Cities
in America are lonely; the lonelier, the wilder. Only by grace are we kept safe
in the dark, when the city and its animals want to eat us alive and show off
the leftover pieces of broken boys and girls.
I had
to retreat to a solitary corner of the bar, and with shades on, I watched the
sun go down in New Orleans on Halloween. I probably looked so unhappy over there
in that corner, slammed against wall all by myself, and that’s okay with me. I
had my Anchor Steam, my leather jacket on, 27s in my pocket, and I was seeing
that bar with the eyes I was born with. I’d been absolutely mad for the
previous two weeks, and I could finally see straight. I was the writer, the
stranger that no one likes, and I prefer it that way. I looked left and saw
your face, I lit a cigarette and I felt your hair in my fingers. When my boots
touched the floor, I was on a rocky hill with you, overlooking cities or
wilderness. I closed my eyes and we were together, and I was a man again. I
could breathe, and I was tired of being mad.
They were
all just people to me again, and not just targets for rebuke or judgement or
lust. I was outside of all this – finally! – and they did not understand how
cartoonish they were. It was time to turn these notebooks into the novel they
were born to be and quit fucking around.
What was
this? Could it be passion? For love and
for art? I wanted to love you like you’d never been loved. I wanted another
chance to draw your incredible body.
Simon
introduced me to a girl he liked that was dressed as a pirate. He had all these
great stories of beautiful women whose clothes melted off in his presence, and
she was one of them. I was unimpressed. When she first walked up, I closed my
notebook.
“Oh,
come on. Don’t act like you’re doing anything important,” she said. People
really hate those little black books. I told her I was a writer, and in spite
of her previous attack, she claimed she was, too – just like everyone else. I
asked her if she wrote fiction, and she told me she wrote funny, intelligent
comics.
“Like,
why doesn’t Jesus eat M&Ms?”
“Because
of the holes in his hands?”
She was
suddenly crestfallen.
“Nobody’s
ever gotten that before.” So she changed the subject. “Aren’t you hot in that
jacket?” she asked. And despite the
overwhelming desire to give a snarky “yes,” (who doesn’t want to be hot in a
leather jacket?) I decided to go with the truth. It’s my new thing.
“No,
I’m pretty used to wearing this jacket.”
She
looked at me quizzically, or maybe it was just drunkenly in her nerdy faux-hot
sort of way. So I clarified.
“I’m
not in costume. This is my jacket. I wear it all the time.” I felt suddenly and
ridiculously like a Marine (this is my rifle).
“Oh. I
thought you were supposed to be a biker, or,” she mocked my big, slick unkempt
hair, “a greaser.” Everybody thinks you’re trying to be somebody else. And in
my case, they choose to assume this truth every single day.
“No,
this is just me.”
And
immediately, in her eyes, I became strange. It’s not that painful to be an
artist in a current American metropolis, but God, it can be obnoxious
sometimes. Normal folks still hate it. I wonder if people have actually
evolved, or if it’s just the posters on their walls that they fantasize about
that check and reshape their immediate vocal reactions to the whole idea.
Either
way, she took Simon outside, and I was relegated to third wheel status. No
matter. I had just reaffirmed my faith in humanity. Why not have it tested
within moments? I was sure she was a sweet girl. But hiding a band kid
underneath a piratesse’s bustier doesn’t erase years spent on a clarinet. I’ll
bet she was good, too, on the clarinet.
Anyway,
none of it mattered. I was still drinking Anchor. I was in my comfort zone,
comfortably missing the city I was supposed to be writing about. But my muscles
hurt; I literally ached from days of drinking and emotional drain, and I was
ready to get back to my square yard of floor and put pen to paper, or fingers
to keys. I was just writing a book full of ashes, but they were ashes I carried
reverently in my internal urn. And if that terrible band could keep playing the
same songs, then I was fully allowed to keep splitting open and describing my
terrible life. And even as awful as those songs were, and as much as the crowd
hated them the first time, as awkwardly as they looked at me as the only soul
applauding the first set; the longer they stayed, the more multi-colored
Halloween they drank, and the looser their silly costumes (actual costumes)
became, the more they loved them. And Christ, did they love them by 2AM. You
should have seen them dance to Shit: Take 3.
I’d
smoked half a pack of cigarettes, but I felt quite confident that my cool was
intact. I was at the point of rolling my eyes dramatically – even to myself. And
by the second time I had to sit through the most bloodless “I Put a Spell on
You,” I didn’t even want to smoke and look interesting, hunched black over
notebook, anymore it was so ridiculous. Halloween is a cartoon in New Orleans.
Honestly,
could this be passion rekindled? And yeah, I was sweating to death in that
jacket, costume or not.
