Nostalgia, New Orleans, 2019

I take a sip from the frozen daiquiri, then offer it to my friend. She takes a long pull from the straw that was just in my mouth. It is the first evening of our New Orleans trip and we’re at a crowded barbecue restaurant with the friends who are hosting us. The pink concoction seems a fitting way to kick off a NOLA vacation. It’s colorful, boozy, and goes down easy.

During the day, we see the sights. We kayak across swampy waterways, cutting through the glassy reflections of cypress and tupelo. We take a tour at the Whitney Plantation, the only museum in Louisiana exclusively dedicated to the lives of the people who were enslaved there. We sample beignets and go through the line at a lunch buffet—twice. On Sunday after church, we go to a small sports bar to watch the Saints play. The restaurant has set up snacks for everyone to share: we join the line for pulled pork sliders. Whenever the Saints score, we high-five everyone and the restaurant sends around a tray of free vodka shots.

At night, we squeeze ourselves into bars that are so crowded that we hand our crumpled bills to strangers who pass our money to the bar, then deliver drinks to us the same way, passing our beers hand-over-hand.

At another crowded bar, my friend gets into a discussion with a friend-of-a-friend about how race impacts education inequity. For a reason no one understands, the man she’s talking to gets offended. You know how those conversations go, right? You’re not even disagreeing and yet you find yourself getting more and more worked up?

This is what I remember about that conversation: not so much of what was said but how they stood. The term “social distance” has not yet entered our vocabulary. The man leans in to make his point; my friend is polite but stands her ground. They shout to be heard above the din. Their faces are inches apart, their invisible breaths aerosolizing in the air between them.