[goin' steady]

They're all my boyfriends. Whether they know it or not.

All the jolly old bums who hang around and make fun of each other in Jackson Square, calling me names like sassy and caramel.

And the freshly dressed brown boys who skateboard the streets of the French Quarter in packs, never giving any woman (including myself) so much as a wink.

Cashiers at corner stores who work to fit as many lame jokes as possible into our 2-minute interaction.

The bar hosts standing out on Bourbon Street holding large menus, working to corral groups of tourists into overpriced restaurants. Hosts who reach out for hugs when I pass them after I get off work. Hosts who offer to buy me dinner at restaurants much nicer than their own.

And every last trombone player. They're all my boyfriends.

And how about the high school boys trying to act tough on their walk home from the school bus, yelling to each other extra-vulgar in order to compensate for their matching uniform slacks and tucked in polo's.

The traveler kids playing washboard, banjo, and fiddle in doorsteps for cash. Wailing old folk songs up over my head and to the moon while I dance and we pass around a brown paper bag of grain alcohol.

Shoot, even my actual boyfriends are my boyfriends.

But so are the tour guides who stop into the shop where I work, just to shoot the shit a little bit before leading big groups of imbiciles from all over the country around the Quarter, enchanting them with their exaggerated historic fables intermingled with ghost stories.

The cute barista guys who get all shy when I toss a dollar in their tip jar.

The young rapper boys in the neighborhood who don't know how to talk to women and get caught off guard by my intolerance for bullshit. Boys who shout out "Simi-Automatic! Pop pop pop!" From blocks away when they see me pass. Boys who commission me to record verses about money, cars, and clothes onto their tracks.

I love them. All of them.

Especially the hot dog vendors, in all their ridiculousness.

And the tragic looking white boys skulking prettily on their porches every day -- the ones who smile-wave, but don't say hello, just look on longingly at everything that passes them by.

And the old, seasoned, mind-blowing jazz musicians playing on the corner in hopes of catching a few five-dollar-bills in their cases. I see them every day -- some times I sit and listen, other times I bring them a beer in exchange for an on-street music lesson, but most times I just zoom on past, skivvies showing under a little dress atop my cruiser bicycle because I'm late for work.

And yet I go home to nobody, no one, except my guitar, and we keep each other up late singing one big love song to the whole damn city of New Orleans.

This girl. Her head. Her heels.

Who knows!