The night started out innocuously enough with some drinking of a mighty fine local beer called Abita Andy Gator, an 8% doppelbock that we picked up in quarter barrel form from Elio's wine/beer shop just north of Claiborne Ave. Well one thing led to another, or rather, I should say, one beer led to another, as they do, and before you know it Jeffrey, Michelle, Karen, and I are knocking the pints down with frightening rapidity. The neighbor guy, southern guy raised around the corner, guy named Randy? Ralph? Something like that. Then he goes and I get into some kind of fight with K, ask her for the keys to the pad we're staying in, without which I can't go wandering. She says, "no." So I head out once more into that good night.
Admittedly I was staggering, that state, more like somnambulism than hypnogogia at this point, where you chuckle at yourself because you can't quite get your feet to line up the way they're supposed to when you walk. I watch those little bad boys but they keep hitting the grass next to me instead of reaching out and moving ahead and down the sidewalk. I go for maybe thirty or forty minutes this way, moving north and perhaps a bit west, I don't know for sure. In dreams like this it's not always that we get the facts right or that they even make any sense if we do. I think that it's the remembering, or the not remembering, of the scenes, the emotions, the images later and the attempt to put them together and to milk them for their symbolism that is where we pick the fruit from the experience.
I'm walking a bit better now, as I was sure I would if I just kept walking. I'm near a big building, a hospital it was to turn out. Rolling a cigarette I hear a voice, and it's a black lady crossing the street asking me for a smoke. I say, sure, if you don't mind roll your owns. She's either in her forties or, as she has the advanced aged look of someone who has lived a really hard life, in her late thirties perhaps. And the way it goes, if I have this right, is that we begin to talk as I pass her a rollie, light it, and go on to smoke my own.
Her accent is southern, Ninth Ward, Houston. She's here because her third daughter, can't remember the name, starts with an S and is not a white girl's name, is in the hospital's ICU two weeks now with pneumonia. She's stressed, sort of moaning every now and then and shaking her head, asks me if there's any way I can help her out with money to buy her baby a sweater, I hand her three twenties and tell her that it's gonna be okay. At this point in the dream one of us mentions being hungry, we go into the hospital, where the security lets us in, and I'm thinking it's about three or three something by this time. After inquiring, the cafeteria opens at eight. That will not do.
We go up to the waiting room on the floor where her daughter is, sit down, I'm telling her that I'd be happy for some company and would be honored to buy her something to eat. She says my name like the southern blacks that I was reared around during my formative years. Pay-dro, she says, the accent all on the first syllable. We ask a nurse walking by, who points us, in her thick and gumbolike Nawlins patois, to either the Trolley Stop or the St. Charles Inn, both near Lee Circle on St. Charles Ave.
I think we took a cab there, yes, we did, I'm sure of it now, we took a cab that had been called by the black lady with the short, gold hairdo down by the late night entrance. Cost $9 and I gave this guy a $2 tip. Middle Eastern he was-so are we all tight with the stereotypes: drunken white guy with some money (that's me); poor southern black lady with sick kid in hospital (name turns out to be Sherron); black security guy (not surly, amazingly enough), Middle Eastern cabbie (you know, poor English, didn't hit the right destination on the first try, charges ya for it anyway, blah, blah, blah).
Trolley Stop looks fun, but it's closed, the St. Charles Inn, down about two blocks, is not. We go in, I get a pint of beer and water, Sherron drinks only water. Now by now she's praising me, you know, thank god for you, I'm so hungry, Pay-dro, you such a nice man, I hope my baby gonna be okay. We both get the Ribeye breakfast, and it comes with the southern accoutrements-grits, eggs, biscuits. Funny enough sitting here it comes to me that my companion here in the night country asked for all of her stuff to be cooked hard, especially the eggs, she asks for that like, I dunno, three times. And I say, how 'bout an order of Boudin Balls to start, I mean, what the hell, right, this scene ain't ever gonna play out again--how often does one have the same dream?
No, it's a singular night, that's fer sure. I don't need the beer, am quite snookered, but love the hell out of the meal. We're here til, hell, I can only guess, about five o'clock. We talk about some such things like her daughters, my kids, she's sure I'm the best dad ever. There is no, and I mean none at all, flirting. It ain't like that at all. No, we just relate, she's got a sick kid, she's listing out what she thinks she can get with the money I've given her. To her it's freezing out this time of year, must be fifty something this time of the morning.
T'any rate, I pay, the lady serving has been a real southern jewel, and I go outside to have a smoke with Arthur and Raymond, Arthur grew up around the corner and has come to the St. Charles Inn every day, he says, for over fifty years. Raymond moved down here to get work after Katrina, he does everything, he assures me, except major electrical. He says that twice with a grin, like maybe he fucked up once or twice with "major electrical." Sherron comes out smiling, a cab has been called, she'll take it back to the hospital. She's never eaten so much at one time she told me. Pointing to her plate she had said this about four times.
I have my arm around her shoulder, she's cold, becoming stressed again about her baby girl, I tell her it's gonna be fine, she thanks me, and as the cab comes she hugs me hard, I return it, she praises me more, has a tear she's wiping away, and she gets in the cab, waves as it drives by, and she's gone.
Chatting with Arthur and Raymond I get a few details about the neighborhood, find out that Lee Circle is just up the way, maybe four blocks, just past the overpass I can see. Wishing them a good day I saunter up St. Charles, go maybe three or four blocks and then, knowing that I can't get into the house I'm staying in for another few hours, I walk into a bar. There's an older white guy in a suit coat hitting on a younger gal, and an old black dude, drunk, making funny southern words come out far too loud from his mouth. The bartender, a thirty something taller dark haired guy, is not a pleasant guy. Never smiles at all. And an overweight black guy who does some sweeping up, some moving things around behind the bar, examining the juke box. And so I order, what, an Abita, what else? Abita Amber I think it is, which is served to me without a syllable coming from surly bartender guy. Whatever, I got time, and quite a fair portion still of my liver, to kill, so I dive into that bad boy. I light up a cigarette, which by now is just harshing me out, it's too late, too early, the light has been coming up now since my time with Arthur and Raymond.
And then the younger gal from down the bar, the one sandwiched, poor thing, between the old white dude and the old black dude, comes around me, sits down in the bar stool/chair next to me. Seeing as how I've already told you about everyone in the bar, I can see right off that she just has become fatigued with the two, um, gentlemen who have her in their cross hairs. Sarah is her name. She's about 23 I'm going to say, not exactly pretty, but fair enough to look at, kind of tall, dark medium length hair. She come here from Florida, dances in the Quarter, makes usually two to three fifty a night in tips, likes her job.
White guy gives up, moseys out. Black guy comes around about every seven or eight minutes, talking too loudly, asking her to pick music on the box (and to pay for it too). Surly bartender guy now talks finally, to tell black guy to stop fucking yellin' in his bar. Black guy tells me, from about six seats away to my right, that surly bartender guy is mean. Surly guy looks at him, goes back to whatever.
Mick, that's his name, walks in, sits next to her on the left. This is my boyfriend, Mick, she says. And he and her leave and it's just overweight black guy doing chores, surly bartender guy, and old black dude. So I pay up and head out into the bright morning.
Wanting to get to the pad around 8:30, I set out on foot down St. Charles, and walk for thirty or forty minutes, my left foot hurting now from so much pavement pounding. Watching the city come alive with cars as it has now, with people, really peppy looking sort of coffee drinking people, I'm thinking. Ambulating slowly I finally get to where I'm going, ring the doorbell once in hopes of catching Chica about to go to work. It is without reply, so I move down the other half mile or so to Audobon Park and crash out on the grass, which is dewey and wet, but which I don't notice as I fall right out.
Then the hypnogogia kicks in hardcore as somehow there's a pretty large, somewhat light skinned black man with a very trimmed little beard/mustache saying things to me. At least that's all I can figure out cuz there's only him, standing next to a golf cart looking thing, and me, now sitting up, my arms behind me supporting me, sort of shaking my head. It's been about an hour or an hour and a half that I've slept and I'm groggy like the dead, and he comes more into focus. I think I heard four or five sentences and I have no idea if he touched me awake, pushed me with his foot, or just spoke gently. He was speaking gently, but firmly, something like the Po-lice (accent on the first syllable) don't let you sleep here, something about the knife in my pocket. He moves on away in his vehicle, and I stand, sort of swaying, transitioning from the dream to wakefulness, or to some close approximation of it.
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