Rollin With Ruby

I hopped out of my car and gave my girl a hug. I screamed and hugged her boyfriend Donald. We had gotten acquainted when they stayed with me in Atlanta for Memorial Weekend.

Ruby’s trying to explain why her neighborhood looks like it was invaded but I can’t hear her. It looks like Miami did when the hurricane knocked our power out.

I followed Ruby up a rickety spiral staircase to their apartment. It was completely dark so we left the door open and sat down on the couch with our flashlights. It felt good to sit down on a nice couch after all of that riding. My plan was to come through Lousiana and see Ruby and then drive on to Houston from here but Ruby made the plan even better by offering to drive to Houston with me and stay through the end of the week to be there with me while I figure out what I am going to do.

I have such amazing friends!

Before I could even snap out of my gratitude fantasy I feel a tap on my left arm. Donald is sitting next to me in the dark, “Here you go,” he says and I see a tiny spark float toward my hand.

“Thanks dawg…”

A half hour later we are hungry as hell and Ruby suggests we go to Nacho Mama’s on North Oak Drive. A bitch ate a burrito and was HAPPY LIKE A MUTHA! For real…I feel like they knew I was gonna write about their shit. I give it 4 stars!

By the time we got home the lights turned back on so we sat and watched TV while I talked on the phone with JB’s fine ass.

It seems unreal but for real. Like a missing puzzle piece has been found. I don’t know about all this. It’s as though whatever is going to happen between me and him has already been settled and I don’t have to change anything about myself or do anything to impress him or worry about who he’s seeing or sleeping with. I just know that no matter what happens between him and I, we are still going to be friends. Just like me and Tamara.

There’s no problem we could ever have that I woudn’t strive to work out.

On Saturday I spent the entire day recovering from my trip. Donald and I surprised Ruby by going to see her at work for lunch and later we all got dressed to spend the evening in New Orleans on Bourbon street. A quick call to a blog friend in the area and we decided to meet up at Cafe Dumond where I tasted my first beignet. I had two actually. Delicious! I also had a cup of the most frothy hot chocolate that I have ever experienced.

The service at Cafe Dumond was interesting to say the least. We actually had to interrupt our waitress as she sat on a chair licking her fingers and counting her money. She was into it. She had her foot up on the chair next to her.

“Excuse me? Do you know who our waitress is?” Donald asked her.

She looked up and rolled her eye, “Ain’t nobody help ya’ll?”

“No, Ma’am.”

She shifted, rose and stretched before walking over to our table and shifting all of her weight on one foot as she asked, “Can I help you?” She then commenced to picking her nails.

We went through our orders pretty quickly; 2 hot chocolates 1 orange juice and 3 orders of beignets. But by the time the last person ordered we all fell silent because we realized that we were intruding on a private moment between our waitress and the roots of her hair.

As this doughboy shaped woman flipped half of her long black braids over to one side and worked her fingers intricately in the roots of her hair to detangle her new growth, we all watched silently as to not disturb the magic of the moment.

When she walked away, my blogger friend said to me, “That’s New Orleans customer service.”

After our beignets we walked down the famous Bourbon street where I was taken to the first bar we saw. “A hand grenade for her,” he told the bartender who handed me a green plastic cup with a grenade shape at the base of a long neck.

I tasted it. It tastes like a lemonade slushy. There was a plastic, red hand grenade sitting on the top of the long, frozen drink.

“They say by the time that red grenade hits the bottom of that cup, you should be fucked up.”

Hmm… Really?

Tastes like a lemonade frosty to me.

Let’s get it!

It was raining for part of the night so the streets weren’t too packed but there were people everywhere hangung out of clubs and on the streets drinking and singing and laughing. I felt like I was in another world. You know how it looks on TV? It looks just like that. It looks like a hang out spot though. Lots of young people there, some tourists like myself. It was foggy so I didn’t get a good look at New Orleans but I did travel the same roads that we saw those people were stuck on after the hurricane.

We ended up at this club called Utopia and we danced until Ruby had to take away my drink. I never saw the grenade hit the bottom. There was this one chick there. Man…She had a nice body. I don’t know why but I just appreciate a woman who has a nice body. So I went up to her and danced with her. She danced with me too. And then I walked away.

~smile~

I remember being on the floor of the bathroom in a bar in the French Quarter holding my head in one hand and my phone in the other. I was talking to JB.

And then we were back in Hammond. The fog is so heavy at night in New Orleans, I hope I get a chance to visit again before I leave here.

Now I’m sitting on Ruby’s new couches with her boyfriend, once again my home girl is at work. Ruby will always keep a job or multiple jobs. She has that strong work ethic. She owns a shirt that says, “daughter of a field negro; the struggle continues” and I believe it is fitting because she is not afraid of work.

I’ve met their friends and family and I’m about to go and meet Serenity23 in Baton Rouge. Serenity has promised to cook a good meal for me and I am so excited because I LOVE to eat and I can’t wait to see what Louisiana foods she is going to prepare as she blesses me.