Summer is lurking leviathan just behind such an innocent and sprightly Spring.
posted by jeremy on April 18, 2006
I just cleaned our apartment, which was as exciting as it sounds. Still, the satisfaction of organizing the kitchen racks and swabbing out this one particular clusterfuck of a corner sticks with me. I am quite OCD on a certain level.
I also found a gun on top the fridge. A 22. with a stubby barrel. A Saturday Night Special I think you would call this particular firearm; Meaning DO NOT pull the trigger on the bitch unless you absolutely have to, OK? 'Cause it just may or may not blow up in your hand.
Erik and I went and saw Scary Movie 4. Uhhh, all I can say is that I did laugh maybe 5 or 6 times and admission was five bucks. So that's like a dollar a laugh.
Take that as you will.
What else?
I need a girlfriend, maybe. Masturbation is losing its charm.
Working in bars requires enforced conversation with very drunk people. Which is cool when it's cool and totally sucks when it sucks. I'm getting better at escaping said fuckers though.
Hell, I'm learning new tricks all the time.
OK, the journalist asked me a bunch of new question about the Storm. I'm going to post my answers for you to read, you know, just because. Playboy wanted him to sex up the article, but alas, no sex was had by any of us during the Debacle.
I mean, really, the smell of us would have scared goats and maggots alike.
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howdy paul,
glad to hear that playboy bit. wow. really. playboy...
um, excuse my lack of caps and/or any grammatical errors to come. its the exact middle of my night. 2pm.
ok, clothing... uniform consisted of dirty tshirt, ripped dirty jeans, lowtop red converse, no socks, sunglasses, mullet.
police... certain amount of pity mixed with fear of large caliber weapons/adrenalin and a half-hearted disgust at the total lack of any form of organization. of course, all communications were down. many officers didnt even know what had happened to their own families, friends, cohorts. when outside cops started showing up, well these men scared me more than the thugs that were wandering about. one day two cops on an ATV asked robin (wearing bikini) to go for a ride. creepy hillbilly rapist looking motherfuckers. i explained to robin that if she tried to go with these guys she would be physically restrained from doing so. luckily she, for once, had the good sense to not go for (possibly final) joyride.
all in all, the cops humanity showed thru following katrina... this was good and this was also very bad.
months & months later... jesus, man. this is a big question.
preface: once out, i went cross country with robin and family to san diego then to portland where it rained on my sorry ass for 5 months. ive never been so sad in my entire life.
i spent many nights with my fellow sarcastic half-Nipponese N.O. refugee, michelle and you know, we drank whiskey and mourned NOLA the entire fucking time. we would hang out together and cry over everything that happened, over everyone we never got to say goodbye to, over everyone that perished, all that disappeared...
but we also told stories that would make us laugh so hard sometimes, all our drunken misadventures
(i also spent a fair amount of time trying to get into fights at the bar. my patience for anybody or anything did not exist and at the same time i was, and often still am, afraid of very little; a strange mix of posttraumatic stress disorder and total depression with a splash of uncontrollable rage.)
point being, both of us,all of us, stuck there and everywhere, we did nothing but miss the big easy. all of us hated and i mean HATED where ever it was we were at...
and now we have almost all slowly made our way home, thank fucking satan.
so i freaked out two months ago and left portland on a few days notice. sunk my last few dollars into a plane ticket and arrived here nearly broke. ive never made a better decision. friends hugged me, kissed me, bought me shots, loaned me money, gave me a couch, a floor, a bed. i got offered jobs at every bar i went into. im now fairly fiscally solvent,living with john and matt, (i think, cause, um, matt just ran off to nevada and got married) and working as a bartender at mollys and as a bouncer/doorman at the r-bar on royal st.
moral: i wake up everyday glad to be home.
uhhh wait, you said a paragraph huh? screw it, sorry.
the city, generally speaking, is fucked. fucked, broke, still dangerous, dirty, evil and corrupt. the levees arent up. if we get so much as a tropical storm things will get ugly fast. ive gone out to the dead zone and ive never seen such utter total devastation. most of the city is beyond redemption, rebuilding, salvage. i think we can rebuild but it will take a decade and new levees and i really do think houses on stilts are the way to go. honestly. the old architecture didnt work, we need some new way of building things if we are going to continue in being so stupid as to reside on a floodplain. yep.
uh, sex immediately post-katrina? gross, dude, gross. i do think sexual tensions were high at certain points. i think maybe various folks (most human males) had serious eyes for candy and/or robin. i basically tried not to strangle them for most of the eight days. still, robin and i slept, and i mean slept, together every night on a mattress we had dragged out onto a nearby roof.
the milky way! was beautiful and the night air cool and clean.
we would lie there and point out constellations and tell stories about our lives. we would name off exactly what meals we were gonna devour as soon as we got out. we would curl up together and wonder about our friends, who was ok? who was where? are we gonna be ok?
we would kiss a bit sometimes, then drift to sleep.
it would have been so very if only we hadnt stunk like carrion smeared in dog shit.
im supposably currently working on a novel about the entire ordeal. it was originally going to be nonfiction but i decided that format was too constraining to tell the stories i have heard from people. (god, man, the fucking rumors you hear about those things that happened here, then...) but in reality ive finished maybe 3 chapters that i hate. im starting from scratch here soon. i just have to let things simmer? fester? what? a little bit longer.
i just want to write the right thing.
ive taken tons of photos of carnage. im slowly putting them up on shrike. parceling out the images. nothing really captures what its like, in the dead zone. its a horror movie out there, just barely sans zombies. paul, i could never explain the silence of it, the devastated quiet, the expanse of the absence. it all sounds so melodramatic, but try it before it you knock it...
it is truly beyond expectation.
we went to the superdome, or near the superdome to be more exact, on maybe day seven, which was Sunday. from a distance we could see the busses lining up to get all those poor fuckers out. national guard stood about, just scared kids in fatigues holding guns bigger than they were, basically of no use to us. we were on bikes, moving about fast, fast, fast. we cruised by the convention center and got the hell out quick. the most desperate people i have ever seen. the guardsmen, when we approached them, just looked at us like we were most likely insane and told us to 'get out of here now!' they were very very frightened. they obviously hadnt signed on for this and we still remain unimpressed.
i remember mothers with wide eyes holding crying children as they sat on streetcorners, collapsed buildings all around.
i remember thugs walking fast towards us as we rolled past on our bikes, intentions unclear.
i remember watching an old man carrying too many things, stop, tear apart a wheeled grill abandoned on the street, throw his stuff on the rolly part, and push all away.
i remember where the flood waters began on canal street.
i remember somebody calling this exact point 'the beach'.
i believe the guard showed up on day 4.
the day bush buzzed about in his helicopter surveying his impartial handiwork
and also the same day we heard mayor nagin breakdown crying on the radio...
(and that, i tell you, was almost a distinct snapping point for a few of us)
timeline? sorry, thats currently impossible. or at least improbable. maybe later, once ive slept.
mattjames was tempted to kicka my ass on day 5, i think. thats just a guess.
explosion happened on day 4, possibly.
sorry this be so very scrambled. i am quite goddam tired. i will try writing a timeline for you later.
if you have any more questions or wish me to expand on something, let me know.
ok, thanks for all.
-jeremy dwight
ps: i just spent several hours with a very drunk robin and please just use the words 'burlesque dancer'.
