Wednesday, February 13, 2008

By Richard A. Webster

Debra Reed lives under the Interstate-10 overpass on Claiborne Avenue and Canal Street. She is short and 54-years old but I don't hold that against her.
My mom is short. She's also older than 54. I'm not sure how much older, but old enough.
The point is that I don't discriminate against short, old women.
Unless they try to touch me in unnatural ways.
I'm an inveterate and unapologetic drunk but I have my limits.
I seem to have gotten sidetracked and am moving into an ugly area.
Let's start over.
Debra Reed lives under the Interstate-10 overpass along with an estimated 200 people. It is a small tent city of hard luck stories.
Every city has homeless people. They're everywhere, but nothing like we have in New Orleans post-Hurricane.
Before the storm there were an estimated 6,000 homeless. Post-storm there are 12,000. And of those 12,000 an estimated 8,000 are currently living on the street. The other 4,000 are in shelters or some sort of assisted living or substance abuse program.
And 8,000 is a monstrous number. Many people would ask the obvious question, "Where in the fuck are they all? I don't see 8,000 people living on the streets."
Well, it's a good point and the reality is that the majority of the homeless go out of their way to stay out of sight. They live in abandoned warehouses and houses that long-suffering storm survivors have chosen not to rebuild. The only time the public is made aware of the presence of these squatters is when one of their makeshift shelters erupts in flames.
The general public believes that the majority of the homeless are psycho or addicted to booze or drugs. And to be sure, they comprise a large portion of the street-dwellers.
But the main cause behind the post-storm rise of homeless, from 6,000 to 12,000, is the rise in rent.
Take Debra Reed, my short, 54-year old friend. Before the hurricane she rented a house for $375 in the 7th Ward. She made $10 an hour working 40 hours a week at a drycleaners. It wasn't a lush life but it was comfortable enough for her. But when Katrina hit that nasty wench of a storm wiped out Reed's house and workplace. She spent four days on the roof of her home waiting for salvation before being evacuated to Houston where she stayed for roughly 2 years.
Nine months ago she returned to New Orleans only to discover that $375 rentals were a thing of the past. It is now impossible to find anywhere to live in the city for less than $600 a month. So she did what thousands of low-income natives just like herself were forced to do given the new post-hurricane economics of the city, she took to the streets.
I spent much of this Wednesday morning wandering around the makeshift city that has been erected under the Interstate bridge, where hundreds of homeless live in donated tents.
I approached a large black man smoking a cigarette and introduced myself.
"Hey man, I'm a reporter with CityBusiness and wanted to know if you'd be willing to talk to me for a story I'm doing."
He waved me off.
No big deal. Not unexpected.
I thanked him for his time and moved on when a short little woman grabbed me from behind.
"Do you want to talk to me?"
This was Debra Reed. Miss Debra.
She told me her story, how she returned to her beloved hometown only to find that people such as herself could no longer make a living or afford to live in her place of birth.
She had recently gotten a job making $9 an hour for 30 hours a week. She was happy to have the job but how in the fuck was she going to save enough money to afford the average rent of $600? Miss Debra was resigned to living at least another 9 months under that bridge.
The day before a torrential, sideways rain pounded the city, making an already unbearable situation even worse.
"This is depressing and disgusting living here," she said. "But what choice do I have? This is my home and I'm staying but the city ain't doing a damn thing to help me. With the rents as high as they are no one like me can afford to live here. Pretty soon this place is going to be like Las Vegas and all the people who made New Orleans New Orleans will be gone."
I sat with her for about 30 minutes, fending off her female pit bull. The white pure breed had just given birth and her nipples were hanging low to the ground. She was desperate for attention and crawled all over me as I talked with Miss Debra.
When it was time to leave I told her I would return in the morning with some money to help her out. And I intend on fulfilling my obligation.
Why not?
The only thing I spend money on is booze to heighten the impact of my own self-serving misery.
As I was leaving I ran into Mike from Unity, a homeless advocacy group. He wanted to introduce me to a Vietnam Veteran who survived a house fire two years ago but suffered burns over 90 percent of his body. He had no nose or ears and his eyes were nothing more than slits. While most people under the bridge lived in tents this Vet lived under a blue tarp draped over his wheelchair.
Mike rattled the tarp but there was no reaction. When he lifted it up there was no one home. "Another time," Mike told me.
It was about 50 degrees this morning, cold by New Orleans standards.
I jumped in my windowless truck and drove to work.
On my way home I drove past the Claiborne encampment. People milled about outside their tents preparing for the frigid night. I had a 6-pack in my backseat. I spotted Miss Debra outside her tent, slapping her blue blanket in the wind.
Tomorrow Miss Debra, I promise. I'll return with some cash to help you out.
So now I sit here in my heated apartment where the sum total of my furnishings include a bed, an office chair and a side table.
On any given night, I spend about 4-5 hours writing and drinking, typing out random weirdness, any stray thought that crosses my deteriorating brain.
Who gives a fuck?
My life's refrain.
Suicide, alcoholism, junkie-bliss, a self-fulfilling prophecy of slow, personal destruction.
A long time ago a good friend of mine visited while in the throes of his own personal torture. He had just been devastated by a girl and was in the depths of heartbreak. At the time I hadn't been touched by that particular source of horror and told him, "Man, what right do we have to bitch about bullshit like heartbreak when people are being slaughtered all over the world for no good fucking reason."
It was something akin to, "Eat your food. There are starving people in Ethiopia who would kill to eat those green beans."
My friend told me that everything I said was bullshit.
"Maybe we can't compare what we're going through to others but when you're heartbroken you're heartbroken and even if you're not being eaten by vultures or watching your family being hacked to death with machetes, the pain is no less real. Sometimes it feels like it would be better to take a bullet in the shoulder than a cold shoulder from someone who you love more than anything in the world."
And he was right. We all live in the small, terrible chambers of our minds where the shadows on the walls can lift us up to unknown heights or rip the skin from our bones leaving us feeling like carnival monsters.
And though we may have jobs and homes and clothes and daily food, when a girl strikes us down, tells us we are not worthy, that we don't live up to their expectations, or tells us nothing at all, allowing us to figure it out ourselves when we see her straddling a leather-faced cowboy at the bar, her skirt riding up somewhere around her shoulders and his nicotine-yellow hands staining the insides of her thighs, things may get a little squirrelly.
Try telling yourself that it ain't so bad.
Try soothing your electric nerves by thinking about the Darfur massacres.
Well, at least I'm not being raped by a Nile croc.
At least some RUF commander is not experimenting on my genitals with a backwards vice and a pineapple.
It doesn't work, does it?
We hold our pain close to our hearts, we cradle and nourish it, waiting for it to grow old and ugly and move out on its own.
"Look at my baby! All growns up. I hated the fucker when it was wreaking havoc in my home but now I think I can appreciate the little Cyclops, now that it has moved on and is tormenting some other poor fool."
I thought about all of this when talking to Miss Debra. I thought about this when mike rattled the blue tarp over the wheelchair that typically cradles the savagely burned body of the Vietnam Vet.
I thought about this as I drove past the encampment on my way home from work, a 6-pack in my backseat.
I repeated the mantra over and over again, "At least you're not living under that bridge. At least you're not burned from head to toe. At least you have a nose and ears."
At least I have a nose and ears.
At least I have a nose and ears.
At least I have a nose and ears.
It's the simple things really.
A nose.
Two ears.
That's true happiness.
I can smell you.
And I can hear you.
Unfortunately, in New Orleans, typically I don't want to smell anyone and few people have anything to say.
But what the fuck?
At least I have my health, right?
"We regret to inform you Mr. Webster that you are on the verge of massive liver and kidney failure. In our professional opinion you should either enter a hyperbolic chamber for 23 years and 7 months or just finish the fucker and chase a pack of Ritalin down with two bottles of tequila."
Doctor's orders.
What choice do I have?
None.
I never liked confined spaces.
Does my skull count?
No telling.
As I write this Miss Debra is wrapped in a pile of blankets in a small tent under the Intersate-10 overpass at the intersection of Claiborne Avenue and Canal Street. Tomorrow morning I will drop by on my way to work and empty my pockets into her hands.
It's the least I can do.
And after I do that, I can get on with the business of gettin' on with my business.
Fuck Darfur.
Fuck Sudan.
Fuck little Iran.
Fuck the starvin' babies in the Sierra Leone land.
And fuck the pews under the crucifix
In the churches where the wishes of
The lost boys go unheeded by
Those raised-up spirits we are all taught
To worship and
Keep near us.
I say keep them at a distance.
I say build up your resistance.
Because in the end,
There ain't a goddamn thing
A ghost can do to
Ensure sanity
When a gun can accomplish everything with
A click and a boom
That proceeds one last
Triumphant
And defiant
Howl of profanity.