Unitl Waiting Fills…

When I was a teenager and living across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of that small town and into the big city. I had a strict upbringing and was very much under the thumb of my mother. I used to think she had spies watching my every move. Such is small town Louisiana. In the end, it was too much of a bother to misbehave, so I spent my high school years being a complete and utter dork (can you say “captain of the debate team”?).

I now thank my mother for her “spare the rod spoil the child” attitude. Being forced to be a certain way as a kid somehow gives me permission to be however I want to be now. Years of therapy and a library of self-help books taught me that.

I did my first two years of university at the University of New Orleans, where I lived at the coed dorm. It was 1983. Reagan was president.

We were listening to U.K. Squeeze, the Psychedelic Furs, and the Talking Heads. We were doing the Safety Dance and the Pogo at Andy Caps and in bars in Fat City and that place on St. Charles in the lower Garden District.

We were dressing like Madonna with lace and fishnets and big, big shirts.

I remember them screening “The Postman Always Rings Twice” with Jessica Lang and Jack Nicolson in the cafeteria of the dorm. I hadn’t watched a lot of “R” movies before that. I had only just turned 18. So the sex was quite shocking. I didn’t know where to put my eyes.

I don’t know if ya’ll remember that first moment of absolute adulthood freedom…the first time when you’re on your own…away from your parents, making your own decisions but still too young to have any real responsibilities. That moment is magical.

All that Fall I felt that way, but there was one particular moment that I hold above all others. Several of us had somehow made it down to the Quarter to that bohemian coffee house Until Waiting Fills. I know for sure that Franc and Trina White were there because we did one of those cheesy chain poems that we thought was absolutely brilliant. I think there were a few other people. This was before I was a regular coffee drinker so I was jacked up on the caffiene.

I remember looking out onto the street at the people walking by. It was dusk…the magic hour. Music floated in from somewhere. “I’m free,” I said to myself.

If I close my eyes and picture myself there, I can bring back that feeling of absolute freedom. You try it now. Remember that time for you, close your eyes and see yourself there. Isn’t it an awesome feeling?

When I let this feeling fade, it is replaced by an enormous wave of homesickness. I want to go home. I’ll have been away for 20 years this August, and the pull is just too great to resist.

As many of you know, I have been trying to make it back home this whole year. Success has not been forthcoming and it’s a very frustrating time. But I will not give up. I visualize every morning when I get up and every night before I go to sleep. I walk the streets of New Orleans. I sit inside my mother’s house eating sunflower seeds. I visit my friends. I ride the streetcar. I stand on the bank of the mighty Mississippi drinking an Abita Amber.

I have a lot to offer to my city when I go back. I’ve traveled literally to the ends of the earth. I’ve had experiences that I never dared dream of in my youth. I have lived, and, boy, do I have some stories to tell. So, until waiting fills, I will imagine myself there. Maybe you can imagine me there too. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Lovely picture found (including charming notes) at the Online Archive of California. Other sitings of Until Waiting Fills on the web: A memory was posted by Delta Diva on 31 August 2005, just two days after the storm. Also appeared in this Usenet Group posted by a guy who used to play piano there and claims you could get a big bowl of Red Beans and Rice for $1. Indexed at The New Orleans Index Project. Remembered by blogger Amie Oliver and two of her readers on Angels and Infidels. Mentioned here, here on Eccentric New Orleans in conjunction with Lord Michael: King of the Burning Sands, and here in the Gambit Weekly “Best of New Orleans.”