Katrina

I haven't posted anything so far about Katrina for a number of reasons, the main one being that I've been all too busy. The other is that it's just been too hard to articulate something that's been so difficult in so many ways.

The short version of the story is that I am safe. The longer version is more complicated.

My mother and I escaped on the Saturday before the storm and went to my uncle's home in the deepest, most isolated woodland of Northern Louisiana.
The next few weeks after the storm was one continuous exodus wandering the desert of rural Louisiana, stopping to rest for seven times. Seven times we found ourselves in various accommodating relatives' beds. That was traumatic enough in its own way. No one, of course, was allowed back into the city for weeks while it stewed in sewerage. We returned to my mother's house as soon as we were allowed in by the Military Police. I can't quite remember dates, because the past few months have been a blur. It's like time as I know it stopped on August 28th and has yet to resume.

When we finally got back to my mother's house, we found that about three fourths of her roof had been damaged, and there were two trees down, but she had thankfully escaped flooding. Apparently, there had been a tornado of some sort that had ripped through the neighborhood, wiping out the two apartment buildings at one end of the street and leveling the gas station at the other end.

The biggest hardship in the early months of being back in the metro area was finding doctors. It was nearly impossible. She couldn't walk, so it was a trial getting around the state (7 moves) with a wheel chair. She wasn't able to get to her doctors for a month, and, because of that, there were a lot of problems with her health.

In the first days of being back here, the suburbs of New Orleans were absolutely crazy. Unreal. There were lots of people back, but very few services. The sidewalks of every street in the whole area were lined with miles of month long rotting meat, and mountains of debris were still sitting on the sidewalk. The smell of rotting meat everywhere and the swarms of flies were almost apocalyptic

Even now, there's still mail only every other day. Altogether in the past three months, the electricity has been out at least six or seven weeks. And we've been lucky. In about 80 percent of the city there's *still* no power. The phone service even now is very sporatic.

In the first week back, there were only two groceries open on the Westbank. I went to the grocery a few weeks into being back only to wait for an hour in line just to check out. I'd gone a few days earlier, but it was even worse then. Inside the store here was a literal mob, like something out of the French Revolution. The line to check out snaked throughout the food aisles so that you couldn't navigate the aisle to buy anything. My mother spent the whole time in the bathroom vomiting. The smell of the rotting meat that had been recently removed was still lingering. The store was literally running out of food. The place had been stripped, and this was in the relatively "normal" suburbs, more than a month after the hurricane.
We gave up any hope of purchasing food and simply went home and ate crackers and MREs.

My school, from what I understand, is devastated. It was in New Orleans East.
Ironically, during the riot scene at the grocery, I met up with a parent of a student of mine who is a police officer. He came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder in the grocery. We were both in a sort of daze. He told me that he had gotten permission to go there in New Orleans east to view the area and said that "it was pretty bad" there. Since then I've gone to see myself. There was about 7 feet of water there from what I can tell. The roof, never in good shape...well, you can imagine.

I'm not sure what's going to happen now. But that pretty much sums up the whole city's predicament. No one knows what will happen. Everything is in a state of flux and uncertainty. I don't think the school will ever be able to reopen. Even if they can repair the building, the whole area there is one vast wasteland...countless churches, malls, hotels, stores, restaurants, businesses, houses and houses and more houses, miles and miles of devastation in every direction. Who knows who will be able to live out there. There's so much mold in the air it's not safe for children. There's still no power or water out there.

All I know is that we haven't been paid (and won't ever be....and now I have no health insurance either.) FEMA is a joke. But don't get me started on that. It seems teachers can't get unemployment, so I've been told from several sources. I've tried three times with no success. I'm not up to trying again any time soon.

We did get food stamps, however. The powers that be let you buy all the junk you want: soda, candy and so forth, but for some bizarre reason you can't buy any cleaning supplies of paper products. Who knows why.

A few months ago, I tried applied with a job placement service. They politely requested "letters of recommendation" and my transcripts. Ummm.....I had to tell them, that might be a problem. My transcripts are possibly destroyed...and certainly not available now anyway. I have no way to contact my boss....and possibly never will again....and the references I might have can't be contacted either. These are little things, I know, but even the simplest things in life are so very complicated now.

Most of the teachers in the city have been fired, and there are very few students left, or schools, for that matter, so it's a harsh, simple matter of supply and demand. Lots of unemployed teachers + very few schools or students = very few jobs to go around.

Anyway, back to my own home: sometime in October, I went back there, illegally to see it with my own eyes. A friend of mine who lived near me, had gone back a few days before, so I knew I'd be able to get it. She had gone to find her place destroyed. They're going to have to level the neighborhood and dig 18 inches because of a pesticide spill she tells me.

The last I had read of my neighborhood before I went back had been a plea on the Times Picayune website to rescue two adults and two children from a rooftop...who were "watching the bodies of their neighbors float by."

That's a direct quote....I can remember it verbatim.

I got there to find complete devastation. Just three short months or so ago, my neighborhood was beautiful...azaleas and crepe myrtles and oaks and palms...wild parrots flying about.

Now, however....well...
When I got back home I found nearly every door had been knocked in by those searching for the dead. My front door was on the floor. It had disintegrated from floating in the sewerage in the front room. The wooden floor had curled up and warped...it was hard to even walk on. Some of the floorboards had floated around like matchsticks. There was still some sort of sludge in the hall. All my shoes had floated out of the closet and were strewn all over the house as had all my books and papers.

The worst of it was the mold. There was a black coating of mold everywhere. It had climbed to the top of the walls. It had been festering in the heat for weeks. That which was not covered by black mold was dusted with film of fine silver mold.


My furniture, the wooden furniture, had just disintegrated. My book cases made of fiberboard had just melted into a big puddle, slumped onto the floor. All of my childhood books....it really is the sentimental stuff that gets to you most, you know.... all the books I had cherished from my childhood...gifts...were a big mass of wet paper and mold. My checks and documents, important papers and files and banking stuff was one big mass of papier mache dipped in sewerage.

I live on the bottom floor of a two story building, but water had even come through the ceiling. Part of the bedroom ceiling was restng in my bed. The kitchen ceiling looked about to collapse too. My computer had been completely underwater. All the paintings that I'd done were destroyed, warped and covered in mold. All my letters and journals and short stories and a novels.....were a mass of pulp.

All of my clothes were still wet and with a half an inch thick coating of mold. I touched a leather coat to find about an eighth of an inch of greenish mold. The smell was sickening. That's true of everything. You can't get rid of it with anything. There was at least six feet of water there.

And, as they say, to add insult to injury, it seems I had been "looted" as well. I don't know if that's really even the appropriate term. I mean, it's not that I had anything there of worth, but I got there to find that others had been there before me. I didn't have anything salvageable to loot except a watch my mother had given to me for Christmas and a bit of other jewelry that belonged to my mother and some liquor. The looting, by the way, is still going on now.

By the 5th, when it was legal to return, I was able to find someone to help me move the little bit that was salvageable. I got back home, however, only to find all my belonging tossed out into the street by my landlord, mixed with everyone else's stuff, buried under plaster and floorboards in a huge mountain of debris. He was already stripping the place. I was horrified. It's a cliche, I know, but just when you think it can't get worse, it does. What hadn't been destroyed by the flood was now destroyed by the throwing out.

I left my neighborhood for the last time watching the most surreal thing. I turned my head instinctively to check for traffic, only to see a line of twenty soldiers in full camouflage, guns at the ready, marching in formation down the formerly idyllic Fountainebleau Ave. It really did look like a war zone.

In good news, the weather is gorgeous right now. It really is very pretty...ironically pretty. It's actually very beautiful, in the few parts of the city now that have escaped the floods, that is.

I see that some of the azaleas have forced into bloom even though it's fall. They have been fooled by the Katrina's stripping off their leaves into thinking it's spring. Maybe, hopefully, they're right.

lost disco worlds

Yesterday, I found a book from the Andy Warhol Museum,
called Andy Warhol, 365 Takes. It's a huge book, 365 pictures of various Warhol ephemera, drawings, photos, magazines, letters, porn, furniture from the Factory, albums, stuffed dogs, but mostly paintings from the Warhol Museum.
It's just a fascinating look at someone's life.

Relatedly, I also found this link, randomly the other night.
It's a site of wonderful pictures of Soho in the 70's (click on the title above)

Of course, there are multiple pictures of Andy there too, but not only him.
It's a whole lost world.

I think I'm going to try to find the most obscure Eurodisco I can today.

Not the way I'd hoped to die...

I guess the most "exciting" thing that's happened lately is that I was nearly
killed. (See photo above from newspaper)

My mother and I went to eat lunch one day earlier this week.
Just as we were just about to walk into the restaurant...I had paused to open the door for her....suddenly I heard a bump from the highway, about 50 feet away.
We turned to see a Frito Lay truck barreling towards us...it had lost control and was coming toward the restaurant.
Thankfully it hit an electrical pole, which stopped it...
but all we could see were a mass of electrical lines, snapping, popping, flashing with lightening and flying towards us in every direction. One of them knocked down the umbrellas in the front of the restaurant, all of about 10 feet from us.
It all happened in a few minutes of course. I hadn't even pulled the door open.

It was like something out of a movie....like something out of War of the Worlds.
(save your money by the way, Tom Cruise + scary aliens = redundant)

My mother, needless to say, hysterical. Took quite a while to calm her down.
The power was out of the whole area after that.

I love the quote on the truck, by the way: "For the fun of it!"

You can't say God doesn't have a sense of humor.
You have to give Him that.

"New Orleans 1957 or 8..."

I often find myself, when boredom strikes, looking over the Missed Connections section of craigslist. The postings there often verge on poetry, I think.
And every now and then, I find something that kicks up
a short story in my head. Like this one, below:

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Hector and I met 47 years ago,where is he now? - m4m

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Reply to: anon-75396035@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-05-26, 12:05AM CDT

New Orleans 1957 or 8 I was a teenager looking for anything opposie Jackson Square Hector was looking for a parking space.I'm still looking for Hector. I heard he had moved to Jamica New York does anyone know if he is even still alive. I would like him to know that I have loved him my whole life. Not a day has passed that I have not sent him a blessing.If anyone knows the whereabouts of Hector Moreno who by now must be in his 70's please contact Paul Sherry at the above addrressPlease do not infer anything but what is clearly stated herein.. Thank you.

this is in or around Los Gatos CAlifornia
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what the cards hold

Ok, so it's been a very long time since my last post. I've been a very bad poster.
Of course, much has happened...some of it good, most of it not, but here's something from about a year ago:

It was a Wednesday night....nearly midnight, a full moon in the sky when I had my fortune told for the first time. Of course, flake that I am in my heart, I've always wanted to, but have never had it done.
I'd like to attribute it to skepticism, but if I'm really honest, it's more probably because I've always been afraid of
hearing bad news. But money talks.
My friend Michael called me up that night and told me that he and Dennis were going to have their fortunes told, by a friend of Dennis'. I had talked to Dennis about his friend before, so knew a bit about him. He had told me that he went to him not so much because he gave accurate readings for him, but because he was a friend of a friend, and he got a discount. Michael told me that he'd give the discount to us too, for being, you know, friends of a friend of a friend, I suppose. Like I said, money talks.

Whatever the case, I was excited....albeit nervous. We found ourselves on Bourbon Street at about 10 pm or so. He had set up shop in some sort of Satanic Halmark shop, if that paints a picture for you.
Although it was nearly midnight on a Wednesday on Bourbon Street, there was a line waiting to see him. Dennis had picked this time because it was usually slow. Tonight, however, it was not slow. We debated on whether or not to stay. I swayed the vote to stay, even if it meant waiting. Eventually, we made it to see him. Each of us went alone. I was second. It seemed to take forever for Dennis to get out of there.

The first thing he told me, flipping over the card, was that I would be making a move.
Of course, eager as I have always been to get out of this hell hole, I asked if he saw me moving out of the city and to what
wonderful destination.

"Oh no, you'll die here," he said bluntly. "I meant to a new house." He saw me somehow moving to the Bywater,
not having a car....but somehow continuing with a PhD. Exactly how I would get to school from the Bywater
(of all ungodly places) without a car, he didn't explain.
Whatever the case, I was dubious about his abilities at that point. He then proceeded to tell me about my family
life, things that were eerily true and that he had no way to know. My ears perked. Suddenly I thought he might
not be a fraud...or at least a complete fraud.
Finally, we got the meat of the matter....my love life, or lack thereof. He asked me about my "boyfriend"
I told him nervously, "umm... I don't have one."
To this, he insisted curtly, almost angrily "well, you will soon." I couldn't help but smile at that, no matter how fraudulent he might be, this is what I wanted to hear, of course.)
He told me I'd have "good luck with the personals" at which I must have grimaced or flinched in pain. The "personals" have brought me lots of things, but "good luck" isn't one of them. I didn't go into the horrors that online dating poured upon my head. I would think that a psychic could see them hovering around me, like mosquitoes or something.

But he insisted that I get back on it. He suggested that I'd most probably
meet a Virgo (hmmm...my experience with them has not been that good, but what do I know?)...a Libra (don't know any male libras actually, but like Little Edie, I'd love to meet one)...or a Capricorn (again, not a sign
I'm familiar with). That said, I did when I got home end up
posting an ad on Match.com. Of course, I haven't hit pay dirt yet, but then again, Bywater is looking better and better.

Canadians and cockroaches

So, we have a new student teacher. She's very, very nice....as all Canadians are. I told my friend Mark (a Canadian himself) how very sweet she was.
"Well, we do have a reputation for a certain dull, sterile niceness... quite unlike you friendly, gregarious Americans,"
he told me, completely nonplussed.

She's a breath of fresh air.
(I'm not sure anybody needs that much fresh air in the morning, however)

Today Mark asks me, "I'm sure this Toronto girl is thrilled to be in your exotic city, right?"

Somehow I doubt it.
She's terrified of the roaches. One day last week she squealed in horror, rushing out of one of the bathrooms. I thought she'd seen a corpse in there. "Oh my gosh, there's a dead cockroach in the bathroom!" She screamed, in the cutest Canadian accent. (By the way, she has never been back to that bathroom since.
Never. )

Later, at lunch she was horrified to near shaking by my coworker Robin's descriptions of nutria. We have lunch with her every day, but she never ever eats the food....she eats two slices of whole grain bread, water and a pickle for lunch. (can you imagine?)

All in all, she seems intrigued.... but disgusted (in a nice, Canadian kind of way, of course) by us all. I can only imagine what my girls must think of her....she's so very different from them (though she is a black female too). She might as well be from a different planet. Hell, *I'm* more "ghetto" (as...uh....parlance puts it) than she is.

Still, I think the culture clash has to be good in a way for both of them (us?), right?

unraveling sense

I'm beginning to discover that sometimes with a lot of time....things start slowly to make a kind of sense. It's not easy, but sense starts to unravel slowly, and slowly the threads that were so tightly wound, relax. That's been happening for me occasionally, with things that I didn't understand. About 7 years ago, my best friend at the time....Desiree, with whom I was very close (I was the beneficiary of her life insurance, ferchristsakes) totally Xed me out of her life. It was so disconcerting and disorienting that I can't even begin to describe how.
It made no sense. Mutual friends offered up suggestions, and I could hear the truth in them, but still wanted to know why?? but never got an answer. Honestly, I don't think I'd ever been so hurt in my life....primarily because it was so unexpected and cold. It wasn't like we'd even had a "fight" or anything.

Desiree was in so many ways a godsend for me. She opened me up to so much.
I met her at my mentor, Mary's, house. It was one of Mary's legendary parties. It was hot that night and I had gone with a girl from college. She'd thought I'd asked her out on a date, I later found out (when I had come to pick her up, she'd introduced me very awkwardly to her father) It was a strange (magical?) night all around.

That was the night that Desiree met Will, Mary's son. The two of them were "fated" to be together, she insisted. (They are not together now, needless to say...). Their story is a convoluted one to be sure. She'd had dreams all her life, real dreams of meeting him, and so had he.
They were fated to be together. He was her soul mate. It was the night she also met me.

(What was I, I wonder?)

I remember that night, a slender, very pretty dark haired girl, looking like a cross between a very young
Sonia Braga and Lisa Bonet coming up to me from the crowd. Her voice and mannerisms were much like Lisa Bonet's in fact.
She came up to me and said, "I've read your poetry. It's very good." And then she quoted one of my poems.
I was flattered and surprised, but didn't take much note of it.We talked very briefly that night.
She spent most of that night getting to know the man she had known "before birth."

Later that week, I got an email from some German person. At the time, I barely knew how to operate the email system at school. We had been forced to use email by the Graduate Advisor, and I was still at that time, technophobic. The German person turned out to be Desiree, using her then roommate Gerlinde's (who was German and a source of *many* stories) email address at Tulane. Mary had given her my email address.
We corresponded every day, several times a day. What followed was a intense friendship, one that blurred the lines all too often, I can see in retrospect.

But back to the End:
It was just a few days after her 25th birthday party, she called me up, whining about wanting chocolate and being on her period (something she did more than once a month by the way). I, co-dependant that I am, baked her (another) chocolate cake and
brought it over. We did our usual thing...played with the dogs, (my god dogs, Dalva, Rabbit, and Pixie)
lied on her bed, draped in an old souvenir handkerchief from Goa, under an unframed print of Fuseli's "Nightmare", ceiling poorly decorated with glow in the dark stars....draped in left over sheets that I had stolen from my mother to make a canopy.
We listened to Peter Gabriel, Fred Astaire and Bjork....we talked once more about her pet subjects,
about Yoko and John, how sexually frustrated she was, how sexually frustrated I was, how tempted she was to have sex with either:
1. Ross, her hyper intelligent, very cool, aggressively asshole ex boyfriend.
3.Armand, her very previous exboyfriend who was determined to get her back, but in whom she was not interested in.
3. Paul, Ross's friend, who was a good Catholic school boy, very secure, looked and acted more than a bit like me, had a frigid bitch of a girlfriend.... and a yacht.
It was all very typical.
She and I smoked in her overgrown uptown back yard at dusk, swatting away mosquitoes....where she'd once filmed me in with a laboriously procured 8 millimeter camera for her student film....smoking "like Cole Porter" she laughed.
It was not much different that any number of such nights.
And then one day shortly after, it was all over.
She didn't return my phone call. She ignored my letter asking "why"? No explanation. It was just over.

Anyway....let's just say that for a good 7 years I've been carrying around a lot of baggage due to it...
and a lot of fear of getting close to others again due to it too.

All the while, I had stayed in touch with a friend I'd met through Desiree,( her "all but adopted" mother) Lisa. (yes, I know, all these Lisas must be confusing) Desiree had nothing to do with her family when I met her, and had taken Lisa (who was about 20 years older) as a mother figure. They were very close. Anyway, I liked Lisa a lot...and she liked me. So even after my relationship with Desiree ended, I still periodically corresponded with Lisa....mainly at Christmas and birthdays. I always made a point never to mention the prickly subject of Desiree in my notes at all. I've done this for 7 or 8 years now.

About a year ago, I noticed a wedding announcement.......it was Desiree's. I noticed that Lisa was listed as matron of honor. Anyway, to cut a long story short, this summer, Lisa sent me a card near my birthday with a few lines about her dogs and her husband and her new house (which is near me actually) and p.s. ed at the end is a note saying: "by the way, Desiree and I don't talk anymore." I'm not sure why, but it helped put my mind at rest for some reason. You'd think I'd have seen the clues before, but it wasn't until then that it all made sense and didn't just seem like a theory...that this is a pattern of Desiree's. Of course I'd seen her x people out while I knew her....(her parents had been xed out before I even knew her, her sister, Mary, eventually William, eventually even Ross, I think)
But for whatever reason it made more sense when I got that card.
Anyway....it's taken nearly 8 years now...but I think I've finally gotten over it.

Meeting an old friend I've never "met"

Last night my friend Lisa who lives in Colorado and her friend Fawn came into town.... out of the blue.

A few days ago, she startled me with this email:
----------------
Hi Jason....
:) How are you doing? I have a surprise! I am coming with my friend Fawn (whom you've met, remember? To New Orleans next week! We will only be in town a short while. My brother bought a pickup truck on Ebay, and it's located in Gulfport, Miss. I offered to go and get it and drive it home to Colorado! So Fawn and I are going to play a tamer version of Thelma and Louise and make a roadtrip of it. What an adventure.... Anyway I would love to get to meet you in peson even if it is just for a meal or drink or whatever. We will be arriving in New Orleans by air about 10:15 pm on Wednesday the 18th, and then going on to Gulfport the next day. I realize that falls right in the middle of your work week. I wish we could stay in the area a while but we have to put 1600 miles behind us in four days, so we can't stay long.
Is it possible to get together?
Can't wait to hear back from you-
Lisa
-------------------

Lisa and I have been friends for, we counted it up....6 years. It's hard to believe. We've been corresponding online for 6 years, and had never met...so I *had* to meet her...even if I was dead. It was strange, even though we only got to spent literally a few hours together, it felt like we had known each other forever. I guess in a sense we have, but I've often been amazed at how natural it is to meet after such a long correspondance.

They got in at about 11 pm. I picked them up at their hotel at about midnight, then we went to eat (at 3 am...it was not easy to find a place). I decided to take them down the long way to uptown, so they could at least see part of the city that was more attractive than the interstate. We ended up at the Trolley Stop Cafe, certainly not the best place in the city to eat, but one which I knew for sure was open at all hours.

Needless to say, there had been a shooting at a parade that night. The police were everywhere, but we didn't know that until well after the fact. It just seemed like the city was especially ....ummm "safe."
We had a nice meal.
They got to eat vaguely Southern food at 3 am, and, more importantly, I got the chance to finally meet one of my best internet friends. We talked about our time at the site we'd first met, a prayer circle of sorts, about the city, about Colorado and her family, about our trapper forebearers, about the school system, about men, life and more. They were only going to be in N.O. for a few hours that night, so that was my only chance to see them. They were leaving for Mississippi the next morning to fetch the truck, and then drive all the way back to CO, like "Thelma and Louise" as Lisa put it. I had to go to school the next day too, 5 am I was back up...no sleep....so you can imagine how beat I was.

Anyway, I'd actually met Lisa's friend Fawn before, but never Lisa. Some of Lisa's friends had come down from CO last year I think? Or the year before that? I can't recall...anyway, I met them then. It was an awful trip for them, I know. It was New Years holiday, and the city was crammed with Sugar Bowl tourists. The weather was bitterly cold, colder even than Colorado, and rainy and miserable. I felt personally responsible for the horrible state of the city. I know they hated it. Thankfully, Lisa's own trip was much much nicer, (I hope) if shorter. It's the middle of Carnival of course, but the weather is beautiful now. I didn't want another group of guests getting a bad first impression of "home," you know. As much as I sometimes hate this place, it's still home, after all.

Board Games and Cold Cuts

I went for a night of board games and cold cuts in Kenner....and ended up in Metairie....at 5 am....in the house of a suicidal priest without underwear.

My friend Lisa (yes, another Lisa) is a former colleague of mine. Irregularly she hosts a game night for some of her friends....mostly me, Velinda, (a former colleague of mine), Robin (a current colleague of mine)
and whoever is Lisa's current boyfriend (at the time now it's Steve... sometimes Helmut...but sometimes it's both...long story). This night is was Velinda, whom I had not seen in months, Steve, Helmut, Lisa, and Lisa's parents, who were in town for the month...yes, I did say for the month. Her parents come down from Pennsylvania and move in, to launch a month long assault on her self-esteem and to reorganize her cabinets.

Lisa's parents are nice Northern people....her step mother especially.
You know the type. They like crafting a lot.
I think her mother even blushed at the word "condiments."

It was all very polite and decorous. Lisa had put out the best dishes. She and her stepmom had made cream of mushroom soup, and the cold cuts were splayed out on the table like a centerpiece. We talked of dogs and crafting and cold cuts. It was all very nice. Lisa loves board games. I think they remind her of her mother,
so when she eagerly asked us, after dinner, "does anyone want to play games?" I said, "ok, I don't mind if we play."
Velinda, however, gave me a dirty look. She did not want to play games.

But we played. We played until Lisa's parents went to bed (early of course). After they had gone to bed, suddenly Velinda came alive, as though Daddy and Mommy had gone to bed, and we could now jump on the beds to our hearts content.

"I want to see a movie!" she announced. "I want to see "Monster" It's got lesbians in it."

It was late, but she insisted. So we all dutifully filed into Lisa's bedroom
and looked up the times for the theater online. Surely enough, there was a very late (12:40 am ) showing.
No one really wanted to go, except Velinda, but with enough cajoling, we found ourselves in Lisa's van, barreling down the interstate, in a mad dash to get there on time. We only barely made it.
We watched the movie. It was searing and depressing....just exactly, it seems, the type of movie Lisa hates. As for me, well, it made the 5th depressing movie in a row I'd seen.

Mostly we were all just exhausted. When the movie let out, it was 3 am.
Stumbling back to the van, exhausted by lack of sleep and the harrowing sight of Aileen Wuoronos's descent into hell still fresh in our minds, Steve pulled out his cell phone. He had gotten multiple calls while in the theater it seems. He had not noticed them there.

There was a lot of frantic calling. We were only half awake and half paying attention. We just wanted to go to bed.

Eventually we were told what the situation was. It seems that Lisa had forgotten her cell phone in the van, and all the while we were in the movie someone had been
calling Steve, trying desperately to get in touch with her.
It was Lisa's parents.

They had been awakened by a friend of Lisa's who had called for her at her home while we were away. It sounded important, they said. She needed to call him now, they said. It was past 3 am.
So she called him. Listening to her talk to him on the phone, it was not hard to figure out what had happened.

He had taken 20 sleeping pills because his 16 year old black (gay) lover had left him. (again?) He, by the way, is a 50 something year old priest.

The next thing I know, we are back on the interstate driving frantically to Metairie. Lisa's driving, in the best of circumstances can be, how do I say it politely... "exciting."

Poor Lisa, who had just seen a movie she hated, did not want to see, who only wanted to be in bed now, was now forced into counselling a suicidal friend over the phone, while weaving frantically, through traffic, with three others in tow.

She sounded angry. Lisa is famously *always* happy.
But not now.

Eventually we found ourselves...all 4 of us....at a suburban house in Metairie. We all tiptoed in, awkwardly.
Steve had never met her friend, never seen him. I've only met him once...as has Velinda (the time he called her "highly inappropriate" at our garage sale...when Velinda climbed into the car of a migrant worker/customer and solicited a phone number for a date).

And now we're at his suicide.

Velinda, Steve and I stayed in what looks like the den, a tackily decorated room, full of pasteboard Walmart furniture and religious knick nacks. On a glass table I could see a sheet of looseleaf.
It's the suicide note. (looseleaf? How much tackier still? Sorry)

I didn't know what to do, none of us did, so I played awkwardly with the cat, who was confused but friendly. It seems we're in the underaged lover's aunt's house...but I'm not sure.

In the front room...very overly decorated, with loud velveteen furniture, Lisa is talking to her friend, who insists that she not call 911. She does anyway.

"But I don't have any underwear on!" I keep hearing him say hazily.

Lisa is still pissed. All she wanted to do was go to bed, and now here she is. Here *we* all are.

Suddenly the room is flooded with red flashing lights and siren noise. There are cops, paramedics suddenly in the front room. I peek out the back window, the cat between my legs, noticing what looks like homemade rat poison in milk jugs lined up along the pantry shelves. There's an ambulance outside and multiple cop cars. I can hear her friend slurringly arguing with the cops about leaving. He insists that he doesn't want to go to the hospital. He keeps repeating that he has no underwear on. They threaten him with force, and he goes. We tentatively get back into the van.
From the back window I can see them loading Lisa and her friend up in the ambulance.
Oh, and an overweight neighbor in the middle of the street with a cell phone, blocking traffic.
They don't seem to be in any hurry.
Steve takes us back to Lisa's house for us to get our cars and go home. It's 5 or so in the morning.

Just a few minutes ago, while I'm typing this in fact, Lisa calls me,
"Hi Hon," she says. "Just wanted to see if you'd like to come over for games Saturday night."
"Sure," I say

September 11, 1964

It's 9-11 night, 2004 and I am on Esplanade at dusk. It's still hot, of course, but there's the strange autumnal cast to the air we seem to get in September....and it felt for some reason (as I told my friend, Michael, whom I was with) that it felt "like New England...New England in 1964." Well, at least like my overwrought imaginings of New England in 1964. I don't know why, but it did. Surely enough, a little walking disclosed none other than beatniks playing jazz in a courtyard and an Asian woman with what looked like a vestigial bouffant. It was all very otherworldly....like I imagine New England.....in 1964....to be.