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.