salt, sugar, sweat

the ghost tour describes various lurid acts in and near the french quarter. i was especially interested to learn more about the lalaurie house, purported in the guidebooks as being the most haunted house in america, or at least new orleans. and there it was, is, very beautifully maintained on the corner of governor nicholls and rue royal. the doctor who lived there in the early/mid-1800s used to conduct experiments on his illegally owned slaves, the story goes, and when they (he and his wife) were finally discovered by the authorities, carcasses in various stages of nightmarish mutilation were found: children with their arms broken in multiple places, then grafted into unnatural poses, to see if the bones would repair thusly; dead arms sewn onto live bodies to see if the living form would accept or reject the tissue, and if not, how eagerly/extensively gangrene would set in ("it took a LONG time to die from gangrene" the guide added ominously).
afterwards i had my palm read. i was feeling puckish and acynical. "hoo boy, are you stubborn" he noted right away. i am also, according to my tattletale hand: passionate, strong likes and dislikes ("if you like someone, you love them; if they wrong you, they're out of your life"), nurturing ("you should be a nurse, or a therapist, or adopting strays" were his exact words), fertile ("five lines of fertility" said he. "ohh no" i replied immediately. "that only means that you have the ability" he backpedalled.), logical/able to see the 'big picture', and yes, impatient. "you don't like to wait, ever" he said. i was laughing at this point. apparently i will also live a long life, have many strong interests, and hit my stride in my mid-fifties.
my fifties... jesus christ, that still sounds so old. i have never been able to picture myself old. i foresee an early, unglamorous death... colon cancer or leprosy or early-onset dementia. or a car crash, wherein i am undeservedly rendered a martyr, and when people come to clean my house and package my belongings, they will realize how filthy my bathroom is and how i read cookbooks in bed.
that was yesterday.
today: after a jaunt to st louis cemetary #1 (blazing sun making my head throb) i took a random bus... and ended up in one of the parts of new orleans that the tourist bureau does not advertise. and no fucking bus was coming. it was hotter than hell, overcast, and my jeans were both sagging and sticking to me (i have developed a rash on my legs, sunburn?, so am wearing long pants in 90 degree weather). i thought, for the second day in a row, "i am going to fucking die." instead i stood beneath a tree and bent shards of spanish moss into zigzag shapes and draped them over branches. the teenage boy at the stop with me greeted me with "hey sexy, how YOU doin'?" and then ignored me once he realized i was waiting at the bus stop with him. i was the only white person around for miles... one of those terribly uncomfortable moments when you want to be cool and hip and "hey, i love everyone, man" but you just stick the fuck out and it is obvious that you are lost as fuck.
i felt like an idiot. "hey white girl, what you doing uptown," indeed.
like in tunisia: i may as well have spray-painted myself purple and tied balloons to my head. appearances dictate how you are dealt with in the world. this is not a bad thing by any means, just a reality... but it can be disconcerting. especially when alone.
it still astonishes me, the liberties people take with single women. it taps into an entirely alternate world. and it is getting a bit old. a grizzly old man offered to "lick me down" as i walked past him today. another pair said, loudly as i passed, "i like 'em young and skinny." and the dirty hippie who explained the term "cock sack" to me yesterday spotted me again this afternoon. "hey, it's that girl!" he yelled to his friends. "you're the one who said you're a vagabond!" "and you're the one with the glorious euphemism!" i called back. i am getting a bit snottier as this journey progresses. but i did smile. and he was smiling back.
a guy at the absinthe bar last night, who had weaved next to me whilst ordering more drinks at the bar and slurred "you're cute" saw me again today. he is painting a set for a theater group. he showed me his studio. it was brief. he has lived here for 12 years; he was raised in mississippi. in a small town that i obscurely know about. life is odd that way. i left quickly with thoughts of pressing him against a studio wall and fucking him upright.
this town, i tell you. it is getting to me.
i must admit: i have been more aware of how fucking spastic and yes, impatient i really am. and how easily annoyed. this is a very go-with-the-flow kind of town, especially outside the tourist areas. and i have felt the possibility, to my chagrin, of that driving me crazy. but sitting on a planter on the banks of the mississippi this evening, under a black and sporadically starry sky, watching a rat and then some sort of heron wander near the sidewalk, feeling soft and calm and alive and full o' possibility, i thought "i can do this. i should do this. this could be the next step."
and then i think of uptight, poseur-y, prissy-assed seattle, with its fairweather mentality and carefully self-conscious calibration, and i get very excited about going home.
funny how that works. vacations are about appreciating what you have waiting.
and knowing that you could, and possibly should, be doing something else.
on a side note: bourbon street smells like shit at night, even when there is no feces visible.
good stuff: cookies from the cafe on frenchman street. frenchman street in general. the architecture along esplanade. balconies vs. galleries. an excellent potato salad that i took a bite of and thought "fuck that's awesome potato salad", only to realize that the awesomeness stemmed from what appeared to be shreds of pancetta, and eating it anyway, thereby breaking my four-year unbaconedness, and it was FUCKING GLORIOUS, and i'm on vacation anyway. the cookbook store, nothing but old and used cookbooks, and a manx cat named bob who yowled to be petted, and me babbling to the man who ran the place "i collect cookbooks and this is so cool, finding a place like this" and him saying "you should move here. we'll write you a note." catching his eye as i wave from the sidewalk in front of his gallery. the bottle of absinthe i bought, complete with sugar-cube spoon. underwhelming chicory coffee (black) from cafe du monde, because one has to do such things, and drinking it whilst sweating in 80 degree nighttime humidity. the allman brothers cover band at sing sing. the bible-thumper with the huge cross standing in the middle of bourbon street and the man with the megaphone standing across from him yelling "ignorant martyr" repeatedly. the paris hilton debacle on EVERY FUCKING NEWS STATION. salty lips. the dirt-covered and expired sodas at the a&p. the eerie story about the andrew jackson hotel. romeo catchers.
i don't want to leave. this place crawls under your skin. like a chigger.