A continuation of my Notes on NOLA, this is a quick accounting of things and people that aren't around anymore. Not famous people or famous places, just people that I know or have known.
So the question that surprised me most at yearlykos was "how is the reconstruction going?". As I have said elsewhere, it isn't. Outside the Isle of Denial, NOLA is largely a ghost town. The neighborhood I lived in when I was in grad school - around Burgundy and St. Roch - has started picking up. Mimi's and Big Daddy's and a lot of restaurants and coffee shops are open. But most of the city is still abandoned.
When I first came to NOLA, I was a sprite young dyke without a clue. NOLA was notorious for taking cocky youngsters like me and eating them for breakfast. But I got lucky. I went under the wing of one of the G.O.D.s - Grand Old Dykes - and I learned a hell of a lot from her. I could tell you endless stories about Charlene from the 50's dance parties at her place in Bay St. Louis after the bar closed to her infamous spat with the HRC that I still haven't forgiven them for. I think the most important thing she told me was (in a deep accent that spoke of a million smokes) "When I see these kids in the clubs these days, these young kids dancing their lives away, I am so happy they can do it. But I am also sad. Because they don't understand that someone had to go jail for them to be able to do that. Someone died so they could do that." It made quite an impression on me.
Charlene was evacuated. Bay St. Louis was destroyed. The little house in the country was all she and her partner had in the world. Charlene is a hero. She was arrested multiple times for wearing a pair of pants with a zipper in the front in a time when women could be arrested for things like that. They would go through the Quarter and collect money to bail each other out. She was one of the first white women admitted into the Krewe of Zulu. She spent hours carving coconuts every year. I miss her cranky, bitchy tirades. I don't know what happened to her post evacuation.
Pino was another bar owner. She and Charlene ran bars in NOLA for years. One of her more colorful establishments had a swimming pool. I will let your imagination run wild. It was wilder than whatever you came up with. Eventually, she was driven out of the East Bank like all of the other lesbians and had a place on the West Bank until her health failed. She was placed in a nursing home. She died during the evacuation. She was one of those people they talked about on the news that died. They didn't give any names. One of them was Pino and she was a Grand Old Dyke.
* was a one woman rescue squad for every broke down dyke in the city. Lose your job? * would arrange a benefit so you could make rent. She ran the cabbage ball tournament at City Park. All the proceeds went to the women's shelter. She was a good friend to a lot of my Pirates. She ended up stranded in Houston during the evacuation and couldn't get back for a while. She made it back to Louisiana, but it doesn't look like she will be back in NOLA any time soon. Cabbage ball is no longer played in City Park. I have no idea what happened to the shelter. Like so many things, it is probably gone.
I don't use her full name because she still lives in the margins. I remember her telling me no so long ago that she wasn't out to her landlord because she was getting great deal and he would evict her if he knew. That was in 2003.
So these are three women that don't mean much to about 99.99% of the population. They were old dykes. Poor dykes. Cranky dykes that made a difference in the community. I thought of them - especially Charlene - when I was organizing my Pirates. The city is much poorer without them. To me, they epitomize what NOLA lost. Characters too colorful for fiction. Living white hot lives.
I miss them.