The City Care Forgot
by
Derek Loewen
You’re walking past the buskers on Royal Avenue. From behind the shady side of the courthouse, a man walks out in a Pikachu costume in the middle of the day. His teeth are white as piano keys. He seems friendly enough and asks if you need a hand with anything.
You end up buying drugs from that Pikachu, and then you end up selling. You buy all the wholesale acid you can before you return home to Canada. But you give most of it away. You’re a good dude, and most of the friends you made in The Big Easy are burnouts - human tire tracks. You’re always at all the music venues, so it’s mostly out of convenience.
You volunteer at a hippie hostel in New Orleans, and you sell drugs, but only the good acid. It’s a better trip than the shitty mushroom chocolate everyone raves about - the one that makes you feel like you’re turning into jambalaya when you nap in the park somewhere deep in Bywater’s nest.
Near the end of your tourist visa, you walk up a staircase at the hostel in the early morning, home from some ruthless night on the strip. You brush your acid-laden hand along the street art on the wall and finally become part of your city’s foundation. You go inside of it, up and down, in this way, deep within all things.
Hours later, with your duffel bag, you’re back outside, just about to come down at sunrise. In the park, the rain still falls on your body. You follow its trail past the lower branches of the sugar magnolias and up into the Gulf storm, up into the sadness of having to leave this place, up into the frustration of purposely missing your flight out, but you still have to go.
You’re pissed about the layover in Orlando International, July families bursting with crying, and Coca-Cola. Your cajun soul is flying off into a place where the morning is always dying, where the humidity lives, where the hot streams zoom over congregations of Crescent City street martyrs, yuppies, gang bangers, and the middle class. You become a future where there is less opportunity, a future where you’ll eventually forget to care about what you’ve been.
You end up buying drugs from that Pikachu, and then you end up selling. You buy all the wholesale acid you can before you return home to Canada. But you give most of it away. You’re a good dude, and most of the friends you made in The Big Easy are burnouts - human tire tracks. You’re always at all the music venues, so it’s mostly out of convenience.
You volunteer at a hippie hostel in New Orleans, and you sell drugs, but only the good acid. It’s a better trip than the shitty mushroom chocolate everyone raves about - the one that makes you feel like you’re turning into jambalaya when you nap in the park somewhere deep in Bywater’s nest.
Near the end of your tourist visa, you walk up a staircase at the hostel in the early morning, home from some ruthless night on the strip. You brush your acid-laden hand along the street art on the wall and finally become part of your city’s foundation. You go inside of it, up and down, in this way, deep within all things.
Hours later, with your duffel bag, you’re back outside, just about to come down at sunrise. In the park, the rain still falls on your body. You follow its trail past the lower branches of the sugar magnolias and up into the Gulf storm, up into the sadness of having to leave this place, up into the frustration of purposely missing your flight out, but you still have to go.
You’re pissed about the layover in Orlando International, July families bursting with crying, and Coca-Cola. Your cajun soul is flying off into a place where the morning is always dying, where the humidity lives, where the hot streams zoom over congregations of Crescent City street martyrs, yuppies, gang bangers, and the middle class. You become a future where there is less opportunity, a future where you’ll eventually forget to care about what you’ve been.