Goodbayou: farewell to New Orleans, by William Gillespie and Dirk Stratton
Goodbye gumbo, your thick distillation of the sea helped us walk the uneven streets and haul the books back to that hotel room we were slowly transforming into a library.
Goodbye mufaletta, your peculiar amalgamation of red meat ferried us through the nether regions of the colon, as the lower Mississippi passed large barges of waste.
Goodbye Camel Lights, once again we vow never to flex our lips in your direction.
Goodbye anonymous dive, maybe called Half Shell, we may well remember you but we can never miss you, your red neon gothic blackletter marquee, your circular red vinyl booths, your candleholders, your vase bearing pink flowers (I will miss the flowers), your corner with the upright video poker machines where no person under the age of 18 is allowed inside, your PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF, and your small American flag which I know damn well denotes nothing for you.
Goodbye Mardi Gras beads, ubiquitous noose swallowing the necks of tourists (though never ours), mainstay of the local economy, neon boob-flash barter, tossed from balconies, dropped on the streets, crushed underfoot, swimming in Hurricane vomit, invisible because so omnipresent, we await your distorted reflection.
Goodbye Faulkner House and Crescent City books; although in both we overheard on the radio announcements of Andre Codrescu appearances, we know that the city is not without its other literature, including at Crescent City a fiction section marked by its extraordinary collection of literature in translation, and at Faulkner House a copy of Taxi Driver Wisdom (except that Dirk bought it).
Goodbye AWP, at least you got it right this time because writers need to congregate in cities where there is no last call and eccentricity is the norm, where the ghosts of our forbears spit into the gutters to remind us that it's all been done before, that it's never been done before, that whichever it is, it either happened here first or will never happen at all.
Goodbye music, cheap tawdry obvious music, I'm sorry New Orleans but the good thing is that there's live music on every street corner, the bad thing is that it's all music I already heard, a great deal of it having nothing to do with New Orleans.
Goodbye. "I will not exchange money."
Goodbye Barrone Place Travelodge, you're a strange hotel, your keycards fail frequently, your coffee pots are glued to the hot plate, your swimming pool is merely a jacuzzi, and you reside near a church that has something akin to "virgin labia" (in Latin) carved in stone above the doorway (as if anything virgin remains so for long in this red light district of a city).
Goodbye Bourbon Street, by now you know that we will never show you our tits.
Goodbye Mississippi, we barely got to know you but we will miss you and all the history you dump into the Gulf.
And goodbye enigma, you, the man who sits every day on Canal Street with two chessboards and a tip bucket. What the hell? Do you think the passing tourists will stop to engage you in a chess game on the curb of a busy street, and then that other passersby will tip you based on the acuity of your chess game, as they might a smoking saxophonist? Whatever the hell you're doing, I have the utmost admiration for it.
Farewell Unknown, your corpse didn't smell as bad as the streets, and that was some small comfort.
2002