I was lucky enough to be in New Orleans in late December 2016 for a research trip.
Though I don’t mind good company, I also love traveling alone. For my work, I’ve been fortunate to sojourn by myself to Europe, the UK, and even Qatar -- a radical departure from the limited autonomy of my mom, who never had a driver’s license.
On December 25, I was walking around soulful New Orleans observing Christmas. I walked uptown, happy as a clam at high tide, to catch some of the Lady and Men Rollers second line and then headed back to the Quarter, where I was staying.
I had picked up a copy of William Faulkner’s New Orleans Sketches at Faulkner House two days earlier. I was thinking about Faulkner’s sketch “The Mirrors of Chartres Street” as I decided to walk into Harry’s Corner, at Chartres and Dumaine. After I emerged from the loo, my motivation for entering this establishment, I sat at the far end of the bar to repay my claimed amenity.
There I met the near-Platonic ideal of a bartender, whose name I can’t recall. What I do remember is the knit Santa hat she wore. I asked her about it when I ordered my mimosa.
“I made it,” she said joyfully. After making my drink, she pulled a bag from behind the bar, filled with hats she had knitted. “It’s my hobby. Or addiction,” she added, smiling.
Inside the bag I found a monkey hat, a perfect memento of my research trip, which focused in part on mimesis, the ancient Greek concept of imitation -- particularly the imitation of character. "You can tell a lot about someone," a wise friend had told me the day before, "by whom they emulate."
At Harry’s Corner I also met Mico.“I used to run a character company,” he said, and asked me why I was in New Orleans. I told him I study and teach rhetoric. We talked for a few minutes about my next major project, which is on character.
A woman traveling alone chooses her seat at a bar carefully -- or should. After my conversation with the bartender and purchase of my monkey hat, I thought I’d chosen well.
Mico said he had a friend at a university in a state near where I live, a theater professor, who would probably like to talk with me about my research. As I started to suggest that wasn’t necessary, Mico pulled out his cell phone to call his faculty friend.
“What can it hurt?” I thought. Besides, it was Christmas: he probably wouldn’t answer the phone.
As I walked back from the jukebox, Mico handed me his phone.
“Rosa?” the voice on the other end asked.
“Guilty as charged,” I replied. The theater professor said I had a nice voice.
“Mico says you’re hideous,” he added.
Without skipping a beat -- what do you say, if you’re me? -- I replied.
“I am.”
And the phone conversation continued for a few minutes, and the theater professor said he would email me, and I handed Mico his phone, and I listened to more music, and I finished my mimosa, and I paid the bartender, and I returned home the next day.
Christmas Eve, the day before I walked into Harry’s Corner, had been among the most affirming in my life. Yet in the weeks after I got home -- and on other research trips and speaking engagements, even a keynote address in March -- and up to a few weeks ago, Mico’s claim, and, even more, my willingness to assent to it, threatened to eclipse all the other memories of my late December trip to New Orleans.
About a week ago I told the story of Harry’s Corner for the first time to a friend.
She asked me what I wish I’d said instead.
“You don’t even know me,” came immediately to my mind.
She added, “And that’s a hideous thing to say to someone.”
All in all, I had a glorious trip to New Orleans, and I can’t wait to return.
That monkey hat came home to Pennsylvania with me and has been particularly useful when standing with others in silent protest after the inauguration of a towering misogynist to the highest office in the land.
And I’m pretty sure no one’s ever going to make me feel hideous again.
So, if you’re in New Orleans and you see Mico, thank him for me.
And, if you want to, if you agree, you can tell him that’s a hideous thing to say to someone.
