Queen of the Savages

Unable to put a coherent thought together yet about my move to New Orleans due to the fact that I’d forgotten just how badly apartment hunting sucks the life out of you.  Let’s put it this way,  if the devil leased houses I’d be the first in line with my soul.  It’s probably worth at least a two bedroom with hardwood floors and a walk-in closet, if he’d be willing to overlook the endless amount of times I kicked my brother in the balls when we were kids and my mother would yell “I TOLD YOU TO STOP THAT! YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE HIM IMPOTENT!!!”  

That said, here are some preliminary thoughts since my gorgeous cousin so nicely hounded me to update this thing I like to call a blizog: 

Driving in New Orleans so far has consisted of many wrong turns down one-way streets and playing bumper cars with all the people who think their cars fit on the narrowest bumpiest roads ever constructed.  One nice old lady desperately tried to flag me down during one of my wrong way turns as I yelled FUCK IT out the window and proceeded along my merry way.  Be damned if I was going to turn that car around and get lost AGAIN.

Men here like girls who drive big trucks.  As in, “I like your truck.  Is it your boyfriend’s? Want to get coffee?”

Food.  Yum.  Muffaletta.  Yum.  Yum.  Beer. Happy. 

Watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre in my pjs with the Southerner and midway through the movie subtitles kick in, except the only words that appear on the screen, no matter what anyone is saying in Spanish, are “That is funny.”  For example, one of the Mexicans says in Spanish “I’m not a bandito.  These horses are mine.”  Translation that appears on the screen: “That is funny.”  And it was funny.

Waking up as the person I love farts on my leg in his sleep.  Now, that’s what I really moved here for :)

Brother J, Sam, and I took a road trip to Crystal River, Florida this weekend and swam with the manatee.  We kayaked to Three Sisters Spring and were immediately surrounded by these large sea cows.  While this was my favorite moment of the trip, we also ate a really great meal prepared by Sam and made a new friend across the canal who we unsuccessfully tried to convince to swim over to our side (he smartly decided to walk).   I  was also introduced to Brother J and Sam’s new obsession: Dexter, a show about a serial killer (and even though I bitched and moaned about them watching tv for five hours straight, I was the one that made us stay up until 3:00 a.m. this morning– I just need to know what happens, guys.  Just one more.)

This past Christmas and New Years celebration have definitely been one of the best ever.  If you’ve never spent a New Years eve in the French Quarter, I highly recommend you try it.  For at least ten minutes.  Then get the hell out of there, but not before you get a drink in a strip club and wish a happy new years to the ladies that deserve it the most.   

Then make your way to Frenchman Street and party like it’s 2010.

Things that made this New Years great:

1. Convincing a very conservative Spanish girl that she had to go into the French Quarter’s most famous bar, and forgetting to mention that it was a strip club.

2.  Convincing another girl who was a strip club virgin to tip a stripper with you, and then watching as the stripper licked her neck.  Ok, so maybe it was my neck.  But nonetheless, it made me happy.

3.  Making it to Frenchman Street in time for the fireworks and this year’s greatest make-out session so far.

4.  Handing everyone in the crowd a grape and asking them to make a wish.

5.  Wandering into a club after midnight that turned out to be a Latin dance club and dancing our asses off.

6.  Listening to some guy tell this girl that she was the woman of his dreams and then asking her to remind him what her name was again?

7.  Making a pit stop in a bar to use the bathroom, looking around and realizing everyone around me was a transvestite. And that the beers cost $1.50.  Yipee!

I’ve never felt so at home in a city in my entire life.  Happy New Years! I hope your’s was equally fun and full of love.

I can’t figure out if listening to Chet Baker during the holidays makes me want to kill myself or fall in love over and over again.  I’m not sure which one is worse, Chet or Sigur Ros, but I find that both are phenomenal when it’s cold outside and visions of cigarettes and rivers of booze refuse to leave your head.

Tonight I took my paternal grandmother out to dinner with my mom and Brother J.  At dinner, mom pulled one of her classic asking the waiter for whatever it was that she felt like eating instead of LOOKING AT THE FUCKING MENU.  This is a practice that absolutely drives me over the edge (although Brother J will say that my demand for a varied assortment of condiments is almost as bad) and by the end of dinner I just turned to Brother J and very slowly, carefully, as quietly as possible said: I need to leave         RIGHT       NOW.  There is an unspoken understanding between siblings here that if these words are uttered it is imperative that it happen as soon as possible or I will inevitably set something on fire or make someone cry within minutes of not leaving right when I needed to.  And god forbid that we both need to leave at the same time and there is no way out.  Like the time we jointly made mom cry on Thanksgiving because we stupidly got into a religious conversation (I NEED TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW) and she ended up staring at us in disbelief and sobbing over her deer cutlet in this weird-ass Italian restaurant in Iceland, as if she’d just found out that she’d given birth to two headless demons who liked to eat babies for fun.

But, I digress.

On the way home from dinner tonight, Nana and I got stuck in BUMPER TO BUMPER Atlanta godforsaken traffic so we had some much needed forced-upon-us alone time.  Nana is unbelievably cool.  She curses, she’s shy, she tells superior stories in a sweet Southern accent, she’s an amazing cook, she loves to read, and she doesn’t care that I’m liberal, don’t believe in Jesus, and hope to live in sin for the rest of my life. She gives the best advice of anyone I’ve ever met. It’s always a variation of Be kind, Be happy, and Don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks about you.

I remember when I called to tell her that I was moving in with my first boyfriend, and mom and dad didn’t approve and what did she think:

Nana: Why do you care what I think? And who gives a shit what you’re mom and dad think, it’s not their life and they’re divorced. What do they know. Do what you want and be happy.

Tonight we sat in the truck in the parking lot that was Ga 400 and talked about the Hubble Space Telescope, Erskine Caldwell, what to do with photographs of old lovers, what we wanted for Christmas (She wants a trip to Myrtle Beach to see the Rockettes.  I want to Be Kind, Be Happy, and Not give a shit what anyone else thinks about me.), Aspergers disease, the Cha-Cha, getting old, and how many times we’ve moved in our lives.

Usually when stuck in traffic, I will have the very strong impulse to stop my car, get out, open the hood of the car, stick my head under it, and let the hood slam shut.  But tonight, the time flew by and I felt so thankful for holiday traffic jams.

Dear Santa,

Why do you hate me? Did you get my Christmas list mixed up with someone else’s? I believe I very clearly stated that I wanted a puppy and a holiday threesome with Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, preferably strung up in Christmas lights in their undies waiting for me with a pitcher of margaritas.  Was that too much to ask?

Is it because I went to Wal-Mart tonight?

Do you know how many times I’ve restrained myself from standing in line at the mall this week and whispering in children’s ears the truth about you and Mrs. Claus before they got their pictures taken with your so-called stand-in? Many.

So tell me, why did I get pulled over again tonight? After I had gotten in the holiday spirit and gone to buy a tree and lights, loaded them into the truck and decided to make an illegal u-turn RIGHT IN FRONT OF A POLICE CAR.  Tell me.  Why do you insist on making me spend the holidays in a courtroom arguing with a judge over the lack of proper street signage?

When I was a child, after years of fighting over their stylistic differences between what made a Christmas tree a proper Christmas tree, my parents finally decided on their version of a compromise: they bought two separate trees.  Dad’s had multi-colored lights and was displayed in the den, while mom’s had all-white lights and went in the living room.  I never really questioned why they ended up divorced several years later, but the image of the two trees stuck with me.  Symbols of their individuality and refusal to bend to one another’s will.

So tonight I went out and bought my very own tree for the first time. And guess what? I couldn’t decide on what kind of lights to get.  I tried to think back to which parent’s tree I preferred as a child.  Mom’s elegant Christmas-cover award-winning display, or dad’s kitchtastic array of splendor.  In the end, I decided to go with a blend of both.  And I realized, that’s what makes me ME.  I am a perfect blend of two people with completely opposing genetic taste buds.

I was supposed to wait until tomorrow to get my tree with mom, but sometimes I get the urge to do something from start to finish by myself and I can’t let it go. It’s what has always separated me from the rest of my family.  A need to be completely alone.  To do things my own way.

Mom called when I was in the check out line and she was appalled that I had ditched our plans and decided to do it myself.  But there is honestly a certain joy in starting my own traditions.  Doing things by yourself is 100 times harder than when you have another person around.  I am convinced sometimes that it’s the sole reason why we cohabitate, or get married for that matter.  Try to put something together from Ikea by yourself and you’ll know what I mean.

But maybe it’s because your significant other compliments the skills you lack. And if you’ve found that you feel lucky, and even if Santa obviously got your Christmas list mixed up with someone naughty who loves traffic citations and curdled egg nog, you know what you have and you feel like the luckiest person in the solar system.