A year after my father died I drove with high school friends from other colleges
to a shitty motel on the outskirts of New Orleans that had green doors with busted locks
and brown stains on the fitted sheets. Not yet 21, all we could do was take a bus
to the city’s center, walk the streets and gather fallen beads that laced the ground,
order hurricanes through barside windows that opened like Scooby Doo passageways.
Holding frosted neon tubes, sucking fruit punch through crazy straws, we peopled the sidewalks,
a crush of glittered bodies. Women’s painted breasts brushed against my arms.
Old men in thongs spiraled my thighs, their beefy bulges flopping like sea cucumbers.
Music from everywhere thundered inside our bodies in one generic thrum and from behind me
someone’s strong fingers inched their way under my skirt, hooked me like a fish. I struggled
against the current of revelers that held me in place, lost the hand of my friend as she was pushed
down Bourbon. When we met up again, sticky and slick with sweat in the cold air, I didn’t dare tell,
wouldn’t break the spirit of fun the night was in. Couldn’t say how in order to free myself
I fought, punched, kicked, became the cartooned tornado of a Tazmanian devil scratching wildly,
how I learned to part a pulsing sea, learned how to walk in kitten heels on fetid water,
instead of what I really did which was to stand there and take it until his grasp was
broken by the barbed surf of the monstrous and dazzling crowd.
