An Uncivilized Place

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© 1995-2007 Carla King | All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

I put on my rain suit and followed the evacuation signs off the peninsula and onto the Florida panhandle, where it started to rain harder.

I was wearing my rain boots for the first time since Seattle. Bob and Pat Gerend had dug through their garage and given them to me the very drizzly morning I left. It hadn't occurred to me before then that it might rain on my trip. I have definitely been living in California too long.

Escape from this hurricane was my only thought as I drove long hours out of Florida to Alabama and out of danger. The sun broke through, throwing glitter onto the sparkling soft sand beaches of the Redneck Riviera.

Facing the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Redneck Riviera is the South of France with cowboy boots. The accents are mixed with diamonds and Chanel dresses. The beachfront mansions are Tara incarnate.

At dark I was in Biloxi, Mississippi, the gambling capital of the South. My hotel room came with a $2 coupon for the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Treasure Island Casino across the street on a beach made of imported sand. Mississippi has been doing much better since all these casinos went up. The religious right isn't too pleased about it, but you don't hear too many others complaining.

I made my way through three levels of smoke, bad rock and roll, and gaming tables to the buffet. It was piled with fresh shrimp and crawfish, and for dessert a choice of key lime or sweet potato pie, or both. Heck, why not both?

I waddled back to my hotel in a warm drizzle, and slept very soundly.

THE NEXT DAY I WOKE UP EARLY and headed for New Orleans. I thought it was humid in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, but I wasn't prepared for the preponderance of moisture that hit me at the Louisiana border.

The countryside was infused with greenery and laced heavily with the dull, fertile tinsel of Spanish Moss, giving it the feeling of Christmas covered over with cobwebs. Everything not freshly painted or sprayed with herbicide appears ancient, crumbled, and grown over. The place is lush with humidity, peeling paint, and old money. It is ripe and fertile and reeks of rot and new growth.

The hurricane had pushed me ahead of schedule. My sister Celia wouldn't be here for three days -- three days spent largely at the Cafe du Monde, gazing out its open walls at traffic. Taxis and limousines were slowed by horse-drawn carriages, by shoppers laden with goods from the French Market, and by the tourists who jaywalked, heading to the levy that keeps the mighty Mississippi from insinuating itself into the quarter. If not for the levy, the Mississippi would have flooded the city long ago, wiping out centuries of French, Spanish, and American culture.

Between café au lait and beignets I walked the French Quarter. It hasn't changed much since the 1700s, though the official language has bounced between French, Spanish, and English a number of times as the coveted city was won or surrendered, bought or sold.

A Creole girl on Bourbon Street crouched in the shadow between a staircase and a wall, muttering and chanting "f--- off" to her boyfriend, over and over again, as if in a trance. Her hair fell to the ground in a smooth black cascade. Her black eyes looked up at the man, through the man, and into the sky.

Nearby, a sadly faded poster graphically advertised TOTALLY NAKED SEX ACTS - MALE AND FEMALE. The jazz clubs were closed tight, and only a few restaurants were open.

I'd wait for Celia to experience Bourbon Street at night.

So I walked the narrow streets, called banquettes, catching glimpses of inner patios rampant with banana trees, brick, and antique wrought-iron grillwork.

On the edges of the French Quarter, carriage rides are offered by drivers in top hats holding the reins of bored mules. Gift shops offer ceramic masks, T-shirts, and sex toys. Restaurants do a brisk business despite outrageous prices. I passed near a group of punks jousting on the grass around a fountain. When a beer bottle shattered at my feet I kept walking, taking a turn onto a quiet street full of antique shops, and exited to Canal Street, where the St. Charles tram took me back to the hostel where I was staying.

CELIA ARRIVED AT THE AIRPORT with a backpack and a dress and shoes for me. For the first time in three months I would wear something besides jeans, boots, and a black tank top.

We took a nap, and then took the tram to Bourbon Street.

Most clubs had a two-drink minimum -- beer is $4 a flimsy, plastic cupful -- but the club we chose let us bring our daiquiris inside. We'd bought them in a shop that had 36 flavors whirling behind a gleaming white bar. Mine was peach something, with three different kinds of alcohol in it. Celia's was green and called a Swamp Monster. We didn't ask.

The singer was belting out Aretha and Ethridge, the guitarist rivaled Clapton, and the drummer, well, the drummer was energetic. And so we danced.

I danced with Rick, a jazz guitarist trying to make it in a band here, then with a hippie who I swear I saw at a Dead show in Berkeley, and a graphic artist named Randy.

Celia danced with a guy attending a sales convention, a dentist, and a plant manager.

"You always get the hippie biker artists," Celia yelled over the music.

"You always get the businessmen trying to cheat on their wives," I yelled back.

"Yeah," she shouted, "but yours are always poor!"

Well, I had to give her that.

After a couple of Jell-O shots, one of her businessmen followed us to the next club. He bought us more daiquiris on the way.

BY THEN THE STREET WAS ALIVE. I mean alive, and crawling with every kind of humanity imaginable. Businessmen and hippies aside, there were college boys wearing nothing but stupid green hats and white towels pinned like diapers. There were prostitutes -- the expensive ones and the really, really cheap ones. There was the voodoo witch and warlock contingent. There were the rich and famous, and the just rich, and the just famous. And at the end of it all, we stumbled into a bar to go to the bathroom, and there was no ladies room. Sorry. All guys. Guys dancing, guys talking, guys kissing at the bar. Whoops.

And here is the lesson of the day from Bourbon Street: The Direct Approach Works.

The street became more crowded with people, too many of them with their eyes glazed over, holding drinks. It became a game of dodging the drunk. And dodging the hands. I got sick of being grabbed, from behind and from the front. So I loaded my straw with peach daiquiri.

"The next one that even looks like he's going to grab me is going to get ice in the face," I told Celia. And I did it. More than once.

They were oblivious.

It all seems so harmless.

At least I think it's harmless.

Celia's businessman told her (after she revealed her marital status, plus the ages and number of her children) that he'd taken women back to his hotel the previous two nights.

"Prostitutes?" asked Celia.

"No. And it's not even a challenge," he'd said. "I don't even know why I ask any more."

We walked to Canal Street to take the midnight tram back, despite hearing it might be dangerous.

It didn't seem dangerous. It was Saturday night. There were lots of people. The trams have slatted wooden benches, the backs of which slide along the seats so that riders can choose to face their companions. Windows open to waist level, letting in fresh gulps of damp air and purse-snatchers. At 12:20 a.m. the tram was brightly lit and crowded.

In the morning we didn't quite remember the trip.

THE NEXT DAY WE WALKED to the Cafe du Monde for breakfast, and for some reason I was overwhelmingly aware of our position below sea level. Maybe it was that tugboat I saw passing by above my head. Suddenly I had the feeling that it would all collapse -- that under the thin crust, the swamp would push upwards, exerting pressure on the pavement, threatening at any moment to burst through and wash us into the earth.

If you forget that you are surrounded by water, the thickness of the air reminds you of it. Pick a day, any day of the year, and the morning humidity will more than likely be 84 percent. By midnight it'll have dropped to a mere 65 percent.

That's not to say it's always hot. But then "hot" is a relative term. Walk down Bourbon Street, and your definition of what's hot is likely to have nothing at all to do with the weather.

NEW ORLEANS IS THE KIND OF PLACE where people disappear. Legend has it that there are bodies in the swamps. And that there are people who live there, hidden from civilization.

In the afternoon we drove to Slidell, where we were scheduled for a two-hour boat ride through a swamp.

"Swamp rules," said our guide, "override state rules, federal rules, and any other kinda rules."

We ducked our heads as he softly maneuvered the boat under a tree limb overhung with moss. Mike, a native of Slidell, took us among cypress knees and lily pads to show us the bayou. It was quiet in there. And lonely. And dark. There were bumps and ripples, animal calls, and rustling in the trees. I saw something slither between two bumps under a cypress tree.

"Cypress knees," Mike told us, "jut up out of the water to allow the tree to breath."

A large bird flapped into the trees, dragging along a small brown rodent. "The snakes aren't in the water most times," he reassured me. "They're waitin' up there in the branches to jump on ya."

He pointed into a tangly grove of cypress, the Spanish moss, and lilies. Later, Mike showed us his snakebite scars.

Celia left, and I was alone again. In the morning I had a café au lait and headed out of town, where the abundance of water reminded me again of the futility of containment. It's only a matter of time, I think, before people lose control of the forces that lurk beneath the thin crust of surface where lies the converging ocean, river, and swamp. Despite it, I know I'll go back. The city is as seductive as a foreign accent and as addictive as a drug. Seething with legend and pretension, New Orleans has only the fragile veneer of sophistication. It is not a civilized place.

Index | Dispatch 22-