• always envy the dead

    Mother of an Apple Picker

    The first tour I took out after Hurricane Ida hit was a memorable one, to say the least. At that point it had been three weeks since that windy motherfucker had come and gone and the French Quarter, like the rest of the city, was still reeling. Most of the power had returned by now, but there was still the odd streetlight, cornerstore, or even entire half-block that remained dark. And these powerless blemishes peppered the quarter, creating a sort of patchwork quilt of dark and light that gave off the impression of a night full of danger.    There was also the disturbing chest-high stack of storm debris and black…

  • always envy the dead,  Non-Fiction,  Uncategorized

    The Audacity of the Pisser

    When I tell people that one time, in the middle of a tour, a man in my group unzipped his fly and began to urniate right then and there, I usually get the same response: “That only happened one time?” And yeah, har har, I get it. All you have to do is take a stroll down Bourbon Street and let the wafts of urine-scented sidewalks invade your nostrils to know that public urination isn’t exactly a rarity in this weird world I work in.  BUT… just to answer that question: yes, it only happened one time, thank you very much. Because even drunk tourists generally know it’s not okay…