There is a party culture in New Orleans that I was eager to experience along with everything else the city has to offer. I was even more eager because I didn’t have the opportunity to celebrate the end of my college career at USC, catching a flight straight to New Orleans after commencement. So, as I found two other graduates on this trip, oh, was it so important that we had a chance to celebrate together. And when the 3 of us found out about the legendary Monteleone carousel bar, the same bar that greats such as Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Tennessee Williams sat and drank in, we made that the location for our celebration.
As we arrive, we are in awe of the carousel itself, the live music, and the general liveliness of the place. It’s New Orleans at its finest, the doorman chatting you away, the jazz band playing, and swanky people from Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Mississippi chatting around with loud laughter. The bartender making drinks and people slowly going around the bar was such a thrill and beautiful sight to see. It took a while for us to find a seat at the bar, but when we did, we immediately ordered drinks and saluted ourselves. And as we made our slow rounds around the bar, we made friends around us in that New Orleans way; something I completely adore about this city. Everyone was so proud of us as graduates, and we got a shot sent our way in celebration.
There is something about the licensee of New Orleans, the fluidity of the Frenchness, that makes New Orleans a bit thrilling, and what New Orleans is. In the weeks we have been thriving in New Orleans, Andrew has covered so much of the history and culture that makes New Orleans a special place. We have talked about the Frenchness that exists in the culture, which creates this atmosphere of a laissez-faire way of life, the sexual way of living, and how people interact with each other; all creating the fluidity that exists in New Orleans.
There is something more profound about the race relations of the South that impacts this French sensuality. As I sat on the carousel bar, 3 older white men to my right were enjoying their conversation. I found myself continuously catching eye contact with one of them until I bumped into one of his friends, and he began a little flirtish chat with me and told me his friend thought I was cute and he had a crush on me. Now, with the LA girl in me and the Frenchness of that moment, made me act a bit coquettish, and have this man buy me a drink.
I found myself in a long chat with an older man at this bar. This man, his name Trey was born and raised in Mississippi with the thickest accent to match. He asked me what I studied, and he gave me an anecdote about a philosophy class he once took. I leaned in and asked how old he was, with which he promptly replied 55. The academic in me continued to engage him in conversation. Hearing about ruining a sewage processing plant, how he was passionate about helping children, and how he thought I was more than cute and more than beautiful. There was a moment when Trey leaned over a little more and tried to touch my thigh, which led me to excuse myself, and he got into an intense conversation with the only male friend I had with me. Trey’s night with his friends intertwining with mine says so much about New Orleans, the South, and the license of white patriarchy that seeps through this city in ways I was not expecting to experience.
Trey from Mississippi came down to New Orleans this weekend for this state of licentiousness. For this ability to sit at a bar and talk to an “exotic” Black woman from California who could be his own daughter's age (which he told me repeatedly didn’t exist in his Mississippi drawl). But, I questioned if Trey from Mississippi would have taken the time to talk to me back home. Or if he felt he had the space to date a Black woman romantically when he was younger. Trey, raised in 1960s Mississippi, didn’t view me as a human, though. Trey didn’t ask me any questions about myself outside of what I studied and talked about himself the whole time but was completely able to hold a long conversation with my guy friend. Trey mentioned that he became a sloppy redneck when he was drunk, not focused on the fact he is saying this to a young Black woman. Trey had the license in French New Orleans, from the South, to fetishize me as a Black woman in a white space. Trey erased the existence of a human being from me and created pure objectification.
If it wasn’t any more obvious, Trey, a waste management professional, completely erased the existence of Cancer Alley. Cancer Alley, a place along the Mississippi River in the River Parish, is a predominantly Black community experiencing very high rates of cancer due to air pollution. The region between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is considered the sacrifice zone, where petrochemical production and waste occur. A Toxics Release Inventory showed Louisiana produced 8.9 billion pounds of waste in 2018 alone, and it was dumped near and around the River Parish. Trey called Cancer Alley bullshit.
Photo of Cancer Alley from Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/louisiana-cancer-alley-photos-oil-refineries-chemicals-pollution-2019-11
Andrew’s conversations about the Frenchness of New Orleans, the license and the licentiousness, and the hierarchical chivalry of the South all concluded on my night at the Monteleone. This history of New Orleans is in the atmosphere, and the history, making it so that a 55-year-old white man from Mississippi fetishizes a 23-year-old Black woman from Los Angeles and abstracts him enough to think he can flirt and pick her up. The delusions New Orleans offers are a wondrous moment for some. It made the conditions in our society for a Black woman like me, to not have an existence outside of this man’s mind more than just an object. For a white man to talk about caring about kids while not caring about the environment, to deny the existence of racism while fetishizing a Black woman, and to have white supremacist ideas and to still want to have sexual relations with a Black woman because she is less than.
I found myself wondering if my friends wonder and analyze being perceived, and how people interact with them. I questioned if Trey thought I was maybe an escort waiting for his attention. I don’t have many thoughts outside of this analysis of the night and I laugh at the thought that he may be thinking about me as a fantasy, and I am studying him writing a blog. I wonder if I am too in my head like Holden from Catcher and the Rye, or Binx from The Moviegoer. Sometimes it is hard to write my thoughts about these situations clearly, but the duality that exists in the South and the French is a duality that exists in the minds of the people of the South, and everywhere around me. The intersection of racism, white supremacy, and white patriarchy is an interesting place to exist in, and I often wonder how the white male mind justifies it. It is a difficult identity to know when you are not being afforded humanity but to also play with the licentiousness that gives me simultaneously. I think this is why it is hard for me to afford empathy to characters like Binx and Holden. My identity is a duality.
My night at the Monteléone was interesting, to say the least.