 The Breathing In and Out |
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Exhausting! That was my weekend. Good but exhausting. On Friday night, I barhopped like I was in college. Three bars. Three! Many beers. It's a blur. Drunken phone messages to faraway girlfriends. On Saturday morning, I woke up feeling totally assy and parched and headed to New Orleans. I packed a bag and left my animals for the first time in a long time. I've never left all four of them alone and I was being fairly neurotic about it even though my parents offered to tend to them. I would leave the dogs all the time to stay at S.'s before he moved in, and I left the cats and the dogs with him last summer when I went to Florida with my family, but I guess I haven't left them all since he left. But they were fine. Fine. Anyway, my sister drove around and looked for a new place for her to live and all I have to say is that trying to read classified real estate ads while riding over bumpy New Orleans roads while being hungover is a recipe for a unique brand of nausea that I never hope to repeat. I slept a lot of the afternoon away and then we went to the Shim Sham Club. Backstory: My little brother is a huge Counting Crows fan. He and my sister saw Adam Duritz walking into Jazz Fest last week, and my brother harassed him as he tried to remain inconspicuous until he finally told him that the band would be playing on Saturday night. For the past several years, they've played a "secret show" at Shim Sham, and the tradition is not to announce the night publicly and the diehard fans will show up, and tra la la. So my brother was ecstatic to meet him and told him he flew to San Francisco last year to see them on his 19th birthday (true) and took a picture with him and Adam finally caved and told him when they were playing. So we went, my sister and her friend visiting from Boston and brother and some of his friends. We sat and waited in an un-air-conditioned bar on Toulouse Street from 7:30 until after midnight when the band finally came on. I have never been so hot in my entire life. I'm not kidding. It gets hella hot here in this fair city, to the point that in the summer months people basically only go outside as they walk from their cars into their inside destination, but usually there is relief to be found in an air-conditioned car or building within a fairly short period of time so people don't shrivel up and burn to a crisp. But no. Not in this bar. Pack a few hundred people in a bar on a hot night in New Orleans (it's been getting up to 90 during the day for the past few days -- hello, summer!) with no A/C and you'd think we would all pass out. We didn't, but we were all certainly on another level of consciousness. As in, shit, it only cost $5 to get in, and that is awesome, but it's hot. So hot. And we can hardly breathe. And this must be what bikram yoga is like. And we've sweat out five pounds each. And look, there's our sweat glistening on the dirty floor. Look! It's dripping off of my head onto the floor. And we've been here five hours. And the band better come out soon. And this show had better be fucking worth it! And it was! We had a great spot on the floor right next to the stage, and they played cover after cover of random songs like "Borderline" and "Friday I'm in Love" and we danced and sang and clapped. They played "Long December" and "Rain King" and "Goodnight Elizabeth," a personal favorite of mine, of course. But mostly covers. And they were doing shots and getting hammered and knocking microphone stands and shit over, but it was all tolerable in that, "Oh my God, I am so hot, this is all really a blur but somehow I'm still having fun and am I getting high from that joint being smoked by the guys next to me? Woo!" We were drenched in sweat. Drenched. DRENCHED. And at 3 a.m., they were still playing, but we surrendered and went home, because I think none of us could have remained standing for much longer. "That's the best thing I've ever done for $5," announced my brother's friend. I mean, really. What a bargain. Sweaty! But so fun. My sister and her friend left at one point to go play blackjack at the casino and find some relief from the sweltering madness, and I couldn't blame them. I left at 6:30 a.m. because I wanted to get home to my animals (cut the cord, Eliza, I know!) and passed out until 1:00 pm when I was awakened by J.'s phone call to demand that we go to a softball game. I forced him to go to a downtown festival instead and it was some good, clean, fun in the sun. I wore a hat with Clifford ears from the public television table and ate some chicken pad thai from a noodle shop and a push-up ice cream pop and went around collecting business cards from all of the artist's booths because I felt rude for not being able to afford any of their beautiful work. He drank many Budweisers but I was content to remain sober and look at the many freaks, including an older gentleman who approached J. to show him his bag full of porno videos and told me all about how his housekeeper got a boil on her leg lanced and he went into such detail that I said, "Look, you're going to make me throw up!" so he stopped and I patted him on the shoulder and wished him luck. We took silly pictures with J.'s mom's camera and it was fun to just be silly and laugh and get a little sunburned.  Hey Elizabeth, you know, I'm doing alright these days.
© Copyright 2003 elb |
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