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Miss Noemi 4.12.98
I haven't mentioned this but the house on the side of us that is not a burnt shell of a pre-Civil War two story structure, is a one story four-plex in which resides one 87 year old white woman. Mrs. Noemi Rodriguez has lived next door to this house for over 40 years. Her people and an occasional nurse look in on her from time to time but essentially she is
alone. Sometimes I selfishly worry what things will be like next door when Miss Noemi dies and the four-plex next door, instead of housing one frail and very quiet old woman, might become the habitat of 12-20 new and exciting Dumaine players.
I have not seen Miss Noemi in her back yard picking bay leaves from her tree in over a year. On Mondays and Thursdays she will begin the momentous trek from her raised porch to the sidewalk to put out her one very small bag of
trash. More often than not she will be intercepted by Shelton who will accept the quarter she keeps in the pocket of her worn house dress and puts the trash by the street so that Miss Noemi does not have to leave the confines of her
fenced property.
I was frightened of her at first, assuming that anyone whose body formed so many right angles to itself, must be in severe pain, and therefore must be mean, and cranky, and cantankerous. I was in my postage stamp back yard one
day pulling weeds and Miss Noemi came out to pick leaves for a soup. I had never really seen her face because her torso bends at the waist and head at neck so that her face is always at the ground or into her own bosom.
So when she straightened up that day, first from the waist, and then the neck, to greet me with the most gleefully youthful smile, I was once again confronted with that annoying sensation of feeling that everything I know and
everything I think, is wrong.
I was relieved when last week the ambulance left out of here without Miss Noemi.
Synchronicity And The Jaded Warrior Boy 4.6.98
Yesterday, on our way out of the hood heading for the swamp and driving down Ursulines through the sixth ward, Shelton spots his mom, Myrna, and yells for me to stop because Myrna waved to him and that means she might give him some
money. I pull over after about a block and Shelton scrambles out of the back seat (Fermin is riding shotgun on the way out, Shelton will ride on the way back) and starts running back up Ursulines. In the rearview mirror I watch him run as Myrna runs from the opposite direction to meet him. On the radio
is playing this rather soulful, full of lament, love song about "how I used to love you," and I can almost imagine the field of daisies which in fact they are not running through. Glynn in the backseat says,
"Look at Shelton and his ma running like that with that music on the radio, its like..."
"Yeah, I was just thinking that myself, like this commercial I remember..."
"I know," Glynn says, "its just like that." And Jacque, next to Glynn, says, "what are ya'll taking about?"
As we approach the swamp in Laffite (as in Jean, the pirate) Shelton is really put out with this surprise location and in his best 'Mississippi gee golly shucks' voice starts up with,
"Wowww, there'll be trees and water and wierd plants, wowww, and maybe we'll see an alligator or sumthin.'"
Shelton is almost always the dissenting voice and has voiced displeasure at virtually every new place to which I take them. When we get out of the car and find our way to the beginning of the trail Shelton really can't get it.
"What are we doing here?"
"We're going to look around."
"Why?"
"Look Shelton," I say, "on Dumaine I gave you the choice of coming or going and you came, when I parked the car I gave you the choice of coming or going and you came. Now that you're here with us it would be nice if you could try not to ruin things for the rest of us."
But June Cleaver doesn't always make sense to Shelton so he says, "But really, I'm just asking, what are we doing here?"
So I hit him with Hendrix and say, "Existing Shelton, nothing but existing."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean much of the the time we are simply existing, without a clue or a plan or a future. Today is one of those days Shelton. But one of the small things we have control over is where we exist. Today, it will be in a swamp. Unless of course you would rather exist in the car.
Later he gets into running a head on the path and hiding behind cypress trees so he can scare us when we pass.
Mardi Gras Day Five 2.18.98
Day Four was an off day so after all that weather on Sunday and then no Monday parades, Tuesday was much anticipated by all us masses.
I ain't taking ya'll to all the parades this year I had warned the boys two months previous as we drove through McDonald's.
So tonight I took Mandy, Marqin (you can insert a U there after the Q if you want), Fermin, Glynn, Kizzy, Greta (Mooses sister from California), and LuLu, the honor student, and brought back Shelton, Moose, Mandy, Glynn, Fermin, and Marqin.
Kizzy is pregnant again, number three in her nineteenth year.
"Feels like gunfire in the air," I said to Mandy.
"You think so huh?" Mandy said
"Yep, I'm using Marqin (8) as my barometer. He seems a little too keyed up. Not a good sign."
"Hmm." Mandy said.
So when a minor panic stampede started and the young girl next to me asked where her baby was and no one seemed to know and people began running up St. Mary's away from St. Charles and the four policemen who had heretofore been loitering in our area stood shoulder to shoulder in the middle of St. Charles waiting for the worst, I had to boast that damn yes, I'm good. But similar to the last time we witnessed
a panic stampede, which was at a second line parade, it all turned out to be an emotional mistake, or someone showed someone else the gun they were carrying and one witness panicked and then...
Shelton and Moose showed up towards the end of the parade with a big garbage sack full of stuff.
Shelton started counting his cups.
"Fifty six," he said.
"If you expect me to hold this stuff, it will cost you twenty percent," I said.
"What's that," he said
"Well, ten percent would be 5.6 cups so twenty percent will double that--11.2 cups."
"I can do that," Shelton said.
Back on Dumaine everyone piled out of the car, Moose thanked both Mandy and I, wow, and Marqin remained curled up into a ball in the back seat.
"Time to go home Marqin," I said as I picked him up still in a ball and plopped him on the street.
Mardi Gras Day Seven 2.21.98
Day six got eaten or pissed on. Computer magic. I'm a little bit bleary-eyed. I think day six was about three teenage girls (Heather, Julia, and KK) being told to get on the "fucking" ground by over zealous New Orleans policemen (with guns drawn) who considered the girls' flight as possible culpability in a crime that had occurred in the Iberville Projects as they were walking home from the parade. Translation: they
saw a boy with a gun being chased by cops so they ran. Cops let them go. Could have slapped them around a little for being curfew violators, but didn't.
We got Evelyn situated in a metal folding chair on the St. Charles neutral ground Thursday night for the Babylon parade. With the red plaid blanket wrapped around her legs and the blue bandanna covering her head, and the plastic straw of the 32 ounce beer filled go bottle clenched between her teeth, she did look a bit like aunt Jemima's evil step-sister, which may be why people were covertly staring at her this night. Or it could be because of her enthusiastic directions to the passing drill team squads.
"Come on now girls, smile, that's right, let me see that smile, you know you wanna smile, there you go, you got a pretty smile, you." And when the bands started playing and the young scantily dressed girls began to shimmy towards sensuality:
"There you go now baby, shake what you got, ooh yeah, looking good like that, ya'll keep a straight line now girls, there you go, that's very good."
Evelyn has been suffering from some as yet undiagnosed medical problems so the wobbly legged stagger was not completely beer induced as I took her by the arm up Phillip street into the Garden District so she could pee in a dark corner of someone's grass driveway.
Mandy was catching beads and cups and keeping an eye on the fat couple (from Ohio?) who were constantly popping peanuts into their mouths but never seemed to restock their hands from any mother lode peanut source.
After the parade passed we decided to race ahead and catch it again.
At the corner of Camp and Canal I was realizing a great navigational mistake as Evelyn ranted on about something.
"Evelyn, I have to concentrate here so I'm going to ask you to shut up," I said.
And the world was suddenly silent.
Across Canal I'm into the French Quarter and I take a left on St. Louis. When the three cars in front of me stopped at Bourbon street begin to inch forward, easing their way through the throngs of revelers, I stay bumper to bumper, and sigh relief as I begin moving again at normal speed up St. Louis. After circling the blocks several times I find a spot on
Rampart that only a Festiva would fit into (using both front and rear bumpers several times, at that) and we walk over to Basin, near Iberville. Before that, I was standing behind the car working my zipper as Evelyn peed on the curb and Mandy into a cup in the back seat, and a cop cruising the other side of Rampart, stopped, and shining his spotlight on me, yelled out, "put it back in your pants." I nodded. I didn't need to pee anyway, I was just checking the equipment.
A cop on Basin very politely tells Evelyn that she needs to move her chair a little ways back from the street. This is near the end of the parade route, in a neighborhood that photographs from the turn of the century show as being completely lined with elaborate two and three story whore houses. They all gone now, though.
It would seem that other than Mandy and I and the cop and the float riders, few white people see this part of the parade route as a viable area to catch beads and live to tell about it. But it's all good. The krewe members were unloading their beads and trinkets with reckless abandon as they prepared to disembark from their floats and have their ball at the Performing Arts Center in Armstrong Park.
We walked back to the car with light heads and heavily laden bags of treasure.
Mardi Gras Day Eleven 2.26.98
The Orpheus parade on Monday evening featured Tommy Tune, Forest Whitaker, and, as it does every year, Harry Connick Jr., this year looking particularly bored. One of the women (maybe his wife, recognizing my NY Mets cap) threw me a nice pair of beads though. None of the celebrities
actually perform, they just stand up on the lead floats and wave. One year, however, Junior's dad, the New Orleans District Attorney, Harry Connick, sang some pretty swell Sinatra-type crap.
Jacque Lewis (aka, alligator boy) and Shelton Jackson came with Mandy and I. Instead of parking on the Garden District side of St. Charles, I found myself in the neighborhood on the other side of St. Charles, at Third and Dryades, which is one of the many N.O. killing zones. I don't know if its extraordinarily dangerous now but '94 and '95 news reports
made this corner one to remember. Remember to stay away from, that is.
"You can park there if you want," the man said after Mandy rolled down her window in response to his tapping, "but I can't guarantee your car will be all right. Now for five bucks you can park in this yard over here and I'll be right here watching it till the parade's over." Mandy became impatient with the huckstering and started walking up Third to St. Charles. I asked Shelton his opinion and when he shrugged I asked
him if he would cough up some money. He gave me his last two dollars and we pulled into the man's yard, behind the only other car, a Ford Bronco. "Don't let me get blocked in here, Ok?" He assured me no such thingwould happen, and it didn't.
Jacque and Shelton disappeared as soon as we got to the front lines but shortly Jacque reappeared and, despite Shelton's wishes to the contrary, stayed with us throughout the whole parade. Shelton would go away for awhile and then show up with two or three unopened (and intercepted) bags
of beads. But he didn't stray as far as he usually would, and
occasionally we would look up to see him lifting some other family's small child up on his shoulder for the passing floats.
Orpheus is one of the moneyed parades and some of the floats were truly a marvelous sight to behold as we gazed up from our playing field on the St. Charles neutral ground.
At no time did we see Jacque boot up pure cane sugar but his energy becomes so frantic at times that one does wonder. Jacque is impressively creative and imaginative and can hit you with a wry comeback that's enough to make you jealous, wishing you could be so clever. And then
he's an eleven-year-old boy again and we're having a knife fight with miniature plastic swords while a passing group of gang bangers exhales pot smoke into the air we breathe. And a rubber band becomes a device of torture and I taunt, "hey Jacque, look at this. You know what I use to
do with these when I was a kid?" And he's off and running, darting behind a light pole which doesn't hide him but does offer good deflection possibilities from dangerous projectiles, rubber, and otherwise. Clever alligator home boy.
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.