Jessica, the girl who wants to save the world

19Aug09

I’ll tell you right now that this story is longer than anything I would normally publish. And if it were not for the generous evocation of New Orleans, I wouldn’t have published it. However, I really enjoyed reading this writer, who wanted to be credited as The Eternal Summer of Hobeaux, come to terms with the impossibility of a brightly burning infatuation and the way it still lingers over him. I assure you, that doesn’t give anything away. If you have the time, read it.

She laughed at me. It wasn’t an isolated incident, mind you. She laughed many times that afternoon. But this was the first time. This time it was special it sounded perfect, the way she laughed as hard as you can when you’ve got a seatbelt on in a car driving over streets that haven’t been paved since Ford was President and you’re experiencing something completely new.

I’d known her for less than twenty minutes. She asked me my name -  the great romances don’t start like that, I though to myself. Well, actually I thought that later. When she asked me my name, I was in the process of thinking ‘how do I go about being careful in hiding the tin of Skoal and the spittoon from my passenger seat before she realizes I dip’. Jessica never commented on my more-disgusting tendencies, which, if they were something she noticed, was something I appreciated, and if she didn’t, then I deserved points for stealthiness.

She laughed at me when I told her I didn’t want to change the world; it’s going to hell in a hand basket, and really, what’s the fucking point anyways. She wants to change the world. This is, I guess, commendable.

Working for Hillary Clinton, a labor union, realizing she wants to do something more, aspirations of law school, election law, public-interest-type-stuff. I’m rooting her for like my favorite sports team.  ‘I’m too cool to have a plan’ I told her. I was only kind of kidding, and she laughed that special, amazing laugh for the first time, and with the last strands of laughter still ringing and causing me to be momentarily blissful, she told me that was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.

We were driving through downtown New Orleans as the sky opened up and seeing past the hood of my car became a challenge. I said ‘welcome to New Orleans, where we’ve got thunderstorms and rain that you can’t find anywhere else.’ Five minutes later, as we were driving through the lower ninth ward, of Katrina fame, it was sunny. And she was still laughing at my ridiculousness.

As we were heading east on Claiborne, under the highway overpass that had destroyed a formerly great neighborhood, she remarked how I was good at these tours. ‘You see, here’s the thing. I practice these tours. Even the pauses, the asides that seem like I’m talking to myself, they’re all planned. I do it in front of the mirror each morning’ I said. I was addicted, constantly craving her to laugh, so I could marvel at how perfect it sounded, how wonderful it made me feel. She admitted that she had never heard of the indie rock band Wilco (kind of understandable) or the international music legend Fats Domino (not really understandable), whose home was destroyed during The Storm. But she had heard of Homer Plessy. As in Plessy versus Ferguson. Separate but equal. He was from the Lower 9^th. Right here. Where my car was. She knew that. And laughed at me for adding dramatic silence to the story of how the Plessy from Plessy vs. Ferguson was from the lower 9th ward, the same place that Brad Pitt was trying to save, Spike Lee had documented and our present geographic location.

She was in from Washington for one night, training our staff of computer-illiterates on the finer points of our reporting software. In between ordering records and reading Phillies-blogs, I’d made it a point to make eye contact with her, just so she knew I cared. When it was all said and done, my boss  designated me to giver he a ride back to her hotel. Maybe they thought I had been flirting with her before.

So we drove through Uptown, with its historic mansions and she was amazed at the ancient palaces that after The Storm were protected by private Israeli security companies. I made sure I told her this, and not just that one of the houses that stands out among the rest was nicknamed the Wedding Cake House, but how one of the top Democratic Fundraisers in the Gulf South lives there. She wanted to know what the guys name was. I hadn’t practiced this part of the tour before: I admitted to her I didn’t know his name. We drove through the Central Business District and I pointed out how O’Keefe Ave was named after one of Huey Long’s main political enemies and how Carondelet Street was named after the first governor of Louisiana, back when it was  a Spanish province; neither one of us, unfortunately could figure out how it should have been pronounced.

I dropped her off at her hotel and said I would call her later tonight, that we would hang out; she had one night in New Orleans and Bourbon St is sooo touristy. And then I missed her hotel and had to drive around the block again because I didn’t want to make her walk half a block; the CDB was swarming with mobs of 12 year olds. And yes, she laughed at this, too. I went home, listened to side one of Okkervil River’s ‘The Stage Names,’ watched Joe Blanton pitch for America’s team and wondered how soon was too soon to call her. What was the rule? 3 days??  I didn’t have three days, unfortunately. But I didn’t want her to think I liked her too much.

But I did like her. So Joe the Lumber struck out the first two batters he faced, Will Sheff reminded me that life may be just a bad movie and I stared at her business card with her number written on purple ink on the back, twirling it in between my index and middle finger, trying to find clues about her in the way she wrote the number two. And I called her. She was in the French Quarter-of course she was, it was an easy walk from her hotel- and I told her I would meet her down there, though not at the current spot she was standing at; she wasn’t going to wait at a corner for me. I got to the quarter, stopped at a dimly lit bar with classic rock on the jukebox, grabbed a beer, put it in a plastic cup and went to meet her.

‘Welcome to America’s worst frat party,’ I tolder her as our paths converged. I was trying to be smooth, but I’m sure I came off as an idiot. We walked through the quarter. Her daiquiri, to her admonishment, had 4 shots of alcohol in it. When she was so visibly shocked to learn this, the girl behind the counter asked her if she wanted another one. We’re not in Washington anymore. She was smart and funny, and I was into her. We ate beignets at Cafe Du Monde and talked about things we hadn’t talked about yet. At one point she mentioned an ex-boyfriend, and I wanted to ask her if she had a boyfriend that came without the preceding ‘ex’; instead I buried my face in my blackberry. I had some emails to send for work and a Phillies game to follow.

‘She had a short life’ she remarked to me, as we look at a statue of Joan of Arc, donated by the French, with the horse riders life years, 1412-1431, inscribed on the base. ‘I think it had something to do with being burned on the steak’ I told her.  I feared every word I said would fall short of the perfection I wanted it to have.

Eventually we left the Quarter–I wanted her to see that there is more to New Orleans than Bourbon Street, that we aren’t just a bunch of drunks down here. We played air hockey at Ms. Mae’s, the world’s best dive bar, where mixed drinks are $1. She beat me 7-6. I was ashamed, but not angry; after all, I had knocked two or three goals in on myself, and I was with her.

We went to Le Bon Temps, the one of the ultimate New Orleans bars and shot pool: I drank beer, she drank water. We weren’t good at pool, but both ok with it. Someone put Tom Waits on the jukebox and I was very happy about that. I didn’t ask her to dance, even though Jersey Girl is, in its own, Tom Waits way, a great song to dance to, and eventually we left and went to a club she could never pronounce on a street there’s no chance in hell she’ll ever be able to spell (Tipitinas on Tchopitoulas) and saw Soul Rebels, a New Orleans institution.

We stood up on the balcony, watching the Rebels play and DJ Soul Sister spin Michael Jackson tunes while the people down below danced; she liked people watching. I asked her if she wanted to go downstairs, to stand in the sweaty mass, to dance, to experience what a Soul Rebels show really is–a head-on collision of sweaty body’s, heavy beats and loud brass instruments. She said she wanted to stay upstairs, and so we did.

I dropped her off at her hotel downtown around 3. I told her I hoped she had a great time, and sent her a text later saying that I hoped that she realized that there’s more to New Orleans than Bourbon St; that we’re more than storm survivors who enjoy revelry as much as anyone. And I realized the heartbreak that she would lead to. She’s the ultimate DC girl–Georgetown law aspirant, American University graduate, a desire to change the world, leftist politics with a conviction to boot – the type of person who is born to live in DC. And me? It’s hard to tell. I guess I just wanted to hear her laugh one more time. And that’s where the heartbreak hit. I was never going to be able to leave the Crescent, and she was never going to want to live anywhere other than Washington.

The next morning at an event we were doing my boss asked me if I’d seen her last night. I was the ultimate New Orleans gentleman, I assured him. Took her to all the right bars, opened car doors for her, was resolved to send her a ‘Brad Pitt for Mayor’ t-shirt, a ‘DJ Soul Sister for President’ sticker and a mix-tape of the Tom Waits songs I should have asked her to dance to. I told him that, in my opinion, the staff really needed more computer training, a two-day seminar really, something to thoroughly get people the nuts-and-bolts knowledge that would help us succeed. He saw right through me, and we both laughed at the obvious: I just wanted to see her again.

My boss eventually told me a story, about how when he was working for a Presidential candidate he had tried to date a reporter who was covering the campaign he was working for. He’s now married and very happy, but not to this reporter.

After he finished his story, a sense of closure kind of hit me, and his story hit me, but not in the way he had intended. Sometimes, you need to draw the line and realize you’ve drawn it. And I did it, drew the line, and knew what it meant, right then and there. I would never hear her laugh again. My boss couldn’t date a reporter covering his job for obvious reasons and I could never have that perfect laugh wash over me for the rest of eternity for equally obvious reasons: she’s always going to be a DC girl who wants to change the world, and I guess that I’m a New Orleanian, for better or worse, who has accepted that there’s no changing the world, and you might as well watch it go to hell with a drink in your hand, living in a place you can’t bear the thought of leaving.

Filed under: stories of heartbreak   |  1 Comment