I Refute You. Thus! (Kick)

Because we were all post grads starved for something to argue about, we AmeriCorps kids decided to form a reading group. We were also lazy, so we decided the pieces had to be short. So, every week we would designate someone to host and choose a story, essay, comic, or whatever. We called ourselves the Swimmers because that was the first story we read and discussed. And because we usually drank a lot.

One week, R decided to join us. R was in charge of making the warehouse more efficient and was outstandingly successful at it. He was also taking a break from an MA in philosophy at Ole Miss and since we hadn't read any philosophy yet  he volunteered to provide.

At lunch, we were sitting in the dwindling shade underneath a rusted, sheet metal structure that served as a volunteer orientation spot. Anyway, I asked, "What are you thinking for a philosophy essay?"

I admit that I didn't particularly care what he was going to choose -- I just wanted to hear him talk. R has a fantastic academic Mississippi drawl and so at lunch I would usually try to prod him into a rant so he'd keep going.

R shrugged. "I don't know. What would people like to talk about?"

"Well, your specialty was ethics, right? Why not bring up something from that?"

"Nah, I'm taking a break from that and I don't think anyone would really want to hear me talk about it because I've researched it so heavily I slide into minutia. What about you? What would you like to talk about?"

"Well, I'm really fascinated by Allan Turing's 'The Turing Test.' We could talk about that."

R gave me a horrified, baffled look. "Why would you want to talk about that?"

"Why not?" I asked, falling back on that age-old rhetorical last-stand question. "It's interesting. I think it could be fun to talk about the idea of humanness and talking about other minds."

R shook his head. "No, it's not. I find that entire debate dull and ridiculous. Why would you bother to ask if a computer can think? Of course it can't. It's a programmed machine."

"But-"

"And why bother asking if someone else has a consciousness outside of yourself. Of course they do. If they didn't, why would you bother trying to communicate with them. Go down that road too far and you end up in solipsism and you've lost the whole game."

I suddenly realized I'd brought a English major to a philosophy fight and looked for an escape route.

"Isn't that poor sportsmanship?" I asked. "Just dismissing someone's argument outright. Isn't that called straw-manning?"

"No, straw-manning is when you misconstrue someone else's argument to be weaker than it is and then tear it down. I didn't do that - I just said your argument wasn't worth my time."

"Again," I said, feebly. "Sportsmanship. What do they teach you at Ole Miss?"

R laughed. "Actually, they encourage you to do that. If you can't argue with someone then you just dismiss it outright and say, 'I'll tell you how wrong you are by ignoring you and starting at the beginning.' Bertrand Russell did it all the time."

Lunch was over. We started to retreat back to our respective offices. "So, what would you like to talk about?"

"'The Apology,'" R said, and proceeded to explain. I considered it a successful lunch break.

Familiar

It was scary how much effort my friends put into trying to make me believe in ghosts. Afterwards they told me it was my fault. On a rainy, February day in New Orleans -- not really cold so much as Unpleasant, the kind of day where you can imagine what it's like to be a forgotten sock on a damp, cement basement floor, growing and being eaten by mold -- we were talking about faith. Just M, B, G, and I.

G was explaining that she was having trouble finding a church because all of them were so Different. They weren't at all like the calm, contemplative congregations she was raised in farther north. B, ever the anthropologist, said Everything was Different down here. It was a hodge podge of faiths and practices that got together for a party and woke up the next morning having no idea how to get home, so they did the responsible adult thing, had a shotgun wedding and raised the kids as best they knew how.

Anyway, I said something about how disappointed I was that I hadn't met a single vampire or ghost since moving to New Orleans. That was all the inspiration they needed, apparently.

Working in the office, I didn't get to go out much, but one of my duties was to go and visit homeowners and interview them. B was working on this particular sight where one Mr. Breaux lived and one day, the first day after B went to the sight she and I were at a coffee shop with M (B was a teetotaler).

"I don't know, something about that house, man..." she said, stirring honey into her tea.

"What about it? Did you find a closet full of pornographic magazines and assault rifles?" M asked.

"No!" B snapped.

"That would be funny if it hadn't happened once," M said.

"Really?" I asked.

"Oh yeah--"

"The point, M, is that people died in the house," B said.

M shrugged. "So, it's New Orleans. Lots of people die in their houses where their mothers and fathers and ancestors died before them. It's tradition. They're big on tradition here."

"The guys whole family drowned in the house during the flood," B said.

"And he wants to live there?"

"To be close," B said.

Strange Things got passed around the work site, then the warehouses, and finally, as these Things go, got to us in the office. B found the tools rearranged in the morning when she got to the site and no sign of a break-in. Every time the framers tried to put up a wall where there wasn't one before, the nails would bend and it took hours of frustrating work to get everything level. B was working late one night and her foot went through the rotten wood and she swore that as she struggled she felt a hand pull her out. People found mysterious trinkets.

"The weirdest thing," B said one night when we were all out at Tipitina's and she was taking a break from dancing manically. "Every morning there's food there. I mean, like, a bag of beignets and coffee. Sometimes even a crockpot full of gumbo. I always thought it was Mr. Breaux coming by before work, but I asked him about it today and he said he had no idea what I was talking about. I think he's pulling my leg, but..."

She let that hang there, then shrugged and darted off back into the fray. Rebirth was playing that night and so there was a full crowd and Stasi-like dudes standing by the door checking IDs. I didn't feel like dancing. I never feel like dancing, actually. People shoved into me while I stood by the second floor railing, contemplating the crowd below while the brass band blared. Vibrations up and down the skin. It felt like a rough caress, if sandpaper could be soft.

This was two days before I had to go visit Mr. Breaux. On a Monday, mid-morning, we agreed to go and meet him, G and I. We worked as partners, typically. She would take pictures while I would talk to our clients, writing down their tragedies, hopes, and disappointments and trying to make a three-paragraph story out of it. I'd argued with my boss over the length of the biographies, but, as always, I lost and so they were always three paragraphs. I had to break down every single person's life that way: what they did before Katrina, what happened to them during the Tragedy, and what happened to them afterward. I wondered if someone dissected  my life, where they would make the incisions.

The house wasn't far from where IB lived. Just around the corner, in fact, somewhere in Treme near a large, institutional-looking building that I was never sure if it was a school or a penitentiary. B was waiting for us in the front, right on the street. It had been raining and it was that uncomfortable, wet-cold so unusual for a Midwesterner.

As we were driving, G wouldn't look at me. This was unusual since she was generally chipper no matter what the atrocious circumstances. But that day she and I drove silently to and from the office and toward our destination for our semi-exploitative endeavors. Finally, when we were only a few blocks away, she said, "I had a few nightmares last night..."

"More than one," I asked.

"Yeah. More than one. The first one I dreamed that I was drowning. I've heard that's one of the most common nightmares, after having all your teeth fall out. It makes sense that that would be one of the most common fears. So I woke up from that and I brushed my teeth. When I went back to bed I had this dream that I was in a house filled with everyone I knew and they were all saying 'I'm sorry' over and over again, but nobody would tell me why they were so sorry. Finally, I got up from my chair and they all looked away. Someone knocked at the door and I went to answer it and there was my grandpa and grandma, they're dead, and you, waiting at the door. You asked me to go with you..."

She drew the Parallel between me and the Dead right as we pulled up to the house and got out without another word. She took her time getting her camera.

Mr. Breaux was much younger than I expected, maybe in his mid-thirties, and he looked haunted. He didn't actually look at me when we shook hands, but right past my shoulder. B nudged me unnecessarily to be polite. It took him several seconds of try-and-fail to find the correct key to let us into his house.

It was a two-story behemoth, the kind that most people associate with New Orleans. You could easily imagine gentry living there from the outside. After we walked through, though, it was all rotten wood and cobwebs, dust and pieces of a house.

"This is the entryway. Sorry I don't have a mat. There used to be a mat here," Mr. Breaux said. He nodded to himself and led us through the broken house. "This is the kitchen. Mom cooks a lot of good food here. Follow me... here is the living room. This is where my sister spends most of her time working on homework. Wave sister..."

He waved at some figure who wasn't there. I carefully did not look at G or B, but took careful notes and asked polite questions about his mother, sister, the history of the house, how FEMA had screwed him, where he was during the Deluge, and so on. When he started to lead us upstairs, G quietly excused herself and said that she was going to try to get better pictures of the downstairs.

As soon as we reached the top landing, Mr. Breaux stopped and stared up at the patchwork ceiling. "This... this is where I survived..." he said. I didn't say anything, but just waited for him to go on, pen poised, like I always did.

"I have to go..." Mr. Breaux said and then quickly went down the stairs. B looked at me and motioned for me to stay put, pursuing him.

So I stayed in the creepy old, gutted upstairs. Strange to think that I once didn't know what "gutted" meant. I asked the carpenters and they said that it's when a house has been stripped to the siding and framing. It's a skeleton, essentially -- gutted. B had warned me that there were a lot of dangerous spots in the upstairs, so I didn't wander, exactly. I just got bored and started to test the wood around me, inching one direction and then the next. It was a giant floor and I could see every room, all the bedrooms and single bathroom, or at least the bare shapes of them.

"I know you," said someone. I looked around and saw no one, but I could've sworn I had heard a voice.

"Hello?" I asked, but didn't move. I know how horror movies work.

"I know you," the voice said again.

That was enough for me. I walked slowly down the stairs and found B and Mr. Breaux talking quietly in the corner. G tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped forward. B laughed. I managed to finish the interview and then insisted that G and I leave as soon as we could.

That was it. Nothing more than that. I know you, the voice said. It wasn't until a month before I left, when we were all together at another bar that M admitted that he was hiding between the floorboards and talking to me. When I confronted B about it, she admitted that Mr. Breaux had played along. He was from New Orleans, but it wasn't his family's house and no one had died in it that anyone knew of.

I asked why they let the joke go after that. B admitted that it just wasn't funny after that point. I didn't seem scared enough.

Grocery Dispute

Looking back on it, Vicky was disappointed that her breakdown hadn't been more spectacular.

For several months, maybe even years, it had been building. A ferocious lump in her ribcage twitched and muttered, clawed and burned. At first, it just fired up every time some self-righteous customer bragged about riding his bike or bringing her own fabric bags to carry away terrifically expensive, organic, gluten-free, vegan, over-packaged food. Then it was the parking inconveniences. Then it was the apartment, the heat, the police sirens, the loud neighbors, the gnawing and itching I-have-no-idea-what-to-do-with-my-life.

One year, four months, and nine days after she started working at Conseco's Market, she came in for her evening shift more tired than usual. She hadn't been sleeping well. Loud neighbors. But it was pretty much a normal day on Esplanade, except there was some quality about the humidity that made it difficult to breathe.

At 10 o'clock, after a day of hearing the blaring PA system request her for managerial assistance, Daniel said something that sounded a lot like, "Manag- what? Fuck..." over the mic. She was sitting in the "break room," practically a closet in the back with a unusual window that made it possible to smoke in an indoor-ish area.

And for some reason, Vicky heard herself say over the PA system, "Repeat page please." A long pause. "Repeat page please."

"Managerial assistance to the register, please."

"Daniel, repeat the page, please."

"Managerial assistance to the register, please."

"Daniel, you said, 'Manag-what? Fuck...' Correct?"

"Please come to the register."

"What's the problem."

"...Is this really the place to be having this conversation?"

Then Vicky laughed. A cacophony over the PA system that made her involuntarily cringe even as she kept laughing. The absurdity of it. Hearing her own voice and laughter over the PA system sounded like someone else talking, a clipped, professional exchange devolving in content. What a cliché. This was the scene from Airplane where the announcers start arguing over an abortion.

But Daniel was not playing along. Not yet.

“This is precisely the time and place to have this conversation, Daniel. Loud and where everyone can hear. These people deserve to know. And this has got to be the last customer in the store – we’re about to close. What seems to be the problem?” Vicky leaned back in her chair and lit another cigarette.

“A customer wants me to accept expired coupons.”

“Customer. This is the voice of god. The manager, at least, which should be good enough for you, here. I kindly invite you to fuck yourself.”

“Vicky, maybe you should go home and I can close things down…”

“You? You can’t count to five, Daniel.”

“That was uncalled for.”

“That was uncalled for? Uncalled for? I’ll tell you what’s uncalled for,” Vicky said and then stopped.

After a moment, Daniel said, “Yes…?”

“Is the customer still there?”

“No. He stormed out. But there are a lot of people staring.”

“Well, now, hear this. It’s been a long, hot day. My back hurts. I have a degree in art history and I’m managing a grocery store. This is to be expected. It’s a good joke. For a long time I wasn’t laughing, but now I am and why aren’t you? You could be, but I wouldn’t know, because I can’t hear anything but the PA system in the back. You know, this thing is great. I never feel like I’m the one talking over this system. I hear my voice, but I can’t believe it’s me talking. And it’s this voice that’s speaking now. Now. Now. Fuck.”

“Boss…?”

“Yeah, Daniel.”

“There’s no one in the store.”

“You lied?”

“Yeah. Except for coupons.”

“So I guess I don’t have to fire myself.”

“Not if you don’t want to. I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“… I'm firing myself.”

They closed the store. The next day, she woke up early for the first shift. For weeks after that, she worked doubles after another manager quit and she had to pick up the slack.

#

My short story, "The Law of Gravity," is now available for purchase through Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine's issue #56.

Stalled

AB's car had broken down, again. In fact, everyone's car had broken down. In the final couple weeks at my job, every single person in the office, except our boss, at one time lost the use of their vehicles for one reason or another.

Luckily, TC was still at the office working after hours, Everyone did there. We walked in to the cinder block building and sat down in the cool air. TC consulted his watch. "Where do you need to go?"

"To my place. It's in the Irish Channel," AB said.

"Oh, that's great. I have to be Uptown, so I can just drop you guys off and go right to the meeting," TC started to shut down his computer and gather up his manila files and plastic binders.

"Do you have to meet a client?" I asked.

"No," T said. He bowed his head sheepishly. "Happy hour."

We went to his car and I sat in the passenger's seat and AB in the back. Inside, before we opened the windows, it was an oven. How did people in Louisiana survive before air conditioning? All the old pictures of politicians and gentlemen, ladies, business people with their layers of wool and elaborate fabrics smothering them, temperatures rising to unbearable levels to generations raised in shorts and central AC.

People, they say down there, have figured out ways of escaping the heat. The high ceilings are one method. All the heat rises so that your surrounded by relatively cool air. Shade, too. You learn how to find shade in the South. Nothing much gets done. Everyone admits defeat for a few months and waits until October, when the oysters are good.

#

Pulling out of the drive and onto the long road leading from the Parish back to Orleans, Judge Perez, TC asked me about my plans.

"Don't have any right now, really. I'm applying for jobs and waiting to hear back from Tulane. If they give me a job, I'll stay. If they don't, I'm going back north." This is more or less what I told everyone verbatim in the second to last week I spent in New Orleans.

"I hope you get it," TC said.

"So do I," AB said.

We talked about job prospects and whether we would stay in New Orleans or not. Both AB and TC intended to stay another year. TC wasn't sure if he'd stay where he was, but AB wanted to find a case management job, which is what she'd gone to school to do in the first place.

#

"What if you can't find a job?" TC asked. "Do you have a back-up plan? Can you stay with family?"

"I can," I said. "I mean, I want a job and an apartment and it makes me nervous that I haven't found anything yet."

"That's good, though," TC said. "You're lucky. I know some people who don't even have that. They live pay check to pay check and some of them are even helping their parents out. If someone can't come up with a couple hundred dollars that month, then everyone's screwed."

"Yeah, I am lucky," I said.

"We all never really know how lucky we are," said AB, looking out the window at a two story building with a partially collapsed roof and vines growing out between the slats in faded and peeling shutters.

"I won't starve and I won't be homeless," I said. "That's more than a lot of people have."

#

Sitting in IB's living room with CS one night talking about jobs, CS said, "I tried and I'm still trying to find case management work, but I just can't find anything. No one calls me back. I have experience. I even had a master's degree. And I work on projects and volunteer all the time. It occurred to me the other day that I'm lucky to be a petty cab driver..."

#

TC asked me if I'd do AmeriCorps again.

"Not if I can help it," I said. "I like the program. It's great for service and supporting good nonprofits that need the help. But I want something more stable. And where I'm actually earning money."

"I hear you," TC said. "I think I could do this another year, but after that I'll move on to something else."

AB said, "I may, I may not. I haven't decided."

"I promised myself," I said. We were on the I-10 elevated interstate driving through the 7th Ward and curving in to follow the unseen river toward Uptown. "That I would spend my twenties going from one to two year obligations from one to the next. But I'm already sick of that. I want stability and I think I'm ready for it."

"You have to do what's good for you," said TC.

"But, isn't it arrogant?" I asked. "What privilege I have that I feel like I can choose to get a stable, salaried position and move wherever I want to? And can I really? That's what I've been told my whole life. That it's just a matter of trying."

#

"Last summer," said AB, "I applied for everything I could and eventually just needed a job. So I applied for waitressing and bartending jobs figuring that I could at least get that, but I couldn't. And, I mean, I have experience. I've worked as a waitress and a bartender for years and nobody even called me back. There are no jobs out there. None."

#

"I miss working in a coffee shop, actually," I said, "But I don't feel like I can go back to that if I ever want to get out it."

"I know," said TC, "It was great being able to leave work at work."

"And the tips," AB said. "And people are made to feel that not wanting more than that isn't right. That what they want isn't worthy."

"Yeah," said TC. "I mean, my grand father worked every day of his life from the age of eighteen. He got married and had kids at nineteen and got a house and that was enough for him. I sometimes wonder why that isn't enough for me."

"Maybe it was enough for him. But that shouldn't mean that you need to live the same way."

#

TC pulled up to AB's house. "Good talk," TC said. "Good talk, you guys. Have a good night."

Tribute to Chuck Palahniuk

To Chuck Palahniuk:

And IB muttered, "This city..."

"I came back for the soil," DB said. She returned shortly after the flood waters that followed Hurricane Katrina finally receded. Most of St. Bernard Parish has been a sugar plantations for centuries up until very recently. It's rich, sweet soil for gardening.

"It's home," said OH. "There's a lot of history in this area. New Orleans is the fulcrum of the country... The city has to be here."

"You'll meet the nicest people you'll ever know in this city," JH said. "Everywhere you go, there'll be someone with food."

"My cousin was by the levee in the woods when it happened," DB said. "He said he heard a sound like a bomb going off and then everything went quiet. And then he saw deer, squirrels, birds, all these animals, every animal in the forest started running past him. The entire forest was in a stampede to get out of there."

VG: "The first time the fire department realized something was wrong, a friend of mine was in the room with the New Orleans chief. He got a call from some guys who said, -- There are all these fires on the north shore. -- Well, why aren't you putting them out? -- We can't get to them. -- Why can't you get to them? -- Because of all the water in the streets. And then the chief yelled, 'Fuck! The levees broke! It's the only explanation...'"

"You know, I wouldn't be surprised if they blew up the levees for Betsy," said LD. "But for Katrina the whole city was destroyed. Nobody got anything out of that."

"I have a friend in the National Guard," said JWB, a St. Bernard Parish resident, "And he told me, swear to god, that the year before Katrina he was ordered to go out to the levees and bury dynamite. They didn't blow it up then. But they did for Katrina."

"No matter what you heard, saw, or read about Katrina, it was much worse than that," KM said.

DB has gardened is her life. From seeds, scraps, and branches DB has coaxed out an entire perennial paradise. All of the plants have a purpose, though -- "Butterflies like pizzas and hummingbirds like ice cream cones," DB says, explaining the shapes of the flowers in her garden.

Behind his gutted, rotting house, JY keeps chickens. He and his wife bring their kids out to see chickens several times a week, to feed and water them. It turns out, he discovered, that the city has a limit on how many animals a person can have on the property: four. He culled the flock down from a dozen to the city's prescribed limit.

VG: (paraphrased) Actually, CNN was one of the first news agencies to report the levees breaking. X was in a community center with her cameraman. Suddenly the councilwoman from the Ninth Ward rushed inside and yelled, 'Please, come quick! People are dying!' So X and her camera man followed the councilwoman up to the Claiborne bridge, I think. All the electricity in the city was out so it was pitch black and they couldn't get any visual footage, but they could hear it. Standing on the bridge, surrounded by a pitch black, muggy night the reporters and councilwoman could hear the sound of rushing water, a deluge, and the screams of thousands.

"I was at a bar the other night and this guy sitting next to me asked me where I was from," AO said, "And when I said I was here for a year with AmeriCorps he said, 'Get out now. Because if you don't, you'll never leave.'"

"This town doesn't like to drink," JC said, "it likes to be drunk." But, "All the things that are great about this city are starting to go away. I mean, some policemen are starting to bust you for drinking on the streets... They're getting after bars because their bands for being too loud."

"I don't like New Orleans, actually," admits JY. JY received a great deal of money from Road Home, but could only use it to elevate the house. There are specialized services in New Orleans for elevating houses. JY told the contractor to raise the house as far as he could with the  tens of thousands of dollars he received from Road Home. This turned out to be nine feet. None of the money could be used to build anything else, even a staircase. The only way to get into the gutted house, now, is with a ladder.

JY laughed and explained that he tells his friends they can store things in his house if they want to. No one can get in it, not without a ladder. It's the safest place to store things.

Author of Showdown in Desire, Orissa Arend, spoke at Fair Grinds Coffee. She described a shootout between the New Orleans Police department and the local chapter of the Black Panthers. It appears, from witness reports, that the police issued no warning and, without provocation, shot at the house for a half hour before the Black Panthers inside were allowed to surrender and leave the building. Miraculously, no one was hurt or killed. One Panther said he spoke to a black officer at the scene. They echoed one another's words, "Sorry, but I'm on this side." And then the started talking about the Saints.

"... I don't think I've ever been in a place full of happier people than when Drew Brees paraded as king of Bacchus one week after the Saints won the Super Bowl," said SD. "The happiness of the crowds that night was unbelievable, and I'm so glad I was able to be a part of such a great celebration--even if I didn't get one of the mini footballs Drew was throwing from the float."

"I get the impression that people came here to have a parade and a city got in their way," NF said.

"The great thing about this place is you can be anything. You can do anything," JC said. "I could decide to be an astronaut tomorrow and I could do it. I've never wanted to, but I could."

Not Surprised

Walking through the Quarter last night with IB, I told her that every Iowan I'd met in New Orleans went to Grinnell College and all were Strange. "That's not fair," IB said. "What about K? She's pretty normal."

I considered. "At her going away party we spent the evening having an in-depth conversation about how much we liked bulldogs."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I don't know. It seemed meaningful."

A woman walked us by. She was heavily made-up and wore a feathered headdress and a black leotard covered in sparkling gold sequins. When she was out of ear shot, IB commented, "Don't you ever see someone on the street and want to know who they are or where they're going? That must be one hell of a party."

"In New Orleans?" I said, "She could be going anywhere for any reason."

We walked a little farther down the cracked, hot pavement. It's been hot and muggy in New Orleans for months and this isn't even the worst of it. Maybe it was never cool. In Interview with a Vampire Brad Pitt's character comments, upon returning to New Orleans, that when he smelled the air he knew he was home - jasmine and flowers. For anyone who's spent any time in the Quarter in the summer, this observation is hilarious.

"But about bulldogs," I said. "They look like they're always smiling. You know Drake University in Des Moines has a bulldog beauty contest every year? It's hilarious. They put a little crown on them and everything."

"Where did that come from?" IB asked, somewhat disgusted.

"I like bulldogs."

"That sounds like a great competition!" we heard someone behind us chime in. We turned and saw another woman wearing a black leotard with gold sequins. "I mean, who needs an excuse?"

"Can I ask you where you came from and where you're going?" IB asked. "You see, we saw someone dressed like you just walk by and we thought there's gotta be a great party along with that."

"Yeah," the woman nodded. "I got left by the group in a bathroom and now I'm wandering the Quarter looking for them. I mean, how hard can it be to find a group of rowdy girls in gold sequins?"

"Where are you coming from?"

"Oh, we were just doing this fundraiser for kids to buy instruments. Now we're out to get trashed."

"Only in New Orleans," IB said, shaking her head.

"I love this town," said the woman.

"He's leaving," IB said, gesturing at me. "For Iowa."

"Why would you do that?" the woman said, looking at me in horror.

"It doesn't suit him," IB said.

The woman nodded. "Yeah, this place, you either love it or you hate it."

"I think I see your group," IB said. We rounded the corner and saw about twenty young women glittering and dancing in the middle of the street around some sort of two story float to Lady Gaga. We waved goodbye and walked away. It only occurred to me later that, wherever I end up going after New Orleans, I will probably be surprised to see twenty nonprofit fundraisers pole-dancing in the middle of the street just for the hell of it.

#

I'm leaving New Orleans this Wednesday and will travel almost to the opposite border of the continental United States. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but none of them worth sharing.

As Adam Duritz offers, maybe this year will be better than the last. Sure, it's not the year's end, but this is a New Chapter. I'm going back to the land of Seasons.

Lysistrata

There’s an ancient Joke: Caesar is inspecting his troops and he notices a soldier that looks very much like himself. He goes up to the soldier and says, “Did your mother, by chance, work in my palace?” The soldier replies, “No. But my father did.”

Generally, I don’t like bawdy comedy or body horror of any kind told by anyone. It’s cheap. The object is to squeeze laughter out of the audience through primal insecurities. It’s verbal groping. Anything visceral will always get a laugh or a cringe out of the audience, but rarely is it deserved.

But, it works. In fact, it Always works and Allways has worked.

Recently, IB told me that L participated in a New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling (NO LAW) competition in which a draw was settled by a joke-off. IB’s favorite, compliments of L, was, “My grandma asked me once, ‘How do you know when you had a good night? When you throw your panties against the wall and they stick.’”

IB elaborated, “I love it when girls tell dirty jokes. Guys get away with it all the time, but women rarely use raunchy humor.”

At the University of Iowa I took a theatre history class in which we read Lysistrata. The primary reason for discussing this play was to begin a conversation about theatre technology. Specifically: props. More specifically: phalluses. It’s a pretty basic gag. A man walks out with a tremendous phallus strapped to his waist and, magically, people laugh.

Lysistrata was written in 411 BC by the great comic playwright, Aristophanes. At the time of its first performance in Athens, the city state was engaged in a 14-year long war with its neighbor, Sparta. Lysistrata tells the story of the eponymous heroine leading the women of both cities in a sex-strike with one simple demand: peace. It is a sex comedy but, more than that, it is a war protest piece.

Cripple Creek’s production of the play, which unfortunately has its last performance tomorrow, captures the play in all its bawdy glory. They made full use of phalluses, writhing pelvic agony, and put perfect emphasis on the right suggestions.

A friend said that comedy only works with good actors. Cripple Creek’s production worked. It was a truly incredible production of this classic comedy. It is testament to Cripple Creek’s expertise that the play has sold out every night of its run.

But, above all, I respect the company in keeping the play thoroughly grounded in the moral: the desire, the craving that conquers all is for Peace. At the end of the play, in fact, the company gets a little heavy-handed drawing pointed parallels to modern day politics. But, then, Lysistrata was not at all subtle about its message at the time. It is in the spirit of this comedy that the audience should walk away laughing and feel guilty if they don’t go immediately write their legislators.

And, while I still don't like bawdy humor, I laugh at it. The vast majority of humanity does, which is why it’s so popular. Lysistrata is proof that there are some things that resonate through the millennia, and one of them is this: sex jokes will always be funny. Even Shakespeare, the creator of most of our language, had an obsession with those things below the belt.

A friend of mine, C, is a German anglophile. She recently earned her masters in English literature and for a long time taught English literature to undergraduate German students. In one class she was trying to teach her students about Shakespeare’s more crass jokes, specifically in Hamlet. On the board, she wrote Hamlet’s quip to Ophelia, “Do you think I meant country matters?”

The class gave her a blank look. She repeated the line with greater emphasis, “Get it? ‘Cunt-ry matters…?’”

People searched for That One Guy who always knows the right answer, but he looked embarrassed.

“Okay, who knows what this word means?” She wrote and underlined, “Cunt,” and again there were only blank stares.

In her exasperation, C said, “Okay, all of you go home and Google this word.” When she related this story to me later that day, she shook her head apologetically and muttered, “I really shouldn’t have done that…”

That was all a very round-about way of saying:

1.) Cripple Creek Productions is nifty;

2.) Sex is and always will be funny;

3.) You should go and see or read Lysistrata;

4.) It's a lovely Saturday late afternoon. I am sitting on a bench in front of Fair Grinds and I would like to be done with this post already. Now I'm leaving.

Trash

In this heat, the trash can't sit. At my office this basic fact has become a sacred duty.

My coworkers and I find Evidence of vermin every morning. Droppings. Dead cockroaches. Things. Combating the fruit flies is a full-time job. At one point, a former colleague threatened anyone who dared leave food in the office overnight with the punishment of being tied up Gulliver-style, covered with cheese, and left until morning. The trash must be taken out. And that full-time job goes to me.

When I worked at the Java House in Iowa City I never minded taking out the trash. It was a duty universally despised by my coworkers, but for some reason I found it zen. Remove the bag, march through the back past the studyers, the coffee junkies, the people Ignoring you walking by with a gigantic bag of coffee grinds and filters, depositing said bag in a dumpster and, magically, the place is cleaner. That's why, before I leave work every day at the office, I don't mind taking out the trash.

Actually, I do this Everywhere.

At my house, I am usually the one carrying the trash can to the curb every Tuesday and Friday morning. Whenever there's a construction project that I am compelled to attend because of work, I'm always glad to clean up the site, tie up the garbage bags, and throw things into the giant green bins for Disposal.

Often, at parties, I find myself Carrying out bags of red cups, beer boxes, half-eaten slices of pizza, dirty plastic plates and silverware, scribbled notes, cans, bottles, wrappers, moldy food, broken electronics, and the debris of late furniture. It's a compulsion.

And I'm not Opposed to sorting out the Refuse either. My Green and German friends have Educated me. Plastics, glass, paper, and bio-degradables all belong to separate containers to be taken Other Places, Somewhere Else.

It's easy. A zen gesture. Probably something that, under proper scrutiny, Reveals Something about my personality, upbringing, and identity. I am, however, too lazy to make metaphors or go too deeply into self-introspection today. So, take from this what you will. In fact, take it out. Forget about it.

#

My friend, Paul "Canada" Nemeth, the man who saved my life once in high school, is now a poet. And he knows it, apparently. Check out his Facebook page.

Stipend

"Have you ever really thought about the awesome implications of ten dollars?" asked G. He stared at a tremendous, fire-engine red container of Folgers coffee.

"Right now I'm thinking about eating," I said. There was a pre-made salad in my hands. Sort of a guilty pleasure since pre-made food isn't really in the Spirit of food stamps.

"A guy in the street a few days ago asked me for a dollar. He used the bill to snort something in front of me. Imagine what ten dollars would do? I wonder if that does affect the quality of the experience? G I need to borrow your money - this needs to be tested." M said. M held a sandwich and a six pack of Tin Roof.

"How much do you think this costs with tax?" G asked, inspecting the Folgers.

"Ten dollars should cover it," M said.

"And this will go for a few weeks," G said, pondering. "My last ten dollars. It seems like a valuable investment. Without coffee, I can't function. I wonder how long I can go without food."

"It's a lousy experiment," I said, "I can buy you food. I've got food stamps."

"We get paid tomorrow," M pointed out. "Four hundred and ninety-five dollars."

"Three-fifty goes to rent immediately," G said. "But I can still afford food with a hundred and ninety-five."

"But then you have to take into account fifty dollars week for entertainment and drinks," M countered. "And then there's miscellaneous expenses, like flat tires, bribes, gas, insurance, taxes, medicine, more coffee. So, realistically, you have fifteen for food. Maybe fifteen fifty."

We walk to the counter. "I'm buying you sushi," I told G. I actually couldn't afford it since I only had seventeen dollars left on my account and I was in the middle of reapplying for further funds.

"Want me to throw in for the beer?" I asked M.

"Who said you're getting any?" M replied. "Nah. If you want to."

I gave M two dollars, bringing his contribution down to ten. We paid and went outside. We were in the French Quarter Rouses at the corner of Royal and St. Peter. Outside it was a cool early Spring evening just getting dark. Doreen Ketchens was giving a performance.

"Wouldn't it be great to be musician?" G asked as we walked to the levee. "They are the happiest people in this town. Who's seen a starving, tortured artist since they came down here?"

"Beer tax," M mutters to himself. "Did you know that between the three of us we make one very poor salary?"

"I wonder how much they make?" G said. He glanced over his shoulder at Doreen, considering. "Do you think they earn more than we do?"

"Definitely," I said. "Fun fact -- it takes Mitt Romney four and a half hours to earn our annual income."

We climbed up the levee and sat on the rocks below the concrete walkway. It's impossible to see water from anywhere in New Orleans without climbing -- hence the joke that the river is the highest point in the city. M distributed the beer and we ate our food.

"How far are we from your apartment?" G asked M.

"About twenty minutes from here," M says.

G held up the can of coffee contemplatively. "Do you have access to water?" he asked.

"That's a pretty damning question in this city," M said. "Thems fightin' words."

"Well, if you have water then we could make coffee," G said, undaunted.

"Amazing!" M said. "We could make coffee."

G elaborated. "And then we would be in the Bywater, where we would have access to Things. The coffee would get us through the evening."

"Well maybe," I said. "You know, I've found that Nodoz are more cost effective."

#

Holy shit, I've kept this blog running for a year solid. I'm permitting myself that this is a triumph.

New Orleans Misc.

A friend, CO, was at a bar not far from my house. It was a Wednesday afternoon, hot, muggy, strange and there was nothing better to do. He sat down and an older man sitting next to him asked CO where he was from. New Jersey, said CO.

"What brings you down here, baby?" said the man.

"AmeriCorps," said CO. "I  rebuild houses."

"You like the city?"

"I love it here," CO said, holding up his High Life and taking a sip.

The man's tone went dark. "Get out now."

CO was taken aback. "What?"

"Get out now," the man said. "Because if you don't, you'll never leave. Trust me. You'll fall in love and never get out."

#

Last week a fifteen year old black girl was shot to death in the Desire neighborhood. A week earlier her boyfriend was shot and killed in more or less the same area. The Times Picayune says that the best the police can do is say it's about turf warfare or schoolyard brawling.

#

"There are so many ways to make a left turn in this town," AC says. We're trying to navigate through the streets of the Marigny and we are not being successful. AC instructs to make another right turn. No one has any idea where we are, but this does not seem to bother AC.

"You can make three right turns. You can overshoot and make a u-turn. You pull down a driveway, back up, and go straight down the way you wanted to..."

"Yeah," said AY, "you can basically do anything but make a left turn."

"But it forces you to be creative."

#

Six years after Katrina, there are still several thousand people who haven't been able to rebuild their houses.

The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center said the number was around 10,000 in 2010 and since then people have played with the statistics (five thousand, eight thousand, and so on) because no one really knows.

There are so many mysteries about this place. It might be useful for the ambiance, but it's hell for a grant writer.

#

L and my house sits near the end of a one-way street in the Fairgrounds. There is no direct way to get there by car except by way of an elaborate dance through the other one-way streets surrounding it like a labyrinth. There is, however, an intersection of two main streets which our road runs into, but you cannot enter the street from this point.

AC was driving with us home one day. L stared down the entrance to our street. "Why can't I just drive down that way? It would be so much faster. Why can't you enter there?"

AC shrugged and said, "Do whatever you want."

"Really?" L asked, looking over at him.

AC nodded. "Really."

So L drove down the street directly to our house. No one tried to stop us.

New Orleans made more sense to me suddenly.

Building Systems

A cold fall night. Maybe Rain. Thanksgiving draws closer and Why Not is good enough. Uptown just off of Magazine.

They stand outside smoking and listening to the wind through the dead leaves and thinking about the water that may fall on their heads.

S is baffled that trees lose their leaves Down Here. It's a twelve month growing season. He just assumed that, you know, nothing died below the Mason-Dixon Line. And yet, there it Is – piles of wet debris in the gutters, on the sidewalk, matting the grass, leaving bare, skeletal oak arms up above whose only garment now is Mardi Gras beads.

There are three of them – and an occasional loud party-goer wanders out to chat, smoke – but then returns to the party. E introduces S to the Other Guy: D. E says, "D and I are old friends. He's a civil engineer. He works on the levees."

"Oh," says S. He's holding a tumbler of whiskey. While everyone else went to the fridge for beer, he ferreted out the liquor cabinet and, since no one stopped him, took generously.

"That's the reaction I usually get," says D.

"Yeah," says E. He's nursing a beer. "D is our go-to guy when we want to know How Bad It's Going to Get. During Gustav we called D up and asked him if we should leave and he said 'Get the hell out of town.'"

"Yeah," says D. "We were lucky that time. But it could have been a lot worse."

"So you must know--" S begins.

"Yes," D says and lights a cigarette, seemingly in preparation for the following conversation. "You want to know What Went Wrong, right?"

"Yes," S says.

"New Orleans is a bowl," D begins. He cups his hands, smoke rising between his fingers creating a smoldering crater. "And the way you’re Supposed to build a levee system is with a lot of spill ways back-up levee barriers, and so on. It's so that when a storm hits and there's a surge there's somewhere for the water to go. If the pressure gets too great, you open up a spill way and relieve pressure on the system.

"What we have in New Orleans is just one Gigantic Wall. You know what happens when a hurricane hits? They have all these gates surrounding the city and when a storm comes they close them and seal off the city. Any pressure or surge affects the whole system. If the pressure gets too great then the whole system fails. Well, there's nowhere for the water to go and no way to relieve the system. What happens then? Catastrophic Failure. You lose a three hundred year old city."

"What about the system now? I thought the Army Corps was rebuilding it," says S.

D laughs and shakes his head. "It's no better. Their solution to the Failure was just build a Bigger Fucking Wall. Very American – just build it bigger. It's supposed to stop a Category 3, but..."

"Just a Category 3?" S asks. "What happens if a Category 5 hits?"

D shakes his head. "There's nothing you can build that could stop a Category 5."

D's cigarette falls to the cement and his shoe rubs it out.

Tornadoes. That's what S remembers. The raw force of wind that can twist and pull entire towns off the face of the earth. No such thing as Tornado-Proof.

And it starts to rain.

Boil

I burn easily. Five minutes in the sun and my skin turns an atrocious, sick red.

In eighth grade I laid out in the wide open for too long next to a pool. I didn't reach all of my back with the sunscreen. The result was an angelic sunburn. A rod of crimson ran from the base of my neck and then fanned out around the entirety of my abdomen so that someone standing behind me commented that it looked like I had white wings. My legs and feet resembled the boiled shell of a lobster.

Now I never wear shorts. Whenever I have to go out in the sun, I usually wear long sleeves or bathe in sunscreen.

Our closest star and I do not get along.

#

"Come on, my little ducklings," the tour guide says and leads a group of twenty Swamp Tourists into the green and out of the sun. It's hotter outside the city. More humid. You feel like you're being cooked.

The boat has no cover. When we're out on the murky water, an interstate river, the tour guide explains that closer to the Gulf the water goes brackish. We'll see alligators on the tour, but only the smaller ones.

"It's too cold for the big ones, yet," says the guide. "They like it hot. As hot as possible. They won't come out of hibernation for a little while yet. They can actually go for about a year without eating."

"What temperature is the water now?"

"It's about sixty degrees," says the guide. He maneuvers the boat around a bend to a long stretch of water. "In a few months the water will get to be about ninety degrees. Further down the river it gets to be about a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Hold on."

He guns the engine and we take off down the river.

#

"What are you eating?" IB shouted over the music.

We were at F&M's, the sketchiest bar in all of New Orleans. There is a pool table in the main entrance room, but no one ever plays pool on it. There is a piece of plywood over the top, rotting with beer, on which people dance.

"Alligator," I said, bewildered.

"Any good?" she asked, sipping a High Life. 

"Yeah. It tastes like chicken."

We stood around for a bit, watching the crowd spasm. It was about three o'clock in the morning. People say that you go to F&M's to end your night, one way or another.

"You wouldn't believe what this place looks like without a crowd," IB said. "Once, J left her purse here and I had to come back early to get it. It was about nine and no one was here. There were two bartenders. One was passed out on the bar and other was picking her teeth. So I said I was looking for a friend's purse. She pulls out four purses and says, 'Which one?' 'Uh, the expensive looking one?' And then I say that the friend also left her credit card. The bartender pulls out this metal crate and starts flipping through. A, B, C, D... This place does not look at all good early."

#

The guide pulls the boat into an area with more shade. "We're in the swamp, now," he says. "Swamps have trees and the marshes have grasses. We just left the marsh."

The other passengers have side conversations, but mostly people are quiet. There are other boats up ahead. The swamp is hushed.

We drift past another boat full of Swamp Tourists. "And there you see the wild Louisiana Homo Sapien," says the guide. "The females of the species are the most dangerous. They lure you in with their legs."

We laugh. One of the passengers asks, "Are the edible?"

"They are, actually," says the guide.

A little further down the guide begins talking about hunting alligators. The season is coming up. Alligators, though an apex predator, are a controlled species.

"What you do is you take a chicken and spit it on a hook and you hang that about five feet over the water so that the little ones can't get it. You don't hunt any that are smaller than ten feet long. The gators jump out of the water, swallow the chicken, but then the hook gets stuck in their stomach.

"You have to come around every five hours to check the traps or else another gator will come and eat him. What you'll see is a line going into the water because he'll be down there hiding. He's scared. So what you have to do is draw him up to the surface. And he will fight. He'll thrash around for four of five minutes, but after that he'll calm down and be as gentle as a baby. He'll be warn out.

"Then you just come up next to him and there's a soft spot on the back of his head. You shoot him there, right into the brain – it’s about the size of a walnut. He dies instantly. A .22 will work. It doesn't take much. It's a soft spot."

#

I know where the shade is in New Orleans. Esplanade is the best street to get into the downtown area from where I live because there are so many great trees. Walking through the Quarter itself, though, during a hot day, can be Treacherous. There is no lee side at noon.

"You'll figure out how to find shade," my first landlord in the Crescent City told me. "You're lucky you weren't here for the hot months. The two weeks before you got here – man – that was brutal. You stepped outside and you were already sweating."

Which is partially why I struggled so much with that first apartment. There is practically no shade in the Seventh Ward. You Boil and Burn your way through the day, looking for Relief.

#

Another boat ahead is stopped. They are throwing marshmallows into the water. The passengers look anxious and eager and no hands hang over the side of the boat.

"Where ya't?" our guide calls.

The other guide calls back, "It's Big Al! He's down there somewhere. I think he doesn't want to come up."

Our guide grins and turns back to us. "Big Al is a ten foot gator. We call him Big Al because he's the dominant male in the area. He eats the younger males. Last year… we saw him dragging this five foot male up and down the river for a few days. Making an example of him. He was still alive."

And we float there. The guide throws hot dogs and marshmallows into the water. The latter, the guide explained earlier, the alligators like because, "They live in the Marsh. ... I'm proud of that one. I came up with it yesterday."

Somewhere below, there is a ten foot alligator who does not want to come up. In the murk. It's too cold for him yet. He's waiting for the Heat and the Sun. He can Wait for a long time.

#

Yesterday I came home and stood in the kitchen. L walked in and said, "How was your vacation Sam? Oh. You're sun-kissed."

Performance Art

A few weeks ago we read Hunter S. Thompson's "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan" in the Swimmers - my friends' and I weekly reading group. Of course his Gonzo style came up in conversation and Mr. A esque. presented probably the best speculated explanation for Thompson's rambling, vicious aesthetic I have heard: it's just too much damn work to redo something on a typewriter.

And that's going to be this post. I'm hungover (yesterday was my birthday) and on the run to meet my family in the French Quarter. So be generous.

Last week, my good friend S came to visit along with her jazz dance troupe, Erin Morris and Her Rag Dolls. She wanted to go exploring that Sunday afternoon so we wandered into the Marigny and, as these things usually go, circled around our destination for about an hour before capitulating and having a drink at Mimi's. There the conversation, as a matter of course, fell to the future.

"Do you consider yourself the kind of person who has a life-plan and follows it? Or do you just find yourself playing it by ear?" she asked me.

This was in reference to the usual Get Married, Have Kids, Find a Salaried Job somewhere in there, and Start Working on a Mortgage. So, the answer was, "No, not really." But it's more complicated than that. I asked her the same question.

She thought about it, sipped the special lemonade Mimi's was serving - which was a fantastic way of fighting the heat - and shook her head. "I don't know."

At least she was willing to admit that life, quite frequently, doesn't boil down to a simple dichotomy.

The evening before I watched the ragdolls perform at a show celebrating women in jazz. See the video above - they were majestic.

Walking through the back hallways of the performance space - where no one is ever performing but still theatrical - I saw Meschiya Lake drift by. "Meschiya Lake?" I called. She turned and cocked her head to one side. She was much shorter than I had imagined, seeing her up on stage so many times. "Will you be performing at the Spotted Cat this Tuesday." She gave a hipster nod, an quick and emphatic upward-downward movement of the head, without saying a word, pirouetted and disappeared back on stage.

The next night, after convincing S that I would enjoy myself watching the dancers have a good time at DBA while I sipped a PBR in the corner, I ended up doing just that. They, the jazz dancers, let loose on Frenchmen street, were miraculous. I've seen good dancers in the Crescent City, but never have I seen so many people in such a small space all owning the floor at the same time. It was crowded, there was beer and whiskey soaking every surface, and the band had to compete with the sound of stomping jazz dancers to be heard.

A gentleman sat down next to me and gently refused an invitation for a dance. Suddenly a woman appeared next to him. "I'm so embarrassed! I didn't realize it was you!"

"No, it's all right," the man said smiling.

"My husband loves your work. You probably get this all the time from people who see you, but could I take a picture?"

"Sure sure," he said. And so she did.

For the rest of the evening I tried to figure out if I knew the guy. And the longer I stared at him the more confused I became. There was no recognition at all, but I was groping for some fame to place on him. Eventually I decided he looked a little like Quentin Tarantino and left it at that.

Meschiya Lake got up and sang a number. While I listened and the dancers did there thing a woman standing next to me asked, "Are you an actor?"

I was a bit taken aback. Quentin Tarantino had accepted a dance with a woman and was having a ball right in front of the Ms. Lake who wasn't paying attention to anything but the microphone and brass band surrounding her. And this woman asked me if I was an actor.

"Why do you ask?" I said.

"Well, just the look. The ambiance," she said. She pointed at Quentin, "He's an actor," she pointed across the room at a man wearing a maroon three piece suit and fedora, "He's an actor. It's all to add spice to the place to make sure people are having a good time."

"You think New Orleans is filled with actors?" I asked.

She smiled and shrugged, embarrassed. "I have no idea. But it seems like it."

The set ended and the dancers kept jamming. Before the stage I saw Meschiya, dancing alone, ignoring everyone and everything but the music. She seemed to be dancing with the band, if anything. The whole world could have evanesced for all she cared.

Yesterday, at Pal's, Meschiya Lake came up in conversation while I shared birthday celebratory drinks. I said she was phenomenal and a friend replied, "Yeah, she may be a great singer but is she a performer." Thinking back on her dancing with the band, I nodded.