Got Dem Shoes

It’s taken me a long time to write this post, and I’m not sure why. I started it last week. Anyway, a little about Mardi Gras 2025. Kechi, Karate, and I headed to New Orleans Friday night along with our friend and colleague, Cynthia—who co-directed Kechi’s Pervirgin with me, handling most of the technical aspects. This was the first time the three of us took a long ride like that—and the very first time Karate has traveled with another human with him in the backseat. He seemed to enjoy it.

I got some work done that Saturday instead of going to the parades. Kechi had been hired to shoot a dance krewe that day, and I’d been wrestling with a particularly difficult piece of material for the book. I had to mine and translate a foundationally traumatic experience of my own to illuminate my main character’s decisions and psychology, and when I first drafted it, I had no idea whether I was getting somewhere or cutting myself open to produce unusable dreck. Turned out the sequence worked pretty well.

It's hard to tell how Karate feels about being back in New Orleans. There’s no telling whether he remembers it as our home. During our trip, we walked along Bayou Saint John and through the neighborhood on a beautiful day, which did my heart good. He enjoyed himself quite a bit, but that might just have been because it was a nice day out, he was with both of his people, and he got to receive pets from strangers—which is his next favorite thing to lounging around and eating like he’s in Angola for life.

The night we got to town, the three of us headed over to an abandoned Family Dollar on St. Claude Avenue, just over the parish line in Chalmette. There, we saw Choke Hole, a drag wrestling extravaganza complete with dangerous-looking moves, queens literally hanging from the ceiling, and bits between every round. The space had no air conditioning and it got very hot very fast in there. At one point, I cripped my way out to the (surprisingly clean) port-a-johns out back and when I tried to go back in, it was like walking into a wall. I wish I had good photos of the show, but my foot was still hurting me, and I wasn't able to get close enough to the ring to catch any worth sharing.

My late brother’s birthday fell on Bacchus Sunday this year, and if I’m being honest, I wasn’t sure how it would feel to be back in New Orleans for Mardi Gras for the first time since his passing. The night of, Kechi and I spent way too much time looking for somewhere to have dinner before winding up at Venezia on Carrollton. The food there is just as good as when I used to frequent the place during lunch breaks at ACORN just up the street. After that, we headed over to the Sea Cave on St. Claude, as our friend Jon was over there. It turned out that was the perfect thing. Brandon would have loved the place. All the old gaming consoles, the colored lights, the music, reminded me of when we used to hang out at VIP billiards right outside Baltimore. Brandon would not have loved the music, though, as it was a pretty solid punk mix. His favorite band of all time was Aerosmith, which I honestly never understood.

While I do wish some family had been there with me, there is nowhere else I would rather have been, and the folks with me were excellent company. I don’t think Jon Reynolds, especially, understands what a blessing his friendship has been to me through this season of grief, and I hope spending time is as helpful for him as it is for me.

We played it cool on Lundi Gras, only really going out during the day, if I recall. We picked up some buttermilk drops from Wink’s, and I was sorely disappointed. I hadn’t had any since well before the move to Baton Rouge, and I did not like the ones we got at all. A lot of my tastes have changed alongside my eating, and I found myself wondering whether they always were bad, and I was just noticing now. The plan was, on Fat Tuesday, to head down to the St. Ann parade so Kechi could photograph costumes and interview people wearing them. Then we’d head over to the Mother in Law Lounge and see what we could get into for Black Mardi Gras, the epicenter of which is the Claiborne underpass there. A random assortment of friends met us there—some of whom we hadn’t seen in some time—there was line dancing, smack talk, drinking, and reminiscing. Molly Ruben Long dropped by. I know she comes back for Carnival often, but I usually miss her. This was my first time really talking to her since her breast cancer diagnosis, and seeing her so far along in her recovery was good for my heart.

From the Mother in Law, we walked the mile or so through the Treme back to our crash pad and slept for a while. The one parade I had wanted to see was my personal favorite, Zulu, but worries over the weather had cut the parade short—it didn’t roll through the Treme—which is the oldest Black neighborhood in the country and tremendously important not just to the culture of New Orleans, but to Black culture nation- and worldwide. I might have tried to catch the shortened parade, but city leaders decreed that the parade would have no bands, and as far as I’m concerned, a parade without marching bands is not worth watching.

Before I forget, I must mention that during our wanderings, we met a purple dog. (!!!) I'm not sure of the ethics of dying an animal that way, and I can't imagine ever doing such a thing to Karate, but I'd be lying if I claimed that seeing a dog that is the wrong color doesn't fill me with child-like glee EVERY TIME. This one wasn't just purple, either--he was MARDI GRAS COLORS. Godddd! I don't remember the dog's name, and while I sort of framed it as a White-people thing in BALLAD, I have only seen dyed dogs being walked by Black folks, so I dunno why that's a thing. Thank God it is, though. That purple pooch was fucken DYNAMITE. I enjoy dyed dogs even more than I enjoy dogs wearing sunglasses, wigs, or hats. Put all three together, and you'll have a genuine contender on your hands, though. And if that dog is dyed? Well.

Before the bad weather could quite hit, we dipped over to the Rail Yard to meet friends we’d missed earlier in the day. The digs were comfortable, but we were across the street from the abandoned Navy base which radiates menace all through the Bywater, and the wind was so high that it was scary at times. By the time we made it there, I had used up all my energy, so I wasn’t the best company. I mostly just listened to people and soaked in the vibes, but when Kechi asked me if I was ready to go, I told her absolutely yes. We ubered back to the pad, and nearly got inside before the sky broke. I was soaked to the skin in what felt like an instant, and fell asleep very soon after I dried off.

Ash Wednesday morning, Cynthia gave the Buttermilk Drop another shot, and as it turns out, they are not trash. The buttermilk drops and the apple fritter were divine. Completely wrung out, we all headed home to vegetate until work started back up. The trip was enormously important to me. All my worries about the experience were swept aside, and I found myself enfolded by the city I love most during my favorite time of year. I laughed, I cried, I reconnected with old friends and partied with new ones. It was bittersweet because I don’t know what all the future holds. Will we even be able to make it back next year? Well, it turns out we have an answer to that one, at least. Kechi’s best friend Camille is marrying her fiancée Joy at the tail end of Carnival next year, an we absolutely must be present for it.

Lately, I've seen discourse online about whether The Wiz is a good movie. I understand both sides of the argument, I suppose, but for me, a piece of art succeeds on its strengths rather than its exclusion of weaknesses. If Diana Ross didn't seem coked out of her mind, reacting and emoting way too hard most of the time, if the witch wasn't killed by being flushed down a toilet, the movie wouldn't land as well with me. If you're ever in New Orleans and someone offers to guess "where you got dem shoes," the answer is "On my feet!" I've always dreamed of a New Orleans adaptation of the Wiz that includes that little cultural detail, and my first novel grew out of my imaginings of what that might be like. In many ways, seeing that movie when I was little was like experiencing New Orleans, experiencing Carnival, before I knew such a place and such a celebration existed. I think of it all the time, and it's how I know that one day, I'll return to Nola in my fiction to see help city beat back another existential threat.

It's been a fantastic year. We’ve been thriving in Baton Rouge, but we’ve missed our home city keenly, and the fact that we won’t be able to move back there for at least three more years can be difficult to bear. Still, the sacrifice is worthwhile, and every time we return—for a reading, for a comedy show, for a photo shoot, the city that adopted us embraces us again, and I feel like Dorothy clacking those slippers and repeating her incantation.