Elysian Fields

By Jessica Erica Hahn

ELYSIAN FIELDS: "This is an epic tale of the meeting and subsequent travels of two young nomadic, chaotic, squatter, beer-swillin’, book readin’, drug takin’, dog lovin’, cop kickin’, car stealin’, plan makin’ & breakin’ individuals. For all its crazy content this book is impressively cohesive." --Fly, in "Slug and Lettuce" zine ('98)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessica Erica Hahn
• Release date: Nov 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452386478

Jessica Erica Hahn

Jessica Erica Hahn lives in San Francisco, where she writes and raises three daughters. Please visit www.jessicaericahahn.com if you wish to read more of her writing.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent,

intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

--Ursula K. LeGuin

Making my way down Esplanade Avenue, leaning on my good right leg, holding a cane made of a mop without the shag, tap tap tapping along with a grimace on my face, my clothes wet, dark and dirty, I appear to be a road warrior kind of girl. My comrades are striding down the street, laughing and talking in the summer rain, howling at their punch-lines, jostling each other for attention and stamping the rain off their boots. We're like a flock of ravens, the young nomads, with hair pointing in every odd direction like feathers out of line, a screech to our laughter; nobody decent, passing us in solitude down this tree-lined avenue in New Orleans, will stare straight into our eyes.

Malakai's helped me because of my leg. He's given me his huge black trench coat to shield me from the incessant rain, which comes and goes every day, but especially now, in the evening. He'd seen the mop on the curb, resting like a tired tango dancer, and snapped off the shag to give me the stick as a cane.

My leg's pretty messed up from bacchanalian revelry a week earlier. See, I was blazing drunk one night and having a blast of a good time when I spied some circular metal tables outside a café. No customers were sitting outside because the rain had driven everyone away. An intoxicated inspiration hit me to go clamber onto those tables and jump from one to another, so I leapt like a ballerina, even spun on one slippery table top---but suddenly I slipped, flew forwards, and crashed with an ungraceful shriek. I swear, my ankle must have swollen to a lemon-sized lump in five minutes, and before morning I had bruised like bad fruit. When I met Malakai earlier today my leg still hurt terribly; I had a severe limp and was looking more handicapped than Quasimodo.

The summer rain pours down and I rejoice. It's this vain girl’s blessing 'cause my unruly bleached hair lays flat and I know I look better, therefore I feel better, and some vestige of femininity remains as I hobble beside Malakai, and I smile despite all my physical pain.

Scabie, this big-boned Eastern European boy with a black tear tattooed under his eye, is sauntering in front of us but keeps turning around to spew foul jokes and laugh. He grabs the trees we pass under and shakes rain out of them for emphasis. Before the rain, his blue-black and bleached white hair was erected into a toothbrush of stegosaurus spikes, now it lay like a skunk road kill. Bricolage on string, all these chokers made of whatever comes to hand, hang around his neck: spiked collars, skinny straps of leather, Fimo nuggets on colored cords and plastic tangled remnants of Mardi Gras. Scabie’s a new squatter on the Orleans scene, and I don’t like his in-your-face boisterous guffaws and chuckles. Every now and then there's a laugh that’s more of a hrrrr hrrrr than a ha ha erupting from his deep guts.

Hrrr hrrrr, hrrr hrrr! Scabie laughs, shaking a tree branch. Hey Malakai, knock knock!

What?

Knock knock!

Who’s there?

Ben!

Ben? Good. Get the fuck away.

Aw, Malakai....

Okay, okay. Ben who?

Ben’ down and kiss my ass! Hrrrr hrr! Hrrr hrrr!

Besides Scabie, Malakai and me, there’s Lee. He's like a bad LSD trip at a heavy metal concert. He wears a black shirt emblazoned with an oversized upside-down pentagram, drawn like an abstract cubist goat's head. His tight black jeans have skull motifs flaring down the thighs, and his oversized Nikes have tongues sticking out like billboards. His features are the epitome of the Deep South good ol’ boy, or the quintessential American knucklehead---the type with a sun scalded neck and a can of Coors close to the lips. But this honkey-tonk image applies only to his face, as his thick hair is dyed just about every Crayola color, spilling across his face and down the back of his neck. His walkman is on, I can faintly hear the speedmetal of DRI, which he let me listen to earlier.

We’re walking on and on in this rain, this deluge upon New Orleans, making our way towards the Krishna Temple for dinner. This little monsoon trammels down in the midst of my pain, sopping and soaking in fat, hard drops. Looking up, the sky's sealed with a gray pan of clouds. Sometimes I hate the rain, but it’s a blessing to be out of oppressive humidity, which one can only take so much of; now I'm reminded of my native San Franciscan temperature.

Right now I’m without a stationary home.

In the past I've traveled across the country numerous times as a squatter. Eventually, I wanted to try out stability, so I worked at a bookstore and loved it---what can I say? Anyhow, armed with a GED, I applied to college, got accepted, and threw myself into a life of schedule and supposed promise. With college, I buried all my old underground roots. I also buried my enthusiasm for life and got really depressed after a year. If I had remained in my stable rut, this would be my second year of college, but I'm fed up with the bureaucracy, the forcing of declaring a major, the educational system, and the competition. By dropping out and traveling once again, I'm on a conscious reclamation, and it would be in my plan to find someone to travel with.

I'm so young, already cracked into the second decade of my life, and traveling by squatting and making my way each lazy day at a time is like opening a walnut and finding the sweetmeat of liberation away from the hectic mainstream society. I wander this country like a free thought.

A while ago I began reading The World's Religions by Huston Smith, and there was a quote in the intro, from the ancient Indian Katha Upanishad, which said, A sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse, A difficult path is this---the poets declare! I don't belong to any particular religion, but I seek to extract the best essence from many to give me different perspectives. For me, traveling anywhere and anyhow is the quintessential portal to mental stimulation, reverence for life, and respect for death. The image of being on a razor's edge is explicative in several ways as to my own character.

Having wanderlust is like resting on the razor's edge because I end up being uncomfortable at routine and need to jump away. Also, the very movement of traveling is like ice skating on a huge razor blade, 'cause if I don't pay attention I could seriously get hurt. So why do I do it? I don't know, I really don't. Nothing but inspiration and spontaneity propels me. It's gotten to the point where I'll give up a good, stable opportunity to just ramble about with no destination in particular, like now, when I could be working part-time and going to summer school in San Francisco. But I do what I want to do, so if I light candles in homage to the concept of walking on a razor's edge, I feel no stupidity or shame. I follow my bliss.

Intuition is my greatest logic. For example, when I think hard enough about an untraceable friend I met on the road, I'll suddenly have impulses to go someplace I've never been to before. I usually run into who I was looking for, but if I don't, I meet some other beautiful souled human. Maybe this tells me intuitive wanderlust came to me before I to it; perhaps there's a collective (un)consciousness in all humans which binds us together in certain ways. I like to think I choose to explore. It doesn't really matter to me, to be honest, because I'm merely satisfied to know I feel the most protected when I'm on the road, and it's the goddess of synchronicity who leads me by her hand.

Being a traveler isn't easy at all, but I regret nothing in my past. Life is life, whether it's filled with chaos or peace. I've been through so many hours of chaos that I realize the definition of chaos must be changed to something positive if I'm not going to go insane. For me, chaos is the energy which the entire universe is made of.

I don't get money from my family, I have had to earn my keep, but lack of money should never be a limitation on goals. I'm forced to think creatively when I don't have five bucks, for example, to buy breakfast, so I go to a soup kitchen and listen to the morning sermon, eat food among interesting company, and have a great day by beginning with a change of pace.

My happiness isn't based on my possessions, but on those folk who I love and respect, like my mother. My mom raised my brother and me all over the country, home-schooled us for years, and we lived in a spectrum ranging from the woods of Hawaii, to a Ford van with hippie-traveler Westfalia accouterment, to Black Berry Commune in Oregon, to a nice brownstone flat in Boston, to a dingy apartment next to the only trailer park in Oakland, and then a house in San Francisco. To an extent, I inherited the intangible wanderlust from my mom. With age, my own adventures progressed from weekend camping trips to road trips with friends, Greyhound rides to see far away comrades, occasional freight train hopping, until now, where I've graduated into an ease of movement and change. Fluidity. My mother told me I can do whatever I want to do with my life.

I don't think of myself as a tourist. As Paul Bowles wrote in The Sheltering Sky, the tourist goes home after a two-week or two month jaunt; whereas the traveler slowly moves around, sometimes taking years to explore a place, but always moving. I've been in San Francisco for years, then traveled, I'll return and be in San Francisco for a few more years, but it's just a temporary home. Although I often say my home is the Bay Area, it's only my homebase, because my home is within me, in both mind and body.

Yet, this body lacks the protection a snail or a turtle has, and it's a female body, so every night I have to find a safe place to sleep. Even with intermittent jobs, there's never enough money to travel as frequently as I do and stay in $20 motels or even $10 hostels. I squat in abandoned buildings if couch surfing---going from friend to friend---isn't an option. I realized in my teenage years that the group of people who believed they could do whatever they wanted with their lives, and were the most liberated from social conventions, are squatters. I felt most comfortable around like-minded people, where we agreed politically and socially. So with this as the pivotal bond, I connected to the underground world.

Squatters---especially the anarcho-punks---form an extended family around the world, especially in Europe and the United States. We protect each other like a family does, although it's a multi-divisional family.

A lot of times I wish for a safer place to sleep than an abandoned building. For instance, last night at Annunciation House I wished for an apartment, but now I'm glad I squatted. If I'd been cooped up in someone's apartment I'd never have left Annunciation this morning and wandered to Esplanade Squat, where I met Malakai. But that is a later tale.

This evening, us four---Malakai, Scabie, Lee, and I---end our walk at the far end of the Krishna Temple porch, waiting for the dinner call. The rain has paused but the sky's still clogged like a sink full of dirty suds. The Krishnas are making us wait outside. A couple of devotees are out on the porch, talking to each other in cliques accented with bright sari dresses. Young teenage Krishna girls inside the house peek out windows and giggle. I'm surprised none of the adult Krishnas smile at us. The West Coast Krishnas welcome strangers to their temples regardless of religious difference, they always include strangers into their forum.

It seems here, in the New Orleans Krishna Temple, us nomads extend beyond being ravens and become vultures. We feed on the good food they prepare, we’re what they aren't, we crawl under the floorboards like indestructible roaches. With no prescribed set of rules or morals to follow, there's no belief in anyone being superior than our own selves. Perhaps it makes castigators nervous to think their utopia can’t exist unless there's a social caste to judge against. Other folks tend to wish they were as liberated as us, as we can get up and go whenever we please, leaving responsibility behind like a heavy stone. So we metamorphosize from ravens to vultures, or ravens to eagles, depending on who's doing the assessment.

It could be that the blatant rootlessness in homeless individuals is what disturbs so many people. Our society is geared towards stability: school of K through college, landing a profitable job, securing a mate and rearing a small batch of kids. Travelers disrupt stationary existence.

Travelers can always expect novelty with the start of tomorrow.

The nomadic aren't always searching, but they're always moving, so society-bound people often associate modern nomads as being members of some secret cabal of animals, joined together to overthrow the sedate and stagnant members of society, or a cult aimed at seduction and murder. Well, if I'm a vulture, as I've been heckled before, then the people who heckle us are anteaters snarfling away at little things for their existence. With this world being a scary place, and an absolutely huge place, manifesting the spirit of a vulture is sometimes essential.

One Krishna devotee is a white man with a halo of condescension vibrating around him. A smile of superiority is clapped on his face as he looks at me. I look at his tan thirtieth-year-old skin, wrinkled around his eyes and forehead, and judge he’s done lots of squinting and frowning in his time.

I limp as little as possible as I walk towards him, plastering on a smooth face to disguise my agony. My friends are still at the corner of the porch, untying their laces 'cause of the NO SHOES sign.

Do you have any ice? I ask the Krishna man.

Ice? he responds incredulously.

Yeah. My leg's throbbing. I should've put ice on it long ago.

Frozen water? I don’t think so. He smiles sardonically.

My mouth opens in protest but without telling this man what I think of his attitude, I turn to a plump Indian woman. The chunky red tikka dot between her eyes is melting from the humidity. Do you have any ice, ma’am? My leg's really bruised.

Oh, she says, looking down at my puffy ankle and pursing her lips into a rosebud. You know, I don’t think we have any, but I’ll look. We don't believe in freezers, she awkwardly explains. Wait here. She scurries down the porch stairs and disappears behind the edge of the house.

I can barely believe there isn’t any ice here.

The sour devotee man watches me momentarily before turning away. Closer to me is a young woman with naturally red hair waving down past her shoulders, a speckling of orange freckles across her face, great big eyes, a tiny snub of a nose, and feet firmly planted against the floor. She's in dun colored shorts and a simple blue T-shirt, hands at her hips, and for no apparent reason, huge smiles somersault off her face. I think she's awesome to just stand here and smile at nobody, and I want to talk to her.

Are you a devotee? I innocently ask her.

Oh no way, I just have a friend who's a Krishna. She bends forward and whispers, I don’t know if I’d ever wanna become a Krishna... A little too weird. She winks, knowing I'll empathize.

I’ve met some really nice Krishnas in LA and San Francisco, but here they seem a little off the righteous path, y'know? I say. A good friend of mine, Corbie, used to be a Krishna. He really loved and understood the whole philosophy, but eventually it was too strict on his wilder habits so he cut out.

We watch the rain in silence, neither of us speaking for some time.

I speak first. What's your name?

Sharon.

That's a pretty name.

Thanks. My whole first name is actually Rose of Sharon.

Like in the John Steinbeck book?

Rose of Sharon looks at me with her eyebrows raised, then smiles. Yeah, she giggles. I got a lot a shit in elementary school for my funny name.

Well, me too. My name is Una.

That's a pretty name. We shake hands in a casual way. Do you live here in New Orleans?

No, I’m passing through. I move around a lot. After college, I don't wanna settle anywhere for a long time

College?

Yeah, SF State.

I see... Are you alone? Oh, I guess not---those guys are with you, right?

I’m alone right now, I just met them recently.

Be careful.

I am. They're interesting folks to hang with.

How'd you get to New Orleans and meet these guys? Sharon's interested and very, very nice.

I started with a group of friends from California, but from the get-go I told them I was gonna split up eventually so I could explore and check things out from a solitary perspective. So we drove from the Bay Area and wound our way to Arizona. I draw a map in the air with my finger as I talk. In Tucson I went to a poolhall and met some students from the local university. I partied in Tucson for a while, played a lot of pool and drank their watered down beer.

We both laugh, and she winks again, as if she's also been to Tucson and drank watered-down beer.

I continue, When the Tucson group went off towards Florida for their summer vacation they invited me to come along. I said I’d like to just get a ride to New Orleans, but I ended up getting off at a gas station by the Sabine River, where I saw an old friend, I laugh, remembering how shocked I was to see Marilyn Macabre, an aged, meandering Goth rocker drag queen, in the Deep South. My friend was visiting his Southern Baptist parents, so on a weekend I got a ride to New Orleans. I said bye at Canal Street about a week ago, walked to Kaldi's Coffeehouse on Decatur to get my bearings straight, and eventually began meeting people.

Wow, Sharon gushes, So are you gonna travel with those boys next?

I look behind my shoulder. Lee has Scabie locked around the throat in a nelson, but Scabie's shoving his dirty socks into Lee's face. Malakai's holding his stomach and laughing. I don’t think so.

Yeah, they’re a rather...eclectic...bunch, Sharon comments. But you must be pretty independent and strong to be a woman traveling alone.

Not more independent or stronger than another woman 'cause I’m alone. To most older people, I'm stupid and naive. But I'm doing this for myself. I definitely feel more independent being alone, but I never anticipated the loneliness. Luckily everyone I’ve met has been really nice---and most are pretty fuckin’ strange, I laugh, There are so many stories! It’s really easy to meet people.

Sharon smiles. I know that lonely feeling 'cause I just moved here from Cleveland---I don't know anybody yet. I'm also in financial dire straits, which is why I have to eat free food here. Eventually my boyfriend's gonna come out and live with me, but right now I'm alone. I'm trying to put together a band.

Oh, what do you play?

I sing.

That's pretty adventurous to be down here tryin' to start a band, where music's everywhere and everybody's into different styles. It shouldn't be too hard to find other people to play in a band.

I hope not, but I'm searching. Her voice sounds sweet, and I'm sure she must be a beautiful singer.

Good luck. I mean it.

Thanks. She gives me a smile. So you go to school? Not to be rude, but I had a different first impression, just 'cause the way you look. I’m not trying to be catty or anything, but y'know, people judge a lot on appearance.

Bluntness is admirable. Most folks are so roundabout or sneaky to avoid hurting feelings or getting in sticky situations. I dropped out.

Oh.

And about the way I look, well, nowadays, finding a safe place to sleep has priority over anything, so I don't have access to different clothes---which’d be sweet if I did--- or to a laundromat whenever I want to use one. People totally make assumptions about a person’s character based on appearance, but I'm just myself. Well, if it means people might misjudge or dislike me 'cause of how I look, then so be it.

Sharon nods and twirls red hair in her fingers. Okay, I get where you're coming from. This is interesting. I hope you don't mind me being so nosy.

Ha, I don't care.

So were you traveling before college?

Yeah. Well, I didn't graduate from high school, but I got a GED and I know I read a hell of a lot more than most people. I wanted to travel around the States, so I did, again and again and again, and then somebody important reminded me I might learn a lot more in school than in the local library, where I spent a lot of time at in each city I pass through. I've never really liked school, but I started living in SF, where my mom was, and I applied for SF State, got a great offer with financial aid, so I was a freshman last year. I hated it. I felt my lips automatically turn into a downward curve.

That's too bad. What'dya study? Her head bent forward like I was talking too softly.

My major was undeclared, but I liked physics and humanities, so I was thinking about Religious Studies, Comparative Literature, or a science. I wasn't sure. I twisted my good foot around and looked away from her. Well. What'd you study in Cleveland?

Music Theory.

Ah, that helps explain the interest in starting a band.

Definitely, Sharon says, smiling and nodding. Her face looks inquisitive, like she forgot to say something. Well, where've you been staying in N'Orleans?

I've been squatting.

Squatting?

Living in abandoned buildings.

Oh, Sharon murmurs, then nods her head with the assurance of solving a math problem.

The chubby Krishna woman appears, wringing her hands like a worried mother. I thank her for her trouble when she tells me there isn't any ice, say bye to Rose of Sharon, and return to my comrades.

***

Last night I'd been up 'til dawn in Annunciation House. It's also called Annunciation Squat, as abandoned homes are called both Squats and Houses. Perhaps the street was once rich, as the houses along it are grand Victorians, and at least it must have been cleaner than the current seedy neighborhood in Uptown, New Orleans. The dilapidated Annunciation House was prob'ly once filled with rich people and beautiful furniture, before a fire gutted the building, insects became the true homeowners, where now gutterpunks reside in the attic and crackheads tweak and fiend on the ground floor.

From Canal Street, the squat's in the opposite direction from the French Quarter, and past Poydras. Flickering streetlights lead to the abandoned house. Last night stray dogs slunk out of the shadows like ghosts, all along the street. Three lone men, hands thrust into their pockets, paced down the sidewalk. Occasionally a car cruised along. One old sedan drove by slowly, bumping over the cracks in the road, one headlight turning off with each dip, turning on with each bump. There weren't many sounds on the street, except eerie elevator music pumping out of grimy speakers at a supermarket down the road.

I was alone. I walked slowly, as to not attract attention from the scraggly men, with both hands in my pockets, one fist around a little can of pepper spray, the other locked into a pair of brass knuckles. I can't fight very well, to be honest, as I've only gotten in two street fights and was helped out in both, yet I turn into a non-stop berserker when I'm angry, so if someone wants to jump me, they better have on a gas mask, goggles and a helmet.

The front door to Annunciation House was open, and the coal black entity of the building seemed to ask me, Can I swallow you? Creaking stairs would've warned anyone of my presence, but I walked quickly to get inside and shut the door---creaks, bangs and all---where the dark would be my comrade. After a few seconds my eyes adjusted and I let go of my brass knuckles to feel my way forward, by memory, to the railing of the stairs. Someone made a stirring noise in one of the ground floor rooms, scaring the shit outta me, so I leapt up the stairs, four at a time, sweating, heart beating. I scared myself for no reason, 'cause no more noise came from downstairs. However, I woke up the people in the attic.

Who's it! said a male voice. He was asking me a question, but said it like a command.

Only Una, and you better let me in quick style, 'cause I ain't gonna wait here with crackheads biting at my ankles. I'm alone.

The attic door hung from it's hinges, so a huge dresser had been shoved across the opening. After I spoke, the dresser was slid away. A barely audible sigh escaped from me, glad once again at the family-like unity among the youth on the streets. Because there were a couple of candles lit, I could only see the silhouette of the guy standing in the doorway.

So I wouldn't be apprehensive, the guy said, Hey, it's me, Zero, and Brenda. It's our anniversary. Zero and Brenda were a crustycore couple who kept to themselves for the most part, but were good people. Come on in, Una. They had met out in New York, where Brenda, a pretty high school girl from the suburban part of the Bronx, had met Zero, who she saw sitting on First Avenue and First Street, in the Lower East Side. I met the two of them in Tompkins Square, about a year and a half ago (back when I'd have never entertained the thought of college), where Zero and I hung out, as we were acquaintances. It's good to see you, it was cool talking by the river the other day. He patted my shoulder in friendliness. We're in the front room. I hope you don't mind some noise tonight. Back when I met them, there had been a stink over their age differences, as Zero was eight years older than Brenda; their union invoked a lot of disapproval. Brenda didn't care---she was a normal looking teenager and Zero was a tough older man with Maori tattoos across his face and earlobes stretched out with African wooden plugs---and her new lover had long since ceased caring about the views of other people towards himself.

Zero's a native from Lake Charles, so when he decided to go back to Louisiana, Brenda followed. Everything seemed to be going well in their relationship, as far as they acted on the outside, and knowing the two of them, they had nothing to disguise. They loved and protected each other, yet when they're together in public they seldom did more than pat each other on the back, wrap an arm around the other's neck, or punch each other in playful love. Like old friends, they'd sit and talk, slap each other on the knees, and have long periods of silence.

Congratulations on your anniversary, I'm sure it'll be the first of many. Anyway, I'm gonna fall asleep immediately. Hey, do you know who's downstairs?

Not my friends.

He waited 'till I stepped inside the attic, then slid the dresser back and walked to Brenda. Good night, he said, and Brenda told me to have sweet dreams. I wished them a happy anniversary and sighed once about my solitude. I didn't feel jealous, as I hadn't desired a committed relationship for years, but I wished to be somewhere else than in that attic with Brenda and Zero, on that particular night.

The attic was divided into two rooms by a skinny wall. The roof sloped down so low, I couldn't stand up for the most part, but there's no sense of claustrophobia, since the several windows were missing their glass and a breeze usually blew in. There wasn't any breeze last night and the air became oppressively hot, so I just curled up on the floor, backpack under my head, and aimed for sleep.

The bugs at Annunciation House are infamous for their quantity and appetite. I've squatted Annunciation many times before last night and never had such a bad infestation, but the nights had never yet been so hot. I stayed up all night from the insects; the swarms had flocked to my skin in the thick Southern heat. Once I ran my fingers down a raw arm and felt cheese-grated skin. In the pre-dawn, I found a dirty blanket and used it as a shield, but there wasn't a way to fall asleep under the circumstances of heat, sub-blanket insectasoidal invasions, and sexual giggles in the next room.

Circa dawn I got up, swatting my legs and arms and shaking my head like a madman. My long hair was frizzed out in a mosquito net, and smelled like potato chips left in the sun 'cause it was so dirty. Zero and Brenda had finally fallen asleep, and the insects had only multiplied. I wiped off my sweaty, bug-bitten face with one of the baby-wipe packets I keep in my backpack, gathered together my things and ventured outside.

My destination was nowhere in particular, so I rambled down to Canal Street, the financial artery of New Orleans. In those early hours, the street was populated by newspaper boys, winos, a few yuppies off to an early start, a rare prostitute off to a late start, and other desolate people. The sun had begun to rise and long shadows kept one side of the street in darkness, and on the other side the sunlight crept into the bleary eyes of the streetwalkers and screamed good morning.

I hate walking down a street at dawn when the businesses haven’t yet opened. I'm no dainty pretty thang, to be sure, with my long bleached hair sticking out in a crazy rat nest, dark clothes hanging on my body and scuffed Converse on my feet. I'm short but not a sloucher, so when I stand tall, I only measure five-foot-five and three-fourths. I don't know my weight, but I'm on the skinny side when I travel, from an unpredictable meal-plan. Nothing about my face stands out noticeably, but I've got long lashes and a splash of freckles across my nose and cheeks, especially when I'm tan, like now, and gray eyes. When I used to wear a cap most of the time---it was lost in Tucson---I'd often be mistaken as an innocent boy. My clothes are nondescript, so I don't fit into any social category of my generation, but combine a few.

I always dress in dark pants and good shoes and tank tops, I try to take showers with some regularity, and my clothes are usually dirty. Chapstick is my only make-up, a small necklace of colored stones and a silver pendant of a bird, hanging around my neck, are my only jewelry. With my quiet disposition, I make an excellent thief, worthy of my stupid childhood nickname, Ganef Girl.

I'm as unexciting looking as an egg bagel, but I'm a female, so the only life on Canal Street makes more rude comments than silence, and men grin and leer rather than look away.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I turned off Canal and onto North Rampart, which would eventually take me to Esplanade Avenue, and good old Esplanade House, where I ended up meeting Malakai.

well the dawn cracked hard just like a bull whip

cause it wasn't takin' no lip from the night before

as it shook out the streets, the stew bums showed up

just like bounced checks, rubbin' their necks

and the sky turned the color of Pepto-Bismol

and the parking lots growled....

--Tom Waits, Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission)

Chapter 2

It was still very early in the morning when I arrived at Esplanade House.

I recognized the big blue Victorian face of the house, peering at Esplanade Avenue with broken windows as empty eyes and the front porch like a lolling wooden tongue. Two huge oak trees, drenched in light green beards of moss, guarded the house. All front entrances had been completely nailed shut, so I walked up the driveway on the right. An old pecan tree and a few dark cypress trees grew along the edges of the cracked cement, and their leaves and nuts fell down and covered the minimal trash, making a brown mulch which squished and oozed tobacco colored juice onto my sneakers. Behind the trees were enormous, untended hydrangea bushes polka-dotted with clusters of small violet flowers. The driveway led to a semi-secluded courtyard, with the main bulk of Esplanade House to the left, an annex of the House towards the back, and a fence to the right. Directly to the left, a narrow metal staircase led to the second level of the House, where a thin verandah wound towards the annex, and a door to the inside.

There're two levels to Esplanade House, the ground floor and the second floor. The ground floor openings----doors, windows, rips in the wall----have been nailed shut, so the ambiance was like closing oneself in a warm, moist coffin. The dirt floors are the only bonus, since the wooden floors of the second level are full of rifts. There's no electricity or water in the entire house, and since the downstairs was the darkest and most secret part of the house, and also the toilet, and smells like shit, so I avoided it.

I went up the metal staircase in the courtyard, testing each step for security, as some of the steps were missing. At the top, I saw a black-haired woman curled in the waxing sunlight with her face on the verandah in a comatose kiss. I walked up to her and made a little noise of identification, but she was deep in sleep, so I walked inside the second floor of Esplanade House to look around.

Inside, the rooms had high blackened ceilings, old carpets curdling under massive amounts of grime, six-foot high French windows nailed shut with plywood, a spiral staircase without a banister, and spacious closets gaping like shocked expressions. Over the years of domestic disuse the rats gathered, the roaches thrived, the dust devils looted the air and infiltrated the carpets, fire weakened the walls and charred the ceilings, and termites bit booby-traps in the wooden floor. Scrunched beer cans, empty food containers, and plastic dishes were everywhere. Roaches flew out from under my feet like curled brown fingernails. I didn’t explore too deeply, so I went back outside to the sleeping girl.

Hey, I said loudly.

She didn’t stir. I considered the possibility of her being dead, and in a second all sorts of thoughts came to mind. The whole scene was surreal from lack of sleep. Thoughts were so relaxed, so unformed, and I lazily pictured her tumbling off the edge of the balcony. I said again, Hey you, wake up! She stirred, flopped a hand. She wasn’t dead. Maybe beat. I concluded she had a huge hangover. Hmmmm..., she murmured, still sprawled on her face. I couldn’t see any of her features, just her black hair and her petite body with a big butt. A couple red mosquito bites swelled on the back of her calves. She brushed a hand against her head, moved her shoeless feet. Her boots, newly bought, lay next to her.

Who are you? I asked. She rolled over. Chloe! I happily cried, Hey! How are you!?

Her face had a sleepy grin on it. She pushed herself up, yawned, stretched, smiled at me. Chloe has a kind face and big brown eyes. Hey there, Una! What’s up dude? she said in her raspy Stevie Nicks voice. I love Chloe’s voice.

It was a good feeling to see Chloe, I had met her earlier in the week, when we talked somewhat about our lives and gossiped on random experiences. She’s sweet and friendly, but she’s been around the block a few times, so she knows all the ropes. She doesn’t look homeless in her new clothes, but that's to her advantage. She’s a hustler, a player, a strong little Spartan fighter, the lover of many boys and men, and a magician who can turn a gray day blue.

I sat down next to her and complained, I’ve been up all night at Annunciation from the goddamn bugs. Check out my arms.... All this from the fucking bugs!

Jesus, man, look at you, she laughed like Janis Joplin and rubbed her arms, Dude, I know, Annunciation Squat sucks. Why do you think I sleep here? she snickered. Then she stretched like a feline and propped up against the side of the house, wiggling her toes and pushing her shoulders back.

Well, I said, I've spent nights there before and never got so tore up. Last night was a bitch 'cause of the goddamn heat.

Chloe sighed tremendously, Tell me about it! It was pretty damn hot here too---that’s why I’m sleepin' on the porch. Me an' Jade an' Malakai slept in a room together, an' it was so hot that I had to come out here this morning. An' shit, it’s gonna rain, eh?... Hey, did y'know Jade an' I are boyfriend and girlfriend?

"Really? Cool. I don’t think