Southern decadence

I've often said that of major American destinations, New Orleans is the most truly decadent. Admittedly, I haven't been to Key West or spent a significant amount of time in Salt Lake City, but allow me to present my case.

San Francisco may have its perversions and New York may have its fetishes, but in those places, the deviants all have membership cards. They form committees, have fundraising drives, and carry around reference copies of Robert's Rules of Orders. Nothing like organizing decadence to make it deadly boring. Wanna stop spree killers in this country? Have them form a union. Wanna put an end to the Dennis Kozlowskis and Kenneth Lays and all their lavish, orgiastic spending? Tax 'em--and make 'em fill out the forms themselves. Wanna put an end to men having sex with one another? Let 'em get married. Let 'em adopt. Let 'em have to figure out health care plans for themselves and their dependents.

A case in point. One recent morning, I shared a table with a colleague from Washington, D.C., at a part-social, part-professional brunch. In passing and totally unencouraged, the colleague decided to share, telling me about how he'd convinced his social group back in the Nation's Capital, the Radical Faeries, to incorporate as a non-profit organization in the District of Columbia, for which in 2005 they received their federal 501(c)3 tax exempt status.

Woo, the rush of excitement over that news. Be still my mitral-valve-prolapsed heart.

I don't know a great deal about the Radical Faeries. Something about Wicca. Something about drumming circles--or was it crop circles? Something about getting spiritual with your brethren and sistren in yonder wood. When I knew a couple of members back in my D.C. heydays, these radfags seemed primarily interested in going out into the aforementioned yonder wood, wearing dresses, doing some mushrooms, and f*cking each other senseless, more or less in that order. Granted, it wouldn't have taken long. The senseless part, I mean.

Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe I shouldn't begrudge anyone who's getting more sex and religion than me. I guess that the Radical Faeries' woodland hijinx could be spiritual if the moment and the moon were right, and I guess they might be considered radical in an old-hippies-at-Altamont kind of way. But it's hardly the Weather Underground or the Symbionese Liberation Army, is it? It's not like anyone's out there calling themselves Tania and holding up Talbot's for matching separates or overturning cold medicine vending machines for hallucinatory substances, shouting "Bring the war home!" as the contraption collapses to the floor.

Tell me I'm running dangerously low on whimsy (a claim I might dispute) or overflowing with cynicism (a charge I wouldn't deny), but mostly the Raddies just sound goofy to me--not to mention encouraging of the wrath of God in the form of a poison ivy rash in your errogenous zones.

New Orleans has always been different. Why I love and admire the Crescent City so much is because it's as if everybody crawled out of the swamps of the South, the bayous of below-the-Mason-Dixon Line, making their way to town to finally be themselves and live life on their own terms. Drag queens and debutantes. Creole and Cajun. Gays and the God-fearing. Jazz and voodoo. Paupers and princes. The oil and gas barons and the artists, as well as just the plain old and plum gassed. Separate but together. Unabashed. Unadulterated. Undeterred. The city that care and social censure forgot. That's my vision/version of New Orleans.

None of this may fly with the Chamber of Commerce or some of the local residents, but it is indeed a compliment, the highest praise, and most heartfelt. In a world where the Olive Garden tries to pass itself off as the restaurant you'd take your relatives from "the old country" to dinner; where fake tans, fake teeth, and fake body parts represent the highest forms of human accomplishment; where scripted TV shows about alliances, loyalties, immunities, and tribes pass themselves off as reality-based--well, the Big Easy ain't all pretty, but it is at least all real.

* * *

Little made me sadder in recent years than when New Orleans flooded in August 2005, the result of Category 5 Hurricane Katrina, its strong storm surge, and an overwhelmed levee and pumping system--which, despite the claims of our fearless leaders, was known for years to be unable to handle anything stronger than a Category 3 storm. (Editor's note: I know I read about this in the Times-Picayune on a visit to New Orleans in the late 1990s. How you like me now, Brownie, Chertie, and Georgie?) Despite its dangers and its decadence, New Orleans always made me feel safe and comfortable, as if there was a Southern urban center that was truly liberated, livable (despite the humidity and crime rate), and welcoming to all. Atlanta it ain't--and thank heavens for that.

This past week my job took me to New Orleans once again, the fourth time in my life. Being that it is, was, and may be again a major center for conventions and conferences, it's perhaps inevitable that I would end up there at some point. Although after Katrina, I wasn't so sure. Last summer, as I watched the horror show unfold on CNN along with the rest of the world, I began to wonder if anyone would ever inhabit New Orleans again and, selfishly, if my plans to visit the city for something other than work would ever materialize.

I'm happy to report that New Orleans is alive, if not perhaps quite well. While there, I only got a slight taste for the destruction and change wrought by Katrina, spending too much of my time going to meetings and vendor demos, running my mouth with friends and colleagues (who me?), and overindulging in the rich food on offer everywhere. The scent of rot in the French Quarter--had that always been there? The lack of cabs--because many of the taxi drivers evacuated and haven't returned. The rushed-off-their-feet restaurant and hotel workers--again, many haven't yet returned. FEMA trailers downtown. Boarded-up windows, closed down shops, areas off-limits. Dumpsters overfilled with discarded, damaged building materials. Blue tarps on roofs in the neighborhoods and nary a street without at least one camper trailer or van parked next to a house, either a home for the family or their friends and relatives. The Morial Convention Center and the Louisiana Superdome, now seemingly benign public structures but only a few months before the scene of barbarism, neglect, and tragedy. This is some of what I noticed in the six days I was there.

It felt decadent--for all the wrong reasons--to have too good of a time in New Orleans. But at least by being there I was witness to some of what had happened in the recent past and some of what is occurring now to rebuild the city. And at least by spending some money--and lord knows I did, on food, accommodations, cabs, clothes, and books--I helped the local economy, however slightly. Over the last year, I've made some charitable donations, too, and attended some Katrina-related benefits. I've even had this long-suppressed fantasy of taking a week or two off from work and going to New Orleans, not for fun, not for discovery, but simply to help clear debris.

For a brief moment, as I was on the bus heading out to Louis Armstrong Airport, it occurred to me not to return to Pennsylvania, but to stay in the Crescent City. To play footloose and finance free for a while, existing on the edge of the economy as a waiter or a bartender (neither at which I have any skill) and helping in some small way get the battered and bedraggled grande dame of the South up on her tottering, gladiator-laced stilletos and back out on Bourbon Street, earning a living any way she can.

Instead, I came home.

So what happens now? Do I just forget and move on, something we are all too quick to do in this world? If so, how so? Can you easily forget a city of half a million displaced persons? A city where more than 1,300 died in the storm, the flood, and the botched emergency response? A city where a 91-year-old woman named Ethel Freeman-- who survived the hurricane and the flood, made it to higher ground in a boat with her son, only to die waiting to be rescued--was left covered in a blanket in a wheelchair on the convention center grounds, the same convention center grounds I trod in the name of commerce, scholarship, and professional duty? I know I had forgotten about Mrs. Freeman until I heard Anderson Cooper mention her in a speech he gave at the conference I attended. When Anderson asked if anyone recognized the name of Ethel Freeman, only a handful--out of room of hundreds, if not thousands--clapped. I'm not alone in my short-term memory, it would seem.

Yet how can we forget? What happened in New Orleans last August was unforgettable--and one might even say unforgivable. True, shit and disasters happen. We can't control everything in our world--we can control very little, in fact, despite the pretense otherwise. Not even George Bush, Michael Brown, and Michael Chertoff can control everything in our world--despite the president and his Gang of Four's (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Rove) best efforts otherwise. Thus, as much as I would like to, I can't even completely blame them for what happened in New Orleans after Katrina.

For they alone are not responsible for generations' worth of disregard for public transportation, neglect of the needs of the poor and aged, good-enough-but-not-that-good urban planning and civil engineering, and constant underfunding of social services.

Instead, we've got our history, our culture, our ancestors, our politicos, and even ourselves to blame for such a laissez-faire, without-a-care approach to life and well-being. Could anything be more decadent?