Close Call part II

Last labor day I was depressed and displaced.

Back to part II of Katrina 2005- should have evacuated…

When Denise and I walked out of the condo we were traumatized, yet overjoyed to be alive. We made it. Surrealism set in as we went to our “gang’s apartment down stairs. Three gay guys, one very uptight straight guy and they were all drinking pressed coffee out of Royal Dalton cups – saucers and all. The complete lack of normalacy made it seem normal.

We all had coffee and bragged about who had prayed the loudest. We then decided to go take a look around the neighborhood. Half a block up to ST Charles the Methodist church had lost all its stain glass and steeple. Looking down the street car lines on St. Charles was looking into a nuclear bomb explosion. All the lines – gone, all the trees down. We continued around the neighborhood looking at friend’s homes and painfully avoiding the down power lines. Finally I said – I have to go to my house, I have to see what happened. There was a pause as I had actually assumed a leader role in this whole situation and my gang was afraid that if the “news” was not good I would lose it all together.

As we walked the tension rose to an alarming level. One of the 3 gay guys John G looked at John K and said, My God, what if we have to start to eat each other? John K reflected on his wonderful but very Nelly partner T and said well we will have to eat T first! John G, Denise and I looked at him in a sort of profound horror and said – “why he is the thinnest and the most finicky”

The response was a fake T voice saying” Oh my god I could not possibly eat Denise’s leg or Raspootin’s arm, I would rather die”

So we all laughed hysterically as we observed the destruction, but there was still a tension that conveyed that all was not right with the world. There were still no sounds of birds or bugs and we started to become very nervous.

My house seemed okay with the exception of my fence, my orange tree and 3 huge bricks from my chimney that broke through the ceiling. I put a bucket under the hole and some towels down to mop up the water. I thought that I would be able to clean everything up the next day.

It was starting to get dark out so we began our ½ mile walk back to the gang’s house. On the way back we started to see some rather upsetting and disturbing behavior.

No one’s cell phone worked, and our only tie to the media was a crank radio. No electricity or phone lines. How could it get much worse?