Time to get back to the story after a long digression. I was talking about how my friend began to bargain to get me to drive with her to the southern tip of Louisiana. The bargaining iteration on the morning after Mardi Gras was her promising to go along with some of “my” plans the day we switched hotels if I would go with her on her little road trip today. She emphasized the “your things” part quite a bit, as though she was doing me a favor. Given that I didn’t expect her to do things that I wanted to do if she didn’t want to do them, and I had specified that I didn’t WANT to go for that drive, I found some of her word choices a bit strange. We really should have sat down at that point and talked about what things we might want to do together and whether we should have at least one day for each of us to just do our own thing. Another thing I have kicked myself about in retrospect, because I really didn’t WANT to be joined at the hip for the entire trip. I didn’t want to feel obligated to do things I don’t enjoy, like shopping or driving to hell and gone, and I didn’t want her to feel obligated to do things she didn’t enjoy, like sitting and drinking beer in sidewalk pubs. But I didn’t speak up. I should have, especially since the idea of going off by herself to do whatever she wanted either never occurred to her, or she just didn’t want to be alone. I suspect the latter.
The final “compromise” was that we would drive downtown today, the day after Mardi Gras, try to find a place to park that didn’t involve tickets or towing (I gave up on trying to convince her to take a cab since the day was going to include the drive), poke around the French Quarter for a while, and then drive down to the tip of Louisiana in the afternoon. We would then catch the streetcar the next day from our new hotel and do more exploring in the French Quarter, including going to the cemetary and the original Cafe du Monde.
My friend put on soft socks and her soft Crocs, and off we went, first stopping at the Metairie Cafe du Monde for coffee and beignets. I paid because they only took cash and my friend was running out of cash. When we were done, we got onto the freeway and headed downtown, with me navigating. I was looking for a certain exit, but my friend pulled the same stunt that she had in Phoenix. The freeway was pretty confusing, and I was mulling aloud over the various exits as we got close. She suddenly went streaking off on an exit I didn’t want to get off at, so I had to do a really fast reconn of the map to figure out where we were going to end up. Luckily, I have an excellent sense of direction and am a good map reader, so I managed to get us headed on surface streets toward the French Quarter. We ended up right between downtown, Riverwalk, and the French Quarter. My friend spotted a pay parking lot next to a hotel and pulled in. I confirmed with her that she was willing to pay for parking, and then she parked as far from the French Quarter as was possible in that parking lot (the other side was right at the edge of the French Quarter), which I thought was silly, but at that point I was just glad to get out of the damn car and go do something.
We started walking toward the heart of the French Quarter, keeping track of the streets with our map. Being the day after Mardi Gras, the area smelled pretty bad (the French Quarter tends to smell a bit anyway) and was still pretty trashed. My friend said she was looking for feather masks as gifts, so she kept sticking her head into various shops. One of the shops she went into was playing very loud music. I tried to go in and look around while she was browsing, but the music drove me right back out the door. There weren’t any benches to sit on, so I stood around on the street corner waiting for her and watching the locals. I saw a couple of pimp-looking guys with a hooker-looking woman and a shiny car. They got in and out of their car a few times, the woman ran into a building briefly, the guys stood and gabbed, and I continued to stand there. Next, I noticed a guy come out of the bar across the street and go over to a trash receptacle and start peeing on it. When he was done, he went back in the bar. I watched cars go by and tourists wandering around with maps. Finally my friend came out of the loud store with a shopping bag. She had found some masks. We continued on.
When we went around a corner, we were accosted by a smarmy guy who was trying to get people to come into the restaurant where he worked. He was basically working the sidewalk to get tourists in. He said they had really good crab cakes, which caused my friend’s ears to perk up. I was just trying to walk right by, since it was only about 11am, but he saw that my friend was interested in the crab cakes and kept up his patter. My friend said that we needed to take our (her) shopping bag back to the car and maybe move the car (why?) before sitting down for lunch. He then told her that if she parked the car across the street in the illegal zone he would watch it so she wouldn’t get a ticket. I called bullshit on that, but she had made up her mind that she wanted those crab cakes, so she told the guy we would be back after we went to get the car and move it closer. We headed back to the car.
We got back to the car, with me thinking to myself that it would make a lot more sense to keep the car there, parked legally, since the parking rate improved the longer you stayed, but I kept my mouth shut because my friend had her mind made up. We began to drive around the part of the French Quarter that was near the restaurant, looking for parking. When we went past the restaurant, my friend stopped for a minute and told the smarmy guy we would be back soon (as if telling him mattered AT ALL). He once again suggested parking in the illegal spot with him watching the car. I said don’t do it. As we drove in circles, my friend kept pointing to cars parked illegally and suggesting that we park in an illegal place like them. I told her that I had it on good authority from lots of people that it was just plain dumb to park illegally in the French Quarter, because you WOULD get a ticket or get towed. She was getting annoyed with me and said she might be willing to take a chance. I told her that if she parked illegally and got towed, I was NOT going to the impound place with her. She snipped back, FINE. She finally spotted a place that “looked” legal. We pulled in. I told her to look around carefully and be sure. She glanced around for signs and decided it was safe. I kept my mouth shut again, suspicious that the parking place was open but not willing to bother with it anymore. We got out and went around the corner for lunch.
My friend immediately ordered the crab cakes before I even had a chance to look at the menu. She didn’t bother looking at the menu. I ordered a beer while I was browsing the menu, and my friend ordered some kind of drink. I noticed in the menu that the crab cakes were quite expensive (didn’t tell her that), so instead of ordering the more expensive oyster po’boy, I went with the cheaper shrimp po’boy. In the meantime, my friend had whipped out her cell phone and began calling her husband and cousin, leaving me sitting there listening to her loud phone conversation. I had begun to notice over the last few days that she carried on her phone conversations as though she was talking to both the recipient and me, in the sense that she was informing me of various things by telling them to the other person loudly. It was like being included and left out at the same time. Pretty weird, and it began to get on my nerves.
Her crab cakes came before my po’boy so she had to get off the phone to eat them. She offered me a taste, and I took a small bite, knowing how expensive they were and that I had a big sandwich coming. My po’boy arrived and it was just average, a little dry (the best po’boys are more “dressed” than it was). When we were done eating we headed back to the car. And what did we find? Yes, you guessed it. A $20 ticket on the car for parking in a “pay-to-park” zone without paying. Sure enough, down the street a short way was the sign. My friend kind of shrugged it off, while I was thinking it would have been cheaper to stay in the pay parking lot we had been in. Not my problem though.
I navigated us out of the French Quarter and onto the freeway to the bridge across the Mississippi River. The little highway we were looking for was on the other side. We managed to take the right exit and headed for the tip of Louisiana. After driving through city streets for a bit, we ended up out in the country along the Mississippi. Somewhere along that stretch I fell asleep, tired from all the driving, shopping, eating, arguing, and smoking pot in the car. When I woke up we had arrived at the end of the line. We got out and looked around for a few minutes. I took a couple of pictures. We got back in the car and headed north. All that driving so my friend could stand there for a minute and say, “yup, here I am.”
As we headed back, I began to realize that we were going to get back to the city just as rush hour was starting, so I pulled out the map and started looking for the shortest, fastest way back to Metairie. I found a great route, and we managed to circle around the west side of the city and into Metairie with minimal traffic problems. I was really glad to get back to the motel and do nothing, because I was sick of the car and just plain tired. I fixed some crackers and cheese to go with the smoked salmon that my friend had brought on the trip, and we just lounged around drinking beer, eating our snack dinner, and browsing through the tv channels.
Later, before bedtime, I got a hungry for something else. My friend was gabbing on the phone as usual, so I told her I was going to go down to the boring family restaurant next to our motel and have a piece of pie or something. I had my pie, came back to our room, and went to bed.
I will continue the story in my next post.
I am pretty sure you would have spoken up as a matter of course if the relationship was balanced in the first place. There would have been no reason to hesitate.
Your description of the cell phone use is amusing as along as I am just reading about it and not 2 feet away. I know quite a few people like this woman who are better at personal relationships and having friends from a distance. They don’t have many friends in person.