Let's get this right out of the way -- I've gone completely cuckoo la la. All of my friends agree that this is the craziest thing I have ever done in my life, in a lifetime of hairising pursuits. You would think I would know better. My dear friend's grandmother and great-grandmother persished in Hurricane Camille, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Both refused to evacuate, which seems to more common among older people. They found the body of grandmother in the backyard, where she was apparently trying to release the dogs from their dog run. Great-grandmother? Never found her, and so she has what is called a cenotaph -- an empty tomb.
New Orleans is not completely empty yet, but it was an exceedingly odd flying the last leg of my trip this morning from Houston to New Orleans. There were only about 30 people on board a very large jet. The jet was large because they were trying to shuttle people out of New Orleans as quickly as possible. The airlines were doing a great job. You get a lot of unusual looks when you land in a city that is evacuating. The crowd waiting to board the plane had a very large contingent of exceedingly hunky, or at least very chunky, gaymen because there is a fethtival taking place called Southern Decadence. I think it is actually just called Decadence now. It is a shame they dropped the "Southern" part of it because no part of the country does decadence as well as the South.
The first time I came to New Orleans I absolutely hated it. That was a long time ago. I was living the life of a happy gay guy in San Francisco, lived on Nob Hill, had a cute car and a great job and then I ran into a guy from New Orleans in a laundromat. Long story short, I gave into his incessant entreaties and moved sight unseen to New Orleans. He was working on the oil islands at the time. I arrived in August. The heat literally took my breath away. I couldn't talk for about a week. Shock may have had something to do with it, too. I had given it all away for THIS? But, I was with my beloved, so that was a plus. Until things got all Stella and Stanley. I can honestly say I have never loved anyone as deeply as I loved him. He was a modern day Isadora, fiercely intelligent and gorgeous, but the ecstasies were almost always paid for in pain. One night he didn't come home. I was up all night. I went over to the house of a friend of his and knocked on the door. A naked guy opened the door and I went looking for boyfriend. And there he was in flagrante delicto with a DIFFERENT naked guy. My rage was directed at the windows for some reason. I broke a window. And three bedroom doors opened with naked guys in each one of them. I broke about five more windows, and left, devastated. I paid for the windows. But there were wonderful moments, too.
We came together and waltzed apart a few times, but pretty soon a few years had passed and I became a New Orleans fanatic. I adopted the local patois. I learned to cook shrimp creole. I worked on a Riverboat and at Restaurant Arnaud's. I became an insufferable expert on dramatic undercurrent of the city, because I lived it. It is a place like no other. But eventually, I longed for California, and returned there for graduate school. Boyfriend followed me back, but my focus was on school and without my constant care and feeding, our relationship foundered for good, and I didn't care. He moved to Portland, went on a downward spiral, got into drugs (not I -- sober as a judge), got a bad needle and got AIDS. I went to see a psychologist (psychiatrist? -- I still don't know the difference) when I learned that. I was distraught that with all my responsibilities I couldn't think of a way to help. I was told, you know, take care of yourself first. So prideful and vain was boyfriend, that he concealed his whereabouts from me. I lost track of him until his Mother (who I had never met), called me out of the blue. He had died, and they took him back to Memphis where he was born. I was invited to the funeral. I dropped everything and went. Up to that point in my life I had never KNOWN anyone that actually died. Ir arrived at the funeral home and his sisters recognized me from the hundreds of paintings and drawings he did of me in my youth.
It was a military funeral. If you have been to one of these, the moment when they fold the flag into a tight triangle. As the only man on earth who had been able to ride the tiger for not just one night, but for many years, I really wanted that flad. But they handed the flag to his drunken, no good father. He hadn't seen his either of his parents for ten year because he refused to be out to them. After the funeral, his mother asked me to sit down and tell her about our relationship. I told her only about the beautiful parts, of which there were many. She did not approve morally, but she liked me very much, and she could see how deeply I loved him. I have since loved others since then, but you may only get one love in a lifetime that is transcontinental, has San Francisco and New Orleans as a backdrop, and tracks that famous desire-laden street car so closely.
After the funeral, I got on the train they call the City of New Orleans, and returned to the French Quarter for the first time in 10 years. And it all came back to me. There are ghosts in New Orleans, you know. Boyfriend used to be a waiter at Brennan's, a famous in the quarter. I got off work before he did. I would go over after work and wait for him to emerge from the pastel colored building, through the leaded glass doors, flanked by gaslamps. He had red hair and blue eyes.
The first night I stayed in the quarter after the funeral, I walked past Brennan's. The door swung open and there he was. Not an apparition. Or someone that looked like him. HIM. Just a day after I buried him. We were about ten feet away. I could have walked up to him, challenged his credentials as a member of the walking dead. You can break the spell if you want to. I chose to smile. I got the smile back. And then I walked away.
And my love for New Orleans was renewed. I ended up buying a small condo there in the quarter, on the edge. Then Katrina struck. During that whole two week period, I could not function, wondering what had happened to my condo, not to mention the city I loved and its denizens.
My tenant gave notice about three weeks ago, and so I thought I had better check to see how things were. And when Gustav appeared on the horizon, I simply did not change my plans. I have been going through an emotional rough patch with my current longterm boyfriend and I am being pulled in so many directions.
The quarter was quite lively this afternoon, before they justifiably started scaring the bejesus out of everyone. They are all leaving tomorrow. The power will probably go out on Monday evening. I did make a miscalculation. Since my place came through Katrina unscathed and NO ONE died in the French Quarter (that I know of), I thought it might be okay. Reports are now that this is triple the size of Katrina. Ooops. In the meantime, I was enjoying a run and coke on one of the many balconied bars tonight, feeling the very first low speed craxy cross winds from Gustav. I glanced to my left, and there was a red haired boy with blue eyes. I just smiled.
Back in the place. There isn't a soul on the property. Tomorrow, this truly will be a ghost town. And I will be in isolation, with my water, my crank radio, and this connection...until the lights go out.