Lenawee Smiles: Becoming like an oyster on a visit to New Orleans

Only idiots head to New Orleans in April. However, the offer of a stay with an old friend made me decide to go for it: to be that special idiot was my desire. After all, I had survived many Michigan summers that leave you groggy from trying to sleep in wet sheets in your wet nightgown. I was a high-humidity survivor; New Orleans held no fears for me. Bring it on.

Stepping off the plane at Louis Armstrong airport came close to casting me to my knees. Humidity the King was just waiting for me. His largesse pushed me into my own particular damp Hades. I waded to baggage claim to find my cloth-sided bag had started to grow mold. That bag was heavier than it had been when I left my home a few hours ago.

A sweat-sheathed taxi driver captured me and drove me to my friend’s home. I wept with great joy when I fell into her house to find an air-conditioned refuge. One of my many concerns at that moment was that I would refuse to leave this sanctuary on Tuesday and outstay my welcome until November. Just to avoid heat boiled in humidity. “This is nothing compared to July,” Abby told me, “then it really gets hot and humid.”

I wondered if somehow I had time-traveled and it was July without her knowing it.

“Mop yourself off, you look like something that crawled out of the Mississippi at dawn,” said my courteous friend.

I probably smelled like it too. As much as I hated the idea of more steam, I knew my deodorant had failed somewhere on the jetway a couple of hours earlier. After my shower, I blotted myself with a heavy cotton towel but was still damp.

The humidity in air conditioning simply meant a cooler state of wet.

“Nawlens,” my friend instructed me. “Don’t say New Orleans or a local might beat you up for being a slack-jawed Yankee. Act like you belong here and carry that drink as you stroll through the French Quarter.”

I certainly wanted to fit in. I wanted to look like the owner of a shotgun house.

I wanted to have powdered sugar on my chin (flies notwithstanding) to prove I’d had coffee and beignets at Cafe du Monde. I aspired to be someone who could pretend to know what “fais do do” meant and how to pronounce it. I wanted people to look at me and think I was Williams’ model for Blanche DuBois … decades after the fact.

Sultry notes of slow jazz were barely contained indoors and gently drifted outside. Zydeco tapped on the streets, nearly raising the cobblestones to lift your feet in its rhythms.

I was gawking like your basic hayseed.

I knew Abby was beginning to wonder if her invitation was a mistake.

“I want to ride on the streetcar named Desire!”

“There isn’t one. It was a streetcar line called ‘Desire.’”

“But everyone says…”

Abby sighed deeply, “There is a place on Bourbon Street called the Desire Oyster Bar.”

“Great, let’s go there for lunch.”

“Have you ever eaten raw oysters?”

“Not willingly…,” I replied, thinking fondly of a tuna melt.

“Well, now is your best chance.”

I know I made a threatening growl deep in my throat.

“You’re in Nawlens, you have to have some.”

As I regretfully recall, there was a mirror opposite of us.

A plate of raw oysters appeared before me. I clenched my teeth at the sight of them.

“This is what you do. Pick up the shell, tilt the oyster into your mouth, chew it once or twice and swallow it.”

I did not want to eat raw oysters. But, after all, Abby was kind enough to invite me to visit her so I felt honor-bound to try.

I watched her eat one, and she appeared to be experiencing some sort of Southern ecstasy.

I picked up an oyster, closed my eyes and tipped it into my mouth.

A mistake was imminent. Instead of chewing it, I bit it hard enough to cause it to shoot out of my mouth and fly 4 feet smack onto the mirror and make its slimey way down it.

Abby drove me to the airport that afternoon.

Susan Keezer lives in Adrian. Send your good news to her at lenaweesmiles@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Susan Keezer: Becoming like an oyster on a visit to New Orleans