back to Things for Which We Are Thankful
Marsden LeBlanc Reviews New Music
work in progress
by Christine Fitzgerald
Marsden took a loooooooong drag on his cigarette. Rather, he took a loooooooong drag on his cigarette through its cigarette holder. He was that affected, Marsden, that he would have a cigarette holder and take a loooooooong drag through it.
“Indeed,” said Marsden, narrowing his eyes as the smoke filled his lungs. Whatever psychological benefits which come from nicotine surged through his bloodstream and pacified his brain.
He slowly let a trickle of smoke seep out through his mouth.
Perhaps you are already thinking of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, but don’t. Somehow think of a skinny Jabba the Hut when thinking of Marsden.
“Know what I hate?” Marsden looked at me quizzically.
I was not exactly stumped because I figured that Marsden hated pretty much everything. I could have hazarded a guess at random, and any guess would have been a correct answer to the question, but what was THE correct answer?
Marsden watched me mentally grope around among the ranks of things he hated. What could he possibly hate the most at this moment?
Perhaps he hated his name. He had been named after Marsden Hartley, the artist. I dare say that no one else in Morganza had ever been named after any American Modernist painters. His parents were the offspring of weird renegades from a socialist community in western Louisiana, and they fancied themselves to have a lot more culture than the average Morganzan.
I said nothing. “No, it’s not my name,” Marsden said contemptuously, as if he could read minds, in addition to his other talents.
Marsden was on his fourth day of his Thanksgiving visit, and we had another four days of him to go. Marsden was a third cousin twice removed. He was a successful playwright in New York City. He came home to Morganza every year for Thanksgiving, and then he would go back to New York and write plays and Netflix shows full of cruel oblique references to Morganza.
But, back to what could he be hating right at that moment? Perhaps it was my Aunt Mary Grizaffi’s (from nearby New Roads) salad. She made it and put the dressing on it the night before, and by dinnertime the next day it was limp and the dressing had almost pickled the salad. As far as I was concerned, that salad, served with a generous sprinkling of parmesan cheese from a green cylindrical can, was an integral part of any special occasion celebrated with the extended family, but Marsden probably had other ideas.
Maybe it was that Melancon’s Cafe, where Easy Rider was filmed, had been torn down. I know he hated that it had been torn down. How could anyone tear down a place where Dennis Hopper and/or Peter Fonda had set foot? As far as Marsden was concerned, tearing down that cafe was the moral equivalent of tearing down Jerusalem. It was hallowed ground, made profane. We had been over this before. He had already hated that.
I needed to guess something new. I looked out of the window. The train was passing and the whole house was vibrating.
Marsden took another huge breath through the cigarette holder. By the way, there was no getting Marsden to smoke outside the house, Thanksgiving or not. Our choices were fisticuffs, calling the law, or having our whole Thanksgiving stunk up with his cigarette smoke. We are country folk, but we don’t resort to fisticuffs or calling the law on each other at Thanksgiving, so we in effect opted for the stinky Thanksgiving.
This was the afternoon before Thanksgiving and I had to deal with Marsden by myself. I suggested that we go sit on the back porch and look at the levee, but I really wanted to get Marsden outside so that the house could get a brief respite from the smoke. I was surprised that Marsden agreed as he rarely agreed to anything.
For a while we looked at the levee in silence.
Finally Marsden said, “white people on NPR who review hip hop music.”
Of course! That’s what he hates! Who doesn’t hate that? But hmmmm, thought I. It seemed that I had heard Marsden, who, by the way, is white, on Fresh Air recently steering the conversation towards hip hop music in a futile effort to avoid discussing his own sexuality.