I have two cumulative finals, one in chem and one in pre-cal. I'm not good at math, so these are my hard courses. If I do very well on both finals, I could pull a B overall in both. It all comes down to this last test.
So of course I am procrastinating like gangbusters.
I know everybody thinks they have ADD and most of us probably don't. All the symptoms of ADD are also symptoms of being a person. But sometimes I wonder. It is not terribly hard for me to focus, but terribly hard for me to get focused.
I'm giving myself an hour break, is my point.
Let's talk about New Orleans. It's been on my mind a lot lately. Well, it's always on my mind to some extent.
Next year I'll be applying to med schools and I will apply to LSU and Tulane, although I have to make Texas my first choice. There are some great schools here and in-state tuition at most of them is amazing.
No matter where I go to school, I hope to match in New Orleans, and even if I don't, that is where I will practice, raise my family, live my life, retire, croak off, and be buried above ground so my big ol' dirty corpse does not come bobbing up during a flood.
There are three types of people reading this. One type is nodding, imagining their own dream Italianate mansion in the Garden District, or restored double shotgun in the Bywater. Another type is asking "Why New Orleans?" out of curiosity, because they've never been there, or only for a long-ago drunken Mardi Gras in the Quarter.
The third type is also asking "Why New Orleans?" but with a look of horrified disgust because to them, New Orleans is where you go to either be poor, get shot, have your car stolen, or drown in your attic. Maybe all of the above.
I did not visit New Orleans for the first time until 2011. I was dating the man whose lucky ass I would eventually marry, and he took me there because it's his favorite city. He lived there for a long time, a long time ago, and is from that general area. He has lots of dead ancestors with French names buried on the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, and his mother's people were boat builders.
The Gulf Coast is not like the rest of the American South. In one sense it's Southern, and all the good and bad that goes along with that: soul food, poverty, hospitality, racism. (I'm being flippant; the stereotypes are largely bullshit. Most southern people are just regular-ass people.)
But on the Gulf Coast there's this other layer that's southern but also French but also Caribbean but also Acadian but also Spanish but also German but also its own thing entirely. My husband grew up spending summers in a cabin on stilts on the coast, shucking oysters and eating crawfish by the pound, sleeping in hammocks and spending days on boats checking crab traps.
In his early 20s, deeply ensconced in a punk rock phase and sporting a now-legendary green mohawk and Dr Martens, he moved to New Orleans and lived in a shotgun in the Marigny with a bunch of other punk rockers who soaked up their booze vomit puddles with cigarette ashes. He paid his meager bills hustling time shares to French Quarter tourists. It wasn't a bad gig, to hear him tell it. He got $50 per rube who sat through the presentation, and basically hung out in the Quarter all day.
He actually sat on the steps across from Jackson Square and read a paperback copy of The Vampire Lestat. I mean, can you imagine?
At night he joined the other ne'er-do-wells at Checkpoint Charlie's, where you could do your laundry while you drank. I think you still can, actually.
In any case, this man who loathes "the big city" has maintained over the years a love affair with the Crescent City. When he's there he comes to life, and it turns out, so do I.
I was not expecting to like New Orleans. I thought I would find it dirty and trashy, all lurid glitz. I imagined it like a southern Las Vegas, basically kick-ass food at exorbitant prices, plastic crap made in China with "New Orleans" printed on it, and sex trafficking.
Instead I found a place like no other on earth, in a way no one has yet been able to put into words. I've heard it called the northernmost Caribbean nation, and that's pretty close, but it leaves out how American and how European it is at the same time. Of course it is also garish and dirty, but not with the grasping soullessness of a tourist trap. If New York and San Francisco are high-dollar escorts, New Orleans is the street hooker with the heart of gold who might accidentally give you the clap, but will also ask about "ya mama and them" with genuine interest while she feeds you an amazing shrimp Creole.
Since 2011 we've been back several times, once with our dog, who I'm pretty sure peed on every inch of Esplanade Ave.'s spacious neutral ground. We've never experienced New Orleans like real tourists because we don't have the money. We don't stay in hotels or eat at fancy restaurants. We park at Elysian Fields and walk. We take our go-cups and we go. We soak it in. It's the most vibrant place I've ever been. I feel alive there.
Mark Twain said that New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans are the only American cities, and everywhere else is Cleveland. He was pretty dead-on. But New Orleans puts San Francisco and New York to shame because not only does it have an utterly unique character, but unlike those other places, it is warm and welcoming. It embraces you like the velvety, humid air. You're never a stranger there.
Crime in New Orleans is a problem, but it's a problem in a lot of places. Its crime rate is only very slightly higher than the average major American city. In fact, violent crime in 2015 was 1% higher in New Orleans than in Denver. Crime in NOLA gets over-reported because in a way New Orleans is America's city. Just about everybody goes there or has been there. A shooting on Bourbon St. is newsworthy in a way that a shooting on Whatever St. in Denver is not, because so many of us have either been to Bourbon St. or plan to go one day.
In truth, New Orleans's tourist mecca status means the tourist areas are ridiculously well-patrolled. Like most cities, if you avoid the shitty neighborhoods and mind your p's and q's, you'll be fine.
When you're from a big city like I am, a city that is known for being "international," with tons of corporate headquarters and giant highways and a business-centered spirit, where everything is money-money-money and go-go-go, power lunches and luxury auto leases and house-flipping seminars, you forget that ambition and drive are not everybody's reason for living. I love the enterprising spirit of my city, but there is nothing like going to a place where the focus of life is the moment.
Life in New Orleans is about the delicious food you're eating, the people you're hanging with, the drinks you're gonna drink later that night, the music you're gonna dance to. Those are not diversions, ways to unwind until the next important thing. They are the important things.
New Orleans is lazy. It's careless. It's wild. It's... sublime.
It only took a few visits for me to tell my husband that I wanted to live there one day, and just like the song says, "I know I'm not wrong... The feeling's gettin' stronger the longer I stay away..."
I'm old enough to know that places we vacation are different when we live there. No matter where you move, you take yourself with you. I don't believe for a second I will leave reality behind by changing my zip code. But I'm also old enough to know what I like, what my priorities are, and how essential it is to not just settle for anything because it's the way it's always been.
It's at least two years until we get to be New Orleanians, and possibly as many as ten. So our consolation prize is incorporating little aspects of New Orleans into our lives. We put Tony Chacherie's on everything, drink Community coffee, eat Creole food whenever we can (my father-in-law makes gumbo every Christmas), and listen to Professor Longhair and Rebirth Brass Band and Dr. John and - duh! - Lil Wayne.
I think most people have a love affair with a certain city. Some of us are lucky to go to ours, and even others get to make it home. I hope I get to be that lucky. New Orleans is one of those things I imagine on the horizon, waiting for me on the other side of this journey through school to a career.
Drew Brees said, "When you love New Orleans, she loves you back." One day I imagine myself - hopefully - being a good doctor for the good people of that filthy, corrupt, lovely paradise of a city. Meanwhile, she will hold it down for me. I will learn chemistry, she will laissez les bons temps rouler. In fact, she will still be rouler-ing long after I'm gone. And that is just as it should be.
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For more New Orleans goodness, see the 1978 documentary Always for Pleasure or the much more recent HBO series, Treme. I particularly recommend the latter because real NOLA musicians play themselves and every episode is filled with incredible music. Once you've seen the first season, though, the title of this blog post will make you feel sad feels. Sorry about that.
