Halloween Schmalloween

                 My every day routine was beginning to resemble the movie “Groundhog’s Day”.  Wake up, shower, work, home, Buddha Belly, PBR, Pool, Sleep, repeat.  One day I woke up and realized that I had a hobby.  Pool is a fascinating game. Once you learn about how to execute the shot you have much more chance of sinking a ball.  I always kind of approached it with the attitude of hit ball, hope ball goes in.  I began, however, to learn something new about the game every day.  Learning English, angles, bank shots, along with practice every day, created an environment for daily mini tournaments.   Before I knew it, I was a challenge to beat.  I began to notice after a while that the guys were starting to get a little bit too much testosterone involved in our little tournaments, and soon, quarrels over rules were common place.   It annoyed the crap out of me.

                Work was getting better; I was finally starting to get into the groove of the routine.  It was actually kind of embarrassing to admit when my co-workers would ask me what I did the night before.  My answer was, without fail, “played pool”.

 Halloween was approaching and everyone was buzzing about what they were going to dress up as and where they were going to celebrate the hallowed occasion.  You see, in New Orleans if there is any reason in the slightest to dress up, people do it.  It doesn’t matter if it’s Halloween or May 2 (random date).  In New Orleans people do Halloween, and they do it big.  So many special events were going on in the city, and I honestly didn’t even care.  I didn’t have any plans on dressing up, and I certainly didn’t have an interest in going out.  I know right? What a fuddy dud I was.  Halloween night came, and it was all hands on deck at the restaurant.  I came in to work the day after and Napoleon was gone.  No call, no show, no more Napoleon.  Apparently Halloween was THAT important. 

                The big night was interesting, and some of the costumes that I saw grown men wearing were shocking to my conservative eye.  Yes. I saw a man wearing the Borat costume, you know , the one where he’s pretty much naked.  I also noticed that Halloween translated into “let me find the skankiest costume EVER” for most of the women.  There is a different air about it in New Orleans, though.  Nakedness is celebrated at times.  One word: Hippies.

                There were literally warehouses dedicated to Halloween paraphernalia all over the city for weeks preceding the big event.  Advertisements for “The House of Shock” flooded the air waves.  The House of Shock is a HUGE production put on by freak shows.  I heard stories of what went on there, and I wasn’t really interested considering I am the biggest chicken I know.  I didn’t dress up. I didn’t go to the House of Shock.  I just played pool.  If I hadn't been so poor, I might have considered attending VOODOO music festival.  But alas, no dinero. 

               The food at the restaurant started making more sense to me as I learned about the culture from where it originated.  It was like I learned something new every time I went in.  A lot of the people on the wait staff spoke Spanish, so it started becoming part of my every day vernacular.  “Permiso” and “A tras”, meaning excuse me and behind you, were some of the first terms that I became comfortable using. This was mainly because that’s what everyone said, regardless if you were “gringo” or not.   Slowly, many other Spanish words started coming into fruition in my brain.  A large part of my learning process was a result of listening to others around me. Considering a lot of the kitchen was Spanish speaking only, it was learn or don’t communicate.  I, of course, had taken two years of Spanish in high school, but I don’t think it really stuck.  I probably shouldn’t have skipped out on Senora G’s senior Spanish class so much my senior year.  You know, I had to go work on the yearbook (aka, I was going to go to Burger King with Nikki).

                We were now in November and slowly the temperatures began to decrease.  I started making plans for Thanksgiving, but discovered that I really didn’t have any money to go home.  I was barely paying the bills still, and the apartment idea was slipping farther from reach.  I opted to spend Thanksgiving with Will’s family.  GG had already started to plan the menu early on, as two sets of Will’s sisters were planning to come to town.  I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet Will’s older sister, and I also couldn’t wait to see A.L. (code for Will’s sister right above him).  Little did I know that something was about to happen that would certainly put a damper on things. Adulthood and everything that my dad had warned me about was about to bitch slap me. 

                

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

                Transitioning into living in a new house completely different than what I was used to was an interesting challenge.  Don’t get me wrong, Will’s Mother’s house is spectacular.  It is an old style New Orleanian shotgun house that was erected in the 1930’s.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term “shotgun”, it refers to the style in which the homes are built.  You walk in the front door and you are in the living room, you open the next door and you are in the dining room, the next door is a bedroom with a bathroom attached,  and the last door is the kitchen, all in linear progression.   In the case of Will’s Mother, rooms were later added to the side of the house as well as in the very back, thus; making it was a modified shotgun.  My first thought was, why would anyone build a house like this? THERE IS NO PRIVACY. PERIOD.  After a short period of thought, I remembered something from my architecture days.  During the time of no air conditioning, people had to get really creative with the way they built buildings.  The shotgun home was the perfect solution because when one opened the front door and the back door the house created its own ventilation.  Even during our modern times of central air and heat most houses in New Orleans only have window units, and the residents STILL stick to the front door/ back door method of cooling.

                Because this particular home has 14 ft. ceilings, it’s nearly impossible to cool the entire thing off at one time.  Usually, we would keep the door to the living room, where the television lived, closed off so that we could turn on the window unit.  The poor machine never really did make the room feel like an icebox, but it at least made the climate slightly more bearable.  I actually don’t ever remember feeling completely cooled off ANYWHERE I went in New Orleans.  Even the central a/c at the restaurant had trouble keeping up with the blistering temperatures.  I remember a few shifts where the whole unit just froze up completely, and we had to run around trying not to drip sweat on the plates.  New Orleans is truly “hawt as hell” in the summer.  Being from Texas, I am used to some heat, trust me.  The heat in New Orleans , however, is accompanied by 100% humidity every day.  In simpler terms, this just means that you constantly have a slight to severe sweat glaze over your entire body, no matter what the temperature, at all times.  I soon found that there really was no point in trying to put on makeup, as it would melt right off my face every time I attempted.

                Anyway, the entire interior of the house is lined with these beautiful beveled wooden panels, even the ceilings.  Sometimes I would lie on the bed looking straight up and wonder how difficult it must have been to put those things all the way up there.  Having a contractor’s daughter’s eye, I would also spot all of the discrepancies in the paneling, cleverly hidden to the naked eye.  The floor was real hardwood, not this fake stuff you see in a lot of modern day houses.  It creaked and moaned in some areas, making it impossible to go to the bathroom at night without someone hearing you.  The entire house created its own acoustics as well.  I could hear most of everything that was being said in the living room while standing all the way back in the kitchen.  GG, my nickname for Will’s Mom, has it all so cleverly decorated, too.  There are baker’s wracks full of books, and decorative snakes, fish, and crawfish on the walls in the living room.  In the dining room, there is a HUGE candelabra on the wall with pictures of Will’s Grandmother’s and relatives. In the kitchen there are hot chili peppers Christmas lights and a Salvador Dali print.  As eccentric as it all sounds, it is one of the warmest and inviting homes I still to this day have ever entered. 

                Every afternoon when I got home, that is if we weren’t down by the levy or at the fly, it was the same routine.  At 4 o’clock the local news would come on, by 6 GG was home and watching Brian Williams on NBC, and right after would switch the station over to Wheel of Fortune.  I can’t tell you how much we laughed at each other as we all sat there screaming out ridiculous solutions to the “things, phrases, people, and places”. 

                However, after my 21^{s t} birthday our afternoon time options changed up a little bit, and it was as if the flood gates to the adult world opened up like a snake’s unhinged jaw. I could now go to all of the places where people were REALLY hanging out.  For those of you who are familiar with the sitcom “Cheers”, it kind of hits the nail on the head for the ENTIRE population of the city.  Every neighborhood has what New Orleanians like to refer to as, “the home bar”. The “home bar” is the one you ALWAYS go to, usually in your neighborhood, where everybody knows your name.  In New Orleans, you are never more than 100 yards away from one.  In fact, where I was staying, there was one only a block away.

 Our “bro time” with Will’s friends eventually shifted into going to play pool in the evenings.  I had only ever played at our neighbor’s house a few times growing up, so I was literally starting from ground zero.  My first home bar, although it was not in the neighborhood, was The Buddha Belly on Magazine.  Will said that back in the day when no one really cared how old you were in Louisiana, they would all go there to play pool and try to score booze.  The Buddha Belly was one of six bars owned by Igor, a very well known entrepreneur in town.  If you went to one of Igor’s bars, it was like you had gone to all of them, really.  They were all kind of decorated the same, they all had pool tables and gaming, and they all had coin laundry.  Brilliant.  Need to do some laundry?  Why not grab a few beers or ten while you’re doing it.  We began frequenting the Buddha every day, because frankly, pool is fun.  As we all began to get a little more skill to our game, the competition in the air grew exponentially.  I was becoming a pool shark, a pool shark who despite my distaste for beer, was forced to settle for the $2 PBR.

Holy Hand Grenade, Batman

                August 2008 flew by in a fury, and before I knew it was almost time for my 21^st birthday.  We all know what that means, especially in a town like New Orleans.  My boss had already agreed to let me have the day off, as well as the day after.  I had actually been to Bourbon Street before, but I knew it was going to be under a few different terms this time. 

                Let’s flashback to a younger, adolescent, awkward Megan, shall we?  My FAVORITE place to vacation was New Orleans growing up.  It was so different back then, for I saw it with child-like eyes.  The French Quarter, Café Du Monde, and the French Market were all like a trip to the past.  My Mom and Dad always made it a point to make our vacations educational in some way.  So, of course, our walk through the quarter was filled with historical information and educational tours.  I remember the first time being in Jackson Square and the magnificent St. Louis Cathedral.  I remember BEGGING my parents, along with my other siblings, to let us take a ride on the mule-pulled carriages.  I remember my dad and mom using all of their limbs to cover up all of our eyes as the driver took a turn onto Bourbon Street.  I guess they had not anticipated a peep show for their children that day. 

                The second time my parents took us to New Orleans, tragedy fell upon us nearly ruining the whole gig.  At the time, we had a 91’ gray Chevy Suburban that was used for our family vehicle.  I distinctly remember the way that thing smelled, corn chips and b.o. Not only was it the family vehicle, but also the Boy Scout mobile.  The days following a week at scout camp that thing was almost unbearable to climb into.  Anyway, the DAY before we were supposed to leave for New Orleans the ole’ girl gave out from transmission failure.  All five children were crying, even Matthew.  Dad announced to the family that we were probably going to have to cancel the trip, and my two little brothers’ hopes of seeing The Big Easy were thrown out the window. That is until Dave and Suze disappeared that afternoon.  While they were gone, we were all praying that they had gone to go get a rental or something of that nature. Daddy called around 8 o’clock and told all of us to come outside because they had a surprise.  We were all standing in the front yard when this shiny, green van turned onto our county road from the highway, drove down the road, turned into our driveway, and into our parking spot.  David and Suzie were sitting in the front seats with smiles on their faces.  My siblings and I were jumping around like heathens screaming “YAYAH!”

                That was the beginning of MANY adventures in that 98’s Dodge Caravan.  It was the van that saved our vacation to New Orleans, it was the van that I learned to drive in, and it was the van my parents made me drive my brothers to school in L haha.

                My second time to visit Bourbon was right after I had moved to the city.  Oddly enough, a young man who had been a missionary in our area, of whom my family and I were very fond, called me up and said that he was in town with some co-workers.  Of all places in the city, this guy wanted to meet us on BOURBON. Irony.  Will and I headed down there and met the group of returned missionaries in front of Razoo, one of the most well-known night clubs.  I wasn’t 21 yet, so I had to watch as this group of young LDS men went into the Cat’s Meow and sang a few Karaoke songs.  They all came out giggling like school girls, no one would have even had a clue that they were all sober.  Bourbon Street, Mormon style.

                The day of my 21^st we were with JJ and D.  We went over to their place to discuss our plans for the evening, as nothing had been solidified.  I remember sitting there and JJ and Will were ping ponging ideas back and forth about where the best place to take me would be.  All of the sudden JJ stopped, looked at me, and said “Wait, have you ever smoked hookah before?” “A whattah?” I replied.  “Hookah, it’s shisha, aka fancy flavored tobacco, and you smoke it out of a hose”.  “ummmm…”, I said.  It was settled then, we were going to go downtown, start at Frenchman, go to the Hookah Cafe’, and see where the night took us.  I was only along for the ride, because heaven knew I wasn’t driving.

                Disclaimer: To my readers who are shocked at my complete honesty, don’t be.  Let’s face it, everyone’s lives turn out the way they do because of their own personal choices.  Like I said in the beginning of this project, the decisions that I made led me on a journey with a positive ending result.  It might not be the positive ending result that was expected, but somewhere along the line I created my own expectations.  I love you all.

                ANYWAYS, Will and I went to pick up JJ and D around 8 p.m. and JJ agreed to be the chauffer for the night.  We headed downtown and ended up in front of the Hookah Café about 15 minutes later.  So, let’s say it’s YOUR 21^st birthday and your friends are taking you out on a night on the town.  What is the first thing that you grab?  Well, we got to the door and the door woman asked for our I.D.s.  

...........................Whoops.

 What kind of human being forgets their I.D. ON THEIR 21^ST BIRTHDAY? I propose that it is one with frizzy red hair and an air bubble for a brain.  JJ just shook his head, then started laughing at me like a hyena, and we all loaded back into their car to go retrieve it.  Forty minutes later, we returned… with my I.D.  

                And so the night began, the Hookah Café was cool, man.  There were hippies everywhere smoking out of these alien looking pipe things with like 4 hoses coming out from every direction.  I think JJ ordered our hookah.  I think that the name of our shisha actually did have the word alien in it.  It was absolutely amazing. It was so smooth and tasted like passion fruit.  I was kind of hooked on the hookah.  JJ bursted my sober bubble by buying my first shot of Patron.  We went to the bar, bar tender poured two shots, gave me some salt and a lemon wedge.  Of course I didn’t know what the hell, haha.  JJ gave me instructions “lick the back of your hand, shake some salt on it, shoot the patron, lick the salt, and put the lemon in your mouth”.  It all seemed so complicated.  So, we shot, I licked, and I sucked the lemon, and my esophagus caught on fire. 

                After the Café, we decided it would be a good idea to go to Bourbon.  I’ll be completely honest, after that shot of Patron, I was kind of feeling warm and fuzzy.  When we got there, JJ handed me this green bottle thing that had a hand grenade at the bottom.  “New Orleans hand grenade, dude” he said with a Cheshire grin.  It was delicious.  I drank it real fast, too fast.  The rest of the night involved more gallivanting and more hand grenades.  I fell asleep on some random steps on our way back to the car, and I’m pretty sure Will puked on someone’s vehicle.  On my 21^st birthday, I was on Bourbon St, in New Orleans, drinking hurricanes and hand grenades.  Not boasting, just saying.

                The next day I had a hangover the size of Texas.  My first New Orleans hangover.  Holy hand grenade, Batman.  Will walked into the bathroom as I was desperately splashing water on my face and said, “Welcome to the REAL New Orleans.” 

We Rep' Tha 17th, Ya Heard?

                My head began to be stimulated from a variety of different cultures in those first few weeks.  Initially, I lived in what they call “Pigeon Town” down in the 17^th Ward (Lil’ Wayne’s hood, homie).  The neighborhood is predominantly African American, demographically, and is right down the street from Hollygrove.  Hollygrove is one of the most notoriously dangerous neighborhoods in the city of New Orleans.  Don’t fret, I was far enough away to not be in the thick, but close enough, nonetheless, to hear gun shots at night time.  Right down on the river bend by the J.P. /Orleans Parish line is where I made that first nest.  I never really felt eminent danger in the beginning, being all naïve and what not.  After all, the street I lived on was full of businesses. This, of course, illegitimately created a safety net in my mind. 

                Will was one of the only white kids in his little band of neighborhood friends from back in the day.  The culture of NOLA runs so deep and crosses so many racial lines, thus creating this wonderful melting pot that I previously spoke of.  There aren’t stigma’s attached to social situations where there is a mix of people.  Folks in the neighborhood say “Hey, how you doing!?” as you walk past each other on the sidewalk, regardless of what color your skin is. 

                With that being said, people still like to rep’ their ward and area of the city. West bank, East bank, 9^th ward, 7^th ward, 17^th ward, or wherever you were, each division was distinguishable in their own way. Each part of the city contained its own unique place in history.  Will and his best friend (we’ll call him JJ) always had big dreams of holding down the 17^th with their music.  Music is how Will and I even began to be involved in the first place. JJ lived just around the corner in an apartment with his girlfriend D.  Their apartment was right across the street from JJ’s grandmamma’s house where his mom, his sister, his grandmamma, paw-paw, and a little Chihuahua named Coco stayed.  When Will introduced me to JJ and all of his family, it was like they immediately adopted me as one of their own.  D, JJ’s girlfriend, and I hit it off.  We came from completely different backgrounds and cultures, but she was one of my first friends.

                Will and I began frequenting JJ and D’s about two to three times a week.  Mainly,D and I would just sit around and hang out watching Cat Williams and whatever else came on BET while Will and JJ worked on music.  The two of them were like frick and frack, JJ of course writing lyrics over Will’s beats.  Those were the beginning days of big dreams and making it into the New Orleans Hip Hop scene.  At the time, I had dabbled into writing lyrics on top of Will’s tracks, but I had predominantly been a singer/songwriter folksy type genre.  JJ and Will were two key players in my style change, and trust me, JJ ALWAYS had an opinion on my music.  When I began to really start writing to Will’s tracks, JJ was the one who encouraged me to make a voice of my own.  He told me I needed to get rid of that country twang if I wanted to be a singer in this genre of music.  It stressed me out.   However, over the course of 4 years, I did indeed develop my own style, and no, I didn’t get rid of that country twang.  Why? Because that is who I am and where I come from, no matter what kind of music I am singing.  About 5 months ago we showed JJ some projects I had been working on, and thankfully he approved.  He even told me, “damn, I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but you’ve done it.  You don’t even sound like you”.

                Anyway, I think it was the excitement that JJ possessed about the music that REALLY helped push Will, JJ, and I to begin pursuing the next level. 

                Meanwhile, work was really kind of sucking.  For some reason I just couldn’t prove myself the way that I needed to in order to gain my boss’ approval. I’m pretty sure they hated me in the beginning. I think they looked at me as a naïve girl who didn’t know what she was doing.  Why? Because Pennsylvania kept talking to me, dammit!  I’ve always been a hard worker, and I’ve always done my job to the best of my ability.  However, Pennsylvania was just so fascinating and so different than any girl I had met.  I couldn’t NOT talk to her, I mean we worked together nearly every day! First of all, she was a vegan.  I had never even heard of veganism.  Honestly, at the time, the sound of it kind of sucked.  NO animal products, period.  Somehow, she presented it in a way that I kind of understood, though.  In later years, I would meet a very interesting man who also was vegan.  He was so extreme into animal rights, that he even made ME feel guilty about eating a burger. 

ANYWAY, Pennsylvania was a strong female who knew exactly what she wanted in life.  She worked and still works in the film industry and had very interesting stories about famous people she had met.  Being from Texas, the most famous person I had ever seen up to that point was Mark Nestler, and that was from afar.   She, at the time, had a crush on a gentleman that she is now currently serious with.  I got to hear all of the details of their relationship, which was interesting as well.  Pennsylvania was one of the most open minded people that I still to this day have ever met, and she had VERY interesting ideas about relationships.  She was VERY open about sex, haha.  It makes me giggle even now some of the things she said, but for the sake of my more conservative readers, I won’t delve into.  She did say that one day she wanted to present the idea to her future husband of taking on her last name.  She even knew someone back in Pennsylvania who had swapped names in that fashion with her husband.  Oh the times, the times.  

My first few months were just a big fat culture shock.  Everyone needs to hear different ideas at some point in their life though.  How else can you decide where you stand?  Everything in my life, up to that point, had been rather one sided.  This wasn’t a bad thing, and I wouldn’t change my upbringing for ANYTHING.  However, something started happening to the way I thought about things, people, and issues.  I was not in Texas anymore.