Dangermond.org

Last year at Tales of the Cocktail I caught up with an acquaintance of mine who was flirting around with this guy I had never met. When I next spoke to her I asked her how it was going with him and she said, “Well, I’m not sure. I think we are cousins.” Fast forward a year later and she gets to the party last night with this same guy in tow and so this morning when she called, I said, so you are still seeing him. And she said, “No, we’re just friends, turns out we are cousins.”

The LaLa was officially house warmed last night and a lovely time was had by all, including me. Anne Churchill from Karma Kitchens did the food and it was very tasty – smoked trout mousse, lamb with kaffir dipping sauce, oyster mushroom pate – a bunch of yummy selections. Beth Ribblett from Swirl did a cheese selection that was dynamite with bread from Le Boulangerie. She also selected some good wines – Crios rose, Peachy Canyon Zin, Lafage for the white, and Hogue Cellars Genesis.

At 3 PM in the afternoon when I hadn’t heard from Heather who was going to bartend, I called Anne in a panic and said can you help me out? And her answer: Don’t worry, I can make things happen. But Heather did show up, she had just bartended at Pal’s the night before and left her cell phone there.

I had borrowed all of Jerri’s patio furniture and that completed what I had and then Roy cut the grass from the funky neighbor’s side all the way to his side and he put out an extra table and chairs on the bayou and Jerri put out a set she has. We put eight tiki torches to keep people from parking on the grass and it actually looked fun and festive. I had copper pots filled with citronella to light up the front and with a little more magic the LaLa was in the mood for a party.

Finally I put my red tutu on – and the party began. At six in the morning, sitting on the front porch with a few guests left, finally I said either we were going to breakfast or I am going to bed.

Today is already in full swing with party prep – last night when I was hauling yet another box in, I thought about my mantra to ask for help and yet it was too late to call anyone. This morning same thing. I need to work on these skills.

I was walking Arlene and Loca around the bayou and when we got to Bell Street I saw a young girl with a big boxer who was acting up. She was yelling at the dog and seemed not to be able to control it. As we approached the dog snapped out of its collar and came charging at me and my dogs and I instantly started yelling at it. I heard the name – Buster – and tried to take the dominant alpha lead. I finally got the dog by the collar but it was bucking and my dogs were going nuts and the girl was saying in a very very young girlish voice, “Can you help me?”

A man drove by in a truck and said do you need help? And I said yes, get out of the car and come help me right now. He pulled over and I said, just stand there and make sure you have my back. Then holding Buster by the collar, I attached Loca’s leash to the wrought iron fence. And the guy went to go for it, and I said, she’s fine. Just stay right there. Because now I was worried he might snatch my dog after the story I just heard. Then I placed Arlene’s leash on the wrought iron fence. I told the girl to get the collar and put it on the dog while I held him. She couldn’t do it. Again she said, “Can you help me?”

I wrestled Buster, got the choke collar on him but it was too tight for some reason and then the girl saw a piece of the collar on the sidewalk. So I fashioned another way to do the collar and I told her to take him home right that minute. She needed to calm down and so did the dog.

The guy was just standing there with a cig in his mouth. I thanked him for being there.

Sometimes you really need help (the girl), and sometimes you just need someone to have your back (me).

Now onto the party.

I was getting a pedicure at the salon and talking to the girls and E was relaying to me an intertwining story that if I didn’t know better I would have thought was made up. She and friends and the kids were at the house playing Clue when she saw some kids across the street fooling around on her neighbor’s porch. She went downstairs and rattled the iron gate. They couldn’t see her because she hid behind banana trees but they took off from the noise. One of the children at the apartment was the child of the man who was recently shot and killed down the street from her. One of her friends there had been friends with the guy and was still grieving.

A phone call came and it was her best friend who bartends at a neighborhood bar down the street – the friend was screaming hysterically in the phone and E couldn’t make out what she was saying, so she and her husband and another woman drove over to the bar to find her in the street banging her head on the sidewalk and screaming like a wild animal.

What had happened is two men had come in the bar and snatched her dog. Picked her right up and ran out to a third guy in a get away car.

The police were called and when they got there they said they needed a description of the dog and a picture but the owner was still so hysterical they couldn’t get her to calm down. So E and her friend ran back to the apartment complex where all of them live to get a picture of the dog off her computer. While they were in the girl’s apartment getting the picture, one of the kids from her apartment came over and said that someone was in the friend’s (who was friends with the guy who was shot) apartment. E and her friend had left the gate unlocked for just one moment while going in to do this. They came running out and upon seeing a man in the apartment they started to approach and the man came out and charged at them so they all ran back to the apartment and E had all the kids get down and turn off the lights and they called the police.

She also called her husband who was at the bar trying calm the other friend. Nothing would calm her. Two police cars left the bar and came immediately to the scene but by that time the perp had fled.

At about 3 in the morning they came home and called our neighborhood vet who said two things were at risk – they were going to take the dog to fight or they wanted to breed it. The vet told them to post flyers, take a bunch of flyers to the post office and have them given to each postal carrier, and then call every vet in the city and the SPCA.

No one could sleep, they spent the night making flyers and faxing copies of the missing dog information every where they could think. The dog owner finally got to bed sometime around 7AM the next morning. And at 9AM when E sat down to start calling vets, one of the owners of the bar called and said she drove by the bar and that the dog was sitting right out front.

When they went down to get in the car, the neighbor across the street came out and said did you see something around here last night? And E told him about the kids, and he said they had tried to start a fire on his porch.

Would it be lovely to wake up and find this was a dream?

I walked Arlene and Loca around the bayou then dropped Arlene off and took Loca for a longer walk through City Park. The graceful herons were out in abundance in the lagoon and Loca was content to walk beside me and not investigate. I thought about my emotional state lately and the memories that have flooded my waking thoughts and decided to put things in perspective. I got this far in life without having my heart broken, quite a feat if you consider how thoroughly I open my heart up. And my heart wasn’t just broken, it was torn asunder by two men and a boy, so it was the Triple Crown of Heartbreaks.

Passing under the massive oaks with the moss hanging down, I thought if there were world enough and time I might go through a dozen Triple Crown of Heartbreaks since each one was worth the hurt. I met my soulmate in my husband, and yes, I think you can have more than one in a lifetime. I had the affair of most people’s dreams with a man who showed me a world of tenderness and passion. And I love(d) a little boy like he was my own. Some people go through life and don’t have even one of those experiences.

So with perspective and my glass half full, I’m a lucky woman for having been loved by those two men and a boy and for having loved them. And the best part is that there are more experiences to be had. I’ve got the world on a string is how I see it and next time I’m going for the trifecta, because why not.

I went to see L – mistress of massage – and told her I needed an attitude adjustment – I’ve been melancholy when I should be walking on sunshine – she said she had just the thing for me.

First she ran her hands up and down my back, strongly applying pressure to my spine, my hips, down the backs of my legs, deeply kneading the soles of my feet and then back up the sides, toussling my hair and down again from my shoulders to my fingertips.

Oh, the power of touch – it carries such magical healing qualities.

Then she said she had something special for me and she poured warm oil onto my back in small tiny drops – she called it rain drop therapy – her hands whooshed the oil around after each application feathering it in broad strokes from my spine outward to my sides and down my hips.

I could hear the rain outside just beginning to fall.

When I turned around, through my closed eyelids the light took on a different hue.

She whispered take a deep breath, Rachel, and when I did she rubbed my tummy and swam her hands up along my breast bone and down along my hip bones and released a lot of what was being held there – all those residual emotions that have been bubbling up over the last few days – overtaking me when I least expected – all of it melted away.

I saw B on the way out, and she said, “You look pretty relaxed for someone who is about to have a big party tomorrow night.”

Smile.

This morning R saw me and said, “I love that you always have that smile.” Well, if he knew what was behind the smile, perhaps he’d know just how much that smile means. Last night when Vanessa sang a waltz her mother had written years ago called I’m in trouble again, I had to leave the Ogden because I got all welped up and then knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop the floodgates. Lord knows, it has lessened a lot, but dang it if it doesn’t just come on out of nowhere – a song, a memory, a whisper from a dream – and my heart feels like it is breaking all over again.

After I ran into R this morning, I just climbed in old Blue (it really looks so beat up it is no longer Big Blue, now she is just old Blue) and sobbed again – having to look for a napkin to wipe away the deluge of tears. I spiralled downward emotionally thinking that it’s over for me, I’ll never be able to love again, and even worse, I can’t even flirt – it’s like I’ve dried up emotionally unless of course I want to pull heart ache back front and center and then I can get real emotional.

The smile – yes I’m happy, I’m getting stronger, my heart is healing, but I know this morning I can say with all honesty that I don’t want love to come around here any more, it hurts too much.

I was speaking to a photographer who has been doing a lot of New Orleans stories lately and her last was about bounty hunters that she said had her going into areas and filming the poorest parts of this city. She said the poor were barely hanging on here before and now they are even worse. She said this is the story that doesn’t come out about New Orleans now. And I thought great – now GQ is about to run an article lambasting the backasswardness of New Orleans. Isn’t poor a problem in this whole country? Wasn’t it a problem when Bush Jr first became president and started sending all our resources overseas?

There is a lot of talk lately that there are a couple of bands of kids – from 6 to 10 years old – that are roaming the neighborhood with no parental supervision. Apparently these kids are living in abandoned houses and that they were separated from adults during Katrina and now they band together to take care of each other and for security but they are on the streets unsupervised. Is this true?

In the middle of my bounty are there children under my nose that are living off the streets – this seems so far fetched – but bears investigation to see if there is any veracity to this subject.

I was emailing back and forth with a source of mine – he is top dog at a media firm in New York and happens to be in New Orleans this weekend and is coming to my party – we go way back, when I first started covering media and he was just a director then not a big ole VIP like he is now. He told me “you’re a dangerous girl” in his last email. As if.

Gal Holiday was at the Ogden last night playing to a happy crowd of people who were swaying and smiling to her sunshine sound. The doorman told me we should clear the floor and all dance. It was a nice pick me up as yesterday was another day where I was glued to my computer multitasking beyond human capacity and trying to carve out a moment to think about the bigger picture and my place in it.

But the glory of living here and Gal said it herself to me the other day on my front porch when we were rocking along and talking about post-Katrina times – New Orleans’ musical cup runneth over and that is why it is tough to do well here. When she and her band show up in other parts, the musically deprived parts of the country, they draw big crowds, but here in New Orleans there are so many options sometimes you have to have the luck of the night or a good solid following to pay the rent.

If you haven’t seen her and her band play before, check them out August 7 at Rock N Bowl or later that week on Saturday at the Maple Leaf.