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imbroglio: a complicated and embarrassing state of things.
quandary: a state of difficulty or perplexity

Here’s how a fabulous day is made in New Orleans. My bike is still in the shop from my ditch diving and so I walked the Bean – then knocked on H&T’s door to get them to come clean the bayou with me. Roped a big limb in the bayou (I want to be a cowgirl) and used Big Blue to pull it out and put it on the corner. Several big black bags full and a sense of a mitzvah [the term mitzvah has come to express any act of human kindness, such as the burial of the body of an unknown person] – my mitzvah, picking up other people’s crap.

Then mom cancelled lunch – typical. Alcoholic mothers are emotionally unavailable – I would say this is true of my mother, except she is incapable of keeping appointments more than anything. We had set up lunch on Saturday and at 11:30 on Sunday she called to say she had just had a bowl of cereal so she didn’t want lunch and would catch up with me later. Meanwhile, I just sat and read the paper – trying to cool off after the bayou clean up. I was on the phone with S and decided I was going to the Quarter to support businesses there (someone recently told me the Quarter has been dead lately). While on the phone with S talking about my house quandry, K (the carpenter) called and asked me a question, and I answered and then began talking about another situation at the house and he said, “no Rachel, Steve informed me that all communiques are to go through him so I am just calling about this one question and cannot talk to you about anything else.” I hung up on him.

He called back a couple of times and I didn’t take the call.

All dressed up I went first to UAL – United Apparel Liquidators – fabulous store and I did some retail therapy. Then I strolled over to Muriel’s to look for my ex-brother in law who is part owner. R was on vacation but I sat at the bar and had a delicious bowl of turtle soup and a roasted mushroom salad – yum yum – and a Cosmopolitan. On my left side was a beautiful woman holding her cell phone, obviously waiting for someone. She had a martini. On my right was a mother and daughter, both beautiful – the woman, J, looked like an Eileen Fisher model and her daughter was strikingly modelesque as well. And then the drum roll began – thunder claps that rivaled cannons, lightning that could be detected deep in the bowels of an old French Quarter building, and rain that sounded like Noah was building his ark once again. We all ordered another round of drinks. The beauitful blonde’s friends had arrived and I scooted down by the mother and daughter – J and C – and so we began our talk.

I said I had moved back from California because I missed New Orleans, but what New Orleans had come to mean to me was society – something developed here to such a high pitch that it is inimitable elsewhere. Post Katrina the social fabric has become even more important. We spoke about how we lived for months with just the bare necessities, which taught us that “things” don’t matter. J talked about being 59 and half and having just gotten out of a long term relationship and now having lost her home where she raised her daughter, her three rental properties and her mother’s house. She’s living in a condo uptown with her mother and C is also uptown – in the Isle of Denial. J said she has always been able to pull herself together through most anything but this time she is daunted – so I recommended E to her.

Of course before the conversation was ended we had to get to that one degree of separation. I kept thinking that C looked very familiar and turns out she teaches Pilates at Uncle Joe’s – I said ah that is where I know you from. She started talking about J and seeing her in a few weeks in New York. I said I miss J too (but I didn’t mention that J is sadly for me, now, a casualty from my imbroglio).

I went by the LaLa to do a few things and I found the wood chips that K writes on. One said “get Tai Chi clothes” and I just shook my head. I came home to get the Bean to go to Bacchanal and K called again and this time I answered. Before he could say anything I said “Look I have no room in my apartment for Noah, last night I didn’t sleep and I paced the rooms – rooms that would be two rooms – so I have no room for Noah, also I talked to Steve because I have a full time job and I can’t manage a house remodel and a stressful job so I want to get up and work in the morning and you do your work and if there are questions ask Steve or Dave – because that is why they are here, to offer expert guidance, and I don’t have it in me right now to deal with your emotional baggage.” And so began an almost hour long monologue from K about everything in his life that all got narrowed down in my mind to two things: he said he felt S was taking away his creativity and two he told me that my “feminity is so powerful” that he had to close himself off to parts of me. He also said that Noah believes something is going on between us. OH MY GOD – what is it with the drama in my life? Any father and son duos out there should run for the fucking hills because I am going to get a bow and arrow and next pair that appears on my doorstep I am going to pin to the wall as an example for all others – to NOT COME AROUND ME.

And then Bacchanal – possibly the coolest place in the whole world. The after the storm weather, the Bean by my chair, a garden full of interesting people, music, food, wine, cheese, a dwarf, Europeans, doctors, students, musicians, hairstylists, fence builders, Halliburton managers, psychiatrists and chefs – the list goes on and on. Bury me at Bacchanal is my new mantra. And Ms. Arlene wins the popularity contest hands down whereever she shows up. One guy was so enchanted with her and I said you know that corgis are the mythological steeds for leprechauns and he was so delighted with this image that he left with a big smile on his face.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 6:08 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.