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So Long Dumaine
This is the last transmission from Dumaine. Am moving the computer to the unfinished Rocheblave this afternoon. Will be offline for an undetermined amount of time, possibly into the New Year. Yall be cool. Have put up a mail box at the house N. Rocheblave, NOLA, but it hasn't been tested yet, maybe they will deliver to me, maybe they won't, so send benignly before you stuff an envelope with hundred dollar bills. And uh, hell, Seasons Greetings. jml.
Pork Chops And The Blonde Woman
I am not a repressed personality, exactly, and yet I have these episodes which lead me to believe I'm wrong about that.
I see him out ot the corner of my eye now, whereas before it was just an idea, me being silly, thinking about dancing like PeeWee Herman in public places, to the muzak; in the grocery store, to the theatre chain theme song; in front of the audience, only there I also fly, swooping over their heads like one of those whatchamacallits, you know, the purple martin.
Today at work I saw him, that is me, dancing to a disco song in front of the mirrors in Willie Roaf's excercise room. He doesn't embarrass me, or scare me, even though he maybe should, him being there and all. It doesn't seem like normality, but so much doesn't if I really examine it. I'm not really into the examining all that much so I don't know what to think about some of these things, when they become alive on their own. I guess I should just be polite. Nice to meet you.
Wednesday is Jamaican Jerk Pork Chop day at the Robert's Fresh Food Market. The "e" in Robert has one of those dashes over it, if you get me. It's a grocery store serving plate lunches, but I mostly get them for dinner right before they throw them out. Doesn't look like the Chops are too popular. Probably too spicey.
The server is talking to a stock boy. The server says while I wait patiently that it doesn't seem right if he just have two dimes that they charging him like that and the stock boy says somewhat proudly the same thing happened to him and he was lookin' at five but they had to reduce the charges on account of something I didn't understand because now I was thinking about those pork chops.
"Whatchu need?" the server asked me.
"Pork Chop Dinner," I said.
"Pork Chop Dinner," she lilted, sounding for some reason impressed.
She was putting down a heavy bed of yellow rice, which was a good beginning. And then she laid on top of it two large chops and juiced them good with gravey. "You see I'm giving you two chops instead of one," she said.
"Yes, that look's good, " I said
"Just supposed to give you one," she said.
"Yeah, last time I got two, but..."
"You should try them first, they spicey."
"I know, I like it like that. I know about 'em, I've eaten everything ya'll cook here."
"Must be a bachelor," the woman standing beside me said.
"Yes," I said.
"You telling a story," the server said.
"Why you say that?" I said.
"'Cause I seen you in here with your woman," she said.
"Not me."
"Yes you."
The woman standing next to me said to the server, "He sounds guilty."
"I wish I were (sort of) but there is no one now so you must have seen someone else."
"Take off your glasses," the server said.
I raised the black lenses and looked at her brown to brown.
"Yeah, I saw you," she said.
"Now you've hurt my feelings, not being able to tell me from the others."
"You was talking to a blonde woman and I said 'you not having a plate today' and you said, 'no, you was eating at home.'"
"Blonde huh?"
"He's guilty," the woman beside me said.
"Not of this, but I do like the way you tell a story, I'm just a little hurt you think I'm someone else. I would recognize you if I saw you again." This young woman had never served me before. She was most decidedly not Drucilla, who is prettier, but would be too timid to serve me an extra illegal pork chop.
The server printed out a bar code tag and after sticking it to the side of the styrofoam container handed the meal over.
"Nice weight," I said.
"Check the tag," she said.
She had under charged me.
"Nice, thanks," I said.
"They gonna have me throw 'em all out in a little while."
I nodded to the woman standing beside me and took my leave.
At the register, checking out, a blonde woman about my age queried my cashier as to the location of the small hand held plastic baskets one might use to shop for small amounts and the cashier did not know what the hell she was talking about, and after the woman had disappeared, said as much to me. I thought about taking up for the blonde woman, she was not crazy afterall, but thought better of it, hell, I did not even know that blonde woman. Maybe she was crazy.
Another Day, Or Two
Well I've made another sustained effort at the completion of Rocheblave with only requisite beer and painkiller breaks to slow me down, and I can say now, finally, after over one and a half years on the job, that, well, I don't think I'll ever finish. I'm not sure if that's a joke or not but what I do know is that the specially designed well ventilated attic--through which run the copper water pipes--is working so well that my pipes are not receiving abundant heat transference and as they are not yet hooked up to a hot water heater, are not, I repeat not, delivering any hot or even warm water for me to bathe under. In my previous seven years here it was still pretty hot this time of year but not this year. It's really beautiful and perfect and cool and dry. I can pretty well cringe through the body bathing but full immersion of this head of hair is unbearable so I may have to come up with a water heating device.
I have a call into the electricians for them to do final trim out; I have my ceiling fans and light fixtures all purchased and ready to go, and have tried unsuccessfully to contact the plumber/heating/AC guy for him to do his final, which would hopefully lead to a water heater, gas meter, and connected kitchen sink which would then lead to me spending the last of the wad on appliances, which I have more or less picked out from the friendly Lowe's Home Improvement Center. At that point I would still have a pretty good handful of finishing details, not the least of which would be, but the least challenging for sure--the exterior finish painting (it is all primed, sanded, caulked and ready to go).
My neighbor the sculptor came over Saturday after a long day of me doing yet another task I've never previously attempted, a fairly major stucco repair (the porch overhang is stucco, the rest of the house is cypress siding), and she said, "are you going to add two more posts?" Meaning porch supports, and I said, "no, uh uh, I ain't doing all that," immediately agitated by her presumption to spend money I do not have even at the same time knowing she is right in her estimation that "the porch is too open," even as I am fond of open. She was wearing a chartreuse velvet beret and was on her way out with husband to do the annual NO arts appreciation gig and I had mortar dust up my nose and would be spending the night laying on top of a blue sleeping bag with Ralph Ellison, whose Invisible Man I read as I read very few--very slowly, hoping it not to end so leaving me with an inconsolable vaccuum. Anyway, guessing from similar style NO houses, my porch should, small as it is, have six posts, three on each side creating a right angle, but what am I, Diamond Slim Brady, post magnate?
The day before Corey's wake I was sort of dead to the world at 5 pm when Phillis from over here at Dumaine came knocking at Rocheblave to rouse me from a nap (stupor?) to tell me that the street repair people were needing Mandy's (who was out of town) car moved so I came over here, parking myself near the corner of Dorgenois and St. Ann, and then walked down Dumaine, stopping briefly to talk to Mr. June, got Mandy's car and moved it just around the corner of Dorgenois and Dumaine. I spent some time over here, fed and talked to the cat, and then after deep darkness had set in, decided to leave out, get my car and head home.
The thing is, after all these years over here, I had never set a walking foot on these blocks of Dorgenois after dark. It can be scary in an all black neighborhood for a white boy when he steps out of context. The 700 block of Dorgenois (at St. Ann) has always seemed a little alien and threatening to me. The 800 block of Dorgenois (at Dumaine) I have always felt a measure of propriety and safeness. The 900 block of Dorgenois (at St. Phillip), while not overtly threatening to a casual passerby has proven to be as deadly as any block in New Orleans and if the local paper still published a dotted end of year murder map, that block's cumulative dotting (say for the last ten years) would not show dots which could be distinguished individually, but would show rather a large black blob of printed ink, representing enough spilled blood to be a proper feast for vampires. So I was thinking about it all and seeing worst case scenarios, those in which I end up dead or wounded, and wishing I didn't have to leave but I most certainly did because I have a home just a few blocks away and there I feel safe and justified. Justified in whatever defensive strategy is necessary.
It's not really that dangerous here but there is often more than enough stimulus to make you imagine that it is very dangerous. The people here are, I think, nicer than any I have ever been around, and yet, I still found myself imagining a man approaching me at the corner, asking for a light or some similar introducing, and then jacking me for little or life.
So when it happened, so when I got to the corner and the man was there exactly where I expected him to be I just felt resigned to it, only a block away from the car. When he said, "I got that fire," I thought first it was as good as any introduction which could eventually lead to ill intended behavior, but then I knew it to be only what it was, an honest solicitation, and although it was a bald faced lie I told him, "no, I'm good," and again as times before, I was suddenly so glad to be alive I let the geek speak, and said, "but thanks for asking, I'm not always good," which on surface was truth but in truth just more of the bald faced lie, and when he said, "for sure," which is the most beautifully sympathetic two words of the local colloquial, that as he rounded the corner, up St. Ann toward the river, and I approached my car parked on the right side of Dorgenois, I wanted to yell after him, maybe even chase him down and hug him, speak to him--"thank you for the offering of marijuana, thank you for being sympathetic, thank you for not killing me."