Jogging Through the French Quarter

By Christopher Louis Romaguera

It is March, and we are in a pandemic, and I have been writing dark things all morning: about my family’s exile from Cuba, about dead friends in Miami, about ghosts in Patagonia, and some poorly written things about COVID-19. I turn my phone on to see my parents make another plea for me to come back to Miami, to my first home. I am in New Orleans and am not able to fully isolate, and my parents are at-risk, and it is an argument that goes round and round.

I have lived in New Orleans for about a decade. This is my second home. Even my sister lives here now. But so many of my peoples and family still live in Miami. With the COVID-19 pandemic in the early stages in the states, it is hard to know where to hole up. Would either feel like home without my peoples in it? Or just a cemetery of one?

I run to break up my days. Most mornings I lock myself away in my room, sipping on cafecitos or cortaditos, working on various projects. I run to break up the writing, to return to the page fresh, I run to get out of my head, to return to my body, or I run to return to the outside world, to no longer be in the deep darkness in my head, ready for hugs and daps with all our peoples as I cross the street, ready for a shot and a drink with my peoples in the corner of our bar.

Before the pandemic, I worked on the busiest music street in New Orleans. For the past seven years, I’ve worked at the Spotted Cat Music Club. On days I worked long hours after writing long hours, I wouldn’t get my run in, but I would listen to the band, bobbing my head and making it through the night. Sometimes I’d send Pops a video of a song he liked. The music was my reentrance into the world those days. The music was how I’d avoid getting too deep into my head with darker thoughts. So, at The Spotted Cat, we’d throw one of the biggest music parties on the street, in the city, with my friends providing the music, me providing the one-liners and a drink within 30 seconds.

With the pandemic, I am out of work, and while I can still write, I still need my escape. I think of Andy J Forest, who opened the Spotted Cat with me for years, and I hear his song “Bartender Friend”, which goes: “When I get to work, I feel at home, always someone there, someone I know, and everybody, says hello.” And I miss that vibe so much. So I make a playlist and tie my Cuban flag bandana over my face and head to Frenchmen, to run through the streets I’ve worked on for a decade, to run through the streets where I’ve seen all my peoples and made so many memories.

As a kid in Miami, I watched my father run after work. He would come home refreshed, like he had sweated out the venom put inside him by the outside world. When I got older, I’d run with him too. Sometimes we’d have headphones on, listening to our own songs or mixes we made for each other. Sometimes we’d run and talk. Sometimes we’d run and hear nothing but the sounds of our steps, whether we were at the beach, in our hood, or somewhere between. Didn’t matter if I explicitly told him about every basketball failure, every fight I did or didn’t get into that I should or shouldn’t have, every broken heart, every botched drug deal, every everything. And it didn’t matter if he told me of every pain that cropped up from memories of Cuba, or his mom, or his dad, or every struggle he faced working in Miami to support our family. We were in sync, in rhythm. Running helped us both just be in the moment, in this world, helped us return back home.

I think of the “suicides” we used to run to end basketball practices with. Suicides being sprints up and down the court, first stopping on a dime at the foul line, tapping the line with our hand, before sprinting back to the baseline, tapping that line, then sprinting back to the three point line, making our way farther and farther out each time. You felt this drill in your knees, you felt this drill in your fingertips, the asphalt courts you practiced on imprinted your hands. For practices to end, you’d have to finish the suicides, then go to the free throw line and drain a couple of shots. If you missed yours, the team ran. If one of them missed, we ran. It wasn’t just the completing of the sprint, it was keeping your wits, it was being sound of body, being solid, still in breath, to get the work done, to shoot your shot and go home, knowing at even your most tired, back against the wall, you can do the damn thing.

I know I run partly cause I don’t know how to talk about COVID-19, about the fear I have of going to Miami to help my family and being one of the asymptomatic ones that has it. Of the fear I have of this virus taking more and more of the people we need now more than ever. How we lost a culture bearer and a neighbor and a friend in Mr. Ronald Lewis, and how we can’t secondline or celebrate him for a while longer. How mournful celebrations put us all at-risk.

No other cars on the road, I stand on Frenchmen Street, staring at Washington Square Park. I listen to “Out on the Rise”, recorded by The Deslondes, composed by Sam Doores, who is fam to me. The song talks about last calls and closing bars, but I have heard him play it when we lived in the house by the river often, and I have heard him play it a lot of late, as it just seems to make sense for a world that has an indefinite last call. I think of how it is my father’s favorite song of Sam’s. Pops always getting the line “but I’ve never been so good at that” stuck in his head. I start to wonder if I’ve never been good at this. I start to wonder if I’m not being good enough for my family? Should I be heading down, in case something bad happens virally or societally? Or will these thoughts make me go back home, and spread something lethal to my family and loved ones?

I stretch my leg using the gate of the park. My head turns side-to-side, looking to see if someone comes too close, or more hopefully, for a friend. I think of a phrase an old roommate used to always tell me anytime I’d call or pop up, that I was “gonna live a long time, I was just thinking about you.” I want to see my friends turn the corner, because I’m lonely and miss them. I want to see my friends turn the corner; cause I want them to know I’m thinking of them. Cause I want them to live a long time. Cause I want to be a part of that longevity. But I’m happy not to see them, cause that actually means a better chance of us all living a long time. Right now, the absence is a promise of presence in the future. Right now, loneliness is love. But the loneliness still deepens a sense of loss.

Sam croons, “And how come all my closest friends, are so far away.” And I think of how he is isolated in the west coast. How some of my closest friends, are so far away. How the ones in the city that I can’t see, feel even farther away. And how this is my situation. Stuck in a broken and incomplete home. Separated from another broken and incomplete home.

Across the street is the Christopher Inn Apartments, which houses seniors and the disabled. I think of some of them coming into the bar to hit their tambourine with the band, some coming with plastic bags for ice to keep their beers cool outside, avoiding the chaos of the bar, but still within earshot of the band. I think of them always bringing us food whenever they barbeque. I think of all the sidewalk parties they had, with their easily folded chairs, of how when I turned the corner for work, I’d see them all lined up, I’d give them all hugs and kisses and fives and handshakes, like I was being introduced as a starter with the baddest bench in the city lined up for me. I think of how many times we saw an ambulance block traffic on the street, in front of the apartments, and we all would check in with our peoples who lived there. Now, I see people at the help desk with flimsy masks and gloves. I read reports that residents and employees there tested positive for COVID-19. I talked to bartender friends who mentioned seeing some of our peoples on the street the night before the shelter in place order, drinking and dancing, saying “Don’t worry baby, we gonna be alright.” I wonder how many ambulances have been there with no traffic to block, and how broken I will be if the street isn’t lined up and down the sidewalk the first day we all get back.

I sprint down the street, and hear Panorama Jazz Band’s version of “Norma de la Guadalajara” come on. I think of how many late Saturday night shifts I’ve entered the Spotted Cat, hearing this song, almost like my musical introduction to the bar, me tipping my hat at the band, Ben Schenck going crazy on the clarinet, doing his dance, making his way through the crowd, a tip bucket in hand, following me like I was a fullback. I think of Aurora Nealand killing it on her saxophone, and how I’d follow her and this band up and down the streets of Mardi Gras, making it from the Marigny through the Seventh Ward to the French Quarter and back to Frenchmen.

I think of all the times I’d hear my name, and give someone a squeeze or a kiss. I look at all the boarded up buildings that are closed. I wonder how many will come back with different owners or staffs or bands, and then just feel different, be different. I wonder how many won’t come back, remembering how Café Rose Nicaud had been emptied out before the pandemic hit. Wondering how many of my memories in there, writing and coffee-ing before work, will be boarded up. I wonder how much my memory will create boards for all the people I’m missing. I wonder how many of those memory boards will stay up, stay blank, from people who won’t make it back. I wonder if my memory boards will bleed into the scenery, if I will even stop seeing the boards themselves. I wonder how many of us knew the residency was over, but still expected to see Ellis Marsalis at Snug Harbor again. Hear him miss New Orleans one more time before we missed him.

I think of how I don’t know when the street will return, or when I will return to the street. I think of how I don’t know how I’ll be able to pay for my life again. I think of how I was so paranoid my last bartending shift that I kept washing my hands over and over again, so much so that my hands started to dry up, crack, and bleed.

I want to sprint down the street for one final time before going into the French Quarter proper, changing the scenery and hopefully avoiding the dark curve of my mind, when I see Miss Sophie Lee on the balcony of 3 Muses. She is the owner of the music club, an amazing musician and singer, a former neighbor and a dear friend. She also has been working from the club this week, chilling on the balcony, and taking photos of shirtless dudes running up and down (and she has now included me in that number.) We laugh and joke from balcony to street, no cars to dodge, on the same corner where I once put on a dress and danced in a music video for her song, “Lovely In That Dress.” When she goes back to work, I warm back up, listening to that song, and remembering laughing so hard that not even my bandana could have fully covered my smile. This was a home.

I hear Sarah McCoy’s “New Orleans” as I do my version of “Dancing Down Decatur Street”. The haunting keys play as I go up the never-empty street that is now emptied out. I run down the empty French Market, past all the ghosts of vendors and tourists that would usually be a flowing vein from the French Quarter to Frenchmen.

I think of how sometimes Frenchmen Street wore on me, how sometimes, I’d only clock in and out for my shifts, but not make it to my friends’ shows, needing the break from the people, the noise. I remember McCoy’s last show at the Spotted Cat, how I showed up on the way to class and stood by a column, almost hiding, having a beer, as friends asked if the bartender was sick or something, if I was going to fill in or something. I remember how good that set was, her singing with no mic, amplified out of a bucket, voice booming between whatever little space was left between all of us who filled in the bar to say goodbye. How we were all happy to see her go get gigs in France, even if we missed her already, even if I missed never getting the chance to grab drinks with her before she left, for we loved having her here, but we also loved our friends sometimes escaping the city that forgot to care for its people. And even if her leaving just for a little bit has become years and years now, we’re still happy for her. But I fear that if I live just for a little bit, all the home I’ve built here could be gone for years and years too.

I sprint past the window at Molly’s at the Market, where I used to write with Richard Louth and the New Orleans Writer’s Marathon. That window being the spot where we all looked up and out in wonder and wrote. Using those moments to write about what we saw, and letting it lead into what we felt. The last time we were there, it was right before a hurricane was supposed to hit, the storm wasn’t big, but it was early in the summer, and the river was high. There was fear that it could topple the levee, and therefore topple the city and leave little of us left. We talked about how pretty the day was, which we all knew meant it was coming tomorrow, the occasional breeze whipping bev naps and papers and thoughts around, as we all sipped watered down whiskey or rum, wondering if we should go the way of the rocks.

I think of how so many friends back home watched the news on the storm, and told me to get out of town. How on one group chat where my Miami peoples were telling me to leave town, leave my second home, my oldest friend on the chat interjected with: “Come on now, you know if everyone is telling Chris to leave he’s staying.” And I can’t tell if I was smart, or stubborn and stupid lucky. I can’t tell if I’m being smart by staying now, or being stubborn and hoping to be stupid lucky again.

I worked at the Spotted Cat that night, the storm supposed to hit in the morning. Joking about being the designated no-power/yes-hurricane bartender. I remember how the friend I worked with sang, “Es viernes y el cuerpo lo sabe” as we had a full bar on an otherwise empty street, in an otherwise quiet city. People dancing and drinking their fears away, as me and my friend got sandbags and boards ready during lulls between drink orders.

After work that night, I got a Banh Minh from the bodega across the street, the reliable one I assumed would never close for a disaster, the one that is closed with the rest of us now, and how I walked a mile and a half home after I couldn’t fetch a cab. How I sat on my levee, on the side they call “The End Of The World,” and smoked a cigarillo, drank some rum, as the river crashed against the walls and licked the bottom of my feet like a fire gasping for breath. I left the levee that night knowing we would not get burned, this was not the one.

I run a little loop down the Riverwalk, one dude threatens another dude with a stick, saying “that’s why I keep this around, to protect me.” And think of how that is part of the fear in this moment, there is no physical thing. A stick won’t do shit to a hurricane, sure, but you can see the storm coming, you can barricade the windows and sandbag the doors. But this virus could be all over the stick, all over the spittle from his dehydrated mouth. If it’s licking my feet as I run down the Riverwalk, I wouldn’t feel it, I wouldn’t know it, till I got burned.

I hear The Catahoulas’s “Shrimp and Gumbo”, a band I hear once a month on Saturdays, and I think of what a privilege it is to hear Mr. Gerald French play with so many of my friends. I run down to an empty Jackson Square, the kind of place I typically don’t go to, but when I am here, I enjoy the brass bands playing, I enjoy serpentining around tourists and the clueless in order to give my peoples a squeeze, for impromptu dances with henna artists. How I love ducking into old dusty secondhand bookstores on Orleans, and how I love coming out of cigar shops with a fresh ember on a fresh cut cigar.

But running here empty, I think of how Jackson Square was the place of protest. How the Take ‘Em Down NOLA movement wanted Jackson removed for the 300^th anniversary of New Orleans. I think of the friend who got death threats before that protest, David Duke stoking the fires of outsiders who were going to come in to defend the monuments. I think of walking next to my friend that day, wondering what would happen. I walked with him; cause I would want someone to walk with me if I got that threat. I walked with him, cause I had the privilege to even make that choice, so I had to make it forcefully. I think of our mutual friend who got arrested during the protest, at the steps of Jackson, us having more friends arrested than the people who threatened to kill some of us.

I need to get out of my head, so I sprint faster. I think back on the suicides, how we knew they were coming from the beginning of practice, how the hardest part was always waiting for you, and how no matter how hard, you had to use that as an advantage. You’re so tired, you can’t do anything but what you’ve always done, clear minded, take your shot. I sprint, I tap the tile. I flick off Jackson on his high horse every time I run by him. I run too fast to worry about if one of the cowards who gave death threats will see me. I run too fast to worry about COVID-19 for just a moment.

I think of how Pops used to run cross country in Miami for high school, after being a child exile from Cuba. How he taught me how to always end a run on a sprint. To psychologically beat whoever or whatever I was running with. To psychologically beat myself, and any fatigue I felt. Pops was so bad at stretching before he ran, like he was always ready to run out of a situation, but how he was so good at walking off the end of the run, to calm down and find his equilibrium, before returning to the rest of the world, to us. Preparing before returning to a rootless home. I think of how I have inherited that practice, in my new home of New Orleans, where there were no roots before me.

I slow down to Arsène DeLay’s “Coming Home”, which she wrote about coming back to New Orleans. It is the song that my sister listened to as an anthem of sorts when she got accepted into Tulane and joined me in town a couple of years ago. I think of how I lived with DeLay for years, and heard that song play over and over again. How it always makes me happy. I think of how New Orleans has become a home for me, and my sister, but yet Miami still has so many of our peoples. How severed that feeling can be in times of trouble, having two homes, no roots.

I catch myself thinking about my sister’s case with swine flu a decade ago. I was still in Miami, but I don’t even remember it happening, being too high, or too depressed, or too self-centered instead. How I didn’t even make it to the hospital, how I barely even remember the episode. Am I just doing that all over again by staying here? The run gets repetitive sometimes, and the questions repeat too. Am I not being enough for my family? Should I be halfway down already, in case something bad happens? Will these thoughts make me go back home, and spread something lethal to my family and loved ones? Am I being rightfully strong or willfully stupid?

I run down Bienville, hearing Andy J Forest’s “My Excuse for Now.” I hear the line, “Today I forgot to eat, last night I didn’t get much sleep.” And I remember the friend of mine that inspired that line. And I think of how many times I adopted that line while working on deadlines and going straight to the early shift to work Andy’s set. Taking “cigarette” breaks in the alley to edit pieces when on deadline. Forgetting to eat before a friend or a brother or a love yelled at me to. Home.

I see a man curled up in the door frame of a closed business like it was his own personal nook, and I think of how I don’t know how to write about the musicians and gig workers who are struggling with unemployment, struggling to make ends meet, despite being the reason people come here. I don’t know how to write about the one in four people who don’t have internet here to follow orders or find information, just like I don’t know how to write about the one in five that don’t have a car for drive-thru testing or groceries. I don’t know how to write about what shelter-in-place means to the thousands of homeless who sleep in the nooks and door frames of businesses that don’t open. I don’t know how to write about the doctors and nurses and medical workers who are doing their best to keep us from reaching our end with minimal medical resources, buying and rigging their own PPE.

I see a sanitation worker on the street and raise my hand to say hi. He nods back at me. I think of how so many New Orleans cats laugh at me and my bandana that covers my mouth, then wave and pound their chest, me doing the same, making up for the lack of contact with each other by smacking our own bodies more, harder, like our heartbeat had to break out of the cage. I think of how so many tourists or people I’ve never seen before cross the street, as they’ve always done, how they did before social distancing, and how it saves me the hassle of serpentining around them and their possible contagions they chose to bring here. I think of a friend from back home joking about how I should wear darker color bandanas to buy groceries so that people would “socially distance” from me. I think of how sad I got having to explain to my mom why I preferred pink bandanas instead of black ones. About being at-risk outside of a virus.

I run down Bourbon Street, it is quiet, and I see the Preservation Hall closed, rusted gates locking up all the memories. I look inside and see a plastic cover over a podium that briefly looked like the silhouette of a musician or bartender sitting down, waiting for the day they can unlock the gates back to a heaven. I listen to Hurray for the Riff Raff’s “The Body Electric” and think of how gun sales are going up, how I read domestic violence calls are going up, how I worry about the whole world being crazy, and those who can isolate from a virus but not from their killers. I think of how I once saw Hurray for the Riff Raff do a “secret” show with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, being with my sister and my homies, and seeing worlds collide and create something better than what was before. I wonder if the world we were all on top of a year ago is crumbling beneath our feet now.

I run past the Hard Rock Casino that caved in, killing people, including some undocumented late last year. I stop the music and I jog in place, looking for the body that used to be visible from the street. I can’t find it, but I know he’s there. Am I subconsciously blind to him? Selectively forgetting? I think of how every intimate experience with death for me has always been accompanied by silence, like I didn’t want to attach or associate a song to a death. I think of how the presence of a white sheet never makes death absent. I think of the blue tarp that they covered the undocumented man with, as if that made it less obscene, as if they could further erase him. I wonder if they thought putting a blue tarp on the dead would make him “disappeared.” As if changing the color to blue would erase the violence to the naked eye. As if his color hadn’t already made him invisible to so many. 

I run down Rampart Street and pass through Louis Armstrong Park as John Boutté’s cover of Southern Man comes on. I think of how my family and I saw Boutté play at a fall festival at the park, a place that was “gifted” to the community after they constructed I-10 through it. Boutté talked about how the park “wasn’t always ours,” and right as he said it, sirens blared, coming from somewhere by the I-10, the echo of the underpass making it hard to know exactly where. Boutté raised up a finger, as if he just got validation from the gods, before saying how the community took the park back, how it’s theirs again, before he sang Southern Man.

The wind howled and sirens blared and Boutté sung above it all, everything but his voice calmed down. I sprint hoping to hear a car pull up and honk, to see a friendly face. For I wouldn’t stop, but I’d turn around, running backwards, like a basketball drill and point at them through a cracking border, knowing they’ll be alive for a long time, and so will I. But I don’t hear it, I don’t see it, I don’t feel what I want to feel. So I sprint and see more National Guard congregating in front of a hotel and laughing, I catch another wind and sprint, stopping at the neutral ground and jumping up and down, like I did pre-regulation-games, nothing stopping my momentum. The cars pass and I sprint across the road, back to Frenchmen, back to home, wanting to finish my run on a sprint, like how Pops taught me, syncing up to the times that me and Pops would run, to the time where he runs alone now, on a treadmill for his knees, slowly, but syncing up all the same. I run because I need to, to get out of my head and to just trust my instincts, my shot. This pandemic is a big one, but it ain’t the one, and we going to make it, with or without help beyond ourselves, beyond our peoples, so I run, to clear my head, to listen to my peoples doing their thing, to shoot my shot, until the next time we can all take a shot together in the corner of a dive, when we won’t have to look forward or back to see our peoples, when we can fill the streets again, and I can return to my river, and take off the bandana and scars be damned, reveal my smile in whatever unveiled home I find myself in.

__________

Christopher Louis Romaguera is a Cuban-American writer who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was born in Hialeah, Florida and graduated from Florida International University in Miami, Florida. Romaguera has been published in The Daily Beast, Curbed National, Peauxdunque Review, New Orleans Review and other publications. He is a monthly columnist at The Ploughshares Blog. He has an MFA in Fiction at the University of New Orleans. You can find him on Facebook at Christopher Louis Romaguera. Or on Instagram and Twitter @cromaguerawrite