A Day in the Life of the COVID Quarter - Part 2

3/28/2020

FQJ's Hunkering Down blog

Frank on his third floor balcony

Second in the series of daily diary entries by French Quarter writer/historian Frank Perez. "To be one flash of color in the kaleidoscope that is the Quarter lends perspective."

- by Frank Perez

Saturday, March 28, 2020
5:05 am

A flood of memories greets me as I wake up. I had been dreaming I was back in graduate school. That was nearly 30 years ago, and I can still smell the library. The memories are pleasant, and I tell myself to file this dream away for later contemplation. Usually I forget my dreams before I get to the bathroom.

5:30 am

Coffee and the computer. I’m revising the first chapter of the biography of Stewart Butler I’ve been working on for four years now. I’ve found an article Stewart wrote—a memoir piece—for The Star, the newsletter of the National Hansen’s Disease Museum. Stewart grew up there when it was a leprosarium.

7:23 am

Time to water the plants. The amaryllises are blooming, their trumpet bulbs beautifully unaware of the viral menace plaguing the city. Rupee, our Chihuahua rescue, is unaware too. He alternates stares between his empty bowl and me, tail wagging.

8:30 am

After a light breakfast (a few strawberries and a boiled egg) is a phone interview with a political activist who was in the trenches with Stewart in 1991 during the fight to get a non-discrimination ordinance passed. Writing.

10:00 am

I should be walking down Royal to the Monteleone to conduct a literary tour for the Tennessee Williams / Saints and Sinners Literary Festivals. Key word, should.

11:37 am

Time for the daily trip to Rouse’s for groceries. The one-block walk usually takes much longer than it should because there are artists behind the Cathedral to greet and always a friend or acquaintance along the way to chat with. Sometimes these chance encounters result in digressions to Johnny White’s around the corner or Tony Seville’s Pirate’s Alley Café.

But there’s little chance of a diversion now. And the tourist hoards who walk and window shop at a glacial pace are nowhere near. The only soul around is Pops, an elderly gentleman who has been sitting outside Rouse’s since it was part of the old A&P grocery story chain. The comfort of familiarity.

12:10 pm

Back to writing.

3:45 pm

Movie break. Trumbo, a film reminiscence about the fabled screenwriter who was blacklisted in Hollywood during the “Red Scare” years.

6:37 pm

What to make for dinner? My brain says go healthy, but my heart says Alfredo sauce. Alfredo it is, with green onion sausage. Whisking the Parmesan cheese into the melted butter and heavy cream, I remember my great Aunt Carmen, who was like a grandmother to me. “Whisking is very important” she would say.

7:20 pm

Sitting on the balcony with Rupee in my lap, I watch the sun slowly sink beneath the rooftops near Armstrong Park. From my perch, I can see the top of the old Ambush “Mansion” in the 800 block of Bourbon. I think of Rip and Marsha and the 32 years of memories they made under that rooftop publishing Ambush magazine before they died in 2017. I miss my friends.

So many rooftops. I imagine the multitudes of lives lived under those rooftops throughout the centuries. To be just one of those lives, to be just one flash of color in the kaleidoscope that is the Quarter, lends perspective, which in turn yields gratitude. For that is what we are—footnotes in the tout ensemble.

Frank Perez serves as President of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana and has authored four books on New Orleans history and teaches part-time at Loyola University. He is also a licensed tour-guide. He and his partner live in the French Quarter.

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