A Love Letter to Diner

Dear Diner,

I love you.

Sure, you're sexist. Then again, you take place in 1959. If you weren't sexist, this would be a fantasy, and your strength is your realism. 

If any movie perfectly illustrates the dynamics of friendship without relying on stereotypes, this is it. You can keep your buddy films and your bromances and your coming-of-age. 

Diner is one of the only movies that leaves me with: Yes. This is how friends behave. This is friendship amongst a group of equals.  It's not about heroes and sidekicks or mentors and students or rivals that 'respect' each other.

I think one of the main reasons I identify with Diner so much is because there are (please don't hate me for where I'm headed, here) so fucking few healthy female friendships represented in popular culture. Why is it that female friends are always jealous and backstabby? My friends aren't like that. If I met a person like that, I would just not be friends with them.

Hollywood has very, very, very low expectations of friendship, especially with women. Stories about camaraderie are usually better friendship barometers than stories about friends.  Movies about growing up that are written or directed by a person who is, simultaneously, coming into their own self, are always the best.
 
Diner's success lies in the level of comfort these actors feel around each other, how they ricochet and couple and strain. I don't think I have a single friend I relate to in the exact same way as another. Friendships are fueled by reflection. It's how you respond to each other, the unique phrases you use, how you reminisce...if you reminisce at all. Some friends are for arguing and debates. Some friends need protection. Some give the best advice, some spill out a slow reveal of our similarities or flagrant differences.

The things that I remember about my friends are the parts that were easy, and those are the things I tell the most.  Staying up all night in on the train to New Orleans with Bobbay, shaking creamers because Muffy told us that if you shook a creamer, it would turn into butter. What did we talk about? Shit, I don't know. Buttermakers? I just know it was effortless and rad, and my favorite part of that trip was getting there. One summer I remember drinking around a fire reading passages from erotic novels with CrazyLiz and Phil and Tyler: I remember the nuances ("You know what word I'm not comfortable with? Nuance. It's not a real word" - Modell, Diner) and stress that each of used and how differently we all read the text. Driving around with Schmee in college looking for cigarettes, refusing to buy our own, just having a day. We weren't out of control or fucked up or anything, we were just...us. Sometimes it's the simple lazy times, when no one is faking it, when you're completely at ease and you don't need to work at anything, when you're not trying, when you're just effortlessly idle. But tthings end, and people grow.

Diner takes place just before the minute hand strikes sixties: the world is about to change, to call out the boys' collective narcissism and smash it up. But no matter what, they'll always have the guys at the diner.

Then they're getting married, having kids, starting new jobs and leaving town. But you know that the next time they're together, Modell and Eddie are going to bicker about absolutely anything and everything, Shrevie and Boogie will remain friendly, but tensely competitive, Fenwick will probably be drunk and brilliant and pissing off everyone else.

And it's stories we all know: the universal, gap-mouthed look Eddie gets when he realizes he just lost a pointless argument, but he still keeps arguing because he must, because he is making a goddamn point, and then later on he brushes it off, why so serious?

Seriously, Steve fucking Guttenberg is a goddamn genius in this movie (words that have never, ever been spoken, and technically they still haven't since I typed them, but whatever jerk). As far as I'm concerned his role (Eddie) is one the most well-actualized characters I have ever seen - because we know him, we can tell how he's going to react to anything outside the sphere of Diner because he does such a fucking perfect job reacting to things. I could go on and on and on, but that shit's boring to list and dazzling to watch. I'll let the movie do it.

In a way, I guess, it's about taking shit seriously: my serious business is much more fucking important than your serious business. Nah, just kidding, super sors, we cool?

Maybe it's because, stripped of the question of masculinity and what it means to be a man and all that bullshit (which I could talk about, but don't want to) Diner is really about learning who you are and admitting those faults, and how none of it matters with the people you love. 

Maybe I the reason I love Diner is because it's like...it's like when an old friend gives you a confident a kick in the ass and tells you to fuck off, so you do a round of shots and make fun of each other for five minutes and feel better about the world. 


Love,
Rassles

...

So I guess I have a Love Letters series now.  I mean, I do. Click here for the list so far.

Raping the Women and Wasting the Men

I am interrupting my memetic programing to tell you this:  the song categories for this meme were created by assholes.  

Because of this, the original days 16 and 17, "a song that you used to love but now hate" and "a song that you hear often on the radio" will be eliminated and new categories created.


So I bring you days 16 and 17, Two Songs I Dominate While Driving. 

Why would I want to show people music that sucks?  And I don't listen to the radio.  Too many commercials.  And I don't have an iPod, so there better not be any iPod categories in the near future. 



I am not a big fan of Bright Eyes (Conor Oberst's other band, which you prolly already knew but I'm saying it anyway because I had no idea who Oberst was when I first heard this song because Bright Eyes sucks) and the Desaparecidos had this brilliantly horrible hollerin' garage-feedback shitty anthem rock thing going on, like Black Flag covering Springsteen.  

Once someone made me a CD with this song on it - Muffy, of course, because I get all of my music from Muffy, Xtine, and my dad - and it makes me wish I'd just gotten away with robbing a bank.

And this next song, well.



Don't even pretend you don't like it.  DON'T EVEN.

When I was a very mediocre keys player/back up singer for a band that really, really could have been big had the members stuck with music instead of taking a "hiatus" to get an "MBA" or go to "law school" so they could get "real jobs" and stop working at "restaurants" and "UPS," we did a cover of this for a battle of the bands and we goddamn killed it.  We practiced constantly.  Fucking constantly.  We were determined to play it in under 3:30 while keeping faithful - which is like running the Kentucky Derby, by the way - and BY FUCKY WE DID.  Thank god.  Every day we'd practice, get hammered, and close with a sweaty, screamy sloppy Iron Maiden cover, and eventually we decided to just do it for real, and we tightened it and cranked it up.  I'm going to see if I can find a recording of it, because we were awesome.

We were competing against all these heavy metal bands that hated us since we sounded like a cross between Queen and Os Mutantes and a marching band, because Xtine is a hipster who plays the theremin listens to things like 1960's Brazilian psychedelic rock, plus we had about nine people on stage.  And a violin.  So these guys, over the course of several nights, all Danzig-ed out and heckling and jerking themselves into a Faygo frenzy had to shut their yaps when we speed-metaled the hell out of them. Their shitty bands couldn't do that. I wanted to cover "Ace of Spades" too, just so we could show those fuckers what's what (and because I would have gotten to sing that, not Xtine) but no one else was on board.


...

Before this, did you really know what live was?

Day 7: a song that reminds you of a certain event

Muffy was the first friend I made in college in 1999, and she stuck, surprisingly. She was cool. She listened to Alkaline Trio and the Pixies and other bands I don't remember or give a shit about, but music was her thing. She introduced me to Modest Mouse and Promise Ring (of course, this was before everyone became a fucking sell out. Muffy was very anti-selling out. I think I learned to care about that from her as well, although I had a similar mindset towards certain filmmakers). I forced her into a more in-depth understanding of Stevie Wonder, Led Zeppelin, and the Kinks (at 18, I was a musical traditionalist). She smoked a shitload of weed, dyed her hair weekly and housed everyone at Goldeneye. I think. She could have been horrible, but she was the only one with an N64. I grew up playing Sega.

So one day, some time into freshman year, we're stuffing towels under the door of her dorm room so no smoke gets in the hallway. There's about six of us in there, including some extremely cute boys that I had never met that terrified me down to my girl parts, but Muffy was friends with like, every cute boy ever so I wasn't surprised. I didn't smoke weed at all, I was just there to play Goldeneye.

"Music, Rass," Muffy yells while she packs the bowl. Dudes are talking and doing that dude laugh. I am very nervous. Everyone in the room is so cool and attractive, and they aren't freaking out about getting caught and sweating uncontrollably - we need to open a window - no, nevermind, they're open - this is like being in a movie, and I'm hanging out with the cool people, and these guys would have definitely have ignored me in high school.

My hands shake as I pop in People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm and skip to track 8, because hip hop is a genre Muffy and I have yet to cover, and she snaps to attention, because what white girls from the suburbs listen to Tribe Called Quest?

"YES." Muffy exhales. "This is the shit." She passes the bowl to a dark-haired young man with insane eyelashes and white teeth. I decide that I love him.

"What, what is this?" The skinniest boy asks.

"Old school, dude," Muffy laughs. "This shit is old school."

"Tribe Called Quest," I venture and then stop talking.

I stretch out my legs and glance around, trying to look nonchalant. What would make me look nonchalant? Shit. I start singing along. "If you feel the urge to freak, do the jitterbug."

Muffy laughs and joins me, but she only knows the last few words of every line. The guys are watching us, amused. I start to get into it. Muffy gets into it. This is the first song we played, in our one-month friendship, that we both knew and loved. We jump up and bounce around, doing the best damn Q-Tip imitation we can pull together, and we're so fucking into it, we got call and response, we got synchronized moves we so didn't plan in advance, and we're awesome.

Skinny guy speaks up again during the musical break. "Yeah, but what's the like, background? I know this."

I scoff at him. "Lou Reed. 'Walk on the Wild Side.' Duh." This is the only reason I know about Tribe: because I know about Lou Reed. I don't tell them that, though. I want them to believe I am worldly and multicultural.

"Ohhhhhhh." I hear the dark-haired guy say, "I'm so glad when people know music."

"Can I kick it? YES YOU CAN!"

"I think my older brother listens to this."

"Mine too! That has to be it. I can't believe I never realized how good this band was. Now I wanna hear that other song. The background song."

"That is a dope idea."

"What was it again?"

"That 'Wild Side' song."

"Oh yeah."

"Mr. Dinkins, would you please be my mayor?" me and Muffy shout, and giggle. I turn to the skinny guy and sing, "And all the colored girls say, 'doo doodoo. doodoo doodoodoo..."

"Oh, THAT song!" They are all really excited that I know what I'm talking about. This, by the way, was before we all officially discovered the internet and all its marvels. This was back when I just knew shit and solved people's trivia debates. I loved knowing shit and being celebrated for it.

I flop down onto Muffy's bed after the song and breathe, smiling to myself. The dark-haired boy (Matt. His name is Matt) leans over to me, and gives me the first of rare compliments I've received on my appearance. "Dude," he says, staring at my face. "You have awesome eyes." I hold my breath and just return the stare, because I'm afraid if I don't he'll forget he was talking to me and everything will fade away. "Adam!" he says, still staring. "Come check out this chick's eyes."

The skinny guy crawls over. "Whoa."

"Dude."

"Dude."

Muffy comes over and stares at me, and the other two guys who'd been interjecting randomly lean over and look. They're all squinty and high-looking. I start to laugh. I feel like an exhibit. And I know that this is my first time existing so blatantly around any drug use, because in high school I was a severe buzzkill. And I promise you, I promise that no one else in the room is nearly as effected by the events as I am.

"Whoa."

"Dude," Muffy guffaws, "your eyes are like a fucking storm right now."

"This is awesome. Muffy, I'm so glad you invited this chick over."

...

Sometimes It Skips a Generation

Last Sunday Afternoon. Not yesterday. The one before that. Whatever.

"Shit. Hold on guys, I need to take this," I'm shaking as I leave the patio table in front of the bar and answer my phone, partly because it's cold outside, partly out of fear, and partly because I'm a little hungover. Or a lot hungover. Whatever.

This is a big fucking deal, because I don't do that. I also don't use call waiting, and I won't talk on the phone while I'm hanging out with someone else. It's fucking rude. Seriously, if I'm constantly texting someone when I'm around you it means I don't want to be around you.

Exceptions to these rules include but are not limited to (1) giving directions to a third member of our party who has yet to arrive, (2) receiving directions for a destination to which we have yet to travel, and (3) my mother, because she only calls when something is wrong. 

I do not idly chat with my mother. She is smart, exact, realistic, calm, retentive, genuinely polite and all business, which is why I answer her phone calls.  Also, I'd been waiting for her to call me all morning.

"Hey, Ma."

"Hi, hon. What's going on?"

"Well..." I don't want to tell her. I've called her twice today, and I don't want to tell her. "So...okay. So you know how I...shit."

"Honey."

"Sorry. Okay." Breathe. Breathe. "The bike got stolen. Atticus. Is gone."

"What? Oh no, honey, I'm so sorry."

"And I'm sorry, it's all my fault, I take full responsibility and I promise, I promise, I promise I will do my damnedest to find it."

"Well, bikes get stolen. How did they get through the lock?"

"See, it wasn't locked."

"Oh? Why not?"

"It was in the back hallway, and it's only accessible through one of the apartments. Unless someone left the back gate and the back door unbolted, which is unlikely. I think."

"Still, honey, you know you should always lock-"

"Yes. I know. Always lock your bike, always lock your car, always lock your door. I know this. I know." My mom doesn't understand things like this. Making little mistakes. There are rules, you see, and you follow them.

"Well honey, obviously you didn't know."

Gaaaaahhhhhhh. "Yes. You're right. I'm sorry. It was locked all winter, and I moved it last weekend and forgot to lock it up and some son of a bitch took the damn thing in that four day period of time and I'm sorry for screwing up. Again." I'd left my lock draped over the handlebar with every intention of putting it back on just after doing...something. Whoever stole the bike had coolly placed the u-lock on the window shelf. Tauntingly.

"It's not your fault," she assures me, with complete sincerity. "It's that other person's fault for breaking the law."

"Yes. I know." She says that now. But in four years I'm gonna do something stupid and she's going to be all, well, you need to be more careful. Remember when the bike got stolen?

"Did you file a police report?"

"No, not yet."

"Well honey--"

"That's why I called you. I need the serial number. I can't find my copy of it." Total lie. I never wrote it down because I never found it on the bike. Because I am a dumbass.

"Oh, I'm sure I have it filed." I am positive she has the original paperwork from 1970-whatever and everything. "I'm actually on the road right now, so I can't get it for you until a little bit later."

"Thanks. And you know, I think I found it on Craiglist. I'm sure I did. And I emailed them and they never got back to me, and then they totally just pulled the bike from the ad completely. Like it was never even there. They had to know it was me."

"How would they know that?" I wish she was being patronizing, because then I could blame her for giving me low-self-esteem or something while venting to my imaginary therapist. No, she is honestly inquisitive. Much more infuriating and harder to prove.

"Because I posted a note with my email address all around the complex and I used that same email address to contact those sonsabitches and I know that whoever stole my bike had to be friends with someone in the building. They had to be. Otherwise, I mean...yeah. They had to be allowed into that hallway by a person who lives there. So I'm thinking that the sonsabitches were warned that I was on to them."

"When did it become okay for you to swear?"

"I'm sorry." Shit.

She sighs. "I guess that's entirely possible."

"But okay, listen to this - so I set up a fake email address and I emailed them this morning and they got back to me within a minute. Seriously. I said I was Phil, and me and him are going over there tomorrow night and we're totally gonna steal it back. I'm talking stealthy, cloak-and-dagger shit. I mean business. Pretend I didn't swear. Sor."

"Please don't steal it. You should call the police."

"I know, you're right. I'm sorry, I just got excited and said 'steal.' I promise we will call the police."

"Don't say things you don't mean."

Fuck. "I apologize. I already talked to the cops and asked them if they would go with me. They said I had to verify it was my bike first, and that I should call 911 if I found it."

"Really--"

"And then I asked if finding my stolen bike on the property of another was worthy of an emergency phone call, and the policewoman said, 'Hell yeah, girl.' So I gots legal permission."

"Well okay, then."

"I'm sorry for interrupting you, before. I just want you to know that I'm taking care of it. I got this down. Seriously. Except for the locking-the-bike part."

"I'm glad. And now you know why we always remind you to do these things. One day, like this time, you might forget. I know you would never be intentionally careless. And you know, in the end - and you don't want to hear this - but you will learn from this."

I fucking wish that was some passive-aggressive shit, but I know it's not. It reads like some passive-aggressive shit. Believe what you will, but know this: you don't know my mom. You never have to ask her if she's mad. Ever. She tells you immediately. Granted, she hasn't been mad at me for years, not since I lived at home after college. Then it was constantly, you know, "I'm mad at you because you got drunk and skipped your cousin's wedding shower" (I WAS LOOKING FOR A MISSING SNOWMAN) or "I'm mad at you because of your secret tattoo" or "I'm mad at you because the dog ate your cigarettes and now there is tobacco in the carpet and when did you start smoking?" or "I'm mad at you because you quit grad school and didn't tell me and if you refuse to take any steps towards a substantive career you need to be out of this house by October."

"Thanks, Ma." Get mad at me. Why the fuck aren't you mad at me?

"Don't worry, honey, I'm not mad at you." Well you fucking should be. It's so much easier to give myself a hard time if I have a fucking reason to do so.

"Good. I was worried." Shit shit shit. Guilt.

"You can't blame yourself for this. I'll get you that serial number later, but I have to go now, okay?"

"Okay."

"Stop it. Do not blame yourself."

"I'm not."

"I don't want you feeling guilty about this. I know how you are. And don't do anything...silly."

"What, like stake out potential burglar addresses that I found on Craigslist? I'm doing that tomorrow night."

"Just don't. You know what? Nevermind."

"Thanks."

"I gotta go. Later, okay?"

"Later, skater."

"Bye, honey."

I hang up the phone and head back over to the table, shivering. It's cold outside. My posse has moved to an adjacent patio table in the sun.

"The Mom?" Muffy asks as I sit down again.

"You know it."

"Did she have it?" MoLinder jumps in.

"Filed away."

"I told you. Accountants, man, they save everything," Sean laughs.

"You know, I love my mom because she's the most responsible woman ever in the world, but I fucking hate my mom because she's the most responsible woman ever. In the fucking world."

...

I Only Get Lost When Other People Give Me Direction, or: I Do Good at Metaphors

(I wrote this like, last summer and never published it. So...yeah.)

"Can I see the map?" I ask Muffy as we're walking to my car.

"Don't worry about it, I know how to get there."

"I don't give a shit, I'm going to get lost if you're giving me directions."

"Dude. You're not listening to me. I know how to get there."

"And you're not listening to me: I WILL GET LOST. Seriously. Can I please see the map?"

"Just trust me, okay?"

"I do trust you. I just trust my frustration more. Please give me the goddamn map."

"Dude, it's not hard to get there. I've been there before. I like, go there all the fucking time."

"I don't give a shit if you go there, you could paint the route on the fucking streets with fucking ice cream and I will still get lost if I don't know where we're going."

"But I know where we're going."

"Jesus Christ, give me the map."

"Okay, all we do is take 88 to fucking 39-"

"Please. Give. Me. The map."

"I'm fucking telling you how to get there!"

"YOU FUCKING TELLING ME IS WHAT GETS ME LOST. I can't follow directions."

"How can we get fucking lost--"

"All I need is to look at the map. "

"--if I'm in the car sitting right fucking next to you."

"You know, I will find a way out of spite," I mutter as I hand her my car keys.

Muffy reaches into her pocket and hands me a folded scrap of paper in return. "Here. I wrote them down."

Wave it away. "I cannot follow written or verbal directions, it fucks with my bearings."

Muffy scoffs at me and unlocks her door. "I should just fucking drive."

"Shut up, I'm driving," I pull my door handle, thunking it a couple of times. "I don't want to listen to your shitty punk music."

"Harsh, dude. Harsh." She tosses my keys back to me over the top of my car before climbing into the passenger seat.

"Seriously," I unlock my door and trip a little as I sit down, "Shit. I just look at the map, see where we are and where we need to fucking go and I will fucking get us there, I don't need street names or nothing. Fucking beginning and end. Boom. Done." Slam the door.

"Dude, I will be telling you directions like step by step."

"Seriously, if you're just sitting there telling me what to do I'm gonna get pissed off and like subconsciously fuck it all up, and then I'm going to blame you in the back of my head."

"Maybe I don't want to give you the map."

"Then we're just going to be miserable all fucking weekend, because we'll be all hating each other."

"Ha ha! Dude, you are so psychologically fucked."

"Please give me the fucking map before I fucking cut it out of your fucking hands."

"Okay. Jesus," she pulls a second piece of folded paper out of her pocket and throws it on the dashboard. "Fucking baby much?"

I start the car, snatching the map. "I fucking hate you so hard."

...

Muffy and I say "fuck" a lot.

...

Points to be Pointed Out.

Point the First:

Muffy: Going to see Frank Black at Wicker Park Fest on Saturday! You in?

Me: Totally.

Muffy: YAY Snowwhite is in town

Me: Awesome. Oh, and also, the hipsters are going to dress up like zombies and do the Thriller walk down Division tomorrow night.

Muffy: Nice. Why?

Me: I dunno. Because they're hipsters, and they're starved for individuality. So they gather en masse and dress alike and walk with synchronized dance moves. I'm thinking about dressing up like a gang banger from "Beat It" and getting in a knife fight. This would prove four things: (1) I ain't no fucking follower, (2) I ruin lives, (3) blades don't need reloading, and (4) zombies are sooooo 2008, while I live in the future.


Point the Second:

The zombie craze is boggling. I mean, yes, blood/violence/brains/yar. It's not like the vampire craze, diligently resurfacing every couple of years, fading away slowly, only to be shoved back into the spotlight by some new book or television show.

Zombies were dead for a long while (you can't kill the undead (Double parentheses! (Triple! (If it's not math, should I still use brackets? (I have decided no))))), with the exception of the occasional resurfacing of George Romero, but then that goddamn 28 Days Later came out in 2002, and then The Zombie Survival Guide, and all of a sudden it's BRAAAAAIIIINNNNSSS and so on, and they just won't go away.  I got no probs with the zombs, I guess.  But I'm really, really getting sick of it. 

It's the wierdest genre trend ever (from the standpoint of cultural shifts - because zombies are totally not wierd) seven years strong, and getting stronger by the minute.  I just want it to fade away like when everyone was annoyingly obsessed with pirates.  Let's make cowboys cool again, huh?  I know, I know.  Cowboys are jerks.  Whatever, you guys are jerks.


Point the Third:

Oh, the hipsters. Every single thing about myself that I don't like (that yearning to be unique, getting angry when people assume I'm a johnny-come-lately, a distaste for average, talking about doing instead of doing), they assault to the extreme. It's nice having them around.

Here's the thing: what makes people unique is not saying, "I'm kind of unique." You must just be unique. Telling me you're unique proves nothing, because you give the impression that you're just like everyone else that thinks they're unique. Drives me nuts. Same thing with "free spirit." People who say they're free spirits rarely, rarely are. They're too preoccupied with trying to be a free spirit, negating the entire mindset behind spiriting free.

Calling yourself a nerd or a free spirit or a princess doesn't make you those things: you must just be them. More importantly, why do you have to be one at all?


Point the Fourth:

This is the type of stupid bullshit that keeps me up until four in the morning on a Thursday, furiously painting my apartment and trying not to focus on Die Hard. I always watch the Die Hard movies when I'm doing things that take hours, like Orange-Glowing the floor or painting the walls harbor blue. Kind of like how I always watch Star Wars when I'm sick, and The Last Unicorn when I lose something. Dude, and I am not gonna lie, I am a big fucking fan of harbor blue. Also, I can't believe I just actually googled and linked the paint code. It looks much brighter and darker than that on my walls. Wow, I am a douchebag.

...

The City of New Orleans: And Dance by the Light of the Moon

Day Five: Continued.

We’re not in that courtyard for long. Four seconds or so.

Out one door, u-turn right into another, we walk through a small room full of jarred herbs and then right into the altar room. The room itself was small, but splattered with junk.

Every inch of wall adorned itself with chiseled artifacts and drapes of fabric, statues and tokens and everything anyone had left there over the course of the past twenty-five years or so, because in the end, this is a new temple.

In the back of the small room, entertaining two young women sitting on the floor, was Priestess Miriam, cackling like chicken. She had a throne, kind of, a normal chair someone had painted and draped with...I don't know, gauze? Doused in jewelry. Leathery and soft. She sat in front of a coffee table covered with tiny jars of crap, a notebook full of repetitive lines of the same scratchy gibberish, a house phone and a big old jar full of something.

We browse, touching nothing, conquered by this treasure altar of garbage and crap and love. People left cigarettes, lollipops, sticks of gum, pencils, pennies, whatever they could as offerings to whatever divine element. Thousands of coins just lying all over the floors and the tables, in scattered piles and mason towers. Dollar bills stuffed themselves in the corners, the hands of statues, crammed into any open crevice. Dried fish, cracked ballet slippers, golf balls, sketches and photographs, burned out candles…a freaking hubcap. Everything drips onto something else.

After a couple of minutes the two girls stand up and say their goodbyes, and Priestess Miriam opens up her jar and takes a long sip.

"Girls. Come on."

We all look around. Did she mean us? She wants to talk to us?

So we step towards her. The incense is lush. You can't help but move slowly, flowing with the simple extravagance of the room. With a slight lift of your foot you can feel the thickness of your limbs, the thickness of air, you swim through that room with a heavy, hesitant ease.

Muffy slowly guides us towards Priestess Miriam and chooses a chair, and the other three girls settle onto the floor while I sit on the remaining chair. Not so much on it as in it. Its paint and limbs moan.

"Wha' can I do for you girls?" our Priestess mumbles.

How about give me some of whatever’s in that jar?

We’re silently trying to connect our eyes, hoping someone will speak first, trying to remain courteous while scanning the collection of bones and canisters, pots and jars, ceramic and glass, bike handlebars. Forks. Napkins scrawled with prayers. A dumpster of hope and gorgeous, fleeting, trashy belief.

"Well, I have a prayer request..." Muffy hesitates, leaning forward.

The Voodoo Priestess leans back and pulls a scarred hand up to her temple. "Thass a heavy requess. Wha di you have in mine?"

"Well, ummm..." Muffy suggests, fumbling. "To uh...to make good decisions."

"Ohhhh, Lord. Wha dya need to desside? Iz i' something like, for a jahb, or for a...something more impohtin? Becuz..." she's interrupted by that phone. She stops talking completely, staring at it, waiting for the ringing to stop. "I'm poplar today! You know how that iz. Somedays you have no one, talkin' to the mine and the head, wondrin' where you--" deep sigh "--gotta be. An' then somedays you gotta be...e'rywhere alls atwonce." She spasm slightly, and leans back and laughs, loud and shriekish, hiding her face in her hands.

Muffy and I both laughed, uncomfortably. This bitch crazy.

In a good way.

"I gotta whet my whistle." She takes another sip from that jar in front of her. Moonshine? Totally. There are bottles of rum and whiskey littered throughout the room, full and half-full, hidden between handmade dolls and guitar branches.

Priestess Miriam starts chatting away, pausing strategically to grab the arm of her chair and cackle and squeal at her own jokes that none of us quite understand. She rambles for a good half hour, somewhat incoherent, but eloquently so, about politics, choices, living in Chicago.

Oh, she’s originally from Mississippi, but she lived in Chicago for years, where she met Priest Oswan and planned on running away with him to Belize, leaving behind her children, the church where she acted as bishop on the South side, her job at the hospital. And they stopped in New Orleans on their way to Belize, founded this temple, and never looked back.

I feel heavy and try to concentrate on her words, because they seem to make sense, but I have no idea what she says half the time. She pauses only in her story to stare at the randomly ringing phone, cackle at the sky. Grab the arm of her chair, sip from the jar. All hopped up on spirits.

She asks what we do for a living, what brought us to New Orleans. We tell her about the soup kitchen and the train, and she spirals into some story about how no one cared about New Orleans until a catastrophe, and now everyone wants to help. Shouldn’t they want to help the places that are always in trouble, all the time?

Sometimes, I think she takes little jabs at us, as Priestess, as a beautiful, drunken, philosophical savant. No, I know she does. She flat out makes fun of us. Not to diminish our self-worth, but as a matter of perspective. What do five white girls from the Midwest know about life in New Orleans?

Because in the end, when we take our turns explaining our jobs, we aren’t a group of young women who are individually on sabbatical, teaching special ed, finishing our masters, building playgrounds, and raising money for inner-city schools, who collectively choose to head out to New Orleans to volunteer at a soup kitchen. We are unemployed, an instructor, a wayward student, a salesperson, and an office manager, and we’re on fucking Spring Break.

...

The City of New Orleans: A Killer Combination

Day Four.

It was much easier to wake up that Tuesday than I expected. Which is a good thing, because after a whole lot of drunk talk the night before, we promised Tom Turner that we'd eat his Lucky Dogs.

Like I mentioned in that drunk blog, we met Tom Turner hanging out in front of a liquor store with a rusted tackle box and a fishing pole, and he and Margaret got to talkin' 'bout fishin'. That girl knows her shit, but I was slightly stumbly and slurry, and I know absolutely nothing about fishing so I can't even faux a retrospective dialogue.

So we were Turner’s first customers on Tuesday morning, and I'm not gonna lie: he served up the most disgusting hot dog I've ever eaten. It's not like I expected high-class Chicago dogs, but it tasted like someone baffed into a meat grinder and linked it up for stupid, drunken New Orleans tourists who keep their stupid, drunken promises to dirty old stupid, drunken fishermen.

Luckily we were scheduled to be at LaFitte's Blacksmith Shop at noon for a cemetery tour and "the best bloody marys in town," because there's nothing like bloody, spicy, vodka-y goodness to carve away the taste of vile-ass hot dogs.

We get there early and strike up a conversation with a chatty old guy at the bar, who was all sorts of yellow. Yellowish hair, matching teeth. Yellowing fingertips fondling a newspaper and a cigarette. He sounds like he lost his voice fifteen years ago, straining for volume ever since. He offers to take a picture of us, and rambles on and on about restaurants we should visit and places to see, and tells us he’s a buggy driver and gives tours.

“You’re a buggy driver? Can I ask you a question?” I’m interested in this.

“Sure, but I think you just did.” He smiles. Yellowly.

“Why mules?”

“Oh, they're just more sure-footed, better suited for the heat than horses. Easier to feed, easier to train, you know.” He hands me his Official Buggy Driver Tour Guide card: Jeffrey Faar. He offers to take us on a buggy tour the next day, seeing as he’s got today off. A Grand Tour for us, he says. We're all for it. Fuck yeah, buggy tour with Jeffrey Faar.

While we're talking, Bloody Mary shows up. She’s our actual tour guide of the day, slightly snobby, highly spiritual, and crazy-educated on New Orleans history.

“Is one of you Muffy?” she asks, thudding her purse on the middle of our table.

“Yep, that’s me,” Muffy answers.

“Hello, Muffy, I’m Bloody Mary.” She turns her battered blonde head towards the bar. “Sweetie, can I get a seltzer water? With a lime.”

The bartender nods, annoyed at being called, “sweetie,” and does his job.

She lights a cigarette and makes small talk about our trip, ignoring Jeffrey Faar, who momentarily turns back to his newspaper. Her voice has a husky, irritable, sultry authority, like a condescending Jessica Rabbit who believes she's the patron saint of knowledge.

“What kinda tour you gals doin?” Jeffrey Faar hollers from behind me.

“Cemetery, and strolling through the French Quarter for a little bit of history about lost souls and local legends and...mysticism.” She flirts when she speaks, punctuating her words with little shrugs and suggestive eyebrows.

“Oh, cemetery tour huh?” He gestures to his newspaper. “You hear about that murder last night—“

“No, I don’t really read the newspaper,” she interrupts, crossing her legs. Finite.

“Oh. You goin up to Lafay-yett?”

"No, St. Louis. Actually, in an oddly poetic way, there was a suicide at Lafayette cemetery--"

There's a hacking cough, and Jeffrey Faar chimes in, "GEORGE?"

"Yes, George--"

"I knew him; he was a buggy driver!"

"Yes, he was. So's my husband. Actually—"

"He killed himself?" I interject, because of course I want in on this.

"What happened?" someone else asks. I have no idea who. Bloody marys make everything warm and forgetful.

"He got drunk and, well, went all on up to Lafay-yett,” Jeffrey Faar pokes his thumb towards the open doorway behind him, “an-an-and blew his brains out under a tree."

"Wow, that's a shame." Echoes and awkward sips all around.

"I actually performed a ritual ceremony for his mother and sister, it was really very sad,” Blood Mary says, somber.

"What happened?" I'm pretty sure that was Bobbay.

"Oh, well he was a manic depressive, you know," Jeffrey Faar puts down his cigarette and turns from his newspaper. "An' on toppa that a drinker."

"Ohhhhhh." Because we all understand drinker.

"An' you know that's lit-trally a killer combination."

"His family wanted a very private ceremony, too, because of just that,” Bloody Mary wisely nods, adjusting her leopard-print hoody. Seriously. Leopard.

"An’ so he was drinking, an’ with the medication an’ all that, an’ his mind couldn't handle it an’ so he blew his brains out----ahhhh, shoot," and Jeffrey Faar starts swatting the newspaper smoking beside him, flinging his burning, neglected cigarette off of page six and onto the floor.

"I burned page six," he calls to the bartender. "Sorry. I'm gonna get you another one, they're right down the street."

“Don’t worry about it, man,” the bartender responds from the back room.

Jeffrey Faar ignores him and continues talking to us, batting the newspaper. "Yeah an’ they had to cut down that tree, too. They say it's not because of George, and it's gotta be because of all the blood an’ brains on it or something."

Bloody Mary furrows. "No...I don't think that's true."

"Oh, well, that's just what I hear." And then he tries to convince her that the trumpet-playing angel over Louis Prima’s grave houses the soul of Prima and therefore his face, and where exactly you turn to get to see clearly it at whatever angle. Bloody Mary is skeptical and argumentative and bored with the conversation, telling him he's completely wrong while checking her red-as-hell lipstick in a pocket mirror.

Eventually, nearly mid-sentence and without warning, Jeffrey Faar up and hops on the bike resting next to the door and rides away, no goodbye or nothing.

“Did he just leave?” I look at Muffy.<

“Hyeah. He totally did.”

“Fucking whatever, man, I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

Bloody Mary starts with her elaborate, well-acted history lesson, dismissing Jeffrey Faar completely. It’s interesting, really.

Then just before we leave, Jeffrey Faar returns to the bar, fresh newspaper in hand. As we leave the bar for the tour, he yells after us, in that taut, rasping voice of his,“You girls have fun!”

I make sure to shake his hand. “See you tomorrow, Jeffrey Faar.”

...

The City of New Orleans: Professional Drinkers Association

Day Three.

Because of the shatness of Bourbon Street, on Monday night we bought PBR silos and loitered on the sidewalk behind the cathedral in Jackson Square Park. Okay, sure, technically only Coors Light comes in silos, being the silver bullet and everything [nards] but you can't full well call a 24 oz can of heaven a tallboy when it's more than a tall order and you're drinking double the pleasure. So "silo" it is.

After striding around the block for awhile, two dirty crackheads plopped next to us on the sidewalk. We carried on conversations within our own individual groups, laughed at the same jokes and threw sporadic conversational interjections at each other.

A stranger ambled up after about half an hour, saddled with a low-slung back pack and munching out of a box of Crunch Berries with a long-handled spoon.

"Hey strangeh," called a crackhead. "Where yeh headin'?"

"Down Frenchmen street. There's a [some musical style] band playing at [some bar] and they got [some drink specials.]"

"Niiiiiice. I'll be headin down theah lateh."

"Cooo, maybe I'll see ya."

"Aiight. I'll be lookin fer the boxxah Crunch Berries." They exchanged smiles and a handslapfingersnap, and Crunch Berry Guy drifted away with his box and spoon.

I looked at Muffy. "I am hungry. And that guy was awesome."

"Dude. Yes."

"He is not an amateur."

"Hell no, that guy's definitely a professional. I'll bet he gets paid to be fucked up."

"I would pay him to be fucked up."

"I would give you half."

"And then I'd double his fucking salary."

"Crunch Berry Guy is so pro he's got a Masters In Professional Fuckedupness."

"Yeah, but that M.P.F. was bestowed upon him in the streets. Being a Professional in a field such as ours is a natural talent. That's some shit you can't learn at Tulane."

"Fuck Tulane."

"Unless he went to Kellogg. Now that's a school for Professional management."

"HAH! For sure, dude. And Crunch Berry guy manages to mix business and cereal."

"Dude, cereal is business. That's what they teach you at Kellogg."

"Cereal is serious business."

"They should really leave cereal for the Professionals."

"PDA 2009, dude. P. D. A."

We hung out there for a couple of hours before wandering back to the hotel, where I ate some Cheetos, wrote a drunk blog, and then convinced Muffy and Amber to head back out with me.

I led them to the casino across the street. I was just itching to play craps. Seriously itching. Took twenty dollars cash and an ID, because if I'd had plastic on me I would have diced my ass off. Nearly two hours of craps and free drinks, and I passed out back at the hotel with fifteen still in my pocket. Muffy and Amber weren't as lucky, but then again, they don't play craps.

And I am a Professional.

But the highlight of the night was back on the sidewalk, leaning against the fence behind that cathedral.

"I came here twenty-two years ago with my dad--" the older dirty crackhead began, his voice surprisingly clear and pleasant, without an ounce of the grit we expected, "--and he was like, I'll be right back."

He paused to light a cigarette, taking a long, slow drag. "I'm still waiting," he exhales in an expert stream of smoke. "He never came back."

We exchanged secret glances, listening in on his confession.

"So I fucking went to Mardi Gras and sold my roller skates for crack."

...

The City of New Orleans: The Perception of Cool

Day Two.

As we eased into New Orleans on Sunday afternoon, once again, Muffy took it upon herself to play that song again on speakers, for the train to hear. This time, however, all of the patrons that we'd befriended over the past several hours sang along with us.

There was this old Irish woman whose son lived in Kankakee, IL, and got all excited when Willie dropped the town name in the song. A gentleman from Memphis kept on singing out, "Good morning, America, how are ya?" on repeat, laughing in embarrassment, but playing along anyway. Others, too, whose names and life situations I completely forget.

It was like living in the jaunty, annoyingly elevated and rosy minds of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Secretly, I loved it, and in my head, a motley crew of strangers harvested complex vocal harmonies and shared rhythmic dance sequences with the steel rails of the train, and singers dropped their personal lines with smiling, coaxing asides to scowling passengers who eventually realized that they needed to lighten up and live, dammit, and in the end succumb to the raw power of Willie Nelson and his proverbial back-up singers.

Jesus, I don't even know if that made sense.

We stepped onto the platform, twenty minutes after the song was over, and people were still humming the tune, singing with each other.

In the end, though, I think everyone was just really excited to get off the goddamn train.

Immediately the five of us snagged a cab and headed straight to a show at the Dragon's Den, packs and all, just so we could watch a band from Indiana that we see all the frakking time in Chicago.

On our way to the show, our cab dragged behind a short man in a vest and fedora riding a doubledecker lamplighter bicycle and balancing a live rooster on its high horse handlebars.

The Dragon's Den is on the border of the French Quarter and Bywater, littered with those heroin chic little crust punk fuckers.

You know the type. The ones who are trying so hard to express their individuality through fashion, and in the end just all look like a clan of dirty little homeless people, with torn clothing and too much eyeliner. The punk-punched leftovers of last night's party...why do they try so hard to be each other? Individuality should be effortless.

Just as an aside, to the naysaying elitists: the harder you try to be different, the more of yourself you will lose. You are conforming to the movement of non-conformity, and there's already tens of thousands hiding in there, striving for cool. I propose that to truly be different, you must first abolish the concept of "cool," because really, that's all that's holding everyone back from becoming what they want: they're afraid it won't be cool enough for their peers.

Define cool however you want. It could be crust punk and dreadlocks, it could be power suits and couture handbags, it could be serving fried catfish at a Christian Mission House, it could be dried flowers and old oiled leather. Murder the concept cool, cement and bag it, because you don't need it, and it's holding you back.

At least I think you don't. I could be wrong.

Now, Bourbon Street? That's not cool. I know, I know, I said murder the concept of cool and don't judge and be yourself and all that business, but seriously, fuck that succession of city blocks. Amateurs, the lot of them, puking and pissing and crying all over themselves. One girl: riding a mechanical bull with a short skirt and an open crotch, giggling uncomfortably, embarrassed at getting mad at the operator, who gyrated the bull and pimped out her box for the bar, grinning like a pedophile at the playground.

Bobbay yelled at that guy for nonconsensual eye-rape of a girl too scared and stupid to stand up for herself. I have never been prouder of a friend.

And so, the Professional Drinkers Association was born: consisting of Us, passing drunks their good, solid reputation back, with a handshake and a guffaw, not as slutty bullshit Tinkerbells oblivious to action, but as sloppy, poetic fighters and dreamers and champions of hilarity and conversational soul.

Welcome to New Orleans.

...

The City of New Orleans: Deborah in a Tizzy

Day One.

On the train they call The City of New Orleans, one of the Amtrak employees threatened to call the Amtrak police on us within five minutes. Deborah. That's her name. Obviously, Miss Deborah was having a real honk of a day (Is that a phrase? That should be a phrase), and she wanted to take it out on the five girls who smuggled liquor onto the train. She didn't know we smuggled liquor, though, and she didn't know that a member of our party was carrying pot, and she didn't know that we were going to be harassing all of the Amtrak employees about the frequency of train stops where some of us could take smoke breaks, or that we were going to hang out in the lounge car being loud for the duration of the twenty hour trip.

But Deborah was upset with us because we settled into some seats that were "Reserved for parties of three two or more" according to the piece of flimsy chicken-scratched paper tacked up above the chairs, and Muffy whipped out a marker to made necessary adjustments, so the sign read, "Reserved for parties of three two or more Us."

So Deborah got her inner-workings all bunchy and flipped out on us for destroying Amtrak property.

Then, just to be more obnoxious, the second our train starting chugging out of Union Station on Saturday night, Muffy cranked up her Ipod speakers and we all sang along to Willie Nelson, because I mean, come on, when you're on the train they call The City of New Orleans, it's like a rule or something.

Muffy got it into her head that if you shook up a little cup of half-and-half long enough, eventually you'd get butter. Silly Muffy. All you're gonna get is gross warm milk. But Muffy wanted butter, and Bobbay and I sat in the lounge car, taking it upon ourselves to see the butter process through after she passed out. We'd finished all of the alcohol, so really, what was the point of her staying up anyway? Other than making butter?

So I'm just hanging out, shaking the cream, churning the butter, and I turn to Bobbay. "Seriously. Muffy's all, 'I want butter.' And then she makes us do all the work."

"She's lazy," Bobbay shrugs.

"I know. What kind of buttermaker is she?"

"She's...a half-assed buttermaker."

I slam the creamer down on the table. "She is a half-assed buttermaker."

And then, just to prove the exchange existed, Bobbay and I recorded ourselves overacting that dialogue about forty times over the next three hours before heading back to our seats, attempting sleep.

...

On another note, I would like to apologize to anyone I drunkenly emailed any time over this past week.

...

We Need More Beer.

If anyone lives in Carbondale, our train will be there at 1:21 AM. Please drop off one case of PBR...hold on...a fifth of Jager, and some peppermint schnapps to the Carbondale Amtrak station. Because we are out of liquor.

We have a five minute window. You must be there between 1:21 and 1:26 AM.

Thank you for your time.

You will be paid back in cash money, karma and possible blow jobs, but probably not from Bobbay. Or Margaret. Or Amber. Or me, really. Okay, so Muffy might suck you off.

...

Are You There, Nola? It's me, Rassles.

Well, I leave for New Orleans in a couple of hours.

I'm extremely glad to be traveling with Muffy, because we're both total travel minimalists. She's one of my Travel Europa cohorts. That was months of wearing the same three shirts every day, this is nothing. A week? Backpack. Done. It took me longer to sew a case for my camera (which took the entire duration of Teen Wolf) than it did to pack (because seriously? Why shell out money for a camera case when I have fabric, cotton balls, and old bubble wrap? Yeah. You heard me. Best camera case ever.)

Chances are whoever brings a rolly suitcase is going to get seriously mocked.

But, not to leave you guys hanging, I have guest posters. They should all feel very special that they were chosen, because I did not draw names out of a hat. And everyone else should feel sorry for themselves, because obviously I don't love you as much as I love them due to your extreme ability to suck.

(That is an outright lie, and if you believe that, I don't want you reading this blog anymore.)

In the end, there were some people that I'm sure wouldn't want to do it, and some people that I'm sure would, and some people that don't even give a shit that I'm writing anything right now.

(Stop talking.)

Okey dokey.

Everyone have a pleasant week. I apologize in advance for when all of your stats drop suddenly without me checking your blogs every five minutes "just in case." In case of what? I have no idea.

Later skaters.

...

I am red as all get-out.

First of all, I decided to check my ‘space before picking up Harry Potter, because once that book is in my hands I'm fucking reading until it's done.

Second of all: Fantastic bachelorette party.

1. Rooftop cubs game. Rules. Excellent food and lots of booze. Love.

2. Everyone made friends with this kinda hot guy on the rooftop who was wearing white pants (haha, lame).

3. At the game we decided we were going to go to Rossi's (the bar) and hang out for awhile once the game was over. My phone runs out of batteries.

4. Left the cubs game and I got separated from everyone. So I hopped on the red line and went to Rossi's alone, ordered a PBR, lit a cigarette, asked Lynn Meyers (bartender) if I could charge my phone behind the bar, and opened up Harry Potter. Yes, it came with me to the bachelorette party.

5. Everyone at the bar wanted to talk to me about the goddamn book. "Is it good? How far are you? How many pages is it?" etc. etc. etc. I'm trying to read, here, people. But eventually I just put the book away and made friends. There's Gary, and old guy wearing a t-shirt for The Color Purple, who talked to me about what it was like being the only black kid in a Catholic school. And Jim, who was also at the Cubs game, the kind of guy who wears sunglasses with a string attached, and who booked it over to Rossi's to avoid his wife, who kept on calling him.

6. After about an hour of talking, I check my phone to see if it's charged. It is. I call people, and they're all like, "where are you?" and I'm just like, "duh, Rossi's."

7. I stay at the bar for like forty more minutes and then leave and walk over to the hotel. I am pleasantly hammered and it's six thirty. Before I can even get inside, Fraya snags me and is all like, "lets get beer and cigarettes." Ok. We go on a mile hike to find a Jewel or White Hen (the only ones I knew about were far, so we walked over there all stumbley-like down Michigan Avenue.)

8. Bought booze and began the trek back to the hotel. I'm sunburned as all fuck, and we watch some tap dancing street guys and give them like six bucks because they were awesome and I was drunk. Me and Fraya just stood there for like fifteen minutes clapping and cheering, and eventually a crowd formed around us and started giving the tap kids more money. Our work there was done. So then we leave.

9. We get back to the hotel with our sixpack and head over to room 1216 or something, and when we get there we hear serious cheering. Pound on the door, Schmee opens it a crack and is like, "Prepare yourself." So then we go inside and there's hardcore porn on the television, everyone is hammered, cheering, and watching the guy with the white pants from the rooftop take off his white pants (thank god, because white pants are LAME). I was thinking, "way to go Schmee, secret stripper. Excellent." But he was just a random dude that they convinced to leave his friends and come back to the hotel and strip for them. Amazing.

10. Everyone leaves to go to dinner except me and Fraya, and we hang out with The Amateur Stripper for awhile and finish off our beers. We make fun of his pants for about an hour.

11. Powell gets back to the hotel and we decide to head over to Rossi's again. Walk the couple of blocks over there and stop at 7-11 for cheap dinner sandwiches and go into Rossi's. People remember me from earlier, and they're all like, "How was Harry Potter? You find your bachelorette party?" and I'm like, "yeah, they convinced a guy to strip for us for free at the hotel and now they're eating tapas and drinking sangria, but we came here for 7-11 sandwiches and PBR." I am all class, I swear to god.

12. Fraya is hammered and goes back to the hotel and passes out for the night. This is at like ten.

13. Me and Powell make friends with a guy named Donny and he leaves his friends and follows us around for the rest of the night. He followed us to Mothers, where we met up with the rest of the party and kidnapped Muffy and sang some quick karaoke, and then to Estelle’s even though we never went inside, and then back to my apartment and slept on the LayZBoy.

14. Just before Mothers I take sixty bucks out of the ATM.

15. While we were hanging outside of Estelle’s they decided they wanted food (Powell, Muffy, and random guy Donny) so they went into Flash Taco to get burritos, and I started talking to a hip hop performer named Calloway who was selling his CD's on the sidewalk. I give him two dollars for one and realize that my sixty dollars is missing. I'm fucking hammered and don't really care. I probably put my card in the ATM and left the money there. I suck.

16. Calloway keeps me company for awhile and does some freestyling for me, which I think was impressive, but I really can't recall. Everyone comes out of flash taco with their burritos and I give Calloway a hug before he hands me a slip of paper with his Myspace page on it, and we head over to Estelle’s. The Compatriots want to eat outside so they sit down on a cement wall under a viaduct. Two guys are there with two dogs named Leopold and Belle. These dogs RULE. Leopold is a smallish American Bulldog (I mean, he was still huge, but he didn't look like beefsteak like some bulldogs) and he becomes my newest bestest friend while everyone is eating.

17. They decide they don't want to go to the bar. Fine. Lame. We have no cash so we walk home. Donny gives Powell a piggy back ride half the way.

18. Get home, turn on Venture Brothers, and hang out before it's pass out o'clock.

19. Wake up this morning and head over to IHOP, where I find my sixty dollars in my wallet.

20. And here I am. Sunburn. It's about time for some serious Harry Potter 7.

...