Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - As this is the Holiday Special Edition, I believe I should begin with speaking of the generousity of women. You know that like Blanche DuBois, another (if fictional) tragic New Orleanian, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Most of the people I know are strangers, after all, to me. My life has been so disjointed, in so many places, that no one knows everything.

The only consistent element has been women taking mercy on me. My ex-wife said that I bring out the maternal instinct in women because I am so obviously a lost child.

"Orphan," I said. "Get it right, Deb. I'm an obvious orphan. I have no home."

Only a jerk like a writer would say something like that.

To get back on point, it has been women who have stepped up to the plate in this Season of Giving for the male version of Blanche. Lynda surprised me with FOOD. She sent steaks and burgers. She also sent Sophia Style, a book about the woman I consider our earthly goddess. And she sent two cigars. I will smoke one and give one to a friend to share the experience with me.

[ABOUT THE BOOK: I've started it already. It's by Deidre Donohue published by Friedman/Fairfax. It's a bit gushy and worshipful for my tastes, but contains some fabulous photos of Loren from various sources. What I've noted, as I proceed, is that of the hundreds of pictures I've seen of Loren all bear one striking trait: she poses with her eyes. Considering her considerable endowments she could take the course of many models and be the subject of the photo, but she seems to turn the equation around by making you, on the other side of the camera, the subject of her intense observation. I'll have to explore the idea further sometime.]

Barbara sent more work.

Okay. I know I've said that there is only one woman in the world that makes me feel that I am always loved. So that was an overstatement. I understand that there are really four. Barbara, of course, my sister-in-law, Rudell, Dragana and Lynda.

I am destined to be saved by women.

Trish, one of my bosses at The Cat, offered me food when I walked in this weekend. When the voodoo ceremony was being prepared, we had a few moments to talk. She reminds me of Lynda. It's not just the red hair. I discovered that she also had scoliosis, and told her that was significant in my life, but did not tell her why. I have always found it easy to talk to her. She can be more serious than most people understand and accepts that I can be more soft that I usually appear on these pages. I have the sense that she has defended me when everyone else thought I was not worth the time. That is our silent bound.

I am destined to be saved by women.

What gets to me is that it seems illogical, therefore, that I should have such a hard time finding a new girlfriend. I love women.

Admittedly, I'm one aloof bastard. And judgmental as Hell. But these traits are not unique to the human race or the gaggle of men available out there.

Okay, okay: There's also my philosophy of waiting to be caught. I have to cop to that one, as well.

Hmmn.

"Be more proactive, Dumb Shit!"

I hear you. But I'm not sure it's in me.

---

Friends and Lovers. Friends and Lovers. Friends and Lovers.
Amis et Amours. Amis et Amours

14 December, 2002: Like every other publisher in America, I am again involved in the time-worn project of producing a Holiday Special edition. Before this year, I've never questioned the practice. This year I do wonder why someone as contrarian as myself has bowed to this tradition so unquestioningly. I can tell myself it's part of the human practice of taking stock, of creating an artificial temporal boundary at which we seek ritual renewal. But that doesn't provide the kind of rationalization strong enough for me because the entire point of this space in this magazine is my perpetual exercise in taking stock. I don't need the holidays, and especially New Year's, to do that. It's like an organ of my psyche already.

I could say I'm doing it for you and the writers. I could say I do these year-end Holiday editions because that's what you all expect. But that would be a cop-out.

I'll wrestle with a suitable rationalization while compiling this week's entry.

Things are suddenly better, as of today. I received payment (and a bonus!) for the Web design work Barbara sent my way. I've purchased soap, toothpaste, some victuals. Scott gave me a care package for the apartment, so I can now begin cooking at home again. Most wonderfully, it included a new French press - the most civilized way of making coffee I've discovered thus far. What's so wonderful about that is that a French press has been on my secret wish list for when "things get better". I'm sure I never mentioned that to Scott, there was no reason to, so his gift was an interesting bit of mental synchronicity.

It's provided the incentive to get off my duff and out of my doldrums and make this place as homey as I can. I'm going to be here a while, after all. I'll have to find a way to make it cozy.

There were two nice wine glasses in Scott's package, too. "Sooner or later you're gonnah have to roll a chick back to the pad," he chortled.

Because he is probably my best pal in town, Scott has been forcing me out of my normal ruminatory state ("navel gazing") and dragging me with wild horses into having some type of a life here in New Orleans. Some of our best laughs have been when I've told him my private fantasies about meeting The Last Woman. I'll point a woman out on the street and say, "Now take her. She might be a little on the hefty side, but I'm not Cary Grant. I think a woman like that would appreciate me and be a lot of fun. Best of all, I wouldn't have to go through the damned pantomime of courtship. I'd just say, 'Hey, Baby, let's go down to the shack on Esplanade and pick up some good barbecue and a six pack of beer and roll back to the crib.' She'd know what I wanted and we'd have us a good meal and some beer and just chill."

Scott would be guffawing by this time. Usually, it's not the story itself, it's the inflection.

It's good to have a pal with whom you don't have to worry about concealing the base thoughts that cross your mind of an afternoon. Someone who understands the demands that the winged snake god puts on his servants is a treasure not to be taken lightly.

---

15 December, 2002: I've been playing a lot of Bonnie Raitt songs at the bar lately. I've been doing that because they define me more than those of any other singer. "My First Night Alone Without You" is a Rod definition. So is "Guilty". What am I supposed to do?

I'm a naif in the House of Love. I wander about like a child.

THE WOMEN I'VE BEEN NON-PURSUING are not cooperating with my planned capture of late. I try to reach The Dancer and get a message machine. The muralist, let's call her "Elusive" henceforth, was supposed to drop by the bar today, but did not materialize. It's probably just as well, the Saints, our hometown football team, managed to lose again today to a far lesser rival.

Some sports writer has written that the Saints are statistically the best team in the NFL today and still manage to play down to their competitors. Ed, one of the two owners of The Spotted Cat, jokes that every game with the Saints turns out to be a nail-biter. They never rout anyone. It always come down to the last seconds of the game. Admittedly, that makes for entertaining viewing BUT the Saints might be the first team that debunks The Rod Charm.

"What's that?"

Well, Darling, every town that I've lived in here in the United States wins the Super Bowl. Denver, San Francisco, Baltimore. So when I started bartending at The Cat, I predicted that the Saints would go all the way this year. Even my most skeptical customers began to become believers after we defeated Green Bay. But our quarterback, Aaron Brooks, has been error-prone these last few weeks. Our star player, in my view, Deuce McAllister, is playing with an injury. Mike Lewis, our most dynamic play-maker, is still performing amazing feats, but penalties by other team-mates nullify his heroic efforts - as with the lost touchdown against the Minnesota Vikings today.

Stop yawning. I know this is not a sports column.

Back to The Women: Fashionable remains on the periphery of my attention. She came by yesterday to invite me to a Peace Circle that she and some of the people in her building are having Wednesday evening. She says she has missed seeing me and wants me to be back in her life.

As I have to bartend Monday day shift and then Tuesday night (nine until four in the morning) her timing is good. I'm not sure why she should reappear now. Eura tells me confidentially that she spurned Jak, dumped Peter, and had taken up with a merchant seaman. "You'd be better off with anybody else," Eura says. "You're a nice man - and you're smart."

"If I was smart," I crack wise, "I wouldn't still be waiting for her, would I?"

Eura has a laugh that is full of all the joy in the world. She loves life in that laugh of hers.

"Yes indeed!" she chuckles.

---

Friends and Lovers. Friends and Lovers. Friends and Lovers.
Amis et Amours. Amis et Amours

16 December, 2002: I now know that I'll tend bar on both Christmas day and New Year's Eve night. My closest friends know that New Year's Eve is my favorite holiday because, rather than in spite of most tipplers considering it "amateur night". I love seeing everyone in the world so inclined feeling that they have a free pass to get drunk and silly. One of my favorite memories is coming up the subway stairs in Manhattan on New Year's Day 1991 and seeing three women descending arm-in-arm, champagne bottles in each of their hands, singing merrily at the top of their lungs. Bliss. They did not have a care in the world during that song. How can you not like that if you are a true Dionysian?

But I will be working. With Curtis. Curtis is my favorite bartender in New Orleans. That means that I stress out thinking about having to work with him. Would you like to work with one of your icons? I think not!

The first thing he said, when he learned that we'd be working New Year's Eve together, was "I hope you won't be thin-skinned that night, because I'm going to be all over your case. We're going to get slammed and I'm not going to be easy on you.

"It's not personal. We're friends. It's just business."

Oh great. Now I'm more confident than ever.

---

Rudolph James, who bartends deeper in the Marigny than I, almost at the border of the Bywater district, dropped by the Cat to see me yesterday. I was pleased to see him, as I'd been thinking about him lately. It seems that whenever I think about someone I miss, they appear. That is a good thing.

He said that I was beginning to look like a New Orleans bartender. I had to wonder if that was a compliment or not. He said that I was at the right place and that I should stay at the Cat as long as I live here. "This place suits you," he said. He watched me mix various cocktails and chuckled. "You make a lot of fancy drinks here. All I have to do is pour beer and shots," he said. "But that figures. It's your kind of crowd."

Again, the wondering on my part. What is "my kind" of crowd?

He said he has another article for me, another tale of New Orleans. I'm looking forward to it.

A NOTE ABOUT THIS COTERIE OF NEW ORLEANS BARTENDERS: Rock stars we certainly are not. We scrape along like everyone else here, more or less so depending on the location of our saloon. But we quickly become known, just because being a bartender is such a public job. In a town of heavy drinkers, the last person anyone wants to disgruntle is their bartender of choice.

If you have half-a-brain at all about his kind of work, you know that you are dependent on developing a crew of regulars. They come down week in and week out to see you and confess or laugh or listen to your particular choice in music. They appreciate the ambience of the place when it's your bar. Tourists come and go, but your bread and butter are the people in the neighborhood. In that sense, despite this being an economy dependent on tourists, every bar is a "neighborhood bar" and every bartender worth his or her salt knows that.

In the French Quarter alone there are over 200 watering holes, so - if you're a decent bartender in or around the Quarter - you have to give your customers a reason to come to your place. It's tougher to do on the day shift, of course, because most people are working. You have to target people who work for themselves, other service workers, and the local retirees and layabouts. Night shift bartenders have it a lot easier and make a lot more money. But you've got to pay a few dues to make it into the night shift crowd.

There's a constant process of comparing notes among bartenders. We talk about what conventions and conferences are in town, how the week seems to be going, what numbers we ring (how many dollars put on the cash register), what days might produce a good crowd, what nights are "money nights". (I was chuffed to get New Year's Eve because it should be the best money night before Mardi Gras.)

One of the downfalls of being a bartender in this town is that you tend toward being a spendthrift. I can't tell you, dear, how many bartenders I know who are also inveterate gamblers. My fellows put hundreds of dollars into the poker machines that most of the bars here invariably have. They put lots of money into alcohol and drugs, too. I know more than one night shift bartender who enhances his/her performance with drugs. It's de rigeur, in their minds, in order to perform the impossible night after night. The bar owners look the other way. They just want a robot to produce a huge ring on the cash register.

So it becomes very easy for a bartender to think, "I can blow this money. I'll make it back on tomorrow's shift." Therein lies the Sisyphusian trap. Blow all your money in the poker machines or on booze and drugs tonight, tomorrow you're starting from square one again. But lots of New Orleans bartenders still succumb to the trap and then lament it with our own kind. I've developed my nightly routine - shift drink at the Cat, after-shift drink at Molly's, go home and eat dinner - in order to keep out of the trap as much as possible. I've lapsed, of course. As with The Dancer.

There is a continuing tension between Rod the Bartender and Rod the Writer, too. That's part of the reason I developed my routine. I love working behind the bar on certain days, those days when my rhythm seems right and people are laughing and the ring looks promising. I'm making people happy, for that moment, after all. The Rod Show is a hit that afternoon and evening. They'll be back.

The Writer stands in the background and says, "This is not what we're all about. You're a whore, wiggling your ass for tips. We have important work to complete, drug dealer!"

The Writer reminds me of people going to jail for being drunk and disorderly, broken marriages, money literally pissed away, careers and bodies ruined ... He has a litany that I pretend not to hear.

"If I don't serve this drink, somebody else will," I respond. "I'm putting a roof over your hoary head, Bozo! I've given you a place to be alone with My Darling."

He grunts. That's the best answer he has to my prostitution.

---

GO TO PART 2 OF "Amis et Amours" HERE

---

| HOME | THE PREVIOUS GLASS HOUSE | PART TWO OF THIS "GLASS HOUSE" | THE NEXT GLASS HOUSE |

CREDITS || AWARDS || SEARCH ENGINES || LINKS ||
VOX POPULI is YOUR PAGE to talk back to us. I'm glad you're not bashful. Keep those cards and e-mails comin', Kids!

Search our Site:

sitemap

RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE

---

Our Editor does listen!

© 2002, GENERATOR 21.

E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.