Take a Bow

I love spitting my mouthpiece onto the ring after a sparring match. How it launches from my mouth in an explosion of spit and sweat, leaving a mark as it bounces off that disgusting boxing ring.

And I can breath again.

House of the Screeching Sun

It's time to write about New Orleans again. Because wasn't that the whole point of this blog?

House of the Rising Sun came on the radio today. The radio that I keep on constantly because I'm suddenly a pussy about being alone.

I cranked it up and sat back on my couch to wait and see what I would feel.

Yearning with a hint of disgust and a feeling that I'm done with this place. But by the second verse a hope that I can still maybe squeeze some beauty or feeling or ... something out of it. Maybe it's a hope I need to have because I'm essentially stuck here the next two years. That's two.

Today I was driving toward the Quarter at about 9 am to meet a friend for breakfast. I've been trying to pin her down for the last two weeks, so I needed to take this opportunity when I could get it. Plus, I overslept, so I don't know how much longer she'd wait for me with her dwindling croissant. I got lost on Chippewa, looked suspicious circling the block and few times and finally found my way toward the bridge overpass.

Right before the bridge, I saw a car broken down for some reason or another and a family standing around it. Looked like a mother, an older daughter and two younger kids, one of which was manically waving his lanky arms at any passing car. They were on the other side of the street, so I could watch them through my rear-view when I stopped at the instersection. I thought 1) why are all these douchebags just speeding past them, and 2) what if they need someothing really simple like a ride to the gas station?

I even thought about giving them my spare if they needed it. Everything in me wanted to wheel my Buick around and devote the rest of my afternoon to helping them. But I didn't.

I pushed down on the gas thinking about how Kristen was waiting. How she was already probably annoyed. And how badly I needed a friend to talk to.

So I left them there. I still feel bad about it.

On the way home, I passed a guy playing trumpet on the corner near a bus stop. I sort of rolled my eyes at how "New Orleans" it was, but turned down my music anyway to hear him play. He sucked. Just made screeching sounds and stopped to laugh at himself every once in a while. It was refreshing.

Webbie On My Hand

"You're a bad bitch."

I have that written on my hand.

It's a last-grasp affirmation before bed so maybe I'll have more oompf and courage when I pry myself from my bed tomorrow morning.

Somehow, I feel like I've been here before. There's just too much emotion, stress, and forgetting between now and the last time. Suppose that puts me at square one.

But it's a new square, and I don't know what's in it. Is that a speck of wonder peering through my nervous depression?

As everyone advises: only time will tell.

And the Rest Is Drag

My interpretation of RuPaul's philosophy into my guide for positive thought shifting:

Those privileged law school hoes are snickering at me because I'm carrying my books in a grocery bag.

The fact that you still look fierce while carrying your books in a grocery bag makes them insecure and they're laughing nervously.

That girl in the gym is sort of cute and it would suck if my girlfriend had a crush on her.

Honey, you can work that jump rope like that bitch never could, and you do it with heart and nerve! Your girlfriend is a damn fool if she wants something less. And your girlfriend is no fool.

It's degrading to walk past a group of men and they comment at me and call me Baby.

Put that bass in your walk! That sidewalk is your property, girl. Look at them incredulously, like, what are you insignificants even doing here? Security! And then shrug it off like a breeze.

I'm so stressed about whether or not I'll get a good job out of law school an what will become of me if I don't.

You're born naked, the rest is drag.

And How Resilient Is YOUR Skull?

Everyone I know who is not from here mention wanting to "take a break from chaos" when they go on vacation. And usually when they are saying, they're at the break point, reeling from the latest power outage or police scandal.

Just this month, my friend got pushed through a glass window, I got into a laughable fender bender where the woman is trying to squeeze me with an injury claim, and it took me a week to retrieve my parcel of pasta and Wheatables from the post office.

Add that to what I've soaked up since my last trip to NY six months ago, and I can feel the chaos clamping down: I assume the owner of the bar I'm sitting in is laundering money, someone's body was just peeled from the street I'm driving on, and the fat man in the suit who just passed me is working for BP and about to go back to his hotel room to have a prostitute delivered from Bourbon, drink himself stupid, or kill his wife.

Then my girlfriend and I take a morning stroll to the neighborhood bakery, where they're playing Dylan as two stylish gay boys flirt and some well-groomed lesbians pick up their scones.

We felt hot and left with our coffees in plastic cups.