Stress

This is a picture of the lovely Miss P. Notice that the photograph captures her in mid-scratch. Both members of the Dynamic Duo have fleas. Both of them are going to the vet tomorrow. Two separate visits, of course.

I gave formal notice at my job. I learned I can move into the house a week earlier than I expected. I'm not doing so much questioning and worrying about the larger implications of law school, etc. I'm just panicking about money and other practical issues.

I'm going to Maine next week to visit friends and get away. I love Maine, and this is just about the cheapest vacation I can arrange (short of vacationing in my parent's spare room) but I still can only just barely afford it. So no more records or frivolous purchases for at least a couple of months and I hope no big unexpected expenses. But I really really need a break from the heat and a chance to relax before school starts.

When I got home last night, there was an eviction notice on R's door. I feel bad for him, though I'm not sure why he can't manage the rent. I could guess, however.

An experiment

This was an experiment in posting a picture. Not sure if I should leave it up. I like the idea of having a simple, black and white page that loads quickly and easily even for people with dial-up. Plus I've been thinking I should be more concerned about my privacy online and remove some potentially identifying details from this blog--and not posting pictures of myself, friends, my neighborhood, etc.

But then again I have this ridiculous, addictive camera-phone thingy that makes me feel like I'm living in an episode of Get Smart. And as you can see, I am a natural born auteur of the medium.

Second lines gone wrong

New Orleans is one of the all-time weird towns, but when you live here you get used to it and don’t notice it so much, until in the course of a normal day perhaps you’re stopped at an intersection, and a police car comes out to block traffic and then here comes a second line—complete with the Social Aid & Pleasure Club in loud, bright matching suits and hats and feathered fans and bobbing umbrellas and a brass band and the whole neighborhood following and dancing behind.

I suppose some people get annoyed by the interruption of their day, but a real, honest not-for-the-tourists ghetto second-line has never failed to make me feel happy and glad to be alive in New Orleans, and hopeful about the future of the city and all of humanity.

Starting in the fall and lasting until Carnival season, there’s usually a second line every weekend somewhere in the city. There have been seasons where I’d try to find out where they were and go to maybe one or two a month. But the only one I went to last year was one I encountered accidentally.

Going to a second line pretty much means going into the ghetto. The beautiful, amazing thing about it is the way it transforms the ghetto into a wonderful place to be. There will be a lady selling pieces of pecan pie, and a guy going around with a cooler of beer and someone selling grilled sausage off a cooker in the back of a pickup truck, and everyone’s out in the street or on the stoop, or dancing on their front porch. But you’re going into the ghetto and you know that there are risks—cars broken into, muggings on the quieter streets. If you live in New Orleans, those are the risks you take every time you leave your house, and I haven’t really worried about it too much.

But lately things seem to be getting worse. It’s not just that you might get robbed, but that you might get shot during the course of the robbery. Maybe I’m just more paranoid or more aware of it after having to put the beat-down on the kids who tried to steal my purse back in February, but I think the numbers will bear me out. Crime is getting worse and I feel less comfortable and confident of my ability to take care of myself in the city’s sketchier neighborhoods.

The cops are always at these things, and not just to clear traffic ahead. In my experience, they’ve always seemed pretty low-key and tolerant. I’ve seen people smoking joints almost right in front of their faces, for example, and they didn’t do anything about it.

I have a relatively positive attitude toward the NOPD, I guess—at least compared to other police departments I’d had encounters with. They usually don’t rattle during the insanity of Mardi Gras, they responded to my would-be purse-snatching quickly and efficiently, and that’s been more-or-less true of their reaction to other neighborhood incidents. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that crime is getting way out of control, and they’ve got to take some of the responsibility for that.

But lately it seems they’re being much more aggressive in handling second lines and street parties. I’ve heard about them busting up a couple of small second lines in Treme, but the big story is them making several arrests and stopping the Mardi Gras Indians from parading on St. Joseph’s Day this year. I won’t explain too much about the Indians, because you either know already or you know how to Google. But in a way, they’re kind of the SAPC’s big brother—more extravagantly beautiful and more rare. They come out on Mardi Gras day and on St. Joseph’s Day or the closest Sunday to it, as well as making some paid appearances at concerts and so forth.

I’m not going to pretend to have any deep understanding of the meaning of second lines or Mardi Gras Indian traditions or any aspect New Orleans’ homegrown black culture. It’s my privilege just to observe it from the outside. But I think I’d be fair in saying that this culture is not purely innocent and wholesome—nothing interesting ever is—but it is often clearly beautiful and profoundly valuable. It’s one of the main ingredients in New Orleans’ special flavor.

Anyway, the Indians are generally too busy sewing their costumes all year to be street criminals. Members of the SAPCs are generally mature and past any juvenile delinquency. The members of the brass bands are probably closest to the gang-bangers, but they’re more likely to be drug users than anything else—just like musicians everywhere.

The second lines and parades do bring a lot of people out into the city’s more crime-ridden neighborhoods—in a way that’s a good thing, preferable to everyone huddling behind locked doors. But it does create the opportunity for crime.

Still I can’t understand why, after all this time, someone at the NOPD decides to get all badass about it. They say they stopped the St. Joseph’s Day parade because the Indians didn’t have a parade permit, but they’ve been parading on St. Joseph’s Day for a hundred years without one.

What the hell good does it do, to kill the good things that make this city special? This being the Big Sleazy, one suspects there’s some kind of twisted political deal behind it, but I don’t understand who benefits.

On Monday, a big crowd of Indians and their supporters showed up at the city council meeting to discuss the incident. I can just imagine the big histrionic circus that it was. Right at the beginning, 80-something-year-old Big Chief Tootie Montana of the Yellow Pocahontas got up to speak, and then collapsed from a heart attack before he'd barely started. He was pronounced dead across the street at Charity Hospital.

New Orleans is a city of drama queens. I don’t want to imagine the hysteria that attended this event, and you don’t want to hear or read the self-important pontification that has been perpetrated by self-appointed pundits in its wake. That’s why I didn’t exactly want to write about this.

But I can’t help but see the incident of a manifestation of New Orleans’ core problem of how to survive—not just how to survive in this completely unsuitable physical environment, but how to survive as a distinct cultural entity. If you stamp out the “cultcha,” we’ll just be a smaller Houston—but without the Mexicans. The cultcha seems to require a degree of chaos and anarchy, but without a reasonable amount of law and order, everyone who has any means will get tired of dealing with the corruption and crime and disorder and will flee—as they have been doing for a long time now. Then the city will be left to the poor, the ignorant and the criminal and it’ll be a sweatier version of inner Detroit.

Red beans & romantic fallout

I wanted my Monday red beans & rice, and I wanted better than they have at the cafeteria, so I went by a café located a few blocks from campus. They have only five tables, and two of them were occupied, one by the chemical engineer and an Asian girl. So I turned around and left.

The chemical engineer and I went on two dates, and then our would-be relationship faded out for lack of interest. We didn’t have a fight or anything. We just didn’t make plans for another date. My preferred method for dealing with guys who I’ve briefly dated when I see them afterward is to acknowledge their existence, exchange very brief pleasantries, and go on about my business. It’s civilized, it’s mature, and it immediately defuses any awkwardness.

Except I’ve seen him in public a couple of times since we went out in December and he’s demonstrated his intention to play the “You Don't Exist for Me” game, which seems ridiculous after such an innocuous little non-relationship. So it makes things awkward. Am I supposed to force him to acknowledge me, or sit there and ignore him and feel like as big a fool as he is?

Oh well, the reason I wasn’t interested in him as a romantic prospect was that he didn’t seem like a grown-up, and I suppose my perception was correct. All the more reason to give up dating.

But it’s okay, because I went to the Oak Street Café, where I hadn’t tried before, and they had very good red beans for very cheap, served quickly so I had time to ride by my new house before going back to work.

It’s so, so cute! I can hardly wait to move! I’ll miss a few things about my old neighborhood—the big Rue, walking Hank through the Garden District, some of my neighbors—but I’m really ready to get out of there. I wish I was moving today. Of course, I haven’t even started to pack yet. But I have been working on a big purge—I want to get rid of half of what I own, all the crap I hold on to and drag around for no reason. Anyone want a big box of Mardi Gras paraphernalia?

More musings on love, and my new records

A float trip for today had been planned by AD & me. But he had to go out of town on family business, and the other potential floaters decided to go blueberry picking instead. I think they’re nuts—it’s way to hot to be out in the sun picking blueberries. It’s the perfect day to be half-submerged in the cool, shaded water of the Bogue Chitto. I feel deprived, and I’m tempted to crash a hotel pool.

My actual day’s itinerary:

Nile Café, the new (yet another) middle eastern restaurant. My evaluation: shrug. I felt virtuous for having fish instead of lamb. But then I went to…

The big Rue, where I had a coffee milkshake. And I ran into G, a single, age-appropriate, reasonably attractive fellow deejay. Someone I know to be looking to date and who on paper looks like a good match for me, but I never do anything about it. Not enough spark would be the lazy way to explain why not, except I seem to have major, immediate chemistry mostly with psychopaths, the Insane Republican Med Student being Exhibit A.

For years now I’ve thought I was ready for a real relationship. I thought I wanted a real relationship. I told people I wanted a boyfriend, maybe even a husband. And I dated and dated and had various flings and misadventures, but in five years the longest relationship I had was with the IRMS. And when I broke up with him, I told him it was because I wanted a real boyfriend. I don’t even want to start explaining why he wasn’t “my boyfriend” after several months of dating and fucking exclusively—suffice it to say that he was a paranoid control freak, misogynist and (did I mention?) psychopath. The real reason I broke up with him is because I was afraid of him, didn’t like him and didn’t like spending time with him out of bed, and didn’t like myself for wanting to fuck him. But I didn’t tell him any of that stuff, because for the first time in my life I had no interest in clearing the air or coming to some kind of understanding at the end of a relationship—I just wanted to get the hell out before he made me as insane as he was.

But I persisted in wanting a “serious” relationship, or thinking I did. Until this spring, somewhere in the desultory whatever-that-was with the Lonely Limey or my Mrs. Robinson adventure with T the Underaged, the shell of that desire started to crack and crumble and I realized there was really nothing much inside it. I’m not cut out for the standard, make-a-commitment-and-share-living-space serious relationship, and I think I’ve always known it.

What I wanted was to be loved and cared for, or some reassurance that I was lovable and worthy of being cherished by a man. I still want those things, but the need doesn’t seem so critical anymore. If I have any readers at this point, they’re probably sick of reading about law school, but among all the reasons I’m going to law school are these: to stop selling myself short and to take full responsibility for taking care of myself. When I made that decision, I realized I don’t need a man—which seems obvious, since no man has made any substantial contributions to my well-being since I was divorced ten years ago.

I still like men and want them around, but dealing with them seems scary and sticky right now.

So, G at the Rue. He probably is relationship material, but I don’t want that kind of relationship. I think I really do want what Edmund White’s favorite woman wanted—romantic affairs followed by lifelong friendship. It’s probably not a coincidence that my better relationships have tended to work out that way, despite the fact that I have never let them evolve that way naturally and peacefully. But if there’s not enough chemistry to fuel the sexy affair part, then it’s better to jump directly to being friends.

Anyway, I had my milkshake at the Rue. Then I should have gone home but it was the hottest part of the day and I knew that the air-conditioning in my apartment would then be losing its daily battle with the late afternoon sun. So to kill some time I stopped in at…

The CD Warehouse. This is usually safe, because most of the time they don’t have much of anything worth buying. The most I’ve ever walked out of there with was three used CDs—before today.

Someone with good taste in music apparently had a financial crisis and had to get rid of a lot of stuff—I feel your pain, buddy, been there myself.

I bought 13 CDs, which wasn’t exactly in the budget, though they were a bargain. They’ll still be a bargain if the check goes through before payday and I have to pay an NSF fee. (Bad girl, Miss H! Boy will I be glad to see payday this month…) I could have bought another couple of dozen.

One of my new acquisitions is Emmylou Harris’ Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town, which came out in 1978. She had some hits off this record, but as I sit here and listen to it, I realize that I know every single song by heart—because my dad had this on 8-track. Pause-click.

It’s a great record. My dad used to have natural, unschooled good taste in music. What happened? The last time I had the misfortune to travel with my parents by car, he whistled along to a John Philip Sousa tape the whole way. If hell does exist, I imagine it will be something like that trip.

I’m reading Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. It’s terrifying—the scenario seems way too plausible—it’s keeping me up at night.

The night's itinerary

Just for the sake of my own memory, and to track what might happen to my boho lifestyle, when I post I'm going to start listing the places I've been that day, and maybe what records I was listening to and so forth.

Today I stayed home during the daytime. I made the mistake of cooking both lunch and dinner at home, and the heat hasn't dissipated. These are the days for eating out or making salads.

In the evening:
One Eyed Jacks, a wrap party for a film S was working on. Free food and drinks and a highly competent but uninteresting funk cover band
Oswalds, just looked in. This is Harry Anderson's new place where El Matador used to be, dammit. We saw Harry onstage through the rips in the window curtains. Twenty dollar cover.
Cafe Rose Nicaud on Frenchmen Street, had some wonderful ginger limeade.
Looked in on Kermit Ruffins at the Blue Nile, but cover was $10 and we were broke.
Checkpoint Charlie, some girl punk band, not my thing but not bad--always nice to see a girl playing the guitar for a change instead of hanging around to suck the guitar player's dick.

Manufacturing the apocalypse

Though I try to avoid it, last night I had to go to the ghetto Wal-Mart. It’s about five blocks from my house and opened about a year ago on the former site of a housing project. It very inappropriately was the recipient of a HUD subsidy. It’s a bad place.

While I chained my bike to the bike rack, a short hispanic gentleman had his foot propped up on the rack and was cutting his toenails. There was a horde of wild teenagers congregating around the entrance, but that’s usual. The poor greeter was wearing a red Bozo-the-Clown nose. In the main aisle near housewares, a fully grown teenage girl was sitting barefoot and cross-legged on the floor. I’m not making any of this up.

I’ve been having spasms of fear and regret that this might be the end of my carefree, creative, boho lifestyle. Well, creative? If I were really going to write some astonishingly original work of literary genius, probably I would have done it by now or at least have shown more evidence of having it in me. Actually, I think I will prove to be a late-bloomer in this and other aspects, but then why try to force it prematurely? And why be afraid of changes and new experiences? Well, cause they’re pretty scary changes and new experiences.

But as for carefree and boho…well, I won’t have so many days to while away lying around and listening to the radio, reading and having goofy one-sided conversations with the dog, or spending hours people-watching in the Rue. I do kind of regret that.

As far as running around all night, listening to bands, drinking, socializing and flirting—I wanted to go hear Liquidrone tonight, but the $12 cover was too steep for my broke end-of-the-month self. I’ve had fun and heard lots of amazing music in New Orleans, but I’ve missed a lot of great stuff due to being broke. Also, I’m tired of drinking and I’m tired of the male population of New Orleans.

So instead I was lounging around at home, reading this article in the New Yorker about Patrick Henry College, a new school for Christian home-schoolers with an interest in politics. These kids sign a statement when they enroll that says, among other things, that they believe that non-believers will suffer eternal conscious torment in the afterlife. They can’t go on dates without their parents’ permission and they find it inconceivable that George W. Bush would lie for any reason. This school is only a few years old and has only about three hundred students, but they have as many students in the White House internship program as Georgetown.

That just seems like another reason to go to law school. Someone has got to fight back against these people. We can’t concede power within the system to them. They are quite like the Muslims they consider their enemy (after liberals). They all want to forcibly return the world to some imaginary golden age, they just disagree when that golden age was—the 1950s or the Ottoman Empire? At its root, I think, it’s about fear of the future and of knowledge—they’d rather see the end times than see the world change into something frighteningly unfamiliar. I understand that fear, actually. But that golden age never existed and the future is unstoppable. We should face it with the clearest vision and the coolest head we can manage and try not to wreck it. I very much do not want to live in the world and society they want to bring about.

Their conception of god is extremely disturbing to me. It’s not like I’m some vehement atheist, either. I think we have to use our rationality and the knowledge that science has given us, but there’s so much we don’t understand and may never understand—like why there is anything at all, that’s the biggest one. And right after that one, even though our brains and our selves may be the function of electro-biochemistry, at the deepest level that doesn’t really explain in any satisfying way where the spark of life and consciousness comes from. We’ve become collaborators in our own creation, but we certainly are not our original makers. So there’s plenty of room there for mystery and spirituality and god.

But a god who will condemn us, his creations, to everlasting torment because we didn’t read the right ancient book, or having read it did not accept a particular interpretation of it, and thus a particular bizarre mechanism of salvation (from ourselves or this cruel god?) because it didn' t make any sense to our presumably god-given brains—that kind of god is petty and sadistic. Even if that’s what god is really like (and it seems very unlikely), I refuse to worship him or call him good. Really, I’m more compassionate and tolerant than that, and I’m not a particularly nice person. Such a god, if he exists, should be ashamed of himself.

Losing my microsoft virginity

My whole computing life until now has taken place in the safe and sheltered world of Apple. After all, publishing and design are the only fields I know of where Macs are the norm.

But the law school IT people won't support Macs and the test-taking software is not available for them, and so I have crossed to the other side and acquired a new Dell laptop loaded with Windows XP. It played cheesy new age music for me when I turned it on for the first time.

It just seems slightly not quite right, like an alien invader who has taken over the body of your next door neighbor.

I've just contributed to the personal fortune of Bill Gates. That's one clever dude with a genius scam.

But I guess I can take comfort in thinking that at least some of my money might end up with the Gates Foundation, which does a lot of good work, and seems to do it much smarter and more efficiently than any government or UN agency.

And it's not like Apple represents some virtuous ideal of computing--does it?

Well, this is embarrassing...

I'm an idiot. The waiter is a jerk. Actually, he's engaged--to a dumpy girl who lets him mack on other women and tucks him in at the end of the night.

Well, it's all just as well, for reasons explained previously. It ended up being a fun night, anyway. I took S with me, and we ran into her hilarious friend W, who had come into the bar to buy cigarettes and ended up staying for a series of alternating Miller Lights and shots of Jamesons, with an interjection of birthday champagne. And at least I got some chocolate birthday cake out of the deal. But really, phoey on boys.

On the other radio station

I think Dave Pirner was the deejay on WTUL this morning from 8 to 10. Or I was hallucinating. When I turned on the radio, he was talking about a member of Soul Asylum who apparently died last week. Then played a set for him. Anyway, whether it was Pirner or not, he did a great show. I didn't recognize most of what he played, or recognized it only vaguely, except for a Graham Parker song near the end. Then he messed things up for the next deejay by not programing the CD player so it wouldn't keep playing, and the following deejay babbled on about how it didn't matter because he was just excited to be in the same room as Dave Pirner.

Odd. Well, the WTUL schedule lists the deejay in that slot as one David G. Is "G" Pirner's middle initial or was that just a one-off deal? Perhaps I've been starting my Mondays off with him all along and didn't know it. I thought you were supposed to be affiliated with Tulane to be on WTUL.

These days I listen to WTUL more than WWOZ. It's good to live in a town where there are two good options, not including the NPR affiliate.

More about writing, money, sex and friendship

R’s problem houseguest is in jail for check forgery, according to MP.

A couple of people seem to be dismayed that I said I’m not a fiction writer, or they’ve asked what happened to my novel. Um, which one? Okay, after about three false starts in the last few years, there was one that had some momentum for awhile and is stalled somewhere around the halfway mark. It might have some good parts, but that’s the best I can say about it. Writing fiction, or at least long-form fiction, is for me like trying to get very thick mud through a very thin funnel—lots of hard, messy pushing and very little coming out at the other end. Sometimes I’m get the itch to write a short story, and it comes out fairly easily and might be publishable quality. That happens maybe once every couple of years.

The writing that I think I’m best at is also the kind that is easiest and most fun for me—some kind of personal nonfiction. And I guess I’m arrogant enough to think that my own real life is as interesting as that of whatever character I might invent.

Anyway, look, I’m not quitting writing. I’m going to keep doing it and keep trying to get published, and I feel pretty confident that I’ll have a book or two with my name on it before it’s all over.

What I’m giving up on is trying to make writing my main source of income. The most successful writers I know personally, who’ve published books and articles in national papers and magazines, are all still struggling with money. I think one of the hardest, scariest things to be in our society is an old lady, and it’s even scarier if you’re poor. I’m not going to inherit much of anything from my folks. It seems unlikely I’m going to marry again, let alone marry someone with money. It’s even less likely that I’ll have kids, let alone good smart kids who will make money and take care of me. So I have to take care of myself.

Law school is a gamble. It might turn out to be a mistake, but I think it will give me a way to do something interesting and worthwhile while making a good living. Like the gospel-singing lady on the bus says, that ain’t no bad thing. Okay, if I get out of school and go to work someplace where Exxon is my client, then you can accuse me of selling out. In fact, I hope you will stage an intervention.

But don’t worry too much about me writing. At this point it’s a compulsive habit. The best one I have.

Speaking of compulsion, I have to decide whether or not to go to the waiter’s birthday party. Fifteen years ago, if a cute appealing guy invited me to a party, I would have gone without question. But you get older and beat up by love a few times, and what seemed simple seems impossibly complex and fraught with danger.

JT gave me some crude but good advice, to get my "dick on the side." Not that I should be fucking guys I don’t like or care about, just that sex and guys and relationship shouldn’t be at the center of my life.

The problem is that when I get involved with someone with whom I have some chemistry, it’s like it stages a takeover of about 80% of my brain. I’m a lot saner and more peaceful without all that stuff. But I do miss the good parts, the flirting and fucking and going to the Camellia Grill in the middle of the night. I just don’t know if I trust myself to indulge without giving in to the brain takeover. I've only been able to avoid it when I go out with guys I don’t particularly like or respect, and what fun is that? It’s definitely not a recipe for good sex.

But this is silly. It would be silly and neurotic not to go. It’s just a party, I can leave whenever I want, it’s not a promise to sleep with anyone.

In other news, it seems I’m being stalked by a girl. No, it’s not romantically or sexually motivated, at least I don’t think so. I met this girl, who has been dubbed the Sandspur, though an acquaintance a few months ago. She just moved to New Orleans in January. She’s perfectly nice, or at least it seemed so. Okay, so in six months she’s already dated a few guys I dated first, which seems a little creepy—but it is a small town, and the first one she met before she met me, so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. It’s just that, to me, we just don’t seem to click, don’t have much to talk about or much in common except our dating histories. I don’t think that matters to her. She seems compulsively extroverted and needs company constantly. I’m definitely an introvert who would prefer to be alone a lot of the time. Sometimes I isolate myself too much and I’m grateful when my established friends pursue me a bit. But this is different.

One day she called me and I realized I just didn’t want to talk to her and I didn’t answer. Then the next time she called I really didn’t want to talk to her, and now after six unanswered phone messages and a couple of emails, I feel like I’m being stalked and I’ll do anything to avoid her. I hate feeling rude. I feel a little guilty, too, but not that guilty. It seems like a normal person would have caught on by now that I’m just not that interested. Because she doesn’t get the hint, she seems creepy, and it looks like I am going to be in the uncomfortable position of actually having to tell her to stop calling me.

More singing about Jesus while riding public transportation

If it's a bus-riding day, and I'm even later than usual, I might get on the bus with this lady who listens to Gospel music on her Walkman and loudly sings along. She's got a pretty good voice. She's in tune and she sounds a bit like Esther Phillips. She's psychotically cheerful. The reaction of the other passengers varies. Sometimes they just roll their eyes at each other and otherwise ignore her. Other days, like today, they half-mockingly cheer her on and applaud. Before she gets off, she makes an announcement along the lines of how she's just praising God, ain't nothing bad about that, instead of talking about her praying why don't we pray along, and have a blessed day.

I guess she's not as annoying as the Christian youth group kids on the streetcar because she can sing and because she's homegrown local color. And she means well and she's nuts. But in the end it's still kind of annoying--all that cheerfully relentless well-meaning self-righteous proselytizing.

But thank you Jesus for the chance to swim in that beautiful swimming pool last night. Thanks to Miss S and Miss A as well, and the other Miss H.

A cabdriver and a swimming pool

This crotchety middle-aged cab driver lives across the street from me in a potentially cute but unkempt double with an ugly half-fallen-off awning over the porch. I’ve heard he supposedly lives there with his mother, but I’ve never seen her. I suspect she might be buried in the back yard. He’s a real old-school Yat, probably lived in that house since he was a kid.

During the summer, he comes out dressed in plastic shower shoes and those 70s-style running shorts that are cut higher on the side, with ribbon covering the stitching. That’s all he’s wearing. He has a thin frame, but with a swollen beer gut stretching out over the top of his shorts. It’s pretty unappetizing. It’s a sight that makes the male form seem unappealing, which is actually kind of a benefit when I’m going through a bout of celibacy. Anyway, he puts on a t-shirt when he drives, but he’s still wearing those shorts.

Last night, for at least a half hour starting around 11, he was out in his front yard throwing bottles and trash into the street and screaming obscenities.

“A real buncha fuckin assholes around here, you wanna piece of my white ass, come and get it motherfucker, ya fuckin son of a bitch….” Etc., etc.

It’s all kind of Psycho meets Taxi Driver meets Confederacy of Dunces.

Apparently someone dumped some garbage in his front yard, which is admittedly pretty rude. But the thing is his yard looks like a dump, anyway. And once he got done screaming and throwing, his front yard was clear for the first time since I’ve lived on the street. All the garbage was on the sidewalk, and not in a bag, either.

He thought one of the wanna-be ghetto thugs from around the corner did it, but paranoid minds might consider the possibility that MP is secretly behind it all. It’s well known that MP has wanted to get his hands on that house for a long time. Maybe he figures a little harassment is what it will take to finally get the cab driver to sell. I wonder if he’s capable of such deviousness.

Anyway, it’s really hot and we’re all close to going off the rails. Except AD, I guess. He just got back from India, compared to which New Orleans is cool, clean and orderly.

As for me, I am grateful that S has a friend who is house sitting at a place with a pool, and that she has invited me to come with her to a little pool and dinner party tonight. Right now a swimming pool seems more desirable than sex and chocolate put together.

A new bed, some fleas, and a curse on Christian youth

My wonderful neighbor A gave me his almost new, very firm and comfortable, not-smelly queen-size bed. First he helped me get my old bed out of the apartment. We did it the lazy white trash way and threw it off the balcony. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown furniture off a balcony before—it was fun. Now my new bed is like a big barge of relaxation and comfort in the middle of my bedroom. And with the money I saved I can buy a new couch.

That’s the good news. The bad news—it has come to my attention that both Hank and Miss P have the fleas.

Also, jeez is it hot. Since I got rid of the Volkswagen I’ve been biking to work everyday it doesn’t rain, but not the last three days. Highs in the mid-90s, 378% humidity everyday. You’re coated with sweat the second you walk out the door. A thirty-minute bike ride is too much to contemplate. I’ve been taking the bus instead. Except last night I had some business on Maple Street after work, so I took the streetcar home.

Now I hate to be hateful and mean, but sometimes it can’t be helped. To the Christian youth group of about 20 or so who got on the streetcar last night—the ones who couldn’t figure out how to put their money in the farebox; who took 10 minutes just to get on the damn car; who screeched when the car started moving; who wore matching t-shirts with bible quotes on them; who were scared of sitting next to a stranger, especially a black one, and thus stood in the aisle making it difficult for anyone else to get on or off; who took pictures of every single house and building on St. Charles, even the ugly ones, and fussed about which house was the Real World house; who started loudly singing some kind of bible camp song for the enlightenment and enjoyment of the other passengers; who didn’t seem to realize the streetcar is not some slow, dull Disneyland ride, but rather a form of public transportation relied on by many locals to get to and from work, preferably with as little hassle as possible:

I don’t hope you get assaulted or killed, but I do kind of hope you get mugged at gunpoint. I hope that, looking for a bathroom, you wander into the backroom of the wrong bar in the quarter and accidentally witness an act of public sex so repugnant and vile that it burns itself into your brain and renders you incapable of normal sexual function for the rest of your life. I hope someone slips something into your soda-pop and you wake up on the sidewalk with dried vomit on your lips, crusted blood on your nose, the worst headache of your life, and no underwear or recollection of how you got there. I hope you take your cornfed ass and the tatters of your faith in your petty god and go back to the Midwest where you belong. And don’t come back.

Not sure if I should be proud or appalled

From Tulane PR:

Last week the U.S. Senate approved the appointment of Judge William H. Pryor Jr. to the
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Pryor, who graduated magna
cum laude from Tulane University Law School in 1987, was editor of the Tulane Law
Review and a founding member of the Tulane chapter of the Federalist Society for Law
and Public Policy Studies. The vote on Pryor's appointment was part of a recent
compromise brokered between Democrats and Republicans on Bush's judicial
nominees.

Anxiety--reminding myself why law school, part 3

The other night I had my first anxiety dream about law school. It was such a textbook classic that it just made me laugh. In the dream, I moved into my house but it was right across the street from the school. It was the first day of classes but I'd forgotten about it, I couldn't find my class schedule, and I hadn't done my reading. In my dream, we had white coats to wear like they do in medical school. I put on my coat and immediately got dirt on it, which I could not get off. Thank god I'm not really going to medical school, there's no way I could keep one of those coats clean for more than ten minutes.

But I've been reading Law School Confidential, just to make sure I have some kind of grip on what's in front of me. And it's freaking me out, because it seems like such a long hard slog, and it seems too easy get on the wrong track and stay on that slog for the rest of your lawyerly life.

Plus, within a couple of months I'll have paid off my credit cards and gotten the IRS off my back, and my salary at my current job will start seeming a lot bigger--and here I go quitting and taking out a student loan.

Still, I think I'm going to be good at this. I'm verbal and analytical and naturally kind of a wonk. If you've been reading this blog, you might have doubts about my ability to write in a way that's clear, concise and to the point, but I have done it often in my work life.

I've talked generally about why law school, but I do have some specific ideas about the kind of work I might like to do. I'd do a judicial clerkship if I could get one, then possibly work for an environmental public interest firm. I could also see myself working for the Louisiana DEQ or the EPA, except those agencies seem so badly compromised, particularly the DEQ. I don't necessarily have to specialize in environmental law, either. I have to allow my experience in school to help me figure out what most suits me. I could see myself working as a US Attorney, maybe. But in the end I'd like to end up a law professor who also does some outside work, or directs a clinic. There are at least two professors at school who have careers I admire and would like to use as a model. It's just going to be very, very important to stay focused on where I want to go with this and avoid getting sidetracked by the gravitational pull of what everyone else is doing.

Arlene, Catrin Striebeck, and Mrs. Robinson

Well, here we go again. Who picks those stupid names for these storms,anyway? I love the weather before the storm. Less heat and humidity, more gusty breezes. It’s almost like the sea breeze you get in a real coast town.

I gave Hank a bath in the front yard this afternoon--maybe his last ritual of humiliating public bathing on Philip Street. Now he is extra shiny and smells great.

That movie Head-on is hanging with me. It’s really a secondary character that’s sticking. I can’t remember the character’s name, but she’s played by an actress named Catrin Striebeck—I looked her up.

Briefly, the film is about two people who meet in a psychiatric hospital in Hamburg after they’ve each attempted suicide. One is a lovely young Turkish girl who is suffocating at home under the control of her father and older brother. She’s a budding wild child, and she wants to be free to explore the wonderful world of liquor, drugs, music, dancing and fucking around. The guy is an old punk on the skids. He happens to be Turkish, but his ethnicity doesn’t mean much to him. But because he’s Turkish he’d make an at least marginally acceptable husband in the eyes of her family. She convinces him to marry her so she can be free of her father’s household. The deal is they won’t be sexually or romantically beholden to each other, but she’ll take care of him in return for him granting her her freedom. Hey guess what!? They end up falling in love with each other. It’s no Hollywood romance, though.

Anyway, the character I’m semi-fixated on is the fuck-buddy (for lack of a better term) of the old punk. Partly maybe because she looks a bit like me—if I were skinnier and had a jawline to speak of. Nose, cheekbones, eyebrows, hair—god help me, forehead lines—she’s my homegirl. And since this is a European film and not so uptight about nakedness, I can report that her tits are quite like mine, too.

Watching the movie, I would have guessed the actress was five or more years older than me, but I discovered she’s only about a year and a half older. She shows her age, but she’s hot.

The character is not the one the man falls in love with. She’s not the one who inspires him to keep going. She displays a twinge or two of jealousy when she catches on to what’s going down, so at first it’s easy to identify her as the reject.

But the two leads spark like they do largely because they’re equally fucked-up and self-destructive. And the young Turkish girl needs him. And she cleans his apartment and cooks for him.

My girl doesn’t need him and doesn’t do anything for him but fuck him and play naked backgammon with him afterward. Which, you know, actually sounds like a great relationship to me.

There are two self-sufficient female characters in the movie. One is the bride’s divorced cousin from Istanbul, who’s a bit of a yuppie corporate whore type, and my girl, a rock’n’roll hairdresser with black eyeshadow and tattoos.

I noticed her, I guess, because my sexual personality or m.o. or something—I don’t know the word I’m looking for—is changing. I’m turning into an "older woman," but what kind of older woman will I be? I’m only becoming more of an independent loner, but I don’t want to be celibate, nor do I want to be an all-out tramp. Though I do think some women can pull off trampiness, I don’t think I have it in me. I don’t want to be a cold-hearted maneater, but even more I don’t want to be pathetic and needy and lovelorn. That balance between tough and tender is tough to maintain.

Since Anne Bancroft just died, there’s been a lot of conversation about her role as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. That movie is way overrated, but she’s the best thing in it, by far. She was sexy, too—I mean, she was only 34 when she made that movie. But that character, sadly, seems both cold and pathetic at once—which doesn’t seem fair, she should be magnificent.

Well, life isn’t a movie, thank god. Coincidentally, when I was writing this at the Rue, a guy started flirting with me quite shamelessly. I mean that in a good way, he was not too embarrassed and not coy about it. I love it when they have the balls to just make a move. Well—as long as they’re reasonably attractive and not too pushy and they don’t make it seem like it’s a habit they practice with every woman who goes by—oy, the more you think about this shit, the more complicated it gets. Still, I have to say that while a little bit of shyness is endearing, painful crippling shyness is not attractive in a guy past the age of 18.

So anyway, this guy got it right. I’ve seen him before and registered "cute guy," but didn’t really give it much thought. He’s got the big-nose-and-cheekbones thing I like. Come to think of it, he looks something like MM with hair. Wearing long shorts and Doc Martens.

He invited me to his birthday party at the Half Moon next week. So I happen to know that he’s going to be 37, which makes him almost exactly 5 months older than me—in other words, age appropriate. What a novel idea.

He seemed pretty quick and funny. But he also said he waits tables at the Trolley Stop Café, and I have to admit that might be a mark against him. I’m not judgmental about money or the lack thereof, but I am turned off by slackerliness. Plus, oy, restaurant people! Still, if he’s a waiter/artist, waiter/musician or something like that it’s cool. As long as he does whatever it is and doesn’t just talk about it. And is reasonably good at it. But maybe I shouldn’t be snotty about things like that, especially if I just want to get laid. It would help if I knew what I wanted.

Anyway, we’ll see how things look to me next week. Haven’t seen the UD, by the way, but I will tonight.

I was thinking about all this a few days ago when I read an essay by Edmund White in The New Yorker called "My Women." Since he was gay at a time when it was hard to admit that to yourself or anyone else, he writes that he was constantly attracting unhappy women who wanted him to solve their problems, and who he always had to disappoint. But the essay turns out to be about the happy women in his life who didn’t try to get something from him that he couldn’t give. The last paragraph describes the kind of woman I’d like to be:

"What I loved about Anne and Marilyn—and even Alice, Sally and Gretchen—was that they weren’t unhappy. Marilyn wanted nothing from me but my friendship, and she has it still. She believed in love but dreaded marriage. For her, the proper form of love was a short, romantic affair (followed by an eternal friendship), just as a sonnet is the best form for a love lyric. She wasn’t afraid to be alone. In fact, she preferred it…. And she gathered her friends around her year after year. Because she and the others I’ve written about here were the first women I knew who weren’t unhappy, who never once made me feel guilty, they showed me the way to friendship with women."

Defend New Orleans--Why Law School? Part 2

I have friends and acquaintances with real problems. They’re unemployed. They’re sick or their mother is, their marriage is on the rocks. And I think, here I am in a comfortable place in my life—trouble’s going to come soon enough, but in the meantime why shake things up? Well, cause, I’m stagnating. I need a challenge. I think I’m capable of more.

But what, what exactly to do with this law school business?

Well---

There’s a t-shirt I’ve seen around town. It depicts a skull in profile, a fleur-de-lis tattoed on it, with a spiky mohawk. Above, gothic lettering reads "Defend New Orleans."

I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, outside of a steel town outside of Pittsburgh. My mother grew up not far away, in a tiny coal town in southeastern Ohio, near the West Virginia panhandle. It’s pretty, hilly countryside. We lived ten minutes from a state park. My childhood was full of walks in the woods, fishing trips and country drives.

But it was also a place where houses were covered with soot, where the rivers were toxic and the hilltops strip-mined. I hated all that. Before I had politics I intuitively felt the wrongness of it.

I’ve always been probably too sensitive to place. I loved and longed for cities, but if we went to Pittsburgh and took a wrong turn through a desolated ghetto, I was depressed for days.

But in some ways the suburbs seemed worse than the ghetto. We moved into the midwestern suburban sprawl when I started high school, and I was miserable every second I lived there. Again, I just felt in my gut that this was wrong, bad, an inappropriate use of land and an unpleasant, inefficient way to live. It breaks my heart now to see that same cancerous sprawl eat up the landscape of my earlier childhood.

In some ways I’m not sure if I’m constitutionally suited for life in New Orleans. I’m a bit too sober and upright. I’m in the south largely to avoid winter, but the reason I was attracted to New Orleans in particular was that it seemed sheltered from the strip-mallization of America. At least inside the city, it has retained most of its architectural identity and its distinct culture.

There are costs associated with that. The ugliness of New Orleans’ suburbs always seemed to me a karmic cost. Besides that, New Orleans has been preserved by neglect and poverty. It would be better if it were preserved by love, care and intelligent management—but then would it still be New Orleans?

Anyway, even good historic preservation isn’t going to save New Orleans when the big hurricane comes up the river.

Maybe we should just shrug our shoulders. Maybe the city that lives by apathy should die by apathy. Maybe this town was meant to be the stuff of myth, and nothing will fulfill its fate like watery doom.

But John McLachlan at the CBR says that if you can solve New Orleans’ problems, you can solve the world’s problems. He’s prone to meaningless hyperbole, but in this case it might be grounded in reality.

The biggest threat to New Orleans’ continued existence is wetlands loss. Global warming is going to cause huge problems for people everywhere, and people in coastal areas most of all, but it seems to be a human trait that we can’t take seriously problems that are more than a decade away from manifesting themselves. But New Orleans is one of the first places to face a more or less immediate threat from rising sea levels, combined with oil-and-gas-related dredging that is causing Louisiana’s wetlands to wash away at a scary rate. Add the continued sinking of the city due to our dependence on pumping water out when it rains, and we could be underwater very, very soon. Even the Bubbas and Boudreaux’s seem to be catching on to this. And if we can figure out how to save New Orleans, we might have solutions that could be exported to even poorer coastal cities in Asia and elsewhere that will face similar threats in the future.

Other things we need to do to save New Orleans: Force the oil, gas and chemical industries to be responsible corporate citizens, and stop letting them anally rape the state while we smile and beg for more. We need an economy that's based on more than gas and tourism.

We need to get serious about fixing our abysmal public school system. This is going to take the introduction of competent and intelligent administrators, lotsa money, and most importantly (and improbably) an end to the Louisiana Way of graft, cronyism, and race politics.

We need to get serious and broad-thinking about curbing street crime and violence. Actually, fixing the schools will probably help a lot in this department.

Beyond that, we need intelligent planning and design, an ecologically sound way to control the formosan termites before they destroy our lovely old houses, and in general an appreciation of what we have. I’d like to think we could solve some of our problems without turning into Atlanta or Houston.

Anyway, Tulane conveniently has one of the best environmental law programs in the country.

Next door

The alleged bad man next store was around quite a bit earlier in the week, but I haven’t seen him in a few days. He does give off a creepy vibe, but there’s no evidence of any bad deeds done, except for some Netflix envelopes that disappeared from my mailbox. I haven’t heard R laugh in weeks, though. He used to always be cracking up, loud. He has a great laugh, that was why I was inclined to like him.

Playlist

Last night I substituted for Michael Dominici on his Moodswing show. It was really fun to have the open format.

Some callers asked me to post my playlist on WWOZ's website. I typed it up, but the webmaster is AWOL and you can't post anything there without his approval. So I shall post it here, in case anyone reading wants some ideas about something new to listen to, and so I will know where to find it if the webmaster returns.

There's more to write about--later tonight, perhaps.

Prince “Reflection,” Musicology
Prince “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” Sign o the Times
Pleasure Club “One Hand Washes the Other,” Here Comes the Trick
Lucinda Williams “Essence,” Essence
Esther Phillips “I Got it Bad and That Ain’t Good,” Black Eyed Blues
Alex Chilton “My Rival,” Like Flies on Sherbet
Egg Yolk Jubilee “Reefer Man,” Champions of Breakfast
Morning 40 Federation “Bottom Shelf Blues,” Morning 40 Federation
Ray Charles “Let’s Go Get Stoned” Very Best of Ray Charles
Nina Simone “Don’t Smoke in Bed,” The Ultimate Nina Simone
Aretha Franklin “A Brand New Me,” Atlantic box
Anita O’Day “Sweet Georgia Brown,” Once Upon a Summertime
Ruben Gonzalez “Mandinga,” Introducing…Ruben Gonzalez
Carlos Puebla, Santiago Martinez and Pedro Sosa “Amorosa Guajira,” La Bodeguita del Medio
Los Super Seven “La Sirena,” Los Super Seven
Los Super Seven with Caetano Veloso “Baby,” Canto
Cassandra Wilson “Harvest Moon,” New Moon Daughter
Bob Dylan “On a Night Like This,” Biograph
Red Stick Ramblers “Sweet & Slow,” Right Key Wrong Keyhole
Steve Earle “South Nashville Blues,” I Feel Alright
Stoney Edwards “Pickin Wildflowers,” From Where I Stand: The Black Experience in Country Music
Lorette Velvette “Oh How it Rained,” Rude Angel
Ann Peebles “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” The Best of Ann Peebles: Hi Records Years
Eva Cassidy “Wade in the Water,” Songbird
Nick Drake “Free Ride,” Pink Moon
Emmy Lou Harris “Sweet Old World,” Wrecking Ball

Life, the universe and everything

I have a manifesto-making streak, maybe a pedantic streak. What do you think that title is about? I always wanted to figure everything out—life, the universe and everything—and explain it. My poor sister, forced to read more than one of my childhood treatises.

Well, here I go again—I just have to work this out on page every now and then—my current theory of the meaning of life. Feel free to skip it, sexier posts a’comin.

In high school and college—Catholic high school and college—I was influenced by the Jesuit philosopher and paleontologist (or something like that) Teilhard de Chardin. He saw evolution as an evolving toward something, that something being god. It seemed a neat and easy way to reconcile science and religion.

But current consensus among biologists seems to be that evolution has no goal at all except maybe the continuance of life of some sort. It doesn’t matter if the life is viruses, roaches, rats, monkeys, whales or people.

I’m willing to work with that theory. It just makes humanity that much more a remarkable, spectacularly random accident. We’re self-conscious knowledge seekers, taking on the world with our clever brains and opposable thumbs. We are, functionally, nature’s consciousness. We seem to be the only way the universe has of looking at itself.

We can and have subverted what seemed to be the purpose and m.o. of evolution. Many of us fully or partially opt out of the reproductive endeavor—those of us lucky enough to have sexual independence and birth control, anyway. We use sex for different things than what nature apparently intended. Then we sit back and take a look around and wonder if there’s a point to this beyond procreation. We want it to mean something more, and we make it mean something more.

Maybe it will all turn to be a gorgeous failed experiment, but how amazing to take part in it. These are the things worth doing—everything we do to seek knowledge. Everything we do to develop and sustain just and intelligent systems of living with each other and within our environment. The things we do for the sake of beauty and joy and unselfish love. Everything we do to make ourselves and our lives a creative work.

Well, we all have mixed motives. None of us are free from the need for food and shelter. Some of us have more freedom than others. There’s nothing wrong with mixing high and low motives. But what must be resisted is the drive of our darker, reptilian potential—our ignorance, hatred, fear, greed.

Writing

Ellen Gilchrist, who I have long admired as a writer, was on campus this semester. In an interview, she said that as she has gotten older, she’s gained more and more of an appreciation for all the many different kinds of work and vocations and passions that people practice.

“It’s all beautiful, and it’s all dazzling,” she said.

I got a lot of reassurance from her comments, especially coming from a writer I once wanted to emulate. If I had much budding anxiety about being a writer-turned-lawyer, she helped knock it down.

The thing is, I tried and I tried and I’m just not a fiction writer. I’m missing an essential skill, the ability to create whole worlds and other people in my head.

But I am a writer, so definitely and unquestionably a writer that I haven’t had any doubts about that for years and decades. I’m a good, articulate observer of the world I live in and of my own self. I can't not write--maybe it's not as necessary as breathing, but I'd put it up there with eating. I know I’ll always be writing something, someone will always be reading it, and with any luck I’ll always be making a few bucks from it.

I’m writing this at the Rue, watching boys watching girls. A cute girl enters the periphery of their vision and they are rendered helpless—their work is interrupted, they can barely talk. Hormones are cruel masters.

Why law school? Here's the answer, part 1

My LSAT students are taking the test tomorrow. Now I will have time to clean my house, goof off, and perhaps start freaking out about law school.

But so far I’m not freaking out too much. It’s probably inevitable that I’ll be having a nervous breakdown six months from now, but why rush it? Anyway, law school does seem like the obvious next step for me, whether you want to look at it as the divine plan for my life (like my mother does) or just what has coincidentally but quite nicely worked out to be the thing I"m most well prepared to do right now to make better use of myself and avoid stagnation.

I moved to New Orleans because I’d wanted to for a long time. I’d even kicked around the idea of studying history at Tulane and becoming a writer of popular history. But I got here in January 2000, with no job and not much savings. I’d temped during tight times before and thought I would try it here. I found out Tulane had its own temp service, which seemed like it would be more pleasant and interesting than working for Manpower. I ended up getting a temp job at the admissions office at the law school, where I happened to learn about how to get into law school.

That was just part time, though. A permanent job was slow in coming, but based on my GRE scores I was able to get additional part-time work teaching for The Princeton Review. They trained me to teach the LSAT, which means they taught me to take the LSAT—and then I practiced for five years. And I couldn't help but think now and then, if I potentially have a genius LSAT score, why not use it?

Then I got my current job in the publications office. The money’s not great, but it’s steady. The work isn’t too challenging, but it’s fairly interesting. Not a lot of stress, mostly pleasant co-workers. It gave me stability for awhile, which I needed after such a long stretch of freelancing, temping, job-hopping, catering, bar-tending and slacking. The best part about it was that I got, almost by accident, the kind of broad-range education I should have gotten, but didn’t get, as an undergraduate.

Instead of getting cynical about universities, I’ve become almost romantic about the idea of the university. It’s an imperfect human creation, but it really does work to expand and transmit knowledge, which seems to me more noble than the work of churches, governments or corporations.

Anyway, during my time here I’ve gotten my eyes off my own navel (or my head out of my own ass, if you like)—at least sometimes, enough to have noticed that there are many, many interesting, useful things that need doing in the world. Even many many interesting, useful things that could be done by someone armed with intelligence, verbal skills and a JD.

Haircut & Laundry

An hour ago I was having one of those cathartic haircuts that make you feel all bright and shiny and new. I have to give my hairdresser credit for giving me a cathartic haircut while keeping my hair long. Of course, that’s also a function of the long, tangled, fried and Rapunzel-length hair I had this morning—when I looked in the mirror and wanted to tear it all out by the roots.

I still remember the most exhilarating haircut of my life, when I was 8 or 9 and I got a perfect Dorothy Hamill bowl-cut. Then we went shopping and my mom bought me a Tommy Roe record from the cut-out bin, and I went home and listened to my record over and over again and danced around and admired my bouncing hair. Such a happy little dork I was. Of course, I could never get that haircut fixed right on my own. It turned into one big cowlick.

Now I am at the laundromat, where the grouchy Norwegian man has raised his prices. Despite his new rates, he hasn’t splurged on an air conditioner or a wash cycle long enough to get your clothes clean or dryers that will get any of the lint or cat hair off of them. I can’t believe it’s June in New Orleans, it’s 92 degrees right now, and I’m SITTING IN A LAUNDROMAT WITH NO FUCKING AIR-CONDITIONING, DRINKING A LUKEWARM DIET COKE.

This is not the glamorous adulthood that the little dork was dreaming of.

Oh well, look—

8 weeks till I leave my job
9 weeks till I move
10 weeks till I start law school

Drama on Philip Street--one more time, for the old times

I’ve hinted that MP is a shameless womanizer, and he is also sometimes an arrogant hipper-than-thou jerk who I want to slap. But he’s a genius at being a good, responsible neighbor.

I accept the broken-window theory, that small signs of neglect, chaos or apathy tell would-be criminals and miscreants that nobody cares about a place and that bad deeds are likely to go unpunished, maybe even unnoticed—they’ll just fade into the general disorder. But fixing the broken windows and such things helps prevent crime.

MP picks up the trash and keeps the gutters clear. Our neighborhood is racially divided, but he spans the divide. He knows everyone on the surrounding blocks. When he walks his dogs, he’ll stop and talk to anyone who’s out. He takes the kids out for ice cream and pays them to clean up the sidewalks. Later, when they get older and starting experimenting with delinquency, he calls them on it and they respect him. He’s bought up the vacant lots and laid claim to the abandoned real estate—which in the end is going to make him a fortune, but he’s earned it. He’s like the mayor of our block. And even though lots of bad things have happened in the neighborhood in the last five years, our block has mostly been a pretty peaceful, friendly, pleasant place to live.

When I went out to take Hank for a walk last night, MP was out there and asked if he could walk with me for a minute because he wanted to talk to me about a brewing problem.

I live in a second-story apartment in the front of my building. I share a balcony with my next-door neighbor. There’s a divider that separates his half of the balcony from mine—enough to keep Hank on the right side, but not enough to keep out a person. My apartment has two tall floor-to-ceiling windows in front that function as doors to the balcony.

Unless the weather is really bad, I leave one of the windows open wide enough for Hank and the cat to get out onto the balcony and back in. Even when I close it, I’m not in the habit of locking it. The windows lock with metal pins that slide into holes that line up at the top of the bottom window and the bottom of the top window. There was originally a pin for each side of the window, for a total of four pins, but when I moved in there were only two. I didn’t worry about it because, although there are many thieves in the area, they’re lazy thieves and I couldn’t see them bothering to climb up my balcony to break in. Plus, the bad element types are pretty universally scared of Hank. Plus, I don’t have much worth stealing. And none of my balcony-sharing neighbors have been the breaking-and-entering type.

This winter a new guy moved in, R. He’s nice and easygoing, it would be hard not to like him. He’s gay, black, older than he looks, and just moved into town to work at the swankest of the swank downtown hotel. At first my only complaint about him was the constant throbbing house music, but I got him to keep it down. But then his social life hit its stride. He turns out to be quite a tramp, and his taste in men is for thugs on the DL. There are guys in and out (er) of there all the time, some I recognize as regulars. Many of them are scared of Hank and lurk outside the gate waiting for R to come down.

So, back to MP. There’s a formerly abandoned house a few blocks deeper into the ghetto that he bought for the price of the back taxes a couple of years ago, restored and now rents out. He had a problem crackhead tenant that stopped paying the rent, trashed the house, got arrested for stealing from one of the neighbors, and also stole from another construction site MP is working on. MP evicted him, and the guy threatened to kill him. MP said he’s been lurking around the block, and now he’s moved in with R, my neighbor! He’s the light-skinned black guy with all the tattoos, with the yin/yang symbol on the back of his neck, who I’ve been encountering on the stairs. Who might have noticed by now that Hank is not really all that ferocious. (He is the very definition of a lover not a fighter). MP said he talked to R, but R defended him. He talked to my landlord, who said he was afraid to get into it with black people! Which is un-fucking-believable, frankly. Grow a pair, please. If you can’t, well, I was gonna say you have no business owning property anywhere but the most upscale lily-white suburb you can find, but really you have no business owning property at all or doing anything where you might actually have to contront someone now and then.

I told MP I will be moving out in a couple of months, but he thinks things are going to go down in a matter of days or weeks.

Do I need this shit? No, I do not.

Last night I locked my windows for the first time in years. Except I could only find one of the pins. I “locked” the other window with a fancy metal chopstick.

I have lived on Philip Street for longer than I’ve lived anywhere but the house in Pennsylvania where I grew up. I’ll look back on it with fond memories, but I’m really ready to get the hell out of here.

Bonus fun fact about my neighborhood: according to S, that commercial bakery on First Street near Tchoupitoulas is the nation’s leading supplier of melba toast.