“What are the odds that he crashes this thing?” I quietly ask Meghan.
“Thirty percent,” she answers.
“That sounds right.”
Meghan:
As much as I’ve enjoyed spending time in Austin, I’m thrilled to be on the road to New Orleans, and even though we are working our way through a brief stop in Houston, I’m already drawn by Nola’s indescribable energy. I’ve heard New Orleans referred to as “the only European city in America,” which really captures the city’s old-world charm. New Orleans is completely intoxicating and a little mysterious. There’s an aura and a swagger to the city I have never found anyplace else.
Over the years, I’ve had extremely special and even life-changing experiences in New Orleans. The first time I got my heart badly broken I had to be in New Orleans a few weeks later. While I was there still reeling, I skeptically visited a voodoo doctor who had been recommended to me by my airport cab driver. I don’t really believe in psychics or fortune-tellers, but I thought a voodoo doctor might be an interesting experience. I really didn’t think anything was going to help, so why not give voodoo a try? At the very least it would be a distraction from my broken heart. To my great shock, the doctor gave me such insight into my life and my recently ended relationship that I truly can say I got closure, and my heart started to heal in New Orleans. Everything the voodoo doctor told me would later come true and I found the experience unbelievably cathartic. Believe what you want, say what you will, the voodoo doctor gave me closure and I will always be thankful to her for that.
Although I am a woman of Christian faith, I have always been open to the advice of others, and that woman was a great help to me during a difficult time. If there is some kind of looming crisis in my life that I can’t seem to shake, and I have the opportunity to travel, Las Vegas may be the city where I go to forget, but New Orleans is the city where I have learned to move on. This all may sound very poetic and idealistic, but that’s the kind of person I am and the way I like to look at life and politics.
Katrina and the aftereffects of the hurricane still linger there, not only around the Lower Ninth Ward, but in pockets throughout the rest of the city as well. It is tragic that so many years later there is still so much evidence of the devastation wrought by Katrina; the work still needed to restore the area continues apace. New Orleans is a city of intense beauty and rich culture, haunted by the repercussions of the shortcomings of the worst kind of American partisan politics. I have come to view Katrina, and the subsequent disastrous way in which it was handled by our government, like the canary in a coal mine. Hurricane Katrina was a warning sign about so many other areas of weakness within us as a nation and within our government. It showcased how bureaucracy can come between the handling of a natural disaster in a morally culpable way. It was an example of the worst America has to offer, a dark spot in our nation’s history. All of that being said, part of the reason why I am eager to visit New Orleans on this trip is to further explore the dichotomy that is this city: the gorgeous and sophisticatedly rich culture scarred by dark parts of our history. But first we have to freaking get there.
Michael:
Houston doesn’t have much to recommend it unless you are curious to see where oil executives work. Answer: big buildings. We thought about touring NASA, but that would have required waking up a lot earlier than we were prepared to do, so we just said, “Fuck it.”
It is our first night with Cousin John, so we take him out to dinner at a Mexican joint called Gringo’s, an appropriate choice since we are all, in fact, gringos. He spends the meal regaling us with stories about his upbringing in Tennessee, his tour of duty as a tow-truck driver in Aspen, his various romantic misadventures, his political leanings (“I don’t feel like I’ve abandoned the Republican Party; I feel like the Republican Party abandoned me”), his initial impression of me (“you could be my uncle Pat’s twin brother except my Uncle Pat has a glass eye”), his future plan to get a sheriff’s
badge tattooed on his ass in homage to Bob Braudis, the “live and let live” former sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, and his life philosophies (“you guys are all caterpillars who are still living inside your own head; I’m a butterfly who lives anywhere I want to be”). He also compares himself to a freight train (“you can’t stop a freight train, and my freight train is a freight train of love and understanding”).
“We needed you on this trip,” I tell him. “We didn’t know it until now, but we needed you,” I say, kind of meaning it and kind of just saying it because his earnest, mixed metaphors are making me squeamish and I feel the need to say something appreciative.
After dinner we head back to our hotel. Part of our deal with Cousin John is that we are not paying for his hotel. That was made clear right out of the gate, but now that we’re actually at our first hotel with him, I feel pretty shitty about it. We’re not paying him very much as it is, and I feel bad that we’re asking him to sleep in the RV. He says he doesn’t care, but it’s really hot out there, and, as I said, the AC barely functions. He’s going to sweat his balls off. But if I offer to buy his hotel room tonight, maybe he’ll expect me to do it every night and I am way too cheap to even consider that option. So I keep my mouth shut and the girls and I check into our comfortable, air-conditioned rooms. The butterfly Cousin John cocoons in the hotel parking lot. I feel terrible. But I take an Ambien and soon forget all about the freight train of love.
The next morning, we clamber back into the RV around nine. There’s a man-sized wet spot on one of the cushioned benches, Cousin John’s residue after a hot night. We are all a little grossed out. Cousin John is chipper, though, and ready for the day’s six-hour drive to New Orleans.
“Weren’t you hot?” I ask him.
“Man, this is nothing,” he says. “I used to live in my car.”
Fair enough. Nobody wants to sit on the salty outline of our driver. It looks like the police outline of a murder victim. The back of the RV has a bedroom, and it’s unclear why he didn’t just sleep
on the bed, but I don’t ask and neither do Meghan or Stephie. Nobody wants to call too much attention to the gross-out factor, I guess.
Meghan:
By the time our RV pulls into the Big Easy, Michael, Stephie, Cousin John, and I are well on our way to becoming a family. I’m secretly pleased that Cousin John is here, because there is still a part of me that is annoyed that Michael has backup with Stephie in our small semblance of a culture war that was going on before we set foot in the RV. I have wanted another red state Republican along for the ride—or at least someone who didn’t know Michael coming into the trip—and I’m pretty sure Cousin John could be that fourth element, an equalizer of sorts.
This is the thing about Cousin John: he really is one of a kind. He grew up in Tennessee but has conflicted beliefs about the South and southern culture in general. He lives in Aspen, Colorado, but for a time, he worked as a river guide in New Mexico. He is for all intents and purposes a self-made man, really living his life on his own terms.
It was surprisingly difficult to find someone to take on the job of driving our RV. People either weren’t qualified or didn’t want to spend a month of their summer driving us around for a cultural experiment. There was a moment where I was worried the trip would not happen at all simply because we could not find a driver. Luckily, I was talking to my friend Sarah Scully, and she suggested I get in touch with her cousin. I met Sarah on the campaign trail in 2007 before the New Hampshire primary. She was working for the Independent Film Channel, doing background interest spots about each of the candidates. I spotted her and her production partner, Will Raabe, outside of a town hall meeting, and I noticed we were all wearing identical Ray-Ban sunglasses; we have all been friends ever since.
I love Sarah so much that when she suggested her cousin as our driver, I figured anyone related to her would probably be amazing.
The thing is, I immediately do like Cousin John. He is nothing if not an additional colorful personality to our little clique. All of his statements normally end with, “Are you kidding me?” I love that he always wants things to be a joke. He calls us all “Gumdrop,” for no reason in particular, but it’s sweet in an absurd enough way that we all start using it, all the time. He is sweet and charming and sometimes a little offensive. He is also a big, burly guy who is more than happy to help me get in and out of the RV and help me with my “Flintstones-sized suitcase.” He is a doll, and he clearly likes me a lot more than Michael, which makes me happy.
Michael:
The first New Orleans landmark is the Superdome, its big white mushroom cap sprouting just off of I-10. The Superdome feels a little like the American Chernobyl. Something horrible happened there, but it’s invisible now. Of course, New Orleans is still habitable and there are no radioactive wolves wandering around, so maybe the analogy is imperfect, but it’s still kind of blood chilling seeing it there, a giant, puffy haunted house.
It’s impossible now to think about New Orleans without thinking of Katrina just like it’s impossible to think of Pearl Harbor without thinking of, well, Pearl Harbor. Coming just a few years after 9/11, the hurricane and its aftermath represented a new kind of American impotence, like we suddenly became that middle-aged guy who finds himself flaccid in bed going, “This has never happened to me before.”
We watch the Superdome go by and nobody says much about it because what is there to say? I’m not one of those “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” Democrats, but I do think that when a political party makes their bones saying the federal government is incapable of doing anything well, they often appoint people who prove their point. If W. is guilty of anything regarding Katrina, it’s that. If he didn’t think FEMA was capable of doing its job, why not appoint as its director somebody skilled at turning failing institutions around, instead of Michael (“Heck of a job, Brownie”)
Brown, former head of the International Arabian Horse Association? I’m sure the IAHA has its own troubles, but I doubt the Arabian horses’ troubles compare to hurricanes and tornadoes.
The stifling drive from Houston has left us all a little worn, so we each repair to our hotel rooms for a little while before heading out for an evening of dinner and carousing in the French Quarter. I have never liked this part of New Orleans, the boozy touristy district where out-of-towners go for rowdy displays of public intoxication and booby flashing. Most cities have those areas (minus the booby flashing), and over the course of our trip, we will pretty much hit every one in every town. Meghan, of course, loves the French Quarter because she is unembarrassed to be seen among drunken white people. After all, a lot of the time she
is
a drunken white person.
We take a streetcar not named Desire to the French Quarter as the sun sets, wandering along Bourbon and Royal and Dumaine Streets. Even in the middle of the week in July, the cobblestone roads are humming with music and street performers and a phalanx of colorful race cars from some coast-to-coast road race lined up and down the streets.
We amble along the storefronts, losing Cousin John almost immediately. I think maybe he wants to ditch us to do his drinking without fear of judgment. The day before he’d had a beer at lunch, which caused all of us to raise our eyebrows a bit. After all, he’s our
driver.
One beer wasn’t going to get the big boy intoxicated, but none of us were thrilled. Stephie had a private word with him the next morning, informing him that from that point forward, we would appreciate it if he did his drinking when he wasn’t driving a thirty-foot motor vehicle containing us.
For dinner, we settle on an overpriced touristy fancy-pants restaurant, and each order some bizarre New Orleans drinks to accompany our meals. Mine is a concoction of fruits and whipped cream and coconut and maybe some caramel and there must be booze in there too, but I don’t know because all I taste is the aching sweetness. It’s delicious and I am buzzed immediately.
Since the Quarter is small, before too long we run into Cousin John, who tells us he just saw a one-punch fistfight, are you kiddin’ me, and then he and Meghan get into a little spat because he won’t shut up about her offer to come watch him get his ass tattooed. He’s drunk. We’re all a little drunk, I guess. They bicker while Stephie and I walk a few paces ahead, weaving among all the other inebriated tourists. Nobody flashes their tits at me, which is a disappointment, even though God knows I’ve seen my share of lady parts lately.
Meghan:
As we scour Bourbon Street for nightlife with giant drinks in our hands, I try to refresh our dinner fight, but Michael’s too happy. We find Cousin John, who keeps insisting that I said I would watch him get his ass tattooed. It actually crosses my mind that it would be entertaining to watch Cousin John get his ass tattooed and that all four of us might end up getting road tattoos as mementos from the trip. Then it occurs to me that I really do not want to get a matching tattoo with Michael; we would never be able to come to a meeting ground about what that tattoo would be anyway.
The next morning we head to the swamps for a tour. A friend of mine had gone on one recently and insisted that I must also do it when in New Orleans. I figure it is as good a way as any to get to know the local color, so we get up really early. The swampy air is about 900 percent humidity on top of all the rising heat and mist. I can’t help feeling that the whole idea is quickly becoming a recipe for disaster.
Boat seats confirmed, we load onto an air-conditioned tour bus for the sticky ride to God knows where or why. I’m in no mood, so of course the minute my butt hits the cushiony blue seats, Michael starts spewing some nonsense about health care and we begin the morning by bickering like an old married couple. By now he must be fully aware that health care and national defense are possibly the two issues that I am most conservative and he is most liberal about.