Juli's Story

Juli lives above Coop's Place with her husband Sean. She is studying to become a lawyer. Here is her story:

Every time I think I am ready to write our story (or my story, since Sean can speak for himself) I find myself unable to remember a timeline or the feelings that I had on a particular day... I guess PTSD is real after all.

We debated evacuating Saturday night after Sean got off work, but decided to sleep on it and decide in the morning. Our decision was pretty much made for us when Jim Monaghan (or landlord) and Tierney woke us up sunday morning to tell us that they were boarding up the building. We grabbed the cats and some clothes and began our 10 hour drive to Lafayette (actually, Henderson) to stay with a friend. We decided that trading in the Explorer for a Mustang was the stupidest decision ever,and that heralded a brave new era of Sean and I agreeing on pretty much everything. change is good, right?

We spent a shellshocked 10 days or so in Lafayette, until a good friend in Chicago offered up his building for us to stay in while he is in Peru (and beyond).With fear and loathing in my heart, we took off for the midwest (FEH! cold winters and 2:00am closing times). We spent a week (or 9 days, something like that) in Detroit seeing family and old friends, got some nice new tattoos and drank a lot. My father is pretty sure I am an alcoholic, but I told him it was just a local thing ;).

We made it to Chicago on the 18th, and have been staying with our friend Chris. He has rehabbed the second floor of his building to accommodate us, and although I am unfamiliar with the neighborhood (Humboldt Park) the space is beautiful. Chris is a fetish photographer and world traveler (he works in nuclear medicine and travels about helping people), so his house is filled with beautiful artwork and amazing artifacts from all over the world. It is like living in some bizzare museum filled with naked people and ancient gods. You could spend hours staring at everything, and I do.

He has a beautiful garden with a Koi pond and a cute black lab named Perdido that we will be caring for — I can probably keep the dog alive but the plants are another story altogether. I hope he does not hate me for killing his garden, as I am certain that my mere presence is offensive to all plantlife.

All in all we are in a good space, but it is hard... we have moments of utter bitchery and complete despair, and we hate not knowing when we can go home or if our lives will ever be close to what they were. We long to sit at our barstools and enjoy a Bloody Mary with Fay, do shots and commandeer the jukebox with all of our friends and family.

When people ask if we have family in New Orleans, we just smile (or cry) — because everyone in New Orleans has family. Most of us just created our own.

So that is it for now — my tattoo is peeling, I smoke 2 packs a day now and drink tons of coffee and just wait, and wait, for some sort of good news. some days we get it, and some days just suck.

Till we meet again....

"During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us 'Sin City,' and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you." ~Anne Rice