By: Zach Dowling
A photo taken by the author during Mardi Gras in 2019.
“That’s wild”, my friends say to me, equal parts impressed and confused, displaying a polite enthusiasm in the same tone as someone responding to a child so as to not hurt their feelings after being shown their favorite toy. It’s okay. I’ve often been the one to say this statement, usually when people try to “humbly” show off their accomplishments, and at functions where I don’t have a choice in whether I’d like to attend or not. It’s only fair that I’m on the receiving end of this phrase now, especially since I don’t quite understand what I’ll be doing either. “Yeah, it’s crazy”, I answer.
I decide to apply to the Fulbright program to be an English teaching assistant knowing absolutely nothing about the organization and even less about what I’d do. The reason I’m even in this situation is that I'm a Philosophy major, which I often mention in a self-deprecating way in order to demonstrate my awareness that I do, in fact, know there aren’t many direct career paths besides teaching philosophy (teaching English abroad, then, seems like the perfect “random” fit). I feel even more obligated to frame it this way because—by some odd and unfortunate chance—I really enjoy learning about it.
It feels like just by attempting to understand life, my attempt is, in-itself, a contribution (I’m sorry, but I study philosophy, I must write this way). There is a solidarity, a shared experience in pursuing this, and there is an equally shared experience among those who study philosophy in not knowing what the fuck we want to do after we graduate.
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I work primarily in the service industry. I’m a bartender at an upscale, modern cocktail bar in the business district of New Orleans. It’s the kind of place that attracts both lawyers sweating in their heavy sport coats and tourists adorning T-shirts that proudly proclaim “I went to drunk and got Bourbon Street!” in bold Comic Sans. “That’s wild, that must be really fun!” people say to me when I tell them what I do for a living. It puzzles me how genuinely people mean this, urging me to tell them my favorite cocktail to make, or the craziest story I have about a drunk person at the bar, or the most annoying drink people have asked me to make. I appreciate people taking an interest in my life—however boring it may seem to me—and truth be told, I love complaining, so it isn’t difficult for me to talk about my job. From an outside perspective, I guess it is a “wild” job, especially when most jobs don’t entail you taking care of and being friends with drunk people in exchange for tips.
What isn’t wild is all the unglamorous stuff that comes with the job: cutting hundreds of lemons and limes, batching pre-made cocktail mixes, tasting all the juices to make sure none of them are bad, constantly cleaning and sanitizing the bar, and having “safety meetings” (other bartenders know this is code for taking a shot with your coworkers out of view of the customers). I suppose every job, even the most glamorous one, has aspects like this. What bothers me isn’t people asking questions, or the fact that they don’t know about all the minute details (it would be unrealistic to expect them to know); but rather it is my own bitterness from working so much at a job I don’t like.
I’m especially bitter because, at this point, I work three jobs I don’t like. When I’m not working, I’m too tired to do much else. Somehow, even though I spend almost all my time working, I only ever seem to have enough money just to scrape by. As one might imagine, this isn’t necessarily a good cycle for my mental wellbeing, and it isn’t made any better by where I live either. Two of my close friends have each been assaulted and robbed within weeks of each other in my neighborhood, neither of whom got any resolution.
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One morning I go outside to my car to go to work and find an empty parking spot. I park my car in the same place every day, and I know it’s legal to park in this spot because I asked the last cop who gave me a parking ticket where I am allowed to park. Someone has stolen my car. I only have liability insurance, which means that I’m left with nothing now. Everyone I know is busy, except for a friend-of-a-friend who lives near me. She picks up my call. I’m angry and sad and confused and wondering why this has to happen to me. “Wow, right in front of your place too, that’s so wild,” comes through my phone speaker. I have tears sliding down my cheeks and try to keep my voice from shaking as I say that at least it could be worse, knowing it won’t be the last time I have to hear that stupid phrase.
Still, it really could be.
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I’m from Louisiana and I love where I’m from, but people from New Orleans know loss better than almost anyone. In the past 23 years, 28 tropical cyclones have hit the city, some developing into hurricanes. The one most people are familiar with, Hurricane Katrina, killed hundreds, displaced thousands, and destroyed the city to a degree in which it has still not fully recovered and probably never will. People from New Orleans don’t forget how they were treated during the recovery either. It doesn't take a detective to find all the old news coverage describing the “lawlessness” and “looting”. It also doesn’t take a sociologist to tell you why this “wild” description of victims in a majority-black city might not sit right with them.
Yet the very reason a lot of people visit New Orleans is because of how “wild” they think it is. Tourists come to Bourbon Street so they can drink in public and embarrass themselves. Mardi Gras is a major attraction and people come from around the world so they can treat a city like their playground and hopefully see a woman take her top off for plastic beads. They throw garbage everywhere then go back home and tell their friends how “wild” of a weekend they had.
As much as I’ve despised dealing with people like this for most of my life, they do get something right. It is a wild place. There is nowhere else in the world like New Orleans. I get why people want to come: everything is a party there. People have parties in the streets for everything, including funerals (I hope someday people will have a party when I die). I have friends just outside the city who send me videos of alligators in the backyards, sometimes in their front yards. Don’t even get me started about crawfish boils— everyone has to go to one at some point in their life, especially so we can make fun of you then teach you how to crack them open. If you want to know what the city sounds like listen to bounce music and Lil Wayne. Jazz was invented there, the best food is made there, and the kindest people I know live in this wild city.
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“Please be safe baby, it seems wild out there”. This is what my mom tells me before I leave to go to Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands and the place I’ll be living for the next nine months. By “out there”, she means all of Europe, because she is incredibly worried that the Russia-Ukraine conflict might extend out to wherever I’ll be. I have to assure her I’ll be fine, that it would be pretty strange if they came all the way out to the middle of an island in the Atlantic.
I know I’ll miss everything I mentioned and more about my home state and the city I love, but I’m more than ready to go. New Orleans will wear you down, and I was exhausted, ready for something to change.
Fuerteventura doesn’t seem wild to me at all when I do my research. In fact, it seems kind of boring: the Google images reveal a never-ending desert, the only animal that seems to thrive is goats, and I’ll be living in the largest “city” on the island with a bustling population of just under 30,000 habitants. I’ll definitely be doing less drinking, I think to myself. However, when my plane touches down for the first time I understand what makes this place wild. Fuerteventura translates to “strong wind” in Spanish. “Windswept” is a word that is commonly used to describe the island on travel blogs, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a better visual representation of that word. Sand dunes spread across the island, with small towns dotting the arid landscape near the coast. Vegetation is scarce, with barilla lining the ground near the roads and the occasional palm tree standing defiantly. Volcanic craters rise up in different parts of the island, giving you the feeling that on the other side the desert stretches out forever.
In the pockets of this desert island where people have settled and formed communities, I’ve come across some of the most generous, friendly, and caring people, people who are proud of their traditions, their food, their culture, their identity, and their land. These are people who are proud of these things and proud to show them to others. Now that I’ve lived here it’s still wild, but that’s not to say I’ve grown tired of it. The waves at Cofete crash into me with such force I feel like I’m a child in a water park being swirled around helplessly, yet having a blast all the same. I could do without the calima, when dust from the Sahara floats westward and fills the sky with a yellow-brown haze that leaves my skin feeling dry and my throat scratchy, but it’s certainly helped me keep better track of the weather. The squirrels here are bold in begging for food, outstretching their tiny hands and standing on their hind legs as close as anyone will allow them to get. The goats bleat at me and sometimes I feel like maybe if I bleat back they’ll understand. I’ll miss it when I leave. When I get back home, I’ll tell my friends and family about the things I got to do and see. I’ll tell them stories and show them pictures and they’ll probably say to me “That looks so wild!”. Maybe now I’ll say back to them “yeah, it was”.
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