New Orleans Chronicles: Part 1.5
a snippet of a day
Yesterday, I bought a pair of wine-red fishnets from Funky Monkey, which, as it happens, is where I bought all my fishnets as a teenager. I mentioned this to the girl behind the counter who looked impossibly young, and she said, “Oh, yeah, I think this place has been around since,” she paused, and spoke in a reverent whisper of a time that myth is clearly made of: “the 90’s.”
I could have re-bought history because they had the neon pink I used to own, and the neon green I used to own, but ridiculous as I am I’m fairly sure that my neon-fishnet-wearing days are staying in my youth. Wine-red, though, is a dignified color. You can wear it with black and almost everything I own is black including the dress I’d planned to wear today. So this works out. And don’t get me started on the swell of emotion I experienced when Musa casually mentioned that some shop or other was “near Funky Monkey,” thereby confirming that this borderline-sacred haunt of my teenage years still thrives. (I can’t say “IT’S STILL THERE?!” in anything but ear-splitting decibels, apologies to the city at large.)
I’m glammed up today because we’re meeting Maurice later, and because I want to Represent on my last full day here etc. etc. etc. Yesterday, I did not glam up: I walked up and down Magazine in a cranberry-colored fom-fitting hoodie and gray wide-legged sweat pants. Miraculously, I crashed the fanciest party I had ever been to that night, with a resounding success that defies all reason.
Addie was teaching a remote class from our home base, and I knew I would be writing at PJ’s so I had to bring my computer: unfortunately, packing light means I have two bags with me, one is basically a functional-looking purse that fits nothing but wallet-keys-phone-type necessities, and the other is the gigantic backpack I’ve been using as my suitcase. That’s the one I have to carry when my computer is involved (and we won’t talk, as yet, about my multiple book-hauls, or how I have no idea how I’m bringing them back.)
So, night fell, and I was walking around trying to decide where to go, when uniquely electrifying live jazz simply gripped me. Like, heart-and-loins gripped me: that’s where I had to go: I had to go dance to that band. The band, it so transpired, was the entertainment for a Mardi Gras party of wildly glamorous people who are also, it’s easy to tell this, colossally monied, all the way back. I can’t even describe the dresses I saw: the sheer amount of sequins and shimmer, the cartoonishly enticing form-fitting elegance of it all. But I have the right strut for this crowd. In my wide-legged sweats, hoodie, gigantic backpack and punk-ass hair, I simply walked about thinking, “I belong here so hard I don’t even have to make the effort y’all are making. This is my turf right here.”
If anyone questioned that, they didn’t dare say anything. There were three ladies of different generations and clearly identical wealth and propriety who sat on an antique couch and stared at me, smiling. I simply smiled and stared back, calmly thinking, “Go ahead, ask me who I know at this party.” No one did. I got asked precisely one question at that soiree and it was by a fantastic woman who was one of the caterers: she offered me the second-to-last hors d'oeuvre on a plate and asked me if I wanted the last one. Naturally, I did. Then I strode over to a nearby tape draped in white linen and took the last plastic cup of champagne off a silver tray.
I’ll tell you one thing that stung a bit: open shunning by the photographer. There he was, his camera ready, and he looked right at me with something between an inquiry and a glare, but not a cold incarnation of either, oddly enough. If I did what I set out to do, then I was clearly somebody’s black sheep niece, or yet another questionable choice made by one of the many eccentric elderly men in their suits so crisp you could cut yourself on a crease.
Still, I smirked at him, hoping to sarcastically communicate, “Awww, are you really not gonna take my picture?” however vocally silent I remained.
I didn’t take a seat among the endless white roses on any of the antique furniture. I wasn’t comfortable enough to do that. When the band left, I left, and when one of the jazz guys asked me how my night was going, I said, “Great! And y’all have made it better!” he said, “I’m glad we could do that for you!” and followed his bandmates, singing the lyrics to one of the songs they had played.
After that, I stopped at Juan’s Flying Burrito, another staple of my youth, and incongruously worked on my werewolf novel on the back patio as I waited for my food. When I went in to use the restroom, I passed a man in his likely-late-60’s with a long white beard, dressed in all black, his ensemble accented by a pair of sparkly iridescent tights. I complimented the tights, and as I passed him I thought, “Thank god. You’re still here.”
