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.