Lately, I’ve been contemplating why, exactly, it’s so important to me to live in New Orleans.
Unfortunately, this is something I’ve had to give a lot of thought lately. The federal attack on transgender rights, along with those in the legislatures of Louisiana, Texas, and just about every other Southern state have made it necessary for Charlotte and her younger daughter to move to a Northeast Atlantic blue state that’s much more willing to fight for the rights of its trans citizens. They’re planning to move mid-April. Though we haven’t been a romantic couple for some time, I probably would’ve lived happily with Charlotte forever.
As the mother of two (as yet cis-gendered) minor children who will continue to live in Shreveport for the foreseeable future, I do not have the luxury of joining her, but I wouldn’t even if I did. I hope this goes without saying, but turning tail ain’t my style, and I love Louisiana too much to let the MAGAts eat her. I very well may go out on a fool’s errand, but I can make their lives miserable every second until I do.
Fact is, though, this impending move has thrown both Charlotte’s and my lives into chaos. None of my school plans have changed, but my circumstances sure have. I need to find a full-time job as soon as possible, and I will be living alone for the first time in years (Charlotte and I moved in together a couple months after we started dating, which was only a few months after my ex-husband left me). Going forward, every aspect of my life will be different and harder: working full time while going to school more than full time, paying the bills, coming home to an empty house, cooking, finding institutional childcare, and spending holidays alone, just to name the most obvious ones. I’m even losing my faithful First Reader (the writers know). And, of course, I’ve had to evaluate whether or not it’s all worth it.
It is, I think. I’ve discovered in the course of my 47 years how much it improves a person’s quality of life when they love the place they live. New Orleans is ridiculous, Byzantine, and endlessly frustrating, but we fit together somehow. At its most difficult, the city still has a certain ease to it for me because the rhythm that moves it is the same as the rhythm that moves me. That’s an odd way to say it, I suppose, and maybe it doesn’t make any sense at all if you’ve never been here. But if you have, you might know what I mean.
Contrary to what some apparently believe but are too chicken-shit to say to my face, I do recognize there’s a certain, shall we say, folly in investing time, money, and (emotional) energy in a city that will almost certainly cease to exist in its current, recognizable form at some point in the future. With the effects of climate change, that day could come much sooner than any of us ever expected.
But that’s actually what I love most about it and why I choose to stay here, despite the hardships.
New Orleans does something few other places can: It invites us to live in intimate connection with the constant cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
Nothing is forever, but nowhere in the world is that more obvious than New Orleans. It’s ironic that we devote so many resources to attempting to protect the physical aspects of our 300-year history – the structures, trees, historic roadways (e.g., the Bayou Road), etc. – when the smartest kid at MIT would be hard-pressed to engineer an environment less hospitable to the preservation of anything. If the humidity, high heat, and intense UV light won’t kill it, well, a hurricane probably will. And the environmental destruction caused by greedy oil companies (among others) and the corrupt politicians who work for them make every single destructive thing about this state measurably worse.
People, of course, aren’t permanent here, either. Many, like Charlotte, find Louisiana’s backwardness toward social issues untenable. Others can’t stand the instability and inherent difficulty of life here. Still others find it too unsafe in terms of crime. If you own a car and move to New Orleans, the very first thing you must do, even before turning on the air conditioner, is, like a Buddhist monk, lose any and all sense of attachment you have to your vehicle. The streets will literally eat it, and thieves will get what the potholes don’t if you leave visible any item(s) worth more than $2.50. Knowing where the potholes are on Franklin Avenue is a legitimate survival skill. The point is people move here to go to school or make art or live out their darkly romantic vampire fantasies, figure out REAL quick this city will eat you alive in one bite, and get gone as fast as their loaded Subaru Outbacks and Kia Sportages will carry them.
Charlotte leaving feels like a death. It is a death, the death of our way of life and our happy home. Truthfully, I’m not doing great. The circumstances are ENTIRELY different this time, but being left behind by another family hits too close to home. I’m a little chagrined to admit this change is terrifying for me. Even though my ex-husband and I were together for 13 years, I’ve still lived the majority of my adult life by myself. But before, it was just me. If I fucked up too badly and ended up in jail, dead, or on the streets, I was the only one whose life would be ruined. But now there are two children depending on me, too, and every choice I make, every victory or failure, affects them. It feels like the “new” version of me, the one that came into being after Old Me died following The Happening, is now dying before I’m ready for her to, and the pain and blood of this next iteration of me being born is happening at the same time. It’s chaotic, messy, and, to be honest, not very pretty.
Life. Death. Rebirth. All the time. Everywhere.
An old version of Charlotte is dying, too, and a new one will be born in just a month or so. Our country is dying, and, if we’re extraordinarily lucky, we will one day get to decide who we want to be going forward. Institutions and societal norms are falling all around us. It’s no wonder so many people feel unmoored. In America, we attempt, at all costs, to avoid even acknowledging death as a reality. Living through so much death at once, it’s almost impossible to trust that there’s anything at all waiting on the other side except more suffering.
Except, in New Orleans, we see it all the time, and we know: We’re in one part of an endless cycle. We lived the old way, and now we’re dying. Next comes rebirth. When?
When it’s time.
This weekend, I met a woman, Holis Hannan, who owns a really cool vintage home decor and furniture store in Mid-City, Floor 13. I’m usually too busy masking my shyness as aloofness to speak to strangers unless I’m getting paid to do so, but Charlotte wanted to meet her, so we did, because when a six-foot-three redhead wants something, she usually gets it. Aside from having the lucky number 13 in common (one of my older brothers and I were born on Friday the 13th), turns out the store, a mandatory stop on any shopping trip in New Orleans, is itself a reborn dream.
Holis previously owned a business liquidating hotel furnishings, the warehouse and studio for which burned down in 2018, and she lost everything. There was no question she would rebuild, but how? She had to decide whether to reestablish the business in its current form or do something new. When Covid happened, she saw an opportunity where many others saw only doom. She began shifting away from refurbishing hotel furniture to collecting and reselling antique and vintage furniture. (It doesn’t hurt that she and her team, which includes her mother, know how to do everything under the sun: refinishing, upholstery, lampshades – the point is having diverse skills makes you versatile, which makes more opportunities available to you.)
Life. Death. Rebirth into easily the best vintage-decor store in New Orleans, if not the whole damn state.
We often forget that what is reborn is never the same as the thing that died. Being reborn isn’t the same thing as reviving something. If you’ve never read Pet Sematary or World War Z, then take it from me, bringing shit back from the dead is usually a big mistake. Rebirth, on the other hand, transforms them, makes them better. Stronger. And, yes, different.
(Holis chose Floor 13 because – in the U.S., at least – many buildings, including most hotels, skip 13 when numbering the floors because people are superstitious about the number 13 being bad luck, something I, a black-cat lesbian as well as a Friday-the-13th baby, have always found most insulting.)
At a moment in my life when my nervous system is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is the end, I really needed to meet someone who’s an expert in both rebirth AND my favorite number.
Let’s keep going, y’all. It’s not the end, it’s just the next turn of the wheel.
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Dispatches from Storyville 
One response to “Memento mori”
girl. the world keeps trying to set you on fire but you’re a motherfucking phoenix. having the chance to rise from your own ashes is the most marvelous opportunity a person could have, but the burning is equally as excruciating.
when I was eyeing the world from my own flaming nest, you were so loving and encouraging and such an inspiration.
call or text me if you need to bend an ear.
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