Good Person

A few weeks ago Brock and I participated in the Baton Rouge and Nola stops on the Gulf Coast Poetry Tour. Technically this event could be a line on our c.v.’s, but when a colleague asked us upon our return how the readings were, my first thought was, What readings? New Orleans, as it has its whole life, excuses bad behavior, and even though I was only hours removed from the flu, we engaged in some anyway. Morning hot toddies and midday beers at Molly’s, moving my car off Royal at six a.m.—still buzzing from a few hours before—so as to avoid the street sweepers, and being handed a croissant by a bum for, presumably, my life efforts. “Take it,” said the guy, a mainstay of the streets. “I don’t need it anymore.” The poetry of the academy was tangential to the poetry of the city.

Thursday afternoon at Molly’s we drank at the open window with Vince and Chris. High Lifes were a dollar, but with a pathetic boo face I insisted on frozen Irish coffee: “I’m sick.” As the boys spoke their exceptionalist nonsense, another boy approached in the costume of a Bible salesman: white cotton ball cap, plaid shirt tucked into high-water khakis, earnest glasses on his face. In one hand he carried a guitar case, in the other a pack of tarot cards, and in his shirt pocket a flask of whiskey. There is no way to adequately describe how ridiculous he looked.

“Oh, hi Paul,” said Chris. “What are you doing here?” The Bible salesman knew Vince and Chris from their old apartment in Baton Rouge, the same neighborhood Brock and I were carjacked in a year and a half ago. This guy, Paul, tells us he’s been sleeping in his car for three days now and wants to make it as a New Orleans musician and will read Tarot cards in the meantime just to get by. He’s psychic, he says. He doesn’t need the cards, but they help. Give his readings a structure.

“Like outlines, in writing,” I say. “I don’t always use them, but often they’re needed, you know, for structure. I’m a writer.”

Sometimes I introduce myself this way, especially to people whom I expect never to see again, just to try out the professional term. It’s always disheartening to be forced to tell others, I’m a teacher. Growing up we all knew this was the job of choice for those who had no other skills. Now I’m here dreaming the dreams of every teacher in existence: yes, I teach during the day, but in my mind and heart I’m Michelangelo. I’m an artist! scientist! filmmaker! archeologist! Often I want to introduce myself as a Good Person too, but I figure pairing that with being a writer doesn’t make much sense. At some point I’m going to have to choose.

Paul wanted to read our Tarot cards, but gave up almost immediately on Vince and Brock, who literally turned their backs to him when he advanced with the cards. Chris and I were more amenable, and during Chris’s read Paul discovered he had a girl problem: there were two to choose from, and decision time was nigh. When Chris asked repeatedly which one was the right choice, Paul just looked from the cards to Chris from the cards to Chris from the cards to Chris. Then, “Oh, you know.” That was all. Chris shook his head and ordered another beer.
My tarot reading followed, and it lasted for more than two hours. I wasn’t sure which parts of my life I should be curious about. Foremost I wished to ask about my writing, whether or not it was worth a damn, or whether the world would feel it’s worth a damn, but figured that would rescind my previous proclamation. Like, if you’re a writer, why do you have to ask if you’re a writer? Instead my questions to the cards were along the safe, general lines: would I make it okay in this life, would my mother-grandmother-sister-husband? The results were mixed. Mother, good life, check. Husband, good life, check (though apparently, he’s currently working on “the wrong book”).

Here is my future, condensed on this more palatable black-and-white slab: I will try to have children and fail. Some of those children will try to live and fail. My sister will meet a better man, have a chance to change her life for the better, but will likely screw that up, unless I stop her, and it’s likely I’ll be unable to. My marriage will go well, until it doesn’t, and I will have to make decisions and change myself if I want it to work, but I probably won’t. Sooner than I think my grandmother will die, but she will die with no regrets about her life though I will have many, thus it will take me years, probably the rest of my life to get over her death, and as for my own death—that elusive time a long way down the road—I will be infinitely regretful of all the mistakes I’ve made, and I won’t have Lala’s peace of mind. I’ll want a second chance, and as I go into whatever that other place is I’ll rue that people don’t get one.

First I wondered whether I got this reading because I told the guy up front we didn’t have money to pay him. Yes, I’d buy him a beer, but that was it. Then I wanted to joke that perhaps one of the dead children he saw was from my abortion eight years ago, but it didn’t seem the time for dead baby jokes.

Thing is, as Paul read my fortunes I tried to look and behave very grown up. I was wearing an extra special teaching outfit, one of my long consignment shop skirts, and I made sure to sit with my back straight and legs crossed, and to wear my sincere listening face. Paying reverence to his skill, I asked him reporter’s questions of how others have reacted to readings, what he does when he encounters skepticism or even contempt, how the cards are read, exactly, and whether or not he’s ever been wrong, and if so, if he feels guilt about that. But all the time I was thinking, I can’t believe in this shit. Because if I believe in this shit, it will kill me.

One of the last questions I asked Paul (a man who, it might as well be said now, as soon as we left Molly’s to go to the next poetry reading, Chris told me was completely not worth listening to, that none of my babies would ever die—he gave my shoulders a sweet squeeze as he said this—and that everyone they knew called Paul by his more accurate name, Turd, because he talks all the time and everything that comes from his mouth is shit) was, “Am I going to be a good person in this life?”

Turd gave me a lecture about the relativity of goodness in the world, how no good nor bad people exist, only good or bad perceptions of human behavior. And while this was indeed a bit of gobbledy-gook, I wondered at the obsession of women—especially women like myself who’ve done many mean things in life, and hurt many others—to be considered good people. A woman I know just broke another man’s heart, and as he rails against her for doing so, all she can keep reminding him is, “Okay, I hurt you, yes, but I’m still a good person. Right? Right!” It’s as if a bad action paired with an inherent need to be good trumps any ill deed. I want to be good, therefore I am. Luckily for us, Turd says it’s all relative, and we need not concern ourselves with goodness or badness. Just orbs of light floating around, we are. Just clusters of molecules.
“Hail Hitler,” said Vince. “It’s just our perceptions, that’s all.” My boys, sensing my readings were awful and I was being too polite, were ready to shut the Bible salesman down.
I’m not perfect, though. Turd can attest to that. When he said that I, as opposed to Lala, would die with major regrets, I thought two things simultaneously: 1) Why does Lala get to die with no regrets and I don’t? Why does she get to be more special? and 2) Do you know what I’m thinking right now, you Turd?

But aloud I said to Paul, “I’ll die with regrets. So you’re saying I’ll die human, then.”