I am in the Dayton, Ohio airport waiting to fly back to Biloxi. My first eleven weeks on the Gulf Coast were like Natalie Portman's character in Garden State: challenging, strangely beautiful and likely to change my life.
At the end of the movie, Zach Braff experiences a Natalie montage set to silly hipster music. On the verge of Mississippi re-submersion, I'm having something of a montage myself. Mine, though, is scored by my as-yet-unreleased mash-up of "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Livin' on a Prayer." (It will be called "Prayin' by Livin' on Believin'" and will be Pied-Piper-irresistible to drunk people everywhere.)
My first three months in Biloxi were an exalted rush, wild and trying and full of hope.
This is the montage. ("Just a small town girl -- and ohhhhhh, we're halfway there!")
As with any group of college-aged hooligans, the conversation at Hands On Gulf Coast often strays into vulgarity.
One memorable debate concerned the vaginal euphemism of distinction. "Cooch" and "snatch" were proposed, only to be immediately trumped by their synthesis: "snootch."
In a related story, Beardsley and I spent our first day in Mississippi picking up trash in a very poor neighborhood.
As a middle-aged black woman walked quickly through an intersection, an old sauntering black man called after her in a thick drawl: "Bring that coochie back here! I'm-a tear that up!"
We couldn't tell if they were strangers -- a cold holler, as it were -- or quarreling lovers. Not that either situation would explain the delicacy of the man's diction.
In what was, incredibly, a comparatively subtle gesture, an eighteen-year-old short-termer volunteering with his Christian high school left Eli Mitchell '10 a note when he left Biloxi: "I wish I had lost my virginity to you."
Highway 90 follows the Gulf of Mexico. We drove it every day. The coast is the last wasteland, strewn with bombed-out shells of gas stations and rusted golden arches. The wreckage bears witness to the desperate first days after the storm. The graffiti is especially searing:
"We are home!! Will shoot, no loot!!"
"We will shoot to kill!"
"He has risen, and so shall we."
"On the road to recovery."
And seven floors up on the balcony of now-abandoned condos: "MOM WE'RE OKAY."
Elsewhere in Biloxi, the exterior of a cafe is brightened by a mural painted months ago by Hands On and local schoolchildren. In the corner, a small message in little-kid scrawl: "A first day of school may be tough but you will make friends."
Driving down 90 every day, the devastation can overwhelm. We learned to keep our eyes towards the ocean. In a city of poverty and garish casinos, the Gulf is abiding, heartening beauty. The ocean's primordial draw was apparent for others, too.
Every few days, I would see a car parked just off 90, its driver standing on the sand gazing seaward. It was like watching characters in "Pleasantville" go from black and white to color.
As a rule, long-term volunteers have great stories. Doug has many about his former job: managing a California porn store.
"Men buy the majority of the videos, women buy the majority of the toys."
The best part?
"Free condoms."
Male-to-female customer ratio?
"Ten to one."
He loved the work because "My job was selling people orgasms!"
Doug hesitated when pressured to tell his "grossest" story.
"You guys don't even want to know. Seriously."
"Yes, we do!"
It went back and forth until he relented. Anticipation was high.
"There's the private booths, right? And something people use, um, material? Say, women's underwear. Once, when I was cleaning up, I found an infant's jumpsuit."
It was like the beginning of Brad Pitt's first fight with Edward Norton in Fight Club: We had egged him on to hit us, begged him, and when he finally threw the punch, it was --"Mother%$@! You hit me in the ear!"-- shockingly painful.
The end of the montage is a blur.
Dinner erupting into the timeless sport of keep-the-balloon-in-the-air, and a short-termer diving -- laying out -- over two chairs, flicking the balloon up with outstretched fingers as he hits linoleum; speedboat races in the Gulf on a bright day, each boat tailed at ludicrously close distance by a helicopter, the whole scene unnervingly reminiscent of "Apocalypse Now;" a volunteer's t-shirt: "Midwives Help People Out"; Marley the disabled middle-schooler on the floor of his classroom, zipping his backpack closed with his teeth; a homeless man in the Wal-Mart parking lot with a mysterious sack over his shoulder, which he suddenly slices open -- grain spills out, and a vortex of seagulls descends around him; a volunteer quietly reciting her poetry to close friends: "Like gods we danced and fought and ate until we were sure we were made of fire."
Dooooon't stop -- beellieeeeeeviin!
