There was the image in the window, a shop not yet open, the poster was a skull encircled by the words, Museum of Death New Orleans, below in script Where the Big Easy meets the Big Sleep.
I had been walking in Nola, alone - verboten by my company (we were supposed to be in a group of at least five to avoid possible crime but then I've never been one to follow the rules) - on the east side; I had been told the east side in particular was not the side of town you should walk alone and half a mile into the quiet, not well-lit streets, a dark blue car, a Dodge sedan, early 2000s, rolled up to me, the rear window rolled down, five men, African American, asked me something, something unintelligible. I grumbled something, also unintelligible in return and I walked away, faster, headed towards Bourbon Street, feeling less male, less testosterone charged, wanting the relative safety of the crowds.
I had been in Nola before, at Jazz Fest 2004, the year before Katrina would devastate the city, my memories clouded by the hurricanes and hand grenades, the local tourist drinks, a drunken bacchanal of merriment, and hawkers and strippers, and honky tonk bands riffing on the blues, on 70s groove rock, catering to the predominantly older, white men and their entourages, and of course the younger college students, all mingled in the undulating mass of sweat and cigars, cigarettes and weed, pungent and nauseating in the sweltering heat, the vomit and the urine alleviating the natural friction of your shoes on the cracked sidewalks and streets.
But this, this was new to me, a cold New Orleans on a Monday night, the week after Mardi Gras, and I was sober.
My legs, particularly my calves, ached from the two miles I had walked altogether, a condemnation to my lack of conditioning. My life had changed and my legs were there to remind me just how out of shape I had become as I strolled along the street, my calves beginning to spasm.
There were fewer people of course, yet still they were energized, drunk and happy, cheered by the bands, and always the hawkers, tempting the people to appreciate the music, the cheap alcohol, the cabaret.
One hawker, a tall, black man, walked circles among the groups of mostly males. "Titties, titties, titties," he bellowed. "White people pay no cover." Two African American men loitering on the sidewalk laughed. And then the group laughed too.
The smells were still familiar, the piss, vomit, the beer, cigarettes, the aromas from the voodoo shops, the homeless swathed in their stained jackets and blankets, aromatic in flop sweat and human funk, nearly catatonic, cardboard signs propped against them: one read "Sperm donor looking for Lesbian Couple"; another read "Too broke to be a sugar daddy, too ugly to prostitute".
