Grief

I went to a Graduate Student function with mr. delagar last night, though I didn't much want to. First off, I don't like parties. Never really have. Parties are large crowds of strangers talking about things that don't matter in large, noisy, bright rooms. Everything I hate.

Also, of course, I hardly felt like a party: though I had just gotten the good news about my brother being safe, still -- his apartment, my youngest brother's house, and probably my parents' house (we're not sure about that yet) have all likely been destroyed or at least badly damaged, and certainly none of them can go home in the foreseeable future. My oldest brother lives in Destrehan, about twenty miles out of the city, and they don't think that area flooded, so if the power gets restored there sometime soon, he can go home -- well, eventually.

But meanwhile, my entire family are refugees. Quite possibly most of them have lost nearly everything they own. My mother is in rampant denial. My brothers are staying with relatives throughout the South. My parents are wandering from hotel to hotel. (I keep saying come here, but they aren't, so far.) Not to mention, down in New Orleans, people are dying in the streets. I don't feel like a party. I go anyway, because mr. delagar wants to.

There's a fund drive for Katrina victims. That cheers me up.

But this -- guy -- come up to me, and says, "I hear you have family in New Orleans."

"I do," I say. I expect sympathy. I have been getting sympathy from people, all week.

"About time that toilet got flushed," he says, and proceeds to tell me about how New Orleans used to be a great city and how it sucks these days, how everything that was good about it has been gone for years, and how much better Fort Smith is than New Orleans, and how he's glad he left. Yap yap yap.

People are dying down there, and he gives me this.

He's lucky I wasn't armed.