A Date? And Hurricane Katrina Memories. in Just another day in Paradise...
- May 28, 2015, 12:52 a.m.
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- Public
I got asked out today. For a date. I feel very conflicted right now.
This song was my anthem after Hurricane Katrina buried my city. Many of you who have read me for years know that we evacuated to San Antonio, Texas for 3 months before we were able to get back to New Orleans.
I loathed San Antonio. It was beyond boring.
There just was no energy there.
Not in Oklahoma, either.
Arkansas? Nope.
Texas though.. sucked.
That was when I realized that I am in love with New Orleans, and I cannot be apart from her for too long.
I miss the sounds of this place.
My city is alive.. and she will always be my lover.
I write because I am compelled to do so.
I live here because I cannot stand to live anywhere else.
Though I’ve wondered about the Pacific Northwest.. I’d love to make it to Los Angeles, sometime, and meet so many friends that I have there.
New York has never interested me. I can have everything in New York in my city. That’s how unique this place is, but it’s small. A million people, so we’re big enough to have big city things, but we are small enough that you can live in a tiny community for that small town feel.
One of my favorite quotes of all time is..
“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.
Everywhere else is Cleveland.”
― Tennessee Williams
San Francisco would be a fun place to visit.
After the storm, we drove around and saw the destruction. A house was literally floating five blocks from where it was. And then I saw a pickup truck in a tree.
The tree was holding a truck.
Insanity.
People were so good though.
We had no street lights, and everyone was so courteous to each other whilst driving. No honking horns. People just.. we all just cared.
It was very eerie though seeing the military driving around the city afterwards all with guns out and ready for anything.
The streetcar took forever to get back running.
I lived 3 blocks from St. Charles Avenue.
The Avenue was dead quiet. No streetcar rumbling up and down and beneath the Oaks and Willows.
St. Charles Avenue is the major street most Mardi Gras parades ride. I used to catch the bus then transfer to the streetcar and walk home from school.
There is no better public transit than a streetcar.
They are not trolleys.
We hate that word.
They are streetcars.
Trolley’s are in Frisco powered by the tracks in the gound. Streetcars are powered by overhead cables.
There are two amazing Katrina songs by Cowboy Mouth.
“The Avenue” by lead singer/drummer Fred LeBlanc. (Fred went to my high school as did Harry Connick, Jr. and a plethora of other big names.. I went to arguably the best high school in the state in terms of academics. Jesuit High School. It was there that my writing flourished.)
He performed it live on Ellen Degeneress’ show after the storm. Ellen is from New Orleans and her brother was a member of Cowboy Mouth for years. She cried when he played it.
Then there is “Home” written by a different member of Cowboy Mouth who lost his home. (Paul Sanchez wrote and sings both “Hurricane Party” and “Home”)
Cowboy Mouth formed with 3 frontmen (Fred LeBlanc, Paul Sanchez, John Thomas Griffith, and for various local New Orleans bands got together to form a mega-band. They are amazing live. Trust me. They are amazing live.
Anyway, the sad part is that Paul couldn’t bring himself to sing “Hurricane Party” for many years after Katrina. He said it hurt too much.
I understood.
I’m all over the place right now.
So conflicted.
So confused.
Jafael ⋅ May 28, 2015
New Orleans is a wonderful city, worthy of such love and such moving songs. I was there for Easter, on a family trip, a few years ago. History, Rebuilding and lingering devastation from Katrina, and most of all the best energy and great people. I loved New Orleans.
LoveSuicide Jafael ⋅ May 28, 2015
You came and didn't say hello to me? I'm crushed. :P
Teasing.
I have not met anyone that does not love this place. It's so much more than Bourbon Street and the French Quarter.
Hell, I met Terry Crews at Cafe du Monde and didn't realize it until people clamored around him moments after we spoke and took his picture.
Super nice guy, by the way, but I had no idea. People down here often are not awestruck by celebrity.
A family trip just to visit?
Jafael LoveSuicide ⋅ May 28, 2015
I would have loved! to see you when I visited New Orleans.
Mom travels a lot. World cruises and the like. Every decade or so, she misses me, so she will plan a weekend to include me. One was New Orleans. Three days! I packed in all I could. Loved it.
I have an urge to look at my photos!
LoveSuicide Jafael ⋅ May 28, 2015
What'd you do when you visited my lovely lady of a city?
Jafael LoveSuicide ⋅ May 28, 2015
Whatever Mom wanted. Ha! She booked all the very touristy things.
We took the steam paddleboat ride down the Mississippi. I loved seeing the big old houses along the river. We walked along the riverfront. Went to the aquarium.
We took a walking tour of the French Quarter. Visited a museum and a cemetery and heard about the history of a dozen places. Ate at some famous place Mom knew about, drank a Hurricane because that's what you do, she said. LOL!
We also saw the cathedral, and took a horse buggy ride. Like I said, lots of touristy things.
We took a bus tour of the city, which drove through all the major neighborhoods. That's when we really saw what Katrina did to some neighborhoods. The tour driver was great, gave so much information about all sorts of things. We stopped at the big cemeteries. (Loved those!) We drove through the gorgeous old mansion neighborhoods.
It rained all weekend, and that added so much ambiance to the history. I love history, and architecture. I loved the buildings, and the cemeteries. Oh, those cemeteries! And in the rain, it was great. I loved the river and the beautiful old homes.
Since it was Easter weekend we also had the best brunch I've ever eaten at our hotel that Sunday. (I think it was a Radisson near the French quarter?)
I remember how the Mardi Gras beads and streamers were still in the trees and on balconies, even on Easter, though they were getting weathered and tattered. That alone spoke of so much love, and pride the people of New Orleans have for their traditions and their city.
Only three days there, but we packed a lot in. My favorite things were the cemeteries, and the river. I always love water.
Telstar ⋅ May 28, 2015
There's someplace for everyone, so they say.
But unless New Orleans has acquired some unbelievable attraction since I was there before......
Feel free to take my place.
LoveSuicide Telstar ⋅ May 28, 2015
I take it you're not a fan.
Telstar LoveSuicide ⋅ May 28, 2015
I also don't care for root beer, turnip greens, Pepsi-Cola, green cars, and South Philadelphia.
So my opinion isn't necessarily held by the majority.
LoveSuicide Telstar ⋅ May 28, 2015
I was born in Philly.
Telstar LoveSuicide ⋅ May 28, 2015
Ahhh yes... Beautiful Philadelphia.
The very old memorial stadium downtown..... Thank goodness it's gone....
The Roundhouse.....
I-76....... Used to be the roughest interstate around.... And I had to use it to get to King of Prussia regularly...... Perhaps it's better now....
The rude taxi drivers......
And last of all, the guy who tried to steal my bag at the American Airlines baggage pickup at 2:00 a.m. ....... Never had to fight anyone while traveling before or since..... But I had to have my blue pin stripe suit for an important presentation later that day.
But other than all this, Philadelphia is a pretty good place!
LoveSuicide Telstar ⋅ May 28, 2015
lol, tell me how you really feel, Tom. Stop holding back. :P
I've never been to Philly other than being born there.
Biological father lived there until he died.
He was not a good man.
Fawkes Gal ⋅ May 28, 2015
I went to New Orleans twice, pre-Katrina. It was an amazing place, it has an energy that doesn't exist in most other places. I'd love to go back some day.
Also, the food. The FOOD.
LoveSuicide Fawkes Gal ⋅ May 28, 2015
New Orleans would love to have you back. :)
I loved the 4th of July here.. because they have the dueling barges on the river and soooo many people I meet down there are from all over the country and the world and it's fun to chat them up. Especially when they find out I'm a native. Cause you're more likely to meet 8 of 10 people down there are tourists.
Did you have a specific place you guys ate at you liked?!:)
Fawkes Gal LoveSuicide ⋅ May 28, 2015
The first time I visited was for business in the Convention Center and so we ate at Mulat's, which I remember being great. That's the main place I remember from my first visit.
My second visit we had coffee & beignets from the Cafe du Monde every single frickin' day. Gahhhh so amazing. I remember having a fantastic dinner at the Napoleon House as well. I can't remember any other restaurants by name, but I always tried to order something regional everywhere we went. Etouffe, blackened catfish, crawfish po'boys.
Goddamnit, I need to get my ass back to New Orleans.
LoveSuicide Fawkes Gal ⋅ May 28, 2015
The worst part for me is I'm not a big seafood person. heh. People glare at me for that.
Yes, the Convention Center, what a lovely place. I've never been to Mulat's nor Napoleon House, but I may have to make a point to do so. Did you ever get a chance to try the Muffaletta?
God, now I want beignets.
They've got a couple drive-thru Cafe du Monde's now, but nothing beats the one in the Quarter.
My God, the doughnuts are delicious and you look like you raped a snowman afterwards with all the powdered sugar everywhere. lol. It's the best cause no one cares!
Roast beef poboys with the debris.. I make a badass roast beef poboy.
Fawkes Gal LoveSuicide ⋅ May 28, 2015
I'm from New England. People actually swear at you here if you're not a seafood person. ;-) I adore seafood, so I fit right in.
The Convention Center was insane. It's so enormous. I'd never been in a building before when you needed a shuttle to get from one end to the other. I have had a Muffaletta! It was on my list of things I had to try when I was there. I have to admit though, it wasn't my favorite. Good, but a bit salty for my tastes.
Drive-thru Cafe du Monde? WHAT? Seems sacrilegious. Raped a snowman. BWAH! More like fellated one. So damn good though.
I've never had a roast beef po'boy. Clearly I need to add that to my list for next time.
LoveSuicide Fawkes Gal ⋅ May 28, 2015
Well, as a not-so-much-seafood guy I always gravitated toward the roast beef poboys. I mean, don't get me wrong, an oyster or shrimp poboy is delicious with the right condiments, but a roast beef poboy?
On that bread? Lather it up with mayo, and then drop shredded lettuce and tomato and then coat those in roast beef and the gravy/debris?
Oh.
My.
God.
Best thing ever.
The muff is a curious thing. Unfortunately, everyone does a mock muff and so you can have a really crappy one and you can't understand it. I'm very picky about my muffalettas!!
New England, huh? Connecticut or New Hampshire or Mass? Where from? I can understand and empathize..
People here glare at me.
Oh! Crawfish though go GREAT with alcohol.
I discovered this one a year ago, because I never drank alcohol...
So damn good.
You're awesome.
Fawkes Gal LoveSuicide ⋅ May 29, 2015
Too much food talk, and it has been too long since I've had proper New Orleans cuisine. sobs
Massachusetts, and from here unfortunately. I still live in the same hometown I grew up in, which is just crazy to me. Not something I ever expected. Blah. I feel very little connection to this place apart from my family ties.
Crawfish aren't technically seafood since they don't come from the sea really, right? They are so good, but so hard to get up here. I tried to make a seafood gumbo once and couldn't get so many of the ingredients that I needed. The crawfish that my grocery store had were pathetic. PATHETIC I tell you. That gumbo came out so terrible. I'm usually a great cook, but this gumbo turned out GREY. Gumbo should never be grey. I blamed my crappy ingredients, and I'm sticking to that story.
LoveSuicide Fawkes Gal ⋅ June 01, 2015
lol, technically they are not seafood, you're right.
You know, a friend worked at a local restaurant but it was a chain, and they had crawfish they imported from Vietnam I think it was. He said they were disgusting, and we both wondered why you wouldn't locally source it?!
Where did you expect to live?
Fawkes Gal LoveSuicide ⋅ June 02, 2015
Really I expected to live ANYWHERE but my crappy home town. I had dated people in Canada, and Italy, so I always imagined I'd wind up moving/living far away from where I was born. Didn't work out that way though.
LoveSuicide Fawkes Gal ⋅ June 02, 2015
You sound unhappy..?
Fawkes Gal LoveSuicide ⋅ June 02, 2015
Ha, understatement. :) You've probably not read my journals, but I'm going through a lot at the moment. But eh, life is what it is, you know?
LoveSuicide Fawkes Gal ⋅ June 02, 2015
I apologize, I've barely read much of anything these last days. Everything seems a malaise of wake up, run, chase tail, run, chase tail, collapse. I shall endeavor to do so.
Fawkes Gal LoveSuicide ⋅ June 02, 2015
Please, don't feel obligated. My life is a bit of a mess. It's actually been somewhat of a nice change to have an innocent back and forth about New Orleans and food with someone who's not been reading me for ages and doesn't know all about my personal crap. :)
LoveSuicide Fawkes Gal ⋅ June 02, 2015
I didn't feel obligated, but I read a smidge, what the heck happened?!
Fawkes Gal LoveSuicide ⋅ June 02, 2015
Here's things more or less in an overly complicated nutshell.
I've been married for nearly ten years now, and we have a 2.5 year old kid. My husband and I have had difficulties on and off but about a year ago things got really bad.
My husband has issues with depression, anxiety, insecurity, etc. A year ago I planned to take a trip to Universal Studios with my mother and sisters in November and it made him completely shut down. He is not cool with me doing things without him, but this is something that he had no interest in doing, so it was either go without him, or never go. I chose to go and he saw that as me not caring about him, abandoning him, etc. All because I wanted to take a 4-day trip with my family to see Harry Potter land.
Shortly after that, I confessed to him that I had recently started writing and publishing gay fanfiction for a tv show that I like and he lost it again. Claimed he felt like I had "cheated" on him. Completely demonized it and made me feel terrible about it. I couldn't watch the show around him anymore, couldn't wear the t-shirts, because it hurt him so much, he felt like I was "rubbing his face in it".
Those two incidents have really pushed us far apart over the last year, we went to therapists and it didn't do any good.
I finally hit my breaking point about a month ago when he said something really horrible to me, and I moved my stuff into our office, so we're not sharing a bedroom anymore. I don't think the relationship is salvageable, but he does. I am trying to get my ducks in a row to figure out what to do. I want to make sure I do what's best for our son.
On top of all of that, I've been going through a lot of self-discovery since my son got out of the baby stage and into the more independent toddler stage, and I've found that I am most likely a transgendered gay man. My husband doesn't know about this because I've been too afraid to share this with him, based on his reactions to far more innocuous things like the fanfiction.
So yeah, there's a lot going on.
LoveSuicide Fawkes Gal ⋅ June 02, 2015
Hm. Wow.
Okay, and I apologize for the ignorance, but you feel like you're a transgendered gay man.. explain in detail what that means? I only ask because I loathe assumptions and I do not want to assert anything upon the view of your situation than fact. Again, I'm thorough and beyond detail, but I hesitate with things I think I understand but do not fully. Hence the request.
Fawkes Gal LoveSuicide ⋅ June 02, 2015
In a nutshell: I was born with a female body, but never felt like being a female really fit me. I am sexually attracted to men, but I also want to BE a man.
This book delves into my gender dysphoria if you really want more details: https://www.prosebox.net/book/14567/
Sharee ⋅ May 28, 2015
Never been to New Orleans, but I have a friend from there who is in TX now, she misses it a lot and hates TX with a passion.
I have been to NYC and San Francisco, NY is okay. I love San Francisco. I have very good memories of being there with my grandmother.
LoveSuicide Sharee ⋅ May 28, 2015
Aww, you went with your grandmother to SF or she lived there and you visited?
NOLA is a magical place, truly.
Sharee LoveSuicide ⋅ May 28, 2015
We went, with my aunt and cousin to visit other family. She, thankfully, always lived within an easy distance.
LoveSuicide Sharee ⋅ May 28, 2015
Aww. You sound like you were very close with her.
Sharee LoveSuicide ⋅ May 28, 2015
Yeah, she was the best ever.
LoveSuicide Sharee ⋅ May 28, 2015
That warms my heart. hugs.
Waiting For Sunrise ⋅ May 28, 2015
The whole of America seems fascinating, the way everywhere's so different, everything's so big, all the landscapes seem so wide... secretly, I've always wanted to get a camper van and travel all those huge expanses of highway and see everything...
How come you feel so conflicted about the prospect of a date? :)
LoveSuicide Waiting For Sunrise ⋅ May 28, 2015
Come on over, darling. The water is quite fine!
I've considered traveling to other lands, especially Scotland. I have such a hard on for Scotland. Highlander. Braveheart. The music seems so more.. so just more there. England would be interesting, too.
I don't know why I'm so conflicted.
I suppose I don't trust much anymore.
No, that's exactly it. I have very little trust in women right now.
Waiting For Sunrise LoveSuicide ⋅ May 30, 2015
Aw... understandable that trust is hard to come by at the moment, I guess perhaps you can just view a date as fun, because trust is something that has to grow organically between two people over time... enjoy spending some time with her and give trust the time it needs to flourish if it will...
Scotland is very cold and very grey and very rainy, lol (um, a bit like England, I guess!)... Scottish dancing is awesome fun though! :)
LoveSuicide Waiting For Sunrise ⋅ June 01, 2015
Scottish dancing?
The date was plenty fun! Dip the toe in the waters, and see where the tide takes you.. :)
Stark. ⋅ June 01, 2015
I miss New Orleans. I lived in BR for 5 years but always wanted to end up in NO. Left after Katrina (for non-related reasons) but Louisiana always holds a special place for me. I agree with Tennessee Williams!
LoveSuicide Stark. ⋅ June 01, 2015
How come you ended up leaving Red Stick? What brought you to Baton Rouge in the first place?
NOLA misses you! She's thriving!
Stark. LoveSuicide ⋅ June 02, 2015
I moved to BR originally because of a boy and I stayed and finished school at LSU, which I loved. A few years down the road I left to return home after Katrina. I might just be taking a trip to NO for Halloween though! I'd love to see her thriving again :)
LoveSuicide Stark. ⋅ June 02, 2015
Messy situation with the boy? Where do you live now? Hope you do and enjoy yourself!:)