The next stop on our epic cross-country trip was New Orleans which, pre-Katrina, was a weird mix of Dixie Beer, corrupt cops, stomp jazz and the bad sections, where we had scored some killer weed. We knew a Tulane guy who said we could crash in his Frat House, a stately converted mansion. He was away on summer break, but told me and my road-buddy to commandeer the couches downstairs, stock the fridge, act nice and they would welcome our traveling party circus. A pretty, young blonde woman was also staying upstairs, renting a room for the summer while she did ROTC training. She’d appear each day after military drills, still in uniform, let her hair down from the regimental bun and chill with our motley crew in the TV room before heading to bed. Seeing her every day made me think about getting a real job, a life, etc but our crazy partying and traveling was part of our artistic notion to experience everything once, fully, then move on. Admittedly, however, I was getting too stoned on this killer weed. While watching the US Open, I thought I was controlling the tennis ball with my mind. In hindsight, I was probably just correctly guessing the next shot, but with synaptic pistons firing I thought I could telepathically conjure a date with the ROTC girl. I sent thought-waves upstairs and the next day, to my surprise, she appeared saying, “My girlfriend is in town. We need dates to a formal tonight. You and your buddy should take us in your car.” We nearly spilled the bong, accepting and wildly gesturing towards where the car might be. After raiding the hall closet for rumpled suit jackets and ties, the girls arrived.. and their appearance was startling. They were not sweet Southern belles, but two smoky-eyed, made-up “bad girls.” We should have heard funereal procession horns, but instead cha cha’d out the front door, past statuesque historic pillars, to the car. They pulled little vodka bottles from their purses and passed them around, unexpectedly directing us to the bad part of town. They wanted to buy some killer weed like ours, which apparently we’d been blabbing about all week. Driving from mansion row to blight city is a bummer, but the girls compounded it by saying, “Here we go, to the other side of the tracks. With all the trash.” We looked baffled until they said, in chorus, “C’mon you guys, it’s Ni**ertown.” No matter how stoned you may be, a cold shot of racism wakes you up, and they continued with more hate-jokes like, “Don’t worry, we love blacks.. We think everyone should own one.” They ignored our shock and horror, saying we needed to be schooled by “real” Southern girls. We told them we’d met a few and maybe they had that backwards! Our protests fell like empty plastic vodka bottles on a curb as we parked in front of the black bar and got out.. Our “bad girl” fantasy had now turned into a perverse white-on-white porn. We decided to buy more weed. As we ordered with the girls, they were surprising steely in the almost all-black bar, and chatted with two other white dudes who were also scoring. I needed my brain to work now, despite its recent hallucinatory lapses. As I looked around, I could see the faces of every famous black person I’d idolized. Fats Waller was at the bar, Louis Armstrong at a table with Professor Longhair and Little Richard playing poker. From the jukebox, a serious Malcolm X gazed. He knew it was our “midnight at the crossroads.” We could ignore these Jezebels’ evil for some action later, but.. The ladies headed into the powder room. In a flash, I approached the other white dudes, asking if they had a car. They said yes and in a quick-swap-change-up, our suit jackets came off of us, and onto them, ties still dangling from the pockets.. The two shocked, dopey bros seemed stoked to suddenly have dates to an old-time fancy racist ball as the gals approached, looking confused. Before they could reach us, we turned and shuffled out the door, past imaginary Lightning Hopkins and James Brown. On the ride back, the radio’s free jazz internal rhythms made more sense syncopating to the car’s smooth rattle, clipping potholes. We had left without getting more weed, but maybe that was Ok. Things pure, whether herb or racism, help set the high- and low-water mark. If you get away, you have your measure. We loaded our gear, closed the heroic party palace and headed west to Texas. The coastline cycled back and forth, from swamp to clear Gulf water, while my buddy mused, “Hey, who do we know in Austin?”
