The City of New Orleans, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

November 13, 2010 Martha Thomases 13 Comments

In case you were wondering, I’m in New Orleans this week, for the 50th birthday of one of my oldest friends (20 years and counting). For some reason, there is no free wi-fi in the hotel, so I’m not going to be able to link to all the fabulous people I met, and all the fabulous things we did, which I’m sure are the buzz of the Interwebs.

Saturday, when this goes online, I’ll be on my way home. Then, it’s off to Florida to help my dad move. That’s a lot of November for a New Yorker to spend south of the Mason-Dixon line.

My friend was mildly famous when I first met him through my job. He had published a book in collaboration with a slightly more experienced fantasy writer, and he was starting his comics career. We hit it off because our kids were about the same age, and he was the only other person I’d ever met (besides my mother) who loved the English children’s writer, E. Nesbit, as much as I did.

I had met New Orleans a few years earlier. I came with my parents for a real estate convention. Then, I came with my family for a book convention. I’ve been to a few other conventions, and we came here for my husband’s 50th birthday.
What is it about New Orleans that makes you want to be here when you’re 50?

In some ways, New Orleans is the anti-New York. It’s slow and friendly. Tourists are welcome, even (maybe especially) is they act like jerks. Nobody notices if you’re a few pounds heavier than a supermodel. The streets are so narrow that, even if you walk single-file, you can still block another pedestrian. No one screams about it.
In other ways, New Orleans is a lot like New York. The place is multi-ethnic and extremely tolerant of all kinds of lifestyle choices. Homeless and panhandling? People will be friendly and talk to you, instead of spending countless hours in meetings about how to keep you from sleeping in the park. Like to dress up in feathers and finery? You don’t have to wait for Mardi Gras. Maybe it’s the French influence (and hence, a kind of hedonistic Catholicism where confessions and indulgences get you to heaven), but this city doesn’t have that fundamentalist rigidity I associate with other parts of the South. There’s a sense of connection to other countries, to Europe and the Caribbean, not that insular navel-gazing to which we Americans are prone.

The last time I was here was September 4, 2001. If we had been here a week later, we would have been stuck, unable to get home. Since we’ve been here this week, we’ve heard dozens of stories about Katrina. Just as New Yorkers each have a 9/11 story, people here each have a hurricane tale.
Which is another thing. In New York, I would never be talking to this many strangers. I would respect people’s privacy and space, which is what happens when millions of people are crammed into apartments that aren’t big enough for all their stuff. However, here, I’ve talked to all sorts of people. While waiting for a table at Irene’s, we talked to a couple from California, here because he’s a chemist working for the government to clean up the oil spill. I’ve offered to take photographs of groups of strangers who can’t all get into the same shot if one of them is holding the camera. I showed one of the housekeepers at the hotel how to cast on her first row of knitting.

So thanks to my friend for being around for 50 years, and thanks for including me in the celebration. Thanks to New Orleans for being so welcoming. And thanks to new tastes, sounds and smells. Being an animal is so interesting.
Martha Thomases, Ancient Goddess of Media, misses her cat, but is otherwise having a great time.