A and I stayed in the French Quarter. It was my first trip to New Orleans, and I fell completely in love with the city.
We went down for Halloween. A told me repeatedly that this was nothing compared to how the city was before the storm, as though New Orleans needed to apologize for a less than hospitable atmosphere. It didn’t matter; it was easy to get a feel for what the city (once) was.
We stopped by all the bars where A’s friends would be—drinking, working, or both. It was wonderful how all the bars had big French doors that opened out onto the street, as though you didn’t ever really leave one before you were in another. At several, A got drinks to go (to go!). I met all of her friends. At one place, I was given a sympathy card for being her new man. It was obvious they care for her intensely, all of them.
And the Quarter was just like “A Streetcar Named Desire:” The passionate life, the drunkenness, the drama, the eroticism, the dirt, and all the sweaty illicitness that Tennessee Williams play embodied. It was absolutely diluted, trampled a bit and unsure of itself, but it was still there.
And I hold an unapologetically romanticized view of the place—I think everyone there does--especially with only one visit. It was still a shell, and there were many walking around in the leftovers of the city, but the city was still there. The architecture still held it, the people still clutched it, and if you listened closely, and looked—really looked—you can see the New Orleans that is an idea. And that idea is still alive there. It is wounded, surely, but it is there still. And that idea is intoxicating.
—And then we took a car trip through the 9th Ward. One year after Katrina.
