A profile of Joe
N wrote up the profile of J based on his conversation with me Saturday morning to send into nolafugee.com’s 40 under the influence contest – here it is:
Joe, a prime candidate for 40 Under the Influence, does not want to divulge his last name. He has long been known as “Black Joe,†to distinguish him from “White Joe†his downstairs neighbor, yet he’s always preferred “Red Pick-up Truck Joe,†a mouthful. But the hurricane blew White Joe to Richmond, VA, and Joe’s red pick-up truck to the New Orleans scrap heap, so now we simply have Joe. When asked about the nature of his profession, declares that he’s “a hustler by day and a vampire by night.†He’s a Mid City resident who can be seen, on any given day, doing yard work on the streets surrounding Bayou St. John or hauling a load of trash to the dump. Naturally, he’s been very busy since the flood. There are, however, jobs that he feels are beneath him, and one of those is unpacking boxes for a local judge’s wife, for whom he’s worked for decades: “I get to her house and she expect me to unpack. Now you know that’s a woman’s job. . . . Unpacking always been a woman’s job. That lazy ass woman, I said no. I ain’t gonna do it. I ain’t gonna unpack that lazy ass woman’s boxes. . . . Don’t matter, I ain’t gonna take no money for it either. I ain’t gonna do it.†So you see, he does draw the line at the historically much more feminine task of unpacking boxes.
His day job as a hustler is a little more obvious than his night gig as a vampire (metaphorically speaking of course), but that is linked directly to the vital role that drinking plays in Joe’s life. He says it best: “While allay’all are sleeping, I’m drinking. Can’t sleep, got nothing else to do, so I drink. Got to.†Joe readily admits that he cannot survive the rigors of the workplace without spending the night knockin’ ‘em back. In fact, he’s got no choice.