THE GODLESS AND THE GLAZED

Avoid traveling during bat season...

Episode VI: the godless and the glazed.


(If you have no fucking clue what's going on here, go down about 6 posts...and then get out of my sight. Don't you have a job or something that you're supposed to be doing?)


When the Strange Hour of the Lord passed over, it was like Dali as Death Angel, killing the second cousin of any confused Egyptian who failed to spread the Cottage Cheese of Covenant upon his closet door. And when salvation came by the last mad Holy Man leaving, I drifted off as well. I had a game plan to flesh out, and a soul to shop around. Both were pitifully small, but fitfully determined. And I refused to be conquered by drunken men.

I had imagined being able to cruise about town, not walk from pub to pub. I wanted to see the stoic graveyards. I wanted to drive past Garden District estates. The New Orleans Museum of Arts still ran their Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou exhibit. And one couldn’t forget the various weird churches, temples and occult bookshops this city overran with. I even recalled something called the “Zulu Pleasure Club” on one of the maps. I think they even had a parade float. And I had intentions of writing some fabulous article detailing it all. But with no means of feasible, affordable travel, it appeared I would have to settle for a one- or two-mile radius, and commit to keep some cash for cab-fair back to the motel.

I wanted to visit some deranged Catholic shrine with the Weepin’ Woman o’ Wonder, or off-beat spiritualist sect that might wax supernatural before my jaded eyes. If nothing else, the incredible archaic architecture of God’s Old Hangouts was a sight to behold. And, of course, Goth Chicks hung out in many of the vast, iron-gated cemeteries these churches possessed. But there was nothing in any of the guides I could walk to safely. Desperate, I thumbed phone books for St. Anybody-Within-a-Decent-Radius. One did leap out—on the 3000 block of Leonidas, there existed a sanctuary with a snappy name if I ever heard one: It was called St. Theresa of the Child Jesus Pretty Flower…no lie. I had to at least walk past it, to see if all the Sunday School buses were of the short variety.

When accepting directions from strangers, always emphasize whether you are traveling by foot. It is also good to verify your directions with actual locals. Whoever said the 3000 block of Leonidas was anywhere close to within walking distance, deserved to push up flowers with Theresa. This would suck. I don’t know why, with all the Real Parties surrounding me, I would want to check out a goofy-named church. It just struck me as something I needed to do. I can’t explain. But suffice to say, I might have zigged when I should have zagged.

Having wandered way too far into the French Quarter—nowhere blessedly near to blessing—I sat on a bench amidst some heavy-accented revelers, who all offered me Jim Beam and the meaning of life. And then depression pondered its predicament.

Salvation came by taxi. Salvation was having a rough night, apparently. The lonely Creole cabbie pulled up to us, and asked if any might be too juice-happy to drive. One of my bench-brethren turned to me, and said “God sends quail! He sends quail to all who ask in the Wilderness!” I replied, “Enjoy them when they get here. I’m taking the cab home now.”

“Where to?” said the driver. Slouching back in the backseat, I shook my head in frustration. I forgot what street the motel was on. I only knew that it was the 23rd infernal pit in the lowest, cheapest rung of Hell. I sighed, “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t suppose you could take me to St. Louis?”

“Why would you want to go to a God-forsaken place like that?”

“I guess because it’s home,” I replied.

He gave me a very puzzled look. He stepped on the gas, and drove intently. I had long ago ceased caring where we went, and didn’t ask. Short minutes later, he stopped. “Here you go,” he said with an oddly-spooked, wide-eyed Amos & Andy look on his troubled face, “Don’t worry about the fare. Just watch out, man.”

I stepped out, a bit puzzled myself…until I saw the ominous sign of the place he left me. It read “St. Louis Cemetery 1.” “Well God,” I thought silently, “nice quail…but I think they’re all dead.”

This was no mere graveyard. This was a grand city of the deceased—tombs without end, like wombs giving the life that ended here. This place was more awesome and alive than the city in which I lived. Compositions of decomposition—corps of corpses—were spaced out in decrepit grandeur. The walls, known as “wall ovens,” were stacked high with the ancient low-rent denizens, doomed to provide shelter than rest within it. Flooding in the 1700’s had caused the locals and the wealthy to bury their well-moneyed and time-honored dead six feet up, rather than under. Monuments were monoliths, and great gothic altars to behold. I wandered endlessly, lost and not caring. This place was a vast vacuum of death, but I felt like I could live there. This place was allegedly unsafe, but I felt more comfortable there than anywhere else.

Then I heard something shuffle behind me.

I turned… Standing before me, unwashed and unpleasant, was a surly fellow whose every inch caused flesh to crawl like what likely crawled in his clothing. His stare was empty, but his hands were clearly not, suspiciously hidden in his ratty overcoat. He grunted with a grin, “Got a dollar?”

“I doubt it,” I replied, “it’s been a rough day.”

“It could get rougher,” snarled the bum.

“I fail to see how. I’m broke, dude.”

He looked very cross, and moved toward me, “Here…Let me help you look...”

I stepped backed with slow momentum. He picked up pace, and soon a chase ensued. He lumbered unflinchingly like a slasher-film stalker. I had a bad knee and a bad day to contend with. I had stayed (relatively) sober, but my coordination wasn’t what it had been earlier. The twists and turns, and upraised tombs, served as a cumbersome obstacle course for which I had not been prepared. My antagonist, however, seemed to know this place quite well. The suspense ended abruptly…I smacked head-on in to a tombstone.

I turned, finding my pursuer oddly backing away. He mumbled curses to himself, and said, “I don’t need none of that!” He abandoned me intact, but bewildered. I looked around at what was both my unlikely savior and stumbling block.

This was what I had been looking for since I crossed the maggot-bait-gate to begin. Resembling more of a dilapidated prehistoric outhouse than the eternal resting-place of a great and terrible supernatural ruler, this was the fear-instilling fountainhead of folk-magick hoodoo and Voodoo Priestesses. This was the mighty tomb of New Orleans’ legendary Queen of Voodoo, Marie Laveau. Bayou Vodou practitioners have elevated her to Loa, or spirit/goddess status since the 1800’s. Her daughter’s home was now a quaint occult emporium for the frugal, discerning magus.

I suddenly saw two very strong reasons why my superstitious oppressor left in haste. Firstly, there was the appearance of her grave and its reputation. The gravesite, as I implied, was nothing special on an aesthetic level. It hardly seemed worthy of its famous resident. But it held a heavy, captivating power that made it impressive, nonetheless. Scribbled across it on all sides are crudely scraped red x’s, each in triplicate. Nowadays this would imply some sort of post-mortem sex-show. But to those who believe, drawing three x’s on the tomb with one of the nearby bricks was a way of asking the Queen for favors. You then tapped your foot three times, closed your eyes, and offered Queen Marie your request. Many believed this wholeheartedly. But then, that was what it was really all about.

Also adorning her stone shelter was a variety of offerings: impressionable, impassioned visitors and devotees had left mounds of candles, coins, necklaces, more candles, flowers and flowered crosses, mojos, dolls, and I even saw a distressing, well-taped shoebox with dark wet areas. Best of all, though, was a white, oblong box of donuts laid right along all the more standard sacraments. A box of donuts?!

The second departure-motivating reason that came to me was the fact that—in my hurried shuffle—I was foot-deep in Marie’s long-johns. The smell of newly desecrated sacrificial glaze rose to meet the smell of my mounting fear. This was ridiculous. But it was also sacrilege, I supposed.

I lifted my offending foot, and stepped to the side of the tomb. I grabbed a red, crumbled brick fragment and scrawled three tiny x’s. I mumbled some awkward apology as I rested my head against the tomb wall, kicking it thrice gently. I wasn’t sure if I believed any of this; but I also wasn’t sure that I didn’t. I just wanted to go home. That was all that went through my head as I made amends for squished sacred pastry. I just wished I could be back with my friends, even if it was only for a moment. I left in a hurry. This place was dangerous…for the lonely, the living and the dead, the drunk, the deadbeat and the donut.

Briskly descending on the first tavern with a phone, I made my call, and waited for my cab. They said I would wait about an hour. This was depressing. Mark the Drunken Master had invited me to a party in Soulard. The Soulard district of St. Louis was a local hotbed of Mardi Gras activity. If I was going to barhop and drink until I couldn’t taste the food, or watch girls stripping off from a distance, and watch drunks nodding off up close, I should have arranged to do this where those drunks were at least my friends.

TO BE CONTINUED...


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