Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do.

It was about 3:00 AM and the heat of the summer was still lying heavy on our bar Sin City on St. Phillip Street just a couple of blocks from Bourbon Street. The building was old and was the location of the old mortuary of New Orleans. Ghosts abounded both in this dimension and in many others. The walls were lined with religious candles and around the bar were hung memories of life that celebrated fun and angst. The dark wooden bar back was ornate and through smoke stains a mirror reflected the life coming awake after the tourist bars had closed.



I had my usual seat at the head of the bar right next to the cigarette machine. I was wearing my auburn wig which made me sort of look like old pictures of Anne Rice. Paul walked in and ordered a drink and bought me one. How you doing Anne Dirty Rice? I smiled. I loved the way that this old queen had given the honor of a drag name.



Old George was drunk on the money he had made selling ice cream from his cart on Jackson Square. He took some quarters and was playing video crack. George had lived in the Quarters for about 15 or 20 years. He scurried around from place to place looking for odds and ends to do to make money to feed his demons that had taken an accountant from a top firm to a drunk killing himself with each shot. He had brought me a gift that evening – a bracelet from the 40s set with semi-precious stones. I loved the glitter and jangle of it. I felt like a diva from another time.



Bob wandered in and ordered his usual gin and tonic. A retired sea captain, Bob loved to come to his local bar and see what would show up to entertain him for the evening. Soon he was joined by a younger man named Mike… Mike’s make up would put Julie Newmar to shame. His arched brows and pouting rouged lips accentuated his feminine features. Bob wandered back to the men’s room. Mike soon followed. They returned after awhile noses a little stuffy but with smiles on their faces.



It was about time for Susan an uptown girl from a wealthy family that was about my age to show up. She was comfortable in a smoke-filled bar filled with the regular folks of the Quarters or at lunch with her socialite friends at Galitoire’s or Antoine’s. She was ready for an extra-dry dirty martini and I got up and went around the bar to shake one up. Susan had brought in two martini glasses just for her and me to indulge in one of Mother Myriam’s martinis which she considered the best in New Orleans. She had her companion, a young man who was entertaining her at the moment, to go put on a little Billie Holiday. She was dressed in an expensive cotton sundress and she took her shoes off, leaned back against her boy de jour and stretched her long shapely legs out resting her feet on the barstool next to her. It seemed that since Susan was diagnosed with brain cancer, she was just going to do exactly what she wanted to do despite the expectations of those up-town friends. Of course, it was pretty obvious that she had always walked on both sides of Canal Street.



The tours were over, the tour guides in their make up as vampires, ghosts and gallants were gathering to count their tips and unwind with a shot of Jagermeister. Dancers from Bourbon Street joined them make up removed and dressed in the usual garb of most young girls. A couple of lesbians who had just spent the last eight hours feeding the fantasies of males willing to pay for a drink and a dance, went to the jukebox and played their anthem. Funny it was the same song as Susan had played earlier: Ain’t nobody’s business if I do. Now they danced for each other filled with the jubilance of youth and an understanding that in the Quarters no one was going to judge their lifestyles.



My friend Rita wandered in. On Bourbon Street they called her old Rita because she was in her mid thirties which is very old for a dancer. I knew Rita was ready to spend the next few days drinking Budweisers from a long neck and chatting up the crowd. Rita could stay drunk for days and never spend a dime. Her boyfriend Mo showed up. Mo was president of the local motor cycle gang and was a true Cajun and lived over in Chalmette. He knew it would do no good to try and make Rita go home so he could hang around for the journey to oblivion or head home. Rita also knew it wasn’t anybody’s business what she did and she did what she wanted when she wanted and how she wanted. Just like all the other folks who were regulars at Sin City.



The seat beside me would be filled by different folks over the night. Stories to share. Hearts to be healed. Memories to be re-created. Dreams to be re-affirmed. It was just another night in the Quarter when most of the tourists have wandered to their hotel rooms and the people who walked the walk that is New Orleans at night gathered to feel not so alone. And as Billie sang out over the sultry air - ain't nobody's business.

Scents of Yesterday

Riding down I 90, the full moon lit the highway with a brilliance I had seldom seen. It was as if my journey was being watched by the Goddess. I could feel the culmination of many years of hoping and praying coming into existence.


Jimmy met me at the bus station and he had Melody with him. Turned out they had been hand fasted jus a week ago on Halloween and they were a site to see. Melody was definitely a character to behold. She had jet black hair with a bleached white pouf in the front. She wore all black and these high healed black leather boots. She looked like a caricature of Morticia Adams. I had to admit Jimmy had met his match. We drove to the apartment and we walked to the open market in the French Quarter. Even in New Orleans they stood out as unique. After lunch a tourist asked if she could take their picture as we walked out of the restaurant.


Jimmy had been lonely after his break up with the crack whore, so I prayed that he would find someone with whom he could relate. I chuckled to myself as I recalled how my mother would always say: Be careful what you pray for, you are going to get it.


My journey to epiphany had begun.


It was not but a few weeks before Mel revealed that she was pregnant. I felt some concern but also felt that a baby would help Jimmy find roots and perhaps settle down. I was supportive of her and so was our dear friend, Rita a dancer on Bourbon Street, and Mel finally decided to keep the baby.


The next 8 months were spent getting to know the person behind the mask of artist and creative and wild child that was my daughter-in-law. In the mornings Melody and I would often walk to the Café Dumond for coffee and begnets. The scent of the rich dark brew was stimulating and calming at the same time. As we sat by the lazy Mississippi we would listen to the sounds of jazz wafting on the air as street performers entertained the tourists for tips.


I made a new friend called Trip. Trip was a trust fund baby. His wild ways had driven his family to distraction so he was packed off to the French Quarter with a monthly allowance to indulge his chosen life style. I don’t know how he managed to run out of money toward to the end of the month with a ten thousand dollar stipend until I started to spend more time with him. Trip was representative of a long heritage in the French Quarter where wealthy families would ship the errant sons to the southern port of decadence in order to save family reputations. This practice had been going on for centuries and Trip was a pure example of a life of indulgence into the realm of the senses.


If not anything, Trip was generous because he liked company and was truly a lonely and lost child of the quarter even though he was approaching his mid-thirties. We would go to the bars and restaurants of the Quarter and I was able to experience some of the most delicious foods and wines that culinary genius could prepare. We would go to the bars on Bourbon Street where dancers would dance dollars and drinks.


The dancers were usually young girls who had run away from abusive homes. Many had children and had to support their babies by dancing to a dream with brass poles on small stages lined with mirrors. As I got to know the girls and heard their stories my heart would often break. Painted faced children using sex to support their lives of misery most only able to do their jobs by taking a bump of cocaine or smoking a rock of crack. Many a lap dance paid for a hit of crystal meth.


I remember one time at a strip bar, I asked Trip for a dollar. He thought I was going to tip a dancer. Instead I rolled up the dollar and lit it. I slowly waved the smoldering bill under my nose. A man who had been enchanted by the virginal vixen spinning dreams with a brass pole all of a sudden began to watch me. The chair he was sitting on was leather and comfortable and was on rollers. He watched intently as I took in the scent of the burning dollar and his chair rolled toward me. As he came close enough to hear me I leaned over and said to him in my best southern sultry voice – don’t you just love the smell of money?


The irony left me laughing again as I would often do during my times in the crescent city.


Coffee, begnets, sweating bodies, garbage pick ups in the summer, and burning money just a few scents of yesterday that come to me as I watch my family and friends trying to survive in a cesspool of what once was a land of dreams for many a lost soul. I remember saying to my son’s grandmother, I wish Jimmy would leave New Orleans and she wisely replied: Where could he go where he would fit in? That question is even more poignant after Katrina has destroyed the homes, the dreams, and the little hopes those who found safety in the arms of La Femme NOLA.


After thoughts: It was another full moon – in fact an eclipse at 5 degrees of Leo/Aquarius when I finally met my epiphany. My granddaughter Joliet Epiphany Morel May was born. When Katrina struck a dagger through my heart Saturn was conjunct the degrees of Joliet’s birth sun/moon. Saturn represents problems, loss, and in the extreme death. The sun represents the father and the moon represents the mother. I hope it is just difficulties and not death that this dear child has to observe and recover from like the many children that I see on the news.

Book Shop

For the first time in my life I felt strange walking into a book shop. The Used and New to You Book Shop was located on Main Street between Rinaldi’s Pizza and the Greenery Bar where all the local college kids came to drink and mate on Saturday night.


I had never sold a book before. I was used to buying books, reading them sooner or later, and letting them collect on shelves as representations of my collective works of knowledge. I still had my first college text books… A Survey of Astronomy, Introduction to Statistics, Psychology: An Introduction, and some stupid math book. I felt like I was sinning as I talked to the owner Jake, a slightly more than 50 man with a balding head and a goatee retained from days of love ins and sharing joints with idealistic friends in the sixties. I need to sell some books I said. He looked up at me and I could almost see pity in his eyes which made my guilt even stronger.


I rubbed my forehead and turned down my eyes. I was not used to being a part of the over-educated, out-of-work poor. My stomach rumbled and my hunger brought back my resolve to divest myself of that which I could not eat. Better to sell a book to pay a bill then burn a book in the fireplace to keep warm.


Let me see what you have, he said.


I lifted up two heavy shopping bags and Jake methodically checked them over. He placed them carefully in stacks according to some system only he was aware of and finally after what seemed like an hour, looked up at me and said: Do you want cash or credit? I cleared my throat nervously, and replied: Cash.


Seventy-Five cash or a hundred twenty five in credit… sure you don’t want credit?


I shook my head. He opened the cash box and handed me 3 twenty dollar bills, a ten and five ones. I took it, walked out, and head lowered, went down the street to the A & P and bought some cheap white bread, a pound of bologna, some instant coffee, and some generic dry cat food for Lucky.


What was that my dad said: Get an education. They can never take that away from you.


Well, tomorrow I will have to apply for welfare. I think Jake and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other. I wonder if a stupid old math book that is 10 years old has any value rather than sitting on my bookshelf reminding me that my life or perhaps all of reality is just the proof of Voltaire’s quip that God is a cosmic joker with an audience that refuses to laugh.

Alone by the campfire

Campfire


Tonio had died and we all had traveled to the Yucatan as a final memorial. Half of his ashes would be kept in the United States and half would be buried in Mexico. It was so fitting as he had always lived with one foot on each side of the border.


He was young when he died – only 65. He was a fusion of the blood that run through Mexico. His maternal grandmother was of Spanish descent and grew up in the comfort of Haciendas and education and social sophistication. His paternal grandfather was descended from Yaqui shamans. Tonio came to the United States to be educated and obtained his degrees in modern languages and eventually became a full professor at the Ohio University. He and his family would spend summers in Mexico and winters in the United States where he would teach and write and paint.


The storms were raging and roaring up the storms on the waters of the gulf when we settled into the casa that sat back from the sea. Mark and I would walk along the beach and feel the deep sadness that only the wildness of nature can evoke. Behind a dune, we gathered driftwood and started a fire. Slowly the other family members gathered around. I pulled back from the fire and watched the family as they did their morning in the ways of our primitive ancestors. The waves crashed and the fire crackled. Silhouetted against the sea stood Tonio’s wife Jane, his daughter Laura, his sister Lucilla, and Grandmother Ona they held each other and were seemingly caught in a chant of mourning for a time that was passed.


As I watched them I had never felt more alone. The vast emptiness of the night sky reflected the hole created in the soul of this family with the passing of their patron.


I felt mesmerized and seemed to fall into some kind of trance. I could feel the coldness of the night and the hearts around me. A glow seemed to be forming behind them as if rising from the sea I saw a golden orb. It grew bigger and bigger until it illuminated the darkness with a mystical glow. And then, it faded away.


The campfire burned down. Hand in hand the women walked back to the casa. I sat alone in the night with my back against the dune.

I Never Loved Her Anyway

When Jimmy was caught in the agony of separation from Melody and his daughter, Joliet Epiphany, he told me about Mel… I never loved her anyway.

Now I sit watching TV as they report on the approaching and increasing danger of Katrina and I wonder did Melody leave New Orleans in response to the mandatory evacuation. I wonder did Jimmy leave New Orleans in response to the mandatory evacuation. Did they have enough sense in the drama queen brains to take Joliet to safety?

I was in New Orleans when the last threat came through and Jimmy and I were alone then … it was before Joliet was born. We refused to go to the Super Dome knowing it was going to be hell. The storm moved and moved over to Biloxi - The morning after we went out to search for food. I know my son. The odd of him changing significantly so that he would seek safety is minimal. Melody might have enough sense. But I don’t know.

Funny how we go through life and we survive the emotional storms that can devastate us… well we survive but we are still wounded. Our souls become fragmented and damaged. And as I watch the news streaming in from the storm area, I think that perhaps he did love her even if to protect himself he had to say: I never loved her anyway.