Malls Don't Stay the Same

They expanded the Freehold Raceway Mall. The carousel is still there, thank God, but the sea green paint is now a sensible eggshell, a Borders bulges out of one side, and a Dick's stands as a sort of satellite in the middle of the parking lot.

Soft-Core Scholar

I've always thought it would be really badass to be a scholar. But a scholar of old -- back when that was an occupation one threw oneself into with the same gusto a dedicated teacher or a doctor would. To make it your job to study and acquire knowledge.

There's a certain sense of martyrdom that goes along with it, like you sort of have to be uncomfortable through your knowledge quest -- have to read in very low light n' stuff.

That's why I'm forcing myself to sit upright at my desk for the 5th hour, no ass-pillow allowed -- feelin' that wood grain!

Aristotle and Nietzsche would likely scoff at my cram sessions of tort and contract law a week before exams. Spineless child's play, they would say. They did this sort of thing when they were in diapers.

Here's an exciting law fact that struck me: The only two things in the world considered common property, and thus without an owner, are the "high seas" and the air.

And even those- if you bottle either, you can own and sell it.

Please shoot me if I start writing in legalese.

I May Have Spoken Too Soon ...

re the antibodies. ... and the wine.

Get By With a Little Help From My Wine

So.. after glass two, here is what I've accomplished:

A Clinical Thanksgiving

Here's a fun thing to try:

Next time you have the privilege of undergoing grief or other extreme mental anguish, pause at intervals and observe the course of your emotions. It's quite an interesting process.

The brain, or your psyche, or whatever controls the level of shitty you feel seems to work the same way your body does when it's fighting, the flu. A good physical equivalent to the way I've been feeling would be Swine flu (remnants of my earlier "eat worms n' die" party are obvious here).

The brain begins building mental antibodies the minute you feel that first tear roll away from your cornea, though you don't really realize it through all the turmoil that ensues.

And then, a little down the road, there's a distinct point, like a fever breaking, when you start seeing the fruits of those antibodies and the shitty starts to reside. Though, of course, it'll be a while before you're back to your vibrant, life-loving self.

I think I felt the break-point today -- with a little help from homemade popcorn and pleasantly mind-numbing property law lectures.

Oh Yeah ...

Sleep Deprivation + Sorrow = Crazy Time.

Not advisable.

Someday You'll Be Lonely Too

How appropriate:

That's the chorus of a song playing in a cafe I'm sitting in much farther from my home than I would normally travel during the week because seeing anywhere I went with her makes me cry.

I'm in the strangest, most torturous arrangement of my life.. no, I didn't get married. I'm giving her time, while only sort-of understanding what that means.

What it means to me is feeling a stinging I hedged myself against for the greater part of my mid-20's. It means suddenly seeing the fruits of my distaste for people staring me in the face in a city where everyone is the best of friends or acquaintances. It means dealing with uncertainty, that nasty little bugger that makes me squirm as I sit on my couch trying to hold on to some remnant of my job or pulls on my brain through the wine haze when I'm trying to doze off with that toy gorilla my mom gave me.

It COULD mean self-discovery, and mending, and "soul-searching" and those those other nice little ideals. But nice little ideals are always more elusive. Right now I don't have the gusto to deal with them -- just maybe to take myself by the hand again. The one hand, for better or worse, that's always there.

And at least that hand kicked some bitch's ass last weekend:

Help From a Retired Dildo

There's a large, pockmarked, somewhat discolored rubber penis sitting across from me on my shelf. It's got glitter on it and pen marks and god knows what else from all the dressing rooms and bar floors it's rolled across.

My girlfriend found it yesterday on my floor next to my suitcase still stuffed with costumes from Friday's show. She said she didn't like it, cringing at its "lifelike veins." I said don't worry, my purpose when I bought it three years ago was purely costume, not personal.

But now, as I'm sitting here across from it on Monday morning it's doing me a different kind of service. It's refusing to let some (most likely) overdramatic thoughts I've been churning around in my head seem so tragic.

It's hard to wax dark and philosophical about another impending birthday with Biff the beat-up penis perched on my shelf, assigned to his location by my grossed-out girlfriend.

I don't know why that's funny, but it is, and thank god.

The Other Big Easy

The Puerto Rican mother in my law school class can't stop talking about how she went to NYC last weekend. It was an extended layover, but her and her husband got to spend a night there, in about 60-degree glorious fall weather.

"Everything just felt so easy," she told me. Funny, I thought this is the Big Easy.

She expanded: It's easy to be honest.

I told her I miss being rude, and the woman behind me, who has lived in Lousianna longer than I have, patted me on the shoulder in solidarity.

To an extent my classmate is right about NYC. There, when two people flip each other off, it's like a shared cynical smile, and for anyone who's experienced it, that can be heart warming. No need for "Excuse me ma'am," or idle talk about football games and the weather and how ya'll are doin'. New Yorkers get down to it: I'm annoyed with your presence, you're annoyed with mine, let's give that a brief nod and then go about our lives.

But that honesty comes at a price too. People you meet at bars won't even give you the illusion that they're interested in getting to know you. Strangers won't pick up your latte and the scattered pieces of your laptop when you careen down the subway stairs. And drag queens on 14th street will do an aggressive catwalk at you and call you a bitch because you're wearing a dress that looks good on you.

I guess the grass is greener and I'm missing having the freedom to be an unfettered a-hole, but I'm sure I'll get my fill over winter break. And then, who knows, I might discover little lies aren't so bad.

What A Year Does

After the girlfriend drove me home from her house this morning, I had about 45 minutes left until I was due at my home office, so I abandoned my coffee in the fuzzy styrofoam cup and hit the bed ... hard. I woke up sweating, saw that I was supposed to have been working ... oh... an hour ago, and made a beeline for my air conditioner's "On" switch, which, incidentially, I'd just been dreaming about.

Had I been in NYC this morning, I would have dragged my AC unit back into the closet about two weeks ago.

Had I been in NYC this morning, I also wouldn't have been napping because I wouldn't have had smashing sex with my girlfriend last night.

A little over a year ago, I had no idea what was down here, except for an enthusiastically idealized vision of New Orleans as the Dixieland paradise. Whenever I was smacked by another oversized imitation Channel bag as I squeezed past a frenzied workaholic on the midtown subway, I'd envision myself in Big Easy Bliss.

And not just regular "oh, where I live is pretty cool" bliss, but what-the-Heaven's Gate-followers-must-have-been-told-the-afterlife-felt-like bliss.

All I had to do, I told myself, was drive a car south on that fateful morning and all my earthly (read: NYC) problems would melt away.

It took a year of living in Nirvana to watch all my original reasons for moving here go down the shitter -- they've got fake Channel bags here too.

I've now got new, mature, more-earthbound reasons:

-Law school in NYC would mean having to live in NJ and commuting on its transit system every day. (read: hell)

-I want an excuse to drive a six-cylinder taupe Buick and outfit it with ridiculous hubcaps.

-I can eat without a stomach ache, don't get panic attacks, and my hair isn't falling out anymore.

-I've escaped becoming one of those fanatic Insular New Yorkers who thinks the rest of the country is an expanse of strip malls and stupid people.

- There's no girlfriend like the one I've got.

- I get to feel cooler than everyone else when I walk out of a bar still sipping my drink.

Those Heavens Gate moments -- I still have them.

Like riding my bike underneath a row of trees whose branches stretch across four lanes of traffic, and I'm like " How do you even do that?" And the trees are like, "We just do, okay?"

And then my bike hits a pavement chasm and my basket flies off the handlebars into said traffic.

Here's to a year.

Fightin Words

Hi again world.

"Fight until hell freezes over and when it does fight on top of the ice."

That's what some boxing coach used to say. I never knew him. He died sometime this month.

To me it doesn't so much apply to boxing as the way I look at my life, with all its trials, triumphs, worries and doubts, that all seem so vapid compared to SOME people. But isn't that always the case?

What did I have to fight through this weekend for example?

Round 1- the DMV
Round 2- emotional distress brought on by a resurfacing ex, with a dash of DMV.
Round 3- self doubt to self-frustration to self-examination
Round 4 - law school studying with a severely distracted mind and halo of cigar smoke.

And she comes out of it with a tinge of anxiety, a new car license, and a loving cup of coffee from the significant other.

Not too bad.

The boxing matches this weekend were monitored by a doctor with a violin. I doubt she'd play for me yet.

Doubt

I just saw a movie about a nun who seemed so certain of something, but broke down in a sobbing, doubt-stricken mess at the end.

The same affliction has plagued me, off and on, and it's manifested itself in different brain-squeezing ways.

I think what the movie tried to say is: it's when you try, or pretend to be absolutely certain that doubt can be the most damaging.

I Very Much Disapprove of Turbulence

The takeoff just sacred the beer buzz out of me.

Very high above the ground and my text message to Annie won’t send. Would it in first-class? Not unless I pay for a sky phone.

I haven’t seen New Orleans from above since my birthday. It still gives me butterflies, like it did that first time I left after a visit, looked down with sentimental tears welling up behind my sunglasses, and swore I’d live there some day.

Now, flying over lake Pontchartrian, part of the reason for one of “the greatest human tragedies,” I’m proud my house is down there somewhere -- as if my approval can somehow make it heal faster. As if I deserve a medal of bravery for living there the last eight months.

New Orleans helps you live an incredible life. It’s like you have one-up on the rest of the world on drinking, danger, suffering, laughing, freedom, and the absolutely ridiculous. But it’s only when you leave, the second that plane lifts off the runway even, that you realize it -- and feel either remorse, embarrassment, or elation.

I wonder what New York would have been like the last few months. I probably wouldn’t have broken my rib, but then, life’s not as sweet without some excruciating bodily pain every once in a while.

I'll Be Spooning Roaches for at Least Another Year

I saw him there by the door, poised to wreak terror upon my soon-to-be-slumbering body. He tried to blend in with the wood floor, but the sickly reddish sheen of his wings gave him away.

The chase began when I sprayed him once with Raid, hoping the dose was caustic enough to penetrate his disgusting frame and fry his insides. I took my eyes off of him once, when he lunged from the curtain in my general direction. When I finished screaming like a little girl and cowering behind my French door, the bastard was gone.

This is New Orleans -- so are the grits with herbs and garlic, the afternoon deluges, the poison caterpillars, the toxic and delicious snowballs, the 13-year-olds with guns, that choking small-town feeling, delicious panama hats, jazz fest tourists, Southern conservatism, female pastors, The Mother In Law Lounge, and, of course, that girl with the curly hair.

I wouldn't say I wouldn't trade it for anything, I think I'm proud to call it home, I guess you can say there's no city like it -- but mainly, I'm still here, and ain't that something?

Am I Moving Back to NYC?

Probably not, though you never can tell.

Situations Move Fast in the Big Easy.

It's been a while.

So much can happen in a month or so. This city can push you every which way if you're not careful.

I was in my first rain storm the other night. This rain wasn't in sheets, it was in curtains - heavy velvet ones. I nonchalantly called a cab, not knowing I was lucky it would even show, and not thinking to roll my pants up to my knees before exiting the bar.

Sewers here are mere decoration. They hang out ironically as the waves of rainwater lap high above them reaching stoops and rolling over lawns.

I felt the waves slapping the bottom of the cab to the tune of my swearing driver as we gurgled past the hospital.

I was grumbling indignantly about the city's inability to come to grips with water when I saw a cop stroll out of the emergency room doors, foot poised to step off the curb, only to realize no curb existed.

He looked down, surveyed the hospital's brand-new lake, and walked back inside.

I smiled the rest of the way home.

The Next Morning

Party’s over. But the city seems okay with that.

Two young men in their party suits walk home, to-go-cup still in hand, as the sun and a breeze slink up from the Mississippi.

The bum that usually takes in a huge visual helping of my ass as I bike past him barely manages a wink. He, along with all the other lechers got more than their fill last night.

My bike hits an empty Southern Comfort bottle, sending it chattering across Frenchmen street, which emanates a smell of piss and crawfish into the morning steam.

The SDT cleanup crews are already hacking away at the trash, but the confetti that found its way onto doorsteps will pay tribute for another week or so.

And if you’re hungover or just a little late to the office today, well ... we’re all in the same boat this morning -- it ain't no thing.

The Photos Don't Lie

Wrap Your Pashminas Around Your Necks Snugly -- It May Get Ugly

I received a 15 percent pay cut yesterday. Well, it was not so much received as it was betowed upon me by the advertisers that ran scared on the 1st of January.

Come back. I miss you.

You Get a Little Something Extra When You Box at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday

They're Coming to Pee on My House

Tomorrow is the Krewe De Veaux parade through my neighborhood. I didn't pay much attention to the flyer they sent around earlier this week announcing the theme will be "Stimulus Package," and naming sub-krewes with names reminiscent of the dirty jokes you and your siblings used to whisper to each other when mom and dad were in the other room.

I'm not sure if this should have been my warning. I've planned my day largely as a usual Saturday. Gym in the morning, work on Burlesque costume, perhaps some light writing in the evening, then a burlesque show at night.

I did leave in some time to observe the parade, maybe throw on a wig and dance a little to look like a local.

My friend at the gym told me that streetcars won't be running, that people would be peeing on my house, and that I should buy earplugs if I want to sleep tomorrow night.

Armed with this new information, I've put new batteries in my stun gun ... and chilled some beer in my fridge in case I can't beat em'.

Where the Game Is Big, the Dogs Are Bigger, and the Hugs Beat Them Both

I choose my Super Bowl parties carefully. At the bar I was at last night, the few fanatics had their posts by the big screen, but the crawfish being unloaded on the newspaper-covered table outside demanded just as much attention as the game.



I discovered king cake, a huge dog ...






... and the fact that Mike, the smart-ass, tactless, cartoon of a man who owns my gym, had pursued Sean, his girlfriend for more than a year before she stopped feeling revulsion toward him.





I also discovered that the city isn't as segragated as my shell-shocked New Yorker self had initially feared, when, after the winning touchdown, someone who looked like Kobe Bryant with a beard-fro wrapped his arms around my friend and hoisted her in the air repeatedly in exultation.

Her breasts were badly jostled, but she only noticed after the initial shock wore off.

Gyno-Saurus-Rex

The waiting room was bedecked with pregnant women who were trying to give off that radiant mother-to-be look, but were being outshined by the purple and gold Mardi-Gras tinsel which culminated in some sort of weird, maternity/Mardi Gras shrine at the front of the room, with sculptures of abstracted motherhood bejeweled in purple lights.

It made me feel like I should have stuffed some Mardi Gras beads into myself as a clinical gesture of festiveness.

I waited an hour. So, it seems, did everyone else. In Queens this would have led to a bitch-fest of epic proportions. Here the most action I saw was a restless toddler dutifully fetching his sneezing momma some tissues from the front desk.

Dr. DuTreil met me in the examination room. Something made me stutter like a schoolgirl when he asked me what brought me to New Orleans. It was sick, I tell you.

He left the room for me to get naked and I had a mild panic attack. I grabbed the Economist and tried to take in an article on foreign policy.

I was relieved when he walked back in with a nurse who would "observe."

The stirrups were covered in fabric with smiling masks and confetti, inviting you to grin and spread em' and let the good doctor have his way.


After the finger exam, which mildly made up for the jaws of steel, DuTreil asks me, as he's giving my cold a violated pubic area a final look-over: "Do you shave?"

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, shaving sometimes causes microscopic cuts which can lead to cysts," he explains.

"How about waxing?"

"That's fine," he says with a warm smile.

I try, but fail to analyze this exchange. He shakes my hand and tells me "It was a pleasure."

I leave feeling confused and a little smug. Should I have left a tip?


Overheard at a cafe today, said by a young, hip mother of one: “I’ve done my time reading the classics and enriching my brain."

She mentions how she now listens to the New Yorker podcast and reads the NY Times magazine.



This is the view from my front door at 9 p.m. I suspect that the nightly-burning lamp in the hallway terrorizes everyone's electric bill.

Canal Street Calling

Clarence called me tonight as I was walking across Canal Street. Every time I cross the first lane of cars, then the streetcar tracks, then the second lane, weaving in and out of the palm trees and celebratory tourists, I think of a newscast I saw a few months ago with a scared-shitless reporter trying to hold it down with the palms bending around him and Gustav grinning off the coast.

Anyway, Clarence called and I asked him why. He's a talented kid and I wanted to count him as a friend, maybe even give him a couch to crash on now and then after one of his Frenchmen street gigs. But three lies is enough.

I remind him that we had decided to part ways. He replies "I didn't know I couldn't call."

I assured him he can't.

"Man you don't want to hear from a brotha," he says.

No, I don't.

He quickly tells me how he and his bandmates are, once again, out on the street tonight because their car, once again, broke down and they can't get home.

I release a few expletives and tell him, in many more words, that he got himself into this situation, he damn well should get himself out.

He courteously hangs up.

I feel firm, defiant, ballsy. This is tough love, I tell myself. Then I remember he's only 19.

crap. I call and apologize, and no, we can't be friends right now, but, I tell him, "If you're ever REALLY in trouble, call me."

He says he will and hangs up.

Don't befriend the musicans, I console myself, even when they can play like motherfuckers.

Backseat Driver

I’ve been looking, but I haven’t seen the streetcar named Desire. They do name their streetcars here. Maybe it's too obvious of a name for a streetcar, like naming your dog Fido.

For all the torment it puts me through waiting and dealing with the cow-eyed, cloying tourists, streetcars almost make up for it with their disgustingly charming wood paneling and equally disgusting tree-lined routes.

The price isn’t bad either- “a dollar and a quarter” per ride as opposed to New York’s $2.00 subway rides.

I’ve also discovered the natural streetcar order:

Tourists sit in the forward facing seats in the front and middle … or crowd near the front entrance in intoxicated bunches.

Locals sit in the middle and rear so as to avoid the tourist clumps and the spilled hand-grenades.

Die-hard locals, and every person in a restaurant uniform I’ve seen, sit in the far back, where the seats look like the benches in a subway.

For the particularly saucy locals and the occasional intrepid (or stupendously drunk) tourist, there is the rear seat, a padded swivel chair the conductor sits in when the car is going in the opposite direction.

This seat is mine. I like to put my feet up on the sill and show everyone how much cooler I am. Then I scowl at all the people in cars behind me.

Bringin’ the New York flava.

My Professional Night

I went to an inauguration "Gala" last night not knowing what Gala means. I was just feeling celebratory.

This was my first formal-esque event in New Orleans. It was sponsored by a group for young professionals that I'm a part of and some legal society.

There were about 15 white people in the place, myself and my friend Jamie included. This was wonderful until it was the end of the night and nobody beside my friend the bartender:




approached/and,or/said hello to me. I'm not sure if this is so much a problem of races being scared of eachother as the fact that it was a "professional" event, meaning it might have been inappropriate to say "How you doin?"

"The news" as everyone called Channel 6, came in the beginning of the night and people of all races scrambled to be in front of the camera when they turned it on, shivering on the drafty dance floor in their stilettos and martini breath.

And I saw a more Blackberried and cloying networking orgy than I have ever seen at a New York press schmooze.

Jamie turns to me as we observe this from the balcony and says,"It looks like they're all trying to be someone."

Gymnasty

One of my new goals is to be able to do a split. I can get closer to the ground than this, but it's impossible to photograph without pulling my groin.

To train myself, I wash dishes with one leg up next to me on the sink. It makes me feel sexier as I scratch my drool and crusty yogurt off plates.




I have also started hula hooping using some instructional YouTube videos. At first I was skeptical about YouTube as a teacher, but it taught me how to do the breast stroke last summer, and now I can "hoop" around my waste and around my hand like a lasso, as depicted in this money shot below.





I have decapitated a plant and chipped a lamp from mess-ups. It goes great with a glass or two of wine.

Still no batteries for my camera because I am forgetful. Here is a recycled photo of my gym. I was there an hour ago, sparring with my friend.

It's funny what happens when two girls get in the ring and box. All the males in the place start hitting their bags harder, turn their treadmills up a notch, or yell juvenile things like "Get her, beat her up."

No matter. I just found something just beyond the reaches of orgasm in a piece of dark Italian chocolate.

I'm staying home tonight.

Your Friendly, Bad-Ass Neighborhood Plants

To get to my gym, I have to lug my gym bag down a long stretch of road called Napoleon. At night and when it's chilly, that road is the worst part of my aggravatingly long trip to the gym and I hold my stun gun especially tight. During the day, it's usually bright, breezy, and lined with cool alien plants like these.

Maybe one afternoon when I'm feeling particularly stroppy, I'll pop one of the blue spheres into my mouth to see what it tastes like. If I make it to the street car, it's not poisonous. If I'm found face-down foaming onto my gym bag, it probably is.

We're Going To Try Something

My good friend Juliet and I are going to each take a photo a day and write something about it. I took a few tonight and then my camera died.

If I get batteries tomorrow, this will happen.

I've read that when you move somewhere new, you're more prone to hypochondria. Right now I can think of a million reasons my eyeballs are hurting and I'm dizzy. They're all icky. Common cold, common cold, common cold ....

Anyway, here is a photo to sub for the one I couldn't take tonight:


I took it on Juliet and my vacation. It's in City Park. To get there, you have to take the street car all the way uptown. Along the way, the ghetto gets worse and worse and then suddenly the abandoned Mardi Gras shops and cheap hotels come to a stop, you go through a few brief blocks of quaint houses and grass knolls, and the last stop is this park that looks like it's some alien wonderland.

It used to be a plantation. The trees, judging by their monstrous size, were around before the plantations were built -- when it was still all swamp and mosquitoes and alligators that ate the occasional visitor.

Still Finessing the Self-Date

The sociology of going to see the Soul Rebels alone:

Do not attempt if you don't have a cell phone on you which you can whip out in moments of severe awkwardness to prove to any who may be watching that you have friends out there ... somewhere.

But even the cellphone can't help you after about an hour.

When you buy your first drink, the bartender assumes you're just throwing down one and waiting for your best freind or lover. When you order drink four, still alone, she gets it. The fifth one is served up with a crushing pity-discount: "This one's half price, honey."

By drink three I figured the white kids on the dance floor were all a little more drunk than I was, and I was bout to show them what's up when I was hampered by the third nut-job psychologist that I've met down here, who introduced himself by saying I look European. He looked like a neo-nazi and tried to slide his arm from my shoulders to somewhere below my waste in one fell swoop.

This was too much for my awkwardness threshold and I threw on my parka to bike home through the rain.

Cry for me.

Somewhere in All This, a Theory Develops

It's good to work hard, pour your brain and sweat into your job, have a productive and robust vision for the future, etc.

New York is an excellent venue for this mindset. New York is a career hound's city.

But on my NYC weekends I always felt empty. Heck, I felt empty anytime I wasn't working.

It's also good to realize that other than work, there's REAL life. You know, what you experience when not slaving away.

New Orleans specializes in living.

I'm here, I think, because I needed to develop my living career. I'm just starting to beef up my resume.

The hardest part so far: retaining some version of the NYC work ethic so I can keep my job, while convincing myself that it's okay to not give a damn from time to time.

The other hardest part: keeping my distance from the enticingly cheap booze everywhere.