The first sentence of a Streetcar named Desire: "They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields”
She looks around, holding a paper scrap that says 632 Elysian Fields, and seeing such squalor, she can't believe the address is correct. And here we are 75 years later, that address, and the squalor it represented, is the double shotgun our shop is in. That must mean something. It must! Hmmm.
I do try to be the best father I can, nurturing, supportive, all that stuff…I try to be where I should be all the time (although when I’m not I’m with some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend, but that’s another story). My child makes art, we invent fables, make sure the characters have a back stories that fit. I try really hard to let her develop her literary sense, as far as a 6 year old who writes about blood and cats can.
Then I think of Tennessee Williams, and realize I am doing this 'father of a creative genius' thing all the way wrong. Tennessee’s dad was a drunk, and a violent drunk at that. He was an awful dad who belittled his young, not yet named Tennessee, son. He certainly never played zombie on the playground with him, he taught his son to hate and called him Miss Nancy. His mom was puritan, I can’t even find a puritan this side of Lake Ponchatrain. Dang, so I’ve already ruined my artistic kid’s life through my rational semi soberness, she stands no chance of becoming a revered playwright this way. I didn't even give my kid a schizophrenic sister to fret over like a young Tennessee had. The guilt was killing me, until I realized, actually, maybe I saved her...Theater ain’t what it used to be. Now she’d probably have to adapt Earnest Saves Christmas into a Broadway musical to pay the bills if she went Tennessee's William's route.
Tennessee wasn't born in Tennessee. He never even lived there. Like the majority of conflicted drunken writers of era who excelled in flamboyancy, he was born in Mississippi. Mississippi really brought it out of folks. He grew up in Missouri, but like every exuberantly drunk artistic failure struggling with everything, and needing some soul freeing sleaze to understand himself, he ended up coming to New Orleans, as someone who considered renaming himself Valentine Lanier would. The mix of art, failure, alcohol, sexual mayhem and humidity is the mortar that holds our city together, we needed him as much as he needed us and like half of New Orleans residents, he came with the plan of just passing through, but again, as a slightly mentally unstable young man of no means, he just stayed. It’s a cliche story that I share also.
So he first moved to 722 Toulouse St in the Quarter. The building is still there because everything is still here. The only thing that’s changed in 100 years is the amount of money one needs to be an unsuccessful drunk in here...times are tougher now that we aren’t in a depression. Back then, he had it easy, he just had to sell his clothes for food, chug water as a meal, and wait tables at spots few wanted to eat at. He got around by bike. We've all been there because there is always here.
My favorite story is the truest. He had finally found success with his first hit, The Glass Menagerie, he was able to up his plan to way fancier booze and an unending supply of barbiturates for his depression, and was working on a play he called 'The Poker Night', which in my opinion is the worst name for a play I could imagine, it evokes the feeling of a poker night, which means it evokes nothing . I still believe it would have been doomed to failure under that name but late inspiration hit from his balcony, as he could see passing at the corner, the Streetcar named Desire. I can imagine the moment. I picture him in a robe on his balcony, drink in hand, smacking himself in the head and mumbling “Did I almost name this play ‘The Poker Night’? Dang. WTF”
And the rest is history, with the best named play ever changing everything.
So besides coming to New Orleans as failures, Tennessee and I share one other thing, his table at Galatoire’s. Large, right by the window, easy to hold court. When I went to propose to someone years ago, the Matre D' gave me the Tennessee Williams table for the occasion. I didn’t have a coterie of hangers on, just a single person, but the place did explode when I got on my knee as the waitress pulled out the ring from the dessert cart. I imagine just as it did when he would order anther drink. My fiance and I never did get married, I'm a New Orleanian, follow through, like everything else, just gets clogged up in my arteries, and I always thought that the proposal was all the commitment anyone ever needed. Security is a kind of death he would have said, because he did say it. In conclusion, if you feel ripped off because this was more about me than him, yo...there are like 10 biographies abut him, I have an untouched 500 page one on my shelf I'll lend you, just ask. There are no 500 page books about me, so let me have my moment please.
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