Volume 1, Issue 3 & 4 - Diverse Voices Quarterly

from LADY OF CHINCHUBA
A New Orleans Remembrance
Diverse Voices Quarterly, Vol. 1, Issue 3 & 4 52
by
Louis Gallo
Historian Doug Brinkley tells us in The Great Deluge that
the original Choctaw name for the site Bienville founded
as New Orleans was “Chinchuba,” which means “alligator.”
Around midnight somebody always threw a party. People drifted in an out of
these bashes for free booze and food and whatever else happened along. One night my
good friend and I wound up on the rear patio of a bungalow on Burgundy Street.
(There are no front yards in the French Quarter.) A smallish rather serious group sat
circularly on stiff iron-mesh outdoor chairs. Exotic tropical plants and ferns, effusing
sweet olive trees, dusty old palms. A blue-and-red parrot sentineled in its gilded cage.
Venerable lichen on the bricks beneath our feet. I can’t remember anything about our
host or hostess except that at some point I asked them for directions to the bathroom.
I was pretty wasted, but my eyes focused on a guest who sat almost directly
across from me, certainly one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. Her hair fell
liquidly, in golden ringlets, down her cherubic, valentine of a face. Her eyes, the
almost holy green of local chameleons. She wore a simple, modest, yet clinging shift
that revealed a slender, model-perfect body. Her crossed legs revealed superb gluteal
clefts. I guessed about twenty-three. I’m sure by this point in the evening I’d tossed in
my two cents on whatever subject the group discussed, but the mystery woman said
nothing, not a word. She sat nimbused in her own splendor, seemingly at ease with
the world. Taking it all in. And, yes, she had fixed her eyes upon mine. The crossed
legs pointed my way. All the right body language. Or, perhaps, wishful thinking on my
part. I was, at the time, between marriages, alone but not lonely, seeking, hoping to
turn the right corners, adrift in a libidinal and existential sea.
At some point I made my way to the bathroom located in the slave quarters
behind the main building. Most slave quarters in the Vieux Carré had been converted,
by this time, into luxury apartments, and this particular structure proved no
exception. How vividly I recall staggering through the door into a main bedroom,
bumping into walls until I found the latrine, doing my business, and trying to find my
way out again. It was not easy, given all the vodka and green chartreuse and with
everyone on the patio passing constant joints.
Expect now one of those legendary moments of life, something encountered
usually in movies or novels or wet dreams. I, a drunken, horny wastrel on the prowl,
with no particular expectations, made my way back into the entrance bedroom,
and…voila!…the beautiful, mysterious patio girl bereft of all clothing! More nakedness
but this to my taste. She had apparently followed me in and made her stupendous
move. I know I stopped short, dropped my jaw, and probably panted. Again the fixed,
languid, pellucid eyes aiming darts in my direction. She approached slowly, in waves,
like Bacall moving toward Bogart mesmerized at the bar. This never happens! Fantasy,