Year 1 in New Orleans
Obvious hook, but really: it’s ironic that New Orleans has the nickname of the Big Easy. Sure, you can walk down the street with a 40 of Olde English and it’s perfectly legal. The cost of living here can be problematically cheap if you play your cards right. Airbnb and VRBO have destroyed neighborhoods whilst simultaneously allowing starving artists the opportunity to no longer starve. If you like day drinking and hustling, this is the city for you.
New Orleans was also the homicide capital for what, four decades? Wikipedia says we’re third as of 2014, and CNN calls New Orleans’ violence “beyond the pale of reason and sanity.” Until I had a car, I didn’t leave my home at night unless my boyfriend, Chris, was driving me. And even so, the only places I go alone at night are the 24 hour Walmart in the next parish over and the Mudlark, the local DIY experimental music and performance art venue where weirdos such as myself easily blend in.
I hear gunshots almost every day. I mean, probably. I don’t really notice anymore. I take a kind of halfassed solace in knowing I haven’t been robbed, attacked or sexually assaulted in the past year. The first year moving to a new place is always the hardest, and I often find myself thinking against my better judgement, “I wasn’t fucked with in the first year, so why would I get fucked with now? I’m not a tourist anymore.” I carry a stilletto knife on me at all times just in case.
The cops here are really lenient about traffic violations compared to the rest of the East Coast, presumably because there’s more pressing matters to attend to. Maybe this is a weird transition to make, but as someone coming from Virginia, the HQ of Dick Cops, this is a stark contrast and a big deal to me. A few months ago, I watched someone drive the wrong way down a one-way street while a cop was parked on the corner. The officer and I exchanged confused glances but he didn’t pursue the driver. Hell yeah. Red lights are generally seen as optional, half the cars I see on a daily basis don’t have license plates, and speed limits are rarely enforced. I’ve only heard of people getting pulled over for drunk driving, but all things considered, that seems like a feat.
Of course, New Orleans has the reputation of being one of the most corrupt cities in the country, with good reason. Far and away the most racially polarized, financially-divided city I’ve ever been to. Moreso than DC. Cops get killed out here on the reg and the department’s chronically understaffed. Many neighborhoods have been rapidly gentrifying post-Katrina and pushing out families who have lived in these homes for generations. Even the lower 9th ward, the neighborhood hit hardest from Katrina, has 20 and 30-somethings from out of state buying and flipping houses. A CVS has also sprung up recently in the lower 9th, the first non-local business to open in the neighborhood in over a decade.
Even with all the corruption and questionable practices, there’s some cool things politically about living here. Our mayor, Mitch Landrieu, recently stated that he supports Black Lives Matter, which is rad. Locals here are, for the most part, progressives. A leftist oasis in the tea party state. Sanders bumper stickers are abundant and Clinton supporters are sparse. People are very embracing of the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s weird to be normal; it’s normal to be weird. The more you push boundaries, the more people like you. It’s arguably the only US city where you can make a living as a musician. Artists, especially those who can build or sew, are treated like royalty.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to get so poltical and think piece-y. That’s not what this is about. I’m not trying to channel my college years. I just wanted to talk about the past year because it’s been nuts.
May
I graduated Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA a few days after my 22nd birthday. One week later, Chris and I loaded up his ’08 Prius with a couple suitcases and bags and drove down the East Coast to get the fuck out of socially-conservative, protestant Virginia. We stopped in Charlotte for a NASCAR race (highly recommend), Folly Beach outside Charleston (also highly recommend), Oyotunji to work on an article (all him, check it out), Savannah (nice), Dauphin Island (great), and finally New Orleans. We move into the right half a shotgun in the trendy St. Roch neighborhood with four other folks, two of whom Chris had met a month prior. We moved out 10 days later.
June
Without housing, we do the rational thing: we put our belongings in storage and depart for Mexico.
The national sport in Mexico is Charreada, which is sort of like a rodeo. It’s an animal rights nightmare, complete with horses getting whipped and impaled by bulls, but it’s nonetheless a very significant piece of Mexican culture. The sport originates from Mexico’s rich animal husbandry traditions and the charro, or cowboys. They’re super decked out—sombreros and everything. Anyway, Chris wants to sell the leather whips used by the charro to tourists and punks in the French Quarter as a lowkey BDSM hustle, and I’m all about it.
We drive down to McAllen, TX, park the Prius in a garage for something like a dollar a day, and take the bus into Reynosa, a border town. Mind you, once you hit the Rio Grande Valley, everything goes from English to Spanish and you’re basically in Mexico-lite, except with, like, law and order. You cross the border and suddenly everything is dusty, worn-down and brandless, you don’t see any police, and you remember that the cartels are real and that Mexico has a reputation...for DANGER! But once you get into central Mexico, that feeling of “Oh fuck I might die,” dissipates and gets replaced with “Oh fuck look at that goddamn mountain.” We spent the night in one of the weirdest motel rooms I’ve encountered (all tile everything) and depart for Guadalajara the next day, one of Mexico’s major cities, in search of whips.
We get to Guadalajara at around 4am. We consider staying at a 5 star hotel for about $80 a night, but decide rather to stay up, attend Catholic mass at 6am and find a hostel afterward (which we do, for about $60 cheaper). No one else was staying at the hostel while we were there unfortunately, but it was located next to a park full of street performers and near the tianguis (the open-air market) where Chris strikes gold. He picks up a pleathora of whips and, feeling bored with the Atlanta of Mexico, we depart for the San Francisco of Mexico: San Miguel de Allende.
God, what I’d give to live here. A popular ex-pat city, San Miguel de Allende is a largely bilingual, expensive-for-Mexico-but-still-cheaper-than-America paradise. It was here where I felt like I “got” why people leave the first world. The architecture is beautiful, healthy food is plentiful, people are active and the scenery is gorgeous. It seems like the perfect city as an American to disappear into. They don’t have an airport but I heard while I was there that a lot of Silicon Valley businesses are starting to set up offices in the area, and that Google’s already there. I don’t know why. This is all hearsay. Ahem.
While there, we visited the Cañada de la Virgen, an ancient Otomi pyramid on the outskirts of town that was discovered in 1998. The Otomi were sky-watchers, much like the Mayans, and were gifted at predicting seasons and times. The position of the pyramid in accordance with the moon and the reflections of stars at night in the nearby pool helped the Otomi grow crops and tend to livestock.
After about 2 weeks galavanting through Mexico looking for fetish items, we board the bus and head back to McAllen. We get pulled off the bus and are almost arrested 3 times for not having a tourism visa that no one told me about (Chris knew but didn’t tell me until much later, “Potentially getting thrown in a Mexican jail before my sister’s wedding was a risk I was willing to take for the $16 we saved”). Our passports were never checked entering Mexico either, although thankfully that wasn’t an issue returning stateside. Neither was the alleged visa. I get the impression this happens a lot.
We spend some time in Austin. We go up to DC for Chris’s sister’s wedding. I find out at the reception dinner that one of my college roommates was hit by a semi and died. I mourn. I continue to mourn.
We come back to New Orleans in July with whips in tow.
July
A friend of a friend is going on tour and will sublet his room to us! Score!
We move in and the room is about 6'x8' big with a queen size mattress taking up most of it. Between the lack of space, the shock of my first New Orleans summer (complete with no A/C), and not knowing anyone in town, I start to go crazy. I begin hallucinating and hearing voices and I fall down a lot.
I dip after about 2 weeks in a Taaka-related stupor and go back to Richmond. I clean my apartment out and see some of my friends for the last time before moving “for good.” It was a really weird couple of weeks. The bus ride up was almost 48 hours because some lady starting hitting her kids at 3am and a bunch of cops had to come on board and arrest her, so I missed my connection. I’m grateful to own a car now.
I sell half my things and store the rest in boxes in my Mom’s house. I still need to move them down here.
I fly out to Oakland to meet Chris on July 21st. His cousin is getting married and we’re going to spend the week staying with a friend in the Mission. My first time on the West Coast! Wowee!!!!
We spend the first day in Berkeley, the leftist capital of the country. Arguably most known for People’s Park, located near the University of California Berkeley campus. It was founded in the late 60’s out of protest of the land being developed by the school. Reagan, who was governor of California at the time, sent police to one of the protests, which became known as Bloody Thursday because people were murdered by the police defending that plot of land. Long story short: the people won, and People’s Park is now a public-use, volunteer-run park with no government involvement. It’s primarily used by the homeless, and Food Not Bombs is active there daily. Berkeley and Oakland, from what I’ve been told, are the best places in the country to be homeless. Berkeley also has tons of openly communist bookstores, countless vegan restaurants and patchouli everywhere. I love it and hope I can go to college there in another life.
One of Chris’s friends met up with us and invited us out to his home in Modesto, down in the Central Valley. Modesto has the nickname of Methdesto, and it shows. It was a cool experience. I’ve heard people are starting to move out to there and Fresno because it’s so cheap to buy homes and it’s only a couple hours from major cities. It seems wild to me though: there’s hardly any culture or anything to do. I’m not sure if it would be worth it.
We spent the following days in the Mission and Haight-Ashbury, going to parks, smoking weed and eating burritos. We even tried out a float tank! I was in yuppie heaven. The wedding had some family drama but was ultimately fine. It was cool to meet a side of his family for the first time.
We flew out from San Francisco to Cape Cod to meet his other side of the family for beach week, which was fine. My first real interaction with New England was as bland as I expected. The food was great, though.
August
We come back to New Orleans determined to escape our sublet and we succeed, despite the odds (no jobs and no references). We get an apartment in the Bywater: what was once a promising neighborhood for aspiring artists turned into a vacation rental disaster. About two weeks after we move in, the house our sublet was in burns down. The neighbor in the other side of the house fell asleep with a cigarette on her bed. Everyone is okay.
Our neighbor has unlocked wifi—the first place we’ve lived with internet in New Orleans. We relax for the first time in 3 months. Everything feels new and peaceful.
September
Chris starts selling whips at the French Market, although we have more fun selling them on the street. I offer to whip people for a dollar to huge success. We carry this on for a few weeks until we realize it’s not enough money to live on.
I have about $60 to my name and fall into a deep depression until I manage to get a job via Craigslist near the end of the month. I would be an administrative assistant at an afterschool non-profit. The school is great, the staff is great—the faculty for the afterschool program is not. I bike 4 miles to my job, work 6 hours and bike another 4 miles home, with Fridays off! My boss tells me he initially didn’t hire me because I didn’t have a car, but the first guy he hired got a better gig, so he hired me. I tell him that’s discrimination and against the law. He ignores me.
October
Someone breaks into our apartment after I leave for work one day and steals Chris’s laptop and gun. Chris calls me and I ask my boss the minute I get to the office to be dismissed but he doesnt believe my story. He eventually lets me leave after working five of my six hours because I broke down. The following week, he invites me over to his house multiple times, insisting that we can’t work in the school during fall break despite the rest of the administrative staff being present, and he also begins hitting on me, so I quit. The day before I quit, Chris leaves town to go to Cheap Fest in Richmond. I could have gone if I quit my job a day sooner. I cry, often. He returns in time for Halloween. Things are still fairly dark and I channel it into my costume.
November
Allan Toussaint dies and the city is in mourning for the better half of the month. Things are eerily quiet, but not in a bad way. Chris’s birthday is November 14th and his family comes to visit. We eat a lot of good food, again. Brennan’s is a very beautiful, expensive restaurant.
We go to Austin a couple days later and visit Slackerville, an artist collective space that is about to be turned into a storage unit facility. I’m extremely bitter about this.
We go back up to Virginia for Thanksgiving. I stay through January to get my driver’s license, to detox from New Orleans and to save money. I feel sane for the first time since July.
December
I spend most of my time in bed ruining my sleep schedule and eating the overpriced readymade food from the Fresh Market that my Mom buys for me because neither of us feel like cooking. I’m oddly not depressed; I feel like I’m floating in a void where nothing harmful can reach me. I don’t have to worry about money, food or shelter. I have friends in Richmond that I can visit although I have no desire to. I am content in my filth. I watch documentaries and read and try to keep my brain active. I begin camming as an easy way to make money and to have something quasi-productive to do. I quit after about a week because I can’t get my sleep schedule to sync up with when my Mom isn’t home. I feel like a teenager but I make enough money to buy a bottle of Chanel foundation.
After driving my Mom’s Jeep maybe twice, I take my driver’s license test and pass. I accidentally have the brights on the entire time. The teacher tells me that I was one demerit away from failing. Little did she know that I live in New Orleans and it doesn’t matter.
I go to North Carolina for Christmas and spend it with my Dad’s side of the family. My parents divorced when I was 13 and I flip-flop holidays. This year, I went to Wrightsville Beach and it was extremely peaceful. My Grandmother buys me a car for Christmas, and three days later, I drive it 10 hours straight back to New Orleans.
January
I miraculously land a job about 2 weeks after getting back into town. I’m going to be a proofer for an ad agency in one of the neighboring parishes! A job involving my degree! One I wouldn’t have been able to get without a car! I’m deeply appreciative and excited during this period. My coworkers all seem cool and the atmosphere is laid-back. I’ve got money coming in. Things are going to be easy, finally. Mardi Gras kicks off with King Cake Day on January 6th, and parades occur almost every day between then and February 9. Everything is fun. I feel sanctuary.
February
My first Mardi Gras! The night before, we sold whips on the street for the first time in a couple months and I whipped people for beer money. I was scared I’d run into someone I worked with but I didn’t!
Mardi Gras day, we took acid and kratom and walked around the Marigny and French Quarter. I can’t imagine experiencing Mardi Gras without hallucinogens. Don’t do it. Alcohol isn’t enough. Mardi Gras definitely feels overhyped but it’s still fun, you get worn out after 5 or 6 hours of partying though. I didn’t see any boobs.
Chris and I go to the Abita Mystery House a week later! The coolest place I’ve been in Louisiana, definitely check it out if you’re ever in the New Orleans-area. Old-school folk art installation pieces and sculptures.
I get promoted to full time at my job and get a healthy raise to boot. I was told I’d be an assistant account executive in the morning, but in actuality, I only did data entry. It sucked, and I started doing worse during my proofing shift in the afternoon as a result. I also started managing the Facebook page for the local police department (lmao), which took up a great chunk of time where I should’ve been doing more important work. I start to question whether I should keep working my job.
March
I keep working my job. The pay is more than enough to live off of and I decide I’ll quit sometime “soonish.” I figure I get benefits in May so I should wait until I get PTO and use it up.
Life is stagnant. I have no social life because I’m too tired to do anything after work and the commute is terrible. I start falling into another depression, but at least this time, I have something to keep me occupied.
I find a really cool couch a couple blocks down the street at the end of the month and get a couple strangers to help me move it into the apartment. It’s my favorite thing that I own to this day.
April
I start drinking more. Chris gets me to start going out but I’m not totally present, and I can tell that’s frustrating to him and the people around me. I start getting manic again. I get moved from my office with the only coworker I was friends with to one with a 40-something year old woman whom everyone in the office openly dislikes. She reminds me of my Mom right after the divorce, so I sympathize with her and apparently become the only person in the office who doesn’t hate her. I never really talk to my old coworker again. People appear to stop liking me at work, and I’m unsure if that’s because they associate me with my new coworker or if I’m just sensitive and depressed. Life continues onward.
May
I turn 23 on a Friday. One of my coworkers gets me a cake but we have a really awkward time eating it in that no one really talks to me and I don’t know what to say to start a conversation. I struggled to talk to people at that job because I’m so different from everyone else there. We have no common interests. The cake was really good though! Red velvet from a local bakery. I don’t really do anything to celebrate my birthday after work. I didn’t have the energy.
I start getting really ahead at work—like, two+ weeks ahead on everything. Coworkers start running out of things for me to do and I scramble for assignments. I hear my boss tell my supervisor that she wants to pay me less because I “don’t work.”
Chris buys a house and a lot in St. Roch near the middle of the month. He says he wants to turn it into an ultra-cheap hostel to give back to the traveling community. The house is a total fixer-upper. We start discussing plans for the property and how to improve it. He wants to get chickens and I want to get a pig. I’m unsure if either would necessarily improve the property.
Some people Chris knows from San Francisco and New York come to visit as a friend reunion and stay in a really nice Airbnb about a mile from us. We grill aligator with them, which tastes like gamey chicken. They had really positive energy though and I really needed to experience it at the time, it was very refreshing.
Memorial Day weekend, we go to Orlando to visit a friend. We sleep on the beach at Seaside, FL—cute little beach town. They have a great book store called Sundog Books if you’re ever in the area. It’s obvious that there’s a lot of money coming in, as the whole 30-A feels exclusive to upper-middle class white folk, but the beach is gorgeous and there’s no cops. We wake up at sunrise, get breakfast, and spend the day on the beach.
We continue on to Orlando that afternoon and spend the majority of our time at the Belgian restaurant our friend cooks at, eating his food for free and drinking weird peasant beer from 800 years ago.
We listen to Santa Monica by Everclear for most of the trip, and I listen to it for much after. I feel like I belong in Florida but I would probably get bored.
June
I come back from vacation and everyone at work seems inexplicably grouchy for the whole month of June, but not at me. It might just be the New Orleans summer kicking in. I decide I’m going to quit my job in September because it’s making me depressed and socially isolated. I’d like to quit sooner but it’s hard to turn down the extra cash.
I become about a month ahead on tasks and people start getting noticably annoyed that I keep asking for things to do. I don’t know how to get around it. On a Wednesday, I hear my supervisor tell my boss that I’m “lazy,” and that I must “come from a fucked up family.” I genuinely have no idea what prompted this and I’m still baffled but I also don’t care. I already had put in PTO for Thursday and Friday on account of my Mom visiting, so that Monday, I tell my boss I’m putting my two weeks in. The first thing she asks is if it’s because of “another coworker.” I tell her no because it doesn’t matter. My last day is July 4th. It feels fitting. I decide to focus my attention towards the hostel.
I start making more of an effort to hit people up. I take a ballet class, practice restorative yoga and go to a studio fundraiser. I meet one of the original VR dudes and get to try out Occulus Rift. I get serious about eating vegan, although I’ve reintroduced seafood in the past week.
I get a jalapeño plant. It gives me motivation and maternal strength.
July
It’s been a week since I quit my job and I’ve already managed to become nocturnal. We got chickens and we’re working on building a fence around the yard so they can free-range, and I’m going to build a hen house with a green roof for them to stay in! Chris is going to Cape Cod alone this year and I’m staying behind to look over the chickens and the plants. It’ll be a lot safer for both me and the chickens if we have a fence by then.
I hope I get to travel again soon. I plan on volunteering with a non-profit organization for Tibetan refugees as soon as I know what my summer plans are. I don’t know what my next job will be. I’m trying to make the money I have last and hopefully get a new gig by the end of August.
