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The Seven Per Cent Solution
I'll admit I felt kind of cowardly, on the battlefield, in my living room, doing nothing. The day after I heard six or eight small caliber gunshots pierce the silence of my quiet Rocheblave neighborhood the new head cop and the new mayor admonished all of us to get involved in reporting criminal activity. The murder rate is spiking again, it's August, the month of greatest desperation.
Fuck it, I thought, supine on the couch catching up on unread New Yorkers which have laid on the floor unattended while I have read light fiction over the last month or two. I was reading about the ex-Dallas mayor, Democrat Ron Kirk, running for the Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican, Phil Graham. Anyhow, the gunshots had the feel of the air murderer, angst released skyward. Also, I don't have a phone, let someone else report it. The boys and girls at the NOPD internal affairs office are as close as I am to it. Let them report it. Is there a dead body on the corner, I wonder?
Ron Kirk has the plain speaking ability to sum things up--his success, he says, is reliant on whether or not the white voters of Texas will vote for a black man. And then he has to be the careful, calculating politician, glad-handing West Coast liberals and the most recent Democratic President without actually appearing to be of that ilk. That is a difficult position. His election to the Senate by the people of a state that worship that lame brain in the White House is essential to the Balance.
Today I watched four youths on bicycles steal a tiny kid's bicycle from my neighbor's yard, while Watchdog barked her head off. Poor Watchdog. She must think, what's the use? I do my job, nobody does nothing. Whiteboy just watches. I tried like hell last month to save him his extension ladder but he doesn't respond to my warnings, nobody does. I'm just a barking dog in the city that care forgot.
To round out a month in which two preachers got shot dead, a woman is brought home from church to a neighborhood she had lamented to her friend, was going to hell. She was embarrassed by the gangs of youth who congregated near her corner and expressed this to her church friend. Seconds after they passed a group of boys in the street, a shot rang out, the rear window of the van exploded, and the woman slumped over dead from the bullet in the back of her head. A sixteen year old boy had mistaken the van for that of an enemy.
Another sixteen year old boy, last known address the 1400 block of Rocheblave, is wanted in last month's shooting of the eleven year old girl in Eastern New Orleans.
Murder is up seven per cent for the month. Later, say a month from now, when there are only 22 murders instead of 30, they will bounce off that figure to show that crime is down, rest easy.
Last week a man in Eastern New Orleans witnessed from the balcony of his apartment another man stealing his car down below. From up on the balcony he shot and killed the man. Public sentiment, on talk radio, and around the water coolers, was adamantly in favor of this death penalty for the car thief. People are so fed up and scared they are now condoning the killing of unarmed men. With my co-workers I argued against this particular death penalty, but I have a very good feel for the context from which sprouts this violent reaction to the overall crime in our city, and more sympathy for the shooter than I have for the victim. The shooter, a grown man with children, has very likely been exposed to unspeakable crime in his lifetime here. If you live in this small city, and your head is not buried deep in the sand, it is hard to express how palpable the threat of violence can be, even as we dance in the streets. The shooter's justification in the paper that he was worried about the safety of his family, as words, factored against our common sense, and the awareness of proximity of shooter to unarmed car thief, do not ring true. But in the balance, in this city, how can we doubt a man who says he is worried about the safety of his family.
I've been thinking about the words of that stoic, Epictetus, and how his thoughts might relate to any of this or perhaps even provide a bit of consolation. He seems to differ from the "bell tolls for thee, no man is an island" school, by suggesting that we not sweat that which we have no control over. Why let that which has nothing to do with you, concern you? he seems to say. I guess it's the idea that if you can't change a thing, why even think about it? And that's, I think, why I can't get over this inner city murder and mayhem as a theme. Because we don't really, I mean really, think it is something we could not change if we chose to change it, do we? Slim?
Mardi Gras Day Three 2.17.98
Day three was a rain out for us but I took six boys and dropped them off
in the rain and 40mph wind to parade their hearts out.
Shelton said he almost got blown over three times. Moose and Fermin and
some of the cousins from Slidell were with Shelton when he intercepted a
cup from a white man who proceeded to chase them over four blocks
yelling out--"Hey you black niggers, give me that cup and some of those
beads."
"Don't give him no beads Shelton, that man call us 'black niggers',"
Moose said.
Then Moose, while holding a private part of his anatomy, told the man he
could suck on it.
The man suggested that Moose suck on his and called him that name again.
Moose suggested that the man's mother might be a black nigger.
Shelton interrupts the telling and said, "Oh yeah, I owe ya'll a cup."
"At least," I said.
"Can I have a dollar? Julia selling candied apples for a dollar,"
Shelton said.
"No, I think that one you're holding is my last one and I want to save it
for an emergency."
"What kind of emergency a dollar good for?" Shelton asked.
"Beer," I answered.
"OK," Shelton said.
Shelton said he got in a fight at school today.
"Why?" I asked.
"I don't know, the boy just come up on me wanting to fight and I had to beat him
up."
"Whatayah gonna do?" I said.
"I know," Shelton said wearily.
Shorty
The one I haven't named I'm going to start calling Shorty. Shorty is the first one of the Rocheblave cats I have touched. I'm going to guess its a girl cat, kitten, about as big as a fist or two, and black, and bony, and not very shiny. She eats chicken bones; swallows pieces bigger than her head. And the other day her mother, Spinks, caught a mouse over in the Pentecostal brush pile and brought it over to her. I was preparing myself for some cat and mouse theatre but Shorty was a one act kitty. She ripped the struggling rodent from mom's mouth and with no ceremony or foreplay whatsoever bit into and swallowed the thing in two bites.
The other day I was putting out some leftover chicken where I put it and Shorty came running across the lot straight for me so I just stayed there, squatting, and said "come on over here, you." She came over without too much hesitation and walked right up to my outstretched hand and licked my index finger. With even less hesitation she turned tail and bolted away at great speed, leaping with legs splayed, over bricks and mounds of dirt, and bending tall stalks of grass with her tiny moving mass. As abruptly as she had started she stopped, turned around to face me, and then deliberately, accusingly, licked her lips with disgust as if to say what manner of beast are you?
BigHead is tired. Kitten is scared. K2 is imitative. Notyetded has developed a patch of brown along the back of his black and white hide. Spinks is waiting for, dreading, the next suitor. The yellow bastard is missing. The three kittens across the street, stay there. Another small black and white cat and her tiny black and white kitten sometimes lounge on the small patch of concrete on the back shady side of the house. My slightest movement scares this little kitten under the fence and into the yard of Sheba, the aging pitbull.
This last month, a week or so before the cop was murdered, a visiting preacher man from Memphis was murdered, but not robbed, in his Mercedes. And then officer Russell. And then the next week a local preacher man was murdered. And mixed in before and after all this is the 18-20 other murders to make up the monthly New Orleans average. These other murders are perhaps well represented by last week's shooting death of a 23 year old man at Eighth and Dryades in Central City, just a few blocks off the revered St. Charles Avenue. Seven years previous at Seventh and Dryades the young man had survived an attack which put five or six bullets in his 16 year old body. And the undercurrent of desperation suggested by these events is just that, an undercurrent. If we don't get off the boat we will all be just fine.
Jobs
I've had jobs I hated so much I couldn't get them out of my mind. I would hate them when the sun came up over that rise and I would close my eyes and let that sun, you know, bathe me in its warm glow, and then I would begin worrying myself because I knew the warm glow was just temporary but the shitty job was forever. Maybe I had that backwards but there is no logic to a shitty job. I would open my eyes and spend the next eight hours doing something someone was paying me to do. The best thing about shitty jobs is how good you feel when you quit them. The longer you stay at a shitty job the better you feel when you quit. If you could bottle that feeling and sell it for a nickel you would never have to take another shitty job ever again.
The job I have now is a long way from being shitty. But still, I have my days. Yeah, that's right, its me, all me; it has nothing to do with the job. It's the attitude. Five cents please.
Paying at the pump with a shitty attitude I am thinking how easy it would be to make this a gas stop on the way to nowhere; how being at a gas pump barely awake reminds me of that being on the road sensation of running away, of being purposefully purposeless, of traveling through those states of mind where possibilities pretend to be limitless. I only need to plot point B. And muffle that annoying voice of reason.
Mardi Gras, Day 1--The Booker T Love Child 2.14.98
This is my fourth Mardi Gras and I have not been anticipating it with
quite the fervor that one would expect one to anticipate "the greatest
free show on earth." But no one escapes Mardi Gras. Even if you forego
the 12-14 days of parades and stay inside watching reruns of Family
Matters, you are effected by Carnival. The Dominoes pizza guy will be
late because he had to travel eight miles out of his way to circumvent
the parade route.
Metairie, where all the white people flew after six-year old Ruby Bridges
integrated the New Orleans school district in 1960, has its own parades.
Algiers, still in Orleans Parish, but on the Westbank across the river,
has its own parades. Gretna, also on the Westbank, has its own parades.
At work today I was Telling Nick about the one Metairie parade M and
I went to last year.
"I try not to get all that wrapped up in whether people say nigger or don't say
nigger but I do take it as a bad beginning if its the first thing some
white trash shithead from Metairie says to me in a pitiful attempt at
small talk. We were on this guy's parade turf and I guess he was a little
juiced and also upwardly prideful of his place in the cosmos. 'You won't
see no niggers anywheres along this stretch of ground.'"
"Wow," I said.
"That's not the best place to see a Metairie parade," Nick said.
"This isn't something that just came about since I moved to New Orleans,
and I don't really have any particularly specific love for black people,
but sometimes white people really scare me. I mean really scare me."
But I'm pushing the envelope of blah de blahness here and all I really
wanted to tell you was about this one young man from the Booker T
Washington High School Marching Band.
Broad and Canal is not an integrated stretch of parade route. Unless
those two skinny white people count towards any real integration. And
this particular parade is made up of all black people, which is rare.
Zulu is the only other all black parade krewe and has been parading for
eighty years on the last day, Fat Tuesday, which is the English
translation for Mardi Gras.
Ostensibly, we are all standing on the parade route, acting or being as
peasants, to receive throws (trinkets, beads, moon pies, Frisbees,
cassette tapes, cups, underwear) from the royalty up on the floats.
But this kid from Booker T was giving out laughter, with his hair coifed
high on his head, and his sexuality of an alternative nature, he shook
and shimmied to the music with an exaggerated femininity, and seemed
perfectly at ease with who he was and why people might find it amusing.
M to my left was laughing, and with the matronly heavy-set woman to
my right, I was sharing big teeth and crinkled eyes.
Esnard Revisited 2.5.98
The charred remains of Esnard Villa were visited today by owner Y, and her friend and protector, Kooleo, and D (9), and
C (6).
The century and a half year old peg jointed cypress framing timber is
broken and burnt to ashes at two places in the roof, the remaining
roofing timber is also badly burnt and occasionally pieces of this
crippled stucture fall in on itself. A crack and tumble in the night.
The stairs to the second floor are located in the back and to the left,
where the fire started. The stairs are still navigable by an adventurous
nine year old under the fool-hearted tutorage of his twenty-seven year
old mother who is standing down under a second story window accepting
lofted shoes and lofted memories from said son.
"Oh these shoes all right, " Y says, "D go back and get all
my shoes."
D disappears from the glassless window he had been leaning out of
and runs back into the blackened, gloomy interior to look for more.
Shoes start flying out the window, and photo albums, and a bible,
cassette tapes, a suede jacket.
C has found his way to the unstable second floor. Kooleo directs
grumbles of profanity at C. Y leans over to inspect her
salvageable memories and property, putting the keepers in a forty gallon
plastic trash can.
I had spoken to Kooleo earlier. The good news and bad news are the same:
"They gonna fix it."
Just Another Night Out
The coals on the barbecue grill were too hot so I burned a bunch of fat leg quarters to begin my duties as Night Out Against Crime chef on 2600 Dumaine. With sideways glances I caught a lot of skeptical looks from the guests who were seated in chairs and on stoops. Smoke billowed profusely. I sweated. I was failing miserably at a pretty simple task. Good thing for everyone the majority of the food had been pre-arranged and sat safely inside Phillis' house.
Evelyn arrived from the 7th Ward and said, "it's not barbecue if it's not burnt."
"Thank you, Evelyn."
"You know I got your back, baby."
"Oh baby, its you and only you."
"I got your back, Jim, I got your back."
The cops buried one of their own earlier in the morning. A few days ago a senior cop with a trainee were responding to an armed robbery of a bar on St. Roch. When they pulled up to the bar four recidivists came out and were in no way blocked from escaping but when the trainee yelled "gun" and ducked in the front passenger seat one of the four shot into her window, hitting the senior cop in the head, causing his instantaneous death. Three of the four were apprehended soon thereafter, one slightly mauled by the police dog, and the fourth was caught the next day. Three will dime out the fourth and he will rot in hell. The implications of a society in which we allow our cops to be murdered are too severe to calmly consider. The cop's pregnant wife and five-year old son have a folded flag and a bunch of kind, laudatory words as consolation.
As I took Evelyn to her home near St. Anthony and Claiborne we became momentarily sidetracked down some of the surrounding streets, Derbigny, Elysian Fields, N. Robertson, saw dealers and derelicts and prostitutes and unattended children slinking through the ill-lit night, and a young man on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance, and I said I don't think I'll be coming around here sightseeing at night. Oh no baby, you don't wanna do that. Evelyn complained that she had tried to get her neighbors interested in a party but they afraid to have an anti-crime party what with so many criminals in their families. I had to admit that the idea struck me a little strange the first time the idea came up on Dumaine. Evelyn agreed. I said I guess they would just have to try it one time to see that you can have criminals and cops and judges on one street on one night and that everything can work out most copacetically. Even with a lame chef.
It sometimes seems like its more fun, more popular, to see the cop as the videotapes show him--as the bad guy beating up the innocent or not so innocent citizen, or just in general being an unnecessarily intimidating presence in a society that, sure, needs him, but not if he can't behave properly. Me, I'm willing to forgive all but the most heinous cop behaviour in exchange for his and her protecting me from what I feel would be an even worse scenario than the one we see when the occassional bad cop hits the news--a world without cops. Christopher Russell, NOPD, RIP.
Premieres Cotes De Bordeaux
First let me state that I am quite obviously not French. I don't even know the meaning of the above title. I copied it off a bottle. I am a Budweiser drinking American, an admission that carries with it the essence of the idea--the ugly American. But alas, we all must live as well as we can within the limitations of who we are.
You really can't blame the French for their famed snobbery. Americans have the same class attitudes. Its like we who shop at WalMart look down on those who shop at The Dollar Store. That was the Budweiser of analogies. What I mean is--besides nothing--is that you really can't blame French people for their well developed attitudes which may or may not be based on two thousand years of remarkable culture. They, like the rest of us, are doing the best they can. I think we Americans may be allowed to judge the French only after we have shopped at WalMart for two thousand years, and not before.
So my joke at work for the last month--and let me tell you the joke works (as well as lame jokes are allowed to work) because I have set it up with months and months of candor regarding my almost monk-like celibacy--has been that I am expecting a visit from a French girlfriend. And today I worked with some old mates I haven't been around for awhile so I hit them with a fresher version of the same joke like this--I said I spent all day yesterday with a French girlfriend. They said oo la la and I said--and her husband and two kids. To further debunk this very mild attempt at humor I tell that the girlfriend is really just a friend who happens to be a girl-woman (although I do admit to a rather serious fourth-grade crush) and she is not really French but an American married to a Frenchman (although she has lived outside of America--in Bordeaux and French Guiana and Northern Africa and Laos and back to Bordeaux--for more than half her life). So not only do I not have a sex life but my jokes don't have a sex life. Also I did not spend all day with the husband and kids. I only spent it with the friend, talking like there was no tomorrow. We did talk about sex though. In six hours of conversation how could you not talk about it?
I'm drinking the straight outta Bordeaux '98 Enclos De La Ronde, one of many wines not sold at WalMart. I'm happy with it.
But I Am Afraid Of The Feds
It's not unlike me, I guess, that right after she said to me, "you're very faithful," I left her, and went to Dallas for a family reunion. I returned some days later and as she saw me approach she did a little dance and I smiled because I knew that dance was a welcome. I was deferring to the man with the cell phone but she asked me what I wanted so I told her the pepper jelly glazed chicken with the garlic mashed potatoes and the broccoli polonaise. I'm at that grocery store I go to, three blocks down from the busted Canal Street Brothel.
The man on the cell phone was no amateur and as much as I hate public displays of private conversation, I found this one rather interesting. The man was a professional of some sort, fairly intelligent in his slinging of multi-syllabic words, and wore a cologne that while noticeable, was not overpowering, nor did it seem cheap. There is some city government corruption investigations going on here in New Orleans and I thought this man might be related to that in some way. When he said, "no one is afraid of the Feds," I had to say to myself that is something of an overstated generalization and I wanted to say as much to the man but just at that moment he turned his back to me which made me think he might also be a mind reader.
My girls, and I can call them that because they are all at least twenty years younger than me, treat me very well, and today the girl was fattening me up with what seemed like fifty pounds of mashed potatoes, with a fat breast and another piece of one on top, and generous glazing. It usually takes me two sittings to finished one of these plates. There's a chef behind this menu and for a grocery store its pretty ambitious and absolutely unparalleled in the city. And for around five bucks It just becomes the logical location for this budgeted bachelor to dine. They actually have booths lining the front of the store so you could eat and watch people go through the check out lines but I always take mine home. Sometimes I also buy groceries here but not much more than bottled water, zesty garlic pickles, microwave popcorn, and beer, and an occasional steak with baked potato, Jimbo's Jumbo salted in the shell peanuts, bananas, and Famous Amos chocolate chip pecan cookies when they go on sale.
I guess the really big news is that I have been asked by Phillis on Dumaine to be the barbeque chef for next Tuesday's Night Out Against Crime party. It will be my honor to stand over a grill of hot coals on an evening that will be hotter than you can imagine and perhaps I will get to meet the new police chief who's momma lives or until recently lived not too far from that 2600 block of Dumaine. So that's where it is, now that you know it, come on over and I'll feed you. Don't be afraid to bring beer and whisky.
BigHead In The Morning
BigHead is not a handsome cat but he is a survivor, which is a thing to admire at least in the sense that surviving against the odds is inspiration to those of us who may occasionally seek inspiration. "Hello BigHead," I said to the black and white tom lounging this morning on my front steps. BigHead immediately got up off the steps and walked across the driveway towards the now out of commission Dodge truck, aka yellow beast. "So how was your night?" I asked him. He faced me and paid attention, which I knew he would continue to do as long as I did not move from the porch towards the steps. BigHead does not flatter me and I do not flatter him, yet we coexist peacefully. That's to say I don't throw rocks at him and only yell at him when I see him spray objects of mine I would rather he did not spray. His head is not so much big as hard looking, and the white areas of his short hair are smudged with street grime and the black spots are dull matted blotches. His markings, that is the contrast of black and white colorations, are not really that pleasant to look at. Kitten has good markings, BigHead does not. BigHead's head this morning was marked with mean looking scratches, which is not that unusual.
"You and that yellow bastard were going on last night weren't you?"
BigHead blinked.
"What's it all about?"
BigHead stared.
"By the way, BigHead, are you pissing on my Mexican Heather?"
BigHead drowsed.
"You know, I don't object to you to home basing under this house. I like you okay. I respect you. I wouldn't go so far as to say I love you but it could happen. The thing is, when you conduct your wars under the house it upsets Watchdog and that new puppy who stay by him, Watchdog Jr. I try to sleep at night, and if I don't, let's say because I was kept awake all night by dogs barking and cats fighting, well, then the next day at work I'm all wiggy."
"Wiggy? What that is?" BigHead asked.
"You know, out of sorts, cranky, disoriented, pissed off, tired."
"Oh man."
"I need to work, that's all, It's what I have to do. And I have to be rested for it."
"Wow, ouch," BigHead said.
"So can you like not do that?"
"It's not really up to me," BigHead said.
"Yeah sure, I know, if that yellow bastard would just stay away..."
"Exactly..."
"But you have to help me here, babe."
"Whyn't you just chill?"
"Excuse me?"
"You know man, chill, stay home, sleep all day, run all night. Know the ladies..."
"I really don't know."
BigHead chuckled. "Well, you should think on it is all I"m sayin'. Look, I gotta roll, find some shade somewheres, and crash. I'll talk atcha."
"Well, yeah, okay, I need to be getting to work, so Ima go too."
"Cool. Look Slim, I'll try 'n kill the yellow bastard next time, that'll slow him down."
"Yeah, good one, slow him down, I bet, but no, don't do any killing on my account, I mean you don't have to kill him."
"Oh yes Slim, I do."
I had to go. I moved toward the steps and BigHead hurried under the truck.
"Slim?" BigHead called after me.
"What?"
"You ain't gonna say nothing about the eleven-year old girl who opened her door in Eastern NO and took an AK-47 round to the head?"
"No."
"Why not? I thought that was your thing. Rocheblave Slim, death reporter." BigHead was wearing one of those cat smiles.
"You are picking a bad morning to piss me off."
"Hey, too bad about that fifteen-year old boy the cop killed the other day."
"You aren't saying the cop was wrong for that?"
"I ain't sayin' nothin'."
"The kid was walking down the middle of the street with a semi-automatic in each hand! At 9:30 in the morning! When the cop approached him he fired off several rounds, missing the cop each time. He was close enough so the cop is deaf in one ear. The cop did what he was trained to do. He's not at fault."
"Slim, calm down man. Who's to say where the blame lies? It's a difficult question. You takin' this shit too personal. People die everyday in many different ways. In the final analysis, what difference does it make how they die.?"
"It matters. That's a stupid thing for you to say."
"Perhaps it is my lacking of grey matter that causes me to think so simply. If I had your quantity of cells who knows what I might be capable of?"
"I've gotta go. You should stay away from here for awhile."
"Whatchu mean by that? What would you do, Slim, given the inspiration and the opportunity?"
Why Slim Doesn't Date
One of the things I like about living in the South besides the oppressive summertime heat that beats you down until you are a mere shell of a man is that waitresses at diners, and others places that aren't diners but sell plates to go in Styrofoam containers, call me honey, or sugar, or sweetie, or baby. Any of these terms will result in the waitress receiving what is the high end of my tipping range. Another great thing about the South is that a man doesn't tend to feel outnumbered by the dreaded palavering intellectual. Thus, not outnumbered, or to the contrary, supported in my archaic thinking, I can say things like: having a woman stand over me while I sit stuffing my face and having that woman say in all earnestness, you ok sweetie?, or, get you anything honey?, or, get you another drink baby? is a great moment in life. It is the type of moment we male Southerners may take for granted but I would wager large that such comments figure heavily in the life flashing before your eyes phenomenon that occurs at the end of our earthly existence. Also, this type of thinking is probably why I don't date much in this 21st century. But I think I'm feeling okay with that. "Yeah love, I'm good."
TV And Drugs
I have some things I need to get off my chest. I don't know where to start. I guess I should go back about three weeks to the day I bought my first TV. Its only a five inch black and white but I had a buyer's remorse that was bigger than a WalMart Supercenter. I felt dirty about it. I was sure it would cut into my reading time. I was sure it would turn me into an idiotic zombie (and to answer your question, I don't know how you would tell the difference?). I was sure this purchase was marking the beginning of my end.
After a week of Simpsons reruns followed by King of the Hill reruns I felt a little better. I had done the right thing. I was still reading. And I was enjoying high comedy. I was watching Seinfeld reruns at night. PBS was running commercial free WWII era movies, with Bette Davis. I was staying up past my bedtime on school nights. But that's OK because maybe I'm getting old enough where I don't need eight hours of sleep. And then...
I finished reading William Gibson's Count Zero and picked up John Grisham's Street Lawyer. But a little sherbet after a meal is fine. I am not a snob. Light reading is important to the overall mission. But light reading and TV, there's a risk there, so I snagged Caleb Carr's The Alienist at the Thrift City and jumped right in. Outstanding. But look at all the back to back movies on Saturday commercial TV. That one where Richard Pryor takes all those kids to Oregon on a bus, and that Charles Bronson one where he grimaces and helps people by killing their enemies. And then I started hearing the voices. Throw it out man, before its too late. Its light, just toss it over into the cat jungle next door. Can I shoot it with my shotgun I asked the voices and they frowned and shook their heads if they had heads, disapprovingly.
I still haven't finished The Alienist but I'm a slow reader so don't give up on me. I'm not giving up on me. I think there is still hope for me. Tell them. No, I don't have to. Tell them yourself or I will tell them. Its not that big a deal. Tell them. All right all right, jimminy. I, uh, I. Go on. I watched recently three quarters of an episode of Touched By An Angel. But I'm not a bad person. I'm not going to hell in a handbasket. I'm not. I was tired, I just needed, I mean I was only...Toss It. No, no no, I will overcome. I will handle this.
Now this next thing I have to tell you is top secret so keep your traps shut about it.
There is scant evidence that the Pentecostals are growing a half acre of weed right next door to me. Here's what little I have: two days ago I walked out my side door, which orients me to look out over the 24 inches of my property and onto the 50 foot by 150 foot Pentecostal vacant lot, half of which is overgrown by six foot tall weeds and underfoot consists of love seat sized slabs of broken concrete growing obliquely from the mucky, oyster shell laden soil. And I am alarmed to see--in this mostly black skinned area--two well fed, well dressed white guys, one with a camera. I had my reading glasses up on my unkempt head, affecting the erudite sloven.
This is my favorite part. Where I get to say:
"Can I help you gentlemen?" The one who was the most well fed said he was just taking pictures of their building (the former dancehall that fronts Iberville and sits at the back of and perpendicular to the vacant lot) and I said "so you're with the Pentecostals?" I didn't make it sound so much like an accusation and the man said yes. "What are you going to do with it?" I asked and he said tear it down. I didn't suggest wouldn't it make a nice AIDS Hospice? "For a parking lot? I asked and he sneered like that'll be enough out of you, whippersnapper, but his oily smile said yes. Goodbye dancehall. "Ya'll can maintain this lot any better?" I said, and the man smiled or sneered and said we're working on it. Oh great, I thought, a group effort. The next day another man, well dressed, black, working class, came in a nice clean van and walked down the only avenue you can walk, the one I cut, and inspected the area. A lot of activity all of a sudden so I became suspicious and when the man went away I went out and looked around myself and let me tell you, what I found was a great disappointment to me. Barely ten feet from my side door, out there amidst the Pentecostal weeds, was a five-foot tall cannabis sativa. So that's what the church is up to these days I unfairly speculated. Well, I'll put an end to it. Tonight I'll go out there and rip that illegal rope from the ground. I'll set it afire if I have to. I won't have it around me I tell you. And hopefully this will be a valuable lesson to those Pentecostals: that only hard work and law abiding efforts are the way to the truth, and that the devilry of drugs should not besot thy path. Not to mention, they should have planted indica.
Teenage Birthday
Glynn, Fermin, Hunter, and Jacque came by on the Sunday after the Fourth of July because Hunter's birthday is the 3rd and Glynn's is the 4th and I had told them we could do a movie and the all you can eat buffet. I think its been two years since we have been out together, except for last year when I took Hunter and Glynn to the Westbank to each get twenty dollars worth of fireworks.
Hunter is seventeen and the other three are sixteen so I was trying to impress them with my MP3 player because I don't have anything else they would consider "new," and would not already be entirely hip to. But out of the eighty hours of music I was having a hard time finding anything appropriate to what I know of their tastes. I tried Family Affair by Sly and the Family Stone and they all recognized it and started dancing, in the front room here at Rocheblave. Fermin performed movements from the Michael Jackson school and Hunter was doing Bill Cosby. "This how Bill Cosby dance," Hunter said. And he performed those awkwardly graceful making-fun-of-dancing gyrations that Cosby does pretty well. Hunter also does a great white person imitation, equal in tone to the master, Richard Pryor, which I love, but as a white person feel awkward encouraging him to do. He can make the adult in me laugh hard, so I really apprecitate it when he does the white guy. The other boys will look nervous when he does it because they are being overly sensitive to the insulting aspect of the imitation. I appreciate that too.
I guess if I looked at it too hard I would agree that Men In Black II was not a great movie. I was stuck on the third row and two of the boys were in front of me and two more were in front of them. Like I said its been two years and I didn't want to spoil their fun but I also did not want them acting the fools in the theatre so I gave them the speech about the Palace being better (?), and more expensive, than the (the no longer existing) dollar cinemas and how I would absolutely not tolerate loud goofiness outside of the proper context. And they were perfect young adults, and the two toddlers, boy and girl, who made some noise and played hide and seek on either side of my most bony knee did not distract me from the apparently less than perfect Men in Black. I was happy they liked me enough to balance their tiny little hands on my knee. I generally don't smile on distractions in the movie house, but apparently on this day I was in a most convivial familial mood.
I should tell you about the cats but that would go on and on.
At the all you can eat steak house/buffet even Jacque ate a fairly large portion of some hopefully non-salted food. I was struck by the words that came with his first self-served plate of corn and something else that did not look so appetizing which were him saying he had asked someone about the salt content. So that was heartening, this adult behavior which had him taking care of himself until comes the prophesied outgrowing of his life threatening medical condition. Salt causes Jacque's whole body and most notably, his face, to swell up to alarming proportions. I think to his and their advantages what Jacque has in common with the other three boys is that he has more than one person looking after him (Jacque splits his time between his mom in the Lafitte projects and M on Dumaine. Fermin between his mom in the 7th Ward and M on Dumaine. Hunter between a sister in the 6th Ward and M on Dumaine, and Glynn between his grandma and M on Dumaine), and that's not including my haphazard, very occasional efforts, and those of maybe two fathers and an aunt and uncle or two.
The fried shrimp did not seem very much salted to me and I suggested Jacque try one and he said he sometimes ate them at home. His second plate was full of shrimp and he finished his meal lazily with one ice cream cone after another. "This is my fourth one, Mr. Jim." To see Jacque feast is a treat, his diet as I have seen it, so constricted as to be bleak.
Glynn clicked with the waitress and was never wanting for Hi-C (fruit punch).
Fermin is the only kid I know who given the chance will eat voraciously from the salad/fruit bar.
The place was packed and we had to sit in the smoking section which was ok until people started smoking. A big fat intimidating preacher lookin' black man dressed to the nines and companioned by a young female escort, who had pushed himself quickly in front of our party when I briefly hesitated at the smoking room option, was now smoking, as was the Joe Dirt lookin' dude behind me.
"Hunter," I whispered, "go tell that big fat preacher man to quit that smoking. It's bothering me. Tell him it is unsatisfactory. We insist that he put the damn thing out. Tell him that and whatever else you wanna tell him. Let him know we ain't scared."
"This the smokin' section, Mr. Jim."
"Tell him we don't care about that, tell him we won't tolerate his behavior."
Hunter smirked, got up quickly and B-lined right to the guy, causing me no small momentary grief, before veering off towards the dessert bar. In a barely perceptible sideways glance he smirked again, and got himself an ice cream cone.
I dropped them all off on Dumaine, where Glynn's dad and stepmother were up on the porch, hangin' with M. I waved, stated the obvious, and drove on home.
Red Awakening 1.14.98
We were all lined up this morning across the street at 4a.m. under the overhangs of the five shotgun doubles, and a steady rain was coming down as I tried to hold my styro-foam dixie cup steady so that Vanessa could pour me a shot of Seagrams. Mama D leaned over and said, "I guess you won't be going to work this morning."
"I was just thinking about that, Mama D."
"No, you should stay home, maybe take care of some business."
"Maybe you're right," I said.
Mandy said, "Mama D could write you a note."
And the fire has now broken through the roof of what was known as Esnard Villa in those few years preceding the Civil War, and is now the headache and heartache of Y.
Her three young boys have been staying with their father so they did not have to jump out the second story window as did Y, and her friend, Chilly. Chill seemed okay but I think Y busted something in her feet pretty bad.
And now here I sit in the undamaged LeBlanc House, as close as six feet away from the remains of Esnard Villa, and I cannot for the life of me fathom what sort of business it is I should take care of. "What do I do now," I could ask Mama D, if she hasn't yet left for the casino.
Crackhead, 1.26.98
S say when I grow up Ima be a cop killer
S say when I grow up Ima be a crackhead cop killer
S say his mama out of jail, staying with his daddy.
S say she back on that rock.
A child named Chris was acting disrespectfully in Miss Amanda's Free School For The Soon To Be Criminally Insane today so she threw him out. I couldn't resist a small act of terror so I followed him out and told him he could come back in the future but that he must not fuck around in this house. He responded by telling me I was using violent language and I said, that's correct, do you understand it? When he nodded, I shut the door. Shelton, who was taking a break from pasting pictures of red and white blood cells on a piece of poster board said, while looking out the window, "You made him cry, Mr. Jim."
"Good," I said.
Sunday, me and the boys, Shelton, Fermin, Eric, and Glynn, were out at Boy Scout Island in City Park and later Sunday I read in the paper that on Saturday someone had wrapped a newborn baby in a trash bag and placed it under the back tire of a Minivan parked in the mud lot at Boy Scout Island. The baby made enough noise to be discovered before being squashed into the mud, and will "live."
After Boy Scout Island, we cruise to the river but the piece of land we usually play on is beneath five feet of water, river's up, and so we hang around for awhile and watch all the well-behaved suburban gutter punks. Check out those bell-bottoms. While I was waiting for the boys to return from somewhere they had disappeared to, I listened on the radio to this rap song by Tupac Shakur that kept asking the question does heaven have a ghetto? It was four years ago that I first wrote this and although I have never heard the song again, that question has become for me one of great spiritual significance.
I seem to be spending the whole day with these little jokers because now we are on our way to the dollar movies and Shelton, Eric, and Glynn are singing made up songs that make fun of Fermin's hands, the palms of which are covered with hard, scaly, cracked callouses. I sigh deeply several times and wonder if these children can ever stop being petty, hateful, and evil to each other. Just one Sunday. And then I threaten them with death, or worse than that, returning to Dumaine and they obediently shut up.
We get to the show a little early so I give the movie listings to the boys and tell them to decide on the movies they want to see. Glynn says, "I'm going to the movie Mr. Jim is going to." I say, "Okay, but if you go with me you can't talk, you can't act goofy, you can't make jokes, and you can't leave your seat more than once." Shelton chimes in with, "That's right," and Glynn pauses to consider the value of the father figure versus having real fun, and says, "Forget that."
I saw Alien Resurrection, thought it sucked, and the boys saw Home Alone III, and seemed to have enjoyed it immensely. Glynn and Fermin returned to the car first and were telling the best part of the movie, how this kid had a gun and stuff, and also that Shelton was cutting up and cursing at some girls through the whole movie.
"I am not sure that surprises me," I say.
"Why?" Glynn says.
"Because ya'll always act bad when I bring you here."
"No we don't," Glynn says.
"How about the time you laughed at that retarded kid."
"Yeah, but then you said if I couldn't keep from laughing to just walk away and that's what I did, I walked away."
"No," I say, "that was the week after you laughed at the retarded kid and we came back here and there was a whole group of retarded children you wanted to laugh at."
"But I walked away," Glynn says.
"You were laughing as you walked away."
"But I walked away."
And then Shelton and Eric show up and Glynn reminds me that Shelton was cussing in the theater and Shelton says, "I most certainly did, I most certainly did do that."
On the way home I yell at them all again for good measure, and, as they frequently do on the return to Dumaine reality, they all curled up into little balls and fell asleep, or pretended to.
Wake Up And Smell The Phlegm 1.27.98
There come those times in a man's life when the everyday pressures build to a point where the release of a little back pressure is inevitable. A man in the company of friends will be forgiven these small transgressions, perhaps a pat on the back with some kindly advice. Like--hey man, you need to get laid.
As a follow up to making a kid cry yesterday, today I verbally abused an indigent person.
I was over to Sam's place (the Magnolia #2) at Broad and Esplanade this morning at 6 a.m. to get a pack of cigarettes and as I pulled into a parking space by the front door I noticed this white bum sitting on the curb with his legs stretched into the parking space. I turned off my lights so as not to blind the old man and stopped halfway into the slot so I wouldn't run over his legs. Hey, live and let live, right? As I got out of the car, the bum raised his head and in some language similar to American English, growled a deep and phlegmy request. Considering the cold blowing wind, there was an unnatural stillness to the morning. I responded to this bum with more voice than I would have thought possible at this early hour, by saying--"Hey man, don't fuck with me," with a particularly harsh emphasis on the F word. I then walked in and greeted Sam, who was behind the counter. He was more than a little solicitous, and with pantomimes seemed to be asking me did I want him to go out and cap the no good scum who upset me this early in the morning. Sam is from Lebanon, and being so reminds me of the paternal grandfather I never met who also came from that country at the very end of the nineteenth century or the very beginning of the twentieth century and, like Sam, ran a grocery store, but in Austin, Texas, rather than New Orleans. Also, Sam's 21st century New Orleans requires that he keep a 9mm holstered to his hip, which, with the proper papers, is legal here. I pantomimed back to Sam (I guess I had used up all the really choice words already) to the effect, no Sam, let the bum live. "Have a nice day, Jim," Sam said, and I left the store. As I'm getting into the car one of Sam's unofficial employees is explaining to the bum about cause and effect, policemen and jail. The bum shrugs, as if to say--three squares and a bed, please don't throw me into that briar patch.
Thirty minutes later I'm on a refrigerated 24 foot ladder with another to my left and another to my right. This way if someone is down there to move my ladders I can just step sideways around the house without climbing up and down. The wind is kicking so fierce that the ladder to my left starts screeching against the brick, moving towards me. The ladder to my right is making the same noise, moving away from me. My fingertips are bloody and throbbing from the caulking I have done over the last two days. Mortar and brick dust broken free by the scratching ladder has found its way into my eyes. The hair under my hat is blowing wildly across my face and reciprocating strands of it are also sawing against my browns, which were already tearing up from the mortar bits scratching their way across my retina. Boss man comes around the corner, and with what vision I have left I can tell he is looking up at me. Careful Boss man, be very careful. I am fully loaded with the F word and I'm not afraid to use it. He said, "Jim, I got a hooded jacket in the van if you want to use it."
That was a close one.
The Cap And Gown
A small fish looking like a baby shark or a porpoise arced above and then immediately into the water inside a concentric ringing geometry of ripples, circles soon bisected by the graceful movement of four swimming ducks on the bayou this morning at sunrise. I was waiting for the seven a.m. church bells but got scared off by my own noisy insecurity.
In the yellow beast I followed the bayou along Moss to Esplanade, then sightseeing right on Decatur, and right on Canal back home. On Decatur all the way down to Canal the number of people moving at seven a.m. seemed unusual. And the minority looked to be early risers like myself. Look at that group of youngsters; why, that young girl is hardly dressed at all. And right before that at the intersection of Gov. Nichols I watched a well dressed but seriously drunk fellow trying to operate his cell phone and walk at the same time just crumple into himself all the way down to the sidewalk as he apparently did not account for the wheelchair ramp. Once he started stumbling it was obvious he didn't have the dexterity or energy enough to remain standing. Seven a.m. is a long night. The man became like water seeking its own level in a city that is below sea level. He disappeared. I wondered about him for a moment and then still moving slowly up Decatur began thinking about the next one and the one after that. Who are you? I idly wondered.
Passing Jackson Square I thought, again, briefly of murder, as a few days previous a street man had killed a street woman, with a handgun, in front of the Cabildo. And tonight two ten-year old boys and two seventeen-year old girls will be shot outside the Superdome at this year's last night of Superfair.
What I've really been thinking about though is the view from Dumaine. I essentially trespass over there once a week or so to get my mail but mostly truth be told I'm looking for that view through the looking glass which isn't always, or ever, so nice. I guess it was Friday I was over there looking out the front window glass while waiting for the computer to finish its woeful permutations. I think I had come over in a pretty cheerful mood, such as I am capable of it anyway, and two cousins, one just out of jail and one whose often lamentable behaviour would seem to put him perpetually just on the brink of it, were acting out directly in front of me, a desperate, decidedly uncheerful tableau, which if entitled would be--The Cowardly Wolf and the Lamb.
The Wolf is shirtless, lean, with cut black muscles, eyebrows that connect maliciously, glimmering gold teeth, and an attitude as humorless, and dark, as asphalt.
The Lamb is not harmless but wants to be. He was maybe 18 and pretty well rumored as the evil bad seed in an area already over planted in such seven years ago and then five ago when I saw him sitting on those steps out there, recovering from a gunshot to his hip, I began to see in him a longing so far from his reach that to watch him, to think about him, was a gut wrenching ache. But the bullet changed him and his countenance began losing its edge and loosening into something like peaceful resignation. Back in jail shortly after that and two years later he comes out looking mature, and handsome, almost cheerful. I was really sorry to see him go that time. He had only enjoyed a few months of freedom before being sent back and now this day I'm seeing him is his third time out, just in the years I have known him.
I don't see his daughter anymore. She's seven now I guess. Neither her nor her cousins come around this street any more. Which is not unusual. People move away; they don't come back and linger around their old block for years and years and years. Except for the boys. Good and bad they come with varying frequency to this corner they call home. Sometimes the bad boys set up shop, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they play cards or dominoes, not on the porch anymore, but maybe a little off to the left, either on the stoop of Esnard Villa, or between this and that, with a scrap of plywood laid over a trash can for playing surface.
The hardened youngsters, either acting or legitimately pulling off the gangster role, can at times be almost obsequious in their efforts to get along with us (after all, not a one of them are area homeowners and really have no rights to be so omnipresent), and other times they will ignore you, just trying to make it through another day invisible to whichever powers that be. But at times they seem almost too resilient, too ever present, and too loud. And just when you really can't stand it another minute, they leave, and don't come back, and after weeks pass, you begin to miss them. The world you have become so used to becomes too boring without them. And they come back to fill that void.
Today though, looking out the front door glass on Dumaine and Wolf is up in Lamb's face, a face which is more hardened but still somehow peaceful after two more years in jail, and, I guess this is a love dance or something but why can't Wolf express his love with a hug, or hell, even a kiss on the cheek, instead of...
Com'ere bitch. What, you don't like that? Wuhchu gonna do? (Evil smile).
Lamb is wearing a clean ivory knit shirt, a cross around his neck like Evangelists might give out in the jails, pressed blue jeans, and black cross trainers, brand unknown.
This is like anatomy of an inner city murder. Lamb does not want to inflict harm but he cannot indefinitely let Wolf handle him this way. Wolf is stronger, meaner, more full of himself. Lamb would have to get a gun to handle Wolf. It is conceivable yet highly speculative that he has done such a thing before but I'm telling you what I know to be true--he does not want to do it.
Wolf pokes Lamb in the chest with his right index finger. Lamb gets angry, Wolf gets meaner, and Lamb acquiesces. Wolf blinds Lamb with his golden smile, says, your daddy is glad to see you out, you know who is your daddy. Lamb says, man fuck you. Wolf pokes Lamb in the chest, harder this time, and bringing his head, twisted sideways, right up beside Lamb's, says, you don't talk to your daddy that way, bitch. Lamb shrugs away, regaining his space. I'm fed up and am about to go outside and suggest that Lamb just cap the motherfucker and be done with it. Don't have a gun, we'll get you one. Erase him. Go ahead. No motives, no suspects, baby.
I was really too deep into this and so was almost relieved when God tapped me on the shoulder and with the authority of a senior salesperson asked me could He help me with anything and I red-faced, feeling as if caught mumbling suggestively to myself while fingering the lingerie at Neimann-Marcus said no thank you I'm just looking.