15 min 6:54 PM 1-8-99 Sa New Orleans Airport

After out “wedding meal,” we walked down Carondelet to Bourbon Street, talking about how blessed we were.  We stopped at a bank and a security guard said, “Have a blessed day,” and he might as well have been Jesus Himself. We got some alcohol and strolled the streets down to the waterfront where a desperate guitar-playing bum was panhandling coins in exchange for his serenades. I began to feel mournful as I rued each fine piece of ass I saw and realized I had just promised a Louisiana judge in so many words not to fuck any of it. I leaned on a rail and watched the muddy waters of the Mississippi passing me by and always coming. We walked along Decatur, past the street performers in front of St. Louis Cathedral to Café Du Monde where a sidewalk clarinetist gave us a free jazz solo. We got coffee and beignets and read and wrote, and my head started to clear up a little. We strolled through the French Quarter before we stopped for a fifth of Wild Turkey and hopped on a streetcar full of junkies. We rode our wedding carriage back to the Saint Charles Guesthouse in the Garden District. I won the orgasm-giving contest three to two. We lay around nude and drank our bourbon a while before showering and walking up to the pub on the corner for an Abita. Then we crossed the street to another pub for another Abita. Then we went down the street to Lucky’s for another. Neither Richard nor Iron Man were there. We shot a game of pool and called a cab. Rochelle had found a bar in Fodor’s called Napoleon House that was supposed to be a hangout for writers, intellectuals, and other bullshit artists. It was dark and full of classical music, and we drank Pimm’s and ate muffuletta and jambalaya. Greg, the bartender, sold us his cookbook. A group of women came in, and it came up that we had gotten married that day, and they gushed and hugged us and said they felt touched by magic and said they knew we would last. We hung out a while before Rochelle started to get tuckered out. We went “home” to the St. Charles, and I smoked and lay in the dark nervous about good and evil and how history seems to affect the spirit of a place. My wife slept in the crook of my arm.

1-10-00  7:00 AM M
We woke up late our last day in New Orleans, had a little connubial bliss, showered, then packed up while the maid waited for us to clear out.  We loaded up the car, bade farewell to the St. Charles Guest House, and drove around the corner.  We stopped in at an archetypal Southern diner, long and narrow with a long counter, round padded swiveling stoools bolted into the while tile floor, the patrons gorging themselves on cholesterol and tobacco, the service terrible, the slow-movin' old gal excusin' her apathy with a lot of  "honeys" and "babies."  The locals were cheering Tennessee against Buffalo on a TV up on the wall, and the smoke was murdering us.  We asked the old gal if we could move to a table about ten feet farther away from the primary smokestack--a plaid-shirted, flat-topped, Jim-Crow throwback--but the ole gal said, "That's not my station, my babies."  "They're very strict about not crossing six feet out of their way around here," I said to Rochelle, loud enough for all to hear.  I got a hot turkey sandwich and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy and, possibly, saliva.  Rochelle got bacon and eggs.  We read the Times Picayune under the hard stares of the regulars assessing the outsiders in their midst.  When we finished, we drove around looking for a place to buy boxes to ship home all the stuff we'd brought with us in the rental but couldn't lug through the airport.  We bought some boxes at a Walgreen's, but they weren't big enough, so we decided to go to the Shipping Post we'd seen in the French Quarter a day earlier.  It cost sixty bucks to have everything shipped.  I bought some post cards, and we drove up to St. Louis Cemetery Number One.  We strode warily among the tombs, having heard story after story about danger in there.  You wondered whether it was ordinary muggers or just bad spirits, and there did seem to be an inordinate amount of fleeting movements out the corners of the eyes.  We found voodoo queen, Madame LaVeux's  tomb near the entrance.  A couple trippers in orange and purple robes were performing some weird rite, spitting wine, burning incense, banging a cymbal.  I took pictures of them.  You could hear jazz wafting in even to the cemetery from the projects behind it.  I peeked over the fence, and a brass band funeral procession was parading between the brick tenements.  I took pictures.  A caretaker came to tell us the cemetery was closing;  We got back to the car and headed for the airport.