Louisiana Anthology

Frank Perez.
“A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter, Parts 1-9.”

© Frank Perez.
Used by permission.
All rights reserved.

A Day in the Life of the COVID-19 French Quarter — Part 1.
3/22/2020

The diary of a French Quarter writer details the neighborhood’s new norm.
— by Frank Perez

Saturday, March 21, 2020
4:48 am

I wake up without the benefit of an alarm. This is not new to me. Early morning is my writing time. Usually, I have a writing goal each day to reach before the day starts (calls, texts, emails, appointments, meetings, errands, etc.). I am relieved that my days will never start for the foreseeable future. The solitude and lack of interruptions give me time to really make progress on my latest book — a biography of the recently departed Stewart Butler. This opportunity mitigates some of the financial stress. Rupee, an elderly Chihuahua we rescued in 2018, accompanies me to the kitchen and watches me brew the coffee. He’s wagging his tail because he knows breakfast is next. Chris is still sleeping.

6:41 am

I step out onto my balcony to survey the infant day. The restaurant across the street is boarded up, which reminds me that hurricane season is not far away. The sun is peeking over the Mississippi River two blocks away. The streets are desolate — no drunken tourists trying to find their car, no bums or crusties sleeping on the sidewalk, nobody on the way to Café du Monde, no one walking her dog, nothing. But wait — just as I begin to water the plants, I spot an affable neighborhood derelict (for lack of a better word), drunkenly singing into a pint of whiskey as if it were a microphone. He is dancing in the middle of Royal Street. This comforts me.

10:15 am

Time for the daily trip to Rouses, a part of my routine that has in no way been affected by the current crisis. On the way I see Sue, my favorite server from Café Amelie, riding her bike. At Rouses I am greeted by Sylvia, who is wiping down the door with a sanitary wipe. I collect the vegetables for dinner (shrimp stir-fry). Mandy smiles enthusiastically as she checks me out. Exiting the store is easier than usual as there are no people congregated on the corner to listen to Doreen play her clarinet. Doreen and her clarinet have taken the day off.

12:15 pm

I receive a text from my friend Ben, an Episcopal deacon who lives a few blocks away, asking if I know anyone who is hungry. Ben is making dozens of brown bag lunches and delivering them around the Quarter to anyone in need. He assures me that he wears gloves and a mask while preparing the meals. I’m hungry now and heat up spaghetti leftovers from yesterday.

1 pm

Back to writing.

3 pm

Tired of writing. I watch the news for a while but it’s too depressing. Start prepping dinner.

5:32 pm

An alarming text comes in. A friend who lives Uptown has the virus. He admonishes me to stay home as much as possible. This is not a problem. Dinner.

6:12 pm

My neighbors across the street, musicians, begin an impromptu performance. It’s just two instruments, a guitar and a trumpet, but they’re really good. Other neighbors come out on their balconies. The spirit is convivial. I think of Italy.

7:30 pm

Movie time. I watched Contagion yesterday. Tonight is Outbreak. I’m not trying to torture myself. I just have a dark sense of humor. The last time I went on a cruise I sat by the pool and flipped through a coffee table book about the Titanic and the first time I flew after 9/11, I read the 9/11 Commission Report on the flight.

I fall asleep.

Not a bad day. Like everyone else, I have no choice but to adjust to “the new normal.” I do look forward to the return of “the old normal,” but in the meantime, here we are. The bars are shuttered, and the restaurants are closed. Street performers and artists are on sabbatical. Spring-breakers are nowhere to be found. The sidewalks are clear of ghost tours. Not a mule-drawn carriage in sight. Jackson Square is empty. The Quarter rests.

But the locals remain, some pensive.

Hunkering Down

A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 2
3/28/2020

Second in the series of daily diary entries by French Quarter writer/historian Frank Perez. “To be one flash of color in the kaleidoscope that is the Quarter lends perspective.”
— by Frank Perez

Saturday, March 28, 2020
5:05 am

A flood of memories greets me as I wake up. I had been dreaming I was back in graduate school. That was nearly 30 years ago, and I can still smell the library. The memories are pleasant, and I tell myself to file this dream away for later contemplation. Usually I forget my dreams before I get to the bathroom.

5:30 am

Coffee and the computer. I’m revising the first chapter of the biography of Stewart Butler I’ve been working on for four years now. I’ve found an article Stewart wrote — a memoir piece — for The Star, the newsletter of the National Hansen’s Disease Museum. Stewart grew up there when it was a leprosarium.

7:23 am

Time to water the plants. The amaryllises are blooming, their trumpet bulbs beautifully unaware of the viral menace plaguing the city. Rupee, our Chihuahua rescue, is unaware too. He alternates stares between his empty bowl and me, tail wagging.

8:30 am

After a light breakfast (a few strawberries and a boiled egg) is a phone interview with a political activist who was in the trenches with Stewart in 1991 during the fight to get a non-discrimination ordinance passed. Writing.

10:00 am

I should be walking down Royal to the Monteleone to conduct a literary tour for the Tennessee Williams / Saints and Sinners Literary Festivals. Key word, should.

11:37 am

Time for the daily trip to Rouse’s for groceries. The one-block walk usually takes much longer than it should because there are artists behind the Cathedral to greet and always a friend or acquaintance along the way to chat with. Sometimes these chance encounters result in digressions to Johnny White’s around the corner or Tony Seville’s Pirate’s Alley Café.

But there’s little chance of a diversion now. And the tourist hoards who walk and window shop at a glacial pace are nowhere near. The only soul around is Pops, an elderly gentleman who has been sitting outside Rouse’s since it was part of the old A&P grocery story chain. The comfort of familiarity.

12:10 pm

Back to writing.

3:45 pm

Movie break. Trumbo, a film reminiscence about the fabled screenwriter who was blacklisted in Hollywood during the “Red Scare” years

.

6:37 pm

What to make for dinner? My brain says go healthy, but my heart says Alfredo sauce. Alfredo it is, with green onion sausage. Whisking the Parmesan cheese into the melted butter and heavy cream, I remember my great Aunt Carmen, who was like a grandmother to me. “Whisking is very important” she would say.

7:20 pm

Sitting on the balcony with Rupee in my lap, I watch the sun slowly sink beneath the rooftops near Armstrong Park. From my perch, I can see the top of the old Ambush “Mansion” in the 800 block of Bourbon. I think of Rip and Marsha and the 32 years of memories they made under that rooftop publishing Ambush magazine before they died in 2017. I miss my friends.

So many rooftops. I imagine the multitudes of lives lived under those rooftops throughout the centuries. To be just one of those lives, to be just one flash of color in the kaleidoscope that is the Quarter, lends perspective, which in turn yields gratitude. For that is what we are — footnotes in the tout ensemble.

Hunkering Down

Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 3
4/5/2020

Third in the series of daily diary entries by French Quarter writer/historian Frank Perez, this piece considers the comforts of the ordinary.
— by Frank Perez

Saturday, April 4, 2020
4:50 am

Balcony check. All is dark and quiet. Well, almost. There is a large light in the 800 block of St. Ann to illuminate the construction area. There are no workers, but I suppose there may be equipment. Thieves, like the coyotes in the CBD, are not subject to the lockdown.

Across the street, the parking garage of the Place d’ Arms Hotel is gated shut. The site of this parking garage was a coffin making factory in the 19th Century — a time when epidemics were much more common.

6:25 am

Like a canopy heralding the arrival of dawn, cirrus clouds fill the blue-gray sky. They seem to radiate from the building across the street — nimbus and crowning. The still air perfumed by the sweet scent of jasmine.

7:45 am

Supplies run. I’ve dropped the daily run to Rouse’s down to two or three times a week, and if possible I try to go early, shortly after they’ve opened, before a lot of people get there. I assume they clean and sanitize the store before they open. Now they’ve added markers on the floor at intervals of six feet. It’s usually difficult to socially distance in the Quarter Rouses, but it can be done, especially with few people in the store. I know what I need before I get there, and I don’t linger.

8:45 am

Working on the Stewart Butler biography. Reading through old LAGPAC (Louisiana Lesbian and Gay Political Action Caucus) brochures. Stewart was heavily involved in this group. Rupee is still asleep. Writing.

11:30 pm

Phone interview with a long-time friend of Stewart’s. Some good anecdotes about bar-hopping in the Quarter in the 1970s; specifically Lafitte’s (still dere) and Wanda’s (not dere no mo). Writing.

4:56 pm

Contemplating dinner when the cathedral bells start ringing. I go outside to survey my corner of the Quarter. A lone cyclist rides by on Royal as a street cleaner in a bright orange shirt and white mask sprays and wipes down a city trash receptacle, the ones with the handles. I wonder how much COVID those things have spread.

5:15 pm

Tired of writing. Strongly resisting the urge to binge-watch Dallas on Amazon Prime.

5:37 pm

Dinner is flank steak smothered in caramelized onions and sautéed mushrooms with a side of grilled asparagus and scalloped potatoes — all of which is sprinkled with few grates of Parmesan cheese. After greasing the sauté pan with butter, I lay the potato rounds down and then cover them with yellow American cheese and a layer of chopped onions. This will be accented with chives later. When the flanks are ready, I top them with a dollop of butter and watch the sea salt dissolve as the melted butter oozes over the steak. Oh, mais ça ces bon!

Check out more stories on FQJ’s Home page or our Hunkering Down blog.

Hunkering Down

Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 4
4/16/2020

Fourth in the series of daily diary entries by French Quarter writer/historian Frank Perez, this piece covers unfortunate hair-cuts, making groceries, and graffiti scrubbing.
— by Frank Perez

Tuesday, April 14, 2020
5:20 am

Rise, and if not shine, at least get moving. Brushing my teeth I make a note to myself to wear a hat if I go outside. I resolve to never again attempt to cut my own hair. The front and sides are okay but last night’s experiment left the back pretty mauled. How do I know? Chris burst into laughter when he saw it. Rupee didn’t judge, though.

Breakfast is homemade Satsuma preserves (thanks, Guy and Mike!) on a toasted bagel. I’m eating on the balcony and it’s chilly, but that makes the coffee even better. Not a sign of life on the streets below.

5:45 am

After checking email (still no word from the Small Business Administration), I turn to the Stewart Butler manuscript. Today’s task: revising the chapter on Stewart’s crusade for trans rights. Stewart took up that cause long before it was fashionable.

8:00 am

Grocery run. I haven’t been to Rouses in almost a week and supplies are running low. Walking past St. Anthony’s Garden, I notice across the street a boarded up window with a spray-painted message: “Jesus is the cure.” In addition to annoying me, this gives me pause and I turn to the garden. There, a few feet away from Touchdown Jesus is an obelisk that was created as a memorial to Yellow Fever victims. Originally, that obelisk was at the mouth of the river where all incoming ships were stopped and inspected. Those who had the fever were quarantined at La Balize.

Inside the store are some familiar faces. There is Robert, who is always affable, checking the shelves. At produce I run into Wayne, who lives a few blocks away. Wayne is the Curator of Costumes and Textiles as well as the Carnival Collection for the Louisiana State Museum. He also serves on the Board of the LGBT+ Archives Project. Robert stocking shelves at Rouse’s.

After a quick greeting, sufficiently socially distanced and through masks, I make my way to the deli. My order — Swiss Cheese and ham — takes a backseat to the three workers’ conversation, but I don’t mind. Listening to their gossip is the most social interaction I’ll have all day. One of them is not wearing a mask, and I think of Jesus being the cure. Then it occurs to me the ham and cheese will be thoroughly cooked. Chicken Cordon Bleu is on the menu tonight.

9:11 am

The street cleaner comes rumbling down St. Ann. There is nothing really to clean and I think of Father Mackenzie in “Eleanor Rigby.” Writing

11:45 am

Lunch is leftovers, shrimp etouffee. Outside the streets are still eerily empty, save the occasional Quarter Rat walking by. COVID Quarter Rats come in two basic varieties:

1. Those on a mission. These people include joggers, grocery shoppers, dog walkers, and workers.
2. The homeless and mentally disturbed. Some of these people shuffle around aimlessly in a daze talking to themselves, perhaps blissfully unaware the world has come to a stop.

12:00 pm

I’m in a writing flow, detailing a protest and picket-line Stewart once organized outside the local HRC’s annual gala dinner over their refusal to include trans people in their mission statement when the phone rings. It’s a woman from the Canadian Pharmacy trying to sell me pet meds for my dog. I tell her Jesus is the cure and hang up.

3:18 pm

Walk the dog and drop off a letter at the Postal Emporium. Leaving my building, I notice more graffiti on the huge piece of plywood covering the soap hawker’s window. “Seek spiritual cleanliness,” it says.

On my way back, I get a paintbrush from my friend Jeff so I can erase the inane message. Seeing Jeff on his stoop was nice. In pre-COVID times, Jeff would have been holding court behind the bar at Lafitte’s.

4:30 pm

I should be preparing for the class I normally teach on Tuesday Nights at Loyola, French Quarter History. This would have been class number seven, focusing on the neighborhood’s LGBT+ history. There might not be a Quarter today if it weren’t for gay men 100 years ago.

6:00 pm

Start pounding the chicken. I don’t have a mallet, so I use a rolling pin. With every blow, I think of the politicians I would crawl over glass to vote out of office. Once sufficiently flattened, I lay the ham and cheese down and begin rolling. Egg wash and breading and the rolled breasts are ready to cook. Once done, they are topped with a creamy Bechamel sauce and fresh parsley.

As Cervantes wrote, “Our sorrows are less with bread.”

Check out more stories on FQJ’s Home page or our Hunkering Down blog.

Hunkering Down

Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 5
4/25/2020

Fifth in the series of diary entries by writer/historian Frank Perez, this day finds him in his French Quarter home, dreaming of Paris.
— by Frank Perez

Thursday, April 23, 2020
5:10 am

I wake up with Paris on my mind. I had been dreaming I was roaming the Pompidou Center in the 4th arrondissement. My thoughts go to the Bastille and the image of the Marquis de Sade leaning out his cell window imploring the disgruntled masses huddled below to storm the prison. It occurs to me that all true revolutions require bloodshed and I wonder how long the quarantine would have to last before the working masses of America rise up against their corporate overlords. These thoughts are heavy. I need coffee.

5:30 am

Time to visit the Stewart Butler biography manuscript. This morning’s writing session is revising the chapter on Alfred, Stewart’s life-partner. Alfred grew up in San Francisco in a wealthy family. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was institutionalized but subsequently escaped and traveled to Europe. He lived in Paris for a while in 1960-61 at the fabled Beat Hotel, where he met Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Brion Gysin, Ian Sommerville, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, and William S. Burroughs. He had an affair with Norse, who gifted Alfred with a few of his famous acid-drawings.

7:45 am

Balcony check. The streets are shiny with wet and devoid of any life. It is very quiet. The sky is Paris grey. I look toward the river and am transfixed by the lower Pontalba building. The Pontalba buildings, which flank Jackson Square, were inspired by the Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in Paris. Truman Capote called the Pontalba buildings “somberly elegant.” Rupee, not feeling as contemplative, waters a plant.

11:28 am

The Alfred chapter is complete and it’s time for lunch — a ham and cheese sandwich with a side of sautéed apples. I want to dine al fresco on the balcony, but it’s raining.

I read a passage from the late, great A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris, “After the trout, Mirande and I had two meat courses, since we could not decide in advance which we preferred. We had a magnificent daube provencale, because we were faithful to la cuisine bourgeoise, and then pintadous — young guinea hens, simply and tenderly roasted — with the first asparagus of the year, to show our fidelity to la cuisine classique.”

2:00 pm

The Paris connection persists. If COVID has reminded of us of anything, it’s that day-dreaming costs nothing. As I check my emails and gather bills that need to be paid, I remember my time in Paris. It was 2006 and I had spent a month in Salzburg attending the Salzburg Seminar for work.

After the seminar I met my mom and stepfather in Vienna where we enjoyed a few days exploring that city and taking a side trip to Prague. After the folks returned stateside, I lingered in Europe, spending the rest of my time in Paris. There I immediately felt at home.

With work done for the day, I decide to return to Paris. I spend the rest of the afternoon reading. But what to read? There are so many books from which to choose: Barclay’s A Place in the World Called Paris, Karnow’s Paris in the Fifties, Mayle’s A Year in Provence, White’s The Flaneur, Baxter’s We’ll Always Have Paris, Flanner’s Paris Was Yesterday, and so many more.

I choose Julian Green’s Paris: “Paris, as I have said, is loathe to surrender itself to people who are in a hurry; it belongs to the dreamers . . .”

5:41 pm

Dinner is a pork and vegetable stir-fry, with an imaginary bottle of ’83 Bordeaux.

6:30 pm

Tonight’s movie choice is easy — Casablanca. This is one of those rare movies that gets better with every viewing. And while Bogey may not have been the most handsome leading man in Hollywood, or even the best actor, he certainly was the coolest, especially as Rick Blaine.

In the final, climactic scene, he tells Bergman (Ilsa), “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.”

In the COVID world, truer words were never spoken.

Check out more stories on FQJ’s Home page or our Hunkering Down blog.

Hunkering Down

Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 6
5/16/2020

Leaving the French Quarter for the first time since the COVID shutdown, the writer’s destination of choice? The family tomb in Galliano
— by Frank Perez

Friday, May 8, 2020
6:10 am

Wake up. In my dreams I was floating down a river on a barge deep-frying turkeys and then sling-shoting them to people on the banks. But not as weapons, I was just giving away turkeys.

It’s time to break in my brand new Ninja coffee maker, which arrived yesterday. It looks complicated and has so many buttons and gadgets that I’m afraid if I press the wrong one I might launch the space shuttle. I hit “brew,” go to the bathroom and hope the coffee drips correctly.

The words of Ignatius Reilly come to me as I’m brushing my teeth: “We shall storm the office very shortly, thereby surprising the foe when his senses are still subject to the psychic mists of early morning.”

6:25 am

Before “storming the office,” which is to say my computer, I take my first cup of coffee on the balcony. It promises to be a brilliant day, cool and sunny. I look at the buildings along Royal Street toward Esplanade and think of my neighbor, jazz musician Tim Laughlin, who each evening sits on his balcony and plays his clarinet for appreciative neighbors. The nightly solo concerts have started to draw something of a crowd.

Across the street from his building is the vacant lot created by the 2014 collapse of 810 Royal. One of the enduring paradoxes of the French Quarter is that for all its architectural beauty, that beauty is often a thin veneer behind which lies decay and decadence. The Quarter is a place of decrepit elegance.

6:45 am

The Stewart Butler biography manuscript awaits. Today’s writing task is emotionally difficult: the death of Alfred, Stewart’s partner of 35 years. Alfred died in their home, the Faerie Playhouse on Esplanade Avenue. The red, nearly 200 year old Creole Cottage is familiar to many because of the red hearts that adorn its façade — a nod to Alfred’s favorite holiday, Valentine’s Day. Stewart called Alfred his “love rock.”

10:45 am

Rupee is napping at my feet as I polish a passage. It’s almost time to go. I had asked my friend Jeffrey Dude for a lift to pick up some prescriptions and when he readily agreed, he also suggested we also take ride out of the city. He said he needed a change of scenery.

“Sure,” I said.

“Any place you’d like to go?” he asked.

I thought for a second and replied, “Yeah, I’d like to go visit my grandparents’ grave.”

So Jeffrey, Chris and I head down the bayou to Galliano.

Galliano is a small town on Bayou Lafourche, a discarded incarnation of the Mississippi River, a little over an hour from New Orleans. The drive down was like riding through my childhood. Memories were everywhere — sitting on my grandmother’s knee as she fed me potted meat on crackers with Dr. Pepper, my grandfather’s nicotine stained hand patting me on the back as smoke twirled and hung in the air, the triumphant feeling that overwhelmed me the first time I caught a speckled trout, and the first time I ate a raw oyster.

My great uncle was an oyster fisherman and when I was eight or nine, he took me out on his boat. I remember him dipping the oyster tongs into the water and retrieving what at first appeared to be sludge. He held the oyster in front of me, shucked it, and then offered it to me. It looked nasty to me, but the smile on his weathered face convinced me it was okay to eat. I slurped it down and fell in love.

12:30 pm

We arrive at the cemetery. The tomb is in good shape, freshly painted and well-kept. My Paw Paw, Earl Angelle, died in 1990, but still comes to me in dreams from time to time. In these dreams he whispers a word to me, a word I need at the time, a word like patience, or forgiveness, or endurance.

12:45 pm

We drive a little further down the bayou to see our old house. It looks the same. The shrimp boats along the bayou trigger another memory. Grandpa Earl once told me that in the 1940s, three or four times a week, his brother-in-law would load up his truck with fresh Gulf shrimp and bring them to New Orleans, where he would sell them to various neighborhood markets throughout the city.

The problem was that Uncle Eddie didn’t like to drive in the city. So whenever he could, my grandfather would drive the truck and Uncle Eddie would ride shotgun. The two would always save the French Market as the last stop and after selling the last of the shrimp, they would dine at Tujague’s. It was my grandfather’s favorite restaurant and today I can’t walk past it without thinking of him.

2:30 pm

We stop at a roadside market advertising fresh shrimp and produce. Dinner tonight will be boiled shrimp.

3:30 pm

Home and Rupee goes berserk with joy.

6:30 pm

After dinner, a “Parks and Recreation” binge. Drifting off to sleep, I meditate on the intersection of place and identity and it occurs to me we are all tiny cracks into which a little bit of history slips.

I hope my grandfather visits me tonight.

Check out more stories on FQJ’s Home page or our Hunkering Down blog.

Hunkering Down

Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter, Part 7
Reopening
6/3/2020

As the nation writhes in turmoil, historian and writer Frank Perez looks through the lens of the past to ponder the French Quarter’s future.
— by Frank Perez
— photos by Frank Perez and Ellis Anderson

Friday, May 29, 2020
5:10 am

Wake up to news that Minneapolis is on fire. My mind goes back 30 years to the Rodney King verdict and the LA riots that followed. I think about my own brief career in “criminal justice.” I interned as a probation officer before landing a job with the Sheriff’s department (in a different city). It didn’t take long to recognize the institutionalized racism operating within the department. I wanted no part of it. I quit shortly after I started, firmly convinced we do not have a criminal justice system but a criminal justice industry.

I hit the brew, then respond to emails and begin writing. The topic? Stewart Butler’s opposition to the “War on Drugs” and his advocacy for reforming marijuana laws.

7:15 am

I step out onto the balcony, surprisingly, to a cacophony of sounds: a dog barking, the rumble of a truck, the beeps of a hydraulic lift, a very loud car stereo, a disheveled man cursing at no one in particular. There are sights too — workers at the Place d’ Arms Hotel painting shutters, a man sleeping in the gutter across the street, a bicyclist whizzing by, and in the distance, a family walking toward Café Du Monde.

On the other end of St. Ann a construction crew occupies the 800 block. The street activity, albeit nowhere near pre-COVID levels, is in stark contrast to the solitude that has greeted me each morning for the last two and a half months. The reopening is slow going, proceeding with caution. Breech birth and baby steps.

10:30 am

Walk to Walgreens on Decatur to pick up prescriptions. The store was closed during the lockdown and has only recently reopened. It is comforting to be greeted by name, by familiar faces. Another small sign of hope that the worst of COVID is behind us. Key word: hope.

As I walk the three and half blocks home, I notice the streets are lined with parked cars. I consider the Mayor’s proposal to banish cars from the Quarter. For me the litmus test is this: will it make people more or less likely to live in the Quarter? Because more than anything, the Quarter needs permanent, long-term, full-time residents. There is no neighborhood without neighbors. No Quarter without community.

11:21 am

I receive an email from Leo Watermeier. Attached to it is a picture he took of a coyote in Armstrong Park. I think of the coyote spotted in a CBD parking garage at the beginning of the shutdown. My friend, Dr. Jeffrey Darensbourg, informs me that in Native mythology, coyotes were viewed as tricksters, a sign something strange was imminent.

Imminent strange was certainly the case on March 7, 1699, when Iberville and Bienville went sailing through Bulbancha and first spotted what would come to be modern day New Orleans. In his journal, Iberville noted three bison laying on the banks of the river in what is now the CBD. Upon seeing the expedition, the bison got up and walked away.

12:00 pm

Lunch is a pork chop with spinach.

1:00 pm

Walk Rupee to the vet. The 15 block walk takes longer than normal because Rupee has to sniff, inspect, and mark half a dozen things on each block. It’s okay; we are not in hurry. I had hoped to take a break in Washington Square Park, but it was closed. I pause upriver on Royal and Frenchmen where Bernard de Marigny lived out the latter part of his life.

Before long Rupee and I are at the vet’s office. I’m not allowed in and am told they will call me when he’s ready to be picked up. Ordinarily I would have popped in across the street at the Phoenix. That is not to be. I look at the Starbucks. No. There was a time when a Starbucks in the Marigny, with all its corporate, bourgeois associations, was unthinkable. Times change.

I look at the boarded up Phoenix and remember the first time I visited the bar many moons ago. Then it occurs to me my friends Mike and Guy live around the corner. After a nice visit with them, the vet calls. Rupee is newly vaccinated, and my wallet is a bit lighter.

4:15 pm

News and social media are all Minneapolis. The coverage is repetitive, the story essential. The pundits call racism/slavery our nation’s “original sin.” The charge is true. The effects of our national sin extend to African American and Native communities, the latter of which represent the first enslaved people in Louisiana.

My thoughts turn to dinner.

Pere Antoine’s across the street from me is open, but I decide I’m not in the mood to go out. Not really that hungry, come to think of it.

7:20 pm

On the couch with Chris and Rupee watching television, a barrage of thoughts. I think about the rioting, about racism, about white privilege. I think about how little things have changed. I think about the righteousness and volatility of anger.

I think about the city, the Quarter, reopening. Will it ever be like it was before? Will tourists return? And if so, in what numbers? And when? Which restaurants will survive, and which will close? How will all my friends in the service industry fare? Can restricting traffic in the Quarter really work? When will tours resume? How long will we have to wear masks in public? Will the bars open next week? How, exactly, does social distancing work in a bar after patrons drink a few cocktails?

I don’t know the answers. All I know is neighborhoods, like lives, inevitably change.

Check out more stories on FQJ’s Home page or our Hunkering Down blog.

Hunkering Down

Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter, Part 8
7/8/2020

On the summer solstice, historian and writer Frank Perez reflects on the passage of time as his French Quarter neighborhood slowly reopens.
— by Frank Perez

Saturday, June 20, 2020
6:15 am:

Wake up with nothing on my mind but coffee. My new Ninja coffee maker and I are getting along fine. The morning kitchen routine would not be complete without Rupee patiently awaiting his morning meal. He loves his regular food, but I know the Jimmy Dean sausage patty and sourdough English muffin I’m about to eat will cause him to act like he hasn’t eaten in days.

6:45 am

Sit down at the computer. I’m not working on the Stewart Butler manuscript today; rather, this morning is all Archives Project work. I’ve served as president of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana since it was founded in 2014, and although getting queer history out of the closet pays nothing financially, the work is significant, and the emotional dividends are priceless.

This summer we have five Tulane students transcribing previously conducted oral histories. This morning I’m checking their work and answering several Archives Project-related emails. Also, I’m writing a proposal for a chapter in an anthology about “LGBTQIA librarianship and community engagement in a post-Stonewall era.”

9:50 am:

Balcony break: The streets are quiet. After watering the plants, I sit and take in the silence. Even though the city has re-opened and the Quarter is slowly coming back to life, this morning, with its solitude and silence, reminds me of the first few weeks of the shutdown, a calm strangeness. Then, the lone sound of a trumpet. Goosebumps.

12:00 pm:

Mindful of the Summer Solstice, I step outside to gaze upon the shortest shadows of the year.

12:10 pm:

Sitting at my writing desk, I pause and survey the room, which is spacious enough to double as a dining room. The dining table is a family heirloom purchased by my grandmother at an antique store on Royal Street just blocks away. So many memories, like familiar spirits, are attached to that table.

In the corner of the room is a recent acquisition — a hand-carved, German-made buffet / dresser. Like New Orleans herself, the piece is old and somewhat tarnished, yet elegant and beautiful. Next to the plants soaking up the sun through lace-curtained French doors are a few pictures: my father, Chris and I getting ready for a Carnival ball, my friend Rip who died a few years ago, Stewart and Alfred along with Rich Magill and Ron Joullian, and finally a picture of Bette Davis in repose smoking a cigarette.

A few years ago, I received a package from Rich containing a complete set of a newspaper he published briefly in the 1980s — The Big Easy Times. About an hour after I received it, a mutual friend called to inform me Rich had committed suicide.

I was sad, of course, but honored he entrusted the old papers to me and the LGBT+ Archives Project. Rich, who had a place on Chartres Street, and I would occasionally run into each other at Café Lafitte in Exile or sometimes he would drop by my office on St. Ann. I cherish those conversations. Listening to Rich reminisce about meeting Stewart Butler and fighting in the trenches with him on behalf of LGBT+ rights was always inspirational.

I don’t know much about guardian angels, but I do know Bette Davis helped me through some of the most difficult times of my life.

I think about Rip and Marsha and Stewart and Rich and my grandparents and a host of others who have passed on. How I wish I could have them around that table for one more meal.

My pause has morphed into reflection. Something lonely about Saturday mornings, like tired sunlight on a dusty mirror.

1:45 pm

Rouse’s run. Unlike this morning, the streets are now busy. More stores and restaurants are open. Peering down Pirate’s Alley, I see the gate around the Square is covered with artwork. The street musicians are out too. The feeling is pre-COVID.

2:30 pm

The groceries are put away and it’s time for a movie break. Yesterday, Juneteenth, was Marshall, a film about Thurgood Marshall. Today is a murder mystery double feature — Knives Out and the silly classic, Clue. Despite a promising ensemble cast, Clue, is slightly disappointing but sufficient as an afternoon escape.

7:00

Dinner tonight is Café Degas. In addition to consistently good food, the atmosphere here is delightful. The dining room is essentially open-air and is designed around a live tree. Stewart and Alfred ate here every Sunday evening for over twenty years.

10:15

Lying in bed, I randomly open James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room to the following passage:

I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, time flowed past indifferently above us, hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning our life held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day.

I fall asleep thinking about the last three months and the return of “normalcy” to the Quarter, about rooms and sea-changes.

Return to Hunkering Down blog or French Quarter Journal’s home page.

Hunkering Down

Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter, Part 9
8/2/2020

Books, bookstores, writing and reading: historian Frank Perez contemplates the literary life in a neighborhood that’s “a world of dreams and letters.”
— by Frank Perez

Saturday, July 22, 2020
5:15 am:

Wake up feeling guilty. I dreamed a book on my shelf was feeling neglected. I could not discern which book it was and I’m not sure if it was sad or angry or both, but I do know it was disappointed. Struggling out of bed, I look at my custom-made bookshelf and my eyes take in the multi-colored slivers, the spines of a thousand memories.

I have nothing to feel guilty about, really, at least with regard to books. I read constantly, usually three or four books concurrently. Right now Ardoin’s Stone Motel is on my nightstand along with Boulard’s Huey Long Invades New Orleans. Berch’s The Woman Behind the Lens and Codrescu’s New Orleans, Mon Amore are on my desk, Vaid’s Virtual Equality waits in the bathroom. These are non-virgin books for me, which is to say I’ve read them before. Some books are like lovers, ones you return to again and again.

6:05 am

Rupee materializes as I spread apricot preserves on a sourdough English muffin. His signal to wake is the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Today, Rupee has slept in; I’m already on my third cup.

6:15 am

The Stewart Butler manuscript awaits. Some minor editing and revising notwithstanding, the work is nearly complete. I hope, anyway. I still need to look over some of Stewart’s papers, which are housed at the Tulane University archives, but they have been closed since March. In the Before Time, I made regular trips to Jones Hall to comb over the Butler papers, which in archival parlance comprise 17 linear feet. Translation: a lot of personal papers. I was at linear foot 9 when the university closed.

I’ve written a few books before but never a biography. Writing about Stewart’s life and work has been an intellectual challenge — and it has given me a new appreciation for biography as a genre. I am fortunate that Stewart saved every letter he ever received, and he told his family and friends to save the letters which he wrote to them, and most of them did. It was as if he knew his life would be consequential. I spent the better half of 2018 and a lot of 2019 reading thousands of these personal letters.

8:30 am

I pause and recline my chair and my eyes fall on the shelf above my monitor. There is T. Harry William’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Huey Long. The book has remained the most significant of my life since I first read it in the eighth grade — no small feat considering it is 900 pages long. Since then I’ve read it at least two dozen times. This book seduced me and compelled me to fall in love with language, with writing, with research, with history, with politics.

For a while, when I was very young, the book even made me want to go into politics. Ultimately I became an English Professor, in no small part due to another book — The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot. On the first day of graduate school, before walking to my first class, I read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Let us go then, you and I…

After an M.A. degree at what was then the University of Southwestern Louisiana and some Ph.D. work at Texas Christian University, I landed an Associate Professor of English gig at Tarrant County College. It was the perfect job for a bibliophile.

11:00 am

Zoom meeting with the editors of a forthcoming anthology tentatively titled Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations in Librarianship. Looks like I’ll be contributing a chapter. It’s an exciting project but it means a few other writing projects will remain on the back burner: a collection of short stories, a play, a book about the letters of John Kennedy Toole, an anthology of history essays, a memoir, and a book about queer publications in Louisiana. All of these are works in progress at different stages of development. Of Hamlet, Polonius observed, “How pregnant his replies are!” I feel like my brain is pregnant with books.

12:45 pm

My mother calls and we catch up on our respective COVID worlds. I hang up and think about the house I grew up in. I think about my favorite place to read (my treehouse). I think about what I was reading as a teenager (presidential biographies). I think about mowing neighbor’s lawns to earn money to buy books. I think about the set of encyclopedias my parents had in the den. I remember sitting down with a pen and a notebook and rewriting the entries in my own words.

3:00 pm

Time to bring Rupee to the vet for a follow up visit. The old boy had surgery recently and is doing well. Afterward, we meet our friends at Guy and Mike’s house. Guy mixes up a round of Old Fashioneds as Rupee hangs out with his buddy, Chester, Guy and Mike’s Great Pyrenees.

5:30 pm

On the way home, we decide to visit Jeff, who is manning the “To Go” station at Café Lafitte in Exile.

6:45 pm

Dinner is roasted chicken with sautéed asparagus spears and slices of salted Creole tomato.

8:30 pm

Tonight’s film is a new documentary — The Booksellers, about rare book dealers in New York. A good film that triggered dozens of memories of bookshops in the Quarter.

Back in graduate school I would spend weekends in New Orleans. I would arrive on Friday and spend the afternoon browsing Quarter bookshops — Crescent City Books, Beckham’s, Dauphine Street Books, The Librarie, Arcadian, and of course Faulkner House. I never knew what book I was looking for until I found it. The discovery was the joy. Friday night was the bars, but the bulk of Saturday was coffee and books at Kaldi’s on Decatur before moving down the street to Molly’s for pints of Guinness under the watchful eye of W.B. Yeats.

Sherwood Anderson wrote in a letter to Gertrude Stein in 1922, “I came down here a month ago and am living in the old French Creole Quarter, the most civilized place I’ve found in America.”

New Orleans is a romantic city and it is therefore only natural that writers would find inspiration here. In New Orleans the muses drink café au lait in every corner café and dance in the street with mourners at every jazz funeral and exhale on every artist along the cast iron gate in Jackson Square and smile on every grave in the cities of the dead. Like the corner grocery and the corner café and the corner bar (all virtually extinct in the rest of America), literary and artistic inspiration is everywhere in the Quarter, permeating every dive bar and upscale restaurant, oozing from every Victorian shotgun house and Creole cottage, hanging thick in the air with the sweltering humidity. All one has to do to feel it is slow down and breathe it in.

To be in the French Quarter is to step outside of time and enter a world of dreams and letters, a world perfumed by jasmine and oleander with the faintest hint of mud wafting in from the Mississippi, a world where people move slowly, with catlike grace and elegance. Here, myth and reality meld to form a dreamy realm where imagination reigns supreme and care is wholly abandoned.

The Quarter itself is a poem. The souls are old here, and each has a story to sigh into any willing ear.

Text prepared by:

• Bruce R. Magee

Source

Perez, Frank. “Hunkering Down — A Day in the Life of the COVID-19 French Quarter.” French Quarter Journal, 22 Mar. 2020, https://www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ a-day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-19-french-quarter. Internet Archive, 22 Sept.2020, https:// web. archive. org/ web/ 20200922183738/ https://www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ a-day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-19-french-quarter. © Frank Perez. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Perez, Frank. “Hunkering Down — A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 2.” French Quarter Journal, 28 Mar. 2020, https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ a-day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-2. Internet Archive, 22 Sept. 2020, https:// web. archive.org/ web/ 20200922182018/ https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ a-day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-2. © Frank Perez. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Perez, Frank. “Hunkering Down — A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 3.” French Quarter Journal, 5 April 2020, https:// www.french quarter journal .com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-3. Internet Archive, 22 Sept. 2020, https:// web. archive. org/ web/ 20200922172145/ https:// www. french quarter journal. com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-3. © Frank Perez. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Perez, Frank. “Hunkering Down — A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 4.” French Quarter Journal, 16 April. 2020, https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-4. Internet Archive, 22 Sept. 2020, https:// web. archive.org/ web/ 20200922174853/ https:// www. french quarter journal. com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-4. © Frank Perez. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Perez, Frank. “Hunkering Down — A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 5.” French Quarter Journal, 25 April 2020, https:// www. frenchquarterjournal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-5. Internet Archive, 22 Sept. 2020, https:// web. archive.org/ web/ 20200922181332/ https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-5. © Frank Perez. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Perez, Frank. “Hunkering Down — A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 6.” French Quarter Journal, 16 May 2020, https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-6. Internet Archive, 22 Sept. 2020, https:// web. archive. org/ web/ 20200922183835/ https:// www. french quarter journal. com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-6. © Frank Perez. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Perez, Frank. “Hunkering Down — A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 7 — Reopening.” French Quarter Journal, 3 June 2020, https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-7-reopening. Internet Archive, 22 Sept. 2020, https:// web. archive.org/ web/ 20200928075046/ https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-7-reopening. © Frank Perez. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Perez, Frank. “Hunkering Down — A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 8.” French Quarter Journal, 8 July 2020, https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-8. Internet Archive, 22 Sept. 2020, https:// web. archive.org/ web/ 20200922164850/ https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-8. © Frank Perez. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Perez, Frank. “Hunkering Down — A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter — Part 9.” French Quarter Journal, 2 August 2020, https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-9. Internet Archive, 22 Sept. 2020, https:// web. archive.org/ web/ 20200922171347/ https:// www. french quarter journal.com/ hunkering-down/ day-in-the-life-of-the-covid-quarter-part-9. © Frank Perez. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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