Halloween is a Cartoon in New Orleans

                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.