Straight up.  There’s no other way to enjoy Memphis, other than straight up.  Neat.  Pure, baby.  One grabs Memphis by the bottle and chugs it down.  One does not savor Memphis as much as one consumes it.  Memphis is that girl that likes it rough; pull on her hair, thrust a couple of times, then bend over to whisper in her ear.  Baby, I like it when you move like that, Memphis.  It is, after all, a city that built a fucking pyramid on a place called Mud Island, and has a gigantic shrine to one of the tackiest singers that ever graced the Vegas stages.

When I came to Memphis, I did what any other tourist would do and made my way over to Beale Street.  Beale Street, at one time, was a nourishing environment for Black leadership, activism, and music.  But, by the time I rolled around, it wasn’t anything better than a tourist attraction, designed to suck the most amount of money from visitors while providing the least authentic experience.  Oh, there were girls, and rows and rows of motorcycles.  Their riders strolled around, leathers stinking with full colors blazing where appropriate.  I gave a wide berth when possible.  Few riders are authentic road gangsta’s, but many will pound the closest challenge just to make their balls swell a few centimeters more in diameter. 

The neon lights were making me horny, so I ducked inside one of the many restaurants in search of beer, fried pickles, low-rise jeans, and a good rhythm to replace the one in my pants.  Some deep, brown eyes seated me in the corner and I ordered beer and fried pickles.  Some sweaty, leather pants served me, and I kept ordering more beer just to see the pants again.

The music was canned and the food was scraped from the very bottom of the grease pits, but I was drunk and the evening lingered.  Across from me, old men played the same flats and sharps that they’ve played every night since they answered want ads for cooks, but instead, found themselves whinging on strings in a solid attempt to emulate the Blues.  Pathetic, for sure, but the tourists didn’t know any better, and occasionally they had deaf patrons who thought they knew the Blues, but instead found themselves knowing bad fried pickles more.

I escaped the whirl of sweaty folks trying to bring the French Quarter to central, west Memphis (grab her hips tight and hold on, brother) and made my way to the banks of the Mississippi. 

The first time I saw the Mississippi, I was riding west on my way to observe an oral school for the Deaf.  That evening, my bike’s radiator blew on the Poplar Street Bridge and cars honked at me while I tried to escape the traffic and figure out my next move.  The last time I saw the Mississippi, before I moved to Arizona, I was crossing the near the same bridge, and it looked like the river was on fire, but of course it wasn’t and it was just the sun, but just the same it burned away my past in the Midwest.

For all my crossings and my flights overhead, I had never actually touched the Mississippi, although I did come close when I decided to see how far I could see down the banks, when I was in New Orleans, and I almost found myself swimming (had I gone in, I would’ve likely not surfaced until the waters overflowed during Katrina and then I may have been counted in that ugly toll, but at least I would’ve amounted to something).  Now in Memphis, and walking alongside the banks of the big river, I decided that I needed to touch it, just to feel the waters run through my fingers (and maybe catch a sense of Abe Lincoln, or Huck Finn, or some other fictional character that lives mostly in books, quotes, and the imagination).

Near the pier was some river gambling boat.  It was as good as spot as any to dip my fingers in.  And, I did; I did dip my fingers in.  Then, I drove back to my hotel on Poplar, the one with the bar off the lobby (which is one of the reasons it was recommended to me), and ordered a scotch of something cheap and off the shelf. 

Neat, of course.  Like Memphis.  Straight up.