Pissing While Riding a Bicycle through the Back End of a Rumored Tornado

I am a test specimen, a guest of this life that I've been given to record a tornado in New Orleans just past midnight. I ride through the rain on a bike with a chain that rattles every time the pedals rotate. The sky flashes gray. Bicycle tires create a wake. The brim of my leather hat collects rain drops that fall to my chest each time I bend forward.
            I follow the front tire through the one-foot puddles of the Tremé to the other side of Rampart Street where water rises and falls against French Quarter curbs.

            Nobody sleeps in Jackson Square tonight. Nobody walks. Nobody talks. The bums have found places to hide. The Cathedral steps are silent.
            Two gutter punks share a bag of beignets on the other side of a closed Cafe Du Monde. The powdered sugar coats the dough like paste. I ride through the puddles, laughing at the tourists who duck and run and hide under balconies. The sky flashes gray. Everybody drinks inside the bars of Decatur: Molly's at the Market, Coop's Place, The Alibi.

            These streets are mine.
            There's music playing on Frenchmen. I watch the rain blow like a sheet past the lamplight above the Praline Connection. A guitar rift escapes the doors of the Apple Barrel. Tourist girls gather across the street at the place that plays reggae. Everybody's afraid of this rain save me and the two people: the guy spinning the twirling barefoot girl in the middle of Frenchmen. Taxi cabs become our guests tonight. We will become the weather. I ask the couple for a cigarette.
            She looks sexy with wet, jet black hair and beads of rain dripping between her breasts.            "I'll get you one," she says." She tries, but the people inside the reggae place are unwilling to give up what they have.

            I take off my hat and get a taste of the rain. I want to smoke now. I've got that itch to go and get a cigarette so I ride past the R Bar. The doors are open but nobody stands outside. Branches blow as I cross Esplanade. The sky flashes grey. People can hear my chain from blocks away. Only firecracker thunder drowns me out. I pass Miss Lucy, the bartender from Johhny White's, who is carrying an umbrella and cursing her dog in Spanish.
            The Golden Lantern always was a standby if I needed a drink or a cigarette; I just don't want to go inside and sit. I don't want old men trying to rub my leg. I want this rain.
            I take a right on Bourbon Street. The rain hits my leather hat and drips down my soaking wet shirt. The first three people I ask for cigarettes tell me it's their last one; I can see the outlines of cigarette packs in their front pockets. Some might blame inflation or the economy. I blame the street where I ride. Nobody on Bourbon wants to share. Maybe the girl trapped in a closed doorway of Razzoo wants to free herself from the bouncer.
            She rocks back and forth as I ask for a smoke.
            "They're Ultra Lights," she says.
            I tell her that I'll tear off the filter. "You got a lighter?"
            "Only wet matches."
            I ask her, "I can get a monkey fuck?"
            She won't look at me. The bouncer doesn't like what he just heard.
            I ride on without telling them that I simply wanted to use her cigarette to light mine. I ask groups huddled under balconies smoking, big plumes blowing above their heads. How can all of them be on their last cigarette? Do people from America not give anymore? I'm a guy with a soaking wet broken Ultra Light, and nobody will give me a fresh cigarette.
            I give up. Time to ride back home. But as any smoker knows, you never give up. Then I see a man with a big umbrella in Mardi Gras colors. Something tells me he's local. I shake my hands to get the rain off of me. The sky flashes gray. He gives me a long Marlboro Light 100. He lights the cigarette he has given me. After I get his name, I tell him, "I'm going to remember you, Doug."
            I stand across from Razzoo, safe under a balcony, slowly smoking, smiling at the bouncer who is alone. His trapped girl was found by her friends as I spoke with Doug. Thunder cracks. A drunk kid wobbles down the sidewalk like a boxer in the eleventh round, gripping onto poles to prevent himself from falling into the small stream of rain and piss and puke and beer that runs along the curb. A sheet of rain blows across neon. The cigarette tastes good. Warm. Necessary.
            I can go home now. The rain feels warmer the more I pedal, but rain induced shivers make me want to piss. I'm soaking wet. More and more drops hit me.
            Two guys kiss outside Clover Grill. I tell them to enjoy the rain as I take a right on Dumaine. I don’t care about holding it any longer. At Dauphine I let the piss run down my leg, splash onto my ankles, warming my whole lower body as I am released from the noise and the smell and the people of Bourbon Street; I ride and piss , past Dauphine, past Burgundy, past Rampart, and back into the Treme.
            I become the sky with each drop of myself that I give to the ground.