The Savior of Misbehavior

Mama's got a squeezebox. Daddy never sleeps at night.

I’ve done my share of ridiculous shit. Most of it worthwhile. Some of it worthy of regret. I used to say I didn’t believe in regret, but I’ve since grown up. I don’t have a lot of regrets, other than occasions when I purposefully, ignorantly, or accidentally hurt people.

That said, I regret not going to New Orleans as an adult for the first time sooner. My first grown-up trip to New Orleans coincided with my fiftieth birthday two years ago. The most recent was a month ago.

What even is misbehavior in adulthood? I don’t know, especially since I just recently realized that I cannot get into trouble with anyone except the law.

No, really.

I’ve been an adult for a lot of years and should have realized sooner but some things are deeply ingrained. My therapist had to break the news to me that no one is going to ground me.

Who knew?

So, apologies to my future ex-husband, Mr. Greg Dulli, and that great term, “the savior of misbehavior,” which I sang to myself every time I crossed Decatur Street during this visit. Especially the times when I was on my way to work from a coffeehouse because someone miscalculated her PTO days at work and ran out after booking this trip.

Every year I make a point of getting the hell out of town on my birthday. After a history of bad birthdays (No, really—my mom went into labor with me at my uncle’s funeral visitation and my birthdate is surrounded by the death dates of two of my grandparents. And no, they didn’t die together in some tragic accident. These were grandparents from opposite sides of the family who died 31 years and two days apart but whatever I’m probably not the Angel of Death.), I make a point of being anywhere else.

Taylor Swift had other plans for me this year. She took over New Orleans the week of my birthday. But hey, New Orleans a week later coincides with Halloween. Plenty of misbehavior opportunities!

So, I spent my first full day in town at the grocery store. Now that my knees and back are all (mostly) fixed and I can enjoy cooking without excruciating pain, I’m back to being excited by grocery stores in other cities. Just being able to spend an hour browsing the aisles, something I took for granted until 2017, is still new and exciting.

I met a man with a Cajun accent so heavy I didn’t understand a word he said. He didn’t mind and carried the conversation while I dug through a deep bin of $1.50 bags of Camellia Beans. Later, while I was hoisting a large bag of satsumas, wondering if they’d explode in my suitcase, he started talking to me again, and I understood every word he said. Clearly, I’d been at Rouse’s entirely too long. But he told me where I could get a big plate of white beans and fried rabbit for $15 the next night, so …

(I did not go get white beans and fried rabbit the next night. Mostly because I had a reservation at Justine.)

In my natural habit— by a plate of pommes frites and a cocktail in a brasserie.

Aside from making groceries, as they say down there, I went to coffeehouses and worked, wrote, and talked about writing.

Petit Clouet is the most adorable coffeehouse anywhere.

My Woody Guthrie pal Mark, a history professor I met years ago in Tulsa while working on that manuscript about Woody Guthrie, met me for coffee with a vow that we wouldn’t talk about our Woody books.

We talked about our Woody books. Even after leaving the manuscript alone for nearly three or four years—long enough that I can’t confidently answer that question—it still nags me. I’ve had some ideas. Discussed them with Mark.

Goddamnit, I’m re-writing the book I started almost 13 years ago. Which is far scarier than my Halloween in the French Quarter.

The Bottom of the Cup is purported to be the oldest fortune-telling business in the Quarter. They book two months in advance and I woke up early on August 31st to make sure I got a Halloween appointment.

When it was my turn I joined a very young woman in a room slightly larger than a closet with the lights turned low. She handed me a hot porcelain bowl of steeping hibiscus tea the same color as my hair and told me to put my energy into it. Instead of us sipping the tea while she consulted the remaining petals and leaves about me, she dumped the liquid and started finding hearts and a man’s face with a letter in the middle of it.

With very little prompting from me, she pieced together the ick of October 2023, and I saw what it meant. It was the beginning of a transformation where I tucked myself away from the world except for the very most important people, stripped my activities down to only the ones that made me feel like myself, and came into my own, my age, my abilities. Almost a year to the day later, this young fortune teller nailed the past year of my life that’s made me a very different person.

In her tarot card reading, she zeroed in on my personality— correctly—and verified that much of what I’m doing in my life is exactly as it should be. There’s love coming from places I hoped but wouldn’t allow myself to believe.

As I was leaving I took one of her business cards. She told me to flip it over, there’s a message for me.

As an obsessive watcher of clocks for 11:11, I gasped even though it’s not an uncommon time for people to make wishes. What’s truly gasp-worthy is the number of times I’ve caught clocks at 11:11, especially in the week after the trip. For four days in a row, I saw every single one. And I’m manifesting. Wishing. I have solid ideas about how the next phase of my life should be and I set my mind to repeating the barest bones of what I want. If stopping for a minute or two a day to wish, to put energy into my vision helps, I’m here for it. Doing nothing but breathing for a minute’s good, too.

Are tattoos still considered misbehavior in some circles? Not mine, obviously. I spent some time bleeding for the world’s dumbest tramp stamp with Joel van Goor behind the gun, capturing my technicolor Hansen’s Sno Bliz dreams on my ass.

The inspiration and the art.

When returning home from a trip I always fly home as late as possible so I can squeeze one mostly full last day out of my time. Sometimes I squeeze too much and miss my plane.

And still, I didn’t get into trouble. This is revolutionary!

One of the many beauties about New Orleans: bad restaurants don’t survive because they’re competing with so many incredible places. Long wait for brunch? Just pick the closest restaurant that tourists don’t know about. You’ll be fine. I promise.

In this case, the closest restaurant didn’t seem to be a restaurant at first. Bywater Bakery looks more like a place where you’d stop by to pick up a fancy birthday cake. Which, they are, but when I pulled up to a zydeco duo playing in the intersection of Dauphine and Independence, I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

They were playing “I’ll Fly Away,” one of the songs I sang in church with Granny Viv, so there might have been some tears.

Went inside, and got my favorite breakfast: an apple fritter and café au lait, just like I used to have with Granny Wheeler (the one who died the day before my 19th birthday for those keeping track.) Took myself outside to watch the duo and shed some tears because of them and the napkin holder.

Granny Wheeler didn't make gumbo but she sang "Jambalaya" a lot.

And it was just about as close to perfect as it ever gets. The large table of folks beside me emptied, with one woman lingering to talk to me. She lives down the block and pointed out all the neighbors sitting on their stoops, listening to the music. That’s just Saturday noon in the Bywater. She and her husband retired to New Orleans—there’s an idea! She said that she’s not a music person, and doesn’t drink alcohol, but it’s the best place she’s ever lived.

I sat long after lunch, enjoying the music and having time to kill. When they played “Squeezebox” by The Who, I knew it couldn’t possibly get any better, so I tipped the band, and thanked them for making my day. They played the chorus an extra time, extra loud, as I walked to my car, shaking my ass, laughing.

One last stop: a naughty (because I came from too-totaling evangelicals) day drink at R Bar, my favorite New Orleans watering hole that I’d neglected the whole trip. Maybe I was a little salty that they didn’t have any of their inn suites available and I had to find a new place to stay.

NOT R Bar. Granted, it was Bud Rips, which has the same owners as R Bar, and it was delightful as always. Not the same, though.

Pulling up my favorite barstool, I took my regular place at the bar. The bartender remembered me from last November as she handed me a frozen pineapple Mojito.

It’s New Orleans—gotta have at least one frozen drink, right?*

A young guy nursing a beer while he waited for his friends to get out of the Quarter and find him said hi. Then a couple took the two stools beside me, asking where I was from. Feeling very at home and fully delighted from my lunch music experience and being at R Bar, I answered when I’d likely just nod and turn my attention to my phone, as has been my habit in the past year.

But we got to talking, and, feeling more like my real self than ever, I leaned into it.

I got the couple to confess a big secret to me (no, I’m not going to tell you but let me just say, it was GOOD!). The wife threatened to kill me over my good skin. Facebook friend requests were made and accepted. I left while I was still thoroughly enjoying myself but needed to get to the airport on time.

And this is what’s so magical about New Orleans. It’s not the spirits and ghosts, and it’s not the boozy spirits, either. They’re part of it but on the surface. A lot of people don’t get further than those things. I mean, they make for good vacation memories.

The people who dig deeper than the spooky and drunken fun parts of New Orleans find something—their people. What does that mean? I’m still trying to put it into words, and I won’t try just yet. It’s very easy to say there are people who “get” New Orleans and those who don’t. So I’ll keep it at that, keep it a secret in a foreign tongue to be deciphered in your own tea leaves if you, too, happen to get it.

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*I had two frozen Palomas the night I was at Bud Rips.