I’ve been keeping a daily journal while in New Orleans, something I haven’t done in a long time, really forcing myself to be diligent and rigorous about it. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to use some part of it for a smaller project, either an ebook or a zine, which I’ve asked Maris to edit and produce, because she is smart and talented and has great ideas and understands what the future will be more than I do. So this blog is suffering in the interim because I’m saving all my energy and the best stories from my “In New Orleans I’m going to do things I would never do” plan for that project.

I can tell you that I went to watch the Saints game at a great neighborhood bar called Finn McCools with my landlord last weekend, and it was terribly exciting – so much high five-giving with strangers! Something I have literally never done before – until the last minute, when the 49ers scored a surprise touchdown. And then the room got incredibly quiet in an instant. I’d never seen anything like it. There was just the noise of the television set, and a packed, stunned room of people. Devastating. And then a single voice rising, trying to lead one last chant in support of the Saints. Everyone actively ignored him. I finished my High Life and then we went home. They’ll be OK. Mardi Gras is here, and the sun is out. But it was a bummer.

Other topics to be covered/published at a later date will include jazz at the Ritz-Carlton, Woody Harrelson, Jung, King Cake, Mardi Gras dance troupe gossip, and my family’s critique of my existence. There will also be a discussion of my withering sexuality, and my ill-timed mentions of it in public, which is briefly and hilariously touched upon in this comic about inappropriateness and awkwardness (and, more subtly, awesomeness), by the brilliant Gabrielle Bell.

I don’t want to get into it too much here except to say that I know far too many women who used to be extremely invested in their sexuality, and because of a variety of factors and influencers (such as bad breakups, health issues, exhaustion, maturity and/or enhanced judgment and/or dwindling tolerance for bullshit or “faking it”, scheduling conflicts, iphone addictions, laziness, boredom, and, of course, the soul-damaging horrors of online dating) have simply stopped doing it, and at a surprisingly young age. I could probably write one of those Atlantic Monthly cover stories about Not Settling or Staying Single Forever except mine would be about Not Ever Having Sex Ever, and there would not be any particular sort of uplift at the end, although there would be a lot of downward dog.

So I’ll table that discussion for later. But I think it will be a good one, and maybe even a little bit of a fun one – as fun as one can get talking about not doing something fun anymore.

I will conclude by telling you that I am very happy here. I am making friends and I am stimulated in many wonderful ways, visually, creatively, intellectually, and emotionally. It is just a very nice place to be, New Orleans, and I am thinking I might try and stay longer than I expected. Because I am not missing New York at all. Although I miss you. You know who you are.

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(01/17/12) | 1 Comment »