New Orleans, 1995
Jon Powell
A client of mine says that
revolution will come. Violent
revolution. Christ. I guess she should
know. After all, she’s a loan
officer in a suburban bank.
This now as we careen towards
2000. Or 2001. Whichever occurs first.
Experts say He was born -- positive
or negative -- within 4 years of BC/AD.
So, at what point the world goes nuts
will depend on how one counts. I think it must be
starting already. In the state formerly
known as Yugoslavia, a son is forced
to bite off his father’s balls, a mother
to drink her child’s blood. I read this
in a George Will column. At the Maple leaf,
my friend, Tom, an aging drag queen,
talks of Jello Biafra and Sarah McClendon,
how they know Bush still brings drugs
into Arkansas. I’m dizzy. He says poetry and politics
are the same: death, life, sex and power.
Whey else would obits, op-eds and religion
be in the same section of the paper?
I don’t know what he yammers about.
But he buys drinks. I think of the other night.
One of my sons called from an emergency
room. He was in a fight, and thought
he had broken ribs. I went there, and sat
with his girlfriend while he was being x-rayed.
She said she wished a hurricane would come
and blow everything away. Then the rivers
could go wherever they wished.
Across from us sat another young girl.
She had close cropped blonde hair. Boot-camp
style except for the pony tail swept
back from her forehead. I believe
there were green highlights. She held
an infant and rambled on to the empty
space between us about the beatings she
and the child took from her boyfriend.
She said she would kill his birds.
While he was in federal prison, Tom says
he met Barry Seal, and that Barry died
for our sins. All that evening, I thought
he was saying Bobby Seals. I didn’t know
Bobby Seals was dead. And Tom, at about
the fifth round of Mai Tais, yelled “Not
Bobby. Barry. Barry Seal.” Nobody cares
if one yells at the Leaf. I still don’t know
who Barry Seal is. Tom come to terms with his
being gay while in the military. It was 1953. He was
on leave, and went to the Brass Rail on
Canal at LaSalle. That was the postwar
jazz club in New Orleans. That, and the Zebra
Room at the New Orleans Hotel, and the Monkey
Bar just up the block from the Jung Hotel.
Sarah Vaughn. Vic Damone. Tom almost gets
teary when he tells these stories. It was
Johnny Ray, though. Ray would get plastered
on stage and proposition men in the audience.
Tom accepted. Tom’s current fling is a waiter
named Milo, a frustrated artist. Italian, I think.
I’ve only seen a few of his paintings.
He sets up in the Quarter, tries to sell on the street.
All his paintings are gaudy, blocky
flowers. I don’t have the heart to tell Tom
that the paintings are crap. If one wants
to see abstract flowers, see O’Keefe’s
Inside Red Canna, 1919, or Pink Tulip, 1926.
Tom and Milo just got back from a trip.
They wanted to see Courtney Love at Lollapalooza,
but got car-jacked leaving the airport.
They missed the concert. I told Tom that,
given his age, he should stick to jazz.
I now he adores her. I don’t know why. so
tacky. So slutty. Showing off her panties
on stage. The slurred lyrics. The anger.
All that misspent angst. Tom slipped
his Mai Tai. Lit a menthol.
Yes, he said, but you miss her message, her
cry as we come to the millennium. Her low,
mournful wail: This is what you wanted.
This is what you made.
