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His Secret Is Safe
Kids have to go in and out on hot days breaching that questionable vapor/heat lock that is a front door, and I don't blame Raticia for opening the freezer door and asking Mandy vague questions about melted ice while that cool air tickles her face, and Kizzie's youngest, Lil' Corey, howling his discontent, peeing on himself, drooling, and generally exhibiting all that normal toddler behaviour doesn't seem to weigh that much, but stepping out on the front porch to test the theory is it possibly cooler outside, and seeing that speedy spin of the electric meter (the big window unit works ok if you sit right in front of it), and realizing that it is about equal, that heavy heavy density of heat inside, and outside, just seems plain criminal.
The three lil' girlz all have bowls of cereal, happily yet grumpily clustered around that ubiquitous Capn' Cruch Computer game. It's hot. And we are grumpy, all of us. I scare myself with my heat n' the hood inspired fantasies of evil behavior, and so when I am alerted by Erica that Shentrell just shot her the finger I am not too overwhelmed by the audacity.
"That means a bad word," Raticia said.
"It's the f word," Erica said.
"Tell her to quit messin' wit me and I won't do it," Shentrell said.
I call Shentrell into my work station, "closer, closer," I have to coax, she's ready to be hit, "closer," I say, "you know I ain't gonna hit you," I'm saying impatiently almost angrily now. Erica looms close to be witness to the dressing down. "Go away," I order, and she does.
"Shentrell, you are a pretty girl and when you do that finger it makes you ugly. Don't be ugly Shentrell, don't be common, don't be like everyone else you see, be different Shentrell, be different." I can't think of anything else to say so I puncuate my simplicity with repitition, "be different Shentrell."
Shentrell seems ready for more of my quietly polite abuse, so different from the maniac she witnessed screaming at Shelton last week (a screaming inspired by Shelton hitting Shentrell), but I don't have anymore time for her, I have to get back to my writing, which doesn't exist without her, but she doesn't know that, and so my secret is safe, for now.
Mr. Jim Get's A Jacuzzi
Last week my plumber, Jack, who will be played by Sam Elliot in the movie told me to make a decision between cast iron tub and fiberglass tub/shower insert because it would effect how he went about the roughing in of his pipes, and if I was going with the insert it would need to be there tomorrow. I went to one of the five area Home Depot's, haggled with the hands off "salesperson," because both the left hand tub/shower inserts were damaged and I'm thinking 50% off this damaged merchandise would be a favor to me and the Home Depot but my "salesperson" gets on the phone with her supervisor and comes offering me 10%. Just getting to the point of this bogus offer had wasted more of my time than that so I waved her off and bid her adieu.
Traveling in a somewhat easterly direction I crossed the river into the area generally known as the Westbank and got off at Stumpf Blvd, Home Depot Number 2. There I found the same insert, undamaged, and asked a man to help me load it onto a flat cart. I picked up a Price Pfister tub/shower valve and handle set also, old timey style, complete with valves, tub spout, separate porcelain handles for the hot, cold, and shower/tub diverter, and a very handsome shower head. I paid for it all and then rolled my sizeable (and large too) purchase out to the truck, where I slid it up onto the plywood bed cover and strapped it down for that high and windy ride back over the Mississippi River.
I passed by Dumaine hoping to find a helping hand for the unloading into the Rocheblave house and as I approached the front of the Dumaine house there came the out cry from one of the large group gathered there--"Mr. Jim got a Jacuzzi."
"Gotcha Jacuzzi, huh, Mr. Jim?, Jermaine said as I rolled to a stop at the curb and leaned my head out the window to survey the crowd, looking for a helper.
"No, it's a shower insert," I said.
Bryan Henry said, "Zatta-jacuzzi, Mr. Jim?"
"No, it's a shower insert," I said. It was mostly little kids up on the porch and when I ask where was Shelton no one knew. Cadillac Shelton was wandering off and as I was about to give up on this crowd, maybe cross the street and see if Van was home, Jermaine offered to help.
"That's a five dollar job," Cadillac Shelton kidded Jermaine.
I was going to pay ten.
Over on Rocheblave I had to widen the front doorway a bit as Jermaine balanced the not very heavy, but awkward insert on the stairs. Once in the house it became obvious that I was going to have to rearrange a couple of doorways to get the thing in place so I thanked Jermaine for his ten minutes of help and offered him two fives. He took one of the fives and gave the other back. I gave him an ice cold budweiser and we chatted for awhile. He wanted me to know that if I had any work I could count on him, that he could work, that he didn't do anything, you know, but hang around all day. And I know him as a conscientous worker and I wish I could hire him and the many others who ask me for work, and although those that are sincere are probably a minority, there is no doubt a good many young, able, bored, and ambitious drug dealers floating around this city who would rather be filling up at least some of that vast amount of wasted down time that is inherent to dealing drugs, doing something productive. I told him I didn't have anything he would probably want to do right then but if something came up I would let him know, however the chances of a suitable job coinciding with his availability are slim.
I dropped Jermaine on Dumaine and went back to the house. With a sledge hammer for force, three short lengths of galvanized pipe for the wheels of finesse, and a level and square for verity, I was able to situate the tub/shower insert in its proper place. The next day Jack the plumber asked me was I living two lives, and that was the first real Rocheblave compliment I have received.
After I placed the insert I was back at Dumaine to clean up and I'm not sure which kid it was, but he asked me, "You got a jacuzzi, Mr. Jim?"
Girls From The Hood
A darkroom thermometer inserted between the two stacked rolls of paper towels which plug the gap not being taken up by the 32,000 btu Fedders window unit is reading 105 degrees Sunday night at seven and has been reading that for the afternoon hours for what seems like forever but is probably more like five days.
I don't wake up here at Dumaine anymore but bathe here in the evening and have stopped by once or twice at six or seven in the morning to pick up some forgotten toothbrush or pair of socks and at that early hour have seen that thermometer to register over 90 degrees, and as I pause and ponder the splendor of extreme heat in the deep south I am interrupted in real time by Raticia (7), who is visiting along with Shentrell (6), and Erica (6, although the other day I suggested 7), and she comes up to me and asks, "what you say," and I tell her I didn't say anything, but I am struck by her question, the third such, in three days, by three different people. I know I can be way too noisy for such a quiet guy, Mandy used to bust me on that all the time, but am I actually speaking to people now and not being aware of it?
"You're the third person to ask me that in the last three days. Did you hear me say something."
"Yes, you said you wanted me to help you turn the computer back on."
I think she has it backwards because I just watched her turn off one of computers in the front room and so I ask her if she wants me to help her turn that one back on. Clearly annoyed by my lack of understanding she shakes her head and says, no, she's going off to Mandy's room.
Not writing but pondering still, and Shentrell comes over and says, "why you crying?"
"I'm not crying, am I?" and I trace that line where tears fall and it feels dry, and when I suggest to Shentrell that she trace the same path, she does, and says, "you cryin.'"
To be so transparent to an artist like Helen Oliver who caught my melancholy years ago in a NYC nude, minus ass and genitals, is one thing, but that these little girls from the hood can see it all too is disconcerting, unless I consider the possibility that such transparency is probably my goal.
Rocheblave is still a gutted hotbox, tar paper on the roof awaiting shingles. Plumbers and Heating/AC guys have nearly finished their rough in. There's copper in the house now. I sleep as guard on an excercise mat--smeared with deet, fan blowing--like a baby yet to experience the weight of conscience and doubt. Working from six to eleven Saturday and Sunday (and with four hours of paid help) filled up a construction dumpster this weekend to a level three feet over the top with a huge pile of compressed weeds and tree limbs, concrete and bricks, and various lumber products. Cleaning myself at Dumaine and then hiding in two different movie theaters, and one volume discount restaurant both days, Saturday working the dusk, fullish moon shift, Sunday, writing this instead, I am able to offer four movie reviews. Rocky and Bullwinkle, enjoyable. Perfect Storm, quite good, and companioned with the book, a high recommend, and no matter your ('s and mine) previous negative opinions of George Clooney, he is on a strong roll with We Three Kings, and this latest. Chicken Run is good, and The Kid with Bruce Willis and his new haircut, and Lily Tomlin, pulls all the familiar emotional strings, but the script, for me, is intelligent, and despite the obvious downside of stretching emotional subject matter beyond the level of disbelief suspension, I liked this movie ok. And while I'm confessing to mediocrity let me add I'm reading, for the three or four minutes of consciousness I enjoy at nighttime Rocheblave, John Grisham's, The Testament, so shoot me.
Rushing now, have to alter somewhat and send this before the phone line gets tied up with this night's call from prison. Had another fight with Shelton this week. It was ugly.
A List
Cries for help.
Tampered with doors.
Children boxing in the street as proud guardians look on.
I love you's.
Halfway houses.
Children I've never seen before calling me by name.
Kids who know.
Kids who do not.
The one who stays away in the name of shame.
Killers.
Dopers.
Fuckers.
Shysters.
These are a few of my everyday things.
Night One
Last night was night one at Rocheblave, the camp out, a return to my roots. Not so bad; the mosquitoes love me. Slept very little but I have planned ahead and made up for that by sleeping too much in the past.
Little T is crying, I don't know why, but the emotion of it is music to my ears.
I don't really work twelve hour days everyday, obviously, but in preparation for the plumbers I've been sweating and drinking bucketloads of liquid as I go about my solitary way. This seems very much like another plane, and drug free, if you don't count the ice cold budweisers.
Erica tonite made me read to her Curious George Flies a Kite, "can't you read it yourself," I pleaded sitting in a straightback five feet in front of the frigid blast furnace by Fedders. "I can't read," said the almost 8-year-old Erica, and so I said, "ok, but only this one," and I was smiling the "I mean business" smile and she smiling conspiratorily with me said, "that's right, only one." After I finished I said "I wish you could read to me sometime," and so she did, Curious George Flies a Kite, the first four or five pages, by herself with really minimal help from me, and I'm thinking, despite the previously discussed (but not with you my dear readers), possibility that she is only memorizing and not reading, I don't know, whatever it is, she's getting better at it, and I'm so fucking proud I could just go out and lie down in the sticky, trash strewn, oil stained gutter of Dumaine and cry my eyes out, and someday--perhaps inspired by the angst of a gangster's son--I will.
Just enough time left for a movie review and this one is me at the dollar show, last night at the nine o'clock in Kenner, thinking by eleven--this being an hour I am rarely awake for--most certainly the climate will be less oppressive, and I will sleep the purest Rocheblave sleep--but optimism ain't buying me shit, and it's hot hot hot after the movie, which by the way was Final Destination, a movie that can only be given the rating of good, but as good movies go, this was a great one, and if you disagree with my assessment perhaps it is because you have yet to arrive on that plane.
Little T And The Unborn
It's Friday, you know I get off early, temporarily skipping lunch, and pressing duties, to slip inside Dumaine and improperly rehydrate with two ice cold budweisers. The tree is heavy with thought but I only offer one-liners, and what goes on down at the farm.
There goes little T (Terrell, Jermaine's son, this week being his first to make regular visits inside this house, playing games on the computers), we regard each other suspiciously, me as stragedy, he, because that's what he feels. It seems like ages ago that Jermaine rather fluently orated his threat to burn this or any other house on Dumaine taking part in the signing of Neighborhood Watch petitions.
Plumbers are coming to Rocheblave on Monday. Just ordered a porta-toilet to be delivered on Monday also. Yesterday I was at the Sewage and Water Board office to request a resetting of the water meter, dormant since 1991. Everyone was very nice, maybe even more so than the permit folks at City Hall. I'm all business, and at the same time, lazy and unproductive. And I daydream (with dread?) about twenty pound sledge hammers, diamond tipped saw blades, and the driveway that needs to be busted up. It will work for me. I'm meeting the Insurance guy at 3, sign, sign, initial, give him the check.
I saw Evelyn's daughter, Julia, 16 and pregnant, this week, and she is a glowing beauty. Lulu, 18, also pregnant, also glowing, a little more than usual, stopped by briefly on the fourth. And it has been reported to me that Heather, 16, is also pregnant. I have not seen her yet to gauge her glow. But she is a genuinely beautiful young girl, and I expect her glow would only add to that. And as much as we are supposed to disapprove of teen pregnancy in the ghetto, and elsewhere, I know that if there can be delivered even a modicum of real love to these new lives, it will all be worth it, and the planet better off for their being here. I am reminded of a recent essence to which I was made fortunate, and it is a theme which visits, and revisits, and I only know to call it--hope.
The Jazz Burning
Its so complicated you see. The needy hard working disenfranchised poverty stricken desperate illiterate frightening drug using prostituting gun toting day to day living on a cellular level exacty like you and me kind of people who inspire the attitude of and share space with the people who would say stay away from me I pay taxes and send my kids to private schools and wished you did not exist are so inextricably twisted like twine together as a part of the greatness, the pure essence of twine that is a place like New Orleans, which is a place like no other--although I think there is a pill you can take, or possibly a room at DisneyWorld that simulates this essence, and there's nothing wrong with simulation, in fact consider the benefit of not having to wash your hands afterwards--that city planners and city councils and such must face many a nail biting decision-making process when things like this come to their attention, i.e., the owner of the First Street home where Buddy Bolden lived for most of his creative years, 1895-1906?, wants to have it razed because of damage from a recent fire. A home and a neighborhood inhabited by the same people I have been describing (not quite rightly but maybe I'll get it someday), for the last three years, and there is nothing remarkable about any of this and we shouldn't put too much stock or pride in the fact the property has already been declared an historical landmark because it can go just like Mr. Armstrong's entire neighborhood went in the 60's? to make way for a park with his name which created a northern buffer for that necessary ($$$) French Quarter, that is, made Rampart Street less frightening than it is was, but trust me on this--don't ever under estimate the potential for danger on Rampart Street, or any points within twenty blocks north.
I say fuck it, let's raze Buddy Bolden's house, afterall who the hell was he but the best quess anyone has as to the paternal parent of the music known as jazz which only complimented and inspired the blues which has absolutely nothing to do with modern rocknroll and let's face it, without which, Britney Spears would never have been inspired to get that boob job, the discussion of which is almost a cottage industry on the Internet.
Did I just say "fuck it, let's raze Buddy Bolden's house"?, what I meant was fuck it let's raze the whole planet. I will apply for the European Dozer and I'll go for the Prado first thing, too many Bosch and Bruegels in that pigstye of art. Do you feel me?
"'Slim25, please return to your cage."
Peewee And Ken
I can't yet tell my good friend and financier of Rocheblave this but the 30K he loaned me to purchase and begin renovations on the property that struck my fancy is uninsured. I do not possess an over abundance of good sense or perhaps I have a fair amount but have real trouble accessing it. I took possession of the property on Leap Day of this year and as we speak (me and me, that is), I am only within a very real proximity (bottom line, uninsured), of having the property insured.
Insurance, however necessary, is not only boring, but in my mind almost sinister, I'm a freak, and living with it.
That being said, I am to be true to you my dear reader confessing that I do have an ongoing relationship with an insurance salesman. It is not at this point a sexual relationship but if things with Barbie don't work out, who knows(?). We have never met, me and this salesman, but we have traded voices and emails. And I say this with all the passion of indecision--I do not dislike this insurance salesman.
He wants--relative to my budgetary constraints--a huge sum of money to insure just pretty much the exact sum of money, including renovations, that I will be spending on Rocheblave. My response to his emailed figure was--"ouch."
(And then the phone rings which I'm not ignoring, temporarily, because I must deal I mean deal with the business of humanity and it's KK calling for Shelton and me reeking of benevolence take the phone to Shelton on the porch playing dominoes with Jermaine and a dude I've never seen before with shaved head and abundant gold teeth and an undeniable charisma I profile as (I'm not ashamed of that, I can't get fired for it, I'm not running for office, and I never wish to be on anyone's list of most politically correct), a medium/high level drug dealer, God bless him, or fuck him, I am ambivalence).).
I'm going to insure the property though, probably during this first week of July, because it has to be done, and also because I just got back a call from a plumber (who also subs out the central A/H work) and for both the major plumbing and central air he quoted a price which was a couple of thousand less than I imagined (I was working with nothing more substantial than "imagine the worst" scenarios) just the plumbing would cost, although I did agree to break out the concrete in the driveway myself. The truck is falling apart and I left it with Del Cid on Broad and there's some hundreds involved but all in all I'm feelng pretty perky, fiscally speaking, poor PeeWee lookin' mf-er that I am.
Peewee And His Barbee Doll
I was in Dallas recently attending the wedding of a niece named Alex to a guy named Denny who is waiting for a heart transplant, and in attendance were the usual crowd of people I only see at weddings and funerals, and of these my favorite is fellow May '59 Taurean, and my junior by fifteen days, cousin Jim Harris. That's Father Jim to you. Jim is a Catholic priest and so it was he I asked the question which I hoped might lead to answers.
"Jim, Voodoo and Catholicism are kind of the same aren't they?"
"Sure, there's some overlap," he said, smiling.
And then I told him my story, thinking that his insights might be useful. I was speaking across the table and spoke elusively at times so as not to offend my mother, or younger nieces and nephews also sitting at the table. Jim's brother, my cousin Ronnie, was also at the table and provided some encouragement later on.
"Have you ever heard the expression--most often this would come from a black man to a white man--'you PeeWee Herman lookin' muhfuh?'" Muhfuh is code for motherfucker. I wasn't sure if my cousin, the priest Jim Harris (although an ardent admirer of PeeWee and his big adventures), would be familiar with the expression so I said it twice, kind of humming the muhfuh part to underscore the hidden indecency. I think he got it, and anyway, if not, I was feeling kind of stupid for humming a version of motherfucker at my mother's dinner table.
"It's meant as an insult, a major putdown, but as insults go it would be one I'd be proud to receive. Still it struck me right off as a kind of hanging by effigy of the only white boy in the area when I saw that familiar PeeWee Herman doll on my Rocheblave neighbor's clothesline. With his chest protruded, arms to his side but behind his side actually, PeeWee it could be said was hanging by his armpits on the backyard clothesline of my neighbor's hatred for all things white. But that statement (bad metaphor), is not only awkward, but probably inaccurate. I am not unpracticed at ignoring the unpleasant but after a week or so of slow diligence at the renovation site I began to suffer from severe pain in my shoulders and forearms. Now before I go suggesting Voodoo victimization let me confess that such pains are pre-existing, bad genes combined with repetitive blue collar work motions. Still, the pains exceeded all previous versions, and I was daily considering some sort of medical, or heretofore untried non-prescription cure. This is how serious I was--I even considered acquiring (through a friendly black market), prescription strength non-narcotic pain killers. To go to the black market for something non-narcotic is pretty serious in my book. I think on a couple of occasions if the pain had been less enough to allow me, I would have cried. Such is the human life. Later the doll was thrown over the cyclone fence and into my discarded wood pile, and my pains are no longer of the mentionable type. And that's where he lays now, arms and legs bent in unnatural directions, which I would be remiss not to correlate with Austin sister-in-law Judy's recent dream about me in a tragic car accident that left me similarly positioned. Everything can mean so much, or little, depending on where you stand, but on the gravity of dreams, and literal interpretations, my brother the criminology professor and I agree: if I can continue to have those few but precious lucid and wildly erotic dreams of me casually outperforming my real self, then I will gladly trade that for the ones that have me hurt and positioned oddly. And with that in mind I'm wondering what I should do with PeeWee. Which is why I'm glad to have a priest in this family of Methodists. What do you think Jim? I mean what if I cleaned PeeWee up and put him in a place of honor, perhaps even hooked him up with a nice Barbie doll? 'Man needs a Barbie,' that's in the bible somewhere isn't it? I just don't know about it all. Can a man affect his own Voodoo doll, should he try?"
My cousin Jim the Catholic priest is no damn fool and he chose his words of response carefully. "I'll meditate on that," he said.
His brother, my cousin Ronnie, was supportive in a different way. "I like the Barbie idea," he said, smiling.
It's His Coma
There is a theory that all these children around here don't really exist but are simply my alter egos manifested inside a coma dream.
I was lurking online climbing branches at the tree when Mandy came in and asked was there any chance I would drive Glynn fifteen blocks up Dumaine to where he stay on that one way Roosevelt with his Grandma, practically across the street from that American Can Company renovation. I was drinking a quart of ice cold budweiser, a quart because the Magnolia got its liquor license revoked and is only selling the residual stock from its sad and lonely looking nearly empty beer shelves to premium customers, lucky me. Freddy's wife imitated Schulz from Hogan's Heroes, "you know nothing," and I agreed wholeheartedly, saying, "that's very true, and I can prove it just by opening my mouth."
Mandy said she had already drunk a beer and a half and did not want to drive and I always encourage the good judgement of others. "Yeah, I'll take him," I said. Glynn had earlier driven his bike into the pole that supports the Magnolia sign at the corner of Dumaine and Broad and given himself--I am not a doctor making 200k a year--a mild concussion.
As I was driving up Orleans, instead of Dumaine, it occurred to me that all the children that are making up the alter egos inhabiting my coma dream, and who used to live either exactly in the 2600 block of Dumaine, or pretty close, now live scattered to the wind, but still find their way to this block almost every day.
Hunter snuck up on me at the Rocheblave job today (I paid him six dollars an hour to help me one day last week so he could go to the SuperFair at the Dome), and he said he just wanted to see what I was doing. I told him, "nothing really," and asked him did he come to work. He said he was on his way home. I thought he still lived around the corner from 2600 Dumaine, on Dorgenois, but no, he living with his grandmother on Bienville and Roman. I admitted I did not know that, and offered him work on Tuesday.
And Lance, who is here everyday, lives way out in the east with Sandra, the nurse his dad Billy had taken up with just before he got busted selling marijuana with that illegal weapon. Lance has brothers living lives elsewhere and one of them was murdered in New Mexico this past week.
Heather (and big sister, Kizzy, with children Raticia, Shadrica, and little Corey, and mom Barbara), lives on Iberville, near Galvez, not too far from the Rocheblave house.
Fermin, and his sister Julia (15 and pregnant), live with mom Evelyn on Touro, several blocks on the river side of Claiborne, a good distance from 2600 Dumaine. Michael Harris lives near there too.
Jacque, Nettie, Tiesha, Roshona, and mom Ramona Lewis still live on Rocheblave, at Orleans, in the Lafitte Projects.
Bryan Henry still lives across the street, and his cousin Irving visits occasionally.
After Mama D died many stopped coming to Dumaine. For instance, I haven't seen Shentrell in almost a year.
Kojak (Clifford Lewis), out of lockup, was playing dominoes on the porch recently, but I haven't seen Clifford Junior in a good while.
Erica Lewis I don't see very often but I think Ba(y) Ba(y) and Lulu are taking good care of her over on Claiborne, near Frenchman. Lulu (17-18) is pregnant.
And as I may have mentioned before, Shelton Ray Jackson is living inside this house, and we are recently trying to be nice to each other.
My new Rocheblave neighbors across the street are a woman named Mebo? and her husband, nice people, she's a sculpter, and I'm not sure yet what he does, but she was offering I don't know what today, condolences? about my break-ins, and I was speaking unguarded, big mistake, and she was offering me advice (all good, and all things I have considered), but I felt this childish competiveness and kept saying things like, "I know what's up," and "Dumaine and Broad make this block look like a daycare center," and she was thinking "what an asshole," who can blame her, but the thing is she kept irritating me with placations to my condemnations, saying things that were supposed to make me pause and consider the hardships of my fellow men, like--"everyone's got a story," and me wanting to grab this cloistered artist living behind the locked iron gates and theories of her urban domicile and scream, "no fucking shit?"
The Rewards Of Bad Behavior
If you listened to the well-intended instructions of all the inner voices and were therefore able to disrupt all mishaps headed your way, would you be a better person for this, or just a well-tuned obedient soldier, safe in the comfort of your knowledge, and obedience?
That's what Slim was asking himself as he sat on the steps leading into his blighted dwelling which was now minus the $200 front door he had ignorantly installed much too early in the process of the dwelling's renovation. "Shouldn't have waved my razor knife in that guy's face the other day," Slim mused out loud.
The next day when the house was violated from the side--but nothing stolen--Slim concocted wild revenge plots remembering an incident years ago where someone kept stealing the hallucinogenic mushrooms he was drying on a windowsill so that he felt forced to replace his "cooling pies" with another variety that he knew--from very reliable second hand sources--to cause violent, blood streaked vomiting. Slim wasn't by nature a vindictive person but he did occasionally lapse into unpredictable behavior.
But back then he was a child playing with children and now he was some version of an adult playing with people who could play hard, in fact had nothing better to do than terrorize some uppity land owner while searching for that next blast.
A man had come onto the property a few days previous and had annoyed Slim in such a way that Slim had lapsed into one of those aforementioned modes of unpredictablility and before he knew what was happening he was threatening to slice the other man. When the other man had finally retreated after an unconvincing pantomime of attempted murder, Slim listened to, but could not really make out the far away rants of this unsuccessful drunken solicitor, but he felt there was to the man's message the basic warning that Slim would pay for his disrepectful ways.
Now he thought about leaving the side entrance ajar and gluing razor blades to the door frame right where he knew one had to place their hands to pull up into the house, and maybe a panel of sharpened nails screwed to the floor would be a nice touch. Instead he went out and bought eleven sheets of plywood and in a frenzy similar to the hectic boarding up that occured in his area when hurricanes threatened, Slim cut to size and screwed plywood over all the windows.
And the list of suspects grew in Slim's mind. Hell, the morning before it was stolen hadn't that feeble old church going woman commented on what a nice door it was? How can she not be on the list? And when the building inspector who had come out that day to inspect the rafters had uttered that it was probably the first person who had been nice to him, Slim could not deny he had been thinking a similar thing himself. About the man across the street who occasionally helped Slim with the chores of renovation and was a self-admitted, and rather obvious, crackhead. And he seemed now two days later to be tweaked way beyond what that fifty dollars Slim had paid him would do. And yesterday he had to excuse himself in the middle of his rather suspect commiseration about the missing door to attend to the 'ho who was lingering at his door across the street. "Excuse me, cousin, let me see about gettin' me some of that pussy." The man was living large.
On the third day when the house was entered from underneath, and a section of the temporarily nailed plywood subfloor was pushed up into the house, Slim suffered a brief spell of despondency. Would he have to live in this unfinished hotbox in the middle of this urban swamp in the middle of summer to protect his possessions? He did not fancy that idea. He was getting verrry sleepy Then he went to find a phone and call the police.
A pretty, young, black, female, police officer was sent to respond to his call. She had a nice manner about her and made Slim feel better about his world. In answer to his question about how far he could go in protecting his property she implied that Slim could go ahead and do what he had to do, as long as he projected an attitude of fear about his predicament. "I am afraid," he said to her. When she left he felt more calm, but lonlier.
The Shiney Black Shoe
The joke was Shelton asking Mandy would she mind it too much if he went to Slidell to stay with his cousin Joe for awhile.
Mandy came home from work that first night--and these days (perhaps) sadly it is not unusual for me to barely look up from what I'm doing when she comes home, and vice-versa, but that night I made eye contact--and she said "is he gone?," like that, with total disregard for his proper name and I nodded with a sigh and she told me that joke about him asking would she mind.... It was almost a moment of bonding, old times relived, a shared total lack of caring what the fuck happens to a most disadvantaged youth from the inner city. It's too heavy sometimes. All the necessary emotions involved in the day to day dealings of this life I love cannot always co-exist. There are limits, and I have found them. Unfortunately, having found them, or defined them, doesn't make the excess less
And speaking of (often) excess(ivley) bad behavior, Shelton, and Joe just got back. Come on, that wasn't even three days was it? I came out of the bath with eyes blinking saline solution which hoped to rinse the residual Rocheblave soot away and I see, sort of, Joe sitting there on the phone, "hey joe," I say; Shelton to my flank offers his hand which I firmly grab but cut short the ritualistic long version and Joe with his hand out says, "its like that is it, Mr. Jim?" I look at Joe and realizing the insult respond, "I'm sorry, Joe, I didn't see," and grab his outstretched hand and also abbreviate firmly.
And it seemed Mandy was reaching her limits as the throngs of needy children hoping to take advantage of a Sheltonless dwelling (for example Marqin tapping on her bedroom window as soon as I left the house at 6:30 this morning), drove her to shut down Le Blanc House on Dumaine, and after a twelve hour Rocheblave Saturday the solitude would have been nice. But I get a good bit of solitude on Rocheblave so I shouldn't complain. The exception to the solitude could prove the rule as today on one of my frequent breaks, having finished eating a somewhat dry banana, and contemplating the can of sliced peaches, I was intruded upon by a sloppy drunk. Give me an HIV positive heroin addict any day over a sloppy drunk.
One of the many fine things about this little crib on Rocheblave is that it is set back from the street, unlike the Dumaine house which is right up on the sidewalk and street. A person doesn't have to trespass to annoy you on Dumaine, but on Rocheblave its a good thirty feet or so to the temporary steps on which I often find myself sitting enjoying possibly one of the better summer breezes to be had in all of New Orleans, being that I have a pretty rare New Orleans inner city circumstance with my prevailing Southwest unobstructed by building or trees for perhaps as large a dimension as 75 X 300 yards.
I have recently become the definition of zero tolerance and my brother the criminology professor can attest to that during a recent visit where he saw me taunt a rich white lady in a high end SUV after I ran a stop sign and she angrily honked and gestured. The situation allowed that after my indiscretion I was stopped by traffic only a shallow intersection away from the offended damsel and while she honked and grimaced a great deal more, I turned fully around hanging my upper body out the cab of the truck and insulted her quietly with full frontal confrontation. And boy did that seem to make her mad. Lucky for me I drive a vehicle which is instantly recognizable, and somewhat memorable. We were uptown where Carrollton meets St. Charles. She was probably a Mafia Princess. I call it the suicide of life.
But back to the downtown side of Mid-City, Rocheblave, and this drunk, who thinks he knows me because in one of my more tolerant moods I had entertained his supposition that he was the drywall man I would want to use when the time came. But today he's coming up my cracked drive carrying a cheap shoulder bag amd waving one patent "leather" high heeled men's shoe. I dismiss him with the insult of my shooing hand and he takes offense right off, gurlgling something or other about not waving my hand at him and as I mentioned before he is way into my territory by the time he stands in front of me, showing his goods. Realilzing the shoe is not to my taste he takes from his bag a used, but clean t-shirt with the slogan, "I'm a Quitter," and the picture of a cigarette inside a circle with a line through it. I insult him again by challenging his assertion that the t-shirt is new, and he, truest denizen of the street sticks to the code--lie and deny, the t-shirt is new, smell it he demands of me more than once. Have I already mentioned this, that I am not a very tolerant person right now? I am going to so to speak cut to the chase as we now have me waving my razor knife in this guy's face threatening to disembowel, repeatedly reminding him how far into my territory he has strayed, a mistake I should hope him not to make again, and him saying how I should not be trying to punk him like this, and me totally done with the sloppy drunk so much so that when he tries to save face by reaching in the back of his pants for his imaginary gun I just shake my head sadly and sit back down on my steps. I feel not as bad but similarly to the feeling of last night at ten-thirty when I yelled at little Raticia for ringing the bell and asking for water. Today I disconnected the doorbell. I know what I am right now cannot be effectively communicated to children, so I just hope for the best, and occasionally contemplate the inefficient but perhaps necessary short term move away from Dumaine, until Rocheblave can on any real level, be lived in.
I hate to write about some of this as it seems to glorify shitty behavior, which is not my intention. My only writing instructor, David Ohle, at the U. of Texas, once gave the assignment to write about something you're afraid of and it is that which keeps me going, because not unlike the young Ms. Nowottny from New Jersey I am so often so afraid of me.
Pobrecito Jim
I can hardly finish a beer (or two), these days without nodding towards deepest stupor; cheaper than dilaudid but not quite as fine.
Pobrecito Jim works all day as the house painter for the rich and famous and then comes home to work some more in a neighborhood that most would see as a ghetto, and in fact poor little Jim sees it that way too, but the New Orleans community has the rich and poor all swirled together so the ghettos of poverty, drug dealing, depravity, and violent death are surrounded by neighborhoods mere minutes away which offer all that is good and safe and clean and honest. So one is never stuck; one can always choose: have a blast, or a latte', poke a vein, or have a beignet.
After getting the permit to renovate and getting fully juiced with electricity the Rocheblave project has Jim working 13 hour days, seven days a week, in a subtropical climate that is so hot, ninety with a gentle breeze is considered very pleasant. Jim has to work such long days because he makes lots of mistakes and has to redo much of his work, but that's ok because Jim can't dance.
Jim has put in a front door but he still boards up over it because his crack-head consultant has told him the crack heads will steal it if he makes it too easy for them. Jim already knows this but it's good to have an experienced consultant nearby to remind him of the obvious truths. Jim is one day Candide and the next Pangloss, benefitting, it seems, little from either, so it is best when he accepts counsel.
And Jim has ripped up and replaced the bedroom and bathroom floors, and today got a good few of the burnt rafter ends scabbed in, braced, screwed and glued. Jim doesn't really know what he's doing but he convinces himself daily that he has the right stuff, and the deception is effective, and the work gets done.
Last night at 9 p.m. Jim was snoozing on top the covers in the dining room that is his bedroom and study, aware of the neighborhood children passing to and fro throughout the house as they are apt to do around here, and in and out of stupor Jim had that awareness of nothingness going on, which is his preferred state, when out of the dark he is kissed on the cheek by Erica Lewis, and eyes opening into hers he kisses her hand and falls back to nothing better than that.
My Country 'Tis Of Thee
With his jailhouse mentality he may be seeing it as a sign of weakness but be that as it may I apologized to the golden toothed motherfucker today because the opportunity presented itself and I selfishly wanted to see if such an act might indeed be good for the soul. I presented my case and suggested that in the future should something similar happen it would be best not to linger around my porch afterwards. Also the whole story of the egg throwing was presented to me by various sources and the true culprit was pointed out to me (one of the haircutters over at Maurice's Impressive Hair Design), and so I was made to look hard at my flaming behavior towards golden tooth and there really isn't any reason he should have taken both barrels of my wrath. He is in theory the kind of person I have a great deal of sympathy towards but over the years he has so worn thin my capacity to feel that sympathy that in all truth I'm glad I apologized but I'm also glad I called him a motherfucking bitch. His younger sister has always made an extra effort to be respectful towards me and his younger brother is a good boy I have written about many times and so I try to consider golden tooth in the light of his siblings and I have caught glimpses of him as that scared little boy growing up in the eighties with that new and improved crack cocaine cutting its devastating path through the inner cities of America (My Country 'Tis Of Thee...), and a mother more in love with it than him, and the things you read about happening all around him, I mean all around him: his fellow children armed with semi-automatic weaponry, not pretending as we did as children, but actually putting loaded gun barrels up against the head of another child and pulling the trigger, once, twice, three times, flinching at first blood but not so much after that first one, after realizing no one is more powerful than you, giver and taker of life. A sobering reality to say the least. A reality where school work is for the weak, because if you're black, and you think school work is going to get you out of here, you are just stupid wrong, because the white man is not going to let you out of here, is not going to let you succeed. It is your destiny to sell crack cocaine to your father, and when your mother gets out of jail and back to whoring herself for nickles and dimes you can sell to her as well. So much hogwash, and yet which one of us cannot admit to seeing some truth in it? How could I not apologize? How can I not be ashamed of heaping more garbage on a life such as that of he with the golden teeth?
The last three library books were all winners and I am recommending all three: This Much I Know to be True, by Wally Lamb, and The Diary of a Yuppie (a reread) by Louis Auchincloss, and Bagombo Snuff Box (some previously unreleased short fiction) by Vonnegut. With a nice preface.
This Car Going Up
Thursday I got off early from work and went down to City Hall to get that building permit that one needs to do any serious house renovating. They did not ask and I did not volunteer that I have been renovating already for two months, albeit at a lollygagging pace, and lately, frankly, not at all. I have heard a lot of criticisms from contractors about the way they run things down at Morial's City Hall and that combined with my own really very impressive lack of ability at dealing with power structures had me in a mood that could best be described as--tense. If I were still a cigarette smoker I would have been through half a pack just getting out of this house.
But everyone down there was very nice to me, even the old man behind the information desk who must have thought me a complete ninny for asking--"do the elevators only go down?" Well, there were two buttons and all, one on top of the other, but when you look above the doors there is a plastic arrow above each one that lights up when the elevators arrive, and they all point down. There is not an up arrow. I had pushed the up button and had waited a pretty fair length of time during which I witnessed all six or eight elevators arrive, and go down. And so I walked over to the information desk and asked my question.
The grey afro-headed man behind the desk did not yell out--as he had every right to--"son, I've been working here forty years and that is by far the stupidest question anyone has ever asked me, 'do the elevators only go down?' What turnip truck did you just fall out of?" he could have asked me, but didn't. He tried his best to answer a question that had never before been asked, which is not easy, and finally had to resort to familiar strategy by asking me to which floor was I headed. I told him seven and he said--now back within the realm of his expertise--"oh, that's Permits and Conveyances," or something like that is what he said, and I rushed back to the elevators to avoid a possible change of heart wherein the old man cried out--"hey everybody, check this out, this little hayseed cracker just ask me do the elevators only go down..."
Twice or four times as big as the down arrows is a square plastic box that lights up and reads--This Car Going Up.
Up on seven I was politely told to fill out a form and then give it back when I was finished, and wait for my name to be called. I went over to the little table with forms and sat down feeling pretty smug as I looked at several strings attached to the table which serve the purpose of keeping people from stealing the pens or pencils but the strategy had not worked for the pens or pencils were all gone. I had brought my own pen knowing there would be none readily available and that asking for one could result in dire consequences, even punishment.
And then there was a fortuitous convergence which had me finishing my form at just the moment a permit agent became available and me and her went through a Q&A session where at one point she asked was I licensed to do the renovation (uh oh, the guy I called yesterday said I didn't have to be if this was a renovation of my personal home), but instead of panicking I tried to bluff by leaning towards her a bit and whispering, "no, but I'm capable." Even at the time I had to ask, who is this nimrod? Are you hitting on this woman, or what? Luckily she paid me no mind and continued to tell me what I had to be if...but I interrupted her to clarify that this was my personal home, and yes, that did change things, so we were back to cooking with gas, and then just as she's about to lead me into the inner sanctum of permit inspectors, where I will be grilled by some guys with white shirts and colorful patches and silver engraved name tags, this more bigger nimrod than me starts whining about how he was here first. I aim to placate and immediately do a languid side step towards the couch but miss my mark and so find myself kind of leaning over when my butt does eventually find the cushion, but I recover nicely and if not for the German judge, my score would have been good, very good.
This guy, for lack of a better thesaurus, is a real pussy. He's going on and on about his pitiful existence and at one point even mentions how just asking for a pen had been a huge ordeal. Now let me tell you, if I was feeling smug before, I am now pure uncut, unadulterated, in your face, smuggier than thou. I glance over at the professional looking gentleman to my left and we share a smug chuckle that shows us to be guys who know about the necessity of a good pen in your pocket. As it turns out the guy needed a drawing of what he was trying to do so he had to go back to that table, And he had to ask for another pen.
As if we were lovers who had been interrupted by a telepone solicitor, me and the permit agent quickly got back to our business, and this time, as if on cue, an inspector walks in and she hands him my paperwork and he leads me through the doors to his desk. Things were not completely in order with my request but wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we're gonna get you a permit. And when he said I need a check for $130 made out to the City of New Orleans I was ready. I'd brought checks, cash, credit cards, even a bag of quarters for the parking meter. Sometimes its all about preparedness.
A Dumaine Day4.23.99
It's no big secret me not being all that finely tuned so it didn't strike me
as unusual that my mom considered it a possibility that my phone call to her
on April 21st was blatantly coincidental instead of an intentional
commemoration of my father's death.
"Do you know what today is," she asked, and I answered in the affirmative.
She said, "I went to the cemetary this morning." And I asked, "so how is
he?" and she said, "he's fine, ornery as ever."
Conversation was somewhat stilted at first, with me never knowing exactly
which of life's informational tidbits are appropriate, and there was some
brief panic as Clifford Louis' depression era sensibilities about waste
(long distance phone calls and such) kicked in. But we pulled out of that
conversational nosedive beautifully and soon enough were talking the basics,
about Mrs. Arista (she never leaves the house), Mr. Walden (first year he
hasn't been able to mow his own lawn), Nephew Ben (hit a double, stole third,
and scored the winning run in highschool baseball game), my brother, Paul,
(and the plans to disinherit him), neighborhood children, and politics
(Clinton's just a man and she wishes people would stop talking about his sex
life). I told her I thought people were talking about other things now.
Right now is a perfect example of how it goes. One minute I'm sitting here
hogging the six hundred square feet of space that includes two rooms, a
foyer, and half the kitchen, and the next minute I'm sharing it with (almost)
two-year-old Clifford Lewis, (almost) six-year-old Erica Lewis, who seems
very much the grown up by comparison, and fourteen-year-old Lance Price who
is being tutored by Mandy in Algebra. Clifford the two-year-old gets kicked
out by Lance the serious student because he was batting a plastic bowling
ball across the wood floor with a badminton racket. A few minutes later
there is banging on the door, and feeling quite the permissive paternal
lord, I get up to answer it. Clifford blows by me, glancing off my knees as
he picks up the bowling ball first thing, and staggers about the room
deliriously, looking for the badminton racket. Fourteen-year-old KaKa
McCormick takes advantage of the open door to ask can she speak to Miss
Amanda. While she's here (getting a piece of fruit) she punishes Clifford
and throws him outside again.
And out on the street it can be just the same. Throughout an average day
there is little to distinguish this block from any other (blighted inner city
block). It is often quiet, with only the normal flow of extra foot traffic
that you would expect from having a corner store in the neighborhood. And
then a couple of guys show up with pit bulls.
I have been in and out of the house talking to my mom, going inside with the
passing of each loudly vibrating, rapping sedan. I'm standing in the foyer
with the door open when the one man just briefly looses his grip on the
leash, and we have instant fido on fido, and in a matter of seconds there are
twelve to fourteen people circling the dogs, cheering.
"What's that noise," Mrs. Louis wanted to know.
"Some fighting dogs, pit bulls, and people cheering," I said.
"Are they fighting?"
"It looked like they were going to but I think this is another false alarm."
"This goes on all the time?"
"I wouldn't say all the time, or even frequently, but this isn't the first
time I've looked out the window and seen such a thing. I'll shut the door."
"Oh, you don't have to. You don't have a lot of dull moments there, do you?"
"It does get dull here, but patience is always rewarded."
And then in a matter of ninety minutes the rooms are mine again and I feel
the faintest remorse as I suffer through the quiet, an empty nester, longing
for the company of a gangster's son, and the sound of a plastic bowling ball
bouncing on a wood floor.
Where'yat
Back in '95 a well known area renovator/activist/realtor--while showing Mandy and I around this area--known as Treme--and her area, across Broad towards the Bayou--known as Fabourg St. John--told us she loved this house too and would look into the procurement of it for us but later reneged because this block was uncharted territory for young white renovators and as she so caringly put--"I don't want ya'll to get killed."
I love life pretty much, sometimes a lot, other times just a little, but it seems to me an inescapable part of life is that eventually it does kill you, so the concerns of Jeanne Tidy did not weigh all that heavily in the decision making process which eventually (after six months of looking, rather quickly actually) led to the owner financed purchase of this 1600 sq. ft. 103 year old double bayed Victorian cottage, with wood floors, twelve foot ceilings, two (of four original) fireplaces, a claw foot tub, 7.5 foot doorways above which are workable transom windows, and a front porch that was at the time, and now five years later continues to be, somewhat of a community property for neighborhood children, current and former grown-up neighbors, and area gangsters (the modern day inner-city variety who sell crack and powdered cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, and occasionally kill each other for wrongs real or imagined).
The purchase price was $22,000. The house was, and to large degree still is, a wreck. At the time we survived on my 9 dollar an hour job and our good credit ratings. We made the $5000 down payment with a cash advance from a credit card, and then shuffled that balance from one low rate introductory offer to another for the couple of years that passed before Mandy became employed and we were able to erase our high interest debts. Originally, $3000 (mostly saved cash from our days in North Carolina) was spent to get the front three rooms, kitchen, and one (of two) bathroom(s) livable/usable, although not really "finished" by a long shot. We did the work ourselves. The back two rooms consist of a 14X18 bayed bedroom w/ small bath, and a door leading out to 10X25 raised deck. The last room which connects by doorway to the bedroom is 12X25 and has a (somewhat leaning) fireplace freestanding in the middle. And the floor in this last room is half wood, half tile. These back rooms are completely unfinished and as wrecked, cracked, and unusable as they were five years ago.
The owner-financed mortgage on this house is 250 dollars a month for a term of ten years, of which five remain.
As chief executive officer in charge of finances during this period, the idea was to live as comfortably as possible in the unfinished primitive state until such time that we were able to pay the accumulated credit card debts (which we did) and then continue to live primitively (well, we have hot and cold running water, a flushing toilet, and new stove and fridge, and a new washing machine, and used dryer) until we saved an amount in cash ( 8--10K) that would finish the renovation and make this house, although not richly appointed, a pretty kick ass little $35,000 soon-to-be-paid-for crib.
And we did that. The saving part anyway. However, after thirteen years of all being said and done, Mandy and I did not desire to live together anymore. So we split the cash and put the division of property decision on hold while I started looking for another ghetto property to renovate. I found one half as big, in worse shape, for exactly the same price as this one cost five years ago. Had to have it. A good friend who also knows how to save money is doing the financing on this new blighted property so to erase for me what can at times be an almost insurmountable difficulty in dealing with power structures, i.e., banks, and bureaucracies, and whatnot.
So that's where I'm at: the beginning stages of another dance with Shiva. Am I going to take you along with me through the destruction, and scraping, and cutting, and hammering? I don't know, but its an idea.