A moment of grace is a dangerous thing.

So I was walking home last night, singing Home of the Heroes and crying about Jesse, and this group of girls strolls around me and one goes, "I ain't gonna steal your purse, white lady!" And I said, "what do you need, five dollars? How bout we go for a drink?" And her friends were grabbing her saying come on come on, and I was like, really, let's go to the bar and get a drink." Looking her in the eyes so she could see that I wasn't joking, or angry at her. Letting her see into me if she dared.

I was crying because Jesse is gone forever, trying to hold my tears back so I could talk, and she's younger than he would be now, and she was just kidding around using me, a total stranger white lady on the street to make her friends laugh and didn't realize I ...was bleeding my heart out on a public street at 11 at night. Jesse. She and I would have probably had a nice chat, but her friends (understandably) did not want to cross that bridge from wherever they were to the bleeding hell behind my eyes.

She was looking then, you could see the micro expression (what you look like when you realize you just stepped in way over your head but this is a New York street and you get your poker face back fast as you can) and I could feel the tears streaming down my face again, and I know she saw them and realized that I wasn't afraid, I was just dying inside. Poor thing. I wonder if she'd ever seen that before in her life. Living death. I wonder.

And then she was my own daughter. I couldn't tell her that. I would have done anything for her.

engagement

So we were sitting at the Frisch's big boy, me, my sister and our boyfriends. It was probably about 730, we were on our weekly date. I think my sister's boyfriend brought Chuck along the first time because he was nervous about courting my sister, Karyn, who had big knockers and long brown hair. I was tall, thin and did not at all belong in the Midwest and knew it, knew it like I knew what color my eyes were. All I had was my wits, and that was not a virtue for a teenage girl in Hamilton Ohio.

So anyway we would go to the same restaurant, scrape together allowance and babysitting money -- Chuck worked at an actual job, so I always ate ok.

This night we were sitting by the window, and there was a couple across the floor from us. I noticed him doing something -- earnest -- you know. And I said, to amuse myself mostly, "look, he's asking her to marry him." So Chuck and Karyn and Greg turn around as craftily as they can. They're angled so they can pretty much see what I see.

The man is leaning forward over the table, holding her hand their elbows nearly touching, and I'm narrating my imaginary version of the events. She blushes on cue, it all fits into the story, and then she -- well, she doesn't eactly shake her head, but the look is no.

Another slow-motion disaster for my people

From Zachary Richard's excellent Zack's Bon Ton, a song I can't get out of my head as the Mississippi swells higher, and the government can only drown one Cajun homeland to save another.

Water’s on the river rising
More water come more land float away
People from Catahoula down to Berwick Bay
They got no place left to stay

When the water come out the basin
There ain’t nothing waterproof
Standing on the levee with the river raging
I’ve got nothing left to lose

Big river / Big river’s on the rise
Big river / Is gonna overflow
Big river / Is gonna wash us to the sea

Back in 1927
Six feet of water in Evangeline
Now the government trying to tell us
They say that the levee’s gonna hold next time

Big river / Big river’s on the rise
Big river / Is gonna overflow
Big river / Is gonna wash us to the sea

I’ve seen the water come under the levee
Boiling out from a crawfish hole
And before the sun was setting
Four feet of water in my front door

Big river / Big river’s on the rise
Big river / Is gonna overflow
Big river / Oh Mighty Mississippi’s on the rise
Mighty Mississippi is gonna overflow
Big river is gonna wash to the sea

Oh my baby come back, come back

I miss you so much, I can't walk up 5th Avenue without seeing you at 2 running to the corner of a building and stopping, waiting for me, to grab my hand and cross the street. I can't stand walking by the little garden in front of your best friend's house, and all the things that happened in that little apartment, and how his mother stopped letting you be his friend.

It breaks my heart. All of it, everything you were robbed of in life, but most especially life. You were so full of life, the last person anyone would have pictured sick. I have a picture of you and that same best friend at 3, him with his braces and crutches, and you dressed like Robin Hood, oh my god. How am I supposed to keep living?

Neurologists are overpaid assholes.

That is all.


Fortunately, tonight Peach is throwing a 70s theme party downtown, so I've got my black pleather jacket and striped shirt. And neon pink leopard print shoes.