Bourbon Street
I lost $10 playing chess to a man on Bourbon Street. I didn’t catch his name over the cascading bar music and throngs of street partygoers, but given the outcome, I’ll call him Victor. When first walking by, I hadn’t considered the likelihood that the game would be for money—that was my first show of Idaho naivety. The second was my assumption that because he had Cash App, he’d also have Venmo. Then came the panic that with just an ID, credit card, and vaccine card in hand, I was unable to withdraw from an ATM.
I stumbled over my words, attempting to humanize myself and create a modicum of trust. Turns out Victor had just played a game in which the opponent quit a move before check mate and refused to pay up. To him, I was just more of the same—why should he trust me? So, an unsure white kid promised to set up a CashApp account as soon as he returned to his hotel, leaving Victor to wait for his next match.
Back on Canal Street, correcting from a wrong turn, I spun on my heels and came face to face with a man who I recognized as the friend of Victor who’d silently watched us play. I said hi, and he said, matter-of-factly, that he’d be walking with me to retrieve Victor’s winnings. “You’re really gonna walk across the city for ten bucks?” I asked, immediately recognizing $10 to him and $10 to me are far from equivalent, and to which he simply shrugged. With this shift in perspective, what was a very tense, concerning moment for me quickly began to materialize into vague understanding.
I told him my name was Kyle; he said his was Keith. Throughout the ensuing 15 minute walk to the hotel, Keith shared about his years in New Orleans and living through Hurricane Katrina, experiences dealing drugs and bootlegging alcohol, time in prison, and about a son back in Dallas he’d never met. The more he opened up, the more I fell into a state of guilt for what I realized had been a conditioned fear of the unknown in an unfamiliar place. I’ve since struggled to differentiate this feeling from concepts like implicit bias and racism.
This experience touches on a recurring thought I’ve had in every new country or state I’ve traveled to—as regions of the US can be every bit as foreign as a country overseas. How does one engage in tourism in an authentic manner? Or is tourism inherently tainted by the distinction between where one comes from and where they go?
I previously believed the length of one’s stay was associated with the ability to break through the invisible barrier and engage in the act of community—i.e. living vs. visiting. I’m now realizing that the same pattern of behavior will lead to the same outcome, whether one visits for a day, month, or year.
While visiting my friend Hunter in Morocco, I cringed as Boomers snapped pics of locals going through the motions of their everyday lives, as if some exhibit for their viewing pleasure. On this recent trip to New Orleans, I heard a couple use the dehumanizing word “exotic” to describe their surroundings. There’s an apparent barrier within this inauthentic mode of being—sometimes referred to as “class tourism”—predicated on a difference in opportunity.
In the midst of a Master of Public Health program and on a school-related trip, my mind couldn’t help but reflexively think of the inequities, social determinants of health, and color of one’s skin—random elements of life nobody gets to choose or control—which led to me being the tourist, the observer, instead of fading into the background as just another pawn of the surroundings I was there to experience. Many of us struggle with this duality internally, but respectfully acting upon it gets muddy and we will all make mistakes.
I’m not proud that my interaction with Victor and Keith—an interaction that was likely unmemorable for them—became a profound lesson for me, but sometimes it takes an eye-opening experience to disassemble the privilege that scaffolds our perceptions of the world.
I chose to play chess with Victor because I genuinely enjoy the game and play it often—my proudest craftsmanship is the chessboard shown above, made in my parents garage with a borrowed table saw and router—but back in the hotel I was unable to sleep and ended up journaling what would become this essay’s first draft. I’ve since been absorbed by the question of whether I chose to engage with Victor for the thrill/novelty of interacting with someone completely removed from my own privileged existence?
I am uncomfortable sharing this account. I can’t say what Victor’s motives were for “pushing wood” in the midst of the late-night Bourbon bustle—connections with locals and tourists alike, or an attempt to make a very modest living playing a game he loves—but the fact that Keith limped a dozen blocks makes me believe it to be the latter.
And it’s not so much the intention, but the consequences of my behavior that give me pause. Had I been better prepared to pay up immediately following a loss to Victor, I could have left his table with a sense of connection through one of society’s oldest games, rather than the feelings of isolation and uneasiness I carried with me back to Canal Street. With privilege and higher socioeconomic status, I believe, comes an increased moral responsibility for one to contemplate and anticipate the potential repercussions of an action, for all parties involved.
I’ve reflected many times in the days since about how a more self-assured or confrontational attitude could have left me in more pain than just mental anguish. I was respectful in part because I was unsure in the situation, but also because that’s how I was raised to behave. When I returned to the front of the hotel with $20 cash, apologizing for my mistake and for making him walk all that way, Keith seemed to recognize this and touched me on the shoulder and said the words, “You’re OK man.”