Tuesday, February 19, 2008

By Richard A. Webster

Let's look at this realistically.
If you happen to be roaming the Riverwalk at night because you have nothing better to do, because you fear sitting at home with shit all to do except listen to the incessant screeching of your inner thoughts, because you hate television and being alone, but you can't stand the thought of being around other people, and while you're walking down the Riverwalk where packs of gutterpunks and train-hoppers congregate, sucking on paper bags and cheap joints they bought with a few hours of flesh, and you run into a pair of ruined rednecks sitting on a bench talking about how Obama should be shot in the head because it just ain't right that the people who ought to be mowing lawns are close to seizing the presidency, what would you do?
This is the situation I found myself in the other night.
After editing my novel for several hours, after immersing myself in the experiences and my tormented thoughts of that first post-Katrina year, I felt something breaking inside so I fled the confines of my doll-house-sized apartment and ran to the river.
Not really ran, more like I walked, slowly, with head down, not wanting to look anyone in the eyes.
There's no substitute for being alone other than being alone in public, knowing that everywhere around you, in all of those brightly lit clubs and dimly lit dives, people are doing things together, whether it be drinking or laughing or talking or fighting or remembering or acting or lying or hurting each other with deceptions and false-promises.
And I usually have nothing against any of these activities. These are the favored past-times of New Orleans. Everyone lies. Everyone promises deep affection or hatred but eventually it all bleeds into indifference.
I am a connoisseur of these wrong pleasures.
But recently I've grown tired of it all.
And I've grown tired of the practitioners.
They bore me. It's all so fucking expected and there is no greater sin than being boring, doing the expected, even if in most circles, the majority of these activities and qualities are not considered boring or expected.
Most people view lying and deceiving and booze-induced madness as the specific qualities of a specific sub-species of sub-creatures worth nothing more than cautionary tales to tell children or the inspirations for movies made to make the careful heart shudder.
It ain't supposed to be boring. It's meant to be horrific, these lives, these ways.
But, when you've been living among these people, experiencing these tricks, and partaking of them yourself, after awhile, it becomes as common as breathing.
And when you're a lonely soul there's nothing lonelier than sitting among other lonely people trying to pretend they're not lonely while you're trying to get comfortable with being alone.
And then the fog rolls in and you find yourself staring in the mirror behind the row of bottles listening to all the same shit…..
Can I get you a drink?
Thank you. Yeah. I'll take a gin and tonic.
Place money on bar, watch it disappear and reappear short five dollars. Throw a few bucks back for tip.
Someone next to you is laughing and you catch a few words.
"Bitch….lost a tooth….beautiful ass…what a cocksucker….gimme a drink baby…I love you…not tonight cowboy…..why…..it happens….someone play the juke…"
And some familiar song comes on, something heavy followed by something annoying followed by something unfamiliar and then silence.
And you sit there trying your best to be invisible but you can feel their eyes on you and then the bartender asks you if you want another drink and you pull your hat down lower so it covers your eyes so you don't have to look her in the eyes because you're alone and want to remain that way and you know if you spend more than a few seconds staring in her eyes then you're going to fool yourself into thinking that maybe you don't have to be alone.
And that's when you start to get paranoid.
That's when you feel the need to flee.
No connection.
No emotion.
Only alone.
Don't allow yourself to be fooled.
And yet all these fucking people are chattering all around you, pissing out of their mouths, the same as they did 10 years ago when you first arrived in New Orleans.
And you know better than to hope.
You know better than to fool yourself into believing the incredible can happen.
You know better.
At least, that's what you tell yourself, though you move like a ghost on the fringes of their society, haunting their existence, where you used to live, longing for…..
No.
No need to indulge in those thoughts.
Best to kill all that.
So get up off of your stool and leave. Pull your hat lower, as low as it can get as you leave a tip and quietly slink out the door, back out into the New Orleans night, into the laughter and action and old loving couples and new love spawn in pre-dawn hook-ups.
And as you glide through the crowds, confident that you are invisible, as you betray no emotion, show no reaction to their joy or even their anger, you can't help but hear familiar voices, familiar feelings, things that take you back to a time when you didn't feel the way you do now.
And that only fills you with self-hatred and compounds the loneliness you have only recently come to accept.
And that's when you walk to the river, to be in the darkness, with the other remnants of society, only they piss you off as much as the bar denizens. These fucking gutterpunks in their gutterpunk uniforms, dancing to the gutterpunk tunes in their predictable gutterpunk brains.
"Hey asshole. Give me a dollar," one of them says as you pass by, them thinking you're an easy mark. And this lead gutterpunk stands up and tries to intimidate you to the howls of his legion, only he doesn't get it, doesn't get that you don't care, that you're just out for a walk and if he so chooses to whip out a knife, you'll adopt a rigid pose so he can choose from a variety of soft spots to drive that blade through.
But, even these gutterpunks, these urban savages, they are as predictable as all the rest. They think they're different, so unique and dangerous, but the scary thing is that they bore you too.
And so you walk right past them and nothing happens. And soon they are a distant memory and there is nothing except for the dark Mississippi water and the echoes of the French Quarter party where a few years ago you would have deep in the thick of it.
But not now.
Maybe later.
Maybe in a few months.
But not now.
Not when you're deep in seclusion.
So you keep walking, slowly, concentrating on the sensation of the wind on your skin and the solitude and how the mixture of the two allow you to forget for a moment that there is no one by your side. They feel like a friend, the wind and solitude, they wash away the week-old sweat from your cheeks and bring back to life something long dead.
And in that moment you think, maybe, maybe I don't have to confine myself in my head. Maybe there is something out there, something pure and unexpected.
"We should shoot that motherfucker Obama."
It comes from a bench to your right. And it is followed by this: "How the fuck are people dumb enough to elect one of these lawn-mowing, lawn jockeys president?"
And so we're back to where we started.
What would you do if you found yourself walking alone along the river and you heard a conversation like that?
I stopped and stared at them, my eyes empty.
But they didn't notice me, so trapped in their mutual love of hatred.
They didn't notice me as I was so trapped in my love of being unnoticed.
You spend enough time as a ghost and soon enough there ain't nothing left but a vapor and a scent of human skin.
"We all make choices," I told them, standing just a few feet from their bench. "I know you can't see me, but what I'm trying to tell you is that I can't see you either. This is something I've come to understand about myself, and I think maybe you should come to terms with your own spirit existence. And that's the thing, people like us, me and you two gay racist lovers, we're in the pit and there ain't no turning back. You're nothing but a foul smell in the wind. But the pitiful thing about it, is that you two fuckers desperately want to be noticed, you desperately want people to look at you and marvel and point and make you feel special. And for that, I feel incredibly sad for you both because it ain't never gonna happen."
And with that I left them and the river and the Quarter and the loud bars and blaring jukeboxes and the hopes and dreams and fantastic surprises that have entranced and deceived and doomed many a sailor before myself.
So it's back down Esplanade Avenue to the Treme and my apartment where there is a good chance that I will kick in my TV.
I apologize to all of you—Oprah and Good Morning America and reality television and Brian Williams and Entertainment Tonight, but I can no longer stomach your presence.
Solitude means solitude and that's that.
Of course, I'll make an exception for Bob Dylan, but that's about it.

"Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you."