A Night at the Prytania

The dolls get ready to see Rocky Horror

FRANCESCA

As our group of Bookpackers gathered outside of the Prytania theater, I shivered with antici…………pation, to quote the film and performance we were gathered to see - The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was all of our first times seeing the movie live, so a cast member came along to mark our faces with large “V”s etched crudely in thick red lipstick. Upon entering the theater, I noticed two figures who stood apart from the joyful freaks of delicious decadence that comprised the general population of the attendees (ourselves included in that description). One was a rather reserved and somewhat plain looking fellow chatting with a movie theater attendant about some smell of some exotic flower, and the other was a large, belching man wearing a green and ear-flapped hunting cap. The latter bloke was accompanied by a lithe beatnik woman - quite the remarkable pair. They sat in the exact center of the theater, while the quiet man sat a bit further back. As we passed by the fat man and his hip girl, we heard him shout, “What incalculable degeneracy is this! The state of this city has utterly decayed…These outfits are an absolute abomination to the principles of theology and geometry!” And with that he stuffed a large mitt of popcorn into his mouth. I could tell that the quiet man was amused by this. 

Standing outside of the Prytania in all its glory!

BINX

It was another day of simple satisfaction, as most of my days had been since I settled down with Kate. She was with Aunt Emily this evening and he had decided to see a movie, which he had not done for some time now. My life has been comfortable, pleasant, and wonderful in its new simplicity. After speaking with an old friend (an employee at the theater) I took my seat. I marveled at the Harmony Korinne-ish crowd, gold lamé shorts reminding me of Chloë Sevigny’s shining golden hair. I smiled at a big man with a worn green cap, and only after he passed did I realize that he had entranced me totally and completely. As the lights grew dim, I could not help but see his strangely intoxicating blue and yellow eyes in each painted face of the show’s performer’s. 

FRANCESCA

As the show began, we squeezed each other’s hands and giggled in excitement. Our prop kits (provided by the theater) were ready, and so were we. The show includes many actions to be done by the audience along with the film and the live performers. The first of these actions is to throw rice at the screen at the same time that the actors do when two characters get married. Our group gleefully tossed rice ahead of us, behind us, at one another, and I heard a large uproar that seemed less pleasant than the other shrieks in the sonic landscape. Someone had clearly not gotten the memo: the green cap exclaimed “OH, MY GOD! WE ARE UNDER SIEGE! SOMEONE ALERT THE CORRECT AUTHORITIES AT ONCE!” At that, everyone began to throw the rice directly at the poor freak. Such occurrences continued throughout the showing, until he was brought up on stage at the end and thanked by all of the performers. He looked appalled, but his female companion urged him onwards vehemently. 

BINX

When that peculiar and captivating presence was forced onto the stage by the circuslike performers, I felt sorry for him. More than this, though, I felt a terribly strange philosophy reemerge in my mind: it was the search. It was back. Something about the soft curl of his cheeks into the bulbous earlobes was impenetrably sensual. I could not explain it, I would not explain it, but when his beatnik girl came up to me and said that she wanted a word, I could not resist. My searchlight relit, I went home with them that night. I haven’t been apart from them a second since. 

FRANCESCA (epilogue)

I am back in New Orleans now two years after that first time at the Prytania. I am alone now, but I saw that Rocky Horror was playing again at the Prytania and thought that I might relive some old memories. Some of the cast remained the same, but others had been replaced. After watching the first few acts, the visions before me clicked. I had seen the new cast before! The new Frank N. Furter was that fabulously large man with the blue and yellow eyes, the new Rocky was the quiet man, and that slinky lady with the loud laugh who had been with the men before, well she was the new Magenta! How perfect, how fitting, how right. There is love and debauchery in the air tonight, and I breathe it in readily. 

(As a clarification for those who have not read these books, the green hunting cap is Ignatius J. Reilly and his companion is Myrna Minkoff from Confederacy of Dunces, Binx is himself from The Moviegoer. Our group did go see Rocky Horror at the Prytania, though these events are fictionalized as an exercise in imagination. Binx and Ignatius and Myrna are now in a polyamorous and cinephilic relationship. Happy Pride Month!)

Artifice and Sexuality/Fear and Facade: the Spectacle of the Vampire

Image taken from Yelp - I forgot to take one of my own! Too enthralled…

Have you ever been to a joint Halloween/sex shop? Chances are, probably not - there is apparently only one in the world. That is at least what the store clerk inside of Nikki’s French Quarter Halloween Store told Ciena and me after we entered the eclectic business, intrigued by the “open 24 hours” and “adult superstore” signs placed underneath the large-lettered “Halloween.” We asked about the 24 hour sign, and the clerk, an intimidatingly cool elder goth with face tattoos and a black shroud about them, explained that “after a plague swept through the city a few years ago, I’m not sure if you heard about it, we are only open 18 hours a day.” Of course, they were referring to Covid – but how right it felt to hear it described as some medieval disaster. After chatting for a while about fright and drama and all the best things that the underbelly of this city has to offer, we learned that she was The Grand Maw, a horror drag performer named for her ripe age and her mouth that was toothless as it was full of metal, with a tongue that can lift 50 pounds. She went on, “of course, this is the only city where a store like this could survive.” She has lived in the subcultures of many cities, and said that perhaps San Francisco could sustain a horror sex store, but no, only New Orleans could keep a place like this alive. She explained that this city is the only place because of its history of haunting, aided by the blend Voodoo and Catholicism, and also of indulgence, aided by the French/Creole attitudes of openness to sex and wine and all things sensual. It makes complete sense, then, that Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire was birthed from this confluence of terror and debauchery. 

It is a tale of sexuality and fear, of philosophy and humanity, exemplified by the main character and narrator Louis’ constant moral musings and visceral descriptions of desire. He speaks constantly of his “vampire eyes,” how everything is more vivid and visually tactile. In many ways, I have experienced this just being here in New Orleans – music at every street corner fills the ears while the brightly colored houses and rich greens of tropical plants feed the eyes with their fanciful delights. 

A colorful and coordinated duo stroll by a band performing on the street - a combination of senses that is so befitting to New Orleans. I see through vampire’s eyes.

It is this focus on the senses, this utter sensuality, that makes New Orleans the perfect place not only for a vampire novel, but for a sexy vampire novel. A few friends from the class and I went into Faulkner House Books, and Simone asked the shopkeeper Peter what from IWTV struck him most. He thought for a moment, saying that he isn’t particularly captivated by fantasy novels like this, but then answered: Anne Rice made vampires sexy. Of course, this had been done before, but she popularized this trope. The widespread notion of the vampire was no longer just Nosferatu or Bela Lugosi, but Louis and Lestat and their woeful sex appeal. When Lestat, that erotically erratic first vampire, turns Louis, it is an ecstasy: “‘...he put his right arm around me and pulled me close to his chest. Never had I been this close to him before, and in the dim light I could see the magnificent radiance of his eye and the unnatural mask of his skin…I remember that the movement of his lips raised the hair all over my body, sent a shock of sensation through my body that was not unlike the pleasure of passion…’” (19). It is marvelously homoerotic, and in that sense progressive for its time. However, it also plays with eroticized pedophilia, perhaps an attempt to further a sense of subversion that these other beings exist in. When talking about Claudia, the 5 year old child that Louis drinks from and Lestat turns into a vampire, Louis says: “She had a voice equal to her physical beauty, clear like a little silver bell. It was sensual. She was sensual” and later in that conversation Lestat reasserts: “’She’s our daughter’” (93). It is taboo, as well as sexuality, that is so heralded in Rice’s novel – however problematic, it affords us a view into the debauched reality of her New Orleans. All of the descriptions of the vampires include some sense of their surreal appearances, as seen with Lestat’s “unnatural mask” of skin, which Louis also maintains: “‘As you can see, my face is very white and has a smooth, highly reflective surface, rather like that of polished marble.’ ‘Yes,’ the boy nodded, and appeared flustered. ‘It’s very…beautiful, actually,’ said the boy.’” (47). It is a sense that they are not only beautiful because they are severe looking, but because of how inhuman they appear. 

A photograph I took the first time I came to New Orleans. The plastic breasts hung on every tourist shop tell me that sex doesn’t just sell in New Orleans — sex is New Orleans.

This non-human, objectified beauty piqued my interest throughout the novel, but it was not until after we finished the book that I understood the idea of object-sexuality in relation to vampires. I have been highly interested in sex robots for some time now, not in an erotic fixation but in a theoretical and morbid fascination. I have followed one account on Instagram for a few months now, @km_amber, who is a “Doll Wife/Juggalette”. She is a multi-thousand dollar, hyper-realistic silicone sex doll, and her Instagram account is run by her very real human husband Vinny. On March 28, Vinny posted that Amber was “diagnosed” with an “advanced heart disease.” On May 21, 2023, at “age 28,” she was pronounced dead via Vinny’s personal Instagram account. It had been two days since I finished reading IWTV, and reading the news of her “death” I immediately thought of the failed killing of Lestat. What does it mean for an immortal non-human entity to “die,” especially when the primary physical characteristic of said being is their eternal youth and beauty? The death is not real, not lasting, but the plastic eternity is: artificiality is the only thing that lasts, and using this lens and understanding, I have come to see how New Orleans seems to champion artifice, particularly sexualized artifice, at every turn.

Blood bag and my book.

Ciena is writing a book that includes characters in a very specific subset of New Orleans subculture: the “real” vampires, some of whom are “sanguinarians” who engage in consensual blood drinking. Being a gothic-minded individual myself, she and I took a trip to the Vampire Boutique, a shop that sells overpriced (yet very fun) vampire wares. After perusing the boutique, we were directed to their sister business, the Vampire Café, where we drank from “blood bags” filled with a red-dyed cocktail. We sat outside, reading IWTV and chatting about our preteen emo years.

Later, we went to the Vampire conglomerate’s third location: the Vampire Speakeasy. She was told that the “real” vampires would sometimes hang around there, but when we arrived we saw the trifecta of the Vampire chain for what it was: a scheme playing to tourists’ desire for mediated gothic fun. However, I was not upset by its lack of “realness,” but instead marveled at the spectacle of it all. I imagined the magnificent Lestat coming through the door of the bar and carefully choosing a victim. I thought of the games he played with his victims. Louis describes one such scene: “There were women in the parlor…Lestat had his arm around one woman and was kissing her. She was very drunk and very beautiful…The woman on the settee with him was already teasing about his kisses, his coldness, his lack of desire for her.” (77) In the Vampire Speakeasy, among the tacky decorum, I could see Lestat laughing at the frivolity of it, at the childish desire for darkness that us mortal humans have and can never truly feel the way he feels it. He would love nothing more than to take the life of a young damsel who reveres the vampire for his sexuality, forgetting his true purpose of killing. He would watch her eyes grow sultry with desire and then wide with fear, striking just as she understands the severity of her errors. Would I be one such victim? Perhaps. As it was, I simply enjoyed the crafted artifice in this space of imagination. 

But what of the “real” vampires? The sanguinarians? Are they more genuine than this tourist nightclub, or less? They fancy themselves real vampires because they choose to drink each other’s blood consensually – yet this, too, is an act of roleplaying. These levels of deception devolve into delusion; it all stems from a desire to be different from a broader society in order to find community in a truly unique subculture. Above all, it is a subculture specific to New Orleans. Anne Rice created the sexy vampire, and they became the city’s own sexy vampires. While the blood may not be of nutritional value, it is of sexual value. It is sadomasochistic, inherently related to BDSM. I am reminded of the Halloween sex store, of its multitude of bondage and fetish gear. One piece specifically stuck out in my mind: a black faux leather collar with the word “SLAVE” attached in silver letters. In any other setting, I would accept this at face value as referring to a sex slave, a common trope in fetish communities. However, the relationship in IWTV between actual enslaved people and the vampires was distressing and rather under-addressed. 

Lestat sought out Louis for his wealth – a rich inheritance from his family’s sugar plantation. Lestat wanted to dress in the softest silks, sit in the most plush seats, and generally be surrounded by luxury. And he was. The book focuses so much on the opulence of the vampires’ lifestyle, but only touches upon the lives lost in order to maintain such a lifestyle. There is the obvious suffering of the vampires’ victims, but there is also the loss of blood of the enslaved in order to produce saccharine delights for the human Louis. Even before he was a vampire, he eked blood from undeserving victims in order to appease his taste for sweetness (literally, the sugar, but also a sweet life of comfort). Louis also often refers to himself as a slave of Lestat’s – again undermining the actual slavery that brought him to his current role as pseudo-slave. 

This is not just an issue within the novel, however. Overt opulence has always covered up the atrocities against humanity committed at such plantations. When we visited the Whitney Plantation, we first discussed how most other plantations are used as event venues rather than museums. Weddings, proms, and other extravagant celebrations are staged at these sites of terror because they are beautiful. When these plantations were used for slavery, there was a harsh and purposeful contrast between the big house and the slave quarters. Now, however, only beauty remains in such spaces – a facade of virtue for willfully ignorant individuals to celebrate their meaningless lives on the soil fertilized by the bodies of those who were punished for being born. The Whitney refuses this glamorization and aims to educate on the horrors of the past. It has removed the furniture from the big house, stripping it down to its bare bones to dissuade visitors from being dazzled by the glitz in which the masters enjoyed their pompous existences. However, as our tour guide stated repeatedly, they have recently had to change their touring program in order to appease wider audiences. People were offended when they heard the traumas executed on this site, and so the museum has had to sanitize their tour in order to stay in business. The most meaningful and important aspect of such a tour is to hear and see and understand the misery and torment that occurred in the history of these spaces. Even the sculpture depicting the decapitated heads of the revolutionary enslaved men of the 1811 German Coast Uprising, one of the most powerful and devastating things I have ever seen, was tucked away into a far corner of the museum’s property.

Statue honoring those executed - murdered - after the German Coast Uprising.

While these are understandably difficult concepts to grapple with, they are absolutely essential to understand in order to grasp our current reality as much as our past. But, in these plantations as much as in IWTV, we see that when the allure of a place (The Whitney) or a person (Louis) comes from a history of others’ agony, it is only the final visual appeal of opulence that is centered. As such, I was enthralled by the book and its fancifully enticing plot, but never once did I feel true pity for Louis throughout his trials of loss and despondency: I knew that he had brought them all upon himself. 

As a final note of the facade of beauty covering up a history of suffering, I refer to a seemingly unrelated yet entirely fascinating cultural history timeline. As I mentioned earlier, Ciena and I discussed our emo years during our talks of vampires. Our favorite band when we were both 13 was My Chemical Romance. The timeline goes like this: Gerard Way, the band’s frontrunner, worked at Cartoon Network in NYC, just blocks away from the World Trade Center. On September 11, 2001, he saw the towers fall. So distraught by this sight of tragedy, he decided to start a band and centralize suffering. But he was also theatrical, sexy, and they adopted that perfect trope that Anne Rice had popularized: the sexy vampire. So inspired and enthralled by MCR, Stephanie Meyers wrote her Twilight series in large part inspired by My Chemical Romance’s vampiric facade. Eventually, E.L. James wrote a smut fanfiction based off of Meyers’ own sexy vampire series. That fanfiction turned into the erotic romance novel series Fifty Shades of Grey. Today, sex and vampires and literature and music are so deeply intertwined, and it seems that we have Anne Rice to thank for this. Thus, it only seemed right that when Ciena and I went to a karaoke bar, we sang a song that was on Meyers’ inspiration playlist for Twilight: I’m (Not) Okay by My Chemical Romance. (INSERT VIDEO OF US SINGING) It was an homage to Rice as much as it was an homage to our own personal histories. The only incongruence, the only irony, is that I was okay. I was better than okay. Here, in this marvelous city, surrounded by spectacle and history, I had never been better. 

Ciena and I singing I’m (Not) Okay by My Chemical Romance. Ironically, the pages of my IWTV book are all torn and frayed! I bought a cheap copy and it promptly unraveled.

Two Things Can Be True At Once

In A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines, Jefferson, the young man unjustly given a death sentence for a murder he did not commit, often refers to both his own impending death and the death of Jesus in conversations with his old teacher Grant Wiggins. When discussing Christmas with Grant, Jefferson asks, “‘That’s when He was born, or that’s when He died’ he asked. ‘Who?’ I said. He looked at me, knowing that I knew who he was talking about. ‘Born,’ I said. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Easter when they nailed Him to the cross. And He never said a mumbling word.’” (139). While reading this passage, a song began to hum in my mind…

“Oh didn’t they crucify my Lord? Oh didn’t they crucify my Lord? Yes they crucified my Lord, and He never said a mumblin’ word, He just hung, Lord, Lord, His head and died…”

This is the opening refrain to the traditional African-American folk/gospel song “And He Never Said A Mumblin’ Word”. As with all traditional folk songs, there is no one known author – as the song is sung and passed down orally, there is multiplicity and variation in the versions and thus it belongs to the people and community in which the song exists rather than one individual person. However, one of the earliest known recordings is that made by father-son duo Alan and John Lomax in June 1933, sung by inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (which is better known as “Angola” in reference to the slave plantation that previously occupied the land). I have linked a recording of the song, though this was made at the Mississippi State Penitentiary a few months later, as the original Angola recording was lost to technical fault.

Image of description card for sound recording in Angola, taken from the website of the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center

Many of the Lomax recordings were done in Southern prisons, and thus, because of the disproportionately high Black imprisonment, most of these recordings are historically African-American folk and gospel songs. They are historical in their origin, but still highly contemporary in the issues of suffering imposed on these groups. Angola remains the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, and is also referred to as a “farm” because of its harsh working conditions, with duties that include picking cotton. With a 72% Black population, the ties between this environment and enslavement are clear. The prison industrial complex is notoriously known as modern slavery – since slavery was abolished with the 13th amendment, there has been an exception for convicts, and institutions (and individuals) of white supremacy have ensured that prison demographics remain majority Black. 

Louisiana State Capitol

These are all issues that I have known about for years, but never have I been confronted with them so directly as when I visited the Louisiana State Capitol. Walking into its vicinity, we were first greeted by the utter grandeur of its visage. Peering at this edifice, I thought of Huey P. Long’s fascist ability to construct this in under two years; looking at the statue of his stately appearance erected after his death, I thought of how Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party hailing from Louisiana, was most likely named after Long. A dictatorial leader dearly loved by those championing ultimate freedom and armed civilians. Two things can be true at once.

The capitol was dazzling, yet its contents were disturbing. After exploring the inside and the lookout point at the very top of the building, Mary, Kiki, and I took an elevator down to what we thought was the ground floor. We ended up in a basement situation and, after seeing a strange room full of suited individuals, decided to explore. After wandering through the hall, we realized there was some sort of committee occurring, and sat down in an adjacent room where the meeting was being televised. After listening for a bit, we learned that the committee was discussing House Bill 321. HB321 proposes to introduce an online database for criminal charges and convictions, specifically targeting court records of juveniles aged 13 and older. The pilot program, if passed, will only be launched in three parishes. Those proposing the bill, led by Republican Representative Debbie Villio, claimed that the choice of these parishes has to do with their technological capabilities of sustaining such a program. However, as pointed out by those opposing HB321, all three of these parishes are majority Black. 

Committee on HB321 in the capitol.

Before sitting in on this discussion, I honestly did not understand the casual nature with which such bills are passed from one stage to the next. After harrowing testimonies from victims of violent crimes from both sides, then finishing with the opposition’s clear reasons why such a bill would not actually aid victims’ search for justice against their assailants as well as how many children’s lives could be ruined by the potentiality of such a bill, the representatives were ready to make a decision. Mere seconds after the opposition’s last point, a spokesperson asked the council members for their decisions. It seemed impossible that these senators could have listened, truly listened, to these arguments and immediately afterwards made a decision about the Bill. Were they listening? Or had they already made up their minds before a single speaker stepped foot in their room? “Yea.” “Nay.” “Yes.” “Yes.” “Yes.” Decided. It was “reported with amendments” meaning that it will pass from this house onto the next. The only “Nay” was spoken by the only Black senator. The “Yea” and “Yes”es were spoken by white senators. 

Kiki, Mary, and I sat and looked at each other in disbelief as the members dispersed. I thought of a line from A Lesson Before Dying: “Twelve white men say a black man must die, and another white man sets the date and time without consulting one black person. Justice?” (157). Although not as immediate or as literal as Jefferson’s case, this Bill passing might have truly devastating effects on youths pushed into lives of crime, or even those charged without conviction, those with no proof of any crime but only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Our justice system still decides on the lives of marginalized peoples without their say. While Representative Villio’s pink plaid suit and gray snakeskin pumps appeared villainous and tacky in their appearance, it was her political stronghold that was tacky in its lasting capabilities. Sometimes, it takes one individual human being to continue a legacy of marginalization and pain. 

The courthouse in New Roads, the town that Bayonne was based on.

However, we know that it also sometimes takes one human to alter the future legacy of another individual’s personhood for the better: Grant Wiggins was that for Jefferson and, ironically, Sheriff Thibodeaux was that for me, albeit in an extremely different way. The courthouse was almost exactly as described in Gaines’ novel: “The courthouse, like most of the public buildings in town, was made of red brick. Built around the turn of the century, it looked like a small castle you might see in the countryside somewhere in Europe. The parking lot that surrounded the courthouse was covered with crushed seashells. A statue of a Confederate soldier stood to the right of the walk that led up to the courthouse door. Above the head of the statue, national, state, and Confederate flags flew on long metal poles. The big clock on the tower struck two as I parked opposite the statue and the flags.” (69) 

While there are no Confederate statues or crushed seashells, this was the most profound moment of Bookpacking thus far. I could see Grant Wiggins exiting his car, his gray ‘46 Ford, as that big clock struck two. Walking into the courthouse, I could see his apprehension towards the men who eyed him suspiciously, walking up the steps I could see him following behind Paul, and reaching those dilapidated jail cells, I could see him sitting with Jefferson in his cell where each of his the cells in his body screamed in pain and hurt. We did not follow Paul or Sheriff Guidry, we followed Tammy and a fellow officer. Tammy was like Paul, sweet and understanding; the other officer, in many ways, did remind me of Guidry. Upon entering the courtroom, we discussed youth imprisonment and the implications of HB321. He recounted to us a story that occurred in that very room: once, he had a juvenile girl in the court. He didn’t tell us what she was being tried with, but he told us that she cussed at the judge. He said, “I told her that she had to behave herself, and she hit me in the face right here.” He pointed to his cheek and continued, “I took her right to the floor. She got 18 months for that.” There was a look of pride on his face, a pride and grumble in his throat as he said he took her to the floor. Pride at taking down a young girl – yes, she had hit him, and no we do not know what she was charged with, but it was that pride that struck me. It was not pride at being an officer upholding the peace, but a gloating sneer that he had shut her away for attacking his personhood. He fit right into Gaines’ novel to me. 

But everyone else was kind, and in some ways, this was more shocking to me. After exploring the jail cells, after finding tattered documents of gruesome murders and dusty photographs of bloated carcasses, I was in a somber mood. Not only seeing the physical spaces where people’s lives were stripped of them, but seeing images that displayed alternately lifeless bodies – so much pain was held in this space. You could feel it in the air, in that stifling humidity, in that dust and decay. Walking into Sheriff Thibodeaux’s office, seeing his large Blue Lives Matter flag hung on the wall, seeing his jovial nature, I began to cry quietly in my seat at the conference table. It felt like whiplash, too much for my brain to comprehend at once. I felt myself bristle against his kindness, distrusting of what I thought to be a facade. The closest encounters I have had with police before this (besides traffic stops) have been at protests against them.

Eventually, I asked him what his Blue Lives Matter flag meant to him. I knew what it meant to me - a direct backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement aimed at uplifting the voices of Black Americans, so long pushed to the wayside. But his answer took me aback: his friend had made the flag for him, his father and grandfather were both policemen, and he was proud of his service. It seemed that he had no idea that the original purpose of this flag was in direct opposition to the BLM movement. And I slowly started to see how in a small town like this, the issue of corrupt police is limited to a few bad eggs. He knows everyone, and he holds all of his officers to the standard of treating each civilian like their cousin, because if they’re not their own cousin, they’re probably someone else’s on the force. It was a viewpoint that I had heard of, but never truly understood in a context where it could be applicable.

Myself and Sheriff Rene Thibodeaux

While my opinion of the police state in a broader sense has not changed (the larger institution of policing in America is too far gone to become anything other than an oppressive regime, that’s what it has always been and will continue to be until there is a large-scale revolutionary shift), I see now that smaller police forces actually are able to keep their officers to a high standard, that not all cops are inherently or intentionally forces of oppression - in a place like New Roads, most actually aren’t. It is an entirely different reality than I am used to, and this is a perspective for which I am eternally grateful. In terms of policy making, I think it necessary to combine these attitudes with conversations of institutional policing in order to find a truly progressive and comprehensive future of law and justice. Sheriff Thibodeaux was truly one of the loveliest people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and I hope to see his sunny face again one day. 

I find this interplay between utter kindness and immeasurable historical pain very profound. The jail was one of the places that struck me the most in this sense, and Gaines’ home was the other space where I felt this so deeply. Cheylon, our marvelous guide to all things Gaines, spoke multiple times about the incongruence between descriptions of physical space in the book and the actual place in real life – the Church/schoolhouse being the best example of this. It was small - very small. I could see Irene Cole standing and commanding the younger students as Grant cracked his ruler over the head of a young boy, hear all of the sounds mixing together in the acoustically tight atmosphere, words climbing over each other to find a home in the mind of the children. Knowing that Gaines grew up on this plantation, I considered how he reimagined the space to feel larger in his novel. It was a literary technique to contrast the city of Bayonne, but it also spoke to his rewriting of his own history. He took back the plantation where he was raised, forced to work as a sharecropper, and turned it into this beautiful home for his children and grandchildren and pets to grow healthy and happy. It is this act of remembrance equal to reimagining that makes Gaines such a profound author and, it seemed, such a gracious human being. He never forgot where he and his people came from, where they struggled. However, where history is unalterable, he found victory in changing his own personal reality. By understanding this through seeing the physical space that he occupied, I further understood Jefferson’s veritable victory of dying with dignity. He, too, could not change the past or the court’s order to execute him, but he could change his mental attitude toward his physical reality (however dismal and cramped it was). Gaines had to return to the South to write his stories because he had to push through his own past of suffering to find victory and success in his mental state by way of the space that he occupied.

The grave of Ernest J. Gaines

It makes sense, then, that he chose his final resting place to be on that same land. The graveyard was small. Very small, actually. There were births and deaths dated from the early 1900s all the way up to 2023, yet I couldn’t help but think of all the bodies that lay deeper in the earth, further back in history, long ago eaten by worms that became fertilizer for the next crop of sugarcane. Blood sugar, the sweetness made possible only by death. Gaines clearly thought about this, too. His gravestone read: to lie with those who have no mark.

With his writing, he gave voice to the historically voiceless, telling the stories of his life and those around him with poignancy and elegance, with full emotional truths even if the facts were sometimes fabricated. Then, even in death, he gives voice to those otherwise forgotten. 

Standing by his grave, a movement caught my eye. Two butterflies circled above me then moved to be above his bones. One was black with yellow dots, the other yellow with black dots. Just like Jefferson’s butterfly, the one that Grant saw before he heard the news of his death: “Several feet away from where I sat under the tree was a hill of bull grass. I doubted that I had looked at it once in all the time that I had been sitting there. I probably would not have noticed it at all had a butterfly, a yellow butterfly with dark specks like ink dots on its wings, not lit there. What had brought it there?...I watched it fly over the ditch and down into the quarter, I watched it until I could not see it anymore. Yes, I told myself. It is finally over.” (252). When I was in third grade, my Nonna died. At her funeral, I sat next on the grass and watched a white butterfly flit around the white lillies that sat on her casket. Her best friend came up to me and told me that if a butterfly is at a funeral, that is the deceased loved one coming back to say hello, and that from now on every time I see a white butterfly that will be my Nonna coming to say hello. To this day, I think of her when I see white butterflies. Now, I have no doubt in my mind that these black and yellow butterflies were Jefferson and Gaines, finding comfort in each other and in their new free-flying forms. It is finally over: this book, this experience, their literal and literary lives, but the butterflies, their souls will not cease flight. The reading of Gaines’ work will not end. Now and forever, they will drink from the nectar of the flowers that their sweat gave life to. I hear Cheylon and Andrew calling us to the van. I watch the butterflies take flight over the grave, past the fake purple flowers and into the lush green underbrush. They encircle each other until I can’t see them anymore, and then I turn around to leave. 

One of the butterflies explores the air before the second one appeared

Bodies Discarded, Others Refreshed

A state of peaceful languor pulls me in and out of a whispering sleep as I sit upon a barricaded porch. The balcony outside is sun bleached and covered with the mangled bodies of countless pests and once-buzzing nuisances, but inside the mesh enclave I am safe. Safe to inhabit my own body, safe to experience bliss, safe to consume the words of Kate Chopin which resonate more deeply after feeling the physicality of Edna Pontellier’s existence in The Awakening.

I received my copy of this novella from a friend last October. I had just met him a few weeks prior, and he gave me this book as a birthday gift. It was an unexpected act of kindness that has persisted in his general demeanor throughout our subsequent friendship. The sweetness reflected here is a difficult one to find: selfless and simple, resolutely human. Coming to Grand Isle, I was reacquainted with this idea of sweetness. The night was thick with mosquitoes and darkness when we ambled in our tightly-packed van across bridges and swamps, eventually arriving in the small town. The trip had lulled me into a cycle of dozing, similar to that later experience on the porch, but this was more dependent on a genuine lack of sleep rather than a comfortable state of lethargy. My final departure from sleep in the van was jolting - we had gone over some rock, and my eyes sprung open, met by Grand Isle’s silhouettes of ominously stilted homes, lumbering and taciturn in their angularity. Their ambivalence to our arrival implored me to stay awake and I sat peering out at these shapes, unaware of the eventual relaxation they would bring. I understood immediately that this unique architecture was formulated as a defense against the disastrous hurricanes so prevalent in this region. I understood their necessity, and then gladly I understood how their necessitated forms gave life to privately sublime occurrences: as we progressed through the vacation homes, I began to witness Sweetness again. A family gathered under one such porch with their brightest flood lights on, dazzling my sleep-sensitive eyes. More remarkable than the light, though, was the situation underneath. Edna’s family, when alone and not in the camaraderie of their summer friends, ate dinners guarded by familial discontent, rife with arguments about race tracks, glimmering displays of crystalline glamor, hurried endings due to songs reminiscent of scandal and passion. No, this was different. It was simple, just a family circled around a newspaper-covered folding table stacked high with the simmered bodies of ocean-dwellers and a host of well-seasoned landfare. A crawfish boil. This is what I had come to Louisiana for: communal experience and visceral pleasures, the culmination and highest form of which being the act of Bookpacking as a group. This entrance, this apprehension turned to affection, would prepare me for the variety of personal emotions and literary concurrences to ensue.

Last summer, I accidentally embarked on my own sort of Bookpacking experience - it traced the trellouses of my own mental landscape, the veins of my own history rather than that of another. I focused my literary attentions on the disdainful ecstasy of girlhood, beginning with The Virgin Suicides in my childhood home, then My Year of Rest and Relaxation as I lolled about waiting to go to New York City, where I lived alone and commuted to work and read The Bell Jar. I relished in these tales of femininity’s inherent melancholy. The Awakening was, in many ways, a continuation of this: a woman’s deeply gnawing desire for individuality precluded by rest, guided by a separation from a (relatively, considering Edna is a wealthy white woman) oppressive society. So, for personal agency. Chopin so poignantly writes, “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight – perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman” (Chapter 6). The young woman, full of passion and despair, still hopeful for a future yet utterly despondent at her state of reality, might be the most apt creature in the world to grapple with such ideas.

However, while the setting of my home or of New York City connected vaguely to the books that I was reading, with The Awakening I was placed directly on the sands of Edna’s desires and in the waters of her demise. It is the water itself which spoke to me so tenderly about these both maiden and matronly matters. Chopin continues the prior quote, “...The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace” (Chapter 6). Though voiced through Edna, these words sound as if they were not written but simply transferred from Kate Chopin’s soul and materialized in the ink of these pages. Reading these words, I know that Kate ensconced herself in that softness and, perhaps, waited to succumb to its grandiosity. Sitting on the porch and reading these words, I see Kate, I see Edna, I see womankind enveloped in these waves. I see myself put the book down, I see my body traverse the hot sand and plunge into the cool water, I see this from above and I see us all together. I am in the water with new friends, my tangible female companions to accompany the literary and historical ones of Edna and Kate. We are all in this infinity together.

Of course, the ocean has long been the topography of the woman. Salted water is pulled to the shore by the moon, cyclically, as fertile blood is eked from the woman by that same celestial body. That day, the Gulf Sea was Mother’s Womb. It took us all in, again girls under Her playful benevolence, again women under Her massive severity, new souls added to Her endless supply. For a moment, I felt Edna entreat me to join her in pinkness and hums. The vast openness is inviting as a final resting place; Oh to die happy! With joyous heart and sunkissed skin! Her death was a victory, Edna’s literary stand against Kate’s literal perils. But my victory will not be so. My victory’s existence is not yet known except that it begins with the delicious delirium of sunshine and ink, with elegant prose and a previous ennui that, with each moment passing under bright sunshine and amongst still brighter individuals, lifts into a precious enjoyment of body and mind.

But I thought too of the bodies the bodies the bodies – the workers on the oil rigs burned and drowned both at the same time, screaming out and gurgling in, full of fear and desperation. Scorched and bloated I imagine some settled down to the sand, picked apart by crabs, and other more buoyant cadavers devoured by toothy fish. This is their sea too. This is the reality of the ocean itself, of water with its multitudes of rivers flowing in and out and estuaries and swamps all creating this network of suffering and of glee. First a peaceful suicide, then a screeching massacre, and lastly, us. Soaking it in, spitting it out.

Contemplating these Bodies, I saw a fin in the water. Almost masochistically, I saw my death right in front of me. I thought about joining Edna in my moments of floating reflection, but I am a coward because I still wanted to live. Cowardice, when well-intentioned, is permissible. In those moments I saw those Grand Isle graves, those bodies marked by French names and crosses askew from years of torrents. I didn’t want to join them yet because I had also seen the school boys playing basketball by the cemetery, had seen their lackadaisical mirth drawn from simple play. A younger boy shrieked and clapped when the older boy tossed his ball right through the net. I wondered if their mothers loved them even if Edna did not love her children. And then I did not care; it was this one individual moment of play that set their hearts ablaze. Edna did not spite her children in her death. She set them free with her bravery, her suicide. Seeing these boys, seeing this cemetery, seeing that fin in the water, I set myself free with my cowardice; my will to live.

This video originally had much brighter hues, but when uploaded onto this website the image was dulled. I could not fix this, but perhaps this is how Kate Chopin would’ve wanted it… Her spirit lives on…