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From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Tue Jan 8 09:47:18 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: Part 44 of CAA #2
BORN TOULOUSE
#44 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
New Orleans, LA
July 14, 1988
copyright 1988, Steven K. Roberts
The energy is building: Journey 3 is mission, passion,
obsession, religion. As we make our last swing through the Southeast,
pausing to frolic in New Orleans with 15,000 sweaty librarians, I am
loosing a barrage of proposals like seductive cruise missles into the
hotbed of high-tech industry.
And the results are trickling in, changing the bike beyond
recognition. The Oki cellular phone is installed and ready for
interfacing with fax, modem, and the 256-point crossbar switch. The
components of my satellite station are arriving, frightening me with their
combined weight while exciting me with communication potential. And a
Createc dual-channel digital oscilloscope and signal computer is on board,
obsoleting my previous mobile laboratory equipment and opening a 20 MHz
window into the new electronics.
Yeah, it's starting all over again. I'm pouring my passions
into a blender and reaching for the puree button...
* * *
But the bike will still be there when I write to you from the
BORING places. Today I want to talk about N'awlins. There's a sort of
melancholy about this city, you know, a strange melancholy that excites
the lusts and touches the soul... and every descent from our balconied
French Quarter suite into street-level turmoil makes the keyboard fingers
itch. Stories lurk in the dark eyes that glower from shadows, in the
antics of children marked by street life, in the crenelated faces of those
who were here to watch the first electric streetlights sharpen their
familiar shadows. This is a rare thing in post-video America: a city's
identity proclaimed by every street, every guitar lick, every face, every
shot of Jagermeister swilled before breakfast in Molly's Irish Pub.
And in the deep sultry night the rhythms of cultures mingle.
Stand at Toulouse and Bourbon and let them shake you -- a thrumming
confusion of blues, rock, jazz, Dixie, and a passing nuclear-powered
automotive rap machine with enough oomph to perform CPR on the driver.
Swirling through the violent acoustic crossfire is a motley fluid of
drunken humanity, and if my metaphors seem mixed... it's no accident. So
is the reality.
People! Blacks from the projects, street-wise and native, white
eyes darting between the blues man's golden sax and the tan legs that lure
imaginations past the hem of a passing red miniskirt. Tourists of all
flavors, ambling with too-deliberate ease along a path that avoids the
ruffians -- eyes alert to the approach of hustlers, drunks, or the
titillating shopfronts of commercial naughtiness. Sixties carryovers,
ponytailed, attitudes revealed less by hard-rock style than by a sort of
Rockwell hardness index of the eyes. Hawkers, luring people into
doorways to glimpse nude women writhing on smoky stages. Cops, jaded and
confident, frisking passers-by with a glance and arresting the city's
descent into behavioral entropy by their very presence. The rich, too
well dressed, slumming. The bottom out-of-sight poor, eyes pleading,
slumped against dirty walls in visible dejection. Con artists, accosting
the naive. Musicians, easy in their element but disturbingly
ordinary-looking off stage, commuting the side streets with battered
instrument cases. Mimes, eloquent and graceful, filling cash boxes with
the wordless poetry of dance. Hookers swaying practised hips under
the lacy incongruities of Frederick's. Librarians on furlough from the
conference, walking in close wide-eyed groups in this place far from
Kansas. Ordinaries, who could be up to the most hienous of evils and
never show it. Gays, simpering down the street with hands on each other's
bottoms. Cabbies lending a touch of hard-edged New York raucousness with
ready honks and impatient driving styles. Whooping college students,
hell-bent on having a good time, clutching their paper-cupped Hurricanes
while getting down in coarse parody of the bloods who lend authenticity
to what might otherwise degenerate into a Daytona Beach. Old coots, young
nimble black break-dancers, lost drunk white high-school kids, businessmen
recovering from business, toughs on missions of darkness and terror,
brain-damaged druggies slurring curses, and the gaudy human echoes of
Mardi Gras. And above all, such a variety of bodies and faces that no
stroll through the maelstrom can fail to yield arousal, disgust,
longing, fear, awe, nostalgia, and laughter (sometimes... all by the same
person.)
* * *
Jackson Square. Jax Brewery. Cafe du Monde. The shops and
museums of Royal Street. The city by day is awash in tourism, an economy
based on T-shirts, biegnets, ceramic masks, artwork, and endless
variations on the almighty souvenir. For 75 cents, you can knock back an
"oyster shooter" -- a raw gob of glistening gray flesh swimming in a
dollop of Bloody Mary mix. At Mr. B's Bistro, the bartender muddles an
Old Fashioned while keeping up a running commentary on local food, music,
and shops. At Molly's breakfast, fogged penitent eyes and tortured
foreheads mark the hung-over. It's all here: portrait artists competing
for sittings, joggers in the park, calliope toots under rising
columns of riverboat smoke, sunsets over the cathedral, fleshy old women
in ghastly pastels clutching beaded handbags, a pricey gallery of Lennon
and Erte, bored horses with flowered hardhats standing before idle
buggies, coarse propositions muttered to any female on the street, a
capella falsetto soul scatting, mingled languages, heart-pounding glimpses
of flesh and ecstasy, ripoffs, good deals, brutal humidity, and interludes
of iced cappuccino to cool the sweat.
And what delights me most in all this is that it knows itself,
celebrates itself, procreates itself like a giant mutant amoeba. New
Orleans is its own species, not a homogenized amalgam of malls,
billboards, and suburban conformity; this city rejects the ordinary by
seducing it, assimilating it, and changing it forever.
* * *
Our home for a week has been the Olivier Guest House on Toulouse
Street -- a rambling place of eccentric hallways, surprise staircases,
gardens, balconies, old N'awlins flavor, and a slowly-evolving family of
international guests (mainstream American tourists, as a general rule,
prefer the predictable carbon-copy motel motif). This place has taken on
a sense of home -- not only because of its period furniture and shambling
authenticity, but also because of its familiarity: I stayed here when
I pedaled through four years ago.
Our bikes have their own room -- the original parlor with its
16-foot ceiling, bronze chandelier, and blue velvet wallpaper. And an
unexpected bonanza: they are guarded around the clock by guest house
personnel and a New Orleans cop named Aaron... a source of colorful street
stories if ever there was one. In this place where madness and booze
mingle without discipline, it's comforting to have a friend on the force.
The Olivier is an oasis -- a quiet retreat from the city nestled
in its very midst. We lay around, skinnydip in the pool, stroll in the
courtyard, neck on the balcony, frolic in the canopy bed, spy on the
neighbors, play with the four kittens stumbling cutely around our room,
and gaze out over the city's rooftops... all without the nervous
excitement of street life itself. Yet with a few dozen steps we can
switch modes and join the revelry, making the change with no more effort
than idly fingering a TV remote control. The difference, of course, is
that the TV is video and the city is an intense, involving experience
that assaults all the senses.
* * *
Speaking of video, we've had a healthy dose of media exposure
lately -- with CNN and CBS both splaying us across national screens within
the same week. But last night's adventure added a different perspective
to the CAA video collection...
The bike stood parked against a blue wall. Behind glass, a
mostly male crowd gawked and grinned; in the room, Maggie and I reviewed
our loosely-choreographed script and took last-minute swigs from emergency
Hurricanes. A wall of monitors and control panels was alive with images:
the bike, a layer of swirling mist, color bars. Then the music started...
ZZ Top's "Legs."
Bouncing in hot pink, Maggie danced into the camera's view. In
exaggerated motions, she mimed her astonishment at encountering the
Winnebiko -- bending low to study it, eyes wide and innocent, hips rocking
to the beat. The music moved her, and the men behind the glass risked not
a blink as fabrics flowed under hot lights. Knowing well her body
language, I could feel the growing tension...
I chose my moment, and danced into view. "Who are you?" asked
my eyes, and we looked each other over, circling like animals in season,
touching in tentative intrigue. "She got legs -- she knows how to use
them..." I knelt and felt, hands gliding over calves and thighs, eyes
teasing, fabrics playing peek-a-boo. The dance grew ritual, erotic, its
outcome obvious in every touch.
I made my move. Climbing aboard the Winnebiko and fastening my
helmet, I pointed at her and then curled my finger into a "come hither."
"Moi?" questioned her look. "Vous!" answered mine.
She stepped astride my lap, leaning into me as the music shook
us -- video capturing in silhouette the lovers meeting, the first kiss,
the bodies moving, the power, the beginning... and then the bike rolling
slowly out of frame to leave only colors, guitars, desires, and an
audience stunned by this unexpected blend of technology and erotic rock...
* * *
Yeah, it's hard to leave this place. I write now at a worn
table in Molly's, dark walls around me plastered with yellowed business
cards dating back to the 60's. The clientele is varied: hungover Smiley
asleep against the pay phone, a woman in too- tight leather, a
street-scarred longhaired Asian, a scattering of tattooed regulars.
Another perfect omelette just met its match, and I alternate between
coffee, water, and Jagermeister while trying to capture something of this
town. And oddly, I find I don't want to go.
Cities usually chase me away with noise and danger. This place
has both in abundance, but I think there's no hurry... and I certainly
don't miss the hot smelly bus and its load of clutter. I know this little
place down on Decatur where the jambalaya can make you crazy...
Cheers from the road!
Steve