"somewhere other than inside the out there." -- part twenty nine.
and how do i start this again?
summer, new orleans, 2002.
i could go on about the dripping humidity, about the half-baked bums of riverbend, about the peddling seers of jackson square. but none of it will help if you haven't been there, seen the corridors of locked-up grief that this city hides behind beads and hurricanes.
it is however the setting for the last leg of this story, the gangrene riddled limb. and so, i won't mince words, but rather, i'll dice them in large chunks so they don't melt away.
in a city like that, it can be hard to keep your bearings, let alone tend to them as is usually neccessary. all in all, sometimes, you come upon places that you never want to revisit.
new orleans is a tricky over-populated ghost town doused in syrupy alcohol and turtle soup. the roads are cramped and show their wear. the food is a glutton's paradise. the neighborhood bars are smokey and deserted. the tourist traps snap off your legs and your bank accounts. there are homes older than the dirt they were built on and withering suspects to match.
it is, however, romantic and cumbersome to be lured in by architecture and lust.
our little one bedroom above the dry cleaner squeeked and moaned with a fatigue known only by expanded wood. we tried to be as quiet as possible most nights to give the old girl a sweet night's sleep. some evenings, we wouldn't speak but communicate in caresses and kisses. some late nights, even the cats just stared at the hollow walls for hours.
we had no plan or way to get out or blueprints of the escape hatch. seemed to me that we were working with a pack of gum and a flashlight, with which to mobilize our troops against good ol' nawlins voodoo and streak across mid-city on our way to some place more like home.
and we wouldn't take our love for granted, as we granted ourselves pretty damn lucky to know who we were to wake up next to in the morning. at least something was figured out, even if at points we couldn't afford the sheets on our bed.
fortunately for us, poverty happens to be love's close friend, and a lot of the time, they're accomplices to each others rash creation of destruction. there was little in the line of luxory, but we really had everything we needed.
sometimes, i guess you could say that love loses the battle with practicality. i look back now, and i have no earthly clue as to how i ended up sweating bullets in a texas town.
there were heavy rains, and i remember a few nights of these storms that clouds poured onto us:
driving home from work, i took my exit from I-10 in a usual 50mph fashion. squinting through the heavy rain, i followed the slight curve of the ramp down under the overpass. night had come, and i didn't see the lake of rainwater collected until my car was up to its proverbial neck. stupidly and fortunately, i tamped the brakes, changed my mind quickly, and floored the gas. this sent my car sailing through a good two to three feet of water to where the road lifted. relieved and breathing again, my rearview mirror illuminated five or six cars stalled at the waters' edge. i continued on to the deserted and flooded carrollton, sporadically praying that my antiquated vehicle could outrun the foot of water gathered on the road. it was nothing but pure luck that i got all the way home that night to see boy standing in our doorway, worried and with a furrowed brow and ready to lecture me on how i should have stopped at his dad's to wait for the water to recede.
there was another evening, i was making dinner, and i kept checking my watch. he was supposed to be home an hour prior. i had asked him to take our cell phone, but he refused, saying he felt better if i had it. nine thirty rolls around, and he was two hours late when i get the call that his car won't start. i put the start of dinner back in the fridge and hop in my car to drive cautiously across town to campus.
when i get there, his car is running and ready.
i snatched the furrowed brow for my very own since he had forgotten our new number and couldn't call to tell me he was on his way.
but we drove home, playing car tag in the rain on nearly empty streets. we ate our dinner on the stairs, watching the tides of water lap over the sidewalk. fell into sleep, damp and smiling.
we had both gotten a day off to make the trek to baton rouge for a day at the water park. somehow, we made ourselves head out early into the muggy ten am. the rain began to come in blinding horizontal sheets, slowing us to 10mph. by the time we arrived, we were twitchy and ready to play. after only two rides, lightning lit up the early afternoon sky with thunder rocking our eardrums. we sat on a covered patio, and it started to sprinkle dollops. suddenly, on the cue of a ringing clap, pianos and gods and woodland creatures, all made of rain, came crashing to the ground. the spectacle blew paper plates and picnic items from their tables. it went on and on for an hour and a half before we could partake of the fabricated water rides. one of the best days we had that summer.
and now, there is thunder in the skies of austin, and a morose gray has conquered something more blue like the city is more comfortable drenched in clouds.
