Po
Boy Views
By
Phil
LaMancusa
Rear
Window
Or
Invitation
to the Blues
Where I’m sometimes staying now is a typical New Orleans
experience, whether you’re Streetcar Named Desire, Walk on the Wild Side or
just another Po Boy View.
My
shop is in one of twin buildings built in 1830 by two brothers from France to
house their mercantile businesses and their families. Their businesses were on the first floor; their
living accommodations consumed the remaining property. The dining room and
parlor would have been on the second floor; master’s and daughters bedrooms on
the third and the boy’s bedroom (garconniere) up in the attic. Rounding out the
classic layout is a breezeway entrance, probably used for wagons and supply
deliveries, and quarters in the back for the servants; the third floor for them;
the second floor for the kitchen and the ground floor a household shop for repairs,
maintenance and inventory. A courtyard anchors the property; back to front.
The horse trough and fountain still remain in
the courtyard, filled in and used as planters. The kitchen and the dining room
(on the second floor) are connected by what is known as a ‘whistling walk’--urban
legend has it that whoever brings the food to table would have to whistle so
that the family would know that none of their food was being eaten by the
servant. The kitchen with the servant’s (slave) quarters above them were built
away from the main house because of the ever present danger of fire…. the most
favored servants were located in back so that they could be on call and
wouldn’t have to travel far to get to work. The staircase to the upper floors
of the main house is outside of the building at the entrance to the courtyard.
This completes the archeological picture of the structure itself.
In
olden days, on warm days, the ladies of the house would have tea in the parlor
next to a table that had perfumes on it for them to inhale; the streets in
those days were reclaimed wetland and full of traffic, manure, stray animals of
every sort and the contents of chamber pots; very ripe, indeed. The men would
work in commerce and the servants would be kept busy shopping, cleaning,
cooking and mending wood, leather and mortar around the building. As a side
note: the building that my shop is in (the one of which I can speak) is still
owned by the descendants of that family.
Fast
forward a hundred and eighty five years. Sometimes my shop goes into overload
and I am obliged to spend the night there. Above me lives a mid-aged sweet and comely
woman that is into photography and bondage; she doesn’t mind walking around
with little or no clothes on with her balcony windows open. The men across the
street love that about her. She owns at least one whip that I know of.
Above
her is an apartment, of the same size, that has changed hands since the first
tenant that I met poisoned the landlady’s pet canine. He told me once never to
go up to his floor because he had a gun and would shoot anyone coming up there,
without looking to identify them and only asking questions later. Since he was
evicted the flat has turned over three times to young professionals—the last a
restaurant manager—with able bodies, ones that have the energy to climb those forty-five
steps up the perfectly round spiral staircase that like I said, stands outside
at the entrance to the courtyard. The apartment is frightfully expensive and
usually newcomers realize quickly that there are better digs at lower rents
elsewhere in the city, or they have made a mistake coming to New Orleans. The
‘Big Easy’ is neither big nor easy.
In
the slave quarters, three or four couples take turns using the ground floor
apartment for weekend getaways, leaving it empty most times. I have no idea who
these people are or where they come from; I only know that they show up for
weekends when the city is busy with one of its many planned festivities. They
bring in their groceries, leave their trash and take their dirty linen home
with them. They contribute nothing to our infrastructure or our voting base;
they’re just people who are, nothing
more. I’m waiting for them to renege on the rent so that I can take it over and
use it for office and Pied de Terre.
Above
them lives a nice guy prep cook that doesn’t go out much but shops a lot. And,
that’s not a bad thing, surely I can appreciate a love of shopping; a harmless
vice that we two have in common. I accept packages for him, gladly, at the shop,
and he has always been courteous, polite and agreeable. A solitary man he is,
both likeable and easy to talk to. He keeps mostly to himself and shares the
duty of making sure that the trash cans are put out and taken back in on pick
up days. He willingly and without question shares this responsibility with me
and the man who lives above him who’s only character flaw that I can see is
that he takes in women as lovers to live with and in all the instances that I
have known, abuses them physically until sooner or later they leave.
I
can be sitting in the courtyard at any time after working hours and hear the silence
shattered by raised voices from the third floor followed by the sounds of a
woman crying or in pain. He’s been through four women at least since I’ve been
here and it’s a shame because he is otherwise a good specimen of his gender.
It’s like a spider with flies. He lures them in and soon after, sets about
destroying them. I suppose that pointing out those analogies would not alter
their temperaments or destinies; holding up a mirror to someone’s inequities
has never been a popular parlor game.
I am
no stranger to domestic violence; I was raised around it. I understand the
concept of loving your mate but not liking them; still the sound of a woman in
pain upsets me. But philosophically, a woman---young, intelligent and
attractive--- should be able to grasp the theory of free will; she could leave. He departs for work earlier
than she and one day she could get a grip, pack a grip and go away…far away. Eventually,
like the others, she will; I just hope that it’s not on a stretcher.
Tennessee
Williams would be no stranger to these passion plays. Me? I remain (hopefully)
an impartial observer, not called upon to be participant nor prey to the dramas
that surround me; the same situations that are continually enacted wherever
mankind is a slave to their passions and not their productivity; their
personality and not their individuality; their lower and not their higher
instincts.
These
scenes are enacted around me on a universal scale; man’s inhumanity; windows
breaking; children hungry; the good left to loneliness and the sly willfully
taking that which is not freely given. Optimism with a bloody nose; bleeding
but not bent.
It’s
two in the morning; I sit with my goodnight beer in the courtyard and wonder at
life being forever thus. There is a light rain falling as late night mists
will. My neighbors are all at rest, I should be as well; but the solitude and
silence stalks me as would a lioness lover. I ponder at how the rain and sleep
falls upon us all without discrimination or regard; the loving and the loved;
the lonely and the lone; the victims and the thieves that rob them of their rights.
How
there is no end to this story. How there is no cure for the human condition.
