November 12, 2002
New Orleans
The Queen laid her head on my left shoulder, barely awake, and I felt a wash of mild euphoria. The strong scent of whiskey flowed from her cup and filtered through her hair, picking up the slightest hint of organic shampoo before landing in their final resting places within my nose. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was move. I rolled my head from my left shoulder to my right and the odor gently shifted to fermented juniper berries and burning cloves. The music was techno. Just the right mix of relaxing and stimulating. It kept me awake but thoroughly melow. I allowed my head a slight rhythic bounce to match.
A young black man lounged on the floor front of me. He wore small square sunglasses pulled toward the end of his nose, a leather trenchcoat, and was smoking something, presumably tobacco, out of a large black hookah. A white man sat next to him, crosslegged, with the look of someone who recently discovered the meaning of life via hallucinagenic eyedrops. He was dressed normally, as were we, and looked as out of place as we did.
A stout woman with long black hair and long white fangs tended a bar-o-ten-stools to my right. Everyone had to drink, or had to leave. Near the entrance two men plaid chess. Nearest me a goth drag queen was getting obviously losing to an overweight cyber-dork wearing glasses thick enough to see the future. How could (s)he not see that coming?
So this is New Orleans
A thin black man in a blue sweat shirt approached us near the corner of the cemetary. He was as facinated with cemetaries as I was. He professed to us his great desire to not be entombed, but rather to be cremated. “What happens to the shell,” he said, “makes no difference to the Lord after your spirit has left.” He wore an ID badge printed with his picture and the word Geneva in a bright color along the bottom. A religious organization, or something mundane? We noticed that tombs sized for one occupant generally contained the names of several people separated by several decades. Did they reuse the precious tomb space?
So this is New Orleans
A provocativley dressed Eastern European woman fed the Conductor shots from test tubes. She put the bottoms of them in her mouth and poured them into his mouth without the use of hands, twice. The first shot, he said, was “koolaid,” the second was Jagermeister. He complained about his stomach hurting. The Shot Woman convinced The Flautist to drink a few shots. This time I got to be the feeder. The Queen took a picture. The shot woman then insisted that I engage with her in the same ritual. I refused. She wrapped her arm around my waist and pulled our pelvises close together. She swayed to-and-fro, sweetalking me while literally trying to pour a test tube down my throat. I had to physically push her away.
So this is New Orleans
The Queen attached a helium balloon to The Conductor’s chair. Her knot was bad. During the conversationt the balloon loosed itself and drifted quickly up, over a balcony, and straint into the ceiling fan of a dating couple. The woman found this quite funny, the man didn’t. The ceiling fan blades tangled the ballon’s string into a much better knot than the Queen could tie. The Queen told me of her dissertation. I wondered if what you call a royal Doctor. How about: Her Majesty, Queen So-and-so, soverign of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Naboo, Ph.D.? It seems sort of silly.
So this is New Orleans
A bright light from the dance floor flashed directly into my eyes causing immediate and extreme pain. The music resumed at a volume that thump-thump-thumped my head right back to fight-or-flight. Panic rose from my toes. It was time to leave, but there was a problem. The Flautist had disappeared onto the dance floor with a stranger and not told us where to find her. The Conductor made a lap or two around the floor trying to find her while the Queen stayed with me in a vain, though much appreciated attempt to quell my discomfort. I spotted the Flautist on the floor just befor the Conductor returned. He came back saying something to the Queen that I couldn’t hear over the music. I pointed him to the Flautist. He smiled and went after her. The Queen led me by the hand right out of the club and off Bourbon St. After that I felt better.
So this is New Orleans
The Conductor led us out of some random bar on to the street. We rounded a corner and saw a large crowd of people dressed up like crazy musicians. A sailor, an overgrown baby, a ghost. All carrying instruments. A revalation zapped through my mind: “Oh wait! Those are crazy musicians!” I should’ve know. They started playing some New Orleans jazz. They spontaniously started walking down the street and into the Quarter. The four of us followed. The precession stopped walking (but not playing) so some of the members could buy beer. The Queen grabbed me by the hand and before I could object was teaching me how to swing dance and telling me how much she enjoyed it. What was I to say? No?
We paraded all around the city. I saw the giant shadow of a saint, arms raised overhead, projected on the St. Louis Cathederal. I learned why you should use the women’s restroom if you acually need to pee while in a gay bar. I drank bottled water at the oldest building in the city. I saw a fountain that spewed both water and flames, I played on the monkey bars in a park covered in dyed green concrete, and I bought french fries from a man who’s whole body was covered in tatooed checkerboard. I ate street vendor gumbo, watched a breakdancing silver man, and saw otherwise civilized looking men urinating in the gutter of a busy street.
As usual, though, the most memorable piece of the story was the part where the Writer discovers, while absorbing the all the sensations of a second story goth bar, that he has a crush on the Queen and there is not thing in the world that he can do about it. He found comfort in the fact that, historically, all crushes have faded rapidly with time. Except one…
And that was New Orleans
Posted by james at November 12, 2002 10:33 PM