking, poor PeeWee lookin' mf-er that I am.
Peewee And His Barbee Doll
I was in Dallas recently attending the wedding of a niece named Alex to a guy named Denny who is waiting for a heart transplant, and in attendance were the usual crowd of people I only see at weddings and funerals, and of these my favorite is fellow May '59 Taurean, and my junior by fifteen days, cousin Jim Harris. That's Father Jim to you. Jim is a Catholic priest and so it was he I asked the question which I hoped might lead to answers.
"Jim, Voodoo and Catholicism are kind of the same aren't they?"
"Sure, there's some overlap," he said, smiling.
And then I told him my story, thinking that his insights might be useful. I was speaking across the table and spoke elusively at times so as not to offend my mother, or younger nieces and nephews also sitting at the table. Jim's brother, my cousin Ronnie, was also at the table and provided some encouragement later on.
"Have you ever heard the expression--most often this would come from a black man to a white man--'you PeeWee Herman lookin' muhfuh?'" Muhfuh is code for motherfucker. I wasn't sure if my cousin, the priest Jim Harris (although an ardent admirer of PeeWee and his big adventures), would be familiar with the expression so I said it twice, kind of humming the muhfuh part to underscore the hidden indecency. I think he got it, and anyway, if not, I was feeling kind of stupid for humming a version of motherfucker at my mother's dinner table.
"It's meant as an insult, a major putdown, but as insults go it would be one I'd be proud to receive. Still it struck me right off as a kind of hanging by effigy of the only white boy in the area when I saw that familiar PeeWee Herman doll on my Rocheblave neighbor's clothesline. With his chest protruded, arms to his side but behind his side actually, PeeWee it could be said was hanging by his armpits on the backyard clothesline of my neighbor's hatred for all things white. But that statement (bad metaphor), is not only awkward, but probably inaccurate. I am not unpracticed at ignoring the unpleasant but after a week or so of slow diligence at the renovation site I began to suffer from severe pain in my shoulders and forearms. Now before I go suggesting Voodoo victimization let me confess that such pains are pre-existing, bad genes combined with repetitive blue collar work motions. Still, the pains exceeded all previous versions, and I was daily considering some sort of medical, or heretofore untried non-prescription cure. This is how serious I was--I even considered acquiring (through a friendly black market), prescription strength non-narcotic pain killers. To go to the black market for something non-narcotic is pretty serious in my book. I think on a couple of occasions if the pain had been less enough to allow me, I would have cried. Such is the human life. Later the doll was thrown over the cyclone fence and into my discarded wood pile, and my pains are no longer of the mentionable type. And that's where he lays now, arms and legs bent in unnatural directions, which I would be remiss not to correlate with Austin sister-in-law Judy's recent dream about me in a tragic car accident that left me similarly positioned. Everything can mean so much, or little, depending on where you stand, but on the gravity of dreams, and literal interpretations, my brother the criminology professor and I agree: if I can continue to have those few but precious lucid and wildly erotic dreams of me casually outperforming my real self, then I will gladly trade that for the ones that have me hurt and positioned oddly. And with that in mind I'm wondering what I should do with PeeWee. Which is why I'm glad to have a priest in this family of Methodists. What do you think Jim? I mean what if I cleaned PeeWee up and put him in a place of honor, perhaps even hooked him up with a nice Barbie doll? 'Man needs a Barbie,' that's in the bible somewhere isn't it? I just don't know about it all. Can a man affect his own Voodoo doll, should he try?"
My cousin Jim the Catholic priest is no damn fool and he chose his words of response carefully. "I'll meditate on that," he said.
His brother, my cousin Ronnie, was supportive in a different way. "I like the Barbie idea," he said, smiling.
It's His Coma
There is a theory that all these children around here don't really exist but are simply my alter egos manifested inside a coma dream.
I was lurking online climbing branches at the tree when Mandy came in and asked was there any chance I would drive Glynn fifteen blocks up Dumaine to where he stay on that one way Roosevelt with his Grandma, practically across the street from that American Can Company renovation. I was drinking a quart of ice cold budweiser, a quart because the Magnolia got its liquor license revoked and is only selling the residual stock from its sad and lonely looking nearly empty beer shelves to premium customers, lucky me. Freddy's wife imitated Schulz from Hogan's Heroes, "you know nothing," and I agreed wholeheartedly, saying, "that's very true, and I can prove it just by opening my mouth."
Mandy said she had already drunk a beer and a half and did not want to drive and I always encourage the good judgement of others. "Yeah, I'll take him," I said. Glynn had earlier driven his bike into the pole that supports the Magnolia sign at the corner of Dumaine and Broad and given himself--I am not a doctor making 200k a year--a mild concussion.
As I was driving up Orleans, instead of Dumaine, it occurred to me that all the children that are making up the alter egos inhabiting my coma dream, and who used to live either exactly in the 2600 block of Dumaine, or pretty close, now live scattered to the wind, but still find their way to this block almost every day.
Hunter snuck up on me at the Rocheblave job today (I paid him six dollars an hour to help me one day last week so he could go to the SuperFair at the Dome), and he said he just wanted to see what I was doing. I told him, "nothing really," and asked him did he come to work. He said he was on his way home. I thought he still lived around the corner from 2600 Dumaine, on Dorgenois, but no, he living with his grandmother on Bienville and Roman. I admitted I did not know that, and offered him work on Tuesday.
And Lance, who is here everyday, lives way out in the east with Sandra, the nurse his dad Billy had taken up with just before he got busted selling marijuana with that illegal weapon. Lance has brothers living lives elsewhere and one of them was murdered in New Mexico this past week.
Heather (and big sister, Kizzy, with children Raticia, Shadrica, and little Corey, and mom Barbara), lives on Iberville, near Galvez, not too far from the Rocheblave house.
Fermin, and his sister Julia (15 and pregnant), live with mom Evelyn on Touro, several blocks on the river side of Claiborne, a good distance from 2600 Dumaine. Michael Harris lives near there too.
Jacque, Nettie, Tiesha, Roshona, and mom Ramona Lewis still live on Rocheblave, at Orleans, in the Lafitte Projects.
Bryan Henry still lives across the street, and his cousin Irving visits occasionally.
After Mama D died many stopped coming to Dumaine. For instance, I haven't seen Shentrell in almost a year.
Kojak (Clifford Lewis), out of lockup, was playing dominoes on the porch recently, but I haven't seen Clifford Junior in a good while.
Erica Lewis I don't see very often but I think Ba(y) Ba(y) and Lulu are taking good care of her over on Claiborne, near Frenchman. Lulu (17-18) is pregnant.
And as I may have mentioned before, Shelton Ray Jackson is living inside this house, and we are recently trying to be nice to each other.
My new Rocheblave neighbors across the street are a woman named Mebo? and her husband, nice people, she's a sculpter, and I'm not sure yet what he does, but she was offering I don't know what today, condolences? about my break-ins, and I was speaking unguarded, big mistake, and she was offering me advice (all good, and all things I have considered), but I felt this childish competiveness and kept saying things like, "I know what's up," and "Dumaine and Broad make this block look like a daycare center," and she was thinking "what an asshole," who can blame her, but the thing is she kept irritating me with placations to my condemnations, saying things that were supposed to make me pause and consider the hardships of my fellow men, like--"everyone's got a story," and me wanting to grab this cloistered artist living behind the locked iron gates and theories of her urban domicile and scream, "no fucking shit?"
The Rewards Of Bad Behavior
If you listened to the well-intended instructions of all the inner voices and were therefore able to disrupt all mishaps headed your way, would you be a better person for this, or just a well-tuned obedient soldier, safe in the comfort of your knowledge, and obedience?
That's what Slim was asking himself as he sat on the steps leading into his blighted dwelling which was now minus the $200 front door he had ignorantly installed much too early in the process of the dwelling's renovation. "Shouldn't have waved my razor knife in that guy's face the other day," Slim mused out loud.
The next day when the house was violated from the side--but nothing stolen--Slim concocted wild revenge plots remembering an incident years ago where someone kept stealing the hallucinogenic mushrooms he was drying on a windowsill so that he felt forced to replace his "cooling pies" with another variety that he knew--from very reliable second hand sources--to cause violent, blood streaked vomiting. Slim wasn't by nature a vindictive person but he did occasionally lapse into unpredictable behavior.
But back then he was a child playing with children and now he was some version of an adult playing with people who could play hard, in fact had nothing better to do than terrorize some uppity land owner while searching for that next blast.
A man had come onto the property a few days previous and had annoyed Slim in such a way that Slim had lapsed into one of those aforementioned modes of unpredictablility and before he knew what was happening he was threatening to slice the other man. When the other man had finally retreated after an unconvincing pantomime of attempted murder, Slim listened to, but could not really make out the far away rants of this unsuccessful drunken solicitor, but he felt there was to the man's message the basic warning that Slim would pay for his disrepectful ways.
Now he thought about leaving the side entrance ajar and gluing razor blades to the door frame right where he knew one had to place their hands to pull up into the house, and maybe a panel of sharpened nails screwed to the floor would be a nice touch. Instead he went out and bought eleven sheets of plywood and in a frenzy similar to the hectic boarding up that occured in his area when hurricanes threatened, Slim cut to size and screwed plywood over all the windows.
And the list of suspects grew in Slim's mind. Hell, the morning before it was stolen hadn't that feeble old church going woman commented on what a nice door it was? How can she not be on the list? And when the building inspector who had come out that day to inspect the rafters had uttered that it was probably the first person who had been nice to him, Slim could not deny he had been thinking a similar thing himself. About the man across the street who occasionally helped Slim with the chores of renovation and was a self-admitted, and rather obvious, crackhead. And he seemed now two days later to be tweaked way beyond what that fifty dollars Slim had paid him would do. And yesterday he had to excuse himself in the middle of his rather suspect commiseration about the missing door to attend to the 'ho who was lingering at his door across the street. "Excuse me, cousin, let me see about gettin' me some of that pussy." The man was living large.
On the third day when the house was entered from underneath, and a section of the temporarily nailed plywood subfloor was pushed up into the house, Slim suffered a brief spell of despondency. Would he have to live in this unfinished hotbox in the middle of this urban swamp in the middle of summer to protect his possessions? He did not fancy that idea. He was getting verrry sleepy Then he went to find a phone and call the police.
A pretty, young, black, female, police officer was sent to respond to his call. She had a nice manner about her and made Slim feel better about his world. In answer to his question about how far he could go in protecting his property she implied that Slim could go ahead and do what he had to do, as long as he projected an attitude of fear about his predicament. "I am afraid," he said to her. When she left he felt more calm, but lonlier.
The Shiney Black Shoe
The joke was Shelton asking Mandy would she mind it too much if he went to Slidell to stay with his cousin Joe for awhile.
Mandy came home from work that first night--and these days (perhaps) sadly it is not unusual for me to barely look up from what I'm doing when she comes home, and vice-versa, but that night I made eye contact--and she said "is he gone?," like that, with total disregard for his proper name and I nodded with a sigh and she told me that joke about him asking would she mind.... It was almost a moment of bonding, old times relived, a shared total lack of caring what the fuck happens to a most disadvantaged youth from the inner city. It's too heavy sometimes. All the necessary emotions involved in the day to day dealings of this life I love cannot always co-exist. There are limits, and I have found them. Unfortunately, having found them, or defined them, doesn't make the excess less
And speaking of (often) excess(ivley) bad behavior, Shelton, and Joe just got back. Come on, that wasn't even three days was it? I came out of the bath with eyes blinking saline solution which hoped to rinse the residual Rocheblave soot away and I see, sort of, Joe sitting there on the phone, "hey joe," I say; Shelton to my flank offers his hand which I firmly grab but cut short the ritualistic long version and Joe with his hand out says, "its like that is it, Mr. Jim?" I look at Joe and realizing the insult respond, "I'm sorry, Joe, I didn't see," and grab his outstretched hand and also abbreviate firmly.
And it seemed Mandy was reaching her limits as the throngs of needy children hoping to take advantage of a Sheltonless dwelling (for example Marqin tapping on her bedroom window as soon as I left the house at 6:30 this morning), drove her to shut down Le Blanc House on Dumaine, and after a twelve hour Rocheblave Saturday the solitude would have been nice. But I get a good bit of solitude on Rocheblave so I shouldn't complain. The exception to the solitude could prove the rule as today on one of my frequent breaks, having finished eating a somewhat dry banana, and contemplating the can of sliced peaches, I was intruded upon by a sloppy drunk. Give me an HIV positive heroin addict any day over a sloppy drunk.
One of the many fine things about this little crib on Rocheblave is that it is set back from the street, unlike the Dumaine house which is right up on the sidewalk and street. A person doesn't have to trespass to annoy you on Dumaine, but on Rocheblave its a good thirty feet or so to the temporary steps on which I often find myself sitting enjoying possibly one of the better summer breezes to be had in all of New Orleans, being that I have a pretty rare New Orleans inner city circumstance with my prevailing Southwest unobstructed by building or trees for perhaps as large a dimension as 75 X 300 yards.
I have recently become the definition of zero tolerance and my brother the criminology professor can attest to that during a recent visit where he saw me taunt a rich white lady in a high end SUV after I ran a stop sign and she angrily honked and gestured. The situation allowed that after my indiscretion I was stopped by traffic only a shallow intersection away from the offended damsel and while she honked and grimaced a great deal more, I turned fully around hanging my upper body out the cab of the truck and insulted her quietly with full frontal confrontation. And boy did that seem to make her mad. Lucky for me I drive a vehicle which is instantly recognizable, and somewhat memorable. We were uptown where Carrollton meets St. Charles. She was probably a Mafia Princess. I call it the suicide of life.
But back to the downtown side of Mid-City, Rocheblave, and this drunk, who thinks he knows me because in one of my more tolerant moods I had entertained his supposition that he was the drywall man I would want to use when the time came. But today he's coming up my cracked drive carrying a cheap shoulder bag amd waving one patent "leather" high heeled men's shoe. I dismiss him with the insult of my shooing hand and he takes offense right off, gurlgling something or other about not waving my hand at him and as I mentioned before he is way into my territory by the time he stands in front of me, showing his goods. Realilzing the shoe is not to my taste he takes from his bag a used, but clean t-shirt with the slogan, "I'm a Quitter," and the picture of a cigarette inside a circle with a line through it. I insult him again by challenging his assertion that the t-shirt is new, and he, truest denizen of the street sticks to the code--lie and deny, the t-shirt is new, smell it he demands of me more than once. Have I already mentioned this, that I am not a very tolerant person right now? I am going to so to speak cut to the chase as we now have me waving my razor knife in this guy's face threatening to disembowel, repeatedly reminding him how far into my territory he has strayed, a mistake I should hope him not to make again, and him saying how I should not be trying to punk him like this, and me totally done with the sloppy drunk so much so that when he tries to save face by reaching in the back of his pants for his imaginary gun I just shake my head sadly and sit back down on my steps. I feel not as bad but similarly to the feeling of last night at ten-thirty when I yelled at little Raticia for ringing the bell and asking for water. Today I disconnected the doorbell. I know what I am right now cannot be effectively communicated to children, so I just hope for the best, and occasionally contemplate the inefficient but perhaps necessary short term move away from Dumaine, until Rocheblave can on any real level, be lived in.
I hate to write about some of this as it seems to glorify shitty behavior, which is not my intention. My only writing instructor, David Ohle, at the U. of Texas, once gave the assignment to write about something you're afraid of and it is that which keeps me going, because not unlike the young Ms. Nowottny from New Jersey I am so often so afraid of me.
Pobrecito Jim
I can hardly finish a beer (or two), these days without nodding towards deepest stupor; cheaper than dilaudid but not quite as fine.
Pobrecito Jim works all day as the house painter for the rich and famous and then comes home to work some more in a neighborhood that most would see as a ghetto, and in fact poor little Jim sees it that way too, but the New Orleans community has the rich and poor all swirled together so the ghettos of poverty, drug dealing, depravity, and violent death are surrounded by neighborhoods mere minutes away which offer all that is good and safe and clean and honest. So one is never stuck; one can always choose: have a blast, or a latte', poke a vein, or have a beignet.
After getting the permit to renovate and getting fully juiced with electricity the Rocheblave project has Jim working 13 hour days, seven days a week, in a subtropical climate that is so hot, ninety with a gentle breeze is considered very pleasant. Jim has to work such long days because he makes lots of mistakes and has to redo much of his work, but that's ok because Jim can't dance.
Jim has put in a front door but he still boards up over it because his crack-head consultant has told him the crack heads will steal it if he makes it too easy for them. Jim already knows this but it's good to have an experienced consultant nearby to remind him of the obvious truths. Jim is one day Candide and the next Pangloss, benefitting, it seems, little from either, so it is best when he accepts counsel.
And Jim has ripped up and replaced the bedroom and bathroom floors, and today got a good few of the burnt rafter ends scabbed in, braced, screwed and glued. Jim doesn't really know what he's doing but he convinces himself daily that he has the right stuff, and the deception is effective, and the work gets done.
Last night at 9 p.m. Jim was snoozing on top the covers in the dining room that is his bedroom and study, aware of the neighborhood children passing to and fro throughout the house as they are apt to do around here, and in and out of stupor Jim had that awareness of nothingness going on, which is his preferred state, when out of the dark he is kissed on the cheek by Erica Lewis, and eyes opening into hers he kisses her hand and falls back to nothing better than that.