Old Friends In Disreputable Places

New Orleans, Louisiana

During my previous visit to New Orleans I had spent one night at a dive bar called J & J's playing songs on the jukebox and drinking tallboys. I must have played over 100 songs, including several selections from the musical "Chicago." This I considered a life highlight. So upon arriving in New Orleans this time, I took a cab straight to J & J's and snagged a bar stool.

Over the next 6 hours I shot some pool, dominated the jukebox, chatted with the locals. My old friends Nitali and Molly stopped by and picked up my bags. They were doing a healthy lady day and not drinking. They left me to my own devices and warned me not to walk home by myself. I think those first 6 hours went pretty well.

About the next few hours I have to make some educated guesses. I'm pretty sure I didn't hit on anyone. I think the bartender cut me off at some point. Probably I didn't leave fast enough for his liking, because the next thing I knew some fat guy was dragging me outside and throwing me down on the sidewalk. At which point I figured I was supposed to take a swing at the fucker. So I did. He didn't seem to mind. Or if he did I don't remember it.

I do remember some hip younger guy walking me away from the bar. I also remember trying to find Lora's house on my Google Maps app. I do not remember buying Gatorade. But the next morning I had Gatorade, and my friends confirmed that I had brought it to the house with much fanfare. Nope, no goddamn clue where I got that Gatorade. Definitely punched a bouncer though. Or a bartender. So it goes in New Orleans.

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After flying to New Orleans in 2016 to see Guns N Roses with my old friend Johnny, I had decided to avoid the bayou for the foreseeable future. My reason? I'd had some bad experiences running into scumbags formerly of my hometown Minneapolis. New Orleans seems to collect them. All the piece of shit punks who get run out of other cities find a home in New Orleans.

In New Orleans the lines of common decency are pretty blurry and sometimes hard to locate. Falling-down-drunk is a pretty normal state of being. It's recommended you take a taxi home, because random muggings are to be expected. If a pit bull bites you when you enter a room, it's because yeah she's a biter. And if you find yourself in a room with a guy who raped an old flame of yours, well I don't know what you're supposed to do then.

What I did on that previous visit was get the hell out of the room, drink myself into a stupor, and then text this lady I used to know to tell her how ashamed I was to have run into her rapist and done nothing. I can't really recommend that line. She certainly did not appreciate it.

So anyway, I decided New Orleans was too scummy for me and that I would stay away. But instead I flew there less than a year later to celebrate my friend Nitali's birthday with some old friends.

Notable arguments this time around included another rape debacle. This time at least the rapist wasn't in the room with me. We were at a bar in the French Quarter and my friend on one bar stool was talking about this guy who is now a woman but who once raped my friend on the other bar stool. I used all my subtlety to try to convince friend #1 to shut up about it but subtlety isn't much suited for penetrating the haze of drunkenness that pervades the French Quarter. So that ended pretty ugly with my loud voice saying some nasty things to a friend I had been really excited to see.

The other big argument (besides punching the bartender) was about Netflix. I wanted to watch the "Charlie Work" episode of It's Always Sunny, and Nitali and Lora wanted to watch an Amy Schumer special. Shit got pretty tense. This to me demonstrates the flip side of New Orleans debauchery. On the one hand you have intense awful beatings, overdoses, suicides. On the other hand there are dumb fucking arguments about Netflix. I still maintain that "Charlie Work" is a masterpiece.

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Of course New Orleans is not all bad.

I actually recommend it to European travelers who know only New York, L.A., and San Francisco. If nothing else, New Orleans is a unique city in the United Sates with some pretty badass local customs.

The "second line" is my favorite. One day at Lora's house her neighbors were having a raging party all day long. Around sunset a 5-piece brass band showed up and started playing in the street. After several minutes of this, the large crowd started a procession down the street, dancing and hooting and smiling.

The "second line" is a second wake. When somebody dies, there's a first wake in a funeral home for the family. Then there's a second line in the street for the community to celebrate the life of the person they've lost. Incidentally the opening sequence of the James Bond movie "Licensed to Kill" includes a second line. They're pretty sweet.

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Most of this trip I spent hanging out with former roommates from a decade past.

First there was Nitali, whose birthday I had come to celebrate. She's one of my best friends. Nitali and I lived together in a couple punk houses back in our early 20s.

At a house called the Feminist Stronghold we lived with Krystal, who I found bartending at a fancy wine bar in New Orleans. We spent an afternoon at her bar drinking beers and reminiscing. Our crazy roommates who half-buried all the junk from the garage in our backyard so "nobody could use it" (after a debate about canine defecation privileges). The asshole shadow puppeteer roommate who couldn't abide people walking in the living room after dark. Seems it's always the assholes and tough times that you remember years later.

At a house called the Kremlin, Nitali and I lived with Lora and Molly. She's still close with them, and we crashed at both of their houses in New Orleans. My best times on this trip were hanging out with the three of them. We did an escape room together, but mostly we did bars and couch beers.

We talked a lot about living together 13 years ago. I wish I would have been keeping a journal back then - doubtless I would have written zines about the experience. Unfortunately I was drunk most of the time and have only flickers of memories. Lora had to remind me how we met.

For me our old house the Kremlin was a few lifetimes ago. Last year I conducted 50 interviews for a large software corporation. A few years before that I was driving a cab and going to night school. Before that I was biking around the city trying organize unions. And before that I suppose I was pretty goddamn punk, playing guitar in basements and rolling cigarettes on rooftops.

I wasn't sure what the next chapter in my life would look like. After New Orleans I was leaving for extended travels in Latin America. I wasn't sure when or if I would ever move back. Who I would remember, who I would see again. Reminiscing with old friends in a dive bar was pretty fun though. I made a note to remember to do more of that.