It turns out Willis just got out of jail. It’s unclear why, although it seems to have something to do with cocaine. His house is one of the ones that the screaming woman on the street “stole.” The details are hazy to me, both because Willis’s voice is quiet, his accent is almost impossible to understand, and because I am getting higher and higher from the cigar we keep passing around, which is, of course, stuffed with marijuana. There’s something about a loan and forged signatures and going to city hall to get them to open up casework, and although I am trying to be sympathetic to Willis’s unintelligible plight, I find the only thing I really want to do is lean my head against the car window and watch the streetlights zip by as we bump along.
At one point after we’ve been driving for what seems like a long time, Meghan leans over to me and whispers, “Is this a good idea?”
“Yes,” I tell her. “It’s a very good idea.”
We start laughing and cannot stop.
Meghan: More drinking, more dancing, more talking about life with Glen, Willis, Michael, and Stephie. Another joint is lit outside the bar. More flirting . . . more, more, more, more. I am three sheets to the wind. My mind is foggy from the combination of partying, southern humidity, good company, and the intoxicating atmosphere that New Orleans just exudes. I thank Glen for the most amazing night of our trip, thank Michael for meeting me and coming up with the idea for a book, and thank Stephie for always being so sweet, because she is the sweetest girl in the world that ever lived.
“Seriously, Stephie,” I tell her, “you must dream about rainbows, lollipops, and ponies. You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met.” She smiles and laughs, a tinkling sound like fairies make. Right as we are all saying goodbye to Glen and Willis I yell at everyone, “Let’s do this every year! Promise, let’s do this exact same thing again every summer until we die!”
Michael: The rest of the night is more of the same: music and dancing and then I am drinking a sugary glass of absinthe with Willis, who I love even though I cannot understand a word that comes out of his mouth. Stephie runs into a friend from college, and two law students corner Meghan for many minutes to talk about politics; she finally catches us up outside whatever bar we’re at, pissed.
“I thought you had my back.”
“I didn’t know where you were.”
“You didn’t look.”
That may be true but what does she expect? I barely know where I am. I give her a hug and she tells me that she loves me, her entire hard edge melting right off into the ocean of the night. Willis packs another cigar and lights up. We smoke some more and say our goodbyes, Meghan’s farewells topping all of us in their outlandishly sincere bonhomie.
“Quack, quack,” says Willis, which means he sees police. Glen shields the cigar from view with his back and they roll right by us. There are hugs all around, then somehow I am back at the hotel in bed, my mouth feeling as if it’s been stuffed with cotton balls and my ears still ringing from all that wonderful wild music.
Meghan: I wake up in the hotel the next morning and feel extremely hungover. I roll out of bed, turn the shower on, and attempt to pull myself together in any way possible. My head is throbbing with pain, but I feel like laughing.
For all the fun and excess that the night before has given us, the day ahead is going to be a lot more serious and somber. We are going to spend the day taking a tour of the Lower Ninth Ward.
It’s incredible to think that Hurricane Katrina happened so recently. For a lot of people Hurricane Katrina and the handling of the disaster by the Bush administration was the end of trust, or at least support, of the Bush White House. No matter which way you spin the events, it’s difficult to give President Bush any leeway. A lot of people died unnecessarily because of the lack of effort and outreach from Washington. Everything from “Heck of a job, Brownie” to “George Bush does not care about black people” will forever haunt my memory of watching the terrible images of people standing on rooftops, lined up at the Superdome, and the endless red X’s and body bags.
I do not pretend to completely understand where things exactly failed, starting from what could have been done to strengthen the levees so they wouldn’t break, to getting FEMA to New Orleans faster, to everything that made Hurricane Katrina the disaster and tragedy that it was. All I know is what I felt when it was happening, as I prepare to see how far the worst-affected part of the city has come.
At a café we meet up with Jacques Morial, an outreach and research director for Heath Law Advocates of Louisiana, and immediately start discussing what it was like for him during Hurricane Katrina. We talk about everything from President Bush to Mayor Ray Nagin and his infamous “Chocolate City” comments. A few years ago I happened to meet Nagin’s cousin, who asked me what I thought of the mayor, and I said that I thought he did what he could during an almost impossible situation. I didn’t think he was a saint or a criminal, but a politician put in a situation where he was given very little help from the federal government.
Jacques was born and raised in New Orleans, has lived there his entire life, loves it dearly, and never once considered leaving after Katrina, though he does understand why some people just couldn’t bear to come back. I tell him about Willis, and how he’d been in jail during Katrina. He wasn’t released from jail during the floods until the water had reached his chest. Just the mental image of men (and possibly women) thinking they might drown in a locked cell seems like something out of a horror movie, not something that happened in the United States a mere few years ago.
“Yeah, they eventually let all the prisoners out,” Jacques says with a sad shake of his head. “That isn’t even the beginning of the kinds of stories I have heard.”
We drive out to the Lower Ninth Ward, and I realize that my words will never do justice to the physical landscape or the energy of the place, but I hope that I can somehow encourage other people to go on this journey to better feel for themselves its beautiful eeriness.
We pass a number of different houses that have been rebuilt in the architectural style they had before Katrina. There are also large areas of empty lots that sit vacant, some packed with garbage and debris covered in layers of uncut dead weeds and new grass. It looks like an archeological dig in reverse—the history of the people too recent, the fossils and potsherds in need of centuries of decomposition.
Other areas are spotless in their renewed perfection, the effort to erase the brutality of the storm outshining the ease with which the bougainvilleas bloom on their tumultuous vines. However, there is no sense of closure to the refurbished Lower Ninth Ward. Almost like a tattoo that has only been partially removed, there is still evidence of the devastation in the demarcations visible on many of the houses that haven’t been restored.
We drive by house after house, and Jacques shows us how far the waterline had risen. He points out different houses where people had to be rescued from their roofs after using axes to break through the rafters and climb on top. Luckily, some people had kept axes in their attics because of lore about the levees flooding.
“If you saw it on the news,” he tells us, “this is where people waited sometimes for days to be rescued. Just sitting up there out in the hot sun, not knowing if they were going to die or not.”
For whatever reason, the image of my father’s prison, the “Hanoi Hilton” in Vietnam, springs to mind. I visited the Hanoi Hilton when I was in college and we went on a family trip to Vietnam. I feel now as I did then, glad to witness what is left of the physicality of a place that held such horrific experiences, yet also angry that history has let such things happen. Human beings and politics can be so grotesque and barbaric, but hope can always be found somewhere, disguised, in that complicated kaleidoscope.
We get out of Jacques’s car and walk around. In the midst of the old-style architecture of traditional wide-porched New Orleans houses are the startling eco-friendly “Brad Pitt houses,” built by Pitt and his Make It Right Foundation. Make It Right has pledged to rebuild the paris
h, and has completed fourteen houses, with nineteen currently under construction. They are slowly moving families one by one back into their homes, which are affordable and environmentally sound. They are also putting money into community centers and gardens, doing their best to reestablish the Lower Ninth Ward as a place where middle-income families can thrive.
All that said, the houses visually stick out like a sore thumb. No one needs to point them out, as they look like futuristic 2001: A Space Odyssey cubes, or like something we may one day build on Mars. They’re not what I would call beautiful, nor do I completely understand why the foundation chose to go so far away from the traditional feeling of the place. I respect and appreciate the intent of Brad Pitt, and the nobility of his mission, but they seem weirdly . . . arrogant, as though a panel of experts handed down a decree to the people of Whoville saying, “Trust us, you’ll like living on this dust speck.”
We stand in front of one particularly unfortunate-looking house, towering over its historic neighbor on stilts that seem to say, Next time I’m going to make it, but you aren’t. I try to see what the building will look like once the shrubs have grown and the trees come back, but honestly, it looks more like a jacked-up trailer than anything else.
I ask Jacques, “Would it have been really difficult to make environmentally friendly houses that also resembled the aesthetic that used to encompass the Ninth Ward?”
“Those eco-friendly homes are not without controversy,” he says softly.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe the Lower Ninth Ward should be rebuilt not trying to recreate the past exactly as it was, but shaped with more consciousness of the kind of future the Lower Ninth Ward should have, which still seems like it’s a complicated one.
We make our way over train tracks and empty lots where a makeshift deck has been built over the levee so that visitors can look out onto the barge of muddy water clotted with weeds, grass, tree branches, and assorted stumps.
“We built this because we never want people to forget and we want to show them where it happened,” Jacques says as a small bike tour led by a young man from the neighborhood passes. “He does that for free,” he explains. “He just wants to give people tours of the Lower Ninth—I mean, you could buy him lunch afterwards, but it doesn’t cost anything to go on the bike tour.”
“Hey, Jacques!” the young man yells. “Doing a tour, I see.”
“Beautiful day for it!” Jacques greets the man back. As we watch the tiny tour weave into the Lower Ninth, I feel hope coming off the area in fresh waves. The guide didn’t seem sad; he seemed happy to be sharing his town with a handful of strangers, just as Glen, Willis, and Jacques have been with us. The pride all these natives feel is contagious, and even as the Brad Pitt houses loom over the neighborhood, it’s apparent that there are enough people in here and out there to bring the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans to a better place, even if it’s taking too long to do so.
Little Rock, Arkansas
Lot Lizards
Meghan: This will not be my first visit to Little Rock. I traveled there during my father’s campaign for an event and a fundraiser and I remember being, as terrible as this may sound, very bored. I’m hoping it was situational, given that I was traveling with my father’s campaign staff, who were essentially adult babysitters—there to make sure I didn’t get arrested or create some kind of media drama. The trip basically consisted of getting on and off a campaign plane, waiting outside a fundraiser talking to volunteers who had previously worked for Mike Huckabee (and seemed to prefer Mike Huckabee over my father), and watching Sex and the City reruns in my hotel room. Maybe this trip to Little Rock will prove a little more exciting.
Much to my relief, Michael, Stephie, and, dare I say, Cousin John and I seem to be getting into a rhythm with one another. The long RV rides and our constant meals together have slowly gone from feeling like the awkward first few weeks of school and started to evolve into the later free-wheeling weeks of summer camp. Before I left for this trip, I had dinner with friends and told them I hoped it was going to be exactly like camp, and I felt that Michael Ian Black would make a good camp counselor, or at least fellow camper. His hilarious work on the movie Wet Hot American Summer was clearly evidence to the yes side of the table, seeing as how it is set at a summer camp. The no side of the table depicted the two of us screaming at each other in the middle of the desert, with me hitchhiking my way home and calling the book off. Happily, we are nowhere near the desert.
I have very dear and close friends that I describe as “the inner circle.” It’s always been difficult for me to let new people in and it gets harder every year as I get older. So it’s surprising to me, as we spend more time on the road and have more meaningful conversations, as the sweltering southern countryside passes outside the window, that Michael has actually, and possibly unintentionally, wormed his little way in. He’s a terrific listener, and has even given me some great advice. I know I go all Rambo on him when we’re talking politics, but with each passing mile marker, we grow that much closer.
I even half-joke with Michael this morning when we leave for Little Rock, “You know, if you’re in, you’re in for life now, and my drama is now your drama, right?”
Michael looks at me and deadpans, “I love your drama. I know. I’m in.”
I can’t help but produce a huge Cheshire Cat grin. It’s a perfect answer, and pretty much at that point I let go of all my walls. I’m sure that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop fighting or debating our absolute world of differences and beliefs. It just means that the discussions are going to be more honest.
Michael: If I have any excuse for wanting to go to Little Rock, it’s that there isn’t much else on the way to Branson. Also, this trip has been a Republican freak fest from moment one and I need to get a little Democrat love. What better Democrat lover than Bill Clinton, whose hometown also houses his presidential library? We figure we’ll make a daytrip to Little Rock, stop at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum, and then hit the fabulous Little Rock nightlife.
As we head up I-55 from Mayor Nagin’s “Chocolate City,” we do some research on what to do in The Rock. Yes, we know Little Rock nightlife is probably not going to compare to the goings-on in New Orleans, but we figure there has to be something to do. After researching the matter on Google, we determined that, in fact, no, there is nothing to do in Little Rock. The entire town disappears in a puff of smoke at five o’clock in the afternoon.
We then put the query out to our Twitter followers. Mostly we get the expected snarky comments, but a few people mention going to North Little Rock for strip clubs and danger. We’ve already done the strip club in Vegas, although “danger” holds some appeal. I’m not sure what kind of danger they’re talking about, but I assume it’s the kind of homogenous corporatized danger that occurs when heated words are exchanged at a Dave & Buster’s.
As crazy a gun culture as we have in America, I almost never feel like I am in any actual danger. That’s a good thing, but it seems at odds with the way the world views us. When I say “the world,” I am talking specifically about a couple of the au pairs who have come to live with my family over the past few years. These are mostly French girls in their early twenties. My wife, having lived for a year in Paris, is an unabashed Francophile and wanted our kids to learn French. They didn’t.
One of the reasons Martha was not worried about me going on this trip with Meghan was probably because she saw how I conducted myself around our series of barely legal French nannies. I always acted like a perfect gentleman. Because I am, in fact, a perfect gentleman. Anyway, all of these girls expressed the same fear when they came to America: that they would get shot. Around the world, or at least in high schools in France, the impression of America is that we are a trigger-happy, gun-crazed culture in which every day is likely to end with a bullet wound. There are some neighborhoods in America where that is no doubt more accurate than others, but it’s not something I’ve witnessed. Meghan argues that carryin
g guns makes us more safe, not less, because people are less likely to get into violent confrontations when they believe there is a good chance their opponent is armed. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know I am considerably less comfortable around cops and soldiers than I am around receptionists. (And, for the record, only one of our au pairs got shot. That’s a joke.)
Also, if I had a gun, I’d want to use it. I mean, what’s the point in going to all the trouble of getting a concealed-weapon permit if at some point you aren’t going to whip it out and yell, “YOU GONNA FUCK WITH ME, MOTHERFUCKER? YOU GONNA FUCK WITH ME???” I would probably do that every day.
So even though I know that there are millions of gun-carrying lunatics in America, and even though I know people get shot here all the time, because I have never experienced any of it, I tend to dismiss actual “danger.” I mean, there are other kinds of danger certainly. There’s drug danger and unforeseen danger and going-over-waterfalls-in-a-barrel danger and all the rest, but I have to come to view America as a relatively safe and peaceful place. On any given day, the greatest danger I face is the possibility that I have accidentally purchased “lightly salted” pretzels instead of the regular kind, a mistake that fills me with the same dread I might experience upon confronting an armed adversary on the mean streets of North Little Rock, Arkansas.
Meghan: Anyone who has been to Little Rock knows that the only tourist attraction worth visiting is the Clinton library. Now, this may surprise you, but I am not a huge Clinton fan.
When I first heard about the Lewinsky scandal, I was just fourteen, and my father was talking on a car speakerphone to his then right-hand man (and for the political junkies out there, my father’s “alter ego”), Mark Salter. Mark obviously was not made aware that I was in the car with my father when he said, “Have you heard this shit about this intern fucking Clinton?”
America, You Sexy Bitch Page 16
