CB: My first apartment in New Orleans was on Frenchmen Street, in that building that’s now a fancy timeshare. You know, the one next to Café-Brasil-that’s-not-Café-Brasil. Back then it was like the Melrose Place of dysfunction. My roommate had already moved in when I showed up, and she’d been telling everyone her college friend was coming to live with her from Massachusetts.
I get in at 11 o’clock one night—my other friend and I had been in the car for like two, three days—and the street’s full of people. Back then, there was Café Brasil, and across the street, Café Istanbul. And that was it.
LD: When was that?
CB: That was 1993. So we get in, and the street’s full of people. Fucking chock full of people. My friend was like, “You live … here?”
I’m like, “Apparently, I live here.”
[General laughter amongst the daydrinkers listening in. This is at Checkpoint Charlie’s, where Claudia is working {managing, bartending} and the interviewer is daydrinking.]
A lot of coke dealers lived in the building back then, and three or four strippers. Two pregnant strippers, one of whom was hysterically pregnant.
LD: Hysterically …?
CB: That means when you have the symptoms of being pregnant—you look pregnant—but you’re actually not pregnant. Psychological blind spot. Because you’re that crazy.
The day after I moved in, my roommate had already gone to work, and I was planning to possibly go look for jobs or just wander around.
There’s a knock on the door, and one of the two transsexuals who lived in the building showed up with an armload of Cosmo magazines and a basket of nail polish. She told me, “Girl, Catherine, told me you’re moving in. I’m here to do makeovers.”
And that was our first apartment.
LD: That sounds … fantastic.
CB: It was. So then this other time, they were having the NORML benefit in my living room.
LD: “Normal” benefit?
CB: Yeah, I can’t even remember what all the letters stand for, but it’s an organization for the legalization of marijuana. I’m not sure how or why, but somehow I ended up with a planning meeting for NORML in my living room, and a couple of my friends’ bands were going to play.
I was a roadie for this one band, really because I had the car. There was a bass player, and there was my roommate—a different roommate by then—playing trombone, and a flute player.
Somehow, this is a band.
So I’m their roadie, just because it’s my roommate and my neighbors, and because I’ve got a car. We go down to Café Brasil. They’re supposed to play early, and there’s supposed to be some hippie kid showing up to play a djembe, who did not show up.
The drum was there, the drummer was not. So then somehow, I was the drummer. I’ve never been a drummer in my life. I have no drumming talent. They’re like, “Okay, Claudia, just do this. No, stop adding things. Just do this beat …”
Daydrinker: Yeahhh, like, “Boom, boom, boom, boom.”
CB: [Withering look] Yeah. And I’m like, sorry, I wouldn’t want to screw up this band of electric bass, trombone, and flute.
So, that was my one time playing on stage at Café Brasil. It was exciting. We were all clearly stoned as fuck.
That NORML benefit meeting, it was just so crazy because I don’t even know how this thing ended up happening at my house. Here we all are, sitting around in a circle in my living room, and there’s a joint coming at you one way, another coming at you the another way, a pipe over here, a pipe over there, and the guy I was dating at the time—he actually ended up naked onstage—he didn’t smoke weed, didn’t even like weed, but he ended up stoned as fuck just because oh my god, there was so much weed in my living room. He was in Dick Slap. One of the bands playing.
Planned a fine NORML benefit … I don’t know if they raised any money.
Another daydrinker: What happens when you have stoned people doing your benefit…
[Jukebox: I get knocked down …]
CB: Right, right. I think my lawyer was probably involved.
[Various daydrinkers: But I get up again!]
CB: My lawyer’s been a hemp activist for years.
.
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Note: Everything herein is factual, except when interviewees speak of doing drugs. These parts are 1o0% fictional. Nobody has done any drugs. Don't be ridiculous.
