s u m m e r
time
The streets of the French Quarter are narrow and one way. We stayed on Dauphine in an old three story Chateau. The gas lamps came on well before dark each night and we'd smoke and drink dark beer on the balcony overlooking the street. I'd brought along a radio and we listened to Wait's and Uncle Tupelo, yawning a little before we walked out into the night.
One block over, down an alley, and out onto Bourbon. Through the chaos and stench, a couple streets over and left at Royal. A few bars on and then Jackson Square. Maybe a smoke, the smell of fresh spray paint in the air and the sidewalk laid out with scenes from distant fictional planets with lakes of red and ships with tattered sails. The Mexicans painted them, cans of Krylon scattered about their feet.
I've said this many times since coming back but I've yet to write it until now, time has no meaning in New Orleans. It simply fades away into the quiet courtyards or the gutters that line the raucous streets of the Quarter. It slips into the cracks and curves of the women in the topless bars where five hundred dollars will buy you an upstairs room and some time behind a velvet rope. It dies on the breath of Irish songs and stories of the bayou during dart games with the locals. It soaks through the skin in the form of pleasant sweat in the humid air and you can see it hanging there, pointless, in the dust above the green felt of a pool table as ball after ball, rack after rack goes down and you finally give up writing your name on the chalkboard on the wall. Time hides behind the teeth of smiles selling test tubes of liquor, and in foul bathroom stalls, their floors slick with urine. It is frozen in the strobes above a dance floor and on the exposed tits of women in Bourbon St. It's held still while beads fall through the air and land at a junkies feet. It circles the locals, wanting back in, but it's lost to their eyes. It's lost to mine...when I'm there.
And before you know it you're the only one left standing in a city that never sleeps. Outside some doorless bar your sense of self comes back to you as the sky begins to light. A man next to you says it's snowing and for a second you almost look up, because it could almost be true, until you realize he's only selling the snow and the first flakes are free.
You look at the fellow next to you. He returns a by now familiar grin and together you walk the reverse of the path before. Quicker this time, until once more the balcony is all that is left. And maybe this time it's gin & tonic and Love & Rockets.
Excuse me while I smoke...
You can hold it all in reverence like the tales of a fighter pilot with Dali's on his walls. You can look out over the rooftops toward the neon and breath deep in the knowledge that for awhile time had no meaning. It slipped by without notice. It wasn't in the forefront of thought and didn't play hand in any decision made. It didn't make or lose money. It didn't find you lonely and it was no cause for alarm.
You curl your bare toes around the wrought iron railing and you might slap at a couple mosquitoes before giving it all up to the sun and burying your head in a pillow while the rest of the world wakes up to just another day.
goodnight 6.15.99