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LA LA LA Everything is beautiful when you have nothing to do. I am looking forward to a day of mundane chores - even mopping! - followed by a night of festivity. I am a new-economy aristocrat. DEPRESSORAMA Not motivated, not even to write, but after dutifully recording the passing of AHWOSG by Dave Eggers into the library of Books Read By Me I felt obligated to replace the last foul entry. I can and do handle the zero-force of my emotions well enough to stay out of (hurting myself, hospitalization) trouble, but distracting myself from the colorless gaping maw of emptiness does get tedious. Hooray for friends THE SCENT OF BITTER ALMONDS For once I don't feel better upon regaining my health. Today was an especially empty day; not even yesterday's industrious house-cleaning bought me a reprieve as it usually does. I had to start working again for the first time in a couple of weeks and I had to cut each word out of my arms with increasingly blunt and painful instruments. I managed to finish the work that I could put off no further, then ran out of blood. Tried to read and had to stop. Ditto TV, ditto chatting with friends, ditto food (the last refuge of the depressed). Took a walk and hated it. Is writing better than wishing I were doing something? It's about the same. I can't even drink as my stomach is still wonky from flu. Codeine is clearly the answer. A few days staring blissfully at the ceiling would do me all the good I need. All this and the sun's out all day every day. Blame lies elsewhere. I choose toxic everything syndrome. Breakup Stump jobs Best new joke I've helped to develop: "Dude, she puts the puta in amputation!" Please deposit twenty-five cents for another fine joke product. Next subject: stump jobs. Please Kill Xmas OK, actually I had a fine Christian holy day. Saw my parents in lovely Federal Way (that LFW becomes less ironic every year; they're far enough from the strip malls to make a difference), got a neat toy, a cool book I've wanted for a while, and other good things. I gave as good as I got, I think. Post-family bliss was spent trying to make the toy work, installing a new video driver on my laptop that would soon prove terminal, and eating meat and playing games with Therese, Jen, Doug, Thomas, and a wee bit of Karin. Couldn't be happier, cheerier, etc. Michael and Deirdre returned from their Yelm trip the next day and we've been busy eating out and shopping ever since, hence the Xmas-killing request. Meanwhile I've been reinstalling practically everything onto my computer and promising myself never again to install upgrades I don't REALLY NEED. I still haven't got my bookmarks or address books to work right, durn the new Netscape to heck. And Kate comes back tomorrow. Woo hoo! Days 8-10 Three days of sitting is a lot like work. There might be advantages - nobody cares if you're reading or when you eat or how much you sleep, but ultimately it's exhausting and you're paying for the privilege. Like the trip to New Orleans, the train ride was about a day too long. Better that than the plane, though. The trip from NO to Chicago, in coach, was swampily beautiful during the day; once night fell the squirming began. Despite having lived through a six-day cross-crountry train trip in coach ten years ago, I couldn't find a way to make myself comfortable. Before dawn the penetrating Mississippi drawl of a septuagenarian in front of me hitting on his neighbor woke me and kept me at the edge of homicidal dementia until I decided to just "get up." By that, of course, I mean open my eyes and remain seated. I read the rest of the way into Chicago, that is when I wasn't worrying about the announcement re: frozen, cracked rails ahead. We made it in, snacked, sat in the first-class/sleeper lounge where we learned that the Seattle Times was threatening to hire permascabs. I was excited and hopeful that this would ensure the permanency of the Seattle Union Record, but no such luck. Our compartment, aptly named, was smaller than a typical two-seater booth in any restaurant. The beds were surprisingly comfortable, if cramped. Fortunately, Dex and I are genetically engineered for life in space, so we are compact and require less air than most of our species. The food was pretty good, if beefy - vegetarian options included fettucine Alfredo and little else, though we were offered all the butter we could eat. I read copiously, we played less Magic than expected, and we probably slept more than 24 hours per day between us. The landscape was unfortunately monotonous under its blanket of snow; this grew wearisome after a day. Crossing the Cascades was a blessed relief - we were back in the warm bath of Western Washington. Paul picked us up at Union Station, bless him and his Saab eternally. From there to the Neptune for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and its endlessly fascinating and complex sexual subtexts. Then home, to await guests Michael and Deirdre from San Francisco. I will never decompress again, ever. Like making the bed - why bother when I'll just sleep in it/get all wound up again? Day 6 Nothing happened today. All right - I can't Schmader my way out of this and I ought to write SOMETHING. Got up, ate crappy Chinese food at the gay-owned Moon Wok restaurant, did for heaven's sake our laundry, went to look at a graveyard that was closed, walked up to Faubourg Merigny and gawked at rainbowy stores, restaurants, B's, and then, finally, found the Turkish place. Midnight Express seems like a poor choice of names - drug smuggling and long prison sentences don't inspire much appetite in YT. Nevertheless, we had a dining experience that I can only describe as profoundly moving. After all the crappy Americana and Orleansiana we'd had to deal with (the Cuban place notwithstanding), this genuinely good and cared-for food was like a conjugal visit. I'm still shaking. Apres that the deluge. Home with 6-pack for orgy of Simpsons and other Fox fare. Watched TV for three hours straight. Finished DF Wallace's Girl With Curious Hair during commercial breaks - it's deliciously wonderful, even essential. That's all. Day 7 Another day of little activity proving that a week is too long for New Orleans without a guide. We ate breakfast at a touristy place with fairly good food that included biscuits, hash browns, toasted french bread, and grits, a blizzard of starch. Bloated, we returned to Faulkner House Books and Pirate Alley Cafe (see Day 2) for one last look. We then waddled over to St. Louis Cemetery #1 (I heard from somewhere that they're all #1, but that could have been a dream) which was decadent and lovely and has been done to death so I'll keep silent. Pictures on the way. So we walked downtown, checking out the rusting shells of failed businesses and wondering if national economics is a zero-sum game. This was grimmer than the cemetery so we retreated to the hotel and then ventured out again, me with a box of books to ship. This was more complicated than we had hoped - the concierge gave us directions that landed us in the middle of the projects, with no PO or other governmental assistance of any kind in sight. We took a hard left and re-entered downtown, presuming that the surviving businesses probably used the mail system now and then. No luck. Two sets of directions and the best we could do was Kinko's, which offered UPS shipping. Close enough for these by-now-hungry-again boys. (Have I mentioned that Dexter has the patience of a saint? It is true, and I will nominate him for canonization in the religion of his choice in the unlikely event that his death should precede mine.) Back to the Cuban place for chips y salsa y nachos y margarita, pronto, por favor. Ate quickly to avoid heartburn (ho ho! the sly wit of a spurned Santa), then some last-minute Xmas shopping and back to the hotel just as it started raining. On the way we spied a ?Café Beignet,? clearly for tourists such as we, and decided to eat breakfast there tomorrow. We still haven?t had beignets yet. Reading, packing, to bed early we go. Tomorrow we get to take a ride on a TRAIN!
New Orleans Day 5 What kind of world is it when you can't trust Santa Claus? Clearly the kind of world I live in. To kill any hope of a proper dramatic telling, I'll tell you up front that Dexter and I got stood up for Santarchy. Beginning traditionally: We got up late and hustled down to the cross-town streetcar to visit another comix shop Dex had his eye on. The long ride was good fun - the interior was all wood so it felt like church (I guess), the woman in front of me combined all the delicate beauty of a small child and an elderly widow and wore crazy glasses that had weighted chains instead of earpieces, and halfway there it started to rain harder than I've ever experienced outside of Miami. It was the kind of rain that makes you pretty sure something's wrong with the world; rain that is much more an brutal elemental force like an earthquake than an annoyance that might wreck your hair. Eventually we had to get out in it, and though it had died down a bit, we still got thoroughly soaked on our way to PJ's coffee shop. My laptop was fine in its Amazon-branded carrying bag, praise Jeff Bezos and all his merry servants. I ate voraciously, worked feverishly against the draining battery, and talked about glasses with the counter lassie. Glasses day, it was. So there we were, Dexter and I, each writing away, when I looked out and saw that the sun was shining brightly for the first time since we'd arrived. I finished up my stupid work that nobody cares about anyway and we hustled outside to make some vitamin D. Standing toe-deep in water and staring at the bright blue sky was quite wonderful for a while, but neither of us was high enough to hold onto it for more than a minute. The Native American store awaited. It looked like someone's garage inside, if that garage was filled with objets d'art native. Mostly local, and I'm partial to NW coast stuff, but Dex had his eye on a basket for Mom which turned out to be $250 because "now that there's a casino, they don't make too many baskets any more." I suppose we all knew that already. The comics were neat, and the comic boy (all comix shop employees are boys, even if, like this one, they're over 40) was sweet and told us how he'd been to Seattle for the World's Fair and had been back a couple of times and loved it. Back on the streetcar exhausted for some reason, we spaced until we were almost to our destination, when the car stopped and let people off and stayed put. We heard a marching band ahead. Couldn't be. A parade at 4pm on Saturday on Canal Street. Yep - we got out and walked ahead, then saw a smallish army of kids marching (no kidding) around and around a single block's median strip. Dancers, musicians, and assorted kids kept going counter-clockwise while we watched and then retreated. Perhaps this is how they arrange detention in New Orleans. Tired as we were, we slouched down to a vegetarian restaurant (by "vegetarian" I mean "gay") surprisingly near our hotel. My burger tasted funny and Homey McHomo - whose shoes matched mine! - explained patiently that it was made from lentils, sunflower seeds, grass clippings, etc. It was exceptionally wonderful, and the gorgonzola on top made it extra-festive. We may go back. We trudged back to the hotel and passed out for a couple of hours. Rising shortly before we were due in Santa drag at a FQ bar, we looked at each other and decided to join in a bit later - the itinerary spelled it all out. So we bumbled around for a while - Dex drank some coffee, I took a Lucidril, and then around 11 we donned our suits and took off for the Cat's Meow on Bourbon. All the way there we abused the anonymity afforded us by our fake beards and felt like kids inside giant robots, crushing and destroying everything in our path. Ho ho ho, indeed. So as you already know we found the Cat's Meow to be sans Santas. It was packed tight, but nary a red stitch did we see, so we plowed back through the crowd, getting in one ugly class-warfare confrontation in which I responded to some drunk's demands for righting the wrongs of Xmases past with "What did you ever do for ME?" which only made things worse. His girlfriend seemed simultaneously embarrassed and elated. I guess most people on Bourbon look that way. Most girlfriends. We yelled at people, a cop gave me an angry glare and then stared at my crotch (is there Santa porn? Santa/cop porn?) as I passed, and we took a few pictures. Dexter passed out in the hotel but I wanted a drink. I doffed my itchy, ill-fitting, stinking-of-vinyl suit and slipped to hell back for a key lime margarita. Nine Santa spottings, in two groups. Is that all the cacophonists could muster? I felt bad for not showing up "on time" until I had thought about it for more than a few milliseconds. Santas seemed to be groups of pre-arranged friends having pre-arranged good times, okay by me. Woo hoo! I waved them on and sipped at my margarita. Next year in Jerusalem! New Orleans Day 4 Thanks for your concern, but I'm having a great time. Honestly, you'd think I'd never complained about anything back in Jet City. (Remember that name? Makes me nostalgic.) Booze, books, and tea are all I ask for; the added bonuses of cab rides, museums, vaulted graves, and things to complain about make me tingle. No, wait, that's the dt's. So we went to the Greek place for b'fast and had a surprisingly, wonderfully, dismal repast of eggs and meat and starch. My frozen and fried hash brown patty was perfectly and adorably tasty and Dex's grits bore the charming yellow stain of margarine and lots of it. Our waiter seemed to be a street person wrapped in an apron by the once-charismatic owner and set to work pouring coffee for those who'd asked for tea. He was super-nice and we thoroughly enjoyed our meal. See, I'm having a good time! We walked a block or so to the squalid downtowny zone and grabbed a cab to UNO, where I assumed I could find a coffee shop in which to complete some Amazon work I'd brought with me near a comic shop Dex wanted to visit. We arrived to find a literal wasteland, with the exceptional inclusion of the aforementioned shop. It was astonishingly well-stocked with bizarre Japanese videos as well as the expected bagged-and-boxed graphic literature. Dex bought some small-press stuff and I bought some preconstructed Magic decks to keep us busy at odd hours and especially on the train trip home next week, then we got another cab to take us to Tulane, perhaps there to have better luck. The cab driver was the filthiest-mouthed man I have ever met, who went on at great length about kids' taste in music, his father-in-law's drinking problem, and his brother-in-law's mooching. After a while I learned that input from pasengers was neither expected nor desired, so settled into a blissful state of voyeurism until we reached the campus. We found it much like UW - some lovely old buildings, some lovely-in-their-hideous-ugliness new buildings, and lots of internalized pedophilophobia. Nothing like a U District that we could find, so I hunkered down in a surprisingly nice campus coffee shop with outlets and batted .667 on my Cyberculture lineup. Yes, I am fully aware of the tortured awkwardness, not to mention mixedness, and especially not to mention sports-relatedness, of that metaphor. I AM A PROFESSIONAL WRITER. Checked out the outskirts of Audobon Park, a nice grassy tree-filled parklike park, then felt tired and hungry so called cab #3 to take us back to Chateau LeMoyne and a relaxing 14 e-mails. I lost myself in them until Dex reminded me that there were two stomachs at risk of auto-digestion, not just one, so we tried again to find the Turkish place. My embarrassment over the previous night's ravenous wanderings because of my spacy refusal to want to eat anywhere led me to proclaim that once we got lost, we'd eat at the next place we saw. When we passed the place we knew the Turks had to be, we saw a Hooters up th street (Does a New Orleans Hooters strike you as bizarre and pathetic, even moreso than one in Lynnwood or Eastlake? It did us.) and renegotiated. Some Cajun place served up some yummy chili and fries and I learned that Happy Hour means two beers for regular price rather than Seattle's thrifty one for half price. I felt cheated until I finished the second beer, when I felt expansive and philosophical. Back to Rue Bourbon for weekend drinking and walking. Though there were more people crowding the street, the throng seemed to yield a net loss of craziness from earlier in the week. It seemed as though people felt permitted to behave like bacchanalians, but saw that permission as a kind of frightening challenge. I got another frozen drink with bananas in it and put it down immediately, purchasing a harmless margarita instead. They make them with key lime juice here, at least one nameless drinkhole does. As it happens, the other night I deceived myself about the ladies' nightclub - apparently http://www.lesbianation.com is in fact a legit fully-clothed girl-girl site and the club caters to sisters at least occasionally. It was closed up when we saw it with a little sign that mentioned "serving all customers, be open-minded, dress nice, blah blah." I think the G-Spot is a weekly event or somesuch. Curious that they felt the need to protect their clientele right down the street from a host of gay bars. Well, why not - I felt the need to protect my own clientele by that point. Back to the room to rest up for tomorrow's Santarchy debacle, plus more words. New Orleans Day 3 Dexter snores as badly as I do. This should only surprise a few of you. Benadryl and Pepto-Bismol see me through the night, though, and I arise at the civil-for-me hour of 10. I smear my sleepy body around the hotel room for a while, trying to solidify my consciousness enough to wash and dress. These functions performed - though how I do long for the carefree irresponsibility of senility - we ventured toward the safe bread pudding haven of the previous day. Finding it without too much trouble, we ordered eggs and potatoes with our meat and settled in. I had to ask the waitress about the green bits in my scramble and learned a new Creole word: "vegetable," which is a colorful term of uncertain lineage that refers to the filler used in certain dishes to bind the meat and starch. The particular "vegetable" we enjoyed was "pepper" - just like the seasoning! I'm coming to feel a real sense of kinship with these simple people and their down-to-earth ways. Dex wanted to visit a bookstore or two and I agreed, though I try not to overburden myself by purchasing faster than I can read. Sadly, I picked up an average of one book from each of the four stores we inspected. Each was more enticing than the last, though, and the orgy cost me less than I'd spent on drinks so far, and rationalization is a powerful force in my life. I have already finished one that I bought yesterday and will probably finish another before I sleep, though, so I'm catching up. In between our bouts of shameless consumption we visited two museums. As it happens, some good things DO end in "-eum." The Pharmacy Museum is a wacked-out drug fiend's heaven on earth, if the WODF happens (like me) to also carry within him or her unspeakably exquisite cravings for old things in jars and cases and - better yet - informative placards. Visions of amyl nitrite vials, opium pills, and still-living, still-hungry-for-human-blood leeches will dance sugarplum-like in my head tonight as Dexter and I perform in glottal dysfunction. Glass eyes, too. Old obstetric implements. Why wasn't I told? For a $2 suggested donation, this is an unbeatable entertainment deal! Then the Voodoo Museum. See Day 2's aborted introspective re: identity, authenticity, etc. In we went, and despite my dear friend Michael's plug I reserved doubt. Room 1 was a tiny gift shop (obvious humor: some of the gifts were fairly large); seven dollars later we were squeezing through a narrow hallway packed with neat-looking masks and bright color photos of white-guy museum-owner "Voodoo Charlie." The next two rooms were unbearably cool - albino python, life-size Baron Samedi guy all chummy with alligator person, altars everywhere. Following the red arrows taped to the floor as per instructions (would YOU disobey the Voodoo Lady's command?), we found a side room that smelled too strongly of dead animal for my indelicate nose, then a video room showing the end of their documentary, which told us how to buy a copy of their documentary. Worth $7? You bet. We returned to rest and drop off our heavy loads of books, then headed out when the maid showed up. Off to Louis Armstrong Park ... Dex informs me that the book he read notes the irony of said park, as Armstrong couldn't play the white clubs of NO before he made it big and wouldn't thereafter. Hee haw. The park is big and has quirky-angled waterways and uncomfortably-colored bridges and steelworks that reminded me strongly of my middle school, itself a 70s-design casualty. A charming young gentleman (and his equally charming young male companion) sought to strike up a conversation with us about the nature of the huge, impressive, empty buildings on two sides of the park. Our ignorance was perceived, perhaps correctly, as aloofness, and they left us to our travels. I had a short-lived-but-intense freakout about my laptop, left behind for thieves to sell to Middle Eastern terrorists, so we hustled back to our made-up room and the joy of my life lay unmolested on its table. We intended to try a Turkish place we'd seen yesterday for dinner, but couldn't find it again in the Fairyland of streets and alleys that make up the French Quarter. (Even the initials seem to betray a bit of Cajun insolence to tourists: F'Q!) We wandered aimlessly and found a tremedously wonderful Cuban place that really knows how to grill its meat. The local beer is beginning to taste good. Back home (no quotes any more; they aren't needed) for some reading and writing and drinking of good strong Bass Ale. I miss my friends, my cat, my home, and my city. I miss doorways I don't have to walk through sideways (how a culture that celebrates obesity through its cuisine can manage such unreasonably narrow doorways is a mystery answerable only by reference to greater powers) and I miss being a local - some jackass with a beer pointed off jackass-ward and said "Bourbon Street's that way" when he saw us, GRRR. Though I'm enjoying it all with an enthusiasm rarely seen outside of politics or show business, traveling is clearly not my life's passion.
New Orleans Day 1 Got up too early after too little sleep to make it to Sea-Tac on time. Big props to Bing Lieu for his willingness to drive his son and myself down south. (Odd synchronicity: as I begin writing this on Mr. Friendly Laptop, Kid Koala and Money Mark's "Carpal Tunnel Syndrome," beginning with the sounds of a thousand typewriters, comes on the radio.) Dexter and I endure more than eight hours of airplane sitting and glazed-peanut eating. Over Phoenix I spy two adjacent building clusters constructed to form clockwise-spinning swastikas! Explanation, please. I have a beer of desperation during our thirty minutes in Houston and a G on the short flight from there to New Orleans. Dexter stoically stays dry. The cab ride is uneventful, though the demonic animals on the dashboard draw attention away from the orange moonlit scenery. Two head-nodding ceramic beagles and a similarly-endowed tiger frame a wee spaniel and a wee-er bulldog; all of them glower as if I held the key to their freedom and was churlishly refusing them the rest of their range of motion. Pulled up at the Holiday Inn one block off Bourbon, dropped off our stuff, then grabbed dinner. Vegetarian here means they don't mention the meat on the menu - my red beans and rice came with huge chunks of hamhock sloughing off into the stew and a side of Andouille, which I would later learn means "nightmare-inducing heartburn" in French. That plus a couple of expensive fruity drinks sated us, so we wandered. Bourbon Street on a Tuesday night long before Mardi Gras was a study in pathetic desolation. It felt like visiting Santaland in June. I bought a $10 Big-Gulp sized hurricane destined to defeat me and walked with Dexter, wondering where all the queers were. Oh yeah, surely they'd hang out somewhere cooler. Shower, sleep, dreams of AIDS prevention, and an unfinished hurricane later... Day 2 Woke up at 11.30 after sleeping for 12 hours. Goodness. Woozy and disoriented, but not yet drunk, I followed Dex around the French Quarter as we tried to find a place that served breakfast for late risers. This task was surprisingly difficult, but at last we found an egg joint where we had our morning ration of meat and tea and then ventured forth into the windy, muggy day. I required more and better tea, so we passed into Pirate Alley to visit the teahouse we had glimpsed in our earlier search. Before we reached it, though, we were drawn irresistibly into the Faulkner House bookstore, where I purchased "Plastic Jesus" by local living author Poppy Z. Brite and "The Neon Bible" by local dead author John Kennedy Toole (yes, I know, I too was surprised to learn there was more than "A Confederacy of Dunces") and was charmed just all to pieces by the literary lady owner. So we excaped and went next door to the unfortunately-named Pirate Alley Cafe, where the cutest coffee girl in all of Louisiana made us tea and chatted despairingly of the imminent gentrification evidenced by the horrendously noisy construction that threatened deafness to all nearby. Gennifer Flowers' husband was tearing down and rebuilding the very structure we were sipping tea in, as it happens. Needless to say, we were again charmed j.a.t.p. but declined to attend the wine tasting she insisted we attend later. Dexter wanted to see the Mississippi River, and who was I to stop him? We viewed that disappointingly narrow and obscenely brown venue and then checked out the French Market and flea market-like space just ashore. My cheese detector strained mightily against its weight, but we made it through alive. Honey roasted cashews and pralined pecans were all I had bought before I poked my head in the little faux-Jamaican product stall to look at cassettes. I picked up one doubtful-looking Dread Flimstone cutout and was about to replace it when the lady in residence looked at me, asked some question I now forget, and blew pot smoke in my face. I paid her $6, supposedly for the tape, and kept walking. As for the market: Such unashamed exploitation of people without standards is rare in such volume. Let us speak no more of it. We snacked in a nice little place on the edges of Gaytown - awful triangles and rainbows kept staring at us balefully from T-shirts, bumpers, and bar windows. Milk and bread pudding made it all nicer. Lots of sweet gayboys on the way back to the hotel; one with a dog kept getting ahead of and behind us, clearly wanted to chat, but ran afoul of my rule, viz. New Orleans Is For Looking, Not Touching. "Home," we shlumped and I dealt with customer service at Speakeasy for a while, trying to find a way to get this to you in a timely fashion. God, I simply LIVE for you people. We ate a dinner of blackened meat somewhere on god-help-us no-more-Bourbon St. Walked up and down said Street in the gradually worsening rain. Who knew it was so short? It looks much taller on TV. Is New Orleans so much bigger than Seattle that it can support a wymyns' dance club? That question isn't just my excuse to giggle over its name ("The G Spot," tee hee) - please help me to understand. [Ed. note: I was deceived! Those few of you who haven't yet learned that I am an idiot can join all right-thinking Americans once I tell you that the website advertised by this bar ("Find your community: www.lesbian-nation.com") is nothing but a cheap porn site, a link to "clubta.com" - oh, the humanity. There is no giant dyke dance club here and I still have one foot on the turnip truck.] After the local beer that tasted like a watered-down porter, I tried a planters' punch in a plastic cup and learned how to drink and walk simultaneously. Dex talked me into entering Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo, which launched an enormously complicated and boring self-examination on the relationship between my identity and the nature of authenticity that I needn't trouble you with. They had Accoutrements (that's Archie McPhee for those of you who don't know your toys) products on their shelves. Har dee har har. More rain. One more drink required. A giant margarita from a crazy slurpee bar. I never want to see Bourbon Street again as long as I live. We return to the relative dryness of Chateau LeMoyne and retire to our literary pursuits.
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