last night in New Orleans

I'm stuck in class through the weekend, looking at lists of radio frequencies with an instructor who hates teaching and gets by on sea stories and bad jokes, the old, salty bastard. I stare into a book, and the codes and digits melt together; I'm completely somewhere else. Out by four o'clock, I take the freeway into town, gunning for the Zydeco Festival in the french quarter, getting my fix of radio news-talk which has BP behind closed doors considering insolvency. I speculate, find it unlikely, park the truck by a cemetery on Rampart near the police station. It's a sketchy part of town just north of the quarter, but there's a police station.

I walk east on Rampart to Esplanade and hang a right toward the river. I can almost hear the music, nearly sense its presence in waves when people start streaming in the opposite direction. I arrive to an empty stage in a park, stragglers and discarded cups on the lawn. Without destination, I head uptown until I find live music at an outdoor bar by the french market. I order a hurricane to go and drift, music traipsing in the market-stall rafters, street performers taking root where merchants vacate, a fiddler on a tightrope, a cripple with drumsticks.

I cut to the river bank in front of the St. Louis Cathedral, a motley tourist crowd dispersed on the rocks. New Orleans is a fine destination for bums, one of whom calls to me as I pass, "Hey, what's that ya' drinkin'?" It's a woman, early 20s, sitting next to a guy, both with tattered backpacks. I announce my "hurricane", wind up in conversation and offer them sips. The guy, with long dreds under a cap, takes a shy pull and walks off. The woman is extroverted and starts up like we're old friends. She's telling me she's banned from Moe's Tavern in Charleston, SC, while I idly stare at the dirt on her clothes & limbs. I listen for longer than I feel like, then politely take my leave.

There's a sketchy side to the Big Easy, and no trip to New Orleans is right without a romp down Bourbon. You can be offended or amused; its your choice. But you can't deny it and shouldn't avoid it. Select streets of the french quarter can offer pleasant strolls in admiration of architecture and unique cultural appeal, but you can just as easily see a naked, junkie-whore in a doorway or a toothless, retarded beggar, shaking on the sidewalk. The area just south of Bourbon near Canal is an olfactory abomination of vomit and garbage, piss and jizz.

Had enough, I follow the river by truck, snaking northwestward toward the airport. I've got a bottle of red wine to drink, so I park in an empty industrial lot and climb the levy. There's grass beside the path up top and a good view of the river, multiple container ships underway, to the west a tiny sunset. I pour wine into a thin, styrofoam hotel cup; its all I've got. It's my last night in New Orleans, and tomorrow at midnight, I'll board a smaller, older crew boat, again working out of Venice. We'll be running to the hotel barge where the cleanup crews reside. For the first time, I'll actually be assisting the cleanup effort.