The Hot 8 Brass Band

On the street, on a wet, humid night with a tropical storm moving in..... in Richmond, Virginia

As Gustav approaches

The good news is that the evacuation appears to be proceeding much more efficiently than with Katrina. Its comforting to know that some lessons actually were learned. Everyone I know seems to be out. But that will be of minimal comfort if the city takes another hard hit.

Happy anniversary baby

Today is the third anniversary of Katrina. Tulane is closing at noon, public transportation is shutting down tonight, etc., all in anticipation of a probable mandatory evacuation tomorrow because of Gustav.

And I'm not there.

I feel relieved, of course. I never want to go on another hurricane evacuation, ever. I also fee slightly guilty and slightly left out of the excitement. Worried, but with hints of a kind of schaudenfreude (sp?)--if something really bad happens, it will prove I was right to leave, and I won't have to second guess myself. But that's not what I want of course. I want New Orleans to be there, be healthy, get better, survive and thrive.

It's been a a hell of a three years, and I can't believe I'm still broke and unsettled--wasn't law school supposed to fix all that?

Like I've been kicked out of the playground...

I need to stop looking at New Orleans listings online. Today's Lagniappe has both an interview the J (see previous post) and a review of the French 75 Bar with mention of Chris Hannah. I wish I could be in New Orleans tonight.

It's not like I didn't know...

that there would be days like this. New Orleans on the news, a New Orleans themed MBE practice question. I would be totally fine with moving away if I knew for sure I would always be able to go back one or twice a year, if I wanted. But I'm still unemployed and broke. And if I don't pass the bar or make things work here, it's not like I will be able to run back to NOLA. Instead I will be living in my parent's guest room.

Well, that should be plenty of incentive to study like a fiend the next two weeks.

I'm sad that I had so few people to say goodbye to after all my years in NOLA. The post-storm diaspora didn't help, but let's look this in the face: I am bad at forging bonds with people. I need bonds with people. Richmond is an opportunity for me to start over and do better.

As for J, I don't care if I ever see him naked again as long as I get to see him play. I would feel better if he would send me the promised package. I would feel better if he was still uber hot for me. He made me feel like I'm bad in bed--although, actually, he wasn't the most, um, skilled and attentive lover. He was sort of bossy and selfish--but, perversely, that turns me on and brings out some need to please. Which then makes me feel inadequate and puts me in the head space I'm in now. I so much want to be a devastating femme fatale with a pack of devoted lovers. That's probably not going to happen in reality world, and it's definitely not going to ever come close to happening as long as I am so.. susceptible, vulnerable, easily knocked off center.

More romantic stupidity

This move has been much easier and less traumatic than I expected. I have a good feeling about my life in Richmond. Still, the last few days I've had a few episodes of gut-twisting sadness about New Orleans. There are certain sounds and experiences that can only be had in New Orleans, and I'm a long way away.

Plus I've been feeling a twinge of sadness and regret about J, which only highlights what a wreck I am about men and relationships. Because what I regret is not the experience itself, but that I am no longer the unattainable goddess of desire to him. It's sort of ice-princessy to prefer staying on a pedestal to coming down and having a tumble with a man and sustaining a few minor bruises in the process. Now my ego seems to need some kind of reassurance that he's still thinking about me. I was feeling this way right after the last time I saw him. Then he called me to check up while I was driving up here, and it made me feel better. But now I feel rejected again because he hasn't mailed me a particular item he promised. It's retarded and makes me seem way too delicate to have any dealings with actual male human beings.

I have a date this Saturday, with a guy who is at least fun to talk to. It shows that my transition is going well, that I already have a date. But even the most minor romantic interaction seems to make me miserable one way or another.

The bar exam is only a week and a half away. I need to stay focused on that and not be distracted by romance and its inevitably accompanying trauma.

Some personally significant real estate of New Orleans

Goodbye

I am leaving New Orleans tomorrow morning. I want to say something about this, but I don't know what. I want to cry but I can't.

I finally did get it on with J a few times. It was a good experience, and he was very sweet to me. God knows I never had any illusions about him as relationship material. I made a very calculated decision to do it, and in a way I almost had to talk myself into it. We had a very warm goodbye. Really, this should have been the most enjoyable, pain-free affair anyone could have, and I still feel empty and alone after watching him walk away. Clearly I am not fit to ever be close to other people, because it takes so little to hurt me.

Anyway, it's not just J, of course. He's kind of a talisman for all my sadness about New Orleans. The rest is copied from an email I sent last night. I don't have the stomach to try to re-explain:

You know, it's my second-to-last night in New Orleans. I've lived here for eight and a half years, and I have only two people to say goodbye to, not counting a couple of friendly ex-coworkers. My friend D is close to me, but she's the kind of person who instinctively creates a lot of unnecessary drama. She's devastated that I'm leaving; I'm sad to say goodbye but I'm also a bit relieved because she's just too much for me right now. My other friend is a guy who I've know for almost as long as I've lived here. He always let it be known that he had a thing for me, and there was at least a spark of attraction on my part, but there were lots of good reasons not to act on it. However, I decided to have a little fling with him before I left, and so I did. It hurts my womanly ego a little bit that I am no longer the unattainable object of desire now that I have been obtained. But still, he was very sweet and kind to me and we were close for a moment and I'm glad I let myself be obtained. I just said goodbye to him. And now I am about to move myself to a new city where I know no one at all...

And the point is? I don't know. I'm not good at making friends or having relationships. I can't seem to sustain the kind of suffocating closeness that many people seem to need. D kind of wears me out. But I appreciate a kind of less clingy intimacy, with a lighter touch. However, by definition you can't cling to it, just let it go. I'm having a hard time with that right now. I'm having a hard time saying goodbye to a town I loved that never loved me back. I feel very alone and peripheral to everyone else on the planet, and I'm afraid I'm always going to be this way.

Life is a continual process of letting go, isn't it? I know that there are people who have profound spiritual experiences of oneness with everything, and I take some comfort in thinking that is true, even though I haven't experienced it.

The long goodbye

I have a month left in New Orleans, with nothing particular on the schedule. Everyday I study for the bar and do little tasks preliminary to moving. I go out to see bands. Why didn't I ever see Rotary Downs before? I carry around a camera so that I can take memento photographs, but so far I haven't snapped any.

In the last few months, my nightlife has gotten good again. I know I will not have such a nightlife in Richmond. The idea, though, is that the rest of my life will be better, and that the rest of my life is more important than my nightlife. It helps to think that I'm just trying out Richmond. I can come back if I want to. In the meantime at least I'll miss a hurricane season. It also helps to consider that I put my hat in the ring for the few appealing jobs in New Orleans that came available, and was completely ignored by those employers.

It's unsettling, though, that I have chosen this new place based on a good first impression and a judgment that it has many of the qualities I'm looking for. I know no one there. And yet it will be the stage for the next chapter of my life. I wonder if this will be a bad idea, yet I don't think it will.

I haven't (yet) been the weeping wreck that I thought I would be, but I am melancholy about the end of the New Orleans era of my life.

Today at the Rue I saw the underaged deejay who fled from my romantic advances a few years ago. Add that to the brief encounter with Torres the day before my graduation and my most recent romantic humiliation. My love/sex/romantic life in New Orleans has pretty much sucked from beginning to end, starting when David dumped me and took up with my nutty co-worker. Followed by painful and/or humiliating episodes with JT, Adam, Brent (tho in that case I inflicted the pain), James, Mr. M, Torres, The Psychopath, the Brit, the deejay, the bartender, and several other minor players. I'm thinking of breaking off a piece for J before I go, because I might as well give it to someone who really wants it for a change. And perhaps I strung him along in an unkind way.

Unkind. I wonder if my real or perceived unkindness is part of my problem. Darcy insists that guys are afraid of me. It would be one thing if they were afraid of me because I was so smart and lovely that I seemed unattainable; but I'm afraid their intimidation has at least as much to do with me seeming snarky, judgmental and mean. Darcy has made me aware of how often I sound sarcastic, even when I don't mean to be.

I've mentioned before how much I identify with Enid in Ghost World. To me she is hearbreaking and sympathetic, but I don't want to be a 40 year old Enid. But the snark has become automatic; I don't even notice I'm doing it, really.

I hope that I can get over that; and I hope that, even with my fears and misgivings about intimacy, monogamy, and the like, I can find a way to have better experience with sex and love and relationships in my next chapter.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am now a Doctor of the Law

I am studying for the bar and getting ready to move out of New Orleans in five weeks. After all the tortured indecision, the emotions have died down and I’m ready to get on with it. I’m really sick of almost everything about New Orleans, I’m tired of the hassle and ineptitude, the filth and the crime and the weather, I’m grateful I’ll never have to go on another hurricane evacuation.

Graduation weekend I was in the French Quarter with my parents and Aunt Susie. We were gawking at St. Louis Cathedral when I heard someone call “Hey Heather!” It was Torres in a seersucker suit, smiling at me. He represents what was probably my quintessential New Orleans romantic experience: weeks of flirting; one insanely fun alcohol-fueled date on which an elderly retired gynecologist bought us drinks and asked us if we were going to get married because we made a great couple; underwhelming alcohol-impaired sex; an ambiguous goodbye with perhaps misread signals; nothing nothing nothing; a year and an hurricane goes by and I see him again and he’s all flirty but nothing comes of it; I send him an email that he doesn’t answer and I don’t know if he received; I see him again and he’s all flirty but even thinking about him seems a pointless exercise in frustration.

In the end, there’s only one thing I’m really, really going to miss about New Orleans, and I’ll miss it a lot: the music and the nightlife that goes with it. In the last month I’ve seen:

Pine Leaf Boys
New Orleans Jazz Orchestra
Happy Talk
Morning 40
Savoy Family Band
Valpairaso Men’s Chorus
Amy LaVere
The Bad Off
The Roots
CC Adcock
Tin Men
The Plowboys
Michael Hurtt and the Haunted Hearts
Johnny J

And that’s just an average month. Memphis was an above-par music town, but I never had a month like that when I lived there. And I don’t think Richmond is going to come close to even Memphis’ music scene. I kind of wish I could conduct my night life in New Orleans while I live the rest of it elsewhere. But as much as I love the music scene, for me it doesn’t quite make up for all the rest

Anyway, I know that Richmond has a weekly swing-dancing party and a couple of clubs that bring it good touring bands. I think that will be enough, and I expect the rest of my life will be much better there.

Almost nine years here and I have no one to go on a send-off spree with except Darcy, who is a newcomer to my life. I might have lunch with my old co-workers. Otherwise, the people I used to know are gone or estranged.