It means that every time you hear it mentioned you miss something different—a sight, a smell, a sound—like beads dangling from trees as far uptown as Loyola, that special lower Decatur street aroma of beer, sweat, vomit, Irish coffee and the Mississippi, the far-off sounds of a brass band letting you know that a parade or a second line or just a marching band for the hell of it is heading your way.
But those are the cliches.
To miss it now is to look for people you know in every New Orleans story you read or hear, and to still wonder what happened to your neighbor whose name you could never tell—was it Ron or Rob or Rod? His accent too thick but his smile always real for you as he made his way over on his one leg and crutch to ask how you are. It’s sometimes to forget to look for people and then trip over a name of someone you knew.
Yesterday I was reading a book called Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans, full of first-person stories of The Storm and What Came After, on the subway in Brooklyn a million miles from New Orleans in some ways and so similar it stings a bit in its pleasure in others. And I flipped to a new story and a name jumped out at me, a professor who taught me to call myself a feminist and drank Harp with us in Ireland and wrote my recommendations for grad school five years after I’d graduated.
Of course I’d spoken to her since Katrina—grad school applications were in 2007, so I knew a bit about her evacuation story and where her family and her Perfect Grandchild were. She knew I did my master’s in journalism in Philly and was still afraid to see New Orleans again.
But reading her story in her husband’s words felt like a ghost—felt like those days after The Storm when I was sitting in front of the television in my parents’ house in South Carolina, waiting to see faces I knew crying at the convention center or the Superdome or walking through Kenner to escape.
I never did.
Instead those faces pop up in my mind when I read stories of the storm, and I still read them all the time.
I haven’t been back, it’s true. I’ve said so many times that it’s like seeing an ex-love after years and some horrible trauma—what’s that person going to be like now? Should you just remember them the way they were?
But if you love them, really love them after all those years and all that’s happened to them, you should go. You smile bravely at the scars and tell them they’re beautiful still and drink a toast.
I just bought plane tickets to London but I’m not using up all my vacation time on that trip.
I think I’ll go to New Orleans this year for Halloween. I need to see old friends and dance in the streets, take cliche pictures of beads in trees along parade routes and remember that smell on Lower Decatur.
The last time I was planning a Halloween trip to New Orleans was 2005. Then Katrina hit.
After a long conversation with one of my favorite bloggers, I realized that I should spend less time feeling guilty about not being back in New Orleans, and more time actually following what’s going on down there.
It’s about friggin’ time. This fall will mark four years since Katrina, and according to the article, “[Army corps of enginieers] officials have said there’s a backlog of projects ready for construction that totals more than $65 billion.”
Let’s get on it, shall we? Let your Senator know you support funds for rebuilding the Gulf, as well as many other infrastructure-related projects.
I’ve been carrying on an affair with New York City. More of a summer fling, really, though like any good affair I’m afraid to make it real–afraid to live there for fear the glamour will wear off and I’ll get bored. Fear that I don’t really love it anyway and if I was presented with what I think sometimes that I want, it would disappoint.
I’ve been cheating on Philly with New York. Philly is stodgy and boring, and yet I feel like I don’t know it very well, that it’s got secrets that it hasn’t shown me yet. It doesn’t love me, yet I come home to it and am vaguely unsatisfied every night when I fall asleep.
When I left South Carolina for Philly I thought it would be fabulous and exciting, that it would sweep me off my feet. After all, I’d spent three years back with an ex that I should’ve never talked to again, Hilton Head. Sure, it was rich and I never had to worry about money, but it didn’t get me and tried to convince me that its superficial charms–sandy beaches, golf courses, pretty blonde people and boys in cargo shorts with no shirts–were enough to hold me.
They weren’t. But I stayed too long.
Denver and I had an abusive relationship–it tricked me with offers of pretty boys and friendly people and its athleticism, but it quickly turned messy. We couldn’t connect, and I turned to drowning my feelings in booze rather than really admitting how I felt.
New Orleans and I had a dramatic love, one of the longest and the most significant, for sure. It loved me not wisely but too well, but pulled back and left me crying many a time, only to come crawling back, whispering sweet things in my ears and seducing me with its sweaty charm. The sex was intense, dreamy–but would you expect anything less of it? The air tasted like liquor and spice and we danced all the time, danced to escape all the rotten feelings that came swirling in off the Mississippi.
I’ve been so afraid to visit New Orleans, because it was in a downward spiral that culminated in Katrina and I was hoping it was getting itself back together again, but now Gustav is headed its way and I’m terrified of what might happen to it. And yet again, I haven’t been back to whisper “I still love you” in its ear.
You have to let go of the old loves, I know, before you can really have new ones, and I’ve always been crap at that. I haven’t given my heart to anyone in so long because I haven’t gotten over the past, and I can’t open myself up to new places when my real love is elsewhere.
I’m still thinking of New Orleans, and now I’m afraid it’s going to fall apart again. And once again, there’s nothing I can do except wait, and watch, and wish I could help.
It’s the anniversary of a lot of things, but right now the one topmost in my mind is Hurricane Katrina. With Gustav shooting New Orleans the death look as I type, I can’t write any more about Obama or Palin. All I can do is hope that it doesn’t happen all over again.
I have a picture of the French Quarter as my background on my laptop right now and on my Twitter page. I miss New Orleans all the time, but never more so than when she’s threatened.
There’s not much we can do about Gustav yet, but there are places you can donate that are still trying to rebuild New Orleans from Katrina, which struck three years ago now.
And cross your fingers, knock wood, and pray to anything you might believe in that Gustav fizzles before it causes any more destruction.
Click here, sign the petition, encourage your reps to vote for the Gulf Coast Civic Works act, and let’s start rebuilding properly, what, three years after Katrina?
For me, kink came right along with discovering sex and taking ownership of sexuality. I was one of those freaky goth chicks, yep, all right, dyed hair and big vinyl boots and corsets and fishnets and lacy lingerie, back in college in New Orleans, which has to be the best place in the world to be a goth chick just learning how to play.
I was still a virgin when I left for college. Loved a man back then more than I’ve ever loved anyone, but the sex thing still scared the crap outta me. So when I got into a relationship that had a lot more of a playful BDSM dynamic to it (as well as got into a friendship with a girl who was among other things a stripper and a submissive–and the smartest, most in-control lady I’ve ever met when it came to her sexuality), I took that opportunity to define sex on MY terms. What I wanted.
And I had control.
And I liked it.
So the kinkiest relationship, in terms of yeah, BDSM, which Amber notes is the first thing that jumps into people’s minds when they think of kink, that I ever had was when I was 18. With a man who’d always thought he was a top but liked when I told him what to do…and kept letting me take that further…
Being a goth girl, especially one who is interested in BDSM, gets you super-sexualized and gets you a bad reputation, uh huh, but I didn’t give a damn and New Orleans was a great place to not give a damn. I was surrounded by girls who were badder than I could ever hope to be, were the bad girls all the boys wanted, and that gave me so much room to explore. To learn that after all, I’m fairly vanilla, but I like teeth and nails and some other things that are none of your damn business anyway.
Lacing myself into a corset was a new form of control, an experiment with my body (which already is pretty hourglass-shaped) twisting it into new shapes different from the hyperskinny ones longed after by most college girls. And even before I called myself a feminist I understood the difference between putting on the corset and boots for ME because I had the choice to define myself that way. And to not need the big boots and the black eyeliner anymore to tell people who and what I was, because now I like the mystery better.
And if I choose to submit, that’s my choice too.
Being on top gave me the courage to explore. Gave me the strength to give in to my desires–and sometimes those desires lead unexpected places.
Putting on those accoutrements of difference, black lace and vinyl or sometimes bright red or hot pink or white because even in that crowd I liked to stand out, I took control of myself. My adult life. My sexuality. My conscious thoughts about it, and my subconscious feelings.
Kink is, as has been said, subjective. All sexuality is subjective. We should know that by now. But the religious right types and the anti-porn types don’t want to give us that freedom to know what we want, to experiment, to figure out which pieces fit and which should be discarded. They don’t trust us to know. They say, “No, little girl, let me tell you what you’ll enjoy. Let me tell you what’s degrading. What’s wrong.”
But I drew more strength from BDSM than I ever did from someone protecting me.
So this was on that same humor site. And yeah, it’s funny, but it also makes me want to hug him.
And then it makes me think. Seriously.
See, over on Feministing a while ago there was a discussion about whether or not Hillary Clinton’s massive income disqualified her somehow from being concerned about health care and poverty. And of course, the answer was no. Rich people all over the place, as Gary Younge pointed out, vote to make themselves poorer and to help others out.
So it’s not the income level that bothers me. It’s what they do with the money. And yes, though the controversy over John Edwards’ haircut was pretty stupid, it does matter. Because the candidate who wanted to talk about ending poverty…well, he needed a privilege check. Dude, you could feed a family for a week with the amount of money you spent on your hair.
Reading about Martin Luther King, as I’ve been doing for the past month–and made more progress on in the last two days than all month!–makes me think about these things. King felt guilty about having his own money, so much so that he fought with his wife about having a nice house and savings for his own family.
I’m not saying anyone has to take a vow of poverty to help people. Hell, I just spent more money than I needed to on two impractical pairs of shoes this week.
But the fact remains that the picture above gives me a picture of the kind of president I want to have. One whose priorities are not so superficial.
Y’know, as opposed to when Condi Rice went shoe shopping while New Orleans drowned.
(yeah, I know that picture doesn’t prove anything. but still.)
